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These look good, but I have some concerns. Getting some variant of 1 passed is to me the highest priority and its wording thus needs to be immaculate. I question whether it would pass in its current form. One concern is that it relies on the amorphous notions of importance and significance rather than something more easily defined such as verifiability. It could allow say an article on a random shepherd, such as that on Pierre Maury, to be deleted. Two avoids this problem with the mention of press coverage. That addendum will prevent bands like The Electras from being deleted. Three is also problematic, especially because the factors that make a website notable are ill-defined. Listings of websites certainly make up less than one percent of the deletion load so just dumping this criteria might be best. - SimonP 14:36, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
For articles created by logged-in editors, maybe we could offer an intermediate step?
The proposed speedy criteria can be applied immediately to articles without logged-in authors. I would suggest only applying them to articles at least an hour old, in case an editor is still working on expansion.
I'm not sure if this is too Rube Goldberg a process; any thoughts? At least it's less work than VfD, still. -- TenOfAllTrades( talk) 15:48, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'm having a little trouble with (article) props 1, 2, and 3. I don't like the "assert" wording, especially on 2 which, because of the music guidelines is very quantitative. Lets say there's no article on Elton John, (hypothetically) and I start it with article that says he's a really cool artist with bright clothes and distinctive glasses and he's really famous, etc. But never explicitly saying he's a signed musician. It could be deleted, despite the truth of the matter that he is. It should not be whether the article asserts it or not, but whether the subject is it or not. Now you may still say that the Elton John article is crappy and still deserves deletion, and I may agree with you, but it should go to VfD (where there's a high liklihood of cleanup for signed musicians), not be deleted without a chance for cleanup. I know this might add an exta minute of googling to the process, but I don't thik it's that big of a deal. Does this make sense? -- Dmcdevit 20:00, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
And one more that crossed my mind... another regular source of vanity is people writing about their college clubs. Thus it may be useful to add a CSD for any article that claims to be about any local club (but not a chapter of a larger organization) and that cites no press reference nor influence outside the local community. R adiant _>|< June 29, 2005 08:37 (UTC)
There may well be a way to dump this proposition #1 entirely. I am currently performing an initial study on a hypothetical speedy deletion criterion that does not rely upon concepts such as "vanity" or "importance" for precisely these reasons, but instead relies upon two metrics that can be applied objectively and that are relatively easily defined. The study is not complete (I want to run it for a few more days yet.), but the data so far indicate that this criterion would allow 75% of the personal vanity articles at VFD that garner a unanimous consensus to delete to be speedily deleted, whilst not allowing the speedy deletion of any articles that proceed to a definite consensus to "keep" or "merge". Pierre Maury would not qualify for speedy deletion under this hypothetical criterion, as a matter of simple subtraction. The proposal is at User:Uncle G/Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Unsourced biographies. See the talk page for the study in progress. Uncle G 19:13, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)
My first thought on Proposition 1 was a recommendation to tweak the wording from "people such as college professors or actors are individually important in society" to "... may be individually important in society". Articles on actors should not be speedy-deletes but we ought not to accidentally imply that no article on an actor is deletable.
On reflection, though, I worry that we are further institutionalizing the bias in favor of pop-culture. I have always been uncomfortable with the belief that entertainers are inherently more encyclopedia-worthy than other business people. However, that's a bigger worry than this one proposal which is, by the way, a close description of the current standard. Rossami (talk) 20:46, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This proposition is arguably too vague. Any thoughts on what might substantiate a website's suitabilty for inclusion in an encyclopedia? This accounts for ~5 pages per day so it would be worthwhile to reword it. R adiant _>|< 12:10, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
How about if we slightly expand this one to say "any article about a website or a website's user..." (or some better word for user)? It seems to me I've seen a lot of obvious vanity pages about message board/forum users. As these tend not to be real biographies, but about their persona, perhaps this could clear up any confusion that might result from trying to apply the first criterion. -- Dmcdevit 22:31, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I feel that four has little hope of passing in its current incarnation. There are unquestionably some occasions where a Wikipedia page will duplicate a page in another Wikiproject. A dict def is very similar to a stub and various Wikibooks overlap all manner of Wikipedia articles. While this criteria could perhaps be reworded, these sorts of listings are again not a major burden at the moment. - SimonP 14:36, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
"Extremely short articles which contain no information other than a rephrasing of the title" should be considered for the speedy cleanup template. I suspect many objections based on the article could have been fixed it there was time if it is an out right speedy. Vegaswikian 18:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ok, someone creates a title with no content because they think an article is needed but don't know anything about it. For the sake of example, the title is George Washington. No one adds anything, but someone who does not believe there should be an article on george washington comes across it. What is to stop him deleting it? surely you can not delete a topic which has potential just because it has no content yet. Perhaps a time limit since creation would solve this objection. Article which has existed for 3 months without anyone adding to it?
