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Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 15 |
Could we make a G10 - advertising? -- M @ th wiz 2020 22:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Does CSD-R2 (redirections to userspace) apply to shortcuts? eg. see: U:DG, WP:ANONX, WP:AYB, WP:BEEFSTEW, WP:BOMB, WP:CCW, WP:CDVF, WP:CUNT, WP:INT, WP:JVS, WP:LAVT, WP:LVAT, WP:PCW, WP:RAUL. These sorts of things may tend to be more or less vanity links, though I know that some of them ( WP:INT, WP:RAUL) were created by independent users in good faith. In my opinion, they shouldn't all be obvious deletes. -- Interiot 19:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed we get a lot of AfDs for non-notable websites, could we expand A7 slightly to explicitly include Websites that do not have a claim to notability per WP:WEB. At the moment they have to go through AfD, which, IMO, is nonsense. What do people think? Werdna648 T/ C\ @ 23:30, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I oppose this, as what qualifies for notability on web sites is highly debated, and unclear. Please take a look at the record when people cite WP:WEB. Also, A7 focuses on the *claim*, not whether it meets a criteria. If you're suggesting we should speedy delete things for failure to meet WP:WEB or WP:CORP, then you're talking about an entirely new speedy category. Note,that we *dont'* speedy things for failure to meet WP:BIO, and never have. We speedy articles on persons with no *claim* of notability. Any claim, even a claim that doesn't meet WP:BIO or WP:MUSIC is sufficient. For instance, a person with just one album on a major record label may fail WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO but is not an A7. Also, it seems the typical web site article actually does make a claim of notability, but the problem is determining if it is verifiable, which is something that needs investigation, and is subject to debate. -- Rob 20:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
I also oppose this. The sort of checking required to see if an article meets WP:CORP or WP:WEB automatically discounts it from a speedy delete, IMO. -- D e ath phoenix 20:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Obviously, I have read WP:WEB, and it seems quite clear to me.2 I'm not saying that we shouldn't focus on the claim: in fact I think we should keep this new criterion inside A7. I perfectly understand the concept of "claim" of notability, and I never speedied anything for failure to meet WP:BIO. Not all articles about websites claim notability, exactly as not all biographies claim notability, and it's the same for bands, and for companies. I found an article some time ago that said "xxx" is a small web design company with 6 employees, and provided a link to its website. That article made no claims of notability, but I couldn't delete it. This is exactly what I'm talking about, and I would like to know if/why you don't agree with this. Mushroom 21:19, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Oppose full stop. During the discussion to get WP:WEB up to guideline status consensus formed around the position that the guidelines should in no way form the basis for a speedy deletion criterion. Hiding talk 21:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
This is a legitimate proposal, as many websites hit AfD on a regular basis, but to make it into CfD it would need to be strictly limited to a set of conditions that will almost never result in a false positive. I can't imagine any such conditions at the moment, but something to think about. Deco 21:32, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
This is my current proposal for A7:
Obviously this wouldn't make a big difference since most new articles about websites and companies are advertising, but it could be useful in a small number of cases and it would do no harm. Mushroom 21:43, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Then what about this:
I don't understand why this should be limited to people. Any article that doesn't claim notability should be speedily deleted. Mushroom 22:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps some middle ground is needed. Maybe we're even looking at it the wrong way here, perhaps we should expand CSD A3 (which provides for deletion of articles with no content other than a link)? In practice a lot of this kind of stuff is speedy deleted already... there are new pages added all the time with nothing but a few unformatted sentences about some "up and coming" forum and a link to it. When this kind of stuff does go to AfD, it's the typical case where the only support votes are from people connected to the site in question... and obviously these are very prone to cause minor sockpuppet-fueled drama at AfD.
Perhaps a criteria for speedy deletion should be along the lines of "Short, uncited articles that serve only to describe and promote an external link". As this thread shows, making website articles in general fall under CSD might cause a whole lot of problems. -- W.marsh 00:09, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I consider two reliable sources that I find through my library, outside of Google, that give informative independent information about a topic, to often be more significant than 100,000 (reported) google hits. We shouldn't be rewarding people for SEO tactics. Also, keep in mind, many sites change their names, and search on the new name fails, but the old one gives high results. Also keep in mind that no web sites gives more than 1000 *unique* Google hits, as that's all Google shows [1]. So, when you say "more than a 1000" you must apparently mean more than 1000 non-uniques, which is utterly worthless, as one page on one web site, can appear as hundreds of thousands of hits (due to something called infinite namespace). -- Rob 02:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
My counter (for the above) would be for reference sites. Consider the Google result for pghbridges.com This site gets 140 or so inward links (some from us) as you can see. But it's a rich vein of material, well sourced and thorough, if you are working on bridges ( Coraopolis Bridge for example, which I just did a lot of work on tonite) and tunnels in the Pittsburgh area. The HAER Library of Congress source, that it gets some of its material from, has a lot of great material but you have to OCR the .tifs... this site author already did that. So this is an awesome, and easily verified as correct, (because you can go check HAER and see if he OCRed them right or not!) reference site. I am of the opinion that it needs a writeup, if only to document why it's a good reference, and what sort of stuff it can be relied on to have, how far out it covers, and how to use it. Now, I'm still a newb, maybe that's a wikipediaspace thing rather than main articlespace but that site is, I allege, notable and verifyable, but fails the google test utterly (it also has no forums and therefore no users to count). I wish there was a site like it for other areas (BTW: other sites I like for bridges are structurae.de and bridgemeister.com... both would also fail the google test badly but both deserve mention, perhaps in our bibliography if we have one rather than in articlespace???) DO we have a bibliography or a place to document references (these are documented in the bridges wikiproject already I think) that's generic? ++ Lar: t/ c 05:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
See here for a discussion of how C1 applies to stub-categories, in particular when they contain (only) a stub template (and no articles), and whether it should be clarified as regards said application, on way or another. Alai 00:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I thought it germane here, so please notice Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Mass_PDF_upload. Would it be wise to try and develop some kind of CSD for images that violate WP:NOT in this manner? Thanks. -- LV (Dark Mark) 17:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I am not sure what to do when I come across potential images that fall into this critera. Should any image with the "with permission" or "commercial use only" uploaded after May 19, 2005 be labled for speedy? This is what assume from Jimbo's message regarding the manner. I'm looking for clarification so I can feel free to label such images for speedy. Thanks. -- Zsinj 08:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
This is a proposed very simple way to deal with non-controversial article deletions. The proponet propses a live test in the near future. I think the idea is a good one, but that some degree of community support is needed to sanction a live test. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion to express your views. DES (talk) 17:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
If you look at the vast number of pages created every hour, a substantial number of them are just defining some new word. It seems like a primary thing people new to Wikipedia want to do is define some term they and their buddies use. See Syck for an example of what I mean... it's just like "Hey, I made up some new word, here it is, Wikipedia!" Now while I personally think the article creation process should be overhauled to help inform people that creating articles like this isn't a good idea, that's beside the point here.
Is there any good way to speedy delete these articles? In practice they often are speedied, but technically they don't usually fall under a criteria for speedy deletion at present. If a word gets 0 Google results, and like in the case I cited above the article pretty much admits it's a freshly coined term not used by anyone but the creator's buddies... it's kind of silly to have to go through the process of AfD with something that will never survive it. But is there a clean way to add these to CSD, to reduce the load on AfD?
I know people aren't very keen on using Google as a criteria for deletion... so what would people think of:
That would cover a lot of ground, really... but preclude anything that might meet WP:V or be something Wiktionary would want (by the way, they speedy delete stuff like I'm talking about). Of course this is a very rough idea and I'm just looking for comments at this point. -- W.marsh 04:55, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Strong support for speedying protologisms. I have seen so many of them on AFD that I have a ton of macros just for voting to delete neologisms/protologisms. — Quarl ( talk) 2006-02-06 13:06 Z
Strongest possible support for this. If you ever patrol the New Pages, you'll see literally dozens of neologisms, but you're basically defenseless against them, since if you go through the tediousness of listing something on AfD, you might miss some other useless articles. Including this in CSD would make this a lot easier. --
Rory
0
96 18:04, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Isn't this better suited for {{prod}}? -- badlydrawnjeff ( WP:MEME?) 18:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I would be very happy with W.marsh's proposal above, per Quarl's reasoning. A large proportion of my delete votes are on protologisms. Stifle 09:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm trying to figure out how to maximize the usefulness of my RC patrol time. I've been watching recentchanges and newpages trying to catch the most egregious vandalism (blanking or insertion of obscenities at major topics) and obvious newpage speedies ("Zobbo215 is the ultimate in coolness!"). It occurred to me that I might be wasting my time, because the most obvious vandalism and almost empty newpages are probably flagged by bots. My question is: are the bots so effective at catching these types of problems that I'm just wasting human resources to do a job a robot can do better? If so, how could I modify my RC patrolling to be more useful to the encyclopedia? Ben Kidwell 09:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
When I was creating {{ template messages}}, I found that there is no A4, what happend to that? → Aza Toth 02:51, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
A number of people have been arguing that the expanded A7 allows the speedying of companies. (There's a snooty note from one such person on my talkpage now, but that's okay because my answering note was no less snooty). Now, this was clearly not the intent of the change, and even people who've played fast and loose with the CSD criteria in the past accept that; for example, User:Mushroom is above arguing that it should be expanded to include companies. Now, "groups" is kinda vague, so I propose that, if we don't want articles on corporations to be speedied for failure to even assert notability, that we make it explicit that companies aren't included. Alternatively, add corporations to the list of subjects which require an assertion of notability to avoid being shot on sight. fuddlemark ( fuddle me!) 03:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Are there any plans to create the Wikipedia:Lost images article, or should it be removed from this project page? ( Lady Serena 23:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC))
These Two Images, Pwsafarijacket.jpg and Trenchcoatinuse.jpg have been identified for source information properly now, so they should be kept. Michael 15:01, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I want to expand/clarify I#5 to state:
instead of the existing
Obviously, the necessary templates and category would be created. The criterion already seems to imply the expanded version by saying simply "uploaded without permission of the copyright holder" but this is contradicted by referring to "orphaned fair use" later. Thus, I'd like to state outright the broader meaning; I can't see any reason orphan non-free images should be around, and this would make the gargantuan task of Wikipedia:Untagged images faster. I am aware this template originated from one of Jimbo's mysterious IRC/mailing list proclamations. However, I still think this change is legitimate. What do people think? Superm401 - Talk 01:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
You confused me (and apparently Radiant! as well) by putting the modified version first and the other second. It seems like a straightforward and sensible change. I wouldn't really even have a problem with being bold for such a minor change. Keep the word article bolded, though. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 05:35, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist.
A thoughtful process of change is important.
And whatever you do, do NOT wheel war about this.-- Jimbo Wales 07:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I would like to expand the CSD for User pages to include the following. Occassionally a user will have a red-linked user page (i.e., no edits to it) and sometimes incautious or ignorant users (no offense intended) will leave messages there instead of on the talk page. I propose that the message should be moved to the talk page and then the user page deleted speedily. There's no point in submitting it to AfD and it's nice to know at a glance if someone doesn't have a userpage (based on color of the link). Also, blank pages are useless. This strikes me as non-controversial. I hope I'm right. :) -- Dante Alighieri | Talk 08:30, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I have seen a lot of AFDs for web forums, IRC channels, mailing lists, and other "online groups" which are clearly non-notable. Thoughts on expanding CSD to include things like web forums with only 100 members and no assertion of importance? (If A7 applies to "unremarkable online groups", it should say so explicitly, because it has been a contentious point in the past.) — Quarl ( talk) 2006-02-06 13:00 Z
What is this? There is no consensus that divisive templates can be speedily deleted. You can't just add stuff to official policy without discussing it first.-- God of War 18:02, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo want's people to discuss this before applying it.
Quoting Jimbo
At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist.
A thoughtful process of change is important. And whatever you do, do NOT wheel war about this.--
Jimbo Wales 07:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
[5].
My opinion towards a consensus here, FWIW, is that obviously intentionally disruptive or confrontational new boxes should be speedied. The same sense used with unrepentant trolls and other contributors of patent nonsense to articles can apply to the phenomenon of userbox templates, which go somewhat beyond the content of any individual's userpage. Letting browsers or correspondants know up front what one is interested in or qualified for is fine, cranks creating tools for denigrating everyone who disagrees with them is too much, IMO. -- Fire Star 07:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't like another aspect of the current wording ("Contributions that are clearly intended to be divisive and/or inflammatory...", my emphasis). I would either replace "intended" or add something to the effect that this also applies to templates which are unintentionally extremely divisive and/or inflammatory. If someone creates an unusually inflammatory template in good faith (without intending for it to be inflammatory), i.e., if this is due to a lapse of judgement rather than outright malice, I think we would still want to be able to speedy-delete. After all, we're not mind readers, so if the net effect is the same, why make a distinction that involves the state of mind of whoever created a template? -- MarkSweep (call me collect) 09:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
File:Adolf Hitler Bigger.jpg | This user thinks that Adolf Hitler was a great humanitarian |
The disaster of this imposed policy is that it has unleashed a plague of petty authoritarians on the project. What gets edited — and therefore what gets deleted — is always going to be self-selected by volunteers. The mere presence of this vague criterion among the current criteria has emboldened people to delete certain userbox templates they happen to disagree with. Even assuming good faith, it's always going to be a whole lot easier for someone to see that those boxes are "polemical" or "divisive". Obviously polemical or divisive but relatively popular boxes (e.g. Template:User no meat, with its offensive "meat is murder" slogan) will stay. No one wants to call down the wrath to come on the person who dares to label it so, much less delete it without notice, as the policy seeks to legitimize. I'd do it myself, but that would be WP:POINT, seemingly legitimize the criterion, and besides, I don't want the hate.
The only NPOV way to do this would be to disable all templates on user pages. Nothing else will get the job done and be truly neutral. Even claiming a language might be inferred as making a political statement; happens often enough in real life.
The proposed policy as it stands increases divisiveness tenfold, and increases pettiness a hundredfold. It has distracted the community from its purpose far more than the boxes themselves ever could. Mr. Wales, I beseech you from the bowels of Christ to consider you may be wrong. -- Smerdis of Tlön 22:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I hope no-one objects to this. Quite clearly the criterion that was created as T1 applies equally to all namespaces. For this reason, I have transferred it over. If anyone wants to add any détente comments, I'm not going to stop them. Sam Korn (smoddy) 21:59, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I got as far as the edit window, but after a few shots I decided that I don't think there's a wording of this, no matter how eloquent, that could prevent prevent improper userspace or category deletions. Jimbo was reverting to sannse's version, and sannse was paraphrasing my own comment on User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Userboxes_again, and I think all three of us were basically saying that polemic templates are causing a lot of trouble. If you move this back to T1, this can be resolved thanks to the new proposal Wikipedia:Use of userboxes. As for categories and userspace, their respective deletion debates see divisive/inflammatory pages all the time and I don't think a new speedy rule will improve the quality of discussion. Ashibaka tock 23:29, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
So you're saying it applies to user space too? -- SPUI ( talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 00:23, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Why just delete redirects to the User namespace? How about redirects from the article space to the Template namespace, or Category, or Wikipedia? Why are those treated differently? - GTBacchus( talk) 02:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
gun article can be deleted info put in mp5k article.( Uber555 03:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC))
Despite the discussion in Archive7 on the difference between CSD A2 and {{NotEnglish}}, it's not clear at all to me why the former merits speedy deletion (ie. deletable-immediately-on-sight) while the latter merits a 2-week wait before being merely listed for deletion (according to the template). The current state of affairs becomes especially strange, when one considers that any {{NotEnglish}} can easily be transformed into CSD A2, merely by having someone cross-post the untranslated text into the corresponding foreign-language Wikipedia. The fact that merely copying the untranslated text into the corresponding foreign-language Wikipedia would lead to the untranslated article in English Wikipedia being allowed to be deleted on sight, before anyone has a chance to translate it into English, that seems a little illogical to me--unless a similar article already exists in English Wikipedia, but that's a different deletion criteria altogether. I would expect that a CSD A2 article be also merit a 2-week period before any deletion.
If this has been discussed in detail before, please point me to the appropriate pages. Thanks.
If what I said above makes no sense or indicates a clear misunderstanding, please clarify the truth for me and others. Thanks for your patience.
67.160.10.87 09:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm starting to tire of the number of completely made-up word and phrase definitions which are created every day; there must be literally hundreds. Most of these are clearly unsupported nonsense, and do not deserve the dignity (and nonnegligible effort) of being brought to AfD. Two examples this evening are Poison fingers syndrome, which gets zero google hits and which the article claims "starting to catch on", and Kurushinism, which is utter nonsense. I sometimes tag these, perhaps unfairly, as {{db-nonsense}}, but I think we need a CSD category for "obvious unsupported neologism with no claim of widespread use or encyclopediacy". Even applying {{prod}} is giving these article too much credit. Any other support for such an addition? bikeable (talk) 05:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be good if we added to "I5" something like this:
This way, when somebody replaces a fairuse image, with a free one, they don't have to "babysit" it, to ensure the fairuse isn't swapped back by another editor (often an anon, who would be unable to re-upload the fairuse image). If the quality/suitability of the free image replacement is debateable, then the normal 7-day wait period could still apply. -- Rob 05:31, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I've had an instance of someone trying to recreate unacceptable templates in another namespace and arguing that T1 doesn't apply outside template space. Because it doesn't matter which namespace a template is transcluded from (template: is simply the default location if an explicit namespace is not provided in a transclusion) I've clarified: pages created in any namespace for the purpose of transclusion, -- Tony Sidaway 09:21, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I guess tony made the change due to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#User:Userboxes ? Kim Bruning 10:57, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I've removed T1 entirely. It's clear that it has failed in its original intent; T1 itself, and the applications to which it has been put, is far more "divisive and inflammatory" than any userboxes possibly could be. Crotalus horridus ( TALK • CONTRIBS) 11:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
You know you have to love this about userboxes. Anytime you can think of something dissruptive either side could do they promptly go and do it. Now clearly T1 is flawed (becuase the deletion of
Template:Nazism sidebar and
Template:NPOV would be terminaly stupid). However getting rid of it would be somewhat tricky. Thus damage limitation is the way forward.
Geni 04:11, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
I have placed in WP:CSD the following, under the heading "Templates":
# Templates that are divisive and/or inflammatory. Please note that this is a brand new criterion and should be discussed before widespread use. See
talk page.
While we may disagree over the intended reach of the rule and its applicability to the various spaces, the rule itself, in its simplest form—that templates which are divisive and/or inflammatory may be speedily deleted by a Wikipedia administrator—derives its authority from Mr. Wales, who as Chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation has "ultimate authority on any matter" on all Wikimedia projects, subject to decisions of the Board. As the Board, to my knowledge, has not disapproved of the T1 criterion he placed [6], it retains its validity; any removal of the rule from the CSD page is tantamount to vandalism. I understand that some parties to the disagreement may at present feel aggrieved; this is quite understandable. I urge that these disagreements be aired in the appropriate fora, and that some resolution be attained through civil discourse—not via revert warring, which is unlikely to bring about agreeable results. I have acted as an ordinary Wikipedian. I bear no other authority. I am neutral with respect to the precise wording of the template. Regards ENCEPHALON 13:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Please stop altering policy pages like you did here. If you disagree with existing policy, please discuss on the talk page. -- MarkSweep (call me collect) 04:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Explain further. I do not believe examples are necessary until the discussion on this topic has been completed. Anyone else have a thought on this? Sct72 04:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I am absolutely in favor of CSD T1, but I have a question about Jimbo's addition of this criterion making it unremovable. Jimbo is the ultimate authority when he chooses to be, but in this case it's not clear to me whether he was acting as ultimate authority or an ordinary editor. How does one tell? -- SCZenz 08:45, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I've come across four of these this week through Special: Random. I'm in favor of articles on terms, including slang and l33t-speak; but there really shouldn't be an article on term #7836592 that someone just made up last week. Why shouldn't these be speedied- it's not like they're going to be expanded, as no one knows about them except the coiner, friends, and people like us who read about it on WP. EGGS 21:07, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Wonder if you'd care to comment on this latest attempt to represent the feeling of the Wikipedia community on activities--mainly political advocacy, voting on everything, and political userboxes--that tend to split us into camps. --Tony Sidaway 14:01, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
This looks very beautiful to me.--Jimbo Wales 21:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
For any templates that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Templates for deletion
At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist.
A thoughtful process of change is important.
And whatever you do, do NOT wheel war about this.--Jimbo Wales 07:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
See the ongoing discussion at The Village Pump, and be wary of Wikipedia:Multiposting. InkSplotch( talk) 14:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Recently, someone changed the language in this new criterion from "divisive and inflammatory" to "polemical". One the one hand, it's a less common word and therefore the case may not be as easily understood. On the other hand, it's well linked and I learned a new word today (which is always a good thing). However, reading the definition at Polemic it appears to me that this implies intent - that the author must be trying to incite disruption. The previous language merely required that it be disruptive. Am I reading too much into it or is this a wording change that also changes the meaning? Rossami (talk) 03:54, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
The problem is not userboxes. The problem is divisiveness. the solution is not to delete but to EXPAND the divisive content into a creative expression of one's self: :"Divisive content in user space, whether in the form of divisive user boxes or any other kind of bumper-sticker type labeling is discouraged as harmful to Wikipedia. Creative, explanatory, or otherwise useful information is encouraged as these efforts can help build a community that in turn builds an encyclopedia. If it is generally perceived that a label, userbox, or bumper sticker type self-expression on your user page is divisive, then expand it with creativity, explanations, and other positive inclusive elements or remove it because that's what is good for building the community that is building this encyclopedia. Facile labels, polarizing "bumper stickers", polemical user boxes, factionalism, and division are bad for Wikipedia. Creative informative explanatory self-expression is good for Wikipedia. Individuality of expression always looks more meaningful than branding." Source = Wikipedia:Divisiveness WAS 4.250 17:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Well the word polemical is better because it does cover pro- boxes. They'll all have to go so we might as well get the word right. -- Tony Sidaway 06:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
How are any of the political userboxes divisive at all? I've been on Wikipedia for several hours now looking for the effects or indicators of this supposed divisiveness, and the only lines I have seen Wikipedians divided along is the issue of whether or not POV userboxes should exist at all. The only way in which I have seen a division along political lines on this issue is that by and large only certain templates are being proposed for deletion, and it is my impression that many people inserting these requests for speedy deletion are doing so for political reasons (why else would someone tag a box expressing a desire for the expansion of the death penalty, but neglact to tag the corresponding one desiring restriction). I would humbly request that someone show me an example of the negative effect these userboxes are having on the community (that is, an effect that arose from the opinion expressed in the box, not one which arose from the box merely expressing an opinion), so that I can compare it to the truly damaging effect that this policy is having on the community.
In the meantime, we need to prevent any userboxes from being speedily deleted until we can have a full, civil discussion on this matter and actually come to an acceptable definition of "polemic or inflamatory". Please. This presently ambiguous policy is seemingly being abused by those who wish to delete all userboxes, regardless of whether the userboxes are polemic. Reveilled 21:43, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
The real problem is less about templates and more about divisiveness in userspace. Please consider my proposal, Wikipedia:Unacceptable userspace material, which is intended as a means to minimally quantify "bad" materials in userspace which the practice of including on userpages has a detrimental effect on Wikipedia, as opposed to making overbroad blanket restrictions. The goal is to maintain the liberal use of userspace while addressing concerns of divisiveness and objectionableness, avoiding template deletionism, and providing a defined standard on which compulsory userpage amendments can be based. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 21:31, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
I propose a new criterion for speedy deletion below (for attack redirects):
The template used will probably be {{ db-redirattack}}.
Please add comments and discussion below. -- King of Hearts | (talk) 23:50, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm really confused as to the extent of CSD T1 - people have been nominating userboxes that support recycling or ones that denounce profanity up for this, yet I don't see how either of those are highly problematic. Could we get examples of what's speedily deletable under CSD T1? enochlau ( talk) 03:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't see it there, but....is or isn't "divisive" part of T1, and exactly how "divisive" would it have to be? It appears from recent deletions and discussions that some think that "divisive" is part of T1, but I'm afraid of the possible lengths to which it can be taken - for example, {{ User incl}} and {{ User delete}} were already deleted for being "divisive". A radical interpretation could even fit things like {{ User singular they:Yes}} and {{ User singular they:No}} and possibly even the Sexuality boxes and the Location boxes into the heading of "divisive". If "divisive" is not within T1, it should probably be clarified. -- AySz88 ^ - ^ 01:47, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, it seems like there's a problem with divisive being used, as visible from all this discussion, so how about the template is moved to {{ db-inflammatory}}? No one has objected to that part of the CSD yet. Tito xd( ?!? - help us) 07:12, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Clearly this policy is too subjective to be workable. See Wikipedia:Userboxes/Regional_Politics for instance. Some editors apparently define "polemical or inflammatory" a lot differently than I do, and take it to mean any userbox expressing any opinion whatever. Since these need no debate, and if any one administrators defines them as problematic they're going, you're basically giving all administrators subjective power to delete any template they'd like. This in turn, leaves us to waste a lot of time at Deletion Review, and frankly piss a lot of users off. This isn't working as a short-term solution, won't work as a long term solution, and should be immediately suspended in favor of exploring more workable alternatives. Sarge Baldy 18:54, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I guess I'll throw in my few cents here. I'll skip the whole issue of whether userboxes themselves are good or evil, and instead focus on the T1 policy. While I really don't care one way or the other about userboxes (my non-sockpuppet userpage doesn't have a single one of them, and never has), this policy is so very, very wrong it needs to be addressed. I'm sure most of this has been said before, but in the interest of consensus, more people saying it is probably better.
To start, it's unacceptably vague. "Inflammatory" is an inherently POV criteria, and can only serve to push POVs. Inflammatory to whom? I have not seen a single userbox deleted that I considered inflammatory, and only a few of them I could see how someone else could find them so, even though this is often given as a reason for their removal. Inflammatory to christian fundamentalists? Inflammatory to muslims? Inflammatory to someone, somewhere, at some time? This criteria allows people's POVs to directly affect the community.
Even worse, by the incredibly poor choice to implement this as a speedy deletion criteria, rather than the good, working, etc TFD process, people can push their POVs without any community input. If the proper TFD procedure was followed, the community could build a consensus as to what was inflammatory, divisive, etc. Consensus and NPOV are fundamental concepts of wikipedia... which this policy throws straight out the window. Since anyone can declare something inflammatory, and the community has no opportunity to respond, any user who disagrees with something can have it deleted (or, in the case of admins, happily abuse the powers granted to us by the community and delete it ourselves). If this policy is to survive, it must be something the community can interject consensus into, rather than allowing random, pov-based deletions.