Sandpiper 08:34, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
One way to address this may be to set a minimum character limit – say, 150 characters - for new articles. If you can’t think of 150 characters on a topic, it’s probably not worth a stub. As a frame of reference, those last two sentences are 150 characters (spaces excluded). -- BD2412 talk 23:55, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)
I like this proposal, because it explicitly covers cases I see all the time of an article that consists of nothing but the title. For example, an article "Doug McEvoy" with the contents "Doug McEvoy" (and nothing else). As it is, I speedy these under case A1. "No substantive content other than that stated in the title" is another way of putting it. For example, an article "Grape soda" with the contents "Grape soda is a kind of soda" would be speedyable under this criterion, but the above "Tezuka Yamazaki is a Japanese man." example would not (it adds the fact that he is Japanese, which is not directly implied by the title: it's a Japanese name, but someone following a link may not know that, and there is the occasional case of someone taking a Japanese name, such as Koizumi Yakumo). — Gwalla | Talk 30 June 2005 04:01 (UTC)
I might be inclined to expand this one to include Any article which is an unrepaired machine translation of an article from another language Wikipedia.
Such articles are easily identified by their identical structure (to the foreign wiki article), tortured grammar and word usage, and occasional untranslated word or phrase. They are troublesome for a number of reasons:
That said, if the translation has been cleaned up and wikified to a close semblance of proper English and Wikipedia style this criterion won't apply. -- TenOfAllTrades( talk) 15:38, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Two things: One, I'd also like to include something that covers articles in unsalvageably broken English. Two, I see no need to restrict this to things translated from other Wikis; in my experience, most foreign-language or gibberish articles don't come from other Wikiprojects. Perhaps Any article which is an unrepaired machine translation or unintelligible human translation of a source text...?
Fourteen days is too short. Are people desperate to recover server space? It surely does not inconvenience anyone doing the proposing to wait a bit longer, the problem is the complexity and effort of having a vote not the time involved. There is no reason why there should not be a longer waiting time before automatic removal. My own computer use is rather erratic, i could quite easily miss something within 14 days. Surely you have to have a realistic chance for the article to be noticed by someone who both has the interest and the skill and the time to do something about it. something which has been badly translated, but nonetheless translated should have more time than something not translated at all. Sandpiper 08:46, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There is a slight error in the proposal page (and it's my fault): at present pages stay on WP:PNT for a maximum of fourteen days, but may be moved to VfD at any time (seven days is a rule of thumb for getting consensus that they are not worth translating). They may also be marked for speedy deletion at any time, and often are. Pages that have gone to VfD after seven days include marginal interest or duplicate articles in languages where we have difficulty finding translators (eg, an article on Sharia in Indonesian). The problem with the current system is that we often feel the need to translate articles just so they can go to speedy or to VfD. As a very rough estimate, a quarter of articles that come to PnT are copyvio, a quarter get speedied under current CSD, a third get translated within fourteen days (only one article in the last two months has needed an extension) and the rest go to VfD on the grounds that we can't do anything with them. The fourteen day deadline is useful for concentrating peoples attention, so that articles do not simply lie around on English wiki for want of translating: the place for that is Wikipedia:Requests for translation, once the article has been moved to a foreign wiki, but most of the articles we move we translate for English wiki as well... Physchim62 4 July 2005 08:24 (UTC)
I want to express my support for this policy - the VfD process is not an appropriate venue for an untranslated article in a foreign language. However, I want to point to a complication: At present, there is an article in Chinese at Shen Qiong, which is short and which I could translate. However, I think the subject of the article isn't very noteworthy. Under the proposed policy, by leaving the article untranslated, it could be a speedy delete candidate. If translated, it would have to go to VfD. I want to make sure that everyone understands that this policy places the power to judge whether the article should be a speedy delete candidate in the hands of whoever can read it. The point of having narrow criteria for speedy delete is to prevent that sort of situation.
Now, I want to make clear that I am still in support of the policy, on the grounds that no one other than bilingual people can judge untranslated articles. Considering how often foreign language texts dropped into Wikipedia are marginal articles or outright copyvios, I don't think there's much risk of losing good materials here. But, this does empower a relatively small minority of Wikipedia user to make broad judgements about what to delete.
-- Diderot 4 July 2005 09:28 (UTC)
Any article that asserts to describe a character or story from fanfic
_>|< 19:19, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
I am still unclear of the meaning of this proposal, on account of being unclear of the definition of fanfic. Is the explanation above to be taken as exact and become part of the proposal?. So we would be talking about JK rowlings and Harry potter, in the days before she managed to get a publisher. Ok, since no one would have heard about her, Or do you mean to include other stuff within the definition of fanfic? Sandpiper 08:55, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Proposed defintion/exposition: In this context fanfic is fiction published since 1970 without an ISBN (or unpublished) using the characters or milieu of a film, novel, television show or other media work. I choose 1970 because that is the year that ISBN was accepted as an international standard.— Theo (Talk) 17:37, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Any image that is already present on WikiCommons
What is the definition of 'an image...already present'? Do you mean identical or similar? Could be two photos taken in quick succession, one of which might be considered superfluous? Or could this amendment be taken to allow deletion of distinct images of the same thing, which might not be desireable. Sandpiper 09:03, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
"Any newly created template that serves the same function as an existed template, but has different layout or wording"
Would this include the four speedy delete templates? After all, they are exactly the same template, only with different wording. What about the welcome templates? They all serve the same function (to welcome new users) but offer different options (especially since more than one user may welcome the same newbie). The warning templates would fall under the same rationale; they all serve the same function (to warn out-of-line users) but use different wording: don't blank pages, stop inserting nonsense, bow down to Jimbo whenever the trumpet sounds. (Okay, maybe not that last one.)