This applies to "polemic" deletions too... Many of the userboxes deleted are neither inflammatory (by any standard myself or any communites I know of adhere to) nor polemic (they do not appear to meet any definition of the word or any statements in the wikipedia article), yet are deleted with a "CSDT1" as their only explanation. Sure, we could restore them as soon as someone does that, but then we'd be accused of wheel warring, as it's apparantly now wrong to correct the mistaken action of another admin. But that's a rant for another page. Anyone could decide absolutely anything is intended to provoke an argument; this again allows random POV-pushing without the oversight of community consensus. Simply stating anything as fact will be considered polemic to at least one group of people.
And, of course, this is all talking about userboxes... What about other templates? As I don't like organized religion, I could decide I find {{ Template:Christianity}} highly inflammatory, and, as T1 requires no consensus, delete it on the spot. I could even make a good case of it too; it implies truth of all the christian arguments, which is inflammatory to anyone who doesn't agree with this POV. Of course, another admin would restore it 1/32nd of a second later, but then comes the aforementioned claims of wheel warring. However, this template is probably useful to an encyclopedia, even though it's inflammatory and polemic to non-christians. As just about EVERYTHING is inflammatory to someone, simply being "inflammatory" is no reason to delete it. Although I may disagree with the template, I'd never even remotely consider it for deletion. At a bare minimum, this policy must be explicitly restricted to userboxes, before it becomes a POV-pushing tool extending beyond user pages.
The whole reason we have AFD, TFD, etc, is to make sure only content determined by consensus of the community to be unneeded is deleted. What if this policy applied to articles, not just templates? Surely people would find it absurd (and I do hope they do) if articles could be deleted because they were inflammatory to someone? Articles about safe sex, taiwan independance, and just about everything else remotely controversial would end up deleted. Wikipedia would be completely, utterly useless, as just about every single fact is inflammatory to someone. I think there's a worst cases item about this. But this policy is ok to apply to templates? Sure, this argument may be a bit of a straw man, but it does serve well to illustrate what policies like this could mean.
There's also the issue of the policy's origins... to quote the top of the page, "Feel free to edit the page as needed, but please make sure that changes you make to this policy reflect consensus before you make them." Judging from the current amount of debate, consensus is non-existant. While I'm sure there's plenty of people who will argue "Jimbo says it; the community is irrelevant," it still is worthy of discussion. What if Jimbo (I capitalize his name out of respect for this project) decreed that all articles about, dunno, the automotive industry should be speedy deleted, giving the argument that promoting pollution is against the interests of an encyclopedia, divisive, etc? Yes, right to fork, etc, etc, etc, I've both been told and told other people those statements many times, but that doesn't mean it's not worthy of discussion. This policy was created without the input of the community, is very vague, allows POV-pushing, bypasses several of the foundation issues, and generally does not reflect consensus or established policies. (omnipotence paradox? Can Jimbo create a policy which violates his own rules?)
As to being divisive, as in the original wording, this yet again is unacceptably vague. Without the benefit of requiring consensus, this is just another ambigious way of using "I don't like it" as a valid reason to delete something.
Specifically for userboxes, this policy does nothing to help the actual problem Jimbo wished to address... People can still say "I think all christians should be shot with completely uncontrolled fully automatic rifles weilded by anarchist governments while protesting fox hunting and eating pancakes provided by wikipedians for an encyclopedia in cooperation with the organization for the promotion of Jimbo's beard," they just will have a very slightly harder time doing it with userboxes. All debate over whether stating personal opinions is acceptable aside (a much bigger issue about what's allowed on user pages, are users allowed to state which groups they belong to (userboxes or otherwise), are they allowed to link to a personal page with that info, etc), this policy does absoutely nothing to address the concerns people in that debate (including Jimbo) have raised, but raises many concerns itself.
Some random suggestions on how this situation might be improved, in order of most like the status quo to most like the new policy:
deleted if consensus is to keep them. Drawbacks: May not result in things being deleted as quickly as some would like. May invoke wikipedia is/is not a democracy arguments. Will invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries.
a specific group or individual. Like with attack pages, any template which directly attacks a named individual, group, or belief, and serves no other function, may be speedily deleted. All others should be listed at Templates for deletion." Benefits: allows speedy deletions of "Jimbo Walse IS GAY ROX0R!!111LOL!" userboxes, while ensuring community consensus for others. Helps prevent the use of this policy for deleting articles that disagree with the user's tastes. Drawbacks: Debate will doubtlessly happen for some of the boxes deleted by the policy; they can be restored then go through TFD for the final decision. Will still invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries. (As a side note, this would probably be my preferred compromise, although I doubt anyone cares about my 2 cents) (As another side note, this policy will, in the long term, establish a history for what the community's opinion of userboxes is.)
attack templates, a userbox may be deleted if it's listed at a TFD subpage (userboxes for deletion) for more than a day and the consensus is to speedy delete. If the consensus is not to speedy delete, it goes through the full 7-day process. Benefits: Like the above, allows speedying attack templates, but also allows the deletion of non-attack templates in a faster manner. Drawbacks: Will invoke wikipedia is/is not a democracy arguments, complaints that something that offends some group of people wasn't deleted fast enough because people voted to keep it (sexuality userboxes come to mind as they seem to provoke the most "It's offensive to me!" responses). Will use lots of admin time processing the double-tiered structure. Will still invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries.
thinks it should be kept, then put it through TFD." Benefits: Allows delete-happy admins to use a "shoot them all, let someone else sort them out" policy without damaging the community too badly. Drawbacks: Allows delete-happy admins to use a "shoot them all, let someone else sort them out" policy. Consensus can only be reached if a squeeky wheel requests restoration. Admins will suffer cabal retribution for undeleting them. Will still invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries.
of cabal retribution upon the restoring admin. Benefits: When admins see a template deleted that might have been desired by the community, or is requested by a user to restore it, they can do so without fear of retribution, wheel warring claims, WP:POINT arguments, etc. Drawbacks: Admins will still fear undeleting anything. Community input may be ignored by admins. Consensus can only be reached if a squeeky wheel requests restoration. Will still invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries.
only option on this list not to. Drawbacks: Many.
As an interim option, perhaps all deletes under this policy should be suspended until there's more community discussion and a good, solid consensus on what to do
next? Jimbo himself has asked for this ("At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a
community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist. A
thoughtful process of change is important."), but judging from the deletion log, and my watchlist being about a thousand pages longer than usual due to all the
script-assisted subst'ing of userboxes on user pages I have watched, most admins are ignoring it. Restoring most of the deleted content until consensus is
reached might also be wise, just to avoid wheel warring, user requests for undeletion, etc, etc, etc.
Short summary for people who skip long rants: The current policy is not consistent with wikipedia's goals, promotes POV-pushing and rogue admin actions against
community consensus, and does not even help to accomplish the goal Jimbo had in mind when creating it. A solution is needed, or it will continue to be badly
abused, possibly spreading beyond userboxes and into article space. A policy which allows community input and depends on consensus is a must for a successful
encyclopedia. Jimbo has stated we should wait and discuss the policy rather than using it. This is a Good Thing.
And that's the end of my Long Rant Of The Day (TM). Like always, forgive typos and the lack of formatting, as proofreading in Lynx is almost as painful as this policy. Thanks for reading this long, boring, incoherent rant, DiscussionWolfy 05:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC).
I have added the following paragraph to this page:
— Guan aco 01:19, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
In addition to having criteria for speedy deletion for user page templates, there ought to be "criteria for things to leave alone." These criteria also should be a lot more specific than anything about "polemical" or "divisive" or "inflammatory" user templates.
Some suggestions for things that should presumptively be left alone:
The idea being that all of these templates amount to user-volunteer suggestions about ways to improve the encyclopedia, and are meant to facilitate communication between users on projects to improve it. They are related to the core purpose of the project even if someone decides to look at them funny.
The idea being that even if an admin takes issue with such a template and decides to delete it, falling within one of these criteria would be grounds to recreate it instantly without prejudice or repercussion. Any template that falls within one of these core categories should at minimum not be speedily deleted unilaterally, and the deletion of such templates should be viewed as an abuse of power. — Smerdis of Tlön 03:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Bear in mind also that the whitelist would only protect templates that fall within its confines from speedy deletion. Templates subject to abuse could still be deleted; but this should at least require some opportunity to be heard. — Smerdis of Tlön 14:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I have expanded the scope of template speedies to cover all pages obviously intended for transclusion. Whatever folk think of the vagueness of T1, it must obviously cover things like the pedophile userbox, and there's not much point in having T1 if people can put it in userspace and enourage others to tranclude it from there. Note, I have worded this so that it has no effect on any userbox that is hardcoded onto a usepage. It is the use of userspace as 'template by another name' I've aimed at. -- Doc ask? 15:05, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
It's too early to include this in the published policy. This is the first I've heard of this, and I've been listening to this debate for the past week. There are a lot of people assuming this not to be the case, with some headway being made on the assumption that template policy applies to template space. That it applies to all transcludable pages is not readily obvious.
JDoorj
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Talk 16:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Trying to expand CSD T1 to other types of pages is a very bad idea in my opinion, since some admins can't even responsibly use T1 as it is now. The Ungovernable Force 04:59, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
If it walks like a template, looks like a template and acts like a template, it is a template. Once you create something in whatever namespace and declare your intent to transclude it (not to mention inviting others to do the same), and then actually do it, it is a template. I guess if we're going to let this gaping loophole stand and encourage abuse by wikilawyering, though, I suppose I can start cooking up trolling userboxen in my userspace. Whee! :D Johnleemk | Talk 05:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
T1 is being massively abused by wheel warriors to delete masses of userboxes. The policy needs to be removed not expanded.-- God of War 05:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
My opinion, based on what Jimbo said; copied from DRV: There are only two fundamental reasons for speedy deletion: 1) it would be a shoe-in at *fD, or 2) decree from above. The T1 criterium clearly falls under "decree from above". In this mail on wikiEN-l, Jimbo seems to be of the opinion that it's userboxes in the Template namespace specifically that are a problem; T1 should therefore not be expanded to cover user space. Eugene van der Pijll 10:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
The 'userboxes could be OK outside userspace' suggestion only (IMHO) refers to where the CODE itself is inserted into a userpage. I don't really see why swapping {{user userbox}} for {{User:SampleUser/userbox}} would solve that problem. Whereas if people simply add the <div>...</div> code to their userpage, then
I would strongly oppose any attempt to remove userbox CODE (ie manually entered/subst'd <div>...</div> boxen) from userpages, but I think DocGlasgow's modification helps to maintain the spirit of T1 (even if certain admins have abused T1 itself horrendously) Cynical 11:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
My opinion on T1 is that some admins have interpreted it rather too loosely. I don't see too big a problem with real world ideological userboxen, although Jimbo would disagree. I just don't care whether they are kept or deleted. On the other hand, I feel very strongly about userboxes designed only to promote factionalism by stating stuff like "This user is a member of ADW" or "This user is a member of UDUIW". There's no reason for these userboxes to exist -- the only conclusion to be drawn is that they're there to promote factionalism. (CVU can be considered an exception, since there's no other faction -- just The Cunctator ( talk · contribs). :p) Those need to go, no matter what namespace they're in. They are clearly polemical and divisive. Johnleemk | Talk 12:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
<droning_voice duration="2.5 years"> Guidelines on wikipedia are descriptive, not prescriptive.</droning_voice>
So what does Deletion review say, and what do admins in the field do, are transcluded boxes deleted, yes or no? Predominantly yes? Predominantly no? Please describe, and come up with diffs.
K THX BYE.
Kim Bruning 13:43, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Unindent here>>>>>
Ah, so they're organised! Hmmm!
Kim Bruning 18:34, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I protected this because you people are edit warring over it. I didn't even read it before protecting it, so it might be protected at a version even I would not approve of. My action is not an endorsement of the current version. Kelly Martin ( talk) 14:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to propose another CSD category. How about having T2 be for templates which do not have any pages linked to them two weeks after the most recent edit? This accomplishes several things:
Any endorsements? -- StuffOfInterest 12:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I would say to not make the deletion automatic, just identification. If someone wanted to take it a step further then it may be possible to have a special comment in the standard templates so that an identifcation query does not pick these up. I'm just looking for something that keeps some of the unused templates from cluttering up TfD. Regarding subst:, I wonder if the database has any information on the last time subst: was used against a template? -- StuffOfInterest 13:55, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't have anything against the T1, but as it stands not, I think it's interpretation is a bit to wide and subjective. So my proposal is: "Templates with a clear intent to be divisive and/or inflammatory" (Perhaps my knowledge in the english language is a bit wauge, but or, is is execlusive or or and/or? ). → Aza Toth 14:48, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
And now it's been changed back from 'polemical' to 'divisive'. What IS the current gold standard, and are we adhering to it or making it up as we go along? I'm all for getting rid of the divisiveness (see the recent attempt to stack the debate, but some sort of explanation to all parties involved would be helpful to us Morlocks. -- nae'blis (talk) 22:12, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Since Wikipedia stopped allowing anonymous to create articles, I've seen an upsurge in the number of talk pages without associated articles. It seems to me that such pages ought to be speedily deleteable. G8 allows for deletion of talk pages if the article has already been deleted, but it makes no mention of talk pages which have never been associated with an article. I propose that G8 be modified to include talk pages which have never had articles. NoIdeaNick 00:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
When tagging an article as a criteria for speedy deletion, should it be marked as a major or minor edit? x42bn6 Talk 08:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
G5 is a strange criterion. If a banned user makes a contribution on George W. Bush, then that article is speediable under G5. → Aza Toth 14:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
G5 is a strange criterion. If a banned user makes a contribution on George W. Bush, then that article is speediable under G5. → Aza Toth 14:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
If a banned user is editing his/her talk page, the that talk page is speediable I assume. → Aza Toth 17:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
With no apparent justification beyond, We think Jimbo wants it this way, certain admins have cut a broard swathe through Wikipedia:Userboxes/Regional Politics, deleting boxes right and left. How does this square with, The community overwhelmingly agrees that these things are a problem, and there is not yet clear consensus on what to do about it. [10], or, I want people to ask slowly and thoughtfully with deep respect for others, even others with whom they disagree. [11] See this past version for a sense of how much has been cut. [12]
Should admins be running around acting unilaterally in the name of Jimbo?
StrangerInParadise 17:04, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
In reply to KeithTyler, I believe Jimbo has tried in good conscience to use his special position carefully to voice his concerns whilst not precipitating reckless action. I would imagine he is surprised and dismayed by some of the results. For my part, I will highlight the worse ones as I can. He has been particularly let down by the poor technical advice he has been given.
In reply to Sam Korn, I beg to differ, the real problem is the anti-userbox faction attacking the very core of the community by pushing this change and acting unilaterally to implement it immediately. Any incivility on the pro-userbox side doesn't even come close to that.
In reply to Friday, there are many things I'd rather be doing, but fighting to oppose this lame change is far worse than doing nothing. If lameness thereby attaches, I'll reluctantly wear it.
StrangerInParadise 18:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
The ability to associate is at the core of any community this diverse, certainly a global one of a million editors. Prior to userboxes, I'd say we muddled along, but with a diminished sense of who our fellow Wikipedians were. StrangerInParadise 18:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I do try, it's all about the fun. I'm glad you appreciated it, Android79 seemed to miss the joke there for a moment. And, yes, we can jaw about the banality of evil and all that, but I would find the total absence of bumperstickers far more disturbing that the usual selection of platitudes. We shall have to agree to disagree for now— a pleasure deferred, no doubt.
This user believes that only articles need reflect a NPOV, and that displaying political, religious, or other beliefs using userboxes and user categories should not be banned. |
On to the dreaded transcluded userbox with organization of users by POV. I disagree specifically with the idea that this is bad for the project, or that it increases the possibility of systematic bias. As you can see from my counter-proposal to the policy change under consideration, I favor providing even better tools for doing so. If you consult Wikipedia:Voting is evil (not a position to which I strongly subscribe), you see the comment, Wikipedia is not a democracy. This is a strength, not a failing. Dialectics is one of the most important things that make Wiki special, and while taking a poll is very often a lot easier than helping each other find a mutually agreeable position, it's almost never better. The brilliance of userboxen is that it facilitates association, and synergizes like minds, while at the same time signals to opponents that there is some body of shared opinion of a topic which should be respected. Frankly, I would even pepper userboxen into talk comments, as many do with page links, just to give a heads-up that there is a different perspective coming to the discussion.
Here is my short take on the matter. Userboxes should be in their own namespace and florish madly. Most concerns about this stem from flawed notions of NPOV, consensus, diversity and the ramifications of association. Whatever problems there are— and I have yet to be convinced there are serious problems— will only be made worse by this proposal. Wikipedia should be a work of neutrality produced by a passionate diversity.
The problem isn't that some article might receive a fatwa from some yahoo claiming to speak for a set of users bearing a userbox, the problem is the institutional weakness which might make such a force irresistible, for example an anti-Wikilawyering culture, poor debate process and a shaky understanding of the essence of NPOV. Telling people they cannot declare themselves Christian believer or Unreconstructed Trotskyite or Extra-crunchy Hippie Freak does not reinforce the culture of NPOV. Showing how these people have an immediate common basis for dialog based on NPOV does. That is the true power of NPOV and the beauty of Wikipedia. You are far too eager to roll up the welcome mat.
StrangerInParadise 03:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
The implication does not necessarily hold. I have been a Wikipedian for many years, and did not bother with userboxen or even a user page until the current crisis, yet I have held my own in many discussions. Bear in mind also that you sometimes get overlap in userbox groups that make for unique syntheses. What you would call a tug-of-war, I call simply ambiance, and have always found it conducive to cooperation. Have you considered that your notion of what userboxen actually do is itself too static? I find the formation of factions useful, as it simplifies how to create common ground between them. StrangerInParadise 04:28, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
AySz88, I'm not sure to whom that Huh? is directed, but my statement still applies to proud expressions of bias. The very hair-splitting futility of distinguishing the right sort of userbox is far more divisive, and anti-intellectual. If I embrace a label, I may risk that Kierkegaardian negation, but that is my problem, and I am comfortable managing it. If you presume that a userbox is some sort of 2D-label, that is your misperception. Most of these predictions/observations that userboxen breed shallow, rigid perspectives is far from established. As for the whole vote busing thing, why would anyone think this can't be organized off-site? It is better to watch it happen here, where we are Wikipedians, than out there, where we are activists.
The real problem I see in these recent comments is the subtext of elitism, culture of bumpersickers, sound-bitish, without any thought behind it, as if we are in a position to decide how to prevent others from expressing themselves or associating in too trivial a fashion, so as to make them better contributors in our eyes. Many Wikipedians are thoughtful, some are not. Too bad. This is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, a non-negotiable Foundation principle. Instead of deciding whose userbox to delete next, why not go referee an article in contention, and show them how it ought to be done? Lead by example, not prior restraint.
StrangerInParadise 05:24, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to have been unclear, only the first bit was specifically to you. I was refuting the notion that, that implies that the "opponents" should do the same and signal via another "body of shared opinion", that I had not felt compelled to do so, and yet had engaged such a body positively. However, no, it would not be a bad thing for opponents to organize, if that made sense.
Much of what followed was to whomever preceded me, and even contained a bit of esprit d'éscalier. As to T1, it should be deleted in its entirety.
StrangerInParadise 06:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
This should not be in effect, that is, no template should be deleted by it. It should be listed as proposed. BTW, polemical is way too broad, and unsanctioned by anything— why is it still there in T1? StrangerInParadise 07:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
The recent change to G5 to exclude the creation of pages by banned users from their ban is incorrect, per WP:BAN which says "Deletion: It is not possible to revert newly created articles, as there is nothing to revert to. However, such pages are a candidate for speedy deletion. Non-sysops can list such pages on speedy deletions instead, adding a {{ delete}} header". The exclusion of userpages is also incorrect since "Banned users are simply not authorized to edit Wikipedia". - Splash talk 16:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
"Templates that have been in existance for more than one month and are used on only one page." Basically, so we don't have to deal with all of the single-use templates on TfD - they should obviously all be substed and deleted. This shouldn't as controversial as T1. — Cuiviénen ( Cuivië) 16:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo has stated that he has made no decree regarding this, and there certainly is no consensus for this criterion. So why is it still there? I am going to remove it if there is not a very good reason why it needs to stay. — Guan aco 15:09, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Earlier, based on experience using it, the rule seemed somewhat broken as written. (See earlier discussion on this page I guess) If it hasn't changed much... well, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. <innocent look> We can always discuss with Jimbo when/if he comes to revert. <actually looks innocent for real for once> Kim Bruning 17:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, let's remove it or maybe move it to the WP:TFD page. If you want to have it here then either get a clear statement from Jimbo that it is policy by decree or run a poll and have it get more than 70% support there the way we usually expand the speedy deletion criteria. In my opinion this is too subjective a criterion to be applied at the CSD level where admins make decisions alone. We've certainly had conflict about templates lately and that's a difficult problem but this deletion criterion has not done anything to fix them. Haukur 20:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I think him putting it here in the first place is a pretty clear statement and I don't see why he should have to renew his intentions for it's inclusion. He's aware of what's going on, at least on some level, and if he wanted it gone he'd say something. Having said that I'm not going to sit here and try and cling to it, because it works both ways. If he wanted it here so bad he'd say also something.
I just want something in place as a control. The new userbox policy is sinking below the waves and I feel like we need something speaking to userboxes on a policy level. So, I don't know. How about if we wait a day or two, if no word then remove it. If anyone would like to work in a small group to create something to present to the community to replace it I'd be interested. Rx StrangeLove 22:26, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
? ? ? | ROGNNTUDJUU! thinks that users who cross out flags show a lack of respect for those represented by them and therefore created this template. |
02:20, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, right. I think "divisive" is too open to different interpretations by different admins and thus likely to lead to discord (as we have seen). But we all seem to agree that templates which only exist to attack or disparage individuals or groups of people can be speedy-deleted. Let's try a wording like that and maybe we can have a T1 which has an actual consensus behind it :) Haukur 10:28, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, the new wording seems to be "templates that attack or disparage individuals or groups of people". While I like this wording much better than the old wording, why not bundle it with A6 and make a general "no attacks" criteria? — Cuiviénen ( Cuivië) 14:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Is "does not assert the notability or significance of the subject" really the most important criteria for speedying? For example, if there were an article that said "L1k5, MR. D00dz is duh meest S1gNiFicunt un4 c00l p5rson EVUR!!!!", it would clearly be speediable, but assuming it was long and detailed enough to not be subject to A1, nothing under the currect CSD would apply to it. 72.224.95.121 02:32, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Some users just reconstruct divisice user boxes on their own pages. Images used solely for that purposed should be speedy deleted. ROGNNTUDJUU! 14:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Following on from discussion above, under the heading Proposed CSD R4, I am proposing CSD G10 with the draft wording:
This is being proposed as a general criteria, as:
There appears to be some support for this proposal, however please add any comments. If you agree with the principle please help word it, to make sure it is clear in scope. Petros471 12:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Your addition got merged into G3, so I changed the text. Ashibaka tock 23:23, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Did Jimbo sign off on the summary deprecation of T1? Insult/attack is very not what the original or any draft of it ever said. - Splash talk 00:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I've reinstated T1 to its original form. I neither support or oppose it (I find userboxes massively dull) but I think the move to deprecate and replace with one with largely unrelated meaning was overly bold. This is why, in chaning the CSDs, we usually discuss before we do. They have been carefully established and tend to get easily broken. - Splash talk 16:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
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I reworded A7 to clarify that a claim to notability had to be "serious" to be counted as a proper claim to notability, with the invitation to revert. As a result, I'm taking it here. AFAIK, most of the time admins speedy pages without a "serious" claim to notability, or one that has a believable base in current policy. What do you think of clarifying this criterion? Werdna648 T/ C\ @ 05:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
This is a solution in search of a problem. What is the recurring, unavoidable issue that adding this language helps to avoid? As User:Cryptic points out above, A7 is already used to knock out "non-serious" bios without any controversy. If it ain't broke.... JDoorj a m Talk 16:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Someone deleted File:Israelsoldier04.jpg. He was cute, and I liked having him on my page. The picture was on the BBC half a year ago, and they said it was released by the World Gay Pride thing in Jerusalem, so it must be free.
And someone deleted , claiming noone was using it on an article, but I was using it on my page. horseboy 17:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Moved to here
Now that we have Prod, can people go easy on the speedy deletes, please? Speedies should be reserved for straight-out garbarge, mostly. It doesn't take any more effort to send stuff to Prod. I'm still picking up stuff off the speedy delete list that doesn't belong there. I'd say about 20% of the speedies should be Prods or AfD's and half of those are likely keepworthy. And yeah admins are supposed to backstop speedies but it doesn't always happen. So remember: Prod. Herostratus 20:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't know where to ask this: Why the hell is the Nintendo article flagged for Speedy Deletion? AFAIK, it's well-written and has good sources. Seems to me like someone online vandal is playing console wars on Wikipedia... —This unsigned comment was added by 200.40.188.174 ( talk • contribs) .
These are typically speedied as common sense anyway, but it may be helpful to specificly outline it here, as they appear on WP:RFD from time to time, but how about "Redirects that were created as a result of obvious page move vandalism"? There aren't too many of them, and they usually get speedied anyway, so this may not be needed, but nonetheless, it may also be useful. -- Blu Aardvark | (talk) | (contribs) 00:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
A few words quoted from Jimbo which have not gotten enough attention in all this:
I believe that divisive and inflammatory userboxes should be deleted. I am convinced by the events of the last few months that they should not be speedied. The reform proposal linked to a few sections above makes abundantly clear the amount of judgment involved in the application of T1; other speedy criteria can be verified trivially, and usually all reasonable editors will agree when they have been met.