I checked TfD, and it doesn't look like they have a backlog (between five and ten a day). I think this proposal should be abandoned (or at least, drastically reworded, to recognize that there are legit reasons for having multiple similar templates). -- Essjay · Talk 14:03, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
I'm a bit torn on this one. Essjay has a point about the multiple speedy delete templates, for example. I presume that it was proposed in response to the spate of "narrow" template boxes that were created because an editor felt the existing cleanup tags were too large/ugly/obtrusive.
In my experience, these templates aren't created all that often, so the expansion to SD criteria to account for them isn't worth the collateral damage. To take a current example, Template:Whedon-spoiler is about to be deleted as redundant with Template:Spoiler—but that TfD discussion has led to the creation of Template:Spoiler-other to cover a more general set of cases. The ?fD pages aren't just about deletion; they tend to result in informal article (and policy!) review, too. -- TenOfAllTrades( talk) 15:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea, I just think it's one that would be hard to put into an abuse-resistant policy. I didn't seriously think that any admin would acutally speedy delete the speedy delete templates, but I do think it could be used against the welcome templates, particularly since several users (myself included) have personal welcome templates (although advertised to the general population as well) that we use because the standard welcome templates don't serve our needs. My opinion is that if and when TfD becomes overrun with nominations, then we should consider this idea, but at the moment, I think we should limit the changes to relieving the burden on VfD. -- Essjay · Talk 21:03, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
This particular proposal I think is unnecessary. It may also generate some controversy. Templates for deletion is not overburdened by template variations, and not all of the nominations of template variations get deleted. Examples of kept template variations: Template:User-c, Template:Creationism2, Template:CompactTOC5. BlankVerse ∅ 14:17, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I would object to this, at least as currently worded. If this had existed, it could and would have been sued to speedy Template:Spoiler-other and Template:Spoiler-about both of which i expect will have a keep result on TfD. Furthermore, and actual tempalte fork may be the best way to test a change in a comples template without possibly messing up many pages. There are too many issues here for this to qusligy fo speedy deletion. DES 19:27, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Not quite sure about the precedent for this, but it strikes me that single-use templates that have been subst'ed into their intended articles should be speedyable. After all, they are orphans, and unlikely to ever be used again. It seems like a waste of effort to have to list them on TfD. -- Dmcdevit 22:48, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I added an alternate wording for consideration - "Any template which is no longer used, 24 hours after it was removed from the last page. This does not apply to templates documented and used exclusively via subst:." Adding a 24 hour wait period after orphaning seems to have been working for categories. -- Netoholic @ June 28, 2005 15:11 (UTC)
The same as 9, only regarding categories rather than templates. Arguably it is more applicable there. R adiant _>|< 11:56, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
Speedy deleting articles that promote illegal activities also seems like a bad idea. In general Wikipedia should not have articles promoting anything, but the solution is not to delete them but rather to rewrite them in a NPOV manner. Any articles promoting illegal activities should simply be rewritten as neutral articles describing illegal activities. - SimonP 14:36, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
Yep; the "illegal activities" umbrella is a bit too broad. The line between 'promotion' and 'discussion' will be placed differently by different admins who may have political axes to grind. Many of our admins may not be familiar with Florida or U.S. law—and I'd be concerned about the misunderstandings likely to flow from that. (To draw a random example mostly from thin air, an article about closed court proceedings might be subject to gag orders in one jurisdiction but not others.) Perhaps if the language of the criterion were tightened up–I can see where it's coming from–this could be okay, but I can't figure out how to write it. -- TenOfAllTrades( talk) 15:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I can't get on board with this one. As SimonP said, the article should probably be rewritten rather than deleted. Anyway, how much do such articles clog up VfD, anyway? Joyous 16:03, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
Some countries ban women taking part in public life, or appearing in public unless fully covered. Would this mean deleting an article on Hilary Clinton because it promoted breaking foreign law? Articles should only be deleted on legal grounds when this is compelled by direct legal action, or is about to be. Sandpiper 09:13, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
A copy in article space of an article that is nominated for deletion, to prevent people from forking an article to save it from deletion
Short articles that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject
This is a wiki, so I added a proposal. Many people mistakenly believe that once an article is deleted via VfD, no content may ever reside at that article name again. We run into situations where legitimate articles are speedily deleted because a previous article under that name was subpar. I propose that we clarify CSD to make this distinction clear. It seems odd to judge a completely new article based on the merits of an unrelated predecessor. Rhobite 16:12, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
There's also a lot of people who assume that if something is speedy deleted it can be speedy deleted again for a second time. But when speedy deletion is arguably out of process, that isn't the case. - Mgm| (talk) 20:05, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
Any vote should always be considered to be on the existing content, not the title. How can you pre-judge something you have not read? Sandpiper 09:21, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Unenhanced copies: Unencyclopedic articles that have been directly copied from an existing web page.