TfD will also usually get rid of something faster, since speedies will often be listed on WP:UBD; and Undeletion will be seriously discussed and often approved. (Of course TfD's can be nominated for undeletion too; but if there has been visible consensus, the deletion reviewers will ignore it.) Septentrionalis 15:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah yeah, no one likes the Scrooge who suggests doing something about April Fool's Jokes. But I think we need to speedy obvious April Fools jokes as vandalism while doing newpage/RC patrol on April 1st. We don't catch all of the hoaxes/jokes that are added in any random day, and they often stick around for months with potentially bad consequences... who knows how many hoaxes will join our million+ articles if we take a "Someone will take care of this tomorrow..." attitude towards April Fools jokes. -- W.marsh 00:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Either that or a bit of stability? Geni 12:59, 31 March 2006 (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 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 15 |
Could we make a G10 - advertising? -- M @ th wiz 2020 22:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Does CSD-R2 (redirections to userspace) apply to shortcuts? eg. see: U:DG, WP:ANONX, WP:AYB, WP:BEEFSTEW, WP:BOMB, WP:CCW, WP:CDVF, WP:CUNT, WP:INT, WP:JVS, WP:LAVT, WP:LVAT, WP:PCW, WP:RAUL. These sorts of things may tend to be more or less vanity links, though I know that some of them ( WP:INT, WP:RAUL) were created by independent users in good faith. In my opinion, they shouldn't all be obvious deletes. -- Interiot 19:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed we get a lot of AfDs for non-notable websites, could we expand A7 slightly to explicitly include Websites that do not have a claim to notability per WP:WEB. At the moment they have to go through AfD, which, IMO, is nonsense. What do people think? Werdna648 T/ C\ @ 23:30, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I oppose this, as what qualifies for notability on web sites is highly debated, and unclear. Please take a look at the record when people cite WP:WEB. Also, A7 focuses on the *claim*, not whether it meets a criteria. If you're suggesting we should speedy delete things for failure to meet WP:WEB or WP:CORP, then you're talking about an entirely new speedy category. Note,that we *dont'* speedy things for failure to meet WP:BIO, and never have. We speedy articles on persons with no *claim* of notability. Any claim, even a claim that doesn't meet WP:BIO or WP:MUSIC is sufficient. For instance, a person with just one album on a major record label may fail WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO but is not an A7. Also, it seems the typical web site article actually does make a claim of notability, but the problem is determining if it is verifiable, which is something that needs investigation, and is subject to debate. -- Rob 20:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
I also oppose this. The sort of checking required to see if an article meets WP:CORP or WP:WEB automatically discounts it from a speedy delete, IMO. -- D e ath phoenix 20:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Obviously, I have read WP:WEB, and it seems quite clear to me.2 I'm not saying that we shouldn't focus on the claim: in fact I think we should keep this new criterion inside A7. I perfectly understand the concept of "claim" of notability, and I never speedied anything for failure to meet WP:BIO. Not all articles about websites claim notability, exactly as not all biographies claim notability, and it's the same for bands, and for companies. I found an article some time ago that said "xxx" is a small web design company with 6 employees, and provided a link to its website. That article made no claims of notability, but I couldn't delete it. This is exactly what I'm talking about, and I would like to know if/why you don't agree with this. Mushroom 21:19, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Oppose full stop. During the discussion to get WP:WEB up to guideline status consensus formed around the position that the guidelines should in no way form the basis for a speedy deletion criterion. Hiding talk 21:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
This is a legitimate proposal, as many websites hit AfD on a regular basis, but to make it into CfD it would need to be strictly limited to a set of conditions that will almost never result in a false positive. I can't imagine any such conditions at the moment, but something to think about. Deco 21:32, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
This is my current proposal for A7:
Obviously this wouldn't make a big difference since most new articles about websites and companies are advertising, but it could be useful in a small number of cases and it would do no harm. Mushroom 21:43, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Then what about this:
I don't understand why this should be limited to people. Any article that doesn't claim notability should be speedily deleted. Mushroom 22:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps some middle ground is needed. Maybe we're even looking at it the wrong way here, perhaps we should expand CSD A3 (which provides for deletion of articles with no content other than a link)? In practice a lot of this kind of stuff is speedy deleted already... there are new pages added all the time with nothing but a few unformatted sentences about some "up and coming" forum and a link to it. When this kind of stuff does go to AfD, it's the typical case where the only support votes are from people connected to the site in question... and obviously these are very prone to cause minor sockpuppet-fueled drama at AfD.
Perhaps a criteria for speedy deletion should be along the lines of "Short, uncited articles that serve only to describe and promote an external link". As this thread shows, making website articles in general fall under CSD might cause a whole lot of problems. -- W.marsh 00:09, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I consider two reliable sources that I find through my library, outside of Google, that give informative independent information about a topic, to often be more significant than 100,000 (reported) google hits. We shouldn't be rewarding people for SEO tactics. Also, keep in mind, many sites change their names, and search on the new name fails, but the old one gives high results. Also keep in mind that no web sites gives more than 1000 *unique* Google hits, as that's all Google shows [1]. So, when you say "more than a 1000" you must apparently mean more than 1000 non-uniques, which is utterly worthless, as one page on one web site, can appear as hundreds of thousands of hits (due to something called infinite namespace). -- Rob 02:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
My counter (for the above) would be for reference sites. Consider the Google result for pghbridges.com This site gets 140 or so inward links (some from us) as you can see. But it's a rich vein of material, well sourced and thorough, if you are working on bridges ( Coraopolis Bridge for example, which I just did a lot of work on tonite) and tunnels in the Pittsburgh area. The HAER Library of Congress source, that it gets some of its material from, has a lot of great material but you have to OCR the .tifs... this site author already did that. So this is an awesome, and easily verified as correct, (because you can go check HAER and see if he OCRed them right or not!) reference site. I am of the opinion that it needs a writeup, if only to document why it's a good reference, and what sort of stuff it can be relied on to have, how far out it covers, and how to use it. Now, I'm still a newb, maybe that's a wikipediaspace thing rather than main articlespace but that site is, I allege, notable and verifyable, but fails the google test utterly (it also has no forums and therefore no users to count). I wish there was a site like it for other areas (BTW: other sites I like for bridges are structurae.de and bridgemeister.com... both would also fail the google test badly but both deserve mention, perhaps in our bibliography if we have one rather than in articlespace???) DO we have a bibliography or a place to document references (these are documented in the bridges wikiproject already I think) that's generic? ++ Lar: t/ c 05:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
See here for a discussion of how C1 applies to stub-categories, in particular when they contain (only) a stub template (and no articles), and whether it should be clarified as regards said application, on way or another. Alai 00:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I thought it germane here, so please notice Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Mass_PDF_upload. Would it be wise to try and develop some kind of CSD for images that violate WP:NOT in this manner? Thanks. -- LV (Dark Mark) 17:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I am not sure what to do when I come across potential images that fall into this critera. Should any image with the "with permission" or "commercial use only" uploaded after May 19, 2005 be labled for speedy? This is what assume from Jimbo's message regarding the manner. I'm looking for clarification so I can feel free to label such images for speedy. Thanks. -- Zsinj 08:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
This is a proposed very simple way to deal with non-controversial article deletions. The proponet propses a live test in the near future. I think the idea is a good one, but that some degree of community support is needed to sanction a live test. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion to express your views. DES (talk) 17:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
If you look at the vast number of pages created every hour, a substantial number of them are just defining some new word. It seems like a primary thing people new to Wikipedia want to do is define some term they and their buddies use. See Syck for an example of what I mean... it's just like "Hey, I made up some new word, here it is, Wikipedia!" Now while I personally think the article creation process should be overhauled to help inform people that creating articles like this isn't a good idea, that's beside the point here.
Is there any good way to speedy delete these articles? In practice they often are speedied, but technically they don't usually fall under a criteria for speedy deletion at present. If a word gets 0 Google results, and like in the case I cited above the article pretty much admits it's a freshly coined term not used by anyone but the creator's buddies... it's kind of silly to have to go through the process of AfD with something that will never survive it. But is there a clean way to add these to CSD, to reduce the load on AfD?
I know people aren't very keen on using Google as a criteria for deletion... so what would people think of:
That would cover a lot of ground, really... but preclude anything that might meet WP:V or be something Wiktionary would want (by the way, they speedy delete stuff like I'm talking about). Of course this is a very rough idea and I'm just looking for comments at this point. -- W.marsh 04:55, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Strong support for speedying protologisms. I have seen so many of them on AFD that I have a ton of macros just for voting to delete neologisms/protologisms. — Quarl ( talk) 2006-02-06 13:06 Z
Strongest possible support for this. If you ever patrol the New Pages, you'll see literally dozens of neologisms, but you're basically defenseless against them, since if you go through the tediousness of listing something on AfD, you might miss some other useless articles. Including this in CSD would make this a lot easier. --
Rory
0
96 18:04, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Isn't this better suited for {{prod}}? -- badlydrawnjeff ( WP:MEME?) 18:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I would be very happy with W.marsh's proposal above, per Quarl's reasoning. A large proportion of my delete votes are on protologisms. Stifle 09:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm trying to figure out how to maximize the usefulness of my RC patrol time. I've been watching recentchanges and newpages trying to catch the most egregious vandalism (blanking or insertion of obscenities at major topics) and obvious newpage speedies ("Zobbo215 is the ultimate in coolness!"). It occurred to me that I might be wasting my time, because the most obvious vandalism and almost empty newpages are probably flagged by bots. My question is: are the bots so effective at catching these types of problems that I'm just wasting human resources to do a job a robot can do better? If so, how could I modify my RC patrolling to be more useful to the encyclopedia? Ben Kidwell 09:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
When I was creating {{ template messages}}, I found that there is no A4, what happend to that? → Aza Toth 02:51, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
A number of people have been arguing that the expanded A7 allows the speedying of companies. (There's a snooty note from one such person on my talkpage now, but that's okay because my answering note was no less snooty). Now, this was clearly not the intent of the change, and even people who've played fast and loose with the CSD criteria in the past accept that; for example, User:Mushroom is above arguing that it should be expanded to include companies. Now, "groups" is kinda vague, so I propose that, if we don't want articles on corporations to be speedied for failure to even assert notability, that we make it explicit that companies aren't included. Alternatively, add corporations to the list of subjects which require an assertion of notability to avoid being shot on sight. fuddlemark ( fuddle me!) 03:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Are there any plans to create the Wikipedia:Lost images article, or should it be removed from this project page? ( Lady Serena 23:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC))
These Two Images, Pwsafarijacket.jpg and Trenchcoatinuse.jpg have been identified for source information properly now, so they should be kept. Michael 15:01, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I want to expand/clarify I#5 to state:
instead of the existing
Obviously, the necessary templates and category would be created. The criterion already seems to imply the expanded version by saying simply "uploaded without permission of the copyright holder" but this is contradicted by referring to "orphaned fair use" later. Thus, I'd like to state outright the broader meaning; I can't see any reason orphan non-free images should be around, and this would make the gargantuan task of Wikipedia:Untagged images faster. I am aware this template originated from one of Jimbo's mysterious IRC/mailing list proclamations. However, I still think this change is legitimate. What do people think? Superm401 - Talk 01:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
You confused me (and apparently Radiant! as well) by putting the modified version first and the other second. It seems like a straightforward and sensible change. I wouldn't really even have a problem with being bold for such a minor change. Keep the word article bolded, though. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 05:35, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist.
A thoughtful process of change is important.
And whatever you do, do NOT wheel war about this.-- Jimbo Wales 07:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I would like to expand the CSD for User pages to include the following. Occassionally a user will have a red-linked user page (i.e., no edits to it) and sometimes incautious or ignorant users (no offense intended) will leave messages there instead of on the talk page. I propose that the message should be moved to the talk page and then the user page deleted speedily. There's no point in submitting it to AfD and it's nice to know at a glance if someone doesn't have a userpage (based on color of the link). Also, blank pages are useless. This strikes me as non-controversial. I hope I'm right. :) -- Dante Alighieri | Talk 08:30, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I have seen a lot of AFDs for web forums, IRC channels, mailing lists, and other "online groups" which are clearly non-notable. Thoughts on expanding CSD to include things like web forums with only 100 members and no assertion of importance? (If A7 applies to "unremarkable online groups", it should say so explicitly, because it has been a contentious point in the past.) — Quarl ( talk) 2006-02-06 13:00 Z
What is this? There is no consensus that divisive templates can be speedily deleted. You can't just add stuff to official policy without discussing it first.-- God of War 18:02, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo want's people to discuss this before applying it.
Quoting Jimbo
At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist.
A thoughtful process of change is important. And whatever you do, do NOT wheel war about this.--
Jimbo Wales 07:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
[5].
My opinion towards a consensus here, FWIW, is that obviously intentionally disruptive or confrontational new boxes should be speedied. The same sense used with unrepentant trolls and other contributors of patent nonsense to articles can apply to the phenomenon of userbox templates, which go somewhat beyond the content of any individual's userpage. Letting browsers or correspondants know up front what one is interested in or qualified for is fine, cranks creating tools for denigrating everyone who disagrees with them is too much, IMO. -- Fire Star 07:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't like another aspect of the current wording ("Contributions that are clearly intended to be divisive and/or inflammatory...", my emphasis). I would either replace "intended" or add something to the effect that this also applies to templates which are unintentionally extremely divisive and/or inflammatory. If someone creates an unusually inflammatory template in good faith (without intending for it to be inflammatory), i.e., if this is due to a lapse of judgement rather than outright malice, I think we would still want to be able to speedy-delete. After all, we're not mind readers, so if the net effect is the same, why make a distinction that involves the state of mind of whoever created a template? -- MarkSweep (call me collect) 09:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
File:Adolf Hitler Bigger.jpg | This user thinks that Adolf Hitler was a great humanitarian |
The disaster of this imposed policy is that it has unleashed a plague of petty authoritarians on the project. What gets edited — and therefore what gets deleted — is always going to be self-selected by volunteers. The mere presence of this vague criterion among the current criteria has emboldened people to delete certain userbox templates they happen to disagree with. Even assuming good faith, it's always going to be a whole lot easier for someone to see that those boxes are "polemical" or "divisive". Obviously polemical or divisive but relatively popular boxes (e.g. Template:User no meat, with its offensive "meat is murder" slogan) will stay. No one wants to call down the wrath to come on the person who dares to label it so, much less delete it without notice, as the policy seeks to legitimize. I'd do it myself, but that would be WP:POINT, seemingly legitimize the criterion, and besides, I don't want the hate.
The only NPOV way to do this would be to disable all templates on user pages. Nothing else will get the job done and be truly neutral. Even claiming a language might be inferred as making a political statement; happens often enough in real life.
The proposed policy as it stands increases divisiveness tenfold, and increases pettiness a hundredfold. It has distracted the community from its purpose far more than the boxes themselves ever could. Mr. Wales, I beseech you from the bowels of Christ to consider you may be wrong. -- Smerdis of Tlön 22:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I hope no-one objects to this. Quite clearly the criterion that was created as T1 applies equally to all namespaces. For this reason, I have transferred it over. If anyone wants to add any détente comments, I'm not going to stop them. Sam Korn (smoddy) 21:59, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I got as far as the edit window, but after a few shots I decided that I don't think there's a wording of this, no matter how eloquent, that could prevent prevent improper userspace or category deletions. Jimbo was reverting to sannse's version, and sannse was paraphrasing my own comment on User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Userboxes_again, and I think all three of us were basically saying that polemic templates are causing a lot of trouble. If you move this back to T1, this can be resolved thanks to the new proposal Wikipedia:Use of userboxes. As for categories and userspace, their respective deletion debates see divisive/inflammatory pages all the time and I don't think a new speedy rule will improve the quality of discussion. Ashibaka tock 23:29, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
So you're saying it applies to user space too? -- SPUI ( talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 00:23, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Why just delete redirects to the User namespace? How about redirects from the article space to the Template namespace, or Category, or Wikipedia? Why are those treated differently? - GTBacchus( talk) 02:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
gun article can be deleted info put in mp5k article.( Uber555 03:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC))
Despite the discussion in Archive7 on the difference between CSD A2 and {{NotEnglish}}, it's not clear at all to me why the former merits speedy deletion (ie. deletable-immediately-on-sight) while the latter merits a 2-week wait before being merely listed for deletion (according to the template). The current state of affairs becomes especially strange, when one considers that any {{NotEnglish}} can easily be transformed into CSD A2, merely by having someone cross-post the untranslated text into the corresponding foreign-language Wikipedia. The fact that merely copying the untranslated text into the corresponding foreign-language Wikipedia would lead to the untranslated article in English Wikipedia being allowed to be deleted on sight, before anyone has a chance to translate it into English, that seems a little illogical to me--unless a similar article already exists in English Wikipedia, but that's a different deletion criteria altogether. I would expect that a CSD A2 article be also merit a 2-week period before any deletion.
If this has been discussed in detail before, please point me to the appropriate pages. Thanks.
If what I said above makes no sense or indicates a clear misunderstanding, please clarify the truth for me and others. Thanks for your patience.
67.160.10.87 09:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm starting to tire of the number of completely made-up word and phrase definitions which are created every day; there must be literally hundreds. Most of these are clearly unsupported nonsense, and do not deserve the dignity (and nonnegligible effort) of being brought to AfD. Two examples this evening are Poison fingers syndrome, which gets zero google hits and which the article claims "starting to catch on", and Kurushinism, which is utter nonsense. I sometimes tag these, perhaps unfairly, as {{db-nonsense}}, but I think we need a CSD category for "obvious unsupported neologism with no claim of widespread use or encyclopediacy". Even applying {{prod}} is giving these article too much credit. Any other support for such an addition? bikeable (talk) 05:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be good if we added to "I5" something like this:
This way, when somebody replaces a fairuse image, with a free one, they don't have to "babysit" it, to ensure the fairuse isn't swapped back by another editor (often an anon, who would be unable to re-upload the fairuse image). If the quality/suitability of the free image replacement is debateable, then the normal 7-day wait period could still apply. -- Rob 05:31, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I've had an instance of someone trying to recreate unacceptable templates in another namespace and arguing that T1 doesn't apply outside template space. Because it doesn't matter which namespace a template is transcluded from (template: is simply the default location if an explicit namespace is not provided in a transclusion) I've clarified: pages created in any namespace for the purpose of transclusion, -- Tony Sidaway 09:21, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I guess tony made the change due to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#User:Userboxes ? Kim Bruning 10:57, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I've removed T1 entirely. It's clear that it has failed in its original intent; T1 itself, and the applications to which it has been put, is far more "divisive and inflammatory" than any userboxes possibly could be. Crotalus horridus ( TALK • CONTRIBS) 11:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
You know you have to love this about userboxes. Anytime you can think of something dissruptive either side could do they promptly go and do it. Now clearly T1 is flawed (becuase the deletion of
Template:Nazism sidebar and
Template:NPOV would be terminaly stupid). However getting rid of it would be somewhat tricky. Thus damage limitation is the way forward.
Geni 04:11, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
I have placed in WP:CSD the following, under the heading "Templates":
# Templates that are divisive and/or inflammatory. Please note that this is a brand new criterion and should be discussed before widespread use. See
talk page.
While we may disagree over the intended reach of the rule and its applicability to the various spaces, the rule itself, in its simplest form—that templates which are divisive and/or inflammatory may be speedily deleted by a Wikipedia administrator—derives its authority from Mr. Wales, who as Chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation has "ultimate authority on any matter" on all Wikimedia projects, subject to decisions of the Board. As the Board, to my knowledge, has not disapproved of the T1 criterion he placed [6], it retains its validity; any removal of the rule from the CSD page is tantamount to vandalism. I understand that some parties to the disagreement may at present feel aggrieved; this is quite understandable. I urge that these disagreements be aired in the appropriate fora, and that some resolution be attained through civil discourse—not via revert warring, which is unlikely to bring about agreeable results. I have acted as an ordinary Wikipedian. I bear no other authority. I am neutral with respect to the precise wording of the template. Regards ENCEPHALON 13:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Please stop altering policy pages like you did here. If you disagree with existing policy, please discuss on the talk page. -- MarkSweep (call me collect) 04:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Explain further. I do not believe examples are necessary until the discussion on this topic has been completed. Anyone else have a thought on this? Sct72 04:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I am absolutely in favor of CSD T1, but I have a question about Jimbo's addition of this criterion making it unremovable. Jimbo is the ultimate authority when he chooses to be, but in this case it's not clear to me whether he was acting as ultimate authority or an ordinary editor. How does one tell? -- SCZenz 08:45, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I've come across four of these this week through Special: Random. I'm in favor of articles on terms, including slang and l33t-speak; but there really shouldn't be an article on term #7836592 that someone just made up last week. Why shouldn't these be speedied- it's not like they're going to be expanded, as no one knows about them except the coiner, friends, and people like us who read about it on WP. EGGS 21:07, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Wonder if you'd care to comment on this latest attempt to represent the feeling of the Wikipedia community on activities--mainly political advocacy, voting on everything, and political userboxes--that tend to split us into camps. --Tony Sidaway 14:01, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
This looks very beautiful to me.--Jimbo Wales 21:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
For any templates that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Templates for deletion
At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist.
A thoughtful process of change is important.
And whatever you do, do NOT wheel war about this.--Jimbo Wales 07:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
See the ongoing discussion at The Village Pump, and be wary of Wikipedia:Multiposting. InkSplotch( talk) 14:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Recently, someone changed the language in this new criterion from "divisive and inflammatory" to "polemical". One the one hand, it's a less common word and therefore the case may not be as easily understood. On the other hand, it's well linked and I learned a new word today (which is always a good thing). However, reading the definition at Polemic it appears to me that this implies intent - that the author must be trying to incite disruption. The previous language merely required that it be disruptive. Am I reading too much into it or is this a wording change that also changes the meaning? Rossami (talk) 03:54, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
The problem is not userboxes. The problem is divisiveness. the solution is not to delete but to EXPAND the divisive content into a creative expression of one's self: :"Divisive content in user space, whether in the form of divisive user boxes or any other kind of bumper-sticker type labeling is discouraged as harmful to Wikipedia. Creative, explanatory, or otherwise useful information is encouraged as these efforts can help build a community that in turn builds an encyclopedia. If it is generally perceived that a label, userbox, or bumper sticker type self-expression on your user page is divisive, then expand it with creativity, explanations, and other positive inclusive elements or remove it because that's what is good for building the community that is building this encyclopedia. Facile labels, polarizing "bumper stickers", polemical user boxes, factionalism, and division are bad for Wikipedia. Creative informative explanatory self-expression is good for Wikipedia. Individuality of expression always looks more meaningful than branding." Source = Wikipedia:Divisiveness WAS 4.250 17:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Well the word polemical is better because it does cover pro- boxes. They'll all have to go so we might as well get the word right. -- Tony Sidaway 06:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
How are any of the political userboxes divisive at all? I've been on Wikipedia for several hours now looking for the effects or indicators of this supposed divisiveness, and the only lines I have seen Wikipedians divided along is the issue of whether or not POV userboxes should exist at all. The only way in which I have seen a division along political lines on this issue is that by and large only certain templates are being proposed for deletion, and it is my impression that many people inserting these requests for speedy deletion are doing so for political reasons (why else would someone tag a box expressing a desire for the expansion of the death penalty, but neglact to tag the corresponding one desiring restriction). I would humbly request that someone show me an example of the negative effect these userboxes are having on the community (that is, an effect that arose from the opinion expressed in the box, not one which arose from the box merely expressing an opinion), so that I can compare it to the truly damaging effect that this policy is having on the community.
In the meantime, we need to prevent any userboxes from being speedily deleted until we can have a full, civil discussion on this matter and actually come to an acceptable definition of "polemic or inflamatory". Please. This presently ambiguous policy is seemingly being abused by those who wish to delete all userboxes, regardless of whether the userboxes are polemic. Reveilled 21:43, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
The real problem is less about templates and more about divisiveness in userspace. Please consider my proposal, Wikipedia:Unacceptable userspace material, which is intended as a means to minimally quantify "bad" materials in userspace which the practice of including on userpages has a detrimental effect on Wikipedia, as opposed to making overbroad blanket restrictions. The goal is to maintain the liberal use of userspace while addressing concerns of divisiveness and objectionableness, avoiding template deletionism, and providing a defined standard on which compulsory userpage amendments can be based. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 21:31, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
I propose a new criterion for speedy deletion below (for attack redirects):
The template used will probably be {{ db-redirattack}}.
Please add comments and discussion below. -- King of Hearts | (talk) 23:50, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm really confused as to the extent of CSD T1 - people have been nominating userboxes that support recycling or ones that denounce profanity up for this, yet I don't see how either of those are highly problematic. Could we get examples of what's speedily deletable under CSD T1? enochlau ( talk) 03:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't see it there, but....is or isn't "divisive" part of T1, and exactly how "divisive" would it have to be? It appears from recent deletions and discussions that some think that "divisive" is part of T1, but I'm afraid of the possible lengths to which it can be taken - for example, {{ User incl}} and {{ User delete}} were already deleted for being "divisive". A radical interpretation could even fit things like {{ User singular they:Yes}} and {{ User singular they:No}} and possibly even the Sexuality boxes and the Location boxes into the heading of "divisive". If "divisive" is not within T1, it should probably be clarified. -- AySz88 ^ - ^ 01:47, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, it seems like there's a problem with divisive being used, as visible from all this discussion, so how about the template is moved to {{ db-inflammatory}}? No one has objected to that part of the CSD yet. Tito xd( ?!? - help us) 07:12, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Clearly this policy is too subjective to be workable. See Wikipedia:Userboxes/Regional_Politics for instance. Some editors apparently define "polemical or inflammatory" a lot differently than I do, and take it to mean any userbox expressing any opinion whatever. Since these need no debate, and if any one administrators defines them as problematic they're going, you're basically giving all administrators subjective power to delete any template they'd like. This in turn, leaves us to waste a lot of time at Deletion Review, and frankly piss a lot of users off. This isn't working as a short-term solution, won't work as a long term solution, and should be immediately suspended in favor of exploring more workable alternatives. Sarge Baldy 18:54, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I guess I'll throw in my few cents here. I'll skip the whole issue of whether userboxes themselves are good or evil, and instead focus on the T1 policy. While I really don't care one way or the other about userboxes (my non-sockpuppet userpage doesn't have a single one of them, and never has), this policy is so very, very wrong it needs to be addressed. I'm sure most of this has been said before, but in the interest of consensus, more people saying it is probably better.
To start, it's unacceptably vague. "Inflammatory" is an inherently POV criteria, and can only serve to push POVs. Inflammatory to whom? I have not seen a single userbox deleted that I considered inflammatory, and only a few of them I could see how someone else could find them so, even though this is often given as a reason for their removal. Inflammatory to christian fundamentalists? Inflammatory to muslims? Inflammatory to someone, somewhere, at some time? This criteria allows people's POVs to directly affect the community.
Even worse, by the incredibly poor choice to implement this as a speedy deletion criteria, rather than the good, working, etc TFD process, people can push their POVs without any community input. If the proper TFD procedure was followed, the community could build a consensus as to what was inflammatory, divisive, etc. Consensus and NPOV are fundamental concepts of wikipedia... which this policy throws straight out the window. Since anyone can declare something inflammatory, and the community has no opportunity to respond, any user who disagrees with something can have it deleted (or, in the case of admins, happily abuse the powers granted to us by the community and delete it ourselves). If this policy is to survive, it must be something the community can interject consensus into, rather than allowing random, pov-based deletions.