This developed out of a discussion at User_talk:Cutler#speedy_garbage about an example of advertizement: CEO reputation.
The gray text is obsolete or not relevant to the proposal because it was based on an altered version of the original proposal.
Often true but not always. In a number of cases the person postign the info to wikipedia is also the person who wrote the text on the website, in which case there is no copyright issue at all, and the only question is the general suitability of the text. it may need rewrite, it may need to be wikified, but neither of thsoe are grounds for speedy delete. Besides as currently written, this would qualify all the 1911 EB articles for speddy deletes. DES 19:39, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I really like DES's argument for stating permission; how about moving it into its own section as a proposed policy? I'd vote for it! — Sebastian (talk) 06:09, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)
I support Theo's changed proposal, but I'm concerned that some voters may find it too general. I therefore added #13, which is meant to be a restricted variant of #12. Some remarks to #12:
— Sebastian (talk) 17:32, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)
What exactly is that supposed to mean? Or solve? And how can it be a policy proposal if it doesn't propose anything? And what about server lag? R adiant _>|< 19:10, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
Good points. I'm withdrawing it. It is a principle for my decisions, but I don't want to impose my principles on others. But what is your question about the server lag? — Sebastian (talk) 07:28, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)
"short articles with little or no context". Okay. What exactly does that mean? The intent of some of the above proposals is to clarify it (thus also limiting it to prevent abuse). Could some people please give examples of articles speedied under this criterion (that aren't patent nonsense and such). Thanks. R adiant _>|< 08:26, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
Proposed text is "Templates containing prose intended for use in articles. Such text should be copied into the related articles prior to template deletion."
Discuss. -- Netoholic @ 13:21, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)
I see your point - we're discussing this on a subpage of WP:CSD, after all. But I see this as a minor concern: The discussion should focus on solving the problem; where exactly a policy will be written is a minor issue. The policies are closely related and I can't imagine anyone would be interested in one and not the other. There are many advantages in voting for all together.
I will announce this on WP:DP, where this discussion should have been announced to begin with anyway. — Sebastian (talk) June 28, 2005 16:34 (UTC)
Radiant proposed on my talk page: "Some people objected to the CSD proposal getting overly long, so I'll be removing some of them that are redundant or have the proverbial snowball's chance in hell. Would you please consider if your DP proposal is appropriate here? I believe that, by its current wording, you could simply add it to DP since it's common sense, and a suggestion rather than a proposal."
While I don't share the concern of it getting too long (because voters can vote on as many suggestions as they like), I take it seriously. Adding it to DP as a suggestion seems very reasonable. Unfortunately, I'm unexpectedly very busy for a week or so, so that I only have time to check my talk page for now. But I don't want to hold up the process, so I won't object if DP1 were moved to the archive. — Sebastian (talk) June 30, 2005 15:21 (UTC)
"Voting on these proposals will begin after some discussion on the wording ..." [2]
Now I'm torn. For the existing propositions, I feel that most is pretty stable. (BTW, my vote would be: 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ 5+ 6- 7- 8+ 10a- 10b- 1oc- G1+ 12+ 13+ T2- .) Maybe we could agree to set Thursday, 19:00 UTC as beginning of voting.
Unfortunately, however, I just got a new idea :-] , which isn't well thought-out yet (see
#Automatic deletion). Let me see what you think about that idea, maybe it could solve some of the problems of the other propositions. —
Sebastian
(talk) June 28, 2005 06:25 (UTC)
However, there exists a great alternative proposal: Countdown deletion. I feel that many of the rules here should rather be reasons for countdown deletion than for speedy deletion. I'll have to look at them individually but my gut feel is that I will have more nays than I said above. Now unfortunately, these two discussions are not coordinated. So people like me may end up voting against a speedy delete in hopes that the countdown deletion passes, and run the risk that that fails, too. — Sebastian (talk) June 28, 2005 16:23 (UTC)
A few points I'd like to raise:
Filiocht | Talk June 29, 2005 08:38 (UTC)
Filiocht | Talk June 29, 2005 09:11 (UTC)
I'm updating the proposal with respect to comments made here. Some of the parts have been taken out, so I'm archiving them here.
Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Archive/linktotalk
Expand the images category to include an image uploaded to Commons.
Expand the image category to images copied to Commons from Wikipedia.
"I don't think its because of urgency, but because of a desire to reduce the load on VfD" -- Dmcdevit
It seems to me our main objective for most proposals is to make the process easier. (Exceptions are proposal #10 and possibly vanity and advertisement, as someone else said above).
Instead of deleting them right away, I therefore propose the following. This could be a general change or a change in selected individual proposals:
An article that fits criterium X will not be deleted right away, but after a delay of N days. This will be achieved by adding a tag that can be recognized by a bot.
The tag could read like this: "This page will be deleted on ______, because it currently fits criterium _______ for automatic deletion. If you want this article to remain, please fix the problems described and then remove this tag.