This applies to "polemic" deletions too... Many of the userboxes deleted are neither inflammatory (by any standard myself or any communites I know of adhere to) nor polemic (they do not appear to meet any definition of the word or any statements in the wikipedia article), yet are deleted with a "CSDT1" as their only explanation. Sure, we could restore them as soon as someone does that, but then we'd be accused of wheel warring, as it's apparantly now wrong to correct the mistaken action of another admin. But that's a rant for another page. Anyone could decide absolutely anything is intended to provoke an argument; this again allows random POV-pushing without the oversight of community consensus. Simply stating anything as fact will be considered polemic to at least one group of people.
And, of course, this is all talking about userboxes... What about other templates? As I don't like organized religion, I could decide I find {{ Template:Christianity}} highly inflammatory, and, as T1 requires no consensus, delete it on the spot. I could even make a good case of it too; it implies truth of all the christian arguments, which is inflammatory to anyone who doesn't agree with this POV. Of course, another admin would restore it 1/32nd of a second later, but then comes the aforementioned claims of wheel warring. However, this template is probably useful to an encyclopedia, even though it's inflammatory and polemic to non-christians. As just about EVERYTHING is inflammatory to someone, simply being "inflammatory" is no reason to delete it. Although I may disagree with the template, I'd never even remotely consider it for deletion. At a bare minimum, this policy must be explicitly restricted to userboxes, before it becomes a POV-pushing tool extending beyond user pages.
The whole reason we have AFD, TFD, etc, is to make sure only content determined by consensus of the community to be unneeded is deleted. What if this policy applied to articles, not just templates? Surely people would find it absurd (and I do hope they do) if articles could be deleted because they were inflammatory to someone? Articles about safe sex, taiwan independance, and just about everything else remotely controversial would end up deleted. Wikipedia would be completely, utterly useless, as just about every single fact is inflammatory to someone. I think there's a worst cases item about this. But this policy is ok to apply to templates? Sure, this argument may be a bit of a straw man, but it does serve well to illustrate what policies like this could mean.
There's also the issue of the policy's origins... to quote the top of the page, "Feel free to edit the page as needed, but please make sure that changes you make to this policy reflect consensus before you make them." Judging from the current amount of debate, consensus is non-existant. While I'm sure there's plenty of people who will argue "Jimbo says it; the community is irrelevant," it still is worthy of discussion. What if Jimbo (I capitalize his name out of respect for this project) decreed that all articles about, dunno, the automotive industry should be speedy deleted, giving the argument that promoting pollution is against the interests of an encyclopedia, divisive, etc? Yes, right to fork, etc, etc, etc, I've both been told and told other people those statements many times, but that doesn't mean it's not worthy of discussion. This policy was created without the input of the community, is very vague, allows POV-pushing, bypasses several of the foundation issues, and generally does not reflect consensus or established policies. (omnipotence paradox? Can Jimbo create a policy which violates his own rules?)
As to being divisive, as in the original wording, this yet again is unacceptably vague. Without the benefit of requiring consensus, this is just another ambigious way of using "I don't like it" as a valid reason to delete something.
Specifically for userboxes, this policy does nothing to help the actual problem Jimbo wished to address... People can still say "I think all christians should be shot with completely uncontrolled fully automatic rifles weilded by anarchist governments while protesting fox hunting and eating pancakes provided by wikipedians for an encyclopedia in cooperation with the organization for the promotion of Jimbo's beard," they just will have a very slightly harder time doing it with userboxes. All debate over whether stating personal opinions is acceptable aside (a much bigger issue about what's allowed on user pages, are users allowed to state which groups they belong to (userboxes or otherwise), are they allowed to link to a personal page with that info, etc), this policy does absoutely nothing to address the concerns people in that debate (including Jimbo) have raised, but raises many concerns itself.
Some random suggestions on how this situation might be improved, in order of most like the status quo to most like the new policy:
deleted if consensus is to keep them. Drawbacks: May not result in things being deleted as quickly as some would like. May invoke wikipedia is/is not a democracy arguments. Will invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries.
a specific group or individual. Like with attack pages, any template which directly attacks a named individual, group, or belief, and serves no other function, may be speedily deleted. All others should be listed at Templates for deletion." Benefits: allows speedy deletions of "Jimbo Walse IS GAY ROX0R!!111LOL!" userboxes, while ensuring community consensus for others. Helps prevent the use of this policy for deleting articles that disagree with the user's tastes. Drawbacks: Debate will doubtlessly happen for some of the boxes deleted by the policy; they can be restored then go through TFD for the final decision. Will still invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries. (As a side note, this would probably be my preferred compromise, although I doubt anyone cares about my 2 cents) (As another side note, this policy will, in the long term, establish a history for what the community's opinion of userboxes is.)
attack templates, a userbox may be deleted if it's listed at a TFD subpage (userboxes for deletion) for more than a day and the consensus is to speedy delete. If the consensus is not to speedy delete, it goes through the full 7-day process. Benefits: Like the above, allows speedying attack templates, but also allows the deletion of non-attack templates in a faster manner. Drawbacks: Will invoke wikipedia is/is not a democracy arguments, complaints that something that offends some group of people wasn't deleted fast enough because people voted to keep it (sexuality userboxes come to mind as they seem to provoke the most "It's offensive to me!" responses). Will use lots of admin time processing the double-tiered structure. Will still invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries.
thinks it should be kept, then put it through TFD." Benefits: Allows delete-happy admins to use a "shoot them all, let someone else sort them out" policy without damaging the community too badly. Drawbacks: Allows delete-happy admins to use a "shoot them all, let someone else sort them out" policy. Consensus can only be reached if a squeeky wheel requests restoration. Admins will suffer cabal retribution for undeleting them. Will still invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries.
of cabal retribution upon the restoring admin. Benefits: When admins see a template deleted that might have been desired by the community, or is requested by a user to restore it, they can do so without fear of retribution, wheel warring claims, WP:POINT arguments, etc. Drawbacks: Admins will still fear undeleting anything. Community input may be ignored by admins. Consensus can only be reached if a squeeky wheel requests restoration. Will still invoke "But Jimbo said so!" cries.
only option on this list not to. Drawbacks: Many.
As an interim option, perhaps all deletes under this policy should be suspended until there's more community discussion and a good, solid consensus on what to do
next? Jimbo himself has asked for this ("At least for a little bit, I advise everyone to chill about this. Let's take some time to reflect on this issue as a
community. That means: don't make any crazy userboxes designed to try to trip this rule, and don't go on any sprees deleting ones that already exist. A
thoughtful process of change is important."), but judging from the deletion log, and my watchlist being about a thousand pages longer than usual due to all the
script-assisted subst'ing of userboxes on user pages I have watched, most admins are ignoring it. Restoring most of the deleted content until consensus is
reached might also be wise, just to avoid wheel warring, user requests for undeletion, etc, etc, etc.
Short summary for people who skip long rants: The current policy is not consistent with wikipedia's goals, promotes POV-pushing and rogue admin actions against
community consensus, and does not even help to accomplish the goal Jimbo had in mind when creating it. A solution is needed, or it will continue to be badly
abused, possibly spreading beyond userboxes and into article space. A policy which allows community input and depends on consensus is a must for a successful
encyclopedia. Jimbo has stated we should wait and discuss the policy rather than using it. This is a Good Thing.
And that's the end of my Long Rant Of The Day (TM). Like always, forgive typos and the lack of formatting, as proofreading in Lynx is almost as painful as this policy. Thanks for reading this long, boring, incoherent rant, DiscussionWolfy 05:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC).
I have added the following paragraph to this page:
— Guan aco 01:19, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
In addition to having criteria for speedy deletion for user page templates, there ought to be "criteria for things to leave alone." These criteria also should be a lot more specific than anything about "polemical" or "divisive" or "inflammatory" user templates.
Some suggestions for things that should presumptively be left alone:
The idea being that all of these templates amount to user-volunteer suggestions about ways to improve the encyclopedia, and are meant to facilitate communication between users on projects to improve it. They are related to the core purpose of the project even if someone decides to look at them funny.
The idea being that even if an admin takes issue with such a template and decides to delete it, falling within one of these criteria would be grounds to recreate it instantly without prejudice or repercussion. Any template that falls within one of these core categories should at minimum not be speedily deleted unilaterally, and the deletion of such templates should be viewed as an abuse of power. — Smerdis of Tlön 03:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Bear in mind also that the whitelist would only protect templates that fall within its confines from speedy deletion. Templates subject to abuse could still be deleted; but this should at least require some opportunity to be heard. — Smerdis of Tlön 14:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I have expanded the scope of template speedies to cover all pages obviously intended for transclusion. Whatever folk think of the vagueness of T1, it must obviously cover things like the pedophile userbox, and there's not much point in having T1 if people can put it in userspace and enourage others to tranclude it from there. Note, I have worded this so that it has no effect on any userbox that is hardcoded onto a usepage. It is the use of userspace as 'template by another name' I've aimed at. -- Doc ask? 15:05, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
It's too early to include this in the published policy. This is the first I've heard of this, and I've been listening to this debate for the past week. There are a lot of people assuming this not to be the case, with some headway being made on the assumption that template policy applies to template space. That it applies to all transcludable pages is not readily obvious.
JDoorj
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Talk 16:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Trying to expand CSD T1 to other types of pages is a very bad idea in my opinion, since some admins can't even responsibly use T1 as it is now. The Ungovernable Force 04:59, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
If it walks like a template, looks like a template and acts like a template, it is a template. Once you create something in whatever namespace and declare your intent to transclude it (not to mention inviting others to do the same), and then actually do it, it is a template. I guess if we're going to let this gaping loophole stand and encourage abuse by wikilawyering, though, I suppose I can start cooking up trolling userboxen in my userspace. Whee! :D Johnleemk | Talk 05:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
T1 is being massively abused by wheel warriors to delete masses of userboxes. The policy needs to be removed not expanded.-- God of War 05:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
My opinion, based on what Jimbo said; copied from DRV: There are only two fundamental reasons for speedy deletion: 1) it would be a shoe-in at *fD, or 2) decree from above. The T1 criterium clearly falls under "decree from above". In this mail on wikiEN-l, Jimbo seems to be of the opinion that it's userboxes in the Template namespace specifically that are a problem; T1 should therefore not be expanded to cover user space. Eugene van der Pijll 10:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
The 'userboxes could be OK outside userspace' suggestion only (IMHO) refers to where the CODE itself is inserted into a userpage. I don't really see why swapping {{user userbox}} for {{User:SampleUser/userbox}} would solve that problem. Whereas if people simply add the <div>...</div> code to their userpage, then
I would strongly oppose any attempt to remove userbox CODE (ie manually entered/subst'd <div>...</div> boxen) from userpages, but I think DocGlasgow's modification helps to maintain the spirit of T1 (even if certain admins have abused T1 itself horrendously) Cynical 11:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
My opinion on T1 is that some admins have interpreted it rather too loosely. I don't see too big a problem with real world ideological userboxen, although Jimbo would disagree. I just don't care whether they are kept or deleted. On the other hand, I feel very strongly about userboxes designed only to promote factionalism by stating stuff like "This user is a member of ADW" or "This user is a member of UDUIW". There's no reason for these userboxes to exist -- the only conclusion to be drawn is that they're there to promote factionalism. (CVU can be considered an exception, since there's no other faction -- just The Cunctator ( talk · contribs). :p) Those need to go, no matter what namespace they're in. They are clearly polemical and divisive. Johnleemk | Talk 12:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
<droning_voice duration="2.5 years"> Guidelines on wikipedia are descriptive, not prescriptive.</droning_voice>
So what does Deletion review say, and what do admins in the field do, are transcluded boxes deleted, yes or no? Predominantly yes? Predominantly no? Please describe, and come up with diffs.
K THX BYE.
Kim Bruning 13:43, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Unindent here>>>>>
Ah, so they're organised! Hmmm!
Kim Bruning 18:34, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I protected this because you people are edit warring over it. I didn't even read it before protecting it, so it might be protected at a version even I would not approve of. My action is not an endorsement of the current version. Kelly Martin ( talk) 14:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to propose another CSD category. How about having T2 be for templates which do not have any pages linked to them two weeks after the most recent edit? This accomplishes several things:
Any endorsements? -- StuffOfInterest 12:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I would say to not make the deletion automatic, just identification. If someone wanted to take it a step further then it may be possible to have a special comment in the standard templates so that an identifcation query does not pick these up. I'm just looking for something that keeps some of the unused templates from cluttering up TfD. Regarding subst:, I wonder if the database has any information on the last time subst: was used against a template? -- StuffOfInterest 13:55, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't have anything against the T1, but as it stands not, I think it's interpretation is a bit to wide and subjective. So my proposal is: "Templates with a clear intent to be divisive and/or inflammatory" (Perhaps my knowledge in the english language is a bit wauge, but or, is is execlusive or or and/or? ). → Aza Toth 14:48, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
And now it's been changed back from 'polemical' to 'divisive'. What IS the current gold standard, and are we adhering to it or making it up as we go along? I'm all for getting rid of the divisiveness (see the recent attempt to stack the debate, but some sort of explanation to all parties involved would be helpful to us Morlocks. -- nae'blis (talk) 22:12, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Since Wikipedia stopped allowing anonymous to create articles, I've seen an upsurge in the number of talk pages without associated articles. It seems to me that such pages ought to be speedily deleteable. G8 allows for deletion of talk pages if the article has already been deleted, but it makes no mention of talk pages which have never been associated with an article. I propose that G8 be modified to include talk pages which have never had articles. NoIdeaNick 00:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
When tagging an article as a criteria for speedy deletion, should it be marked as a major or minor edit? x42bn6 Talk 08:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
G5 is a strange criterion. If a banned user makes a contribution on George W. Bush, then that article is speediable under G5. → Aza Toth 14:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
G5 is a strange criterion. If a banned user makes a contribution on George W. Bush, then that article is speediable under G5. → Aza Toth 14:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
If a banned user is editing his/her talk page, the that talk page is speediable I assume. → Aza Toth 17:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
With no apparent justification beyond, We think Jimbo wants it this way, certain admins have cut a broard swathe through Wikipedia:Userboxes/Regional Politics, deleting boxes right and left. How does this square with, The community overwhelmingly agrees that these things are a problem, and there is not yet clear consensus on what to do about it. [10], or, I want people to ask slowly and thoughtfully with deep respect for others, even others with whom they disagree. [11] See this past version for a sense of how much has been cut. [12]
Should admins be running around acting unilaterally in the name of Jimbo?
StrangerInParadise 17:04, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
In reply to KeithTyler, I believe Jimbo has tried in good conscience to use his special position carefully to voice his concerns whilst not precipitating reckless action. I would imagine he is surprised and dismayed by some of the results. For my part, I will highlight the worse ones as I can. He has been particularly let down by the poor technical advice he has been given.
In reply to Sam Korn, I beg to differ, the real problem is the anti-userbox faction attacking the very core of the community by pushing this change and acting unilaterally to implement it immediately. Any incivility on the pro-userbox side doesn't even come close to that.
In reply to Friday, there are many things I'd rather be doing, but fighting to oppose this lame change is far worse than doing nothing. If lameness thereby attaches, I'll reluctantly wear it.
StrangerInParadise 18:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
The ability to associate is at the core of any community this diverse, certainly a global one of a million editors. Prior to userboxes, I'd say we muddled along, but with a diminished sense of who our fellow Wikipedians were. StrangerInParadise 18:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I do try, it's all about the fun. I'm glad you appreciated it, Android79 seemed to miss the joke there for a moment. And, yes, we can jaw about the banality of evil and all that, but I would find the total absence of bumperstickers far more disturbing that the usual selection of platitudes. We shall have to agree to disagree for now— a pleasure deferred, no doubt.
This user believes that only articles need reflect a NPOV, and that displaying political, religious, or other beliefs using userboxes and user categories should not be banned. |
On to the dreaded transcluded userbox with organization of users by POV. I disagree specifically with the idea that this is bad for the project, or that it increases the possibility of systematic bias. As you can see from my counter-proposal to the policy change under consideration, I favor providing even better tools for doing so. If you consult Wikipedia:Voting is evil (not a position to which I strongly subscribe), you see the comment, Wikipedia is not a democracy. This is a strength, not a failing. Dialectics is one of the most important things that make Wiki special, and while taking a poll is very often a lot easier than helping each other find a mutually agreeable position, it's almost never better. The brilliance of userboxen is that it facilitates association, and synergizes like minds, while at the same time signals to opponents that there is some body of shared opinion of a topic which should be respected. Frankly, I would even pepper userboxen into talk comments, as many do with page links, just to give a heads-up that there is a different perspective coming to the discussion.
Here is my short take on the matter. Userboxes should be in their own namespace and florish madly. Most concerns about this stem from flawed notions of NPOV, consensus, diversity and the ramifications of association. Whatever problems there are— and I have yet to be convinced there are serious problems— will only be made worse by this proposal. Wikipedia should be a work of neutrality produced by a passionate diversity.
The problem isn't that some article might receive a fatwa from some yahoo claiming to speak for a set of users bearing a userbox, the problem is the institutional weakness which might make such a force irresistible, for example an anti-Wikilawyering culture, poor debate process and a shaky understanding of the essence of NPOV. Telling people they cannot declare themselves Christian believer or Unreconstructed Trotskyite or Extra-crunchy Hippie Freak does not reinforce the culture of NPOV. Showing how these people have an immediate common basis for dialog based on NPOV does. That is the true power of NPOV and the beauty of Wikipedia. You are far too eager to roll up the welcome mat.
StrangerInParadise 03:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
The implication does not necessarily hold. I have been a Wikipedian for many years, and did not bother with userboxen or even a user page until the current crisis, yet I have held my own in many discussions. Bear in mind also that you sometimes get overlap in userbox groups that make for unique syntheses. What you would call a tug-of-war, I call simply ambiance, and have always found it conducive to cooperation. Have you considered that your notion of what userboxen actually do is itself too static? I find the formation of factions useful, as it simplifies how to create common ground between them. StrangerInParadise 04:28, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
AySz88, I'm not sure to whom that Huh? is directed, but my statement still applies to proud expressions of bias. The very hair-splitting futility of distinguishing the right sort of userbox is far more divisive, and anti-intellectual. If I embrace a label, I may risk that Kierkegaardian negation, but that is my problem, and I am comfortable managing it. If you presume that a userbox is some sort of 2D-label, that is your misperception. Most of these predictions/observations that userboxen breed shallow, rigid perspectives is far from established. As for the whole vote busing thing, why would anyone think this can't be organized off-site? It is better to watch it happen here, where we are Wikipedians, than out there, where we are activists.
The real problem I see in these recent comments is the subtext of elitism, culture of bumpersickers, sound-bitish, without any thought behind it, as if we are in a position to decide how to prevent others from expressing themselves or associating in too trivial a fashion, so as to make them better contributors in our eyes. Many Wikipedians are thoughtful, some are not. Too bad. This is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, a non-negotiable Foundation principle. Instead of deciding whose userbox to delete next, why not go referee an article in contention, and show them how it ought to be done? Lead by example, not prior restraint.
StrangerInParadise 05:24, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to have been unclear, only the first bit was specifically to you. I was refuting the notion that, that implies that the "opponents" should do the same and signal via another "body of shared opinion", that I had not felt compelled to do so, and yet had engaged such a body positively. However, no, it would not be a bad thing for opponents to organize, if that made sense.
Much of what followed was to whomever preceded me, and even contained a bit of esprit d'éscalier. As to T1, it should be deleted in its entirety.
StrangerInParadise 06:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
This should not be in effect, that is, no template should be deleted by it. It should be listed as proposed. BTW, polemical is way too broad, and unsanctioned by anything— why is it still there in T1? StrangerInParadise 07:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
The recent change to G5 to exclude the creation of pages by banned users from their ban is incorrect, per WP:BAN which says "Deletion: It is not possible to revert newly created articles, as there is nothing to revert to. However, such pages are a candidate for speedy deletion. Non-sysops can list such pages on speedy deletions instead, adding a {{ delete}} header". The exclusion of userpages is also incorrect since "Banned users are simply not authorized to edit Wikipedia". - Splash talk 16:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
"Templates that have been in existance for more than one month and are used on only one page." Basically, so we don't have to deal with all of the single-use templates on TfD - they should obviously all be substed and deleted. This shouldn't as controversial as T1. — Cuiviénen ( Cuivië) 16:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo has stated that he has made no decree regarding this, and there certainly is no consensus for this criterion. So why is it still there? I am going to remove it if there is not a very good reason why it needs to stay. — Guan aco 15:09, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Earlier, based on experience using it, the rule seemed somewhat broken as written. (See earlier discussion on this page I guess) If it hasn't changed much... well, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. <innocent look> We can always discuss with Jimbo when/if he comes to revert. <actually looks innocent for real for once> Kim Bruning 17:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, let's remove it or maybe move it to the WP:TFD page. If you want to have it here then either get a clear statement from Jimbo that it is policy by decree or run a poll and have it get more than 70% support there the way we usually expand the speedy deletion criteria. In my opinion this is too subjective a criterion to be applied at the CSD level where admins make decisions alone. We've certainly had conflict about templates lately and that's a difficult problem but this deletion criterion has not done anything to fix them. Haukur 20:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I think him putting it here in the first place is a pretty clear statement and I don't see why he should have to renew his intentions for it's inclusion. He's aware of what's going on, at least on some level, and if he wanted it gone he'd say something. Having said that I'm not going to sit here and try and cling to it, because it works both ways. If he wanted it here so bad he'd say also something.
I just want something in place as a control. The new userbox policy is sinking below the waves and I feel like we need something speaking to userboxes on a policy level. So, I don't know. How about if we wait a day or two, if no word then remove it. If anyone would like to work in a small group to create something to present to the community to replace it I'd be interested. Rx StrangeLove 22:26, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
? ? ? | ROGNNTUDJUU! thinks that users who cross out flags show a lack of respect for those represented by them and therefore created this template. |
02:20, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, right. I think "divisive" is too open to different interpretations by different admins and thus likely to lead to discord (as we have seen). But we all seem to agree that templates which only exist to attack or disparage individuals or groups of people can be speedy-deleted. Let's try a wording like that and maybe we can have a T1 which has an actual consensus behind it :) Haukur 10:28, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, the new wording seems to be "templates that attack or disparage individuals or groups of people". While I like this wording much better than the old wording, why not bundle it with A6 and make a general "no attacks" criteria? — Cuiviénen ( Cuivië) 14:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Is "does not assert the notability or significance of the subject" really the most important criteria for speedying? For example, if there were an article that said "L1k5, MR. D00dz is duh meest S1gNiFicunt un4 c00l p5rson EVUR!!!!", it would clearly be speediable, but assuming it was long and detailed enough to not be subject to A1, nothing under the currect CSD would apply to it. 72.224.95.121 02:32, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Some users just reconstruct divisice user boxes on their own pages. Images used solely for that purposed should be speedy deleted. ROGNNTUDJUU! 14:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Following on from discussion above, under the heading Proposed CSD R4, I am proposing CSD G10 with the draft wording:
This is being proposed as a general criteria, as:
There appears to be some support for this proposal, however please add any comments. If you agree with the principle please help word it, to make sure it is clear in scope. Petros471 12:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Your addition got merged into G3, so I changed the text. Ashibaka tock 23:23, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Did Jimbo sign off on the summary deprecation of T1? Insult/attack is very not what the original or any draft of it ever said. - Splash talk 00:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I've reinstated T1 to its original form. I neither support or oppose it (I find userboxes massively dull) but I think the move to deprecate and replace with one with largely unrelated meaning was overly bold. This is why, in chaning the CSDs, we usually discuss before we do. They have been carefully established and tend to get easily broken. - Splash talk 16:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
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I reworded A7 to clarify that a claim to notability had to be "serious" to be counted as a proper claim to notability, with the invitation to revert. As a result, I'm taking it here. AFAIK, most of the time admins speedy pages without a "serious" claim to notability, or one that has a believable base in current policy. What do you think of clarifying this criterion? Werdna648 T/ C\ @ 05:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
This is a solution in search of a problem. What is the recurring, unavoidable issue that adding this language helps to avoid? As User:Cryptic points out above, A7 is already used to knock out "non-serious" bios without any controversy. If it ain't broke.... JDoorj a m Talk 16:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Someone deleted File:Israelsoldier04.jpg. He was cute, and I liked having him on my page. The picture was on the BBC half a year ago, and they said it was released by the World Gay Pride thing in Jerusalem, so it must be free.
And someone deleted , claiming noone was using it on an article, but I was using it on my page. horseboy 17:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Moved to here
Now that we have Prod, can people go easy on the speedy deletes, please? Speedies should be reserved for straight-out garbarge, mostly. It doesn't take any more effort to send stuff to Prod. I'm still picking up stuff off the speedy delete list that doesn't belong there. I'd say about 20% of the speedies should be Prods or AfD's and half of those are likely keepworthy. And yeah admins are supposed to backstop speedies but it doesn't always happen. So remember: Prod. Herostratus 20:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't know where to ask this: Why the hell is the Nintendo article flagged for Speedy Deletion? AFAIK, it's well-written and has good sources. Seems to me like someone online vandal is playing console wars on Wikipedia... —This unsigned comment was added by 200.40.188.174 ( talk • contribs) .
These are typically speedied as common sense anyway, but it may be helpful to specificly outline it here, as they appear on WP:RFD from time to time, but how about "Redirects that were created as a result of obvious page move vandalism"? There aren't too many of them, and they usually get speedied anyway, so this may not be needed, but nonetheless, it may also be useful. -- Blu Aardvark | (talk) | (contribs) 00:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
A few words quoted from Jimbo which have not gotten enough attention in all this:
I believe that divisive and inflammatory userboxes should be deleted. I am convinced by the events of the last few months that they should not be speedied. The reform proposal linked to a few sections above makes abundantly clear the amount of judgment involved in the application of T1; other speedy criteria can be verified trivially, and usually all reasonable editors will agree when they have been met.
TfD will also usually get rid of something faster, since speedies will often be listed on WP:UBD; and Undeletion will be seriously discussed and often approved. (Of course TfD's can be nominated for undeletion too; but if there has been visible consensus, the deletion reviewers will ignore it.) Septentrionalis 15:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah yeah, no one likes the Scrooge who suggests doing something about April Fool's Jokes. But I think we need to speedy obvious April Fools jokes as vandalism while doing newpage/RC patrol on April 1st. We don't catch all of the hoaxes/jokes that are added in any random day, and they often stick around for months with potentially bad consequences... who knows how many hoaxes will join our million+ articles if we take a "Someone will take care of this tomorrow..." attitude towards April Fools jokes. -- W.marsh 00:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Either that or a bit of stability? Geni 12:59, 31 March 2006 (UTC)