— Sebastian (talk) June 28, 2005 06:40 (UTC)
I think it's been over two weeks at least since I commented on this. I still see what I regard as utterly absurd presumptions being made:
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These look good, but I have some concerns. Getting some variant of 1 passed is to me the highest priority and its wording thus needs to be immaculate. I question whether it would pass in its current form. One concern is that it relies on the amorphous notions of importance and significance rather than something more easily defined such as verifiability. It could allow say an article on a random shepherd, such as that on Pierre Maury, to be deleted. Two avoids this problem with the mention of press coverage. That addendum will prevent bands like The Electras from being deleted. Three is also problematic, especially because the factors that make a website notable are ill-defined. Listings of websites certainly make up less than one percent of the deletion load so just dumping this criteria might be best. - SimonP 14:36, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
For articles created by logged-in editors, maybe we could offer an intermediate step?
The proposed speedy criteria can be applied immediately to articles without logged-in authors. I would suggest only applying them to articles at least an hour old, in case an editor is still working on expansion.
I'm not sure if this is too Rube Goldberg a process; any thoughts? At least it's less work than VfD, still. -- TenOfAllTrades( talk) 15:48, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'm having a little trouble with (article) props 1, 2, and 3. I don't like the "assert" wording, especially on 2 which, because of the music guidelines is very quantitative. Lets say there's no article on Elton John, (hypothetically) and I start it with article that says he's a really cool artist with bright clothes and distinctive glasses and he's really famous, etc. But never explicitly saying he's a signed musician. It could be deleted, despite the truth of the matter that he is. It should not be whether the article asserts it or not, but whether the subject is it or not. Now you may still say that the Elton John article is crappy and still deserves deletion, and I may agree with you, but it should go to VfD (where there's a high liklihood of cleanup for signed musicians), not be deleted without a chance for cleanup. I know this might add an exta minute of googling to the process, but I don't thik it's that big of a deal. Does this make sense? -- Dmcdevit 20:00, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
And one more that crossed my mind... another regular source of vanity is people writing about their college clubs. Thus it may be useful to add a CSD for any article that claims to be about any local club (but not a chapter of a larger organization) and that cites no press reference nor influence outside the local community. R adiant _>|< June 29, 2005 08:37 (UTC)
There may well be a way to dump this proposition #1 entirely. I am currently performing an initial study on a hypothetical speedy deletion criterion that does not rely upon concepts such as "vanity" or "importance" for precisely these reasons, but instead relies upon two metrics that can be applied objectively and that are relatively easily defined. The study is not complete (I want to run it for a few more days yet.), but the data so far indicate that this criterion would allow 75% of the personal vanity articles at VFD that garner a unanimous consensus to delete to be speedily deleted, whilst not allowing the speedy deletion of any articles that proceed to a definite consensus to "keep" or "merge". Pierre Maury would not qualify for speedy deletion under this hypothetical criterion, as a matter of simple subtraction. The proposal is at User:Uncle G/Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Unsourced biographies. See the talk page for the study in progress. Uncle G 19:13, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)
My first thought on Proposition 1 was a recommendation to tweak the wording from "people such as college professors or actors are individually important in society" to "... may be individually important in society". Articles on actors should not be speedy-deletes but we ought not to accidentally imply that no article on an actor is deletable.
On reflection, though, I worry that we are further institutionalizing the bias in favor of pop-culture. I have always been uncomfortable with the belief that entertainers are inherently more encyclopedia-worthy than other business people. However, that's a bigger worry than this one proposal which is, by the way, a close description of the current standard. Rossami (talk) 20:46, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This proposition is arguably too vague. Any thoughts on what might substantiate a website's suitabilty for inclusion in an encyclopedia? This accounts for ~5 pages per day so it would be worthwhile to reword it. R adiant _>|< 12:10, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
How about if we slightly expand this one to say "any article about a website or a website's user..." (or some better word for user)? It seems to me I've seen a lot of obvious vanity pages about message board/forum users. As these tend not to be real biographies, but about their persona, perhaps this could clear up any confusion that might result from trying to apply the first criterion. -- Dmcdevit 22:31, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I feel that four has little hope of passing in its current incarnation. There are unquestionably some occasions where a Wikipedia page will duplicate a page in another Wikiproject. A dict def is very similar to a stub and various Wikibooks overlap all manner of Wikipedia articles. While this criteria could perhaps be reworded, these sorts of listings are again not a major burden at the moment. - SimonP 14:36, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
"Extremely short articles which contain no information other than a rephrasing of the title" should be considered for the speedy cleanup template. I suspect many objections based on the article could have been fixed it there was time if it is an out right speedy. Vegaswikian 18:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ok, someone creates a title with no content because they think an article is needed but don't know anything about it. For the sake of example, the title is George Washington. No one adds anything, but someone who does not believe there should be an article on george washington comes across it. What is to stop him deleting it? surely you can not delete a topic which has potential just because it has no content yet. Perhaps a time limit since creation would solve this objection. Article which has existed for 3 months without anyone adding to it?
Sandpiper 08:34, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
One way to address this may be to set a minimum character limit – say, 150 characters - for new articles. If you can’t think of 150 characters on a topic, it’s probably not worth a stub. As a frame of reference, those last two sentences are 150 characters (spaces excluded). -- BD2412 talk 23:55, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)
I like this proposal, because it explicitly covers cases I see all the time of an article that consists of nothing but the title. For example, an article "Doug McEvoy" with the contents "Doug McEvoy" (and nothing else). As it is, I speedy these under case A1. "No substantive content other than that stated in the title" is another way of putting it. For example, an article "Grape soda" with the contents "Grape soda is a kind of soda" would be speedyable under this criterion, but the above "Tezuka Yamazaki is a Japanese man." example would not (it adds the fact that he is Japanese, which is not directly implied by the title: it's a Japanese name, but someone following a link may not know that, and there is the occasional case of someone taking a Japanese name, such as Koizumi Yakumo). — Gwalla | Talk 30 June 2005 04:01 (UTC)
I might be inclined to expand this one to include Any article which is an unrepaired machine translation of an article from another language Wikipedia.
Such articles are easily identified by their identical structure (to the foreign wiki article), tortured grammar and word usage, and occasional untranslated word or phrase. They are troublesome for a number of reasons:
That said, if the translation has been cleaned up and wikified to a close semblance of proper English and Wikipedia style this criterion won't apply. -- TenOfAllTrades( talk) 15:38, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Two things: One, I'd also like to include something that covers articles in unsalvageably broken English. Two, I see no need to restrict this to things translated from other Wikis; in my experience, most foreign-language or gibberish articles don't come from other Wikiprojects. Perhaps Any article which is an unrepaired machine translation or unintelligible human translation of a source text...?
Fourteen days is too short. Are people desperate to recover server space? It surely does not inconvenience anyone doing the proposing to wait a bit longer, the problem is the complexity and effort of having a vote not the time involved. There is no reason why there should not be a longer waiting time before automatic removal. My own computer use is rather erratic, i could quite easily miss something within 14 days. Surely you have to have a realistic chance for the article to be noticed by someone who both has the interest and the skill and the time to do something about it. something which has been badly translated, but nonetheless translated should have more time than something not translated at all. Sandpiper 08:46, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There is a slight error in the proposal page (and it's my fault): at present pages stay on WP:PNT for a maximum of fourteen days, but may be moved to VfD at any time (seven days is a rule of thumb for getting consensus that they are not worth translating). They may also be marked for speedy deletion at any time, and often are. Pages that have gone to VfD after seven days include marginal interest or duplicate articles in languages where we have difficulty finding translators (eg, an article on Sharia in Indonesian). The problem with the current system is that we often feel the need to translate articles just so they can go to speedy or to VfD. As a very rough estimate, a quarter of articles that come to PnT are copyvio, a quarter get speedied under current CSD, a third get translated within fourteen days (only one article in the last two months has needed an extension) and the rest go to VfD on the grounds that we can't do anything with them. The fourteen day deadline is useful for concentrating peoples attention, so that articles do not simply lie around on English wiki for want of translating: the place for that is Wikipedia:Requests for translation, once the article has been moved to a foreign wiki, but most of the articles we move we translate for English wiki as well... Physchim62 4 July 2005 08:24 (UTC)
I want to express my support for this policy - the VfD process is not an appropriate venue for an untranslated article in a foreign language. However, I want to point to a complication: At present, there is an article in Chinese at Shen Qiong, which is short and which I could translate. However, I think the subject of the article isn't very noteworthy. Under the proposed policy, by leaving the article untranslated, it could be a speedy delete candidate. If translated, it would have to go to VfD. I want to make sure that everyone understands that this policy places the power to judge whether the article should be a speedy delete candidate in the hands of whoever can read it. The point of having narrow criteria for speedy delete is to prevent that sort of situation.
Now, I want to make clear that I am still in support of the policy, on the grounds that no one other than bilingual people can judge untranslated articles. Considering how often foreign language texts dropped into Wikipedia are marginal articles or outright copyvios, I don't think there's much risk of losing good materials here. But, this does empower a relatively small minority of Wikipedia user to make broad judgements about what to delete.
-- Diderot 4 July 2005 09:28 (UTC)
Any article that asserts to describe a character or story from fanfic
_>|< 19:19, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
I am still unclear of the meaning of this proposal, on account of being unclear of the definition of fanfic. Is the explanation above to be taken as exact and become part of the proposal?. So we would be talking about JK rowlings and Harry potter, in the days before she managed to get a publisher. Ok, since no one would have heard about her, Or do you mean to include other stuff within the definition of fanfic? Sandpiper 08:55, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Proposed defintion/exposition: In this context fanfic is fiction published since 1970 without an ISBN (or unpublished) using the characters or milieu of a film, novel, television show or other media work. I choose 1970 because that is the year that ISBN was accepted as an international standard.— Theo (Talk) 17:37, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Any image that is already present on WikiCommons
What is the definition of 'an image...already present'? Do you mean identical or similar? Could be two photos taken in quick succession, one of which might be considered superfluous? Or could this amendment be taken to allow deletion of distinct images of the same thing, which might not be desireable. Sandpiper 09:03, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
"Any newly created template that serves the same function as an existed template, but has different layout or wording"
Would this include the four speedy delete templates? After all, they are exactly the same template, only with different wording. What about the welcome templates? They all serve the same function (to welcome new users) but offer different options (especially since more than one user may welcome the same newbie). The warning templates would fall under the same rationale; they all serve the same function (to warn out-of-line users) but use different wording: don't blank pages, stop inserting nonsense, bow down to Jimbo whenever the trumpet sounds. (Okay, maybe not that last one.)
I checked TfD, and it doesn't look like they have a backlog (between five and ten a day). I think this proposal should be abandoned (or at least, drastically reworded, to recognize that there are legit reasons for having multiple similar templates). -- Essjay · Talk 14:03, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
I'm a bit torn on this one. Essjay has a point about the multiple speedy delete templates, for example. I presume that it was proposed in response to the spate of "narrow" template boxes that were created because an editor felt the existing cleanup tags were too large/ugly/obtrusive.
In my experience, these templates aren't created all that often, so the expansion to SD criteria to account for them isn't worth the collateral damage. To take a current example, Template:Whedon-spoiler is about to be deleted as redundant with Template:Spoiler—but that TfD discussion has led to the creation of Template:Spoiler-other to cover a more general set of cases. The ?fD pages aren't just about deletion; they tend to result in informal article (and policy!) review, too. -- TenOfAllTrades( talk) 15:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea, I just think it's one that would be hard to put into an abuse-resistant policy. I didn't seriously think that any admin would acutally speedy delete the speedy delete templates, but I do think it could be used against the welcome templates, particularly since several users (myself included) have personal welcome templates (although advertised to the general population as well) that we use because the standard welcome templates don't serve our needs. My opinion is that if and when TfD becomes overrun with nominations, then we should consider this idea, but at the moment, I think we should limit the changes to relieving the burden on VfD. -- Essjay · Talk 21:03, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
This particular proposal I think is unnecessary. It may also generate some controversy. Templates for deletion is not overburdened by template variations, and not all of the nominations of template variations get deleted. Examples of kept template variations: Template:User-c, Template:Creationism2, Template:CompactTOC5. BlankVerse ∅ 14:17, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I would object to this, at least as currently worded. If this had existed, it could and would have been sued to speedy Template:Spoiler-other and Template:Spoiler-about both of which i expect will have a keep result on TfD. Furthermore, and actual tempalte fork may be the best way to test a change in a comples template without possibly messing up many pages. There are too many issues here for this to qusligy fo speedy deletion. DES 19:27, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Not quite sure about the precedent for this, but it strikes me that single-use templates that have been subst'ed into their intended articles should be speedyable. After all, they are orphans, and unlikely to ever be used again. It seems like a waste of effort to have to list them on TfD. -- Dmcdevit 22:48, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I added an alternate wording for consideration - "Any template which is no longer used, 24 hours after it was removed from the last page. This does not apply to templates documented and used exclusively via subst:." Adding a 24 hour wait period after orphaning seems to have been working for categories. -- Netoholic @ June 28, 2005 15:11 (UTC)
The same as 9, only regarding categories rather than templates. Arguably it is more applicable there. R adiant _>|< 11:56, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
Speedy deleting articles that promote illegal activities also seems like a bad idea. In general Wikipedia should not have articles promoting anything, but the solution is not to delete them but rather to rewrite them in a NPOV manner. Any articles promoting illegal activities should simply be rewritten as neutral articles describing illegal activities. - SimonP 14:36, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
Yep; the "illegal activities" umbrella is a bit too broad. The line between 'promotion' and 'discussion' will be placed differently by different admins who may have political axes to grind. Many of our admins may not be familiar with Florida or U.S. law—and I'd be concerned about the misunderstandings likely to flow from that. (To draw a random example mostly from thin air, an article about closed court proceedings might be subject to gag orders in one jurisdiction but not others.) Perhaps if the language of the criterion were tightened up–I can see where it's coming from–this could be okay, but I can't figure out how to write it. -- TenOfAllTrades( talk) 15:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I can't get on board with this one. As SimonP said, the article should probably be rewritten rather than deleted. Anyway, how much do such articles clog up VfD, anyway? Joyous 16:03, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
Some countries ban women taking part in public life, or appearing in public unless fully covered. Would this mean deleting an article on Hilary Clinton because it promoted breaking foreign law? Articles should only be deleted on legal grounds when this is compelled by direct legal action, or is about to be. Sandpiper 09:13, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
A copy in article space of an article that is nominated for deletion, to prevent people from forking an article to save it from deletion
Short articles that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject
This is a wiki, so I added a proposal. Many people mistakenly believe that once an article is deleted via VfD, no content may ever reside at that article name again. We run into situations where legitimate articles are speedily deleted because a previous article under that name was subpar. I propose that we clarify CSD to make this distinction clear. It seems odd to judge a completely new article based on the merits of an unrelated predecessor. Rhobite 16:12, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
There's also a lot of people who assume that if something is speedy deleted it can be speedy deleted again for a second time. But when speedy deletion is arguably out of process, that isn't the case. - Mgm| (talk) 20:05, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
Any vote should always be considered to be on the existing content, not the title. How can you pre-judge something you have not read? Sandpiper 09:21, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Unenhanced copies: Unencyclopedic articles that have been directly copied from an existing web page.
This developed out of a discussion at User_talk:Cutler#speedy_garbage about an example of advertizement: CEO reputation.
The gray text is obsolete or not relevant to the proposal because it was based on an altered version of the original proposal.
Often true but not always. In a number of cases the person postign the info to wikipedia is also the person who wrote the text on the website, in which case there is no copyright issue at all, and the only question is the general suitability of the text. it may need rewrite, it may need to be wikified, but neither of thsoe are grounds for speedy delete. Besides as currently written, this would qualify all the 1911 EB articles for speddy deletes. DES 19:39, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I really like DES's argument for stating permission; how about moving it into its own section as a proposed policy? I'd vote for it! — Sebastian (talk) 06:09, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)
I support Theo's changed proposal, but I'm concerned that some voters may find it too general. I therefore added #13, which is meant to be a restricted variant of #12. Some remarks to #12:
— Sebastian (talk) 17:32, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)
What exactly is that supposed to mean? Or solve? And how can it be a policy proposal if it doesn't propose anything? And what about server lag? R adiant _>|< 19:10, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
Good points. I'm withdrawing it. It is a principle for my decisions, but I don't want to impose my principles on others. But what is your question about the server lag? — Sebastian (talk) 07:28, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)
"short articles with little or no context". Okay. What exactly does that mean? The intent of some of the above proposals is to clarify it (thus also limiting it to prevent abuse). Could some people please give examples of articles speedied under this criterion (that aren't patent nonsense and such). Thanks. R adiant _>|< 08:26, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
Proposed text is "Templates containing prose intended for use in articles. Such text should be copied into the related articles prior to template deletion."
Discuss. -- Netoholic @ 13:21, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)
I see your point - we're discussing this on a subpage of WP:CSD, after all. But I see this as a minor concern: The discussion should focus on solving the problem; where exactly a policy will be written is a minor issue. The policies are closely related and I can't imagine anyone would be interested in one and not the other. There are many advantages in voting for all together.
I will announce this on WP:DP, where this discussion should have been announced to begin with anyway. — Sebastian (talk) June 28, 2005 16:34 (UTC)
Radiant proposed on my talk page: "Some people objected to the CSD proposal getting overly long, so I'll be removing some of them that are redundant or have the proverbial snowball's chance in hell. Would you please consider if your DP proposal is appropriate here? I believe that, by its current wording, you could simply add it to DP since it's common sense, and a suggestion rather than a proposal."
While I don't share the concern of it getting too long (because voters can vote on as many suggestions as they like), I take it seriously. Adding it to DP as a suggestion seems very reasonable. Unfortunately, I'm unexpectedly very busy for a week or so, so that I only have time to check my talk page for now. But I don't want to hold up the process, so I won't object if DP1 were moved to the archive. — Sebastian (talk) June 30, 2005 15:21 (UTC)
"Voting on these proposals will begin after some discussion on the wording ..." [2]
Now I'm torn. For the existing propositions, I feel that most is pretty stable. (BTW, my vote would be: 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ 5+ 6- 7- 8+ 10a- 10b- 1oc- G1+ 12+ 13+ T2- .) Maybe we could agree to set Thursday, 19:00 UTC as beginning of voting.
Unfortunately, however, I just got a new idea :-] , which isn't well thought-out yet (see
#Automatic deletion). Let me see what you think about that idea, maybe it could solve some of the problems of the other propositions. —
Sebastian
(talk) June 28, 2005 06:25 (UTC)
However, there exists a great alternative proposal: Countdown deletion. I feel that many of the rules here should rather be reasons for countdown deletion than for speedy deletion. I'll have to look at them individually but my gut feel is that I will have more nays than I said above. Now unfortunately, these two discussions are not coordinated. So people like me may end up voting against a speedy delete in hopes that the countdown deletion passes, and run the risk that that fails, too. — Sebastian (talk) June 28, 2005 16:23 (UTC)
A few points I'd like to raise:
Filiocht | Talk June 29, 2005 08:38 (UTC)
Filiocht | Talk June 29, 2005 09:11 (UTC)
I'm updating the proposal with respect to comments made here. Some of the parts have been taken out, so I'm archiving them here.
Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Archive/linktotalk
Expand the images category to include an image uploaded to Commons.
Expand the image category to images copied to Commons from Wikipedia.
"I don't think its because of urgency, but because of a desire to reduce the load on VfD" -- Dmcdevit
It seems to me our main objective for most proposals is to make the process easier. (Exceptions are proposal #10 and possibly vanity and advertisement, as someone else said above).
Instead of deleting them right away, I therefore propose the following. This could be a general change or a change in selected individual proposals:
An article that fits criterium X will not be deleted right away, but after a delay of N days. This will be achieved by adding a tag that can be recognized by a bot.
The tag could read like this: "This page will be deleted on ______, because it currently fits criterium _______ for automatic deletion. If you want this article to remain, please fix the problems described and then remove this tag.
— Sebastian (talk) June 28, 2005 06:40 (UTC)
I think it's been over two weeks at least since I commented on this. I still see what I regard as utterly absurd presumptions being made: