Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

Proposed minor modification regarding G13

The rule for G13 says "that have not been edited in over six months (excluding bot edits)"

I'd like to propose a change. I will give two options, and at the moment I'm indifferent between the two.

Option 1. Change to "that have not been edited in over six months". In other words, remove the bot exclusion.

Option 2. Modify the bot which adds the template, so that it ignores bot edits.

Rationale— at present if an editor checks the edit history and finds that it has been six months since the last substantive edit they can nominate it for deletion, but the page will show up with the template with a big red bar through it. That red bar indicates that it has been less than six months since the last edit.

This will undoubtedly sound like trivial tinkering to anyone who does not work on removing these.

Let me explain my process so you understand why it is not trivial.

I helped with the development of the bot, and reached a significant level of comfort with the ability of the bot to get it right. If I open an article and it has a green bar, I will look at the identity of the editor who added it. If I'm not familiar with them, I will double check the history to make sure it qualifies. (It always does). Because there are only a handful of editors who work on identifying these articles, in 95% of the cases I am familiar with their ability to identify them correctly, and I can delete without double checking the history.

It takes less than a second, on average, in the case of articles with a green bar and an editor I recognize.

If it has a red bar, in order to delete it, I have to check the history and confirm that the offending edit is a bot edit. This doesn't take long, and I can probably do it in 15 seconds.

A 14 second gain doesn't sound like much but I've done many thousands, and it adds up.

There may be a good reason for the bot edit exclusion (it was added here and discussed here) but this means we have a mismatch between the criteria for deletion and the criteria for tagging.

Unfortunately, the bot creator @Hasteur: has a retired notice on their user page, but I see recent edits.

If you are wondering "why now?", on most days there are no red bars. At this moment, there are 21 items in the cat. That's less than a minute, if they all have green bars. But 10 have a red bar, so we are talking closer to 4 minutes. Still, not a lot of time but it adds up.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:15, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose 1, Support 2 - I am opposed to this because of the fact that bot edits would not help improve the article enough as to reclaim it from a state of abandonment. The second one does sound reasonable, although. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 23:42, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
• Note HasteurBot (talk · contribs) has not edited in 11 months. I don't think there's any bots working on G13 at the moment, it's all human editors. – Train2104 (t • c) 03:09, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I've been doing a whole bunch of G13s and now Crypic declined a few for what I assumed were exempted edits. In one case the page was correctly tagged G13 but an IP removed the tag less than 6 months ago. In another User:Northamerican1000 removed 7 random letters less than 6 months back on a page not otherwise edited for 11 months. According to an even narrower interpretation of G13 (I can imagine this being said) the act of tagging it G13 is an edit that invalidates the tag itself. If I see a 3 month old draft and post a review that says "this should be deleted" does that reset the 6 month countdown? Legacypac (talk) 05:01, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Summoned I respond. Been a little disenchanted with wikipedia for various reasons and reduced my focus again. The nominating bot takes the strictest interpertation of the rule that any edit less than 6 months prior to nomination resets the clock. Nominating for CSD doesn't invalidate the CSD criteria because it has to have lied unedited for 6 months 'immediately prior' to the nomination. Legacypac's comment on the page at 3 months will reset the clock. Rather than take the time to look at the list of most recent edits and work backwards throwing out bot edits, I decided (in conjunction with the community) to go with the assumption that any edit is enough to potentially spark interest from people who have it on a watchlist. I could go through and discard explicitly flagged bots, but the extra pages this would gather does not feel like a good investment of time. Hasteur (talk) 12:53, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support 1, Oppose 2 I personally think 6 months unedited should mean 6 months unedited. I'd rather not get into "6 months unedited, unless it's a bot, unless it's a trivial edit" because that gets us into dangerous territory with discretion. If editors want to get into discretion and considerations, that is something a set of eyes and brain can do (and administrators can evaluate). Hasteur (talk) 12:58, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
• Agree with Hasteur. The complications are not worth it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:08, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose 1 - There are two different issues here (1) What are the criteria for G13? and (2) What will the bot do? Pages can be deleted under db-g13 whether they have been tagged as such by a bot or a person or neither, as long as they meet the criteria. There are many bots that go around making changes to pages for a variety of purposes, but they don't demonstrate that any human editor is interested in the page. If it's complicated to make the db-g13-tagging bot make exceptions, then leave it alone and let it tag only totally unedited ones; let human editors look at the others and tag them if appropriate. As to having pages with trivial edits that don't actually change the text of the page be eligible, that would be okay with me, since, as Hasteur points out, administrators are expected to check first before deleting, and also because db-g13 is a "soft" delete, so it's easy to get back the draft.—Anne Delong (talk) 14:21, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose both - just dropping by with my perennial "G13 should be deprecated" comment; I oppose all changes to the criterion which are not deleting the criterion. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:35, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Agreed. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 10:53, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
• Trivial bot edit changing "Its to It's" currently resets the clock. Delinking of deleted pages resets the clock. It's a race to find the pages over 6 months before some trivial edit makes them non-G13. Otherwise we have to run it through MfD to clean up the declined garbage. Legacypac (talk) 15:04, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
  • @Legacypac: Do you know how often your examples of resetting the clock actually happen (Hint: it's on the order of about 1 page per 10k). It's not that competitive of a race to get all the eligible pages before a trivial change comes along Hasteur (talk) 20:00, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

No I don't know. I'm only finding the exceptions, I can't see the number of pages deleted. Legacypac (talk) 21:37, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with hasteur that "trivial edits" bring in too much discretion, and it's not worth it. However, whether or not an edit is a bot (defined strictly, as having undergone a BRFA and operating with a bot flag), should be a clear-cut distinction with no room for ambiguity. Anything else (AWB typofixes included) is not a bot per se, and should reset the clock, no matter how small. – Train2104 (t • c) 15:31, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support 1 If a page has been edited then it is not abandoned. It doesn't matter if that edit is by a human or by a bot doing work at the behest of a human. Thryduulf (talk) 17:54, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

− I've manually cleared a large backlog of pages categorized as G13 eligible but reviewing other categories I'm finding many more pages the template on the page correctly says it is G13able, but however the page is supposed to end up in the G13 able category is not happening. Anyone know how to fix this? Can a bot be run to find all G13able pages and CSD tag them regardless of category? Would save me a ton of work and help reduce the backlog.

• oppose 1 and support 2 Legacypac (talk) 18:19, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

There are 2 categories Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions and Category:AfC_G13_eligible_soon_submissions The first is pages that are 100% eligible for G13 right now. The eligible soon pages are ones that are between the 5 months and 6 months unedited. The eligible soon is designed so that people who want to try and save pages can go through and try to make effort on them. A random sampling I did showed no pages that are eligible at this time, so could you show an example of a page that should be eligible but isn't being nominated? Hasteur (talk) 20:07, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Nail_Art_And_Beauty_Nagelstudio_Schiedam Draft:Andrew_Watts_(countertenor) Draft:JOEpop Draft:The Never Content. (This last one got picked up today but was G13 elegable on the 11th)

There were about 1100 more before they started piling up on Sat. when I started this thread. Legacypac (talk) 22:10, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

• I don't care about 2. This strikes me as an IAR situation; just make the tweak if you think it would be helpful, and don't worry about asking BAG for a little change. Oppose 1. Bots are irrelevant to the question of whether a page has been abandoned, unless you can show that a human picked a specific group of drafts as candidates for automatic editing, e.g. someone asks for a bot that will change all [[Foo]] links into [[ooF]], and someone else writes it. Beyond that, a bot edit we should ignore, entirely and absolutely. Nyttend (talk) 04:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose 1. Support 2. Seems pretty straightforward to me, if you want to streamline the process to delete stale drafts. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 05:48, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose 1. Support 2. : no brainer, an abandoned raft is an abandoned draft. Bots and minor AWB edits don't change the acceptability level of the draft and should not reset the clock. Off topic, but I would even advocate shortening 6 months to 3 months, but that's another discussion.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:23, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose 1. Support 2. This is especially important given that we have multiple magic links bots running now if I recall. That shouldn't make G13 harder for drafts that are eligible. Same goes for other bots, just the magic links one is the best example I can currently think of. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:03, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Post closing note: The Template that magically populates the "this page is eligible for G13" cannot support exclusions. See {{AFC submission/declined}} and {{AFC submission/draft}}. Second the bot will continue to push for the more strict standard of completely unedited as it's the more conservative/AGF position. The bot matching the same standard as the template is a side benefit. Any editor who wishes to push the leading edge of G13s under the less strict interpertation is perfectly free to do so, but to reduce the risk of false positives the bot will not follow. Hasteur (talk) 13:54, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose 1, support 2. It should be obvious, but to be clear - there is a human behind AWB so AWB edits are not synonymous with "bot edits" as outlined in the original proposal here. VQuakr (talk) 19:37, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

New criteria

This is an extension of the failed proposal of a new criteria made some months ago at here. Prose : G14: Articles created in violation of the Wikimedia Foundation terms of use that prohibit undisclosed paid editing

1. The main difference this time is in the specifics : This applies only to articles created by users blocked for paid editing or for being confirmed sockpuppets.This applies only to articles created by users blocked for paid editing or for being confirmed sockpuppets, and have no substantial edits by others.
2. Optional Specific : The articles must fall into either of the two categories - WP:BLP or WP:ORG.

Why this helps?

• Most paid editors are experienced folks, and they know how to write articles which rise above deletion. Most often they operate different accounts at the same time, which are not easily linked back to the original sockmasters due to their experience with SPI. So G5 is powerless as the articles were created before they were blocked.
• However I feel there should not be a difference between articles created before they were blocked and those created after they were blocked. Why :

1. If they were blocked for paid editing, it is self explanatory as to why they should be deleted.
2. If they were blocked for being a confirmed sockpuppet, they mostly likely had a WP:COI in creating the articles. The emphasis on confirmed is to avoid any qualms of arbitrariness. For example in - WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Amitabhaitc/Archive, the administrators blocked KuwarOnline on the suspicion of being a sockpuppet, even without CU evidence to confirm that. So that would mean all the articles created by him would not be eligible for deletion under this criteria, but those by the other confirmed sockpuppets would be eligible for deletion. What this does is rule out deleting contributions by all the editors who were blocked as sockpuppets exclusively based on behavioural evidence.

• Most often Wikipedia is part of the package for online promotion, per this. So paid press often accompanies these articles, and are used as references. Voonik and its CEO Sujayath Ali were created by a large sockfarm, and many of its subsequent editors have also been blocked. However they will probably survive AfD, as there are references to satisfy WP:CORPDEPTH and WP:GNG, and the article will continue to remain, with probably just a COI tag. Well meaning inclusionists will oppose moves to delete this citing the references, scuttling any efforts to delete this.
• If the articles are deleted as soon as sockpuppets are identified, then it would break the back of paid editors, as customers will not be willing to pay for articles that are deleted soon. I also believe this would lead to more voluntary declarations of WP:PAID as they would try their best to stay away from being blocked. Suspected paid editors are always keenly watched by Sockpuppet hunters, as the paid editors know, and the fear of loosing all their work, and thereby their reputation among customers would invite more WP:PAID declarations.
• WP:BLP and WP:ORG is good for a start, as these are the most abused areas.
• As with all CSD, the reviewing administrator would still have discretionary powers to look at the suitability. So for example, our current AfD position is to let articles that satisfy WP:NPOL or WP:NFOOTY stay. However we do not extend the same for WP:NFILM and expect them to satisfy WP:GNG. Same goes with the CSD. If they are sure to survive AfD based on such provisions, they should not be deleted. However in all other cases they should be deleted.

End of long post. Now for the comments. Jupitus Smart 07:36, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

!vote subsection

I strongly oppose any such criterion. I think it violates the deletion policy. Even if it didn't or if consensus was obtained to change that policy, it is my view that the test should be the content of the article, not who created it. Indeed i favor removing the current G5, which authorized deletion perfectly good articles created in violation of a block or ban. To delete a perfectly valid article, supported by reliable sources, because it was created by someone editing for pay, or while socking, is to damage the project. Indeed it would be a form of vandalism by consensus, if adopted. Now I don't object to applying the rules against promotional content quite strictly in the case of paid editors, and often enough that will have the same effect. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 15:43, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - We should judge the content, not the creator. And besides, the creation of a paid editor where the article is promotional would likely get snow deleted at AfD. Really, it doesn't help things. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 15:51, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
  • RileyBugz, AfD typically doesn't deal with TOU as a reason for deletion and the conversation centers on NOT in these cases. There does appear to be a consensus emerging on this page that some form of deletion is warranted for articles created in contravention of the terms of use, but that maybe AfD is better. One of my main reasons for supporting this is that AfD thus far has not worked as well to deal with this serious problem. It gives us the ability to enforce the TOU, which we don't currently have. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:52, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose without prior consensus to change the paid editing policy. I understand where this proposal is coming from but this is the wrong venue. WP:Paid editing#Changing this policy prescribes that changes in how to handle paid editing should be discussed in a community-wide RfC and whether to delete pages created in violation of the ToU is something that basically changes this policy (by adding an automatic deletion). This goes against both WP:PRESERVE and WP:ATD and thus needs much more discussion than a post to WT:CSD. If the creator is already banned or blocked from editing before creation, G5 applies anyway. Regards SoWhy 15:59, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
  Addendum: I also believe this to be impractical. How would admins be able to identify such paid editors in a way that is objective? Currently it often takes a lot of work to figure this out, so how can we expect admins patrolling CAT:CSD being able to easily identify such creators? Regards SoWhy 07:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Er, admins are not required to identify paid editors. All they have to do is check if the user who created the page has been blocked. If so check the reason as to why they were blocked by referring to the block log.

• • If the reason mentioned in the block log is paid editing then delete.
  • If the reason is an SPI investigation, click on that link and check if the user has been blocked as a confirmed sockpupper, which would also entail deletion. Jupitus Smart 07:28, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strongly support the underlying idea. Yes we should delete articles created by undisclosed paid editors. If we have 5 accounts that are socks of one another, with each account used to create around one promotional article, it is obvious the TOU are being infringed. It is also obvious that they have prior blocked accounts even though we might not have found them yet so G5 would also apply. But an additional criteria for deletion would be useful. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:42, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

• Doc James says just above that It is also obvious that they have prior blocked accounts even though we might not have found them yet". This is sheer unverified assumption. If the statement "John Jones previously edited Wikipedia using a sock account, in violation of its TOS" were to be included in a BLP, would the above reasoning count as "well-sourced"? Indeed many SPIs based on "behavioral evidence" are based on little better than assumptions, and in a few cases where I have had reason to look into things based on assertions of innocence by a blocked user, they have turned out to be in error. I ask you, would the evidence presented in a typical "behavioral" SPI (one with no checkuser evidence) stand up it it were being nused to source a statement in a BLP? I think not. And now this evidence, not in just a typical case but in every case, is to be made sufficeint to delete every edit by a blocked user? I think not. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 12:36, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

We are talking about large families of socks verified by CU, not account blocked on behavioral evidence. Do you truly think that real new editor will start editing Wikipedia by creating 6 socks and writing one perfectly formated promotional article with each them? Sometimes a duck is a duck. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:26, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose, in the absence of broad and concrete consensus on the paid editor policy. New criteria should be added only when an article that meets that criteria is virtually certain to be deleted. That's not the case here - editors will first debate whether the editor was a paid editor under the policy, then they'll debate whether the article could stand on its own merits, then they'll toss in COI for fun. G5 will cover some cases (mostly with socks), and A7 many others. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 18:37, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
• A common thread among 3 of the oppose voters is that we should delete based on the content and not on the contributor. However G5 already is a means against that idea, and the new criteria is only completing the process, by plugging an inherent loophole in G5. Voonik provides an illustrative example for what I wish to convey:

• It was created by Strobe12345, who was blocked for being a sockpuppet of Smileverse. After their block, the article was extensively edited by different sockpuppets of Gayatri0704. However there was no CU evidence linking the two sockmasters - Smileverse and Gayatri0704, even though they are obviously part of the same syndicate.
• This meant that all the articles created by Gayatri0704 and her many sockpuppets were not G5 eligible even though they they are obviously associated with previously blocked sockmasters. This probably has got to do with the sockpuppets getting intelligent since their last block and employing methods to evade linkbacks to previous accounts.
• With the sockpuppets getting intelligent it is time for us to rise up to them, and according to me the new criteria was intended to be an extension of G5. People who were blocked for sockpuppetry, are more likely to be paid editors than all the editors encompassed under G5, and therefore I believe that there is no need to pardon their first set of paid articles.Jupitus Smart 19:02, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Maybe there is no loophole per WP:MEAT. Quote from policy, emphasis mine: "A new user who engages in the same behavior as another user in the same context, and who appears to be editing Wikipedia solely for that purpose, may be subject to the remedies applied to the user whose behavior they are joining." Could not the second account's promotional edits anywhere qualify for G5 under existing interpretation? Or maybe "in the same context" doesn't extend to the new articles created by Gayatri0704. Bri.public (talk) 20:53, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I do not think that any admin will allow the clubbing of G5 and WP:MEAT as G5 almost explicitly prohibits that. AGF is bound to be the cited reason. Jupitus Smart 04:01, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support - we are now drowning in articles created by undisclosed paid editors. These editors are prohibited from editing here at all - the equivalent of banned editors. Treat them as banned editors or treat them as never-allowed editors as proposed here, but we can't ignore all their garbage. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:08, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
• Moral support, practical oppose CSD are supposed to be unambiguous. G5 is unambiguous and will apply to editors who have been previously banned, including for undisclosed paid editing. Having seen how G11 is applied, I cannot see this as anything other than a shoot-first-ask-questions-later dramafest. By all means, ban undisclosed paid editors violating the TOUs, take suspected socks to SPI, and G5 their creations if confirmed. As far as previous articles created before a ban? Take 'em to AfD. If it's that clearcut a case, a mass nom shouldn't take much extra time. Jclemens (talk) 19:18, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

How many of these people actually get banned vs. just blocked? There is' a difference, you know. 71.208.245.45 (talk) 03:42, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

• Comment I think this falls under WP:G11 ("Unambiguous advertising or promotion"). It's known that undisclosed paid editors write in this tone, so any such page could be speedied under G11 criterion anyway. As an alternative, G11 could be expanded to explicitly mention undisclosed COI, without adding new criterion. Brandmeister^talk 20:08, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
  • I like this alternative better than a separate criterion. Jclemens (talk) 02:01, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
    • It's a nice sentiment, but what would it accomplish? A practical example: would you have G11'd this? I wouldn't, even knowing that that's the account's first edit (and the second and third are an appeal to the deleting admin and a DRV), and my stance on G11 is so far toward the deletion end compared to the admin average that I don't trust myself to take action on them. —Cryptic 02:39, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• This fails new criteria criterion #3, not frequent enough, since it requires blocking the paid editors. That's vanishingly rare in comparison to the number of paid articles. —Cryptic 21:02, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. "created in violation of the Wikimedia Foundation terms of use that prohibit undisclosed paid editing" is not unambiguous. Short of a an admission/declaration which then makes it OK as not undisclosed, it always requires an investgation, and that investigation should end with with a discussion on actions such as deletion. "Drowning in articles created by undisclosed paid editors"? The answer is G11, although perhaps a [[WP:|log of G11-ed topics suspected of being products of undisclosed paid editing]] would be a good idea for long-term tracking. Speedy deletion provides more of a clean slate for the inept paid editor to do it more discreetly next time. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:38, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Cryptic wrote below "Ambiguity really isn't the problem here: the articles become speedyable if "TOU", "undisclosed paid editing", or "abusing multiple accounts" appears at the top of the author's block log". That is not the proposal wording. Do Admins WP:Block with correct summaries and without errors? Any one admin may make such a block, and then this would allow the deletion of every article page authored by them? The evidence is deleted, thus suppressed preventing participation or review by ordinary editors? I tend to agree that these pages should usually be deleted, but I think at least a week discussion per blocked author is demanded. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:46, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support per Doc James, as long as it is provable that the article in question was created in violation of the TOU. Articles are deleted all the time when it is apparent that they are created by socks of blocked editors. Such editors are not supposed to be creating articles and the same goes for TOU-violating paid editors. Coretheapple (talk) 23:15, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support This is the logical consequence of undisclosed paid editing. It also will be very useful to have this as part of efforts to discourage people from buying services from paid editors - it will make it even more clear that if they work with someone who tries to avoid policy, they are at (even more) risk of wasting their money. For those who say undisclosed paid editors are often socking -- well we can't always identify sockmasters or even convince CU to run a check, so this direct line to deletion would be very useful in the post-indef cleanup. We can also often use db-promo, but again the direct message of "undisclosed paid article creation >> speedy deletion", is a very good and very clear message to send to the world. And to use. Jytdog (talk) 00:20, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support TOU is the bare minimum criteria to be able to use server space before we even begin to assess whether it should be present. If an editor does not comply with the terms of use, the content has no right at all to be on Wikipedia, and we don't need to assess if it complies with other policies. This is similar to G12 deletion: even if the content is good, we delete them as being in violation of our terms of use. It also is in line with the WMF's strategic vision of being the most trusted source of knowledge by 2030. We cannot have an encyclopedia where people are allowed to pay publicists to promote their views in secret. It is against the five pillars of Wikipedia, and it has been made a part of the legal TOU for the site. One should no more be able to do it than they can make an edit here without agreeing to our licensing terms. We simply need the technical means to enforce it, and this is the simplest way to give admins the ability to enforce them. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:55, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
  • I think the G12 comparison is misleading. We don't delete copyvio because it's against the ToU, we delete it because keeping it might leave the Foundation vulnerable to legal action by the copyright owners. Content produced by paid editors without declaration does not carry this risk of legal action, so removing it is less urgent. Regards SoWhy 07:01, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
    • SoWhy, sorry for the late response. I just saw this now coming back to the conversation. You are correct that G12 certainly has more legal implications for the Foundation than undeclared paid editing does. The legal implications are why they include not hosting copyrighted content in the terms of use. G12 is our enforcing the choice of WMF legal counsel to make that a requirement for using this website. The proposed G14 would be along the same principles: the WMF has required that editors declare if they are paid unless there is an explicit consensus on the local Wiki to create an exemption or a different policy. Since there is not an explicit consensus for an exemption on en.wiki, contributions of undeclared paid editors have a similar status in my mind to copyright violations: they are contributions where the contributor added them to en.wiki without the legal right to do so, since they did it in violation of the conditions of the terms the owner of the servers placed on their use. I should likely know better to discuss legalities with a jurist, but I did want to further explain myself :) TonyBallioni (talk) 00:11, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Allowing Wikipedia to fill up full of paid for promotional material has a very significant risk of harming our reputation. The longer we do not deal with it the greater the risk. Thus I see an equal great necessity to deal with this as to deal with plagiarism. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:29, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, practically speaking based on application. Agree with rationale as laid out by Jclemens, above. Jclemens outlines a logical process for how best to deal with this issue. Agree that CSD are supposed to be unambiguous. G5 is unambiguous and is straightforward in nature. G11 has historically been applied with more of a subjective nature and I agree with Jclemens can lead to a dramafest. Best to use other processes for this as recommended by Jclemens. Sagecandor (talk) 01:18, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Ambiguity really isn't the problem here: the articles become speedyable if "TOU", "undisclosed paid editing", or "abusing multiple accounts" appears at the top of the author's block log. This would get some use from the last, sure, but we need something with actual teeth for the first two. —Cryptic 01:36, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support per Tony Ballioni, Jytdog, DocJames, and others. Since the WMF won't ban it outright, we must take strong steps to bring paid editing under control and stop the damage to the content and reputation of the encyclopedia. People who come here have to know that what they read has not been written by paid advocates. This is a good step forward. The "oppose" rationales are weak and unconvincing. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:21, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support per everyone here. Paid editing can be a problem here sometimes, any sort of new guidelines restricting CoIs are welcome in my book. Jdcomix (talk) 01:51, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support speedy deletion of articles created in violation of the TOU, as a TOU is useless without full enforcement. – Train2104 (t • c) 02:53, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Note per SoWhy's concern above, I have posted this at WP:CENT and left a note at VPP. Jupitus Smart, I think it is probably appropriate to put an official RfC template on this. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:22, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks for that. I still think this is the wrong venue though because the proposed addition will contradict both WP:PRESERVE and WP:ATD as well as impact the WP:PAID policy, so those policies need to be changed first. Speedy deletion is a way to enforce existing policy, not to create new one. Regards SoWhy 07:01, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
    • Not a problem, I actually don't like WT:CSD as a venue either, though for the reason that the watchlist crowd here tends to be opposed to any changes and that VPP would have been a more neutral place to discuss it. To the policy argument, like I mentioned below, I don't see this as a policy concern so much as enforcing something that already exists above local policy: the terms of use. Unless the English Wikipedia clearly adopts a policy to the contrary on paid disclosures, the TOU control above any local policy. Because of that, since there is no consensus to allow an exemption from the TOU like Commons has, any content added in violation of the terms of use doesn't even get the benefit of local policies because the user was not allowed to place it on the encyclopedia. By not giving administrators a way to enforce the TOU, we are effectively making an exemption policy without explicit consensus to do so. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:19, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support G11 is too narrowly interpreted now. Many admins look for adspeak which is just poorly done promotion. The more sophisticated paid editors create pages that are either too well written for G11 or are in Draft and Userspace and are mainly for the SEO and link building benefits. Legacypac (talk) 03:33, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Can you elaborate on the SEO benefits? Those pages are not indexed by search engines after all. Regards SoWhy 07:01, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Ambiguity is being presented as one of the reasons for opposing this. Articles created by editors blocked for paid editing or editors blocked for confirmed sockpuppetry is an unambiguous closed set, which is probably narrower in its scope than G5 but covers more articles that are more likely to have been created in bad faith. Take the case of Teefa In Trouble created by the sock of an editor who was blocked for disruptive editing. The new sock was blocked for sockpuppetry as soon as he was identified, and the article deleted as G5. Teefa in Trouble was promoted from Draftspace, and had enough references to stay. It probably was not a case of paid editing, but it still ended up getting deleted. My concern is that while an editor blocked as a case of WP:NOTHERE cannot create good faith articles anymore, paid editors are allowed to slip through the cracks as our system is powerless against them. I find that very saddening. Jupitus Smart 03:49, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
  • It may be unambiguous, but it's also ambitious. How many people opining on this have actually worked as checkusers? If an account is blocked on behavioral evidence (i.e., at least one admin at SPI thinks they're sufficiently alike), we consider that sufficient evidence to delete everything ever contributed, that--on the face of it--doesn't meet G11 or it would have already been deleted? Again, I like the idea but the implementation is not workable without risking a lot of false positives, and the opening statement's reassurances do not convince me. Jclemens (talk) 05:25, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
    • Either I have not understood what you want to say or you have not understood what I intend to convey. I will assume the former. If an account is blocked exclusively on the basis of behavioural evidence, all the work done by the blocked user will not be eligible for deletion as I explained with an example above and which I will re-iterate again. In Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Amitabhaitc/Archive, KuwarOnline was blocked on the basis of behavioural evidence even when there was no CU evidence against him. Nowhere in the SPI has he been mentioned as a confirmed sockpuppet, which means his articles cannot be considered for deletion under this criteria. Jupitus Smart 06:26, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Perhaps neither applies. I have participated at DRV intermittently over the past decade, and I have seen an alarming trend towards admins applying CSD criteria in an outcome-based manner ("Well, it should have been deleted even if it didn't meet the letter of the CSD"), and, worse, other editors endorsing that behavior. Thus, while I have no doubt those supporting the criteria believe in good faith that it will be applied correctly, I have little to none that it will never be abused. I won't go into further details per WP:BEANS, but no matter how many safeguards are put into the system, basing the system on an SPI outcome is quite abusable. Jclemens (talk) 07:16, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
        • I understand your proclivity which is probably based on your experience. I still think there are enough fail-safe mechanisms to prevent admin abuse and if we have survived G5, we will probably tide through this, which is just as similar. But then again, to each their own opinion. Jupitus Smart 07:28, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - Content should be deleted/removed based on its merits and not on its creators. The fact that I, DESiegel, RileyBugz, and SoWhy have explicitly articulated this principle in this (at this time) relatively small RfC shows that the proposed G14 clearly fails the "uncontestable" requirement for CSD since the fundamental principle underlying G14, that content should be removed based solely on its creator, lacks consensus (see Ultraexactzz). I understand that nearly all content created by paid editors should be deleted on its merits. However, the existing criteria are plenty sufficient to remove uncontroversially bad content, especially given that their application frequently exceeds their strict wording. For all the rest, there's AfD. I see no evidence (and none has been presented) that the vigorous current anti-paid editing efforts, for which I am immensely grateful, are having any trouble efficiently deleting problematic content, so even if there were consensus on the principle underlying G14, there does not appear to be a need for it. A2soup (talk) 04:43, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
  • The content has no right to be judged on its merits if it is in violation of the terms of use. This is the same thing as copyright. The user legally does not have the right to put it on Wikipedia since the non-profit that owns the servers requires that they declare their paid editing status before saving it. This is merely a technical means of enforcing that requirement equivalent to G12. This RfC has been added to CENT and posted to VPP, as well as given an RfC ID that will make it added to lists and distributable by the bot. I expect after 30 days, a clearer consensus will emerge one way or another and that it won't be that small of a conversation. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:10, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

My point about the smallness of the RfC was only to emphasize that a large proportion of participants disagreed with the principle - I am sure the discussion will grow and all these things will become clearer. A2soup (talk) 06:45, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support per various points above; particularly the rather narrow interpretation of G11 that is occasionally encountered: Simplistically, where if an article isn't saying "Stop me and buy one" or written by User:SaatchiandSaatchi, it is claimed as not advertising/promo. Good examples from today- here, here, or here. All clearly WP:PAID editors. SPI will bring back nothing; the accounts are set up, and article is bunged straight into draftspace, silently moved into article space, and the account retired. In fact, it doesn't retire in our meaning of it- just becomes moribund. One account=one job; WP:G5 will not apply. — fortunavelut luna 07:20, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• The first of your examples is not at all promotional, Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, it is a purely factual description, although the firm may not be notable. But then it is still in a sandbox. The 2nd I have tagged for speedy deletion as promotional. The third I have reviewed and rejected the draft as not yet establishing notability. And on what basis do you say these were "clearly" paid editors? Would these all be speedy deletable under the proposed criterion? If so, why? DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 13:36, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

All paid editors, regardless of the depth of promotionalism in the article, was what I meant (glad at least one was OK :p ); because "the accounts are set up, and article is bunged straight into draftspace, silently moved into article space, and the account retired... One account=one job." They never get used again. That's why our relaince on SPI and G5 is naive: the accounts are set up purely in order to write the article, once it's in article space, job done. You'll never hear from them again. They charge a fair bit; it is hard to imagine they don't factor petrol / train tickets into their costings. These are the professional ones of course; if you ever find one who's used AfC, you'll know they're new to paid editing. Don't worry- once the article they want to make money out of has got completely bogged down there, they won't make the same mistake again. They'll very quickly learn to do the above. They'll probably appreciate their luck, of course. Vis a vis the fact that their 'opponents', in vague and vain attempts at upholding their own ToU, rely on policies to confront the paid editor that were created in the infancy of the internet when words like SEO were a glint in a blackmarketeer's eye, and whom also will never ever unite against them and will forever be distracting themselves with trivia, ignoring the tide as it laps at their boots. That, ladies and gentlemen, is your very own WP:NOTLINKEDIN profile and career trajectory of the fully paid-up paid editor who actually wants to be paid... and is. Cheers! — fortunavelut luna 13:54, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Yes we need to adapt to the realities we find ourselves in. We are now a major information resource and as such people are trying to co opt our good name for their personal financial benefit. We need to prioritize quality over quantity at this point. We should not allow socks of obviously previously blocked accounts to get a free ride simply because we can only prove 99% that they do not previously have a previous blocked account. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:18, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  Agreed with Doc James and FIM that simply having a page on the English Wikipedia can serve as a form of promotion. Since G11 only deals with clear marketing speak, AfD is necessary for these pages now. I find it interesting that the argument by some here is that AfD works fine in cases like this: NOTSPAM typically works as a way to get rid of spam at AfD, but if you use a TOU argument it tends to get shot down with people sometimes saying to use speedy deletion if it is so bad. It seems like a bit of a Catch-22: when you argue TOU at AfD, you are told to try CSD. When you are at a CSD RfC, its said that these cases need AfD. We need to clarify which process is the way to deal with this because there does seem to be agreement that they should be deleted, just no agreement as to which forum. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:19, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose as unworkable. As well as what Jclemens says above, deleting articles based on who the creator is, regardless of any subsequent edits, is a horrible route to go down, and will cause endless arguing and bad feeling. There are numerous articles where the initial creation was by a paid editor or by somebody later blocked for paid editing, but where the topic is unquestionably notable in Wikipedia terms and where subsequent edits have brought it to a neutral and reliably-sourced state. Were this to pass, articles as diverse as The milkmaid and her pail, Nicki Minaj and Line management would be liable to immediate speedy deletion subject to the whim of whether the reviewing admin happened to decide they were sure to survive AfD or not. ‑ Iridescent 09:49, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  Sure if it was significant fixed up it would be ineligible for deletion under this criteria. Most however do not get edits of substance because the topic is barely notable. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:25, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose as written. An article created against the ToU and then completely rewritten from scratch by others should not be speediable. The proposal has merit to my mind but it must be redrafted more thoughtfully. Thincat (talk) 09:56, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  I think it would be perfectly reasonable to not apply this to those that are "completely rewritten". This almost never happens.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:25, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - with the exception of confirmed sockpuppets of previously blocked users (where G5 applies), the community has no reasonable means of determining this. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:04, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Instead of providing moral support and opposing the move, I would much rather invite opinions from such editors on how better to frame the draft. This is largely a consensus building exercise, and I understand that most of the support votes are also based on personal proclivities towards wiping paid editing off Wikipedia. One of the users above said that The milkmaid and her pail, Nicki Minaj and Line management and the like can be deleted under this. If by that logic, tomorrow if we find that Roger Federer was made by an editor who is the sock of a blocked sockmaster - then would the article be eligible for G5. Roger Federer technically would then be eligible for deletion, though no logical admin would accept that. The same sanity would be expected of administrators in the new case as well. Jupitus Smart 10:22, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes. It is not a fair criticism, articles like Milkmaid etc, because all pages, per the CSD criteria, are subject to 'A page is eligible for speedy deletion only if all of its revisions are also eligible' (my emph). — fortunavelut luna 10:29, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Actually, they wouldn't be eligible for G5 because G5 explicitly does not apply to pages with substantial edits by other users. Something the current proposal lacks. Regards SoWhy 10:41, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Actually, SoWhy my answer incorporates that already. As I was ready to point out to the editor who originally used the example... Milkmaid stopped being eligible for G5 on it's fifth edit, which is what would have made it illegible way back. And my comment still stands. All CSD criteria are covered by the need for all edits to be eligible for it to apply, this criteria would too. So, if a paid editor writes an article that is subsequently re-written (one of the above suggested problems), it still could not be eligible, on the assumption the second editor was, say, you. Which is nice. — fortunavelut luna 10:51, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

This is a fair point, which I have used to update the draft. More points at improvement are welcome from all. Jupitus Smart 10:45, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi and Jupitus Smart No, that doesn't work; you're falling into the category mistake of dividing the world into "good editors" and "paid editors". Yes, there are some PR accounts who only exist to promote their clients, at whom I assume this proposal is aimed. However, a paid editor is just as likely to be a reasonably long-term experienced Wikipedia editor who after a while has thought something along the lines of "given the amount of unpaid work I've put into this, I may as well put the skills I've developed to practical use and make some money on the side". (We're not talking a few marginal characters here—at least one WMF employee has been caught out touting for paid-editing work on Elance.) This proposal and all variations I can think of on it would mean applying damnatio memoriae to these editors, even if their paid editing was just a brief blip at the end of a decade of constructive contributions.

If (for the sake of argument) I start editing for pay and get caught out and blocked, under this proposal pages like Halkett boat, Alice Ayres or Victorian painting to which I'm the sole substantive contributor would immediately become eligible for speedy deletion, even though they're on topics in which it's hard to imagine there being the possibility of a COI since nobody gains/loses anything from what their Wikipedia articles say. (This isn't just an arcane hypothetical point—had Sarah Stierch been blocked rather than just reprimanded when she was caught red-handed, would we have deleted Wadsworth Jarrell under this provision? If you don't think we should be deleting it, then you're effectively adding an "unless the reviewing admin likes the article" proviso to WP:CSD which is a route to endless ill-tempered arbitration cases—speedy deletion is meant only for uncontroversial cases.)

Given how much of the process is now automated via Twinkle, it's not as if taking a created-for-pay article to AFD is an incredibly onerous process. (And no, I don't for one second buy the "but taking it to AFD means it's live for a week so the subject is getting publicity!" argument. If anything, a Wikipedia page with a big "this article is being considered for deletion" banner at the top is more of a disincentive to potential paid editing customers than a page which quietly disappears.) ‑ Iridescent 17:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

No, the three categories of editor would be the good, the bad, and the paid, as it were. — fortunavelut luna 08:08, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

In my opinion they should only be eligible if all the articles by your hypothetical socks were promotional in nature. And none of the accounts looked "new". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:54, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

@Iridescent: For the sake of a counter-argument, let us think of a supposed scenario. Suppose its turns out that you are the sock of a previously blocked sockmaster. G5 would entail that Halkett boat, Alice Ayres or Victorian painting, would then be eligible for deletion as you were the only contributor. If I were to tag them as such, do you realistically think any of the admins would accept that and have these well written articles deleted. I do not think any admin would do so, as G5 exists primarily to drive off WP:COI content.

My proposal is just an extension of that, and would be governed by the same metrics as before. As for the illustrious editor turning into paid editor scenario. This is the same as before and can be refuted by an addition. Suppose an illustrious editor decides to become a paid editor one fine day and is found out and blocked. He cannot live without editing Wikipedia, and decides to form another account, and continues to edit while trying not to leave traces linking him to his former account. He ends up writing much better articles (with many FA's to his credit) than before while not indulging in any paid editing this time. I am a sockpuppet hunter and initiate an SPI in which he is identified as a sock and blocked. Would it be okay if I tagged all his new creations as G5. Do you think any admin would accept that, if the FA's were like the ones you had mentioned earlier.

The answer in both the above cases would normally be that the admin removes the tag and chides the person who tagged or advises to go for an AfD.

The problem is not about the 7 days it would be on AfD. I personally don't think that even matters if it were deleted and the 7 day publicity would be anything but desirable for the company concerned. That is however not the case as many a times Wikipedia is part of the package of paid editing, and is accompanied by news articles. Take the case of Nathan M. Farrugia. This is an article created by a paid editor, who brags about it and has listed in his portfolio on Upwork (Source). This was created by a G5 eligible editor and I have tagged it as such now. However do you think the same article would have been deleted had it been taken to AfD. I don't think so as many well meaning editors would have jumped to its defence citing the good references present. This user was dumb enough to list the article in his portfolio and I was able to tag it. What about the thousands of other paid editors who are not so dumb. This was created by a single purpose account which was blocked for sockpuppetry. A look at all his confirmed sockpuppets is mind-boggling Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of LogAntiLog and this is not including the many sockpuppets that may have been yet to be identified. When we are facing a problem of such magnitude, it is pertinent that we employ harsher measures. I am off to sleep now. Probably the G5 is accepted by the time I wake up. Jupitus Smart 19:32, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

So what you're saying is that you want to make "delete them unless the reviewing admin likes them" Wikipedia policy. I reiterate my opposition to this, which is so counter to the spirit of CSD that it beggars belief that anyone is supporting it. If the article is promotional, we have WP:G11 for that; if it's not unduly promotional than what's the issue? The WP:G5 criterion was created for an entirely different reason (I was there), to deal with the issue of long-term problematic users like ItsLassieTime where there was the presumption that their sourcing was likely to be problematic, without having to manually check the sources in every article they'd written, and has no particular relevance here (since if something is problematically promotional and non-neutral it will already be deletable under existing provisions for dealing with spam). ‑ Iridescent 19:42, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose don't punish the reader by withholding notable topics from them. Inappropriate promotional content is already well served by G11. feminist 13:42, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose As someone who's spent a lot of time working WP:COIN issues, I don't think a speedy deletion for paid editing is unambiguous enough. If we make deletion too speedy, we'll just end up with more articles at deletion review. I'll sometimes use proposed deletion, or "prod". In a week, the article is gone. It might be useful to require that you have to have achieved, say, autoconfirm level to remove "prod" tags. I'll sometimes start an AfD for an article that probably came from paid editing and just isn't about something notable enough. Sometimes there's argument, but it usually ends up being one paid editor vs. the world, and the paid editor loses. If they win, so be it; that's consensus. Sometimes you need more eyes on the problem. See, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nelson De La Nuez, an eBay art seller with heavy self-promotion. The harder we looked, the less notable they got. John Nagle (talk) 22:28, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, but support further community discussion of serious countermeasures against paid editing. I came in hoping to support, and while I am sympathetic to the underlying idea, I agree with Jclemens. The proposal would only generate drama, and is rather duplicative of G5 and G11. I work extensively in filing and clerking SPI cases involving paid editing, and can attest to the urgent need to find a workable solution to this very problem. GAB^gab 22:34, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose speedy deletion, but I would definitely support a middle ground of automatically throwing a PROD tag on everything that appeared to be paid. bd2412 T 23:14, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  @BD2412: My experience with this is that another sock always comes along and removes the tag. It has to go through AFD to be safe. —Guanaco 23:31, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  Then we can easily identify who is removing PROD tags from paid editing articles. bd2412 T 23:38, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  Sounds good. Support a special category of PRODs of articles by undisclosed paid editors, and creation of a log of paid editors and dePRODders of their articles. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:45, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  We need to look at getting approval to run a CU on all brand new accounts dePRODing a spammy article created by another brand new account. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:19, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  Sounds, good, Doc James. New accounts dePRODing a spammy article, CU them. CU is very restrictive about discovering personal information on old editors, it could be way more lax on combating paid editor new account rings. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:17, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose because it would include articles with substantial changes by legitimate users. I would support a change to G5 to explicitly include pages whose only substantial edits are by sock farms. —Guanaco 23:33, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  User:Guanaco Agree this is likely a better way to go. How should we define farm? Three or more? Four or more? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support if and article was created by a sockfarm and/or looks COI-like but has no edits by legit users who improve the article and remove promotional language (just slapping {{coi}} or {{advert}} on there doesn't count). KMF (talk) 00:22, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Moral support, practical oppose, largely per Jclemens, Iridescent, and John Nagle. I'm strongly in favor of rapidly nuking this sort of deceptive spam. I hear the proposer's request for constructive suggestions for how to improve the proposal. So: it seems to me that we do not need to have a G14 to put on those pages, because the process as envisioned must follow the sequence of, first, identifying the violation of policy or TOU, and then, second, requesting rapid deletion. We can accomplish that pretty well with existing policy, so long as the administrators who deal with the policy violation then go on to nuke the non-notable pages that had been created. We don't need a CSD for that to happen, and it's better to depend on human evaluation of each page anyway. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:44, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• Tryptofish, absent a new CSD, on what basis would admins "go on to nuke the non-notable pages". Admins are not authorized curently to delete pages simnply because they are njon-notable. That is a decision to be made at an AfD. No one, not even an AfD, is authorized to delete pages because their creator was subsequently blocked, that would violate deletion policy. There is no such thing as an IAR speedy or rapid deletion. Any such deletion would violate current policy, and would be properly overturned at WP:DRV. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 01:16, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• You raise an interesting point, one that I had not thought of. To some degree, I was simply getting, shall we say, overly enthusiastic when I talked about "nuking". As I think about your comment, I find myself asking whether, in fact, the deletion has to be that urgent, anyway. WP:There is no deadline and all that. I get it, that we don't want to overload AfD (and PROD) with spam that will unquestionably have to be deleted anyway. But I feel like what matters more in this case is my original observation that there would be no way, even with a G14, to make a deletion decision before having come to the conclusion that there had been a policy violation: it would be nonsensical to delete first and investigate later. Consequently, there has to be some consideration prior to deleting, no matter how we do this. Here's a thought: just as we have WP:BLPPROD as a special category of WP:PROD, we could make another special PROD category for cases like this. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:23, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
• Looking back here, I see that the PROD idea has already been proposed in the discussion section below. Woops. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:37, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Great minds think alike? Or just we are both looking over the same small toolbox to try and find the least inappropriate tool? :-) Jclemens (talk) 01:46, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

• Moral Oppose, Practical Oppose - as Tryptofish related from Jclemens et al. Still seems the prior "vague/covered". Morally, I feel judge the content not the user, blanket approach is wrong, and wishful thinking is bad for management. This guilt by association beyond just the TOU paid-for material is entirely too much focused on the irritation and not enough on looking for unintended consequences or collateral damage protections for a "nuking" option. Guidance should morally lead to a positive and be detailed anyway, rather than unleash draconian measures or be vague, so that WP:PAID leads to working better with WP how-to engage and do this instead of just hoops and constraints and punishments. Practically -- I agree with this wouldn't be effective (wishful thinking), questioning the need when alternatives exist, and this seems too vaguely stated to latch up to WP:PAID or WP:BLOCK or WP:BAN. I think the TOU clearly does not mean to throw out items not paid for or perhaps written before they were ever paid. Also practically, it is just easier to judge the content -- the motives of all editors are for something invisible and from some POV unknown and we do not care, but that they follow guidelines and give RS cites and goodness in content is visible and what we care about. Finally, for some topics the reality is that info is largely from press releases or captive reporters. Sony releases the film info that they want to; Microsoft coverage gets preview-packages (and if you write too off-script you get cut off); war coverage is by daily press briefing to controlled press pool. Markbassett (talk) 04:31, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• Strong support. Endorsing Tony's comment wholeheartedly. As others have mentioned, G11 as currently construed is not dealing well enough with UPE. I've some experience with UPE in relation to academic boosterism; and based on that experience UPE content should be removed with prejudice. It is the only way of dealing with this. James (^talk/_contribs) 07:42, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I understand the opposes, I really do, and I even partially agree with most of them. But existing channels simply are not working well enough for this, and as Jytdog has mentioned, it is good to have a clear and unequivocal message on this to send to the world. Double sharp (talk) 08:10, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support Delete all the articles! Chris Troutman (talk) 16:03, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  • I think "Delete all TOU violating submissions" is far superior to TOU sticky prod removalable arbitrarily by an admin. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:25, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support. I've long held that we need to set up a proper incentive structure to dissuade paid editing. Immediate deletion is as strong a disincentive we can provide for breaking our rules. This is necessary. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:34, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  • As an aside, this is already somewhat common practice. When we find a large sock ring that is making paid articles, I delete G5, whether or not I can identify a master that was blocked at the time of article creation. There was some discussion of this at one point and the gist is that, in the cases of large sock rings at least, we can be reasonably sure they've been blocked before even if they can't be tied to a specific farm. Or, alternatively, they are so behaviorally similar to any number of existing sock farms so as to meet the technical definition of sockpuppetry whether or not they're "really" the same farm. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:35, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! Statement of actual practice like this is very helpful. Based on what you are saying, this criteria is not actually new policy, but rather is just putting in writing the policy that is already consensus practice. It is not uncommon that written policy needs to updated to catch up with consensus-based practice. It is too bad this was not part of the original proposal as people would have reacted differently, most likely. Jytdog (talk) 07:43, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Agree with User:BU Rob13. When we find a large family of socks, none of which look new, who are writing promotional content. We can be certain they have prior blocked accounts so I also feel comfortable applying G5. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:57, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: and @Doc James: - Would any of these fall under the extended G5 criteria that BU Rob13 has mentioned above - Kijiji Canada, All Assam Minorities Students’ Union, Char Chapori Sahitya Parishad or Buljit Buragohain. These were created by a large sockfarm and around 10 of their sockpuppets were found out in one go. And they continue unabated with new sockpuppets even now per Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Raju Adhikari. Jupitus Smart 18:57, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Yup would apply as none of the socks were ever a new account per their editing and thus we can assume that their are prior blocked socks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:13, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support We have to dissuade paid editing companies and this is definitely a good way of doing so and getting them to declare properly. Currently, they have no incentive unless they are behaviorally obvious enough or make a small slip (e.g. mixing up of accounts)- this would add a 'stick' that incentivises them to declare, or get their articles deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcc (talk • contribs) 12:13, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Sorry, this looks like a solution trying to find a problem. If paid editors create spam, our existing deletion policies can cope with it. If paid editors create articles on people who turn out to be notable per our guidelines, then what's the issue? I got "paid" to write Bullets and Daffodils, it just wasn't in cash. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:38, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose One would think a truly professional content producer would be smart enough to avoid being detected through checkuser and other methods of detection by following all the other policies outside of WP:COI. This proposed policy wouldn't likely be able to help with those people, which is what I assume the problem is - everybody else can already be dealt with through current policies. South Nashua (talk) 23:02, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Many pages (not just articles, since we're talking general criteria here) written in violation of the TOU already fall under G11 or G12, and they may even fall under both. What isn't taken care of there can easily be handled by our various other deletion processes. If it's unpaid editing, chances are very high that it's not a notable topic. Even if it is a notable topic, chances are still very high that the page would need to be fundamentally rewritten to conform with Wikipedia:NOTFORPROMOTION (from G11), and so would still be deleted. If it is, by some miracle, salvageable, then WP:FIXIT. Even if, after you fix it, its history contains copyrighted content, simply use {{Copyvio-revdel}} (for non-admins) to request Rev-Del under WP:RD1 or Rev-Del it yourself (for admins). — Gestrid (talk) 03:11, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support The proposal is equivalent to "Should our Terms of Use" be enforced, and the prevailing answer appears to be "No, not really". Mind boggling. Rentier (talk) 10:38, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support (in the absence of a better alternative). ToU needs enforcing, the challenge is getting consensus on how, so hopefully those opposing can get behind something? Widefox; talk 18:13, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support per arguments by TonyBallioni, Jytdog, Legacypac, BU Rob13 and others. CSD is already overly complicated, but if this would even slightly dissuade spammers, then I see it as a net positive.- MrX 20:03, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose A7, G5 and G11 adequately cover this ground. I can't see why we would want to delete okay articles based solely on who the author is (especially when it can be sometimes difficult to know for certain whether the author was paid). If there are other, related instances they can be sent to AfD. If this means a significantly greater load at AfD which almost always results in consensus for deletion this can be reconsidered/proposed at a later date. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:47, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose As many others already said, it should be about the content, insted of the author. But maybe making it easier to delete it the normal way, would be a solution. --Info-Screen::Talk 12:11, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support. It's important to discourage people from using Wikipedia for advertising; given the impact of mirrors, search engines, and other things advertisers target by adding things here, this requires a way to get rid of advertising that violates foundation policies quickly. Allowing undisclosed paid editors to hold the hope that the adds they spam here could stick around long enough to generate profits will cause trouble for us down the road. Additionally, the foundation policy on paid advertising is extremely important to Wikipedia's reputation and function as an encyclopedia; it is absolutely our duty to enforce it and to try and minimize any circumventions of it. Even when the text itself is good (which I feel is rare), it's important to underline that undisclosed paid editing hurts Wikipedia as a whole and leads to major scandals that damage our entire reputation every time it comes to light. Occasionally sacrificing potentially-usable stubs is an entirely reasonable price to pay for preventing that (and is no different than what we do with banned editors; I see no difference between this and that.) Anyone above who argues that we should not delete articles purely because of their creator or purely to enforce some broader goal of protecting Wikipedia needs to take a look at G5, which does exactly that, and which has been an uncontroversial part of CSD for years. Some people above have expressed concerns about identifying paid editors; however, this is nonsensical, since the CSD would only apply in cases where it was clear. --Aquillion (talk) 01:34, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support very strongly. Quality is now more important than quantity. It’s al very well to boast that we are getting on for 6 million articles, but already in my estimation anything up to 20% shouldn’t be here anyway. It’s gone beyond the point where we would ever be able to address even all the tagged BLPs. We won’t be able to discover all the paid-for articles either, but paid editing is growing exponentially, and the opposers here are possibly not aware that according to some claims there are even admins and New Page Reviewers taking on paid work.

This is not a solution looking for a problem. It’s defeatist to say that solutions are unworkable. it’s a very big problem that needs constant discussion and intelligent brainstorming until something is found that can be made to work. Too many people are opposing here who are not New Page Reviewers and have no idea of the magnitude of the spam, artspam, and devious articles that arrive here for which someone has obviously been paid and/or will increase their turnover as a result of their commercial exposure in Wikipedia. Never say we can’t delete per G14 without concrete proof - we delete per G5 all the time based on loud quacking. While a lot of it is very subtle and needs careful research, some paid editing is so blatantly obvious that if it weren't such a serious issue it would be a howling joke.

Wikipedia is organic and needs to adapt to new situations. Stifling progress by of rigidly adhering to every syllable of policy like a jurist's inflexible attention to every letter of the law will stifle our attempts to maintain a good reputation for the encyclopedia by changing our Wikilaws.

Wadsworth Jarrell is absolutely not the kind of article we're talking about, so we can do without red herrings and strawman arguments. As Beyond My Ken says, The "oppose" rationales are weak and unconvincing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:10, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support The problem to address here is the time sink of good volunteer labor into providing service to organizations which are vandalizing Wikipedia. If we feel strongly enough to block an account for bad behavior then we should not further invest volunteer attention in preserving the vandal activity. CSD is the right place to start, then undeletion and AfD can be next steps if anyone objects. When dealing with accounts which are deemed in violation of the terms of service we should default to permit anyone to delete their work. This is a big issue consuming 100s of hours of volunteer labor and harming the reputation of Wikipedia. While there are theoretical other solutions which others might develop in the future, this one is practical, easy to implement, works now, and seems likely to prevent 10 times more problems than it could cause. I hear lots of volunteers burdened with promotional editing. I am not sure that I have ever heard a sympathetic story of any editor who behaved in a way that got them blocked, and yet posted content which I thought was obviously worth keeping. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:30, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Here's why this policy is a bad idea. An editor who was later identified as part of a sockfarm created an article about someone named Bruce Flatt. Flatt is apparently a well known Canadian businessman and one of the richest people in Canada. There is an abundance of relaible third-party reportage about Flatt. The article Bruce Flatt was by deleted admin User:Kudpung under WP:G5, despite not having identified the article creator as a previously blocked or banned user. Now Wikipedia doesn't have an article on Flatt. Does this harm or help our readers? World's Lamest Critic (talk) 17:09, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

That, World's Lamest Critic, is a bad faith vote in vengeance of the comments and concerns that have been raised and expressed over your own editing pattern here. Serious users such as Doc James have commented. 17:27, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

If by "bad faith" you mean that we have different opinions, then yes, it is. If you mean I am opposing this because you support it, then I can assure you that you are wrong. Your deletion of Bruce Flatt is an excellent and timely example of what will happen if this proposal were adopted. I also believe it was an out of process deletion, but we agree to disagree on that. As for your comments about my editing, I'm not bothered so there's really nothing for me to avenge. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 17:51, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

World's Lamest Critic first edit was to JW's talk page. The subsequent edits show they are unlikely to be a new user. Bruce Flatt was created by User:AnalyticCat who is part of this family of socks.[1]. As it was a TOU violation and this family obviously has prior blocked socks not seeing an issue. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:50, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:G5 Creations by banned or blocked users says: "To qualify, the edit or article must have been made while the user was actually banned or blocked. A page created before the ban or block was imposed or after it was lifted will not qualify under this criterion." wbm1058 (talk) 13:00, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 August 4. I'm a little confused about the rationale. wbm1058 (talk) 14:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Wbm1058 there is a general consensus that for very large farms with VPNs and where CU is a mess, we can safely assume that at some point there has been an original blocked account. In the case above, as Doc James pointed out, the user was part of a huge sock family that dated back with active accounts to 2015, and with stale accounts, likely had them dating back to 2009 that were stale. The odds of a sock farm like that not having been banned at one point is effectively zero. This is distinct from a sock family with one of two socks that is likely just a freelancer doing a one off. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:52, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't get it. Per Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tomwsulcer, the author of Bruce Flatt is a sockpuppet of Tomwsulcer, yet the sockmaster himself, a user who identifies himself on his user page, has a clean block log?? wbm1058 (talk) 15:16, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

No. CU did not find a connection to him, he is not the sockmaster: the clerks have yet to sort out what to move the page to: we don't know who the original account was there. GeneralizationsAreBad, could you look into getting that case resolved so that we don't have any additional confusion about a named master? TonyBallioni (talk) 15:23, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. In most cases, these articles are spam to a significant extent; the worse ones can be G11-tagged immediately, and a borderline case should easily be pushed over the edge if you can demonstrate that the author's been blocked for paid editing or sockpuppetry. If it's not a borderline case in this way (i.e. it's a decent article as far as lack-of-promotion is concerned), and if it doesn't have other significant problems, deletion might well hurt the encyclopedia, so we mustn't delete such a page without giving a chance for objection (PROD) or discussion (AFD). Nyttend (talk) 01:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Very strong oppose. G5 and G10 are the only criteria currently that are about who created the page rather than its content. G10 is uncontroversial as it only relates to someone requesting deletion of their own work. G5 is frequently controversial in application, and has been throughout the 12 years I've been an admin, but the blocking and banning policy are not at all controversial in themselves. The moral panic about undisclosed paid editing does not enjoy full community support so basing a speedy deletion criterion on it cannot possibly be a good idea. Per Nyttend and others, it also fails the requirement for a speedy deletion criterion that everything that could be deleted should be deleted. TL;DR this will harm not improve the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 07:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support. This is absolutely essential and long overdue. We are already suffocating under the weight of paid editing, and we can only expect it to get worse. G11 is only available for articles that are overtly promotional in tone, but any article created for pay is, by its nature, an advertisement – it is a publication created for financial reward for the sole purpose of promoting a person or entity. Undeclared paid editing is not allowed under our terms of use, without any exception, and we are under an obligation to ensure that any such edits are summarily removed. This would be a good first step in that direction. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:53, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• I don't want to raise Richard Stallman levels of pedantry, but what you're describing is paid advocacy. As I've said before, the WMF could pay me to go through nearly 2,700 articles in Category:Unreferenced BLPs and add a reliable source to each one (a tedious job that obviously nobody wants to do) - it would be "paid editing" but wouldn't be advertising. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:10, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support in theory (although extending G5 could also work). If we disallow undisclosed paid contributions, we need to have a tool to delete them. I am sceptical about the burden of proof, though. Perhaps decisions should be made at COIN or SPI? —Kusma (t·c) 12:15, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. As alluded to by Thryduulf above, I don't really understand the moral panic Wikipedia has with paid editors. Paid editing is against the terms of service specifically because paid editors are more likely to produce articles which are partisan and/or promotional, but we already have the tools to deal with that and I don't think there's any sign these existing mechanisms are failing. G5 is, I suppose, intended to try to improve compliance with bans and discourage socking in the same vein as WP:DENY. It's not about upholding some moral ideal that all editing here should be free of financial interest. I don't really see what the project has to gain from deleting good material on notable subjects purely on principle. We are foolish to think of ourselves as "at war" with paid editors; sometimes they even do us a favour by writing good-quality articles on notable subjects. Indeed, their work is often of a particularly high quality because they are familiar with Wikipedia's quality control processes. If paid editors produce specific work which is inappropriate then we can deal with that ad hoc using the tools already available, but I see nothing to be gained by granting admins carte blanche to delete articles just because they suspect the main contributor might have a financial conflict of interest. We should judge articles and their suitability based on content and quality, not authorship. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 13:11, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, does not come up sufficiently often. Stifle (talk) 13:38, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. If an article is written by a paid editor and is blatantly promotional, it will be deleted via G11. If the article is written by a paid editor and it is a well-written and neutral article, it should be kept. Deleting well-written articles on principle simply gets rid of well-written articles. In a practical sense, G11 covers every scenario under paid editing that would warrant a speedy deletion. This is both bad in principle and superfluous in practice. Malinaccier (talk) 16:32, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support, as a measure to dissuade organized paid editing, and as an effective tool to save valuable time of good-faith editors and admins. Many of the previous "oppose" arguments have 2 basic flaws: 1) Non-promotional well-sourced articles by organized sockfarms are, with a few extremely rare exceptions, a myth. The whole purpose of sockfarms as commercial enterprises is to make as much money as quickly as possible by advancing the goals of their customers - both of these goals are diametrically opposite to Wikipedia's principles and goals. So the risk of loosing suitable content is relatively small, and vastly overstated by previous statements. 2) "Judge articles by their content" is a noble idealistic view. But in rough and dirty daily practise regarding paid editing this view is upheld on the backs of dozens of fellow good-faith editors and admins, who have to waste hundreds of hours of their time cleaning up these messes - just to see the next sockfarm popping up a few weeks later. Talking about fair article assessment, how about we try to be "fair" towards these regular maintenance contributors and don't waste any more of their time than absolutely necessary? GermanJoe (talk) 17:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support If paid editors unlawfully create an article and we keep it anyway, they're incentivized to continue socking. Delete everything they do and they'll learn a lesson. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:19, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Chris troutman, I do believe you !voted above to delete all the articles!. Just noting it for you because I wouldn't want to strike a double vote of an established editor without letting them know. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:18, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Having a coherent, community-support policy (like this) is better than tacitly encouraging expansion of scope of other existing criteria. Sophisticated editors who are deliberately undermining the integrity of the project for financial gain are a serious ongoing problem, deserving of a policy response. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 13:56, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support underlining concept. Paid editors usually write promotional articles. That's what they are paid to do. QuackGuru (talk) 21:18, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Judge the article by content, not source. ++Lar: t/c 04:21, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support -- having paid articles in the mainspace is disruptive; this is the best way to deal with this issue. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:19, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• strongly Oppose I think that adding something like this as a criteria for deletion would be reasonable. Would likely overcome some of the inclusionist arguments (including my own) for keeping such stuff. But this is a horrid idea. Imagine someone gets blocked as a sock. Maybe incorrectly (it has happened). And someone else goes through and speedy tags every single article they've created that no one else has really touched. Or even if they do get blocked for socking in a way that has nothing to do with paid editing. Then all their work is deleted for one bad decisions made 5 years later. Or someone hacks their account after they've quit the project. They never even know they were blocked as a sock. But all their work gets deleted. This doesn't belong as a speedy. Way too overreaching and subject to abuse. Hobit (talk) 15:58, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose but support as a revision deletion criterion. When a user saves an edit, they agree both to the ToU and to the CC license release simultaneously. If they're flagrantly and knowingly ignoring one of those things, they have a case to argue that their contribution is not subject to the license agreement. The license also requires that the contribution is original content or that the contributor has the right to contribute that material, which if they've been paid under some contract we don't know the content of (which likely includes trademarks and intellectual property protection) to reproduce what is probably PR copy from the organization paying them, they very likely do not own a compatible copyright to their contribution. In these cases, every undisclosed paid edit is a potential copyright violation. A contract is implied if remuneration is received; paid editors' contributions ought therefore to be removed as soon as they are identified. That's a case for WP:REVDEL, which may leave pages with no contributions in which case other criteria apply. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:11, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, per User:Jclemens. That being said, I'd be happy to see it harder to get a page back under G5, since there's usually another sock or a gullible inclusionist around to resurrect paid for articles and give them another go. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:27, 14 August 2017 (UTC).
• Oppose - We have adequate community-inclusive mechanisms for deleting craptervising and for challenging lame articles of dubious notability. We don't need an handful of fanatics riding around on white chargers and serving as judge, jury, and executioner without evidence as to an editor's financial relationship to a subject. Carrite (talk) 05:13, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
• Reluctant oppose- I don't think this is the best way to go about combating paid advertisements. I mostly agree with the above posters who argue that determining who is or is not a paid editor is inherently controversial. That said, I agree that Wikipedia is not very good at defending itself from being used as a billboard and I worry that opposing this proposal will be seized on as opposition to doing anything about it. I would not want that. Reyk _YO! 06:52, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - What is the difference between WP:G5 and the proposed WP:G14? Bruce Flatt was created 21 October 2015, at 08:08 by AnalyticCat, who was blocked at 17:30, 27 July 2017. If Bruce Flatt can be deleted under WP:G5 then there is no need for the redundant G14. See #Flatt discussion above. wbm1058 (talk) 14:14, 16 August 2017 (UTC) See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 August 4, which raises more questions in my mind. Again, if G5 already de facto covers G14 situations, why do we need G14? If someone without a COI "rewrites" the article in a neutral and acceptable manner, based on references used in the deleted version, do we need to restore the deleted revisions to restore attribution? wbm1058 (talk) 14:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support: I understand the concerns about ambiguity, but like other CSD criteria (hoaxes are a good parallel) this will only be used in clear cut circumstances. As long as the criterion says that this is for clear-cut situations, I have no problems with the practicality. The implications of this are not without precedent; as before, the hoax CSD could be called ambiguous and open to discretion but is largely a success. We must remember that tagging for CSD is only half the story. A qualified admin also needs to agree. This is a sensible solution to a problem that needs addressing, and I can't see any implementation issues. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 15:27, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as more trouble than its worth. Use G5 more creatively.L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 13:06, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. As Iridescent said, "speedy deletion is meant only for uncontroversial cases." And as feminist pointed out, this change would punish ordinary readers of Wikipedia who are looking for a digest of the published information about a topic. As for me, as a Teahouse volunteer I frequently encounter editors who are working on articles without disclosing they are paid editors not out of malice, but because they simply don't know the paid-editing policy exists. Frankly, I'm tired of seeing articles and even draft articles PRODded or AfD'd or even speedied where the underlying reason for the nomination is that the initial or main contributor appears to have a COI and/or is suspected of being an undisclosed paid editor; such articles are often salvageable with only a moderate amount of editing by a more experienced (and non-COI) editor. —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 13:48, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose As User:Feminist points out, we are punishing our readers by deleting an article that is properly sourced and notable. If article is unworthy, take it to AfD. Find another way to punish the author of such articles, but don't punish the people who we are trying to serve. First Light (talk) 11:31, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

• Strong support As is evident from cases such as Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Michael_Quinn_Sullivan — even in the face of concrete evidence is it difficult to delete paid pieces.
  Paid editing biases which articles are written, and what is included in them. Unless we as a community want to spend the rest of our days "fixing" shitty paid pieces we need to have a process to quickly and easily dispose of pages created by undisclosed paid editors.
  RileyBugz & A2soup — We must judge the creator in order to judge the content. By allowing paid pieces to stick around, we bias Wikipedia and force editors to do the handywork of special interests. We need to look not only at what Wikipedia is now, but what will become of Wikipedia. Either we allow this practice to continue and Wikipedia will turn into a cesspool of for-pay biographies, or we spend all our volunteer time fixing paid pieces, which in turn means people quit and Wikipedia still turns into a cesspool of paid editing. There is no way around it, we need to get rid of paid pieces, even if they are decent. Our ordinary protocol for deletion promotes "fixing problems", we can't have that approach to paid editing, it will be the end of us. Carl Fredrik ^talk 14:44, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support Paid articles in violation of created in violation of Wikipedia terms of use need to be deleted.Allowing Wikipedia to fill up full of paid for promotional material has a very significant risk of harming our reputation and credibility.Firstly deletion is done in WP:G5 Creations by banned or blocked users is removed this is similar to that.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 16:21, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Sticky PROD alternative

• How about a new "TOU sticky PROD" like we started for the BLP unsourced cleanup of a few years back? I hear not a whole lot of objection to leaving things around for a week, and we have time-based CSD-F? criteria that trigger after seven days. If we can get 1) eyes on the public process vs. having to ask for DRV 2) time for input, and 3) opportunities for objection or rescue if anyone really wants to. Ideally, this would still be reasonably expeditious, but available for more community review and input. Jclemens (talk) 02:00, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • BLPPROD has a (mostly) unambiguous and uncontentious path to removal: add a reliable source, and you can remove the template. When can a sticky-TOU prod be removed? When an editor in good standing says so - then when is a new editor's standing good enough? When an "unpaid" editor rewrites it, or says it's good enough - then how do you tell the difference between an include-all-subjects idealist and the 20,000-edit good-hand sockpuppet of the editor who created the article? —Cryptic 02:35, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • Hmm. Here's my first draft of how it would go:

      1) Any user in good standing (autoconfirmed) tags an article

      2) Article banner appears, category added, article added to list of tagged, etc. to notify community for one week of the issue.

      3) Any administrator can remove the tag at any time, either because the tagging was in error OR the article has been sufficiently cleaned up and neutral-ized, and such removal is logged in the file history and maybe somewhere else, too

      4) If no administrator has removed the tag after 168 hours, the article becomes deletion-eligible, and an admin can STILL review it and remove the tag... or delete it outright.

Note : The consensus is probably towards allowing Extended Confirmed users to remove the tag and therefore voters are requested not to hold this up in case administrator tag removal is what bothers you. And articles can only be tagged so if they were created and mostly edited by sockpuppet(s) who have been confirmed by checkuser evidence to have used multiple accounts or by editors who were explicitly blocked for paid editing. Jupitus Smart 16:26, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• • • So, yeah, still a rough draft/work in progress. Jclemens (talk) 03:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Oh, and nothing about this process would make an article immune to other CSD criteria (G5, G11, G12, etc.) or prevent it from being AfD'ed per normal process if it "fell out" of the process. Jclemens (talk) 03:25, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem with autoconfirmed is that 7 days is more than the 4 days required to become an autoconfirmed user. So even if an editor decides to form an account after it is PRODed, he will be eligible to remove the tag, and many a times editors simply don't care enough to take it to AfD, ultimately defeating the cause. Jupitus Smart 03:38, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Jclemens' proposal above is to have autoconfirmed+ able to tag, but only admin+ to untag. —Cryptic 03:55, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I am really sorry as it probably skipped my eyes. That is an even better proposal than mine. Jupitus Smart 03:59, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• I am all for any proposal that does not entail going to AfD. AfD is a strenuous process, and if you go through some of the upwork jobs, there are companies willing to pay you to vote keep. It becomes harsh on the nominator who files the AfD's when well healed socks pile on logical votes, and you have to take the pains to research on all of them before refuting them. I am not sure why the 7 day period is an issue. Remaining for 7 days was not the issue when I created this CSD criteria, it was the surety (or the lack of it) of deletion. The 7 day period is okay with me if socks are not allowed to remove the tag. 20K edit sockpuppets are few, so we may set an arbitrary barrier equivalent to an Extended Confirmed user. All the well meaning people who would want to preserve well written articles (and have written such articles themselves) will fall under this. Jupitus Smart 03:19, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • On a related note, I was looking at all the creations of the sock I mentioned above. One of his socks have made large edits to Sunny Li. This was created by another sockpuppet editor (probably not related to him), and the only other major contributor is an IP. This is technically not eligible for G5 and I am not knowledgeable enough about Chinese pianists and would not want to take it to AfD where somebody might say that she satisfies WP:NPIANO and therefore this should be kept. Jupitus Smart 03:38, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Here is another example of what I want to avoid - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tom Mooradian. This was created by one of the socks of this guy, and the AfD ended up getting support votes from 2 editors in standing. The amount of man hours wasted by the editors who inadvertently voted keep assuming good faith and those by the ones who voted delete is simply not worth the effort according to me. Jupitus Smart 04:03, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Less few than you might think. We've banned admins for paid editing, more for generalized sockpuppetry, and 100k-edit users for (unspecified) TOU violations. The 500 edits it takes to get extendedconfirmed on a primary account isn't just too flimsy a barrier for a minimally-savvy paid editor; it's no barrier at all. —Cryptic 04:14, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • I would wholeheartedly support a move that would allow only admins to DePROD. I would not want to be pessimistic already, so let me hope that there would be a consensus towards it. Jupitus Smart 04:41, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • A PROD that can only be removed by admins is a huge step above CSD in terms of the power of the deletion tag (a CSD may be removed by any uninvolved editor) and, as the first process in which uninvolved editors could not participate, would be an unprecedented change in Wikipedia deletion processes. A2soup (talk) 04:52, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
        • Oh, but they could. They can edit the article during the tagged week, argue for or against deletion on... well, the talk page, I guess. The entire point is to make it public and participatory, even if it is to be administrator-closed when all is said and done. Jclemens (talk) 05:12, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
          • Can Extended Confirmed be agreed as the middle ground @A2soup: and @Jclemens:. Bad EC users are expected to be few, and can be monitored for suspicious de-taggings (and/or Sockpuppetry). Jupitus Smart 05:33, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
            • I'd also support EC over admin being able to remove. An admin-only process invites this to be turned into a battleground between admins who have different views on what our inclusion standards should be for paid editing. Allowing more users to participate in the detagging I think would actually make it more likely for the bad content to be removed and would decrease the pressure on an admin as the final call because they would know that other users have had the practical chance to remove it as well. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
            • I went with admin on purpose. I don't expect it to be a tug-of-war, because I expected that once a TOU-sticky-prod was removed, the full AfD process would be invoked by anyone. I also expect admins to not do stupid things like mass-remove everything because "freedom!" or something like that: I have no such hope no EC user would do such a thing. The community can take my proposal any which way it wants--like everything else on Wikipedia, all I 'own' are my own contributions. I don't want it to be EASY to undo a good-faith TOU tagging; I want it to be hard, but transparent and with some time to fix problems that a speedy process doesn't allow. Jclemens (talk) 05:54, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
              • You don't do you? I wouldn't quite mass-remove such prods, but I would expect to patrol the list regularly, and probably remove a good many, if this were to be enacted. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  I find User:Jupitus Smart's argument, wanting to avoid AfD because in the past it has been strenuous to convince others, highly unsatisfactory.
  In that AfD cited, User:Carrite, a respectable Wikipedian was unpersuaded by User:Bearcat's nomination and !voted "Keep". In the name of "consensus decision making", that demands more discussion demanding more mutual education by editors through that discussion. PROD and CSD are for objective things for which there is no point in discussion. If respectable Wikipedians can disagree, a discussion is necessary. If the discussion draws out sockpuppets and meatpuppets and members of rings of undisclosed paid editors, that is a good thing. It sounds like an essay on the merits of deleting undisclosed paid editor product is required, not an authority-heavy non-consensus deletion process. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  I edit conflicted with SmokeyJoe in replying to Jclemens. SmokeyJoe's comment solidified the belief I was going to post: the problem stems from WP:DEL15: violations of the terms of use being a redlink. It is not seen by some as a valid deletion rationale, even if it is legally a prerequisite before we even get to local policy on en.wiki. If we could get that added, I think it would make the conversations on the technical means to enforce the terms of use much easier. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  • The alternative of a PROD was suggested because it allows editors who disagree and who are in standing to remove the tag. The arguments for Keep were made by Carrite in good faith, and did not have much substance which was the reason why the article was ultimately deleted. The watered down proposal is in itself better than the current scenario, because it makes the drama at AfD required for only strictly essential cases. So even though I would not AfD Sunny Li (or other such articles) because I don't want to waste my time arguing in a field where I am not knowledgeable about the different WP:NWHATEVER, I can always do the new PROD, and wait for Carrite or other such good users to remove the tag with a valid reason. This gives me an idea about the suitability of taking it to AfD if I still disagree, which would not be available if a new user removes the PROD tag without any explanation (and since PRODs can only be done once, I am realistically left with only AfD). Jupitus Smart 06:28, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• I hope something can be done about ToU violations so would prefer not to be raising difficulties. I'm unhappy at the idea that a ToU tag could be placed so easily (autoconfirmed+). WP:G4 tags are frequently placed with no evidence and such tagging seems not to be deprecated.[2] Placing such a tag should be regarded as disruptive unless there is some adequate basis. For example, shills of the firm's/person's opponents shouldn't get an easy ride. Thincat (talk) 07:53, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • From what I understand, the PROD follows the criteria for nomination, as the CSD above. It is possible only when the creator of the article is blocked for confirmed sockpuppetry/paid editing, which would mean that frivolous nominations would not be possible. Jupitus Smart 08:11, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • OK, I hadn't understood then. If the criterion is definite then my objection doesn't apply. Thank you. Thincat (talk) 09:17, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Jupitus Smart, Exactly who confirms that "paid editing" has taken place? In any case i do not trust our current SPI system to identify sockpuppets with a reasonable level of assurance, unless by "confirmed" you mean "confirmed by checkuser evidence" and if you do the proposal should say that. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:19, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
        • Yes that is exactly what I intended @DESiegel: as can be gauged from the example of KuwarOnline that I presented. But I suppose its better to be more technically correct and I will append your words as is. Jupitus Smart 16:26, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support User:Jclemens suggestion. Would also be good to get the notice of concerns fully visible on mobile. But that will likely require a different process. Admin involvement is key to prevent interference from further socks such as we so often see at AfD. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:27, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support Jclemens but with conditions. A guideline is drawn up explaining how the tag can placed legitimately (autoconfirmed user, creator blocked for paid editing, article still "spam") explaining misuse is disruptive. Also, the deleting admin must look at state of article, talk page and history (in case no admin has previously done so), i.e. no speedy deletion of articles with unremoved tags. Question: what procedure for undeletion: WP:DRV or WP:REFUND? Thincat (talk) 11:00, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment - So in the Jclemens proposal (and per their clarifications in the above discussion), the article is tagged by anyone, editors argue for and against deletion on the talk page for a week, the article may be improved/fixed during this week, and then an administrator makes an assessment and close at the end. Pardon me if I'm being dense, but that's just a poorly-organized AfD, no? Just send the article to AfD and the process is literally identical. Am I missing something? A2soup (talk) 14:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • AfD defaults to keep and involves other sorts of arguments (notability, etc.) while what I'm proposing has some of the safeguards, but defaults to delete unless rationale is demonstrably false OR the article is rewritten, possibly as much by "from scratch" in the interim. I admit it's not hugely far, but AfD looks at different things and considers different possibilities rather than "Is this COI article rewritable, or shall we just nuke it?" Jclemens (talk) 14:47, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • AfD does look at different things, but isn't "Is this COI article rewritable, or shall we just nuke it?" definitely within the current scope of AfD? I'm far from a regular there, but I feel like there are often discussions along those very lines. And if the article isn't notable, might as well figure that out at the same time you hash out the COI issues. No sense having a weeklong discussion about an article and keeping it at the end if it isn't notable. A2soup (talk) 14:54, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • PROD's generally do not involve any discussion. We PROD, and if it is notable somebody improves it, and an EC user or the reviewing admin who evaluates it at the end of 7 days removes the tag, if they feel notability has been achieved. This defaults to keep as well, but removes the need for unnecessary long drawn out discussions at AfD. In the end the encyclopedia probably gains, as the editors can use the time wasted at AfD improving articles.Jupitus Smart 15:10, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • My experience with AFD for COI or promotion issues can, almost without exception, be summarized as "keep, has sources, afd is not cleanup". Once in a great while, an article can be deleted on WP:TNT grounds there, but there's a better-than-even chance that when the beyond-any-sane-doubt paid editor recreates it verbatim, it'll get kept the second time. I'll call out Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Basedow (2nd nomination) as a particularly blatant example. G11 is the only tool we have of any efficacy at all. —Cryptic 15:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • That is because, under current policy, COI is not a reason to delete, and promotion is not a reason either if the article has been edited to be neutral in content, is supported by reliable sources, and the topic is notable. This was a good keep.This proposal would change those policies, i suppose (which may mean that discussion here would only be a first step. However, i have seen quite a few articles brought to AfD largely for COI/Promotion deleted on the grounds of notability. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nancy Ruth (singer) was a recent case in point. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:15, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • As is so often the case the account fighting for keep turns out to be a sock[3]. This is not so much about is COI a reason for deletion but should content that is promotional and created by an army of socks be deleted? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:09, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Promotional content can be removed from articles now, and it is all the time, by normal editing. Wholly promotional articles that cannot be cured by copy editing can be and often are deleted under CSD G11, in both cases with no regard to who created or edited the article. So far as I can see the only effect of this proposal would be to authorize the deletion of valid, neutral articles because of who created them. (If they aren't valid neutral articles, they can be deleted without this proposal). DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:41, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Before we go any further, would you agree that the same thing is valid for G5 as well @DESiegel: (that it also involves deletion based on who created it instead of the content). And if the answer is Yes, should we abolish that as well. Jupitus Smart 16:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
        • Yes it does, Jupitus Smart, and if you look up to the G5 section on this very page, you will find me arguing to abolish G5 on exactly those grounds. I am consistent. As it stands, G5 has consensus, but I will never delete anything so tagged. I won't remove such tags, but i don't choose to act on them. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 17:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
          • Then we should agree to disagree. G5 has its share of proponents and I am one of the editors treading the fine line between WP:PRESERVE and G5. It means that I would tag for G5 only if I personally feel that the article was made in bad faith and we can do without the article (This is just my personal opinion). This is the reason why I have been flexible enough to write into the draft, most of the fail safe mechanisms that were presented above to prevent abuse. Best. Jupitus Smart 18:03, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support despite what has been argued above, promotion is a actually a reason to delete under current policy beyond just G11, as WP:N, WP:NOT, WP:DEL4, and WP:DEL14 make clear and this can be argued in an AfD even if G11 has been declined or as is more often the case, the nom feels it isn't overtly G11. Some closers don't like the argument, others do, but pretending that it isn't a valid reading of policy isn't helpful to the conversation. Violations of the TOU are almost always promotional in intent and as has been mentioned above, since we aren't a startup anymore, simply having a listing here can be promotion. Creating a sticky PROD for undeclared paid editing makes sense from local policy as it stands now, and terms of use are above any local policy anyway barring consensus to explicitly make an exception to this, which does not exist. Support this as a compromise between AfD and CSD. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• I sad that promotion is not a reason either if the article has been edited to be neutral in content, is supported by reliable sources, and the topic is notable. I don't think any of the policies you mention authorizes deletion when the article has been edited to be neutral. If one does, please quote the wording. Promotion can be a reason to delete beyond G11, but not beyond editing for a factual, neutral article, even if its existence has some promotional effect. Otherwise we would need to delete all articles on fortune-500 companies. They all have some promotional effect. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 17:56, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • The proposed draft addresses that, in it allows the PROD to be rejected if it is edited to become neutral (albeit the removal can only be done by an EC user). The only realistic goal of the draft PROD now is to reduce the number of AfDs besides provide an avenue for deleting many promotional articles created by blocked users. If these articles can be improved after tagging it is ultimately the encyclopedia that wins, otherwise they end up deleted. Cheers. Jupitus Smart 18:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia articles about a company or organization are not an extension of their website or other social media marketing efforts. [...] Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so. Contributors must disclose any payments they receive for editing Wikipedia. per WP:NOT, which is listed as a reason for deletion at WP:DEL14 and WP:N. We aren't talking about Fortune 500s here. We're talking about startups and local restaurants where Wikipedia would be more high profile coverage than anything they had every received before. If an editor feels that there are enough factors on another side that might warrant keeping, they can remove the PROD and an AfD will happen to resolve the tension in our policies and find consensus. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:30, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• Comment The proposed deletion template is useful, but too easy to remove. One approach would be to have a template which proposed deletion, and a 'bot which, when it detected deletion of a PROD template, would check who deleted it. If it was the article creator, a new editor, or an editor with an SPA editing pattern, it would automatically start an AfD and send out the appropriate notifications. John Nagle (talk) 20:02, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • My original proposal had an admin-only removal clause, but adding something like this with appropriate automated support would clearly serve a similar purpose. Jclemens (talk) 22:07, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Traits of any solution.

Here's some things I think I want to see in any solution:

• Public I don't like insta-speedy because it could be more abusable than an open process. Public has the benefit of also providing negative reinforcement to correctly identified TOU violations, but also has the possibility of improper visibility to falsely named articles and their subjects, which leads to...
• Thresholded (was that a word before? It is now) that is to say that we don't accept nominations/accusations from new accounts or IPs, because it's a serious allegation and we don't want people using this when G11 is really what they should be using. Likewise, I propose a high threshold for clearing an accused article for continued existence, thus...
• Inevitable while not automatic, I want things that really are TOU violations to be deleted unless there's a clear indication (not necessarily 'consensus', but admin judgment) that the article should stay.

If what I've proposed above doesn't meet these goals ideally, or if there are other goals you want to see added or substituted, by all means, let's improve the ideas... Jclemens (talk) 22:07, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• • "TOU violations to be deleted ... not necessarily 'consensus', but admin judgment". This sounds very much like "admins know best, let admins make the decisions". It implies acknowledgement that the community is not behind "TOU violations to be deleted", and so the community is to be removed from the decision making process. No. Admins do not get this power. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:26, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

The old "let the community decide" mentality worked when Wikipedia (and even the internet) was new. But it is a failed ideology now that these things are ingrained in society. WP needs a hierarchy. The community, when it grows to this size, does not know best. Kellymoat (talk) 02:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

The internet was not new when Wikipedia was born. And Wikipedia was larger, in terms of the number of active editors, 5 years ago. Any such hierarchy is in violation of fundamental policy here. It would require Foundation approval, and if approved, would doom the project by driving away the second-class editors (as designated by such a change), who do the vast majority of the work. Indeed IP editors make a substantial part o the productive edits in article space. Indeed to enact such a rule would IMO violate the current policy WP:ADMIN which says: Stated simply, while the correct use of the tools and appropriate conduct should be considered important, merely "being an administrator" should not be. Simply not acceptable. A threshold of ECU might possibly be acceptable, although i still oppose the whole idea. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 03:52, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• SmokeyJoe, no more than administrators are needed to delete any other process, be it XfD, PROD, or CSD. The idea is to have more public input than CSD, but not as ambiguous an outcome as XfD. Jclemens (talk) 04:12, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• XfD is about consensus decision making, and is the process required of there is a history of disagreement. PROD is deliberately very soft, anyone can remove the PROD for any reason or no reason, meaning and XfD is required. BLPPROD, OK, adding a single reference is a pretty low requirement, nowhere near as complicated as paid articles that are more likely to be reference bombed. Admins are not supposed to be there to make executive decisions. The way to do this, I think, is on every TOU block, to initiate a group listing AfD on every article created by that account. Then see how community consensus develops. Isolated AfDs are too isolated. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:22, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support We have to enforce the terms of use. jcc (tea and biscuits) 12:13, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

jcc - I see your 'support' at the top section and at the PROD alternative so is there a preference or just a desire for something and either will do or what  ? Markbassett (talk) 19:22, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@Markbassett: I would prefer the top proposal, but yes, I think something should be done so I'm happy if either of proposals get enacted. jcc (tea and biscuits) 21:13, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

• So there are a class of articles (created with a COI) that do NOT get regularly deleted at AfD and thus we are discussing if they should be speedied or PRODed? Shouldn't it be the other way around? We should Speedy/PROD something that is a obvios AfD deletion? (I admit I only read here and there, the discussion is already long, so if I missed some explanation on that please just point that'away) - Nabla (talk) 23:10, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@Nabla: I am not sure I comprehended the question correctly, but I will attempt an answer on what I understood. The question probably is should the article revert to Keep in an AfD, can it be allowed to be PRODed/CSDed. The existing rules should probably apply in this case. In case of a PROD, as with all PRODs, once an AfD has been done, the new PROD should not be applicable. In case of a CSD, there are no restrictions, and recently I saw an AfD which was about to be closed as Keep, but just before that it was identified as G5 material and deleted (it was probably re-created by an admin later). The other aspect of how your question can be construed is probably what was really asked - should we delete as a PROD/CSD if it is bound to pass AfD. As with the example I mentioned, even if an article reverts to keep, we would not hesitate to delete it as G5 (even though the said article was re-created, it was probably because it was about something very obviously notable like a Congressional district - I don't seem to remember who the involved admin was else I would have presented the link). The same should apply here probably. Best. Jupitus Smart 08:55, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jupitus Smart:, I think I understood your point. It does not mean that I agree (or not), but at least it now makes sense to me, Thank you! Iy would be interesting to know if the equivalent of G5 was already commonly deleted at AfD, before the creation of that speedy deletion criterion. But I admit I will not take the trouble to find it out, so I am _not_ asking anyone to do it either. - Nabla (talk) 19:00, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support in general, the broad idea of a modified PROD. It seems to me that more discussion will be needed to flesh out the details, so I'm supporting the general idea, rather than any specific proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:23, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose What I'm seeing is that a TOU violation gets to stay on Wikipedia for a week. While, yes, it could possibly be edited and changed to fall within the TOU, it still essentially gets to stay on Wikipedia for a week, during which time the page, for starters, could be archived by the Internet Archive or Archive.is or something like that. In my time of editing here, I haven't yet seen someone create an make an undisclosed paid contribution that wasn't obvious advertising, which falls under WP:G11 (and, depending on the content, WP:G12). If someone did make one without advertising, how would they get caught so we could even apply the template? Even if they were a sockpuppet, that would fall under WP:G5 as a creation by a banned or blocked user. Many of the things I put up in my oppose to the first proposal apply here as well, so forgive me if I left out a couple things here. — Gestrid (talk) 03:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Staying for 7 days is better than staying forever. Though a great many articles will fall under G11/12/5, with experience many paid editors have become better at their trade and their articles would not fall under any of the above criteria. Many examples of such cases have been presented above and you could read through to note them. The most recent case I encountered is Kirk B. Jensen, which had its G5 rejected because it was formed as a result of a draft histmerge (the main author was a G5 eligible sockpuppet, but since a one edit user removed the spam and created this, G5 was disallowed). I am not seeing G11 or G12 as well. Maybe it will be deleted in AfD, but I am not sure about the criteria I should provide, so in effect the article stays because I know my deletion rationale might be countered with a WP:NAUTHOR or WP:NPROF, both of which fall in areas where I am not really sure about how the criteria are usually applied. That's one of the reasons why the new criteria might be required. Jupitus Smart 08:44, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Another example of an amusing G5 rejection. Gestrid, you said "What I'm seeing is that a TOU violation gets to stay on Wikipedia for a week." Articles eligible for speedy deletion would still be eligible. The proposal is to merely supplement the existing tools by making the remaining articles (which usually violate the core policies in subtle ways) deleted by default after 7 days unless someone takes the responsibility for removing the PROD. It's a small step, but a step in the right direction. Rentier (talk) 10:52, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

User:Rentier That article also contained outing. The person's birthdate was published without a reliable source. Have removed this from Jaimie Hilfiger but likely needs oversight. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:55, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose the specific proposal, Draftify (or AfC) is better (and can Salt if admin only lockout needed) would be a better method without inventing new PROD : the criteria for removing the stickyPROD is? The reasoning for keeping such content created in violation of ToU in articlespace for an extra week is? My new analysis at WP:BOGOF is that we want to put the burden back on the paid editors (to do the work, and disclose etc) and the crucial aspect is it has to be easy for editors, not a burden to admins (or fall foul of a lack of consensus across inclusionist-deletionist admin spectrum) to move the content out of articlespace immediately, and then can deliberate on the fate? Gestrid is right. Widefox; talk 18:54, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support in clear-cut cases especially when there is considerably outweighing advertising or when it would clearly be for the encyclopedia's benefit. Our deletions policies are clear about this so this would be adding on it; Our pillars themselves make clear we will not accept webhosted advertising. I would support the exception of Drafting improvable contents. I certainly wouldn't support moving all of then in Draftspace in lieu of deletion since that would be aiding their policy violations. SwisterTwister talk 07:42, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose It is not a responsibility of our administrators to enforce TOU. It is a responsibility of WMF which has its own staff. Ruslik_Zero 18:59, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Well, as nice as it would be to have the WMF devote paid staff time to things like their legal obligation to not host copyrighted content, that isn't the case. Copyvio is first and foremost a legal issue/TOU issue. We have empowered our volunteer administrators to do this task via local policy. Saying that something is the job of the WMF does not preclude our enforcing something locally. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:47, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
    • It also assumes that the WMF will get round to doing that. In my relatively short experience here I've seen that the WMF, usually, not always, is about as useful as a trapdoor in a canoe. DrStrauss talk 18:58, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. It is absolutely and unquestionably the responsibility of our administrators to enforce the TOU when (as in this case) violations potentially endanger the reputation and value of Wikipedia as a whole. However, I strongly prefer a more broadly-worded "burn it with fire without even looking at it" approach to all contributions from undisclosed paid editors. Undisclosed paid editors are a threat to the entire project; every edit they make, without exception, hurts and endangers the project as a whole and should be instantly excised without regard for content on discovery. The slim benefits of allowing some edits to remain do not come anywhere close to the serious threat to the project as a whole that every single paid edit, without exception, is inevitably a part of. This suggestion would fall short of that and is therefore insufficient, but it would be at least a step in the right direction. --Aquillion (talk) 01:34, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support largely per Kudpung, above. I was going to oppose on the grounds that G12 and G5 can take care of everything, but after a little thought realized that is not the case. Consider the following: a paid editor, who is not a sock, creates a string of articles. They fall short of G12, but are promotional in nature. PROD is tried, and removed by the creator. The creator is then discovered, and blocked. Even if PROD was not tried before, a PROD tag applied after could be removed by an IP or drive-by editor, and such an edit would not be enough to revert on the suspicion of socking. Their creations are no longer eligible for PROD or CSD. In my experience (involving some guesswork, of course) this is a not-uncommon scenario; there are numerous articles that are clearly promotional in intent but whose language is borderline. Of course this criterion will only help deal with a small subset of those, but every little bit helps. Vanamonde (talk) 05:01, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Identification of who is and who is not an undisclosed paid editor has far too high a rate of false positives (and maybe false negatives also), especially as disclosure may be retroactive. The rules for this are complicated, will attach stigma to content based on its author not its reliability and unlike some others in this discussion I see that as a Very Bad Thing as that stigma will rapidly transfer to all editors of a page, regardless of whether they are suspected of being undisclosed paid editors or not. And anyway, much of what this could apply to will be speedy deletable under criterion G5 anyway. Thryduulf (talk) 07:55, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Paid articles introduce promotional bias. The bias is rarely fully removed by editing despite huge effort expended on verifying and attempting to fix these generally non-notable and borderline-notable articles. An effort, I must add, that encourages paid editors to insert even more promotional content into Wikipedia. One undisclosed paid editing company boasts: "Our Wikipedia veterans create or correct it in a way that it conforms to all Wikipedia policies and sticks on the wiki, even gets updated for free by the Wikipedia volunteers later on." Just take a look at the sockfarms discovered in the last week here, here, here, here, and here. Hundreds of articles. One false positive that was promptly identified. A "sticky prod" is too little too late, but it's better than nothing. Rentier (talk) 11:31, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support as less-controversial alternative, only if the more consequent and efficient proposal about speedy deletions fails. GermanJoe (talk) 17:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose-- Try and imagine a perfect world in which volunteer editors and paid editors created articles that were virtually indistinguishable from one another. They were equally about notable subjects, written equally from a neutral point of view, had excellent third party sources. For what possible reason would you still oppose articles created by paid editors? Except for this one area which is against TOU, these articles unquestionably enhance the encyclopedia. Cant those who voted Support understand this logic? I know this is not a perfect world, and the chances of paid articles being written about non-notable subjects in a promotional style are much higher, and therefore there exist many rules on Wikipedia to control those kinds of articles. Summarily deleting well-written articles about notable subjects solely because a suspected paid editor wrote them seems like shooting ourselves in the foot. I believe very strongly that articles should be judged on their own merit, just like people. It was not so long ago that people were judged based on their origins, and not on their own merits. Society suffered from this behavior, since fantastic people from "problematic" backgrounds were not allowed to succeed. Oh wait, did I use the past tense? Hmmm, I think this kind of mentality is still rampant in the greater society, and exists even more so in the mini-universe of the subculture called Wikipedia. The conclusion? It is all about power: who has it, who doesn't, and how can the ones in power assert their power over those that don't. The longer I spend on Wikipedia the more I see this place as the farthest thing from a libertarian, egalitarian, meritocracy as can be imagined. Have you ever wondered why about 10% of editors are women? If you would like to learn more abut that you can go here, here, and here. There is also a problem with content about women on the encyclopedia. Look here, and here. I for one, would not care if more excellent articles went up on Wikipedia about women, even if paid editors wrote them or even sock puppets. I know that is a radical view here, but extraordinary times call for extraordinary methods. DaringDonna (talk) 21:27, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Very strongly support for the following reasons:

1. Paid editing goes against the spirit of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a form of promotion.
2. The amount of absolute guff that comes into the New Pages Feed which is clearly from COI editors that can’t be speedied because it doesn’t fit G11 is astounding as Kudpung says.
3. The future of Wikipedia has to be taken into account. ACTRIAL is now underway and it is something that I believe to be essential to the survival of Wikipedia. Once upon a time, if you said “I read it on Wikipedia” you would be laughed at. In recent years, Wikipedia has been allowed by some exam boards in the UK as a citeable source. If this influx of junk continues, that will no longer be the case. This proposal is similarly important for the same reason.
4. It sends a message. “If you violate our Terms of Use, your gubbins gets deleted.” Not “you can degrade an extraordinary work of collaboration into a soapbox because we want to hang on to some anarchistic ideology.”
5. It’s perfectly plausible. We can still retain WP:AGF but use common sense similar to the WP:DUCK test. It requires no software changes. DrStrauss talk 19:13, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

• Strong support - oh what a blessing it will be for NPP and AfD - much needed!! ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:15, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support -- having paid articles in the mainspace is disruptive; this is the best way to deal with this issue. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:17, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• weak oppose on a procedural basis. This too would be a major change and consensus for this shouldn't be found without its own RfC. That said, I certainly like this better and might even support it on it's own (I'd need to think on it more). Hobit (talk) 16:02, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support as it seems the above proposal won't pass. We need a more proactive approach to undeclared paid editing, and we need to make sure our terms of use aren't just a dead letter. Daß Wölf 02:25, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - We already have adequate mechanisms to challenge pure advertising or material of dubious notability. Carrite (talk) 05:13, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support - as long as there is mechanism whereby the PROD can be contested by anybody but the creator, so that we can start an AfD discussion in case there is a consensus to keep the article. Otherwise, how would we know if there is consensus against deletion? RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 15:16, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Why can IPs nominate a CSD?

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I'm still asking. Earlier I ran across a CSD nomination for Nina Godiwalla that been nominated by an IP. I and another editor saved it by just cleaning up the sourcing. It did have source problems, but the article was pretty much already written and not anywhere near candidacy for CSD. I'd like to think if I didn't catch this, whichever admin did see it would know it wasn't CSD fodder. Why can IPs make nominations? What an opportunity for vandalism. CSD nominations really should be restricted to auto confirmed and above. — Maile (talk) 00:55, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Any editor can apply a CSD tag when patrolling new pages including IPs but not existing articles. Sometimes it can be abused or used for vandalism. KGirl ^{(Wanna chat?)} 01:11, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Not a horrible idea, and one I'd probably support if we could find a good low-cost method to enforce it via edit filter. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 01:48, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

I've seen some legit CSD requests added by IPs. That's why they are still allowed. A single instance of mistagging is not a good rationale for disallowing these, among other things because a single legit tagging will invalidate the whole argument. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:45, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, it's just not big enough of a problem, and the reviewing admin is (we hope) intelligent enough to tell if it's a legitimate CSD. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 07:54, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

(Edit conflict with Jo-Jo Eumerus): I don't think there is a need to filter out IPs from tagging articles for speedy deletion according WP:CSD criteria. There are editors that contribute on maintenance tasks but choose not to register an account. I see that most vandalism is usually quick and easy, so in this case the solution might be worst than the problem. If the filter was implemented nothing would prevent that determined IP from registering an account and tagging it unless auto-confirmed status would also become a requirement. I would personally leave it as it is now. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 07:49, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Er ... your point is well taken. As much as I would prefer the holes in the system be filled to prevent a recurrence, I've had personal experience with a determined blocked sock master who did exactly what you say. He had been vandalizing as numerous IPs, and attacking editors on a talk page. When the talk page was protected, he simply created an account, and made enough minor edits elsewhere to achieve confirmed status, with the sole purpose of returning to attack on the talk page. We got him in the long haul. But it's a possibility out there. — Maile (talk) 12:16, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

The tagging user doesn't decide the page should be deleted; the handling admin does. An anon who tags a page correctly has merely attracted the admin's attention to the page - to do an action (s)he would have been authorized to do even without the tagging. An anon who mistags a page has done an action which is no worse than a registered user mistagging a page. Unless you can show that anons have a much higher false-positive rate than registered users, or even than extended-confirmed users, there is no reason to even start discussing this. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:21, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

The CSD should be reviewed to make sure it is correct by the admin before they hit the delete button. If this happens it doesn't matter if there is the odd malicious nomination made by an IP. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:30, 14 August 2017 (UTC).

Expand G13 to cover ALL old drafts

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Note Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion#Blatant disregard for the RfC, encouragement of that disregard, and overwhelming of MfD by worthless harmless drafts, and for example Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Montenegro-United Kingdom relations. Legacypac is proving that there is near endless crap and mess abandoned in DraftSpace. Unowned (no user caring for it), content-forked attribution-compliance-menacing scrambled mess. There are few OK stubby things amongst them. The stuff should be deleted for some many reasons, and page-by-page MfDing them is unworkable and trying is disrupting MfD.

Things in draftspace that are not drafts should be removed to elsewhere. Users' notes should be moved to userspace. Article sandboxes deleted per the same rationale written at WP:UP#COPIES, there are good short term but long term they are attribution hazards. Generally useful stuff, but not article drafting, move to ProjectSpace, and the few long term good drafts, probably a WikiProject in the several instances where this applies.

There are other ideas for this old crap. DraftPROD. DraftPROD will be pseudo-speedy deletion. AfC-managed autodeletion. Yes, AfC reviewers need to be able to delete completely hopeless things and tendentiously resubmitted stuff, but they do not go backwards for years old abandoned crap.

Everything in DraftSpace untouched for 6 months should be speediable under G13. Everything that would be hit by that and shouldn't be deleted should not be in DraftSpace. Bot edits and minor edits, and tagging "worthless" should not necessarily delay G13, but it really doesn't matter. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:37, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support per the spirit of WP:NOTWEBHOST. Admins handling deletions can and should salvage good content, but there's loads of crap drafts (and plenty of seriously problematic content among them). ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 04:59, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support but would increase time to two years, that would provide a more than reasonable safety period to help prevent any useful content from getting and still address the bulk of the problem. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 08:00, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support CHANGE TO: Conditional support SEE ADDENDUM - CSD G13 falls short in requiring drafts to use the {{AFC submission}} template to be eligible; all drafts should be equally eligible.--John Cline (talk) 09:04, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Addendum - upon considering the merits of those opposing this measure, and those who reserve their support, I have come to agree that draft deletions are more than perfunctory clean-up measures. And that time-based criteria, alone, are needlessly blind and recklessly impartial. More is needed here than an hourglass provides and haste, in these deletions, is clearly contentious. Interim steps appear needed, such as "DraftPROD" and perhaps, time spent categorized as "usurpable". Seeing that the {{AFC submission}} clause was deliberately carved, it occurs to me that a proposal bearing on it ought also address the prevailing concerns that brought it about. This proposal is remiss in that regard.--John Cline (talk) 03:10, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support - provided fair warning is given to any interested parties. Anything deleted can be restored on request per WP:REFUND. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:14, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

  Or the deletion postponed per the current AFC G13 deletion postponement process, in my opinion. --Izno (talk) 12:25, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

  But that implies having someone watching it at the very precise moment where someone decides to speedely delete the draft. If no one is looking and it gets deleted, the chances that someone will later discover it and ask for a refund are close to zero; "out of sight, out of mind". The collaborative process needs that the content is left around in plain sight for someone to stumble upon it and decide to adopt it and make it better; getting rid of it prevents the whole process. And it is not reasonable requiring the editor that finds about a deleted draft to ask for a REFUND; since the talk page and history are also made inaccessible upon deletion, there's no way to assess whether it's worth to start the non-instantaneous and non-automatic bureaucratic process, bothering some fellow administrator, maybe only to discover whether or not there was something there that was worth the bother. Diego (talk) 20:01, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support - 6 months is long enough to improve anything that is likely to be improved. Cabayi (talk) 09:25, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

  I have had Draft:FuturLab on my to-do list for some time—in fact, more than 6 months since I last touched it. The time period is mostly-irrelevant for long-term, in-good-faith, Wikipedia editors, since we can always extend the lifetime of a draft. --Izno (talk) 12:19, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support 6 months matches the Stale Draft report generated weekly amd G13 should cover all drafts. . There are over 6,000 such drafts ranging from simply blank to hoaxes, attack pages, profiles of completely non-notable people and other nonsense. Anything actually useful will je G13 postponed or promoted (yes occasionally fully formed articles are found abandoned in Draft space, but without reviewing the abandoned stuff and deleting the garbage we will never find the useful pages. Legacypac (talk) 10:03, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Broadly support making G13 apply to all draft-space content. I don't think I agree that WikiProjects should assume "long term good drafts" and I explicitly disagree with Smokey's assertion that "shouldn't be deleted should not be in draft space"—some draft-space content is worth leaving for work-to-be-done. I do agree with Ritchie's caveat. --Izno (talk) 12:19, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

  Also, regarding notability (which apparently started this discussion to some degree at the 'blatant disregard' thread), I had this to say to the now-banned now-ex-administrator working on drafts. I am unsure if it is a point that has been made previously.... --Izno (talk) 12:23, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

• support since there is a notable amount of abandoned drafts. The lack of AFC template does not make them any better. However it wouldn't be bad to notify involved parties and/or corresponding wikiprojects before applying it. --Kostas20142 (talk) 15:12, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Draftspace needs tidying and that task should take up a minimal amount of volunteer time. – Joe (talk) 15:53, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• support - I see no particular reason why G13 should only apply to drafts with an AfC template on them. In fact it seems to me to have been simply an oversight that that was not part of the original RfC for G13. Bot and minor edits should not restart the clock. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:55, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support draft space isn't really my thing and I don't see too much harm with stuff staying there, but we are not a webhosting service, and it also makes next to no sense to delete things with an AfC tag, but not one without it. Per Kudpung, I'd also like someone to close the conversation on the top of this page as to how to deal with bot edits and G13. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:59, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support subject to all the same rules as already apply to the tagged drafts, incuding {{AfC postpone G13}} and WP:REFUND. An untagged draft is no better than a tagged one, there is no reason to delete the latter and not the former. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:24, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:38, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support per all the above. Good proposal to clean up some of the junk we've built up.--Mojo Hand (talk) 18:42, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support provided there is a mechanism for editors to exempt particular drafts from G13. (Note that about 1,900 articles are about to be put into draft space that were created by the Content translation tool, some of which may have been improved or overwritten since then). If this proposal is implemented there will be a need to reinstate automated daily processes first to warn the creator, then to list the articles due for deletion: Noyster (talk), 18:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
  • @Noyster: The mechanism is really just "make an edit". We have {{AfC postpone G13}} as a null template to allow editors to postpone G13 and keep track of how many postpones have been made. Anyone can use it. (As for the bot notifications, that's currently not required of G13 but may not be a bad idea. Worst case they go to REFUND.) ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 20:17, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support makes sense to me. Jytdog (talk) 19:41, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strongest possible support with bells on. This will solve both the overflow of drafts at MfD and the massive piles of cruft dumped into draftspace and abandoned. Kudos to SmokeyJoe for having the balls to propose this. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:29, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support clearly as this is something that I had not only used IAR in that past, but I had also proposed here long ago but nothing surfaced from it. General G6 cleaning basically. SwisterTwister talk 20:43, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose No no this is a terrible idea. Age should not be used as a synonym for low-quality. What is needed is a better deletion mechanism not the expansion of the not-so-good mechanism. The result of this proposal would be that the good drafts will be moved to the user pages for the fear of the deletion. Perversely, the remaining drafts will be of lesser quality and would bolster the argument that the draft namespace attracts only wrong-kind of drafts (since good productive editors will not be attracted to the draft namespace.) -- Taku (talk) 23:00, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Change to Support: SmokeyJoe makes a good argument: the status quo is not good, which I agree and making a change is better doing nothing. But, for the record, I still think this is not a good idea, if not terriblest (English word?) idea. -- Taku (talk) 20:49, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose An arbitrary time limit works no benefit to the project. But if this does pass, i will stop advising people to start by creating drafts in draft space, and instead advise that all drafts be created in user space. I will also stop draftifing marginal articles, moving them instead to user space. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 23:03, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Taku and DES, these drafts are already being mass pseudo-speedy deleted at MfD. Their deletions are frequent and apparently uncontestable (ubncontestable not counting procedural objections). If you disagree with their rapid barely-reviewed no-discussion deletions, you should speak up at Wikipedia_talk:Miscellany_for_deletion#Blatant_disregard_for_the_RfC.2C_encouragement_of_that_disregard.2C_and_overwhelming_of_MfD_by_worthless_harmless_drafts. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:41, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment If this is enacted to consensus, I propose that: All pages in draft space that are are at least 3 months old that do not have any form of AFC submission banner on them have the AFC banner placed on them so that they can be enrolled in the AFC tracking categories based on their creation date. WIth that I will reset the HasteurBot G13 reminder process and CSD nominations at 5 months reminder and 6 months CSD nomination. This is 100% unedited because I prefer to take the more conservative view that unedited really means unedited and I'd rather not have to sort through all the exceptions as to bots and real changes. I chose the conservative view so that I'm not exceeding the mandate of the community. Hasteur (talk) 00:06, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
  • @Hasteur: I'd actually recommend a very different route. Rather than trying to template and mass-delete these, I think it should just be a criterion editors can choose to nominate under. Each page should be considered on its merits for speedy deletion with editors/admins considering postponing or expanding. That is the point of draft space, after all. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:12, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
  • I recommend instead that we ask AfC reviewers to begin reviewing old untagged drafts, and decide on their own judgement whether to add the AfC tag, move out of draft space, or tag immediately with G13. There is no need for multiple handling of the vast majority of abandoned hopeless worthless stuff. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:38, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
    • @BU Rob13:@SmokeyJoe: We can slap on {{AFC submission/draft}} which helps get them in the Year/month/day tracking categories that I use to help drive the bot. Hasteur (talk) 02:10, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Sure, but there should be no compulsion to tag obviously inappropriate drafts with that tag. If they are old, abandoned, worthless, no hope, let that tagger in their judgement tag them G13 immediately. Reviewing the old stuff once is enough. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:16, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment The cutout of CSD:G13 that excludes not AFC draftspace pages was intentional for the above noted reasons Personally I think think that we should nominate, but it takes some significant abuses of the good will to make the effort. Hasteur (talk) 00:08, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Junk is junk, regardless of whether it has an AFC tag on it. MER-C 02:41, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Do you want to kill Wikipedia? 'Cause this is how you kill Wikipedia. The continued gentrification of mainspace--where ugly content isn't allowed and WP:DEADLINE is ignored--is bad enough, but now there appears to be a large number of editors who don't care to preserve any refuge for stuff that sucks, who don't care to allow people to write lousy articles in hopes that someday they will be worthy. Every edit you delete is an insult to the editor who volunteered his or her time to contribute it. Some of them need it because the edits are actively harmful, but those are all covered by G5, G10, G11, and/or G12. The entire idea of blanket or time-based deletion of content that is 1) not presented to the public, and 2) is available for people to work on and improve is wrongheaded and against the spirit of collaboration that draws editors in. Actions like this drive out hobbyist editors, and play to editors who thrive by picking apart and rejecting others' contributions, rather than encouraging them. WP:NOTWEBHOST is entirely about stuff that was never intended to be part of the encyclopedia, not legitimate contributions that simply suck. Jclemens (talk) 04:52, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Jclemens, I largely agree, but not completely. This is not killing Wikipedia. AfC is killing Wikipedia. WP:ACTRIAL is underway, it may be a move to fixing, and at least it will tell us something. DraftSpace is killing Wikipedia, not because of gentrification, I think you mean to say Extememe Immediatism. Newcomers are sent to draftspace where they will not meet other editors, and they will be ignored. The notion that drafts can sit in draftspace forever is killing Wikipedia. Newcomers with not topics should introduce coverage of the new topics into existing mainspace page before writing a standalone (orphan) page. Anyway, they are the small minority, most of the drafts are not realistic drafts. Allowing G13 on all the old stuff at least gives Legacypac an incentive to continue reviewing the old drafts and bringing to light the few worth attention.
    Also, as I said to Taku and Des, these deletions are happening already. Collectively they are SNOW deleted, and this is a more efficient method, and one that lays more responsibility on the nominator. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:48, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
    • Worth noting also that these drafts aren't works-in-progress. By the six month mark, they're works-in-trash-bin. They've been abandoned. That's kind of the point. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:05, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

      I could enumerate several things that would kill Wikipedia (out of date user interface, steep learning curve, uncompetitive usability on mobile and tablet compared to Facebook / Twitter / Instagram etc, trigger-happy admins, a WMF software engineering department that seems to have difficulty shipping stuff people want and works and has been adequately tested, a leader who is as out of touch with the day-to-day runnings of Wikipedia as Jacob Rees-Mogg is to the job centre, etc etc etc) but the deletion of non-AfC drafts after 6 months is not one of them. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:28, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose with caveats. I previously supported such proposals for the reason that undeletion is always possible. However, Jclemens' argument holds considerable weight. I do agree there are a number of drafts that are hopelessly unsuited and fall under WP:NOTWEBHOST or similar policies but then a extension of U5 would be better than this proposal.
  Drafts are currently linked to from the main space if an article does not yet exist, allowing all editors to find potentially useful drafts to expand and send to mainspace. We should not get rid of this potential to increase both the project and our editor base.
  The question should be: Is there any need to remove stale drafts that do not violate any policy (including attribution!)? I don't see any real reason mentioned so far and if there is not, the mere chance that someone after more than six months finds the draft and improves them is sufficient reason to keep all of them. Again, I'm happy to support deletion of drafts that are clear violations of policy, including content-forks and drafts that are someone using Wikipedia as their webhost, but I oppose blanket deletion of all drafts because there is nothing we can gain from removing non-policy violating, potentially viable drafts.
  Also, currently some editors seem to use draftifying - without consent - as a way to circumvent the deletion policy (see previous discussions here and here for example) and this proposal would basically open the door to speedy deletion of any article. If someone wished to do so, they could just move thousands of rarely-edited articles to draft space and after six months, they'd be gone. So even if this proposal passes, it should not apply to drafts that are the result of a move (except if draftifying was the consensus at AfD or requested by the creator). Regards SoWhy 12:30, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
  • SoWhy, the Draft pages could be ignored, but many seem incapable of ignoring them. The need is to stop them coming all through MfD one by one. A U5 condition for the author to have made no mainspace edits? See WP:ACTRIAL for implementing that if the assumptions are right. Mass draftifications? Yes, it is a barn door loophole for backdoor deletion, and at WT:Drafts there have been strong statements against it at all, except for when it is a good idea. I think we have almost got good boundaries documented, see Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol#Clarification_and_guidance_for_draftification. Most of your concerns are being addressed. The current abandoned junk though? Ignore, or MfD one by one, or speedy? They are currently being speedied via unparticipated MfDs. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:52, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
    • SmokeyJoe: ACTRIAL will not have an impact on the ability to create drafts or AfC. It will likely reduce the need for draftification of articles such as Draft:Mohammadpur Khanquah, by preventing creation by non-autoconfirmed users, but half of the project is getting good faith users acquainted with en.Wiki and that includes sending those who want to immediately create an article AfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:28, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
      • TonyBallioni, not directly and immediately, but I for one anticipate that it will. A major premise of ACTRIAL is that people should experience content improvement in existing articles before writing new articles. If this premise is borne out, it should inform revision of the Article Wizard instructions. Currently, the Article Wizard paves a clear road for a newcomer to make their first edits by writing a new draft on a new topic. Many of the drafts to be deleted are first edits of newcomers, and worse, are last edits of those newcomers. I believe it likely that if autoconfirmation is required before writing either a new article or a new draft, there will be far less woefully unsuitable drafts dumped by drive-by editors. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:28, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment anything with half an ounce of possibility as a potential page is being postponed or put through AfC anyway. Occasionally abandoned Drafts get sent to mainspace. The VAST majority of non-AfC Draft space is link SPAM, hopeless garbage, blatent lies, and absolutely never gonna be a valid topic junk. This will really help useful pages be surfaced and improved. It ensures that all Draft pages get some experienced editor eyes at some point after they are created so we can dispense with problematic pages. Legacypac (talk) 17:49, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per my usual arguments against G13. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:54, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support per arguments by BU Rob13, Kudpung, and others. Our purpose is to build a published encyclopedia, not to stockpile content that no one cares enough about to actually work on. Six months on the internet is a long time.- MrX 18:38, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• I continue to believe, for reasons similar to Jclemens, that any time-based deletion of drafts must be paired with analysis of their content - that is, they should also meet speedy deletion criteria of their target namespace, typically the A* series. An abandoned draft reading in full "[Name] (born [date], 1999) is a high school senior at a local Miami public school. She has been described overall as a stunning individual and has never failed to excel in everything she does." doesn't need an MFD; one starting "Captain Marvel is an upcoming American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Carol Danvers." with 45 references and 2400 words of prose does, even if it goes unedited for six months and a day. And yes, there are users who would tag that, and admins who would delete it.
  That said, this proposal is still better than the status quo, where drafts like my first example are regularly speedied despite meeting no speedy deletion criterion, typically with a G2 or G6 or G13 deletion summary. I started to do an analysis of G2 deletions here; an unexpected drop in my free time has prevented me from following up on it. —Cryptic 19:09, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support equality for drafts irrespective of userspace {{AFC submission}} or draftspace. Widefox; talk 19:11, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support. The draft space is not a free repository where drafts can remain indefinitely, especially if they are about topics that are clearly non-notable, such as WP:MILL topics. If this were not true, then we risk the draft space becoming a place where anyone can write an article about a decidedly non-notable subject (i.e. something not meant to be included in the encyclopedia) and have it remain there forever – this is the fundamental violation of WP:NOTWEBHOST that we are trying to avoid. Previously such drafts were nominated to WP:MFD, but it's been pointed out that MFD is somewhat overwhelmed by these nominations. To avoid deletion, all it would take is one edit, one comment to say "hey, I'd still like to keep this". Or, if it has already been deleted, a note at WP:REFUND or to the deleting administrator. Mz7 (talk) 20:40, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose without additional requirements. Most importantly, I don't believe we should consider drafts "abandoned" if the user is still actively editing but has some draft he/she hasn't touched in 6 months. If other editors feel it should still be deleted, that's a good case for MfD. There's a lot of crap indeed, and G13 should be broader (after checking a sample of the recent MfDs, it looks like 80% of them should've been speediable, but not 100%). But there's no requirement here that it be an inappropriate topic; there's no requirement here that the article be of poor quality; there's no requirement here that the editor be inactive; there's no requirement here for a waiting period to ask an active editor about it; there's no requirement here to make userfication an option... Obviously I wouldn't want all of these requirements, but as it stands it seems like this will allow for deletion based solely on time, with no other considerations required. Am I missing something? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:45, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

• Just because the expansion would allow for deletion of more abandoned drafts doesn't mean that it insists upon deletion. Drafts that look half-decent - anyone can plop the postponement template on them to forestall deletion for another 6 months. Reviewers can use their judgement to ask still-active editors about their abandoned drafts, or even just drop the postponement template on them in the good-faith assumption that the author will be back. Setting a bright-line bar for inactivity is difficult, because how do you define it? A month? Three? Do you give additional leeway for editors with lots of edits but who haven't stopped in in awhile? Does a single edit in a year, not even to the draft in question, count as "activity" for this purpose?

  If you insist that a topic be "inappropriate", again you get the question of how to define that, which is something we've been struggling with at MfD. There are editors who will argue that anything with even a 5% chance of becoming notable is appropriate enough to keep forever in draftspace, and there are editors who will argue that anything without an 80% chance of being kept at AfD is inappropriate. It's going to be impossible to create a hard line that will satisfy everyone and still allow for things to be deleted.

  I believe userfication is always an option for drafts, and of course, WP:REFUNDS are cheap and easy. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:59, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

  doesn't mean that it insists upon deletion - If we say "after 6 months, drafts are speediable" it will become routine maintenance to delete drafts older than six months. And it will be interpreted by many different people who may or may not have the same perspective as you -- people who would be justified to delete regardless because we have no qualifiers in this text.

  Reviewers can use their judgement to ask still-active editors about their abandoned drafts, or even just drop the postponement template - Or they could not do that. If it's something that reviewers should be doing, that should be reflected in the proposed text.

  Setting a bright-line bar for inactivity is difficult, because how do you define it? - Arbitrary is fine by me. Why 6 months until deletion rather than 3 or 12 or 5.9? To me, the simplest way would be to say that a draft can be deleted if its major contributor(s) has/have been inactive for 6 months.

  If you insist that a topic be "inappropriate", again you get the question of how to define that - Fair. I suppose I mean no obvious problems with either GNG or NOT, but again, this is just one of many hypothetical qualifiers I threw out (not something I actually think should be imposed, necessarily). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:02, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose  The word "crap" is popular here, which shows thinking influenced by an excrement viewpoint.  Draft articles are work product, and reliably sourced statements are the building blocks of a reliable encyclopedia.  It is the deletion of reliably sourced statements which turns work product into waste product (excrement).  We are not here to create waste product.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:18, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

  If only there were more than the very occasional reliably sourced statement in the pages that this covers. Sadly you have to wade through heaps of undeleted crap for such a gem. G13 facilitates the sorting. Legacypac (talk) 01:59, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

  If it shouldn't apply to drafts with reliably sourced statements, that's relatively straightforward to include in the text of the criterion. Otherwise, presumably, it will also be used to delete those with very occasionally reliably sourced statements, no? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:04, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

  That is a different proposal you could make to apply to AfC drafts now subject to G13. Most rejected AfC drafts that should never see the light of day (SPAM and non-notable topics) include reliably sourced statements. Legacypac (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support Keeping drafts for years encourages the idea that Wikipedia is a web hosting service, and that leads to the current situation where potential articles in the backlog of abandoned thoughts are likely to languish forever. An admin is required to apply thought before deleting a speedy candidate so it is unlikely that future featured articles will be tossed out. Johnuniq (talk) 03:49, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support per above. I'm also one of the few admins who actually process G13 requests. Per my experience, most of it *is* cruft. -FASTILY 06:02, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support per above. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:42, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I occasionally go through the Stale Draft Report and many of them are, to put it lightly, garbage. Because we're unable to tag them with G13 to get rid of them faster, they sit there for an extra 7 days where they're inevitably deleted anyway. This doesn't apply to userspace, as far as I'm aware, so experienced users will be able to edit drafts for months in their own userspace if they desire. If something decent is deleted from draftspace it can always be refunded at a later date anyway. Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:38, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

  Good grief, I've just had a look at that. I would like one of the oppose !voters to explain how they can salvage Draft:Rim Malass is one of the famous singers worldwide. Born on September 14,2003 she published 9m songs her own and got help from other artists too. and turn it into something encyclopedic. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:45, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

  We're not talking about a rule for terrible drafts. We're talking about a time limit after which any draft can be deleted. If that terrible draft you just linked were 5 months old, it wouldn't even be covered here. If the problem is terrible drafts, the criteria should cover terrible drafts, not all drafts that happen to have been created before a particular date. I can't speak for other opposers, but I can't imagine anybody thinks every draft is salvageable and worth keeping. Also up for deletion would be very good articles that happen to be 6 months old and, most importantly, a whole lot of edge cases where sometimes they'll be deleted and sometimes they won't. With no other qualification other than time, the quality of the draft doesn't even come into play except as the reviewing admin subjectively decides to factor it in. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:04, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (edit conflicted with Rhododendrites' comment & not meant to reflect on it) I think this is one of the fundamental problems about this whole draftspace debate. There's this romanticized view that there's all this incredible content in draftspace just waiting to be deleted by evil deletionists who don't want to give peace a chance, but really, the stunning majority of it is one-line drive-by dumps by IPs or SPAs that needs to be weeded out so people have a chance to find the good stuff. Nobody is out here cheering wildly as wonderfully-sourced FA-material gets ruthlessly G13'd. We're looking for that stuff among the rubble, but there's very little gold out here in these hills. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:07, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Since this is directly below my comment, I presume this is directed at me. If so, it is, I believe, the first time I've been [indirectly] placed on the side counter the apocryphal "evil deletionist" camp (a couple blocks away from the street from the evil admin cabal, I believe). It also misrepresents what I'm arguing.

As I said, most of the content that would be deleted should indeed be deleted, and this criterion should be broadened to include that stuff. But it doesn't just do that; it says any draft 6 months old can be speedy deleted. The problem is that some are not junk. Whether that non-junk makes up 50%, 20%, or 0.25% of all drafts, non-junk nonetheless exists. But this proposal does not distinguish. It would be easy to add some additional qualification -- I'm opposing because this RfC is already well underway such that it would be fruitless to propose alternate wording at this point. But I would support with other wording. Of course, it doesn't look like it needs my support... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:53, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Rhododendrites, I apologize. That comment was meant as a reply to Ritchie and was not directed at you. It was a post borne of frustration with the kind of draftspace content that Ritchie highlighted in his post. It's below your comment because it was an edit conflict with yours (which I didn't read until after posting mine, and had no bearing on what I posted), which is why they're indented to the same level. I've put a note on there to make that clearer. I in no way meant to label you as part of, or contra to, any deletionist cabal, or to misrepresent your argument in any way. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:14, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I guess that means I can't save that diff to pull out next time I'm put back into the evil deletionist cabal. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:32, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support per Rim Malass and her nine million songs; uh, that's pretty convincing. — fortunavelut luna 11:50, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support...9m times...ehmm, actually, yes, time to get rid of all this, or at least move it to userspace. Lectonar (talk) 11:53, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support Yes, that list is very persuasive. jcc (tea and biscuits) 13:17, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support per Jclemens and PMC. Gentrification is improvement. There's nothing in draft space worth saving and refunds are free. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:34, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
  • No, undeletion is not free. It hides the content from all non-admins, who won't even know it's possible to ask for it back. I've seen several people use this as an argument for cleaning up draftspace, but I have yet to see anyone who's actually had an article undeleted to work on it suggest this as a good idea. It really comes across as a 'let them eat cake' kind of comment. We need a junkyard where harmless stuff can accumulate without this sort of time-based deletion. Jclemens (talk) 05:14, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
    • In the 6-7 months that I've been actively closing MfDs and draft deletions, I've had exactly one person come to my talk page and ask me for their drafts back. One person, two drafts, and they'd been G7'd, not G13'd anyway. One of those drafts is now at Dayan Lake, while the other, Draft:Jiangshe (姜畲镇), is still blank and has never been touched again by its author. (Who, upon examination of their userpage, is indef-blocked as a sock anyway). Hell, I've never even had a draft creator come to complain that I deleted their draft and ask why.

In contrast I do have plenty of people who come requesting refunds for content that's been deleted via AfD, CSD, or PROD, or even just asking why. The massive disparity there tells me that the authors of those deleted drafts aren't here and if they are, they don't give enough of a damn to ask for a REFUND. Which, in turn, tells me that drafts that go stale are drafts we don't need, since they're not being worked on or even noticed 99% of the time. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:57, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

IMHO that's proof that drafts in Draft: space provide the best value for people who did not create them, not their originators. The requirement that drafts be updated by the person who created them entirely misses the point of having a Draft space separate from User: space in the first place, which is to allow other editors to eventually find them and build upon them, per WP:WORKINPROGRESS, WP:IMPERFECT and WP:PRESERVE. Hiding drafts merely because they're old would completely kill the possibility of finding them years after the fact, and of benefiting from the initial work of compiling references and focusing on particular aspects of the subject, which is the basis of the iterative wiki process of building content.

It's not clear to me that the people supporting this indiscriminate removal of potentialy good quality content have considered the harm of destroying the repository of knowledge that would be deleted together with the "cleanup" of trivial pages. We already have mechanisms to remove the problematic crap, and if they're not enough we can build better ones, but always providing the failsafe mechanisms to avoid removing the good content (and no, REFUND is not a valid failsafe); let's not activate the nuke option that would get rid of everything. Diego (talk) 07:47, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

"repository of knowledge" "work of compiling references" "potential good quality content" - you say this as though any significant percentage of draftspace is useful encyclopedic knowledge that has reliable references. So much of what gets put into draftspace is never going to be encyclopedically significant, whether we wait 6 months or six years. Seriously. If you can look at the short end of the stale drafts report (in other words, the stuff we actually want to target with this expansion of G13) and find one topic that's suitably notable for mainspace (even if the article isn't) and has even one ref already included, I will print this comment and eat it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:26, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

What you're asking for is the equivalent of sending DMCA takedown notices to everyone on the Internet to improve Google Search results. Well, not exactly, but what you're describing is a problem with searching through the piles of useless content to find the worthwhile stuff: if you delete it all, we've lost everything, which is why I favor deleting essentially none of it, and focusing on search tools to identify the better stuff, not deletion tools to winnow down the pile indiscriminately. Jclemens (talk) 19:11, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

• No, and one thousand times no. This exact proposal has been discussed for years at WT:Drafts and faced overwhelming opposition there, to the point of being rejected several times. It should not be approved by a stream of me-too "sounds good in principle" supporters in low-attendance summer time, at a different page, without input from the regulars there, and without a careful consideration of the reasons why G13 was deliberately worded to exclude drafts that have not been created by newbies through Articles for Creation, with arguments that have been discussed there to death. I can't write a detailed account of them here and now, but I'll be writing a summary of the highlights in all those years. Diego (talk) 07:25, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Diego, the draft namespace hasn't been in existence for 'years'. It was created to replace another repository for deadwood, remember? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:42, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Kudpung, the RfC that approved the existence of the Draft space happened in 2013, why do you say it's not been years? Diego (talk) 19:21, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Continued voting

• Oppose six months is much too short for such a time limit. The redlinks mentioned in the previous post prove that G13 extension is not required when other speedy delete criteria apply. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:02, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

redlinks prove some are already speedyable but hundreds deleted at MfD and NOT speedyable is what this change addresses. Legacypac (talk) 12:10, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Graeme Bartlett, why do you believe that six months is too short of a time limit? Is there evidence that many of these articles are improved in months 6 to 12, or beyond? - MrX 14:34, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Example of the draft I wrote as a test, which is now an article: Squeaky hinge. It would have been deleted through this process, unnecessarily. As it sat unimproved for over a year. Writers are not in the same hurry as some others are on Wikipedia! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:27, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support per Legacypac --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 20:18, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support Having seen some of the stuff that can reside in untouched userspace, I support cleaning out Draftspace like this. We need to make it clear that Wikipedia is not for hosting your autobiography (assuming it doesn't meet the requirements). Someday, I would like Wikipedia to actually be a mostly reliable source (according to, for an extreme example, English teachers). Cleaning out Draftspace is one step in the right direction, and it's a step that will need to be done sooner or later. Better to do now than later, in my opinion. (Sorry for rambling a bit.) — Gestrid (talk) 08:46, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Do you realize that this proposal would remove good content as well? G13 removes content based exclusively on how long it has been stale, irregardless of the quality or number of references in the draft. Therefore it does not work as a way to separate the wheat from the chaff. All the arguments posing that "this will leave us with a better Draftspace" fail to see that the outcome will be a Draftspace with only recent drafts, irregardless of how good or bad they are; since G13 completely misses any quality-based criteria, and it depends exclusively on an arbitrary criterion of time. Diego (talk) 19:32, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

• Pointer: I have proposed a template which can be used to stop the automatic deletion of old drafts with reviews; see Wikipedia talk:Drafts#Draft classifier template revisited. -- Taku (talk) 20:36, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

That may be a sensible idea, but it will not work if this RfC passes as proposed. Administrators would be allowed to delete any draft, even if it is marked as reviewed and/or notable, as long as it has remained unedited. G13 is unconditional, and completely unrelated to the quality of the draft.

What we need is to change G13 so that it includes criteria that prevents it to delete good content even if it has been stalled. The current version has it in some limited form: given that it can't be applied to content that wasn't created through the AfC process, the pages that are most likely to be good quality (like pages moved from main space through AfD discussions, or drafts abandoned by editors in good stand) can't currently be deleted for arbitrary reasons. Rather than drop the clause that prevents this good content from being deleted, I'd extend it to all good content (including good content that was created in AfC), to satisfy those who want the criterion to be homogeneous.

This way, all bad content could be speedely deleted for being bad, not for being old; and all good content would be WP:PRESERVEd even if it is old, regardless of its origin. Diego (talk) 19:43, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

@Diego Moya: I think what we really need is a degree of trust in our administrators. When I reviewed G13 drafts, I postponed quite a few which looked notable and had content which would actually be usable in a mainspace article some day. Admins are chosen because we supposedly have decent judgement. Let us use it so we can stop spamming MfD with nonsense that will always be deleted. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 20:59, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

I actually agree with that. But the proposal in this RfC is flawed, as it doesn't reflect that modus operandi you just described; it would merely instate a rule that "everything that has been stalled six months should be deleted"; and anyone could request the rule to be interpreted and enforced that way. If the goal of the rule is allowing admins to delete the bad and salvage the good, it should say so. I agree with SoWhy's !vote above that extending U5 would probably be more effective for this goal than making G13 universal. Diego (talk) 07:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Not true. Anyone can postpone deletion by making a null edit. There are over 400 drafts in the G13 Posponed category right now and hundreds more postponed but not categorized. Legacypac (talk) 07:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support. I was under the impression that this was already the policy. Daß Wölf 01:22, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support, with changes ... The principle of deleting useless material is correct and necessary. The problem is that this only should be applied to actually useless material, and the six month limit or any other is too drastic. At the least, there needs to be adequate notice to everybody who has ever been involved in the article, , and easy way of stopping the deletion, and an index of some sort to deleted titles. The current G13 process does none of these properly. When Hasteurbot it running, it provides notice, not always in advance, but only to the original creator--not even to people who may have formally reviewed it. The deletion can be stopped, but only if caught in time. There is no way of accessing the titles of the deleted material, even for administrators, unless the exact wording of the title is known. This will be even worse with userspace titles. And all of this functionality shouldn;t depend as it now does upon a single botowner. DGG ( talk ) 00:46, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. G13's meant to cover abandoned drafts. Userspace pages may or may not be drafts, so thus we need the AFC tagging as a bright-line rule, but anything in Draft:space is a draft by definition (aside from pages that got put into the wrong namespace by mistake), so we should always be able to treat such pages as abandoned or not-abandoned drafts. I understand the concerns regarding the six-month period, and I'm not sure what I think there, so take this as a support for the idea and an abstention on the time period. Nyttend (talk) 01:07, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

  The 6 month rule is part of the main policy of G13, and beond the scope of this discussion. Ifd some one were to make ap proposal to extend this period, I wouldn't oppose waiting on the newer drafts covered by this proposal provided that there is signoficant support to raise this time period for all drafts. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support, it does not seem to be helpful to let these pages linger in draft space forever. We should encourage more pages to be moved to main space. Until someone invents a better carrot, maybe we use the stick? —Kusma (t·c) 10:19, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support, lots of stale drafts left around and it's pointless keeping them. Stifle (talk) 13:38, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Opppose proposal as stated. Deleting simply on the basis of age is not good. The nominator should present a reason for deletion. I am also concerned that, as currently worded, the proposal will include drafts in user space. SpinningSpark 16:41, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

As currently worded the proposal only specifies the Draft namespace: Everything in DraftSpace untouched for 6 months should be speediable under G13. Drafts in userspace would not be covered. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 16:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

The title of this section is Expand G13 to cover ALL old drafts. Is that not the proposal? The passage you quote is from the fourth paragraph down. If that is the actual proposal then that should have been made a lot clearer. The same paragraph also says Everything that would be hit by that and shouldn't be deleted should not be in DraftSpace. If that is also part of the proposal, by what mechanism will it be ensured that pages that shouldn't be deleted won't be in draft space? That is really the central issue here to my mind. SpinningSpark 17:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Based on previous comments/opinions from SmokeyJoe at MfD, I took Everything that would be hit by that and shouldn't be deleted should not be in DraftSpace to mean things like pages of working notes (which you do occasionally find in Draftspace when they should really be in Userspace). I can't read his mind though so I've pinged him for a clarification just in case I'm wrong. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:13, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

We should not be guessing what the proposal is. And we shouldn't need to ping somebody to find out. It seems many people are voting on what they would like the proposal to be, not on what it actually is. SpinningSpark 20:33, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• • User:Spinningspark, the proposal is to allow speedy deletion per G13 on anything in DraftSpace for the reason of being an abandoned draft. That is the standard now in practice at MfD, in huge numbers, too many for MfD to handle. One editor's decision to tag "abandoned", usually stating "non-notable" which is synonymous with "content not suitable". Mostly is it also "promotion" or "made up" or "random silly stuff". The promotion is usually well sourced, as can be other silly stuff. Deletion occurs on review by the deleting admin. That one editor should know to move things that should not be in mainspace, whether a user's notes that belong in userspace, or a fair topic with content that meets WP:STUB and belongs in mainspace. If any one editor chooses to do this, we should thank them, and trust them. Already, that editor is required to not personally move things to mainspace (apparently he is too inclusionist, he moved some unsourced BLPs to mainspace), see User:Legacypac/Promotions.

An editor reviewing abandoned drafts and the reviewing admin will catch some false negatives, there are some lost drafts that could now be in mainspace. Same is true with rejected submissions. Same is true with unsubmitted drafts. What difference? There will be some mistakes, a human has to look for quality in the ocean of cruft, and the sifting is mindnumbing.

If the rare abandoned good page is not visited and judged by the single editor, it has no chance of being promoted. Better to allow someone do to do this properly than to insist on doing nothing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:13, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

@User:SmokeyJoe point of correction - I have never moved an unsourced BLP to mainspace - that was the main false accusation that resulted in a move ban. (Possibly future non-)Admin Arthur Rubin is on the way to a editing Block at ANi partly for participating in making false allegations against me. Pretty funny I'm labelled too inclusionist on one side and appearently want to delete the world indiscriminately on the other. Legacypac (talk) 15:50, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

• @SmokeyJoe: You argue that there are far too many abandoned pages to allow for review and tagging by individual editors. At the same time, you expect that drafts mass-nominated for G13 will be reviewed by admins. The corps of admins is much smaller than the general body of editors. The body of admins servicing speedy deletions is smaller still. If there are too many for review by general editors, then there are certainly too many for review by admins. And as I said elsewhere, content review is not an administrative job in any case. The reality is that the same thing will happen as when stale AFC drafts were mass-nominated – the vast majority of them will be deleted without review.

It is no good writing your interpretation of what the proposal is supposed to be as a reply to a post here. Someone else can still have a totally different interpretation and that can get implemented. That clarity should have been right at the top of the proposal. SpinningSpark 10:12, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

@Spinningspark:The section header needs to be short. Theexplicit proposal can be found immediately before the OP's sig: Everything in DraftSpace untouched for 6 months should be speediable under G13. Everything that would be hit by that and shouldn't be deleted should not be in DraftSpace. Bot edits and minor edits, and tagging "worthless" should not necessarily delay G13, but it really doesn't matter. This is too long to be a section header. Old, in this context, refers to the age of the most recent significant change, not the age of the page. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:35, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support per the above. Mkdw ^talk 17:01, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support no use in keeping around useless content, WP is not a web host. CSD is a "can-delete", not a "must-delete", so if anyone wants to save something de-tagging it gets you another 6 months. – Train2104 (t • c) 17:21, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

  CSD is a "can-delete", not a "must-delete" - Actually the whole point of Speedy deletion criteria is that, once the stated criteria are clearly met, the page can be deleted without further thinking; that's why it's allowed to bypass any further discussion. If this proposal is approved, the strong expectation is that all drafts will be deleted after being stalled for six months, no matter their status; unless we explicitly include some wording that says otherwise. This idea that "the criteria says one thing, but admins will really be doing another thing" is naive; the proposal as stated is to unconditionally delete drafts based exclusively on time. Diego (talk) 07:51, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose per DGG. I have spent a fair amount of time dealing with G13 deletions, and I agree that the vast amount of what gets deleted is useless cruft. But not all of it is, and we are losing good content in these deletions. The idea that administrators use restraint when evaluating G13 deletions is naive; I have observed many potentially worthy drafts deleted. I can't support this change without more effective safeguards. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:54, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't agree with the increasing trend to get rid of drafts. Sure, most of them aren't very good, but that doesn't mean we gain much by deleting them. Drafts have very low visibility and few people other than those who work on a draft will ever see it, so there is little risk involved. The ones which actually are dangerous can already be deleted under G11, G12 or BLP-specific rationales. On the other hand deleting them does do harm. Some drafts which might have made viable articles will be deleted, and some editors who worked on them will be annoyed at having their work deleted just because they didn't keep to an arbitrary deadline. The former will be exacerbated if the deletion process doesn't consider the contents of the draft or the potential of the topic. Hut 8.5 20:54, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support mainly because of concerns about hidden problems with many drafts that aren't easily detected (undiscovered copyright violations and libel, mainly). Also, some of the points raised below indicate that editor retention would not be heavily affected. I've no opinion about hiding vs. deleting so as long as people who patrol the namespaces for whatever reason don't keep falling over the hopeless ones. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:17, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Any good-faith attempt at improvement of a draft would restart the 6-month "clock", which combined with the ease of a WP:REFUND addresses concerns about deletion of good content for me. Editors convinced that reams of mainspace-ready content will be deleted as a result of this policy tweak must hold a very low opinion of the judgement of our admins. VQuakr (talk) 03:13, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Why do people keep saying that WP:REFUND is easy, when it's one of the most dull bureaucratic processes we have? REFUND is not easy, certainly not at the scale at which this proposal is being made - bothering a human to some grindy requests, and blindly requesting to see if something is worthy or not, only to then have to wait several hours or days until someone complies; and having to re-delete the hundreds of pages that were requested and were indeed worthless, just so you could rescue the one that could be used. Wouldn't it be better not to delete them in the first place? What benefit did it gain us to perform this delete-undelete-delete again dance? No one has answered that yet.

Also the whole point of this request is that it will not involve the judgement of admins - judgement of content is being replaced by an automatic objective criterion not based on anything regarding the quality of the thing deleted. Diego (talk) 05:09, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

No, speedy deletion is not "automatic". WP:REFUND is exceptionally straightforward, complete with a prefilled form and big blue button in the middle of the page. What support can you offer for your bizarre assertion that "hundreds" of pages are going to be refunded and re-deleted en masse? VQuakr (talk) 06:17, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Let's not kid ourselves. Speedy deletion is almost completely automatic in practice. See e.g. these articles where a user left a comment indicating that that the draft was potentially worthwhile and then it was deleted anyway. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Gavin Selerie, poet and writer, Draft:Gender inequality in Honduras, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/General Philip Willbeck, Draft:George Triggs, Draft:Gesell Developmental Schedules. And I'm sure I could provide additional examples. Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:09, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support per Legacypac Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 22:27, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is a random, pointless sabotage. We don't need to have people grinding mass MfDs, and if that remains their pleasure, we don't need to make it automatic so they can go find some other useful content to spend their days destroying. Remember, the deleted drafts take up disk space even if us stinking peasants are not allowed to read them! I therefore have no problem with allowing random drafts, even if they are stubs of a few sentences in length, persist for hundreds of years. Wnt (talk) 12:14, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment: this is getting out of hands. This RfC is not even closed, and people are emboldened to make edits like this, a much stronger claim that is in direct contradiction to our WP:Imperfect written policy, quoting this change to the speedy criterion as justification. The creation of Draft space was supported by many of us with an eventualist position of using it as a placeholder of material that couldn't be fixed in main space, but still could be stored indefinitely in a place where it wouldn't be harmful to readers. Even if there were consensus for the proposed change, this shows that its consequences for the community have not been well thought out. Diego (talk) 20:46, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support - it's time to clean out the closet. Moldy drafts are bad for the health of the project. Serious article creators create stubs worthy of mainspace, they don't abandon their baby on drafty doorstep for someone else to raise. ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:07, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support -- unsuitable drafts are best deleted. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:14, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support for any initiative aimed at removing the garbage, be it from the draftspace, mainspace, userspace or outer space. Rentier (talk) 08:51, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I find that draft space is being used as a surrogate for deletion. For example, good faith stubs such as National Park Podunajsko and Siamese buffalo were moved into draft space without leaving a redirect in mainspace. This seems quite outrageous as it is our long-standing policy that such weak starts are welcome in mainspace. Pushing such contributions into draft space without any discussion is bad. If they were then to languish there and be deleted, that would be even worse. If the draft space continues to be used as a deletionist dumping ground then you can expect inclusionists to start pushing the articles back into mainspace and this will cause silly, time-wasting tugs-of-war. Settling such issues is what the AfD process is for and it should not be subverted by a process of rules creep. Andrew D. (talk) 11:37, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Good examples, Andrew. Both of them would have been eligible for the newly proposed G13 in six months and most likely be deleted, thus circumventing the speedy deletion policy. Regards SoWhy 12:22, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• oppose 6 months is too short, stale draftspace articles aren't an issue that really needs a solution (put another way, deletion doesn't really help but might hurt), and per Andrew Davidson's arguments above. Hobit (talk) 15:42, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Since the G13 criterion has existed for almost 4 years now, in theory, no drafts in the "Draft;" namespace should be able to have their G13 deletions delayed past the 6-month mark. In other words, the drafts that existed prior to G13 existing were subject to grandfathering, and now that window of time is long gone. Steel1943 (talk) 07:00, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

  I just understood the purpose of this proposal. The proposal is not to disallow G13 to be postponed, but rather to allow anything in the "Draft:" namespace to be deleted per G13 if it is eligible. I'm abstaining for now until I can figure out where I stand on this. Steel1943 (talk) 07:09, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

  ...And scratch that. I actually have no idea what is being proposed here, nor do I understand what is recommended to be changed. From how I read the proposal, all of what SmokeyJoe stated seems to be common sense stuff that reviewing administrators should be following anyways when pages tagged for G13 have not been edited for 6 months. But, that common sense seems to already be implied by the way that G13 is currently written. (I think I saw DGG comment somewhere higher in this thread; I know DGG performed a lot of G13 reviews when G13 was first established, so I suspect DGG could shine some light on this, I think. Honestly, after reading this proposal again, I'm more confused about what is being proposed for change than I ever was before.) Steel1943 (talk) 07:17, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

  @Steel1943: What is being asked here is: Should we extend Speedy Deletion Criterion G13 to include any page in the Draft namespace that is not tagged by {{AFC submission}} that has not been edited in the last 6 months? Take a look at User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report to see some of the low threshold to creating that have languished in draftspace for multiple years without any improvement. Tt takes a full MFD to delete these because there is no low effort procedure to delete hopeless and worthless content that took all of 10 seconds to create. Personally I would rather have the a "stale" deletion rule go in for those non-AFC drafts that have been reviewed by an editor as not worthwhile and have remained unedited past that "not worthwhile" for 6 months. Yes this means a investment of human time to get all the drafts reviewed, but we have plenty of time to give the page authors their opportunity to contest/fix the page, but Draftspace is supposed to extend everything short of universal AGF to people who create there. Hasteur (talk) 13:11, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

As I say in a further-down discussion on this page, administering WP, just lie writing WP, requires people using discretion, not arbitrary rules. When G13 was first proposed I suggested 12 month as giving enough time to let people find and think about draft as a better compromise between the factors. I would like the ability in reviewing to specify a longer time--some articles just need refs and the refs should be findable, and the person is clearly notable--there is no reason to ever remove them, just to index them so someone can find them. But many are abandoned as hopeless, and the sooner we realize that the better gotten rid of--they shouldn't even clutter up an index. IF ONLY we had enough really skilled reviewers who could actually fix articles in reviewing them, we wouldn;t have a problem here.

Similarly with non-submitted drafts--there are multiple factors--some should simply be submitted as good enough to pass AfC already; some could reasonably stay indefinitely, and be indexed and someone may find them; ; many should be gotten rid of. But I recently had a complaint from someone whose draft I submitted & it was accepted--that though he knew anything he wrote here could be used by anyone if credit was given--it did not yet meet his standards for his own writing and in courtesy he should have the right to determine this. I have great sympathy for this point of view, but we have a place designed for just this purpose, user sandboxes.

on balance I support using G13 here, but I very much wish we had a more flexible G13. DGG ( talk ) 09:59, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support – volunteer labor may be free, but as a project it makes sense to apply it in the least wasteful manner we can figure out. The first step in dealing with a large, unorganized pile of work is to organize it into an ordered work queue to ensure that, eventually, everything will be looked at and, with any luck, consistent standards will be applied. There's an asymmetry involved here: the effort to create a piece of junk is pretty low, we need mechanisms that keep the effort to get rid of obvious junk low as well. Allowing G13 for non-AfC draftspace content is no more dangerous than allowing G13 for AfC draftspace content. If a bot is allowed to tag for G13 under the constraint of first giving a 30-date notice, we'd be giving up one human out of the two who currently have to agree that a deletion is called for. I like the idea of allowing an editor to mark a draft as promising; that would be another defense against premature deletion. But in the end, some person has to be willing to actually do work to advance a draft to mainspace. Once an article makes it past that threshold, we can apply WP:NODEADLINE, but leaving unfinished, unsalvageable junk in draftspace does not further the project. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 10:12, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as a blatant violation of the WP:CHOICE policy (also see WP:VOLUNTEER), as it requires draft creators to not take a break of >6 months or else suffer negative consequences. Additionally, the only problems with drafts that should qualify them for deletion are already covered by G3 (pure, blatant vandalism), G10 (attack), G11 (pure promotion), and G12 (copyvio). Deleting drafts for any other reason defeats the purpose of draftspace. This has been well-established for the concern of lacking notability that has been repeatedly raised in this RfC - see WP:NMFD. Deletion does not even save disk space, as the revisions are retained. As userspace and draftspace are NOINDEXed, I don't think WP:FAKEARTICLE is a concern. If other users believe it is, however, the best solution is to blank the draft to {{Userpage blanked}} or an equivalent template for draftspace. This procedure ensures the page will remain blank unless being worked on and does not require admin intervention, leaving them free to work do backlog work that actually benefits the project. A2soup (talk) 17:28, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose At the very least the time period should be extended to two years. Drafts that are copyvios or violate BLP should go for those reasons. The rest can wait for a week or two if need be. See also the essay by Ivanvector. Matt's talk 23:23, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose This would just be an end run around AfD. What use is the dratftspace if you cannot put drafts there? Hawkeye7 (talk) 13:16, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. There's no reason why someone who "does it well" (uses AfC) should have more trouble (i.e. risk of deletion) than someone who, for whatever reason, doesn't. Most of the opposes seem to be opposes of G13 in general, rather than arguing that there's a reason why the currently-exempt drafts should remain exempt while others qualify for G13.

Another argument that I don't think has been made yet... It's possible that old drafts can be worse than nothing, if someone unrelated to the original author wants to write about something, finds an old draft, and decides that trying to fix someone else's attempt is too much trouble, or doesn't want to interfere with someone else's article or something. No idea how often that happens, but I feel it's worth considering. Yeryry (talk) 21:28, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Opposition to G13 in general is a very valid reason to oppose a large expansion of its scope. An oppose (or support) isn't worth less just because the !voter doesn't get everything they want from their favored outcome. A2soup (talk) 01:36, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support--Rentier has summarised it beautifully! Godric on Leave (talk) (Alt account of Winged Blades of Godric) at 02:55, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Example discussion

Here is the report of pages that would be first impacted User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report. Pulling a couple random examples Draft:PSNPrank is spam. Draft:KAKIRI TOWN COUNCIL FC is NEVER going to become notable. Almost all the red links were deleted since Saturday under various existing CSD criteria. I've been holding off MfDing more while this proposal runs. Legacypac (talk) 08:58, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Here are a few selected ones from that list: Draft:Mike Mitchell (actor), Draft:Ideal theory, Draft:Shinobu (band), Draft:Proof of Binomial Theorem, Draft:Faculty of Applied Sciences, Draft:Fahrenheit 451 (unreleased film), Draft:Clusters of Innovation, Draft:Fingazz, Divisor (algebraic geometry). What is the rationale for speedy deleting any of those after six months of inactivity, without a MfD discussion? Diego (talk) 08:04, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Mike Mitchell (actor), unilaterally draftified by User:NativeForeigner. I think it should have been PRODded. The content was written by the subject, just as he wrote http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2396944/resume?ref_=nm_ov_res and related pages. Doesn't meet NACTOR, all content is better hosted at IMDB. There is no anticipation of him becoming notable, is it to be hosted in DraftSpace=ShadowWikipedia indefinitely pending a dramatic advance in his acting career? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:17, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

That's a reason to delete it per WP:COI. It doesn't make sense to leave it lingering for six months and then merely deleting it because it's old. When content is problematic for some reason, we already have the tools to get rid of it. Diego (talk) 08:26, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: I'd tend to agree. There was a reason for me draftifying it, but I not recall what it was offhand. Given what I can see now, that would have been the ideal course of action. That being said I don't think it's problematic per se due to lack of searchability, although the interaction with G13 is indeed funky. NativeForeigner ^Talk 05:14, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, G13 itself is problematic. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 08:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Without G13 that COI it's not going to be found, and when it is we have to MfD it.

you've picked some math pages that are part of another discussion centered on NOTAWEBHOST. Divisor (algebraic geometry) was developed by experienced editors. I'm not sure why it's not in mainspace but no Admin would delete that G13. Draft:Ideal theory is an abandoned UP#COPIES type page that should be redirected when not being worked on. Draft:Faculty of Applied Sciences has zero refs except a link to the school. It's maybe copyvio, has way to vague a title (which university?) and generally we don't do pages on facilties within a University per WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES Legacypac (talk) 08:44, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

It shouldn't even be an option to speedy it just because it hasn't been edited lately. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 08:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Legacypac, I think your comment proves my point. For problematic drafts that shouldn't be there, you can point to specific problems with them, so they should be removed providing those problems as the reason for their removal. For good content developed by experienced editors, like Divisor (algebraic geometry), shit happens, and it doesn't make sense to remove them merely because they got abandoned for some unknown reason; so deleting them for becoming inactive shouldn't be an option. Diego (talk) 09:06, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

I did not prove your point. Many Drafts can be speedy deleted or redirected for many various reasons. Many should not be deleted but instead promoted or at least worked on further. This change deals with efficently deleting thousands of drafts at the intersection of Not otherwise CSD eligible + Worthless Abandoned Crap. We want to remove that set of Drafts from MfD because MfDing them to get SNOW or uncontested Delete closes is a waste of time. That is ALL this about and arguing how this or that Draft could be deleted another way or should be kept is off topic. Legacypac (talk) 09:18, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

It is not offtopic, since the proposal made in this RfC is that all those drafts may be deleted automatically after some time. If we want the guideline to be applied in a way that those that "should not be deleted" are treated in a better way, then the guideline should reflect it. The point is to avoid the likely situation in the future when someone proposes to make a bot that automatically deletes all stalled drafts, they can't point to this updated rule and say "oh yes, this is compatible with the policy".

If you can't see how the proposed change can be used that way, you're not even trying to understand the opposition. Your comment ammounts to "the proposed change has some good uses, therefore anyone pointing to outcomes of that change which are different to that good use are offtopic". We are not opposing creating a tool to get rid of "drafts that get snow-deleted at MfD", we are opposing the specific mechanism proposed to achieve that outcome. Diego (talk) 10:36, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh I understand the opposition, I just disagree with both the logic and the "facts" being used because both are falty. Diago wrote "the proposal ... is that all those drafts may be deleted automatically after some time." That is very incorrect. It's not "all" and it's not "automatically". It's only the stuff not worth saving after human review. The proposal simply extends the existing CSD process created to deal with one mounting pile of abandoned Draft crud to the rest of the same mounting pile of Draft crud. If you don't like G13 start an action to repeal it - but misrepresenting the proposal is not helping the discussion. Legacypac (talk) 14:35, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Discussion of some opposition

As a supporter of this proposal, I want to pull at the thread that Rhodo is, which is that there are good drafts, or possibly simply notable topics, that are left to languish in draftspace, and that the date shouldn't be the only factor protecting these from deletion. I personally use draft space as a place to a) identify a (video game) topic that someone else is interested in and b) clean it up to pull it into main space. I don't want to go around editing every existing draft in my domain of interest every 6 months (because I'm busy), much less keep a running red-linked list somewhere or another of video games drafts which might be worthy of article space (at some point in the indeterminate future and with some undetermined zero to non-zero amount of work). I personally will wield an extended G13 as a scalpel (to slice away drafts with no present hope of being article-spaced) rather than the butcher's knife at least a few of the supporters above would prefer to use it as. I am wondering if there is a way, or if it might be desirable, to back away from a "every draft can go under the knife" G13, while also allowing its expanded use, as a possible baby step toward an all-draft G13. A7 comes to mind. I like the current timeframe (6 months feels fine), so I wouldn't want to see that change. Lacking a single independent reliable source might be one way (a la BLPPROD). Are there others that are concrete? --Izno (talk) 03:31, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Date is NOT the only thing protecting pages from deletion. Remember an Admin checks every page before deletion, and so does the nominating editor (hopefully the bot will come back though). Pages that have merit are regularly postponed. The creator is notified of the deletion and WP:REFUND applies. G13 actually really helps content make it to mainspace - I regularly find entire ready to go unsubmitted notable articles in Draft that were last edited over 6 months back (even several years back, since the bot that identifies G13 eligible pages is a little blind and slow. New editors must assume someone else will look at and approve their draft without them specifically requesting it, but without G13 (or someone like me working the non-afc stale draft report) that never happens. This proposal facilitates deletion of uncontroversial junk so ediors like me can find and surface the useful pages and topics. I do seek deletion on thousands of Drafts to find those few promotable pages. Legacypac (talk) 04:04, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I am rarely the creator, so I do not get a notification, nor do I know to refund a draft with potential because it will have been deleted. (I need to see if the article alerts mechanism picks up deleted drafts.) I am quite aware that an administrator checks every page before deletion, but that doesn't mean that a) all or even b) any administrator will do any more than process the page as a deletion (because all they have to do is check the timestamps). As for nominating editor, that is what I am most afraid of! I did not dispute that a deletion method such as draftspace or even simply AFC G13 helps to separate the wheat from the chaff, but as at least one other editor pointed out above, because there is no criterion other than draft age and the good faith of an editor and an administrator, the system can fall down quite quickly and reject good contributions (at some low probability, I think, but a probability > 0%). --Izno (talk) 04:25, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@User: Rhododendrites maybe I'm missing something but do your concerns not equally apply to AfC drafts (perhaps unsubmitted). This change will remove the arbitary distinction between AfC vs not AfC. In my estimation having looked at many thousands of Drafts, non-AfC ones are worse because at least on many AfC Drafts the creator attempted to address reviewer comments. Legacypac (talk) 04:16, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@Izno:, if there was a way to apply a template/category/tag to a draft which would permanently prevent G13 deletion, would you find this solution sufficient to address your concerns? Tazerdadog (talk) 05:53, 28 July 2017 (UTC) Fixing ping Tazerdadog (talk) 05:53, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Easy just post a message on the Draft talk or make an AfC Comment to that effect on the Draft page. If a Draft is labeled as "notable but needs xyz" it's not going G13. Legacypac (talk) 05:56, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

This is not true. Drafts with such comments are routinely deleted. See e.g. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Gavin Selerie, poet and writer, Draft:Gender inequality in Honduras, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/General Philip Willbeck, Draft:George Triggs, Draft:Gesell Developmental Schedules. Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:32, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Draft talk is not considered in HasteurBot's code. Any change that would cause a revision to be registered by wikipedia (i.e. not a NULLEDIT) resets the G13 clock for HasteurBot. I coded to choose the higher threshold for qualification of G13. Hasteur (talk) 06:01, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

So ..., tagging the Draft page with {{promising draft}} would be good, delaying G13, as well as being prominent. Tagging the talk page with {{No hope draft}} would also be good, indicating that an editor thinks it should be deleted, and not delaying G13? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:05, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: We could do a hybrid and any page that is taged with the No hope draft gets 6 months unedited before the bot nominates it for CSD. Still have an admin to the final checking on it. Hasteur (talk) 06:23, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I think we already have a "no hope" tag - Template:CrapArticle Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:56, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia talk:Drafts#Draft classifier template revisited is supposed to achieve the purposes of SmokeyJoe's proposed tags. -- Taku (talk) 03

18, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: Pending thoughts! :). A {{no hope draft}} per Smokey would also be desirable, because we might be able to use that to categorize certain drafts as more likely to be draft-space G13 eligible, and at the end of 6 months, those might reasonably auto-convert to draft-space G13s (as well categorize the drafts differently). --Izno (talk) 12:21, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)*5 Part of why AfC drafts usually have a very high percentage of sustained deletion on G13 is because every page that was submitted for review gets evaluated by an editor that looks for issues that would cause the page to be subjected to one of the "A" series CSDs or a AFD very shortly after creation in mainspace. Does this mean some drafts get rejected a few times, yes but that's ok because there's WP:NODEADLINE to get it to mainspace and if the page is being improved it's not becoming Stale. Having some form of evaluation go through on all non-AfC drafts to let the author know "you need to fix X, Y, Z, and R before you can put this in mainspace" goes a long way to sifting the at best 0.5% (1 page out of every 200) needle from the bulk haystack that gets submitted.

Also Legacypac HasteurBot lives Hasteur (talk) 05:57, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac: I would strongly dispute the 1 in 200 figure unless you can present some evidence of that. When G13 first came in, I spent a lot of time reviewing G13 nominations. I moved at least one in ten pages I reviewed into mainspace after declining the G13. On some days it was much higher. As far as I am aware, none of them have ever been deleted. I don't think any have even been nominated at AFD. Other users, such as DGG, doing this task got similar results. The number of pages involved was so high that only a small fraction of them got any kind of review from anybody. The sad truth about the introduction of G13 is that tens of thousands of salvagable pages have been deleted. SpinningSpark 17:19, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I've processed thousands (no kidding) of Draft pages but the 1 in 200 number is not mine, I was just mentioned beside it. I feel AfC is too hard to pass, but that is another discussion and this proposal does not change how G13 for AfC works. The pages this expansion will actually delete are at the intersection of "Garbage without another CSD option" ie "take to MfD" and "Abandoned" for 6 months. In my experienced estimation 99% of abandoned non-AfC Drafts are either CSDable under existing crteria or would be deleted at MfD. Even if we G13'd them all blindly (we will not) I don't believe we would lose many useful pages and [[[WP:REFUND]] is easy. Legacypac (talk) 18:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. Was it user:Hasteur who made the original comment? The bottom line is that we should not be deleting any pages that are salvagable, whatever that percentage is. Our central task is building the encyclopaedia, not getting rid of crap in draft space, and a usable abandoned draft is useful for building the encyclopaedia no matter how long we have to wait for someone to pick it up. I could support this proposal if G13 involved at least one human marking the page as deserving deletion, not just a bot. It should not be left to the deleting admin only to review the page. The admins job is to carry out the administration of deletion, not article review. SpinningSpark 20:42, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree that a human really should be the one that arms the timed soft delete trigger (by determining that the page does not appear to have value) (i.e. no hope draft) and indicates what they see as problematic. Then if the page remains un-edited for 6 months, we pronounce the soft delete on it. Yes it means 2 sets of humans (arming and the admin for real deletion) but this extends a good faith olive banch to potentially fix the issue. Hasteur (talk) 21:15, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• If we do this, i would like to make it a condition that only hasturbot, or some simialerly programed bot, nominates pages for G13, not any human editor. The bot gives creators a 1 month warning, and puts pages on the 1 month pending status into a categry which can be used to review them. Human editors who have been nominating for G13 have not been doing that. if a human editor is to nominate, s/he should follow the same rules as the bot -- a 1-month warning and a tracking cat. moreover the bot is throttled to avoid any huge lump of pages tagged for deletion, so review is feasible. Humans have recently nominated at much grater rates than the bot would. The original understanding of G13 was that the bot would do all or almost all of the nominations -- human noms would be unneeded. We should return to that, and ,make it part of the criterion, if we are to expand the scope -- and even if we are not. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 02:15, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

respectfully, the bot G13 nominates blindly. Only the Admin considers suitability. When I nominate G13 eligible pages I look at suitability. I find good pages where the creator addressed the AfC comments but never submitted. Without G13 no one would think to review the page and promote it. Legacypac (talk) 18:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• Comment First and foremost, too many decent drafts are deleted under G13 as it is, and that information is lost as it is "out of sight, [and] out of mind", especially when the writer of the page has left the project. Second, there is no harm in having drafts that are "junky", as someone will eventually delete if it has no potential to be an article. Third, the time period of six months is both too short and completely arbitrary. That said, I would support a draft PROD, to decrease the burden on reviewers. The point is, I would advocate getting rid of G13 altogether, and adding a draft PROD. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 08:12, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Jjjjjjdddddd, G13 is DraftProd. If you made another DraftProd, who would review them? No one is reviewing the MfD Draft nominations when they are deleted on an unopposed nomination, unopposed because there are too many listed. Deletion of drafts by any method is pseudo-speedy already. If you don't like this, I ask you to go to WT:MfD (eg and oppose the current practice of pseudo-speedy deletion. I am very sympathetic to the view that none need deletion, they can be blanked for example, but the community is in contradiction of this and it should be sorted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:25, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
    • But wouldn't a PROD for drafts and G13 be different, because a draft-prod would be for prodding any draft, saving the hassle of the MfD process for obvious junk, while G13 is a matter of time since last edit? Also, I do support a DfD process. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 08:35, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Legacypac (for example) would in time DraftPROD every abandoned draft. What difference. DfD? I would support Wikipedia:Drafts for discussion (proposal), except that I find it disingenuous to support a process that I believe will never get rolling, it will not host serious active discussions. In weighing all the options, all with drawbacks, including "do nothing", I think this one wins. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:56, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Slight correction. I would DraftPROD every unsuitable useless page. I postpone G13, submit for comments, and recomment promotion on quite a few stale pages. Legacypac (talk) 18:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• • • • • But a G13 covers any and all pages that haven't been edited in over six months, while a draftprod forces the nominator to have another reason to delete, and would also have more reviewing admin scrutiny. Also, a DfD would probably be like RfD, not having heavy traffic, but having enough to work, especially if it's Drafts for Discussion, as opposed to Deletion. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 09:29, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
          • G13 requires a nominator and an admin deleter. The vast majority of old drafts are mind-numbing cruft. Asking a DraftProdder to sift them all and write a meaningful reason for each I think is too much to ask, not realistic. The draftprod nominator I expected would soon being writing "abandoned non-notable" on every case, just as he does at MfD. Most of them would be convincing justified with "abandoned promotion, non-notable topic". In the end, same difference, I think CSD#G13 will be more honest about what we are doing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
            • Asking a DraftProdder to sift them all and write a meaningful reason for each I think is too much to ask, not realistic. Oh come on, we have lots of semi-automated tools that make it trivial to choose the right reason from a list of common occurrences with just a click. In the rare situation when the draft doesn't fall under any of those pre-defined cases, that's precisely where the nominator should carefully reflect and provide a hand-crafted reason for wanting to remove the content. And if they can't think of any reason, why exactly should it be deleted? Those are precisely the kind of drafts we want to preserve, which are not obvious crap in any way and therefore may contain a seed of useful content - so better to keep them just in case. Diego (talk) 10:47, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
              • nominator should carefully reflect and provide a hand-crafted reason
                Great sentiment. Would you like to contribute at WT:MfD to enforce that, because at MfD it has become usual to see Drafts nominated with a brief generic statement, and deleted should there be no opposition, which is usual except for occasional procedural objections that decreasingly gain traction. (check the archives, because this proposal has directly caused a temporary lull.) I am talking about Legacypac's nominations of recent months, but to be fair, over many years, he is far from unique. Others over the years have also wanted to clean out old junk cruft, and brought it to MfD because there is no other deletion mechanism (and because of an inexplicable aversion to blanking being sufficient). I called it mind-numbing above, and I think it is quite right. It is not realistic to expect a customised unique rationale for the thousands to be processed when they belong a to very few classes having exactly the same failing. A great many can be labelled "abandoned promotion, non-notable topic" (companies, music bands), others "abandoned probably made-up fantasy, non-notable topic" (kids stories, reality TV imitation), and a most of the rest so brief and random it is hard to describe what it is beyond "obviously not useful". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:40, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• I'm uneasy about all of this. The problem I see is the difference between a "stale draft" (which really isn't a problem for us) and "cruft that shouldn't have been there in the first place". We ought to clean up the second, because the number of these things in an indistinguishable draft namespace makes any useful management of the space difficult. For the first though, we are being torn between pressure to keep them (an old stale draft just isn't a problem, and we don't know who might return or re-adopt it) and the exciting wikigame of finding stuff to delete. It is a problem throughout WP that stuff gets done because it can be done (Look at me Mom, I just deleted a whole article! I'm nearly an admin!) rather than because it ought to be done. A simple "Anything becomes zappable after n months" doesn't distinguish between a large, serious and unfinished draft on a real topic, or the regular test cruft that should really have gone long ago. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:14, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

User:Andy Dingley your patronizing comments are an inexcusable insult to every editor that spends volunteer time deleting problematic pages to make Wikipedia more useful. I've never noticed you at MfD or AfD or CSDing stuff so I submit you have zero clue how this works. Legacypac (talk) 21:15, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm not talking about those who delete problematic pages, I'm talking about those who will delete anything, simply because they can. WP is a bureaucracy, and as such it attracts aspirational bureaucrats. We have long had a problem with such. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• Absolute oppose deletion of drafts based solely on age. I might support a criterion that deleted pages in draft space that were greater than 12 months old and written solely by editors who have not edited in 12 months, and at least one of (a) clearly not intended as an encyclopaedia article, (b) of lower quality than an existing article on the same topic and contained no verifiable (note not verified) information not included in that article, (c) would unambiguously be subject to speedy deletion under an A criterion if posted in the main namespace. Anything less than that and I cannot support - we need to encourage the creation of good content and we need to encourage editor retention, the proposal as stands would discourage both of those. Thryduulf (talk) 08:06, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

  Thryduulf (or anyone else who has made similar arguments), can you point to any evidence at all that editor retention is somehow tied to draft articles being retained more than six months?- MrX 12:19, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

The theory is that when we delete semi/active editors draft articles, it is a negative customer experience. They may get disillusioned with the process and leave. Personally I think that argument is valid for someone who has been working on an article for a month say, even up to 3. Over 6 months? Na. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:26, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I think there are two issues--1) specific instances of offended newbies. That's typically done just fine by NPP without any further help, and 2) the general attitude of "you can join us if you are already elite; we don't have time for you or your contributions otherwise" which is more subtle and obviously not targeted at any one specific individual. Allowing Draftspace as an alternative to outright deletion of sucky contributions did a LOT for both, but we're considering taking that away again, bit by bit, although impacting #2 far more than #1 with this particular move. Jclemens (talk) 20:16, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Nearly every impacted page was created and only edited by someone that already quit - often after one or two edits. Therefore your point is not on point. Do you realize we are targeting pages like Draft:JoJo Wolf Draft:GrumpMutt Draft:The Hunna Draft:Albion Football Club (Clapham) and Draft:First To Eleven that currently require MfD to delete. Which of these randomly selected pages have any use in Wikipedia? Go check out the current list of pages eligible for G13 when this change passes at User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report. Anything obviously useful will be kept. Legacypac (talk) 21:15, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

(sigh) Arguing by anecdote? Really? Allow me to quote this page's own FAQ: "It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus." No amount of lousy, useless drafts will prove the general applicability of time-based deletion. Oh, and you didn't really respond to my argument about hospitability, either. I get that you genuinely think you're crusading for quality; I happen to think that it's more like planning committees demolishing treehouses and sandcastles because they don't meet permitting requirements. Jclemens (talk) 21:32, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Those are crap pages. We need a mechanism to remove them because they're crap, not because they're old.

If you attach a process to the wrong criteria, don't be surprised when it doesn't work well. Even if they're easy criteria to identify. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:53, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

the pile of junk in Draft outside AfC is much worse on average then the junk inside AfC. If you want to repeal G13 make that a seperate proposal, but don't muddy the obvious logic to treating the whole pile by the same rules when the junk on the bottom is worse then the junk on the top. We have MfD to remove them now but it takes too much effort. Legacypac (talk) 23:17, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Evidence please that deleting 6+ month old drafts affects editor retention? I actually find Legacypac's examples to be considerably more informative than the usual cliches and generalizations.- MrX 00:34, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Sample of some worthwhile articles that have been deleted under G13

To rebut claims that administrator discretion are an effective way to keep worthy pages from being deleted, I offer up this page which lists drafts that were marked as postponed at some point in time (whenever I copied down the list): User:Calliopejen1/Postponed AFC. I encourage admins to examine what was deleted; there are a number of promising articles. Even though at least one user thought them worthy for salvaging at some point, the vast majority have now been deleted. The idea that postponement and admin discretion are sufficient to save good drafts is naive. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:01, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Just one example picked at random: "María Vallet-Regí was born in Las Palmas, Spain. She studied Chemistry at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) and received her PhD at the same university in 1974. She is full professor of Inorganic Chemistry and head of the research group Smart Biomaterials in the Department of Inorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Prof. Vallet-Regí has written more than 600 articles and several books. She was the most cited Spanish scientist (regardless of gender), according to ISI Web of Knowledge, in the field of Materials Science in these past decades. [and the article continues...]" Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

And that example was postponed twice by DGG before the bot tagged it G13. Good example of how even such postponements are not helping in preserving potentially useful drafts. I don't speak Spanish or have any idea about chemistry but 9,900+ GBooks hits seems a good indicator that this draft would have benefited from a deletion discussion at the very least. Regards SoWhy 17:38, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

they are actually very helpful. There were just too many of them for me to work on--the slowest part is the necessary manual search for copyvio google and the bots do not reach, (or alternatively, rewriting the whole thing so there won't possibly be any). If there were an actual list for people to see, organized by at least a rough subject, then other people would be able to help. The problem here, as in many other places of WP, is following them up. (Of course , I could simple accept and mark as "possible copypaste" and let other people worry about it. I am very reluctant to resort to that kind of shortcut.) DGG ( talk ) 02:19, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Drafts that have been proposed to be deleted under G13, and whether they should be

Let's lay all cards on the table, and explore the full ramifications of both the proposal and its opposition. Legacypac has linked above a few examples of drafts s/he considers ought to be speedily deleted. Calliopejen1 and I have done the same with some other drafts that are much more likely to contain some data that could be preserved (in my case, even if each one doesn't ever necessarily becomes a full-blown article on itself).

Regarding the draft examples posted by Legacypac, after reviewing them I do not see the need to apply the WP:Deletion process to most of those. (Gasp! Yes, I've actually said that). Not necessarily because I find anything valuable or salvageable in those particular pages, but because the mentality to "delete everything and force interested people ask for a WP:REFUND" is completely backwards, and an enormous handicap to the project. Even if any of those particular examples do not provide any value to the project individually, removing them from view and making them inaccessible to non-admin editors does not provide any value either, and it results in overall negative value in the aggregate. And no, asking for a refund is not cheap, specially when you're talking about exploring hundreds or thousands of related pages (the most basic case, allowing anyone to perform the accountability of what those admins have been speedily deleting; but also for researching content contributed by many editors in some particular topic amenable to deletion).

Mind you, I don't mean to disparage the hard work of the people willing to sort through the new crap to find the few jewels hidden beneath; there was some time when I've been a regular at AfD, I'm aware that it can be a grinding process, and I recognize the value in the task of sorting everything out in that gray space between the clearly valuable and the clearly worthless.

What I'm criticizing is the process itself as it is being proposed, where the only possible outcome for those reviewed items is to bury them and make them inaccessible to the world at large. Much of the opposition to this proposal comes from realizing that such extreme practice is likely to lose most of the good content as well.

If some page is really dangerous (containing unambiguous advertising, attack pages, vandalism and hoaxes, patent nonsense), we already have the tools to remove them completely with other speedy criteria. Thus the current proposal is for drafts which are not problematic, and are not clear transgressions of any core content policy. For those cases, I really believe that removing them with full deletion is worse than leaving them alone, and that a better process should be used for their cleanup.

If such other process requires the people doing the cleanup to think a bit harder about whether to send a page to full and heavy-permission-locked deletion, or rather apply a milder remedy like tagging or blanking, I don't think that's a too harsh requirement to ask. Given the stakes at hand, which involves permanently deleting a corpus of user-contributed content published under a free license, I believe that people not willing to do that small assessment should not be in the process of reviewing drafts. People participating regularly in a process, and admins in particular, should be subjected to some kind of accountability; and that accountability is lost in the case of the Deletion process where all decisions are hidden from view. The least we can ask them is to clearly explain the reasons of their actions. If they can't explain the reason for a full deletion in some particular cases, well, maybe it is because those particular cases should not be fully deleted.

There has been this perennial proposal at WT:Drafts of blanking abandoned draft pages that don't infringe any content guideline, instead of deleting them; but there has never been interest in discussing it thoroughly. Maybe if the current RfC is closed without approval, and we definitely and formally show that "deleting everything stalled in draftspace" is not an option that will gain community consensus, then we can finally start talking about an altertative to cleanup that uses less severe and blunt methods.

(And for anyone willing to yell "but, but, perennial proposal!, please note that the official WMF's statement about deletion only limits universal access to content that has already been decided to deleted, yet it doesn't force us to delete everything sub-standard. The current status quo is entirely a community decision, and it's got consensus only for what to AfD in main space, never fully decided for Draft space. We have a lot of leeway here to get things right). Diego (talk) 10:54, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Responding to ping. Diego Moya Deletion of problematic pages is a hard job that has taken me years to master. There are so many CSD criteria with odd carve outs, so many notability guidelines, a lot of rule interpretation etc. I've tackled various backlogs but After weeks of emphasis there are still over 6,000 stale non-AfC Draft pages still standing. More go stale every week and without expansion of G13 there is no way to get to the bottom. See revision history here [

Let's be really blunt and say that opinions from editors with no experience or effort put in on these backlogs are pretty worthless - even grossly insulting to editors that work deletion processes. Such editors have no clue what the issues are or how much extra work their proposals to limit deletion processes creates. We are volunteers, forced to respond to a never ending stream of critics and comments by people that don't do anything to help. Not only are such criticisms and never ending proposals not helping solve the mess, dealing with them takes editors that do cleanup away from clean up.

Editors that work deletion process SNOW endorse applying G13 to all Drafts. Sorry to say but the opposers generally have no experience but lots of uninformed opinions based on dilusions that because some kid/corporate promotor/spammer typed some nonsense it nedds to be carefully preserved and made accessable for all time.

If content is not suitable for mainspace (or headed to mainspace very soon when it is ready) it has no place on Wikipedia in any Namespace. We have no mandate to build a permanent repository of random useless problematic garbage. If people want that there are WP:ALTERNATIVEOUTLETS to explore.

Editors that insist everything is useful and want to save three unreference sentences in Draft about some 12 year old youtuber forget that way more content is deleted bit by bit over in mainspace every day via regular editing. While I'm trashing three unreferenced useless sentences someone is deleting referenced paragraphs in mainspace.

Do you tell the public bathroom janitor - no you can't have a mop or use a hose, you need a toothbrush and a teacup because you might wash away a gold earing? Or say you better preserve the crap from the floor because we might want to see it again for research? Just let the people that do the cleanup have the tools they need and stop commenting on areas you have no commitment to or experience in. Legacypac (talk) 11:45, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, we all know there is a load of crud out there. Please stop insulting people by telling them they don't understand that. You repeatedly put forward the argument for deleting all old drafts that we don't have the resources to review them all. This does not change the fact that many usable pages would get deleted as well. Our decisions should primarily be based on building the encyclopaedia, not on making the work the work of those processing backlogs easier. If it is impossible to keep under control, then perhaps the whole concept of draft space should be reexamined. SpinningSpark 14:40, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

• With all due respect to your dedication to cleaning up, Legacypac, you don't know how much time I dedicate to the project and how much I understand it, and you don't WP:OWN the Draft space no matter how much voluntary effort your pour into shaping it your preferred way. At a point where I consider that an initiative to "increase the efficiency" of deletion will hurt the project rather than improving it, I will speak up.

I'm as qualified -and entitled!- as you to participate in defining the nature of the cleanup that needs to be performed, and that which needn't. Note that I never denied that some form of 'cleanup' is needed nor said that it should not be done. I'm saying that a large part of it should not be made in the form of hard deletion. I could equally comment on your "delusion" that every "kid/corporate promotor/spammer nonsense" should be hard-removed and kept under lock and key even though it's been posted in the Draft space and doesn't contain problems of BLP, COPYVIO, vandalism or nonsense, and which could be made invisible by default to casual readers by blanking them anyway; and you'd be justly allowed to call me on it for using such colorful language.

I see no reason why it wouldn't take just the same effort to blank or tag non-infringing pages instead of deleting them. And I don't see it because no one has provided such reason in all the years I've been discussing this same topic, first at AfD and the Village Pump, latter at WT:Drafts when it was created.

All those editors that claim the imperative need of instant deletion of every bit of trivial content, as the only way to keep the encyclopedia in place, remain silent when pointed to the equally efficient alternatives that would allow for the accountability of their voluntary hard work. No insurmountable problem has been explained in all these years that would justify preferring on-place hard deletion over instant blanking or categorizing the reviewed content, in those cases where none of the valid content deletion criteria apply unambiguously.

And those reasons haven't been provided because they don't exist; it's a matter of preference. It's just the personal view of some editors with an acute sense of what is 'dirty' and should be 'cleaned up', which many of us disagree with and which we suffer whenever we arrive to a deleted article or draft. So maybe you will this time illustrate us on how you would solve the problem we have stated, that you'll be deleting reams of good content with the bad in a way that makes you unaccountable, or will you remain silent on the subject and keep addressing only the part of the conversation that benefits your point of view? And please don't say WP:REFUND one more time or I will scream, since as explained above it doesn't solve anything. Diego (talk) 17:52, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Good points, Diego. Even after re-reading the whole discussion I can still not find any good reason why it would be imperative to delete those pages. They are not indexed, they don't appear on any searches unless specifically searched for and there is nothing actually gained from deleting those pages if they don't fit any existing criteria. The example Legacypac gives above does not really fit. It's not like keeping waste on the floor, it's like going outside looking for fecal matter in the woods and then insisting it has to be buried when it didn't harm anyone just lying around. Wikipedia worked just fine for years before G13 was created and all the energy that goes into finding drafts, tagging them for deletion and reviewing those taggings could much better be spent improving content that is actually visible in the main space. There are 635 G13 eligible drafts (at this point)? That's nice. On the other hand, there are 2,700+ BLPs without sources at the moment, each of them potentially more problematic than any abandoned draft because they are visible to the world. In the end, I think expanding G13 will only incentivize people to spend their (limited) time focused on an area that is really the least of our problems. Regards SoWhy 17:53, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Fwiw, I just spotchecked a few "unreferenced" blp 9/10 had refs, tho they didn't have a ref section, or the tag wasnt removed when refs were added. Of the 646 G13s, about 1/3 have possibilities for making an article. DGG ( talk ) 05:25, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

I also see no reason to clear this "backlog", and no harm in not doing so. The fact that other editors aren't interested, I would say, would be a clue. If you want to get rid of the backlog, reprogram the bot that tags the pages to wait a year before doing so. If that isn't enough, make it two years. Eventually editors will be able to systematically scrutinize every abandoned draft... just as soon as they get around to it. In the meanwhile, of course, you're still free to program bots to systematically prowl after putative web cut and pastes or bullying pages to tag them for a faster look. But however problematic content is added, it still takes the same number of eyes before somebody complains, and the same amount of effort for editors to check it. Wnt (talk) 21:32, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

G13 is a bring forward system. Drafts are full of copyvio, attack, and other real problems. Drafts don't get NPP but at least G13 evenually gets someone to look at the page and that is even more important in non-AfC drafts. Legacypac (talk) 22:20, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Are drafts actually improved after six months and are editors likely to be driven off if their stale drafts are deleted?

I looked at all of the 13 articles that I moved from article to draft space between 6 and 12 months ago. In every case, the draft articles have not been edited beyond the day that they were moved to draft. In two cases, the article creators went on to make a few edits to other articles,[4][5] then they stopped editing altogether.

Of the 25 articles that I have moved to draft space more than 12 months ago, two were recreated in article space; a few were redirected to existing content in article space; and about a third had trivial edits made to them (example 1, example 2). Of the editors who created those articles, most made no edits beyond creating the article; a few made some edits in the following couple of weeks; one continued to edit for a while and then stopped; and two are still editing [6][7].

It's difficult to see how deleting stale drafts would actually have a harmful effect on editor retention.- MrX 20:26, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

References

Request for implementation delay

It seems like this discussion is heading to the applicability of G13 to non-AFC drafts. If this is the result, I request that there be some delay before the change is implemented so that interested editors can identify and tag promising drafts before they become eligible for deletion. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:09, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I really think the current implementation of "Any page over 6 months is eligible" is a bad idea. I'd much rather prefer any page that's marked with a not-promising template that is 6 months unedited is eligible. It means many people will have to go through and tag both promising and un-promising. If the un-promising happens, I'll probably take the bot task on and code to that standard as we need to give every Non-AFC draft at least one review. Hasteur (talk) 04:15, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

No need for a delay. The stale draft report has been available amd updated weekly for a long time [8] so please work it. Many of the pages are CSDable now under various critera and I plan to continuing working my way through the backlog when this passes. I'll G13 pages that I would have sent to MfD until this proposal was made. I'll CSD G11 or G2 etc where applicable to get hard deletes like I do now. I'll note promising drafts with AFCH comments like I do now. The only thing that will change is pages that would have been deleted at MfD with zero or little comment will go G13. Legacypac (talk) 04:36, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I have started looking through it. But even though it has been available in the past there was no threat of deletion in the past. It will take a little while to look through ~6k articles to see what is worthwhile lurking in there. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:40, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Calliopejen1 makes an excellent point. Those who endeavor to identify and improve wanting material are spread thin, stuck Between Scylla and Charybdis of those who create sub-par material and those who strive to delete it without any effort to improve it on the other. If G13 is improved, the obvious implementation delay is six months: that is, staring the "six month" count would occur at the time the criterion is implemented, if indeed it is. Anything else would be imposing an immediate change on anything over six months old. Jclemens (talk) 07:24, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

While there might be numerical support for a change to G13, I still don't see consensus, with a good part of supporters merely being votes instead of arguments. But even if an uninvolved user judges there to be consensus to make such a change in principal, there should at least also be consensus of how to word the new G13. The opposers have brought up a lot of good points of the dangers of a blind expansion and request at least caveats to be made, so before making a change, we should consider how the new criterion will be worded? Regards SoWhy 07:12, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy: I agree, to the extent that the discussion is not so obviously clear that early RfC closure is warranted. The wording (assuming consensus is reached to change the policy) seems that it would be straightforward - the expansion of G13 to all Draft: space is unambiguous and seems pretty easy to concisely word in the policy. Tweaks can just be under BRD. If I ran the zoo, the relaxed rollout schedule would be handled qualitatively in the closure statement by suggesting that G13 nominations be introduced gradually rather than in the form of 6,000 CSD noms the day it passes - no formality needed. VQuakr (talk) 18:59, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy's unusual statements about concensus borders on Admin WP:CIR failure. No one will be nominating 6000 pages on day one. It would take days or weeks to work through the backlog even if that is all someone did. Evaluating a page for possible G13 takes several minutes and logging it with AFCH tool or twinkle takes a few more seconds. Legacypac (talk) 03:34, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

No, SoWhy is right here. There is a lot of voting in the "Support" section and many points raised by "Oppose", and, speaking from experience, nominating articles for CSD with Twinkle is very easy. I could probably knock out hundreds of deletion nominations for the would-be G13 criterion in a short amount of time (not that I would). Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 03:58, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Just changing the wording to remove the AFC requirement opens the process to abuse as some people, including myself, have pointed out. For example, without a caveat to disqualify moves from mainspace to draftspace without consent or discussion opens the new criterion to abuse (just move the article to draftspace, find an admin to R2 the redirect (not really hard, most will not check the move was correct in my experience) and in six months tag them G13 → presto, speedy deletion of articles without reason). Since we have to expect people to use the criterion liberally, we cannot just "hope" that reviewers will be careful, we need to make sure that the wording prevents such deletions in the first place. The examples mentioned above by Calliopejen1 are proof that even currently G13 is applied to clearly worthy drafts. PS: WP:CIR has a banner on it saying "Be cautious when referencing this page, as it can be insulting to other editors." for good reasons. Just because you and I disagree, @Legacypac, does not make either of us incompetent. Regards SoWhy 09:33, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Any CSD that requires admins to be 'careful' in reviewing fails to be sufficiently lightweight. Roughly half of the speedy deletion criteria do not require the deleting admin to look beyond the page in question, and the other half typically require just a single examination or comparison (e.g., G4). Jclemens (talk) 16:09, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Reiterating that if this proposal does take effect, I intend to write a bot that looks for a "No Hope" like template that some editor has come through and tagged the draft with (indicating it's had at least one set of eyes/brain reviewing it) that has been 6 months unedited. In the shortest timeframe this would be 6 months after the page was No-Hoped. I reiterate that I don't see this being something that needs to be jumped on immediately to clear out, and that the action of reviewing all the drafts that are at least 6 months unedited already gives an effective 12 months minimum cycle (i.e. 6 months to show up on User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report, then 6 months with the No-Hope, then a procedural G13). Obviously with the oldest draft being from 2014-07-13, we have 2.5 years of unedited drafts to consider before we start getting to the minimums. Hasteur (talk) 12:23, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• FWIW, if people want a delay, I'm fine with that I also don't see the need for a quick close here: let it play out for 30 days: draft space is even more not on a deadline than mainspace so there is no need for a quick closure.
  One thing I do object to that has been said above is the idea that people don't have policy based !votes or are just "per above" in a discussion on what policy should be is a bit of circular reasoning (as is common on either side of an RfC trying to change policy when the other side is in the majority). Sure there are several just votes, but they can be taken as "I've read all the oppose, they aren't convincing, lets move on because this makes sense." Ultimately every policy is based on ILIKEIT: it is what the community as a whole has decided to adopt as the standard way of doing things for the project because it is what we prefer as a whole.
  Making arguments that contributors here shouldn't have their opinion weighted as highly because they aren't as verbose or don't respond to the objections makes little sense when we are determining what the preference of the community as a whole is. Wikipedia is not a democracy, but numbers do matter as well, especially when we are not talking about local consensus or the application of policy, but of writing the policy itself. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:06, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Another potential compromise idea

What if this G13 for drafts were limited to certain problematic categories of articles that recur frequently? I'm not sure this would entirely solve the perceived problems with draftspace, but it would be less likely to cause collateral damage. In my experience, drafts of things that fall into the following categories (adapted from A7) tend to be garbage: living people, bands, musical recordings, clubs, societies, groups, companies, corporations, organizations, websites, individual animals. Also articles totally lacking in references are probably just has hard to reference as to write from scratch, so deletion generally is not terribly problematic. Perhaps everyone could get behind a proposal to allow G13 deletion for these sorts of articles, and use a prod-type mechanism for the rest (both unless tagged by another editor as promising). Or something like that. If automatic deletion were limited to these categories (and admins use some sort of discretion so obviously promising living-people articles aren't deleted, for example) I think I would support this proposal. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:34, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

List of Drafts outside AfC

I have compiled a list of all drafts outside AfC (watch out, big page). There are a little over eleven thousand of these pages. Of those I randomly checked, about 1 in 3 is unsalvageable cruft; YMMV. -FASTILY 08:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@Fastily: Urm... That looks similar to User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report. Hasteur (talk) 12:28, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

thank-you so much User:Fastily! User:Hasteur The FastilyBot report covers all Drafts outside AfC (11,000 pages apparently, though I don't see a counter in there) while the MusikBot report is about 5500 pages of non-AfC Drafts that have no edits within the last 6 months (any edit, including AWB, delinking edits and other inconsequential edits get the page off the report). If you look at the page history of Musikbot report you can see how the number has risen and fallen over time. Significant progress on cleanup has been made lately, including the removal of 2500 soldier bios and some thousands I've CSD'd and MfD'd for various reasons. I've long wondered how many non-AfC Draft pages were excluded from the Musikbot report - and this new report says the 6 month stale line currently divides the non-AfC Drafts in half. If the new report excluded pages not edited in 6 month (ie User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report included) the report would be much shorter and easier to work with. I'd like to look for and remove kid's personal info, hoaxes, and other permanently problematic pages before they go 6 months stale. Sort options and size data etc like MusikBot provides would be awesome too. Legacypac (talk) 13:05, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I have no problem switching to FastilyBot's page once we dispose of the pages that are over 6 months stale. I think chasing the additional 6k pages when there are 5k alerady beyond the 6 month mark seems like hasty WikiImp-ery in the time scale of drafts. Hasteur (talk) 13:13, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

There will always be a need for the StaleDrafts list - it's the only reliable way I know of to identify what should soon be G13 eligible non-AfC pages. The other list, pared down, would be useful for scanning for issues. Sometimes the title alone tells you it's a joke or attack page. Legacypac (talk) 13:53, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Template for promising drafts

I see the writing on the wall, so I created the following template. Thoughts, anyone? This may be more effective at saving worthwhile drafts than postponement, because truly worthy drafts shouldn't have to be re-postponed over and over again. (And prior postponement may not be apparent to the reviewing admin.) I suppose whether this sort of template helps or harms depends on whether editors act reasonably on both sides (applying to drafts that actually look good; respecting template where it appears to have been applied in good faith). Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:55, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Template:Promising draft

An editor has indicated that this is a promising draft and requests that it not be speedy-deleted as WP:G13 and instead be nominated at WP:MFD.

What I already do is make an AfC comment about why the draft has promise. That has the advantages over this of being specific and descriptive, as well as it gets auto removed when/if the page is ever promoted. It does require the AFCH script, though you could do it manually I suppose. If you really are too lazy to set up and use the script, make your template post just like the script so the comment gets striped out automatically. This post is far enough off topic for the RfC that I've changed the header size to primary (2 ==). Legacypac (talk) 23:34, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, comments about notability do not seem to be effective to withstand deletion. See Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Gavin Selerie, poet and writer, Draft:Gender inequality in Honduras, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/General Philip Willbeck, Draft:George Triggs, Draft:Gesell Developmental Schedules. Also, editors may not have the time to be "specific and descriptive" considering the volume of affected pages... Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:49, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Also, I do have the script, but was unaware that I could use it for non-AFC pages. It might make sense to modify the script so that it can produce prominent warnings like this one, AFC or no. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:50, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I would suggest adding a date parameter so someone could quickly see if the tag itself was stale. Adding a parameter that requests userfication instead of deletion could be helpful as well. The text of the tag is off since there would be no policy-based rationale for the nomination if the only issues were age and notability of the underlying subject. How about, "An editor has indicated that this is a promising draft and requests that it not be immediately speedy-deleted under criterion G13." VQuakr (talk) 00:32, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

How does this tag become stale? If a draft is promising now, it won't become less promising later, no? As for the text of the tag, I don't see the problem. What do you mean there would be no policy-based rationale? Could you not nominate something and say it qualifies for G13 but another editor has indicated it shows promise so you want further input before the article is deleted? Also, why would we userfy a promising draft instead of keeping it in a communal area where it could be improved by other editors? Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:30, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

If an editor slaps the "promising" template on a bunch of drafts just because, we'd expect them to actually do something about those drafts. If 6 to 12 months later, there hasn't been a single edit to move these drafts forward people should be able to question if the promising was really that promising? Also the promising template seems to be sticky, so I'm less than enthusiastic about the first mover advantage and the excessive bureaucracy we will have to go through because of the template. Hasteur (talk) 04:23, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't see why we expect the editor who applied the tag to do the improvement. Anyone else in the community could do so as well. This isn't much unlike the prod template -- if someone removes it, it goes to a discussion. Here, if someone applies the tag, the article goes to discussion. This seems like a fair process to ensure we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. And as I have been going through the stale draft report, I see a fair number of worthwhile drafts that could be improved in the future and certainly are doing no harm by sticking around. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:42, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The AFCH comment script includes your name and date, which solves some of the concerns above.

Some promising draft do lose value completely. There are a number of abandoned Drafts about upcoming movies and events or just random topics where by time I find them the movie is released or event happened or someone independently picked up the topic and a much better mainspace article exists already. Good G13 cases if there is nothing worth merging from the three unreferenced sentences in an Abandoned Draft. Draftspace COPIES of mainspace pages are another issue.

Userfying a promising draft seems pointless as it just moves something from one abandoned box to another place its even less likely to be found and improved. If you want to improve something actively just improve the Draft. That keeps it from going stale. Abandoned userspace drafts with promise should be moved to Draft space, and that function is even built into the AFCH script.

Classification systems sound great in theory and I've tried several but if you start sorting you find there is lots of junk and find that rarely does anyone pick up any of the hundreds of AFC deferred or rejected for seemingly fixable issues. Legacypac (talk) 04:44, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The underlying assumption on userfication is that it would go to the still-active editor that tagged the draft, not the user space of a long-retired original creator of the draft. VQuakr (talk) 04:56, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

maybe I'm missing something. Why would you userfy a Draft to work on it? Just edit it in place till ready for mainspace. As long as you add a period or delete a space it's safe from G13 for another 6 months. Legacypac (talk) 05:01, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

By the way, if no one is working on AFCs that were rejected for fixable issues, maybe we should be moving more of these to mainspace so that they do get fixed. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:44, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

There is a general lack of editors who work best to clean up others' messes. I term us "curationists", as opposed to anywhere on the inclusionist or deletionist spectrum: We just want things imoproved, and it would be nice if everyone else would stop fighting about deleting stuff and just fix the fixable stuff we already have... Jclemens (talk) 07:27, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I have long agreed, but it seems that the only people willing to shine light on the better stuff are motivated by the finality of deletion being applied to the hopeless. If the expanded G13 results in some people reviewing the oldest drafts, unilaterally tossing things they consider worthless, and occasionally touching/tagging/promoting other stuff, the net result is good. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:36, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: well said. VQuakr (talk) 19:02, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I think something like this would need an edit filter to restrict the adding of these tags to new page reviewers or something, otherwise people would just start creating drafts with the tag already in place, or using socks to add the tag, or something. Yeryry (talk) 20:52, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support Though it should be noted that I generally oppose G13 anyway. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 04:55, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support, but not the " instead be nominated at WP:MFD" part. Any page tagged G13 exempt should presumably be suitable for improvement for promotion to mainspace, the tagger should be of the opinion that the page will never need deletion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:36, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Tagging with an AFCH comment is superior solution that adds more info and does not require memorizing a new template code. We already have a big collection of AfC drafts declined for potentially fixable reasons like needing footnotes or needing to be merged and usually over 500 pages in Category:AfC_postponed_G13 (many are again pending G13 at the moment). Interested editors should work those piles of drafts. Legacypac (talk) 21:03, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• The AfC comments for whatever reason (likely because they are not sufficiently prominent) are not successful at safeguarding worthwhile drafts against thoughtless deletion. No need for users to learn new code if this is added to the AFC script. Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support - I have promised to oppose any change affecting G13 until G13 is deprecated. I feel this is an important step in that direction. What I've been saying all along is that drafts should be systematically reviewed and the unsuitable drafts, the ones which meet already existing deletion criteria related to content, should be deleted without waiting six months; the remainder do no harm just because an arbitrary countdown expires. Use and acceptance of this template effectively guarantees a review process of some sort, and so I support. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:23, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support Removing drive-by {{AFC submission}} and {{G13}} should be enough, but this may prevent repeat CSDs. Will support abolishing G13 too. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:10, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support--Good idea.Except that if it is affixed by the creator of the draft, it could not be counted.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 08:56, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Clarifiying CSD G11

The issue of poorly made G11 nominations have remained and they make the criterion makes it extremely subjective. What is the level of bias needed to allow G11 deletion? See this discussion happening ten years ago for more information. The situation should have changed enough for this to be reconsidered. I propose a new clarification for G11: Pages whose main purpose is to promote or publicize its subject or some other entity, whose contents primarily consist of external links, contact information related to the entity being promoted, and unsourced or poorly sourced statements supporting the purported superiority of the entity. This also includes cases where the creator identifiably, usually through the username or user page, have a conflict of interest, when that the page is written in a disportionally positive tone. This will limit any future disputes arising from the differing interpretions of G11. Thank you. 211.100.57.166 (talk) 05:43, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

• I don't know that "bias" is part of the equation. "Blatant", and its replacing synonym "unambiguous", has only become more difficult due to promoters becoming more skilled at inserting promotion into Wikipedia. I gather from others that different admins may have significantly different tolerances for G11 speedy deletion requests. At DRV, I see very few G11 protests. "main purpose is to promote or publicize its subject" is too vague, given that promoters have learned to be subtle, with the use of advertorials. I think G11 should apply liberally to any page describing any for-profit organisation, where the page content lacks any independent commentary on the topic, AND all links and sources (if any) are to unambiguous promotion, or non-independent sources, or sources that link to making purchases associated with the topic. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:13, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Looking at the username? Maybe compare my first article with my username. Agathoclea (talk) 06:20, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
    • Not replying to me I worked out. I agree, many newcomers make a username matching their arriving interest which will match their first contributions. Especially noting how difficult it is to get a good new username. A company-associated username I think should be welcomed as an honest COI declaration; they should be mere moved from User:Company X to User:Company X, Person A. These people are not the clever, below-the-radar, committed promoters who create the difficult border cases testing the definitions of words describing G11. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:54, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
      • I seldom process G11 nowadays but in my mind if every sentence is promotionally written or if the non-promotionally written sentences would not make an article or stub, then it's a legit G11 case. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:13, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
• I agree with SmokeyJoe in that G11 may be used liberally in this manner. However, this is not the opinion of many others (see User:SoWhy/Ten Commandments for Speedy Deletion and Wikipedia:Why I Hate Speedy Deleters#G11). If one checks out Special:RandomInCategory/Candidates for speedy deletion as spam there are plenty of articles whose G11 deletion one might object to. This is the reason I proposed a clarification. 211.100.57.166 (talk) 08:52, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
• Additional comment: I would like to note that the criterion should not be applied exclusively, or even particularly, to "for-profit" organizations, as SmokeyJoe mentioned. Non-profits should be treated the same. If someone creates Wikipedia is awesome we should be able to delete that as G11. 211.100.57.166 (talk) 08:57, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
  • That sounds idealistic, but for non for-profit topics, G11 deletions are far less called for. Platitudes and puffery on a long dead philosopher is far more likely to be workable than platitudes and puffery on a recent up market underwear company. One is not likely the product of a promotion agenda and budget, the other, is. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:14, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm also concerned about the range of views on G11. Some Admins insist on puffery or sales language being present, but much of the spam is neutrally written pages on totally non-notable entities designed to support link building. Smart marketers don't write XYZ is an awesome company please buy their products. New wording is likely warranted. Non-profits vs for profits = nondifference in the problem. The idea the page must include some outside independant commentary about the organization is a nice bright line between spam and encyclopedic content that matches up with WP:GNG Legacypac (talk) 16:17, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I think non-profit COI equally important. It contributes to the impression so many good faith new editors get that promotional writing is what we want, because they see so much of it. It detracts from actually useful information about organizations by giving such content about how important their causes are, sometimes to the extent it competes with the nPOV of our actual articles. It gives fertile ground for undeclared paid editors --such organizations and their leaders are just as eager for publicity as any commercial organization,and equally gullible. it's not giving undue weight to long dead philosophers that's the concern, but the assistant professors whose CVs get magnified in attempts to make it appear that they pass WP:PROF. In fact, I'm starting to emphasise dealign with them. DGG ( talk ) 18:09, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

legacypac to the extent that you believe "neutrally written pages on totally non-notable entities" are ever properly in the domain of CSD, I think you've demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of what CSD criteria can be. Can you explain how the CSD criteria listed at the top of this page would apply to such a criterion? Jclemens (talk) 05:42, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Sorry that's not what I said and you fundamentally are trying to trap me. SPAM takes many forms. Legacypac (talk) 05:47, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

You can argue that's not what you meant, but it's clearly what you appear to have said. No one is trying to trap you, just offering you a chance to clarify what appears to be a roundly unsupportable statement. Please do clarify what you meant. Jclemens (talk) 08:31, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Try rereading the whole sentence before quoting part of it out of context. I'm talking aboutlink building spam where the text serves no encyclopedic purpose, it simply exists the support the SEO link. Legacypac (talk)

• The reason we have the language as it is now is requirement #1 from the top of the page. Trying to determine the COI an editor might have had makes it subjective. I also agree that promotional language from a clearly COI editor might pass G11 easier than from others but it still needs to be objective. If User:ACME Corp creates ACME Corp with the content "ACME Corp is a really important company", I think G11 applies objectively. If someone else did, how do we know they have a COI? Maybe they just like ACME Corp products? The problem with people seeing promotional language is usually not actually people promoting their own stuff but the fact that articles are oftentimes written by people interested in the subject and most people interested have feelings about those subjects influencing their editing. Regards SoWhy 18:23, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
• No one could ever accuse me of being sympathetic to spammers, but I actually am for a more conservative application of G11, and often will PROD or send to AfD things that other people at NPP are more ready to tag as G11. This is because I recognize that I have strong opinions on this, and as such, I prefer to temper them by having more eyes on it. I'll vigourously argue my side, but if people think I'm wrong, I don't mind it. The important thing to remember on this is that something that is not G11 can be deleted as promotional at AfD per WP:NOT, WP:DEL4, and WP:DEL14. We don't only have to rely on CSD for this, and there is nothing wrong with being more conservative on your deletion methods. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:59, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
• I wondered whether to post this as sometimes it seems as if I'm not entitled to my views on CSD, but here goes. I always thought G11 was about the content itself, not who wrote it. I was criticised for declining G11 on a user page that said: "X company is a company consisting of XYZ people". They tried to G11 this based purely on who wrote it. Yes, it's not what we'd like to see on a user page, and yes, it would have been an A7 it it was in mainspace, but if that is deemed "unambiguous advertising", then we're in trouble. Big trouble. To me, if it's written in an even vaguely encyclopaedic tone, it's not a G11. Another thing: I notice nobody's mentioned Wikipedia:Identifying blatant advertising. What do you think of that essay? Adam9007 (talk) 21:08, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

  No, you are absolutely right. G11 should not be used for articles that pass WP:GNG. WP:COI is immaterial; Any article that describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion. G11 should be used rarely and sparingly, and only for advertising or spam without any relevant or encyclopedic content Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:21, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

G5 - should be automatic delete and salt?

If an article is G5ed, it seems to me that it should not just be deleted but also salted. I don't know if there is way to set up the salt so that before an admin allows recreation of the article, a check is done to see if the new creator is a sock, but this would seem useful. Jytdog (talk) 00:42, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't agree with the salt, as quite often an article with the title would be valuable to have. Others could write it. Sometimes after deleting I will create a stub with the title. But if there was some special list to add the title to to check on recreators that could be useful as sock alert checking opportunity. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:03, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:BEANS, I will not describe how anyone could use this to effectively deny coverage of their competitors' organizations, brands, and products. I will leave it as an exercise for others. Jclemens (talk) 05:34, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I've been asked in the past to leave such titles unsalted as honeypots. I also understand Jclemens' issue. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:57, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

It depends on whether salting would likely prevent further disruption. This type of admin action cannot be made algorithmic. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 17:26, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Salting just puts controls on re-creation -- it doesn't deny recreation of a quality article, right? An article created by a sock was likely an undisclosed paid editor, and the purpose of the salt would be to provide an opportunity to check for return of yet another sock to create it again... there would be nothing to prevent any good faith editor (including a disclosing paid editor) to create it... But I am hearing the resounding "no". Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The problem is this: If a page is deleted according to G5 and another - good-faith - newbie wants to create it, they should be able to. Salting is sometimes necessary when a spammer does not get it but with all protection, it should be used conservatively and only to prevent further disruptions, not because of a single past disruption. Regards SoWhy 18:00, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely not. G5 deletions are about the contributor, not the content. G5 deletions of articles about notable topics are necessary (otherwise banned does not mean banned: the only difference between a banned and a non-banned editor is that good edits/articles by the banned editor are not welcome. Bad edits are not welcome no matter who makes them), but there is no reason to make it difficult for others to write about the topic. In fact, in some cases it might be best to delete per G5 and immediately start a new stub. —Kusma (t·c) 18:20, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The salting should not be automatic as per the comments above. If the subject is not notable etc. the admin is the right person to make the decision on whether to salt it. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 06:30, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

SALT may be used by any admin who can justify doing so - and persistant sockpuppetry is certainly, already, a good enough reason. No need to require it, though. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu

As an aside, I would be supportive of using extended-confirmed level salting to deal with specifically undisclosed paid editing sockfarm articles because there is a high likelihood the company will hire another undisclosed paid editor to try again. This happens regularly. Forcing those articles through AfC is not a bad idea. I think the existing protection policy allows this, since the fact that a company has hired an undisclosed paid editor to create an article suggests future disruption. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 04:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support -- it's quite likely that another sockfarm would recreate the article. Many articles in Deletion-sorting Companies have been deleted in the past, so might as well protect from recreation "at the source". K.e.coffman (talk) 05:23, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Sockmasters are just as capable of thinking of alternate article names as they are of new sock names - this cluster of sock attempts finally overcome by a paid meatpuppet, sticks in my mind (and in my craw) Barbera Caffè S.p.A., Cafè Barbera Franchise, Barbera Coffee, Barbera Caffé, Barbera Caffè, Franchise Café Barbera, Barbera coffee, Barbera Coffee Co., Barbera Coffee Company, Cafe Barbera.

The honeypot notion just tests a sockmaster's ability to think of new sock names, very little else.

Just like its real world analogy, the food needs to be tasted before salt is added. It should remain discretionary, though a pretty standard choice. Previous G11s & G5s in the article's deletion log are a good pointer. Cabayi (talk) 07:51, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose The fact that a sock farm has written an article does not necessarily mean that an acceptable article cannot be written. About 9/10 of the time it does, but the other 1/10 is thousands of potential articles.. The usual standard of 2 previous recreations is a fairly safe one, but it still shouldn't be automatic. Administrating WP is like editing WP -- it needs to be done by people using human judgment, not arbitrary rules. DGG ( talk ) 09:39, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - that said, I do periodically salt articles which are repeatedly recreated, but a long way from doing so by default. Sometimes salting a title which a sockfarm is repeatedly recreating will deter them long enough for them to go do something else, but about equally often it will inspire them to recreate the article at a slightly modified title instead, or with "Draft:" prepended, or with special characters, or in a different language, etc. ad nauseam. For example, see Syed Aman mian sharma, Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Tiger), Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Miya), Draft:Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Tiger), Syed Aman Mian, Sayyad Aman Mian Sharma, Draft:Syed Aman Mian Sharma, Draft:Sayyad Aman Mian Sharma, ... this isn't all of the variations this editor has tried. My point is that deleting these is like whack-a-mole already, adding salt just wastes more time. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:13, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment The Honey pot idea is an interesting one. The problem is that CU is not pixie dust and does not reliably connect all socks. Using salt more often is a good idea IMO but should not be done automatically. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:13, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose If a subject is notable, then an article should not be salted. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:58, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

New criteria ("F11" or extension of "G8")

A considerable chunk of the orphaned files on this project are images that used to accompany articles that deleted long ago. A useful criteria for helping reduce the amount of files that end up orphaned and never used would complement the deletion of the article covering the topic. Realistically, File:The Haptik logo.png could've only been used in was Haptik, which was deleted for A7 back in 2014. That file has been since been orphaned due to the file's deletion and was added to Category:Wikipedia orphaned files which has amassed over 100K files. Having such a criteria would help reduce the rate at which non-useful files are added to the category. Jon Kolbert (talk) 01:58, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• If anything, that sounds like it'd be an extension of G8. -- Tavix ^(talk) 02:02, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

  That's true. I've adjusted the title accordingly. Jon Kolbert (talk) 02:08, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

  Even unfree files we only delete if they've been orphaned for over a week. I might support a proposal which gives a sdelay of significantly longer, but not one which allows for deletion on sight. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:35, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• The fact a file isn't used in any pages doesn't necessarily mean it should be deleted. For example Commons will accept images that are "realistically useful for an educational purpose". While being used in an article does meet that standard, files which aren't being used may also qualify. Hut 8.5 06:43, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Agree. Most of those files might be useful and should probably be transferred to Commons if possible. You never know when someone might need them and it's not like we are running out of space. Regards SoWhy 06:59, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

  That's correct, being in use or not doesn't establish the basis for a file being of educational value or not, I do not think anyone is disputing that here. In fact, unused files such as File:Toronto Police Service Rover Crew 3.jpg and File:Tyson Ritter.jpg do get transferred as they serve an educational purpose. The distinction setting apart files that would fall under this criteria is that files such as File:Notimeband.jpg, don't serve anything beyond "a b/w pic of four blokes on a car", which wouldn't fall within the project scope of commons either. Jon Kolbert (talk) 07:43, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

  Speedy deletion criteria are supposed to be straightforward and as objective as possible, anything which involves subjective judgements won't be suitable. Now "image only used in a deleted article" is straightforward and objective, but "image only used in a deleted article and which isn't suitable for Commons and which doesn't have any other encyclopedic use" is much more open to interpretation, which makes it a lot less suitable as a criterion. Hut 8.5 17:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

What exactly would be the new criteria here? I'm not clear on the proposal. In particular, how will your proposal meet "Uncontestable: It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted"? Something like "files orphaned when articles are deleted" would take out a huge number of files that should not be deleted. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 13:18, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - First off, images without an article still serve an education purpose. Second, this does not seem to really be a problem. We have a lot of server space, thus meaning we do not need to reduce the images on it. Really, it would be detrimental, as it would get rid of files that serve an educational purpose. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 13:24, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as almost all images around here are educational in some form. Those images that are not, are free and have no other speedy delete reason should be considered more carefully first (FFD is a venue). But I think it is fair enough to speedily delete the non-free files that may have been used in the deleted page. Things like book covers may as well disappear with a page about the book, and similarly for logos. But then it is not a big deal if they go through the unused fair use timeout delete. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:56, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

A book cover may be useful on the the notable author page even if the standalone page on the book is deleted (though better to redirect the book title at the author). Legacypac (talk) 23:40, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose mostly because these really need some review. Some images could be used more on the site. Some should be transferred to Commons as encyclopedic even if not used (e.g. potentially useful on other projects, potentially useful in the future, useful as content unto themselves). We have the file PROD process now to get rid of the really bad ones, and that's good enough. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:32, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Just because an image has not been used does not mean that it will not. When writing articles, you go looking for images. Sometimes I want images for purposes that the original uploader never considered. Sometimes I just use a different one so a reader looking up a topic will not see the same image over and over. When I take images myself, I often upload several. Looking at the category, I instantly spotted File:ACTION-Canberra bus08.jpg, a nice image of ACTION bus 341 in Woden. It is not from a deleted article. It has been flagged as an orphaned free file since December 2011, and for transfer to Commons since February 2012. I have no idea why it hasn't been transferred. Deletion would be detrimental. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:55, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. A nonfree image dependent on a deleted article can already be G8 deleted, while a free image isn't really dependent on an article. Merely having been uploaded for a now-deleted article isn't sufficient reason to delete a free image; it can be moved to Commons, or we can FFD it because "it's not realistically useful anywhere else", but we have a criterion for Commons, and FFD can't be replaced because that's a subjective matter. Nyttend (talk) 06:05, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

New G Criteria: Personal information of Minors

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Proposed G??: any page that discloses personal details of a minor child who is not obviously significantly notable.

I regularly find Draft and Userspace pages that include information on minors including some combination of name, social media handles, full birthday, city and sometimes even elementary school attended. Sometimes these pages even have info on personal preferences and interests. The disclosed information is often enough for an online predator to work with. Usually the pages include some dubious claim the child is a youtube star or rapper or similar. I've yet to find a Draft or User page that discloses a minor's personal info that has any encyclopedia value so the chances of losing valuable content is next to nil.

Failure of WP:N is an alternative way to delete such pages in mainspace, and some of these pages can go G11, but for many examples there is no obvious path in Draft or Userspace except MfD which draws more attention (including by mirror sites) to the info we want to suppress. RevDel can be used but is awkward to request, not as well known to editos as CSDs and not specific to child protection. A clear CSD criteria available in twinkle would emphasize that Wikipedia does not want to host personal information that could be used by pedophiles and potential abductors to lure children online.

The "obviously significantly notable" part is to exclude royals and major celebrity child actors or well known children of actors were the personal info is well sourced from WP:RS.

The source of the information - a friend, enemy, bully, or the child themselves - is not really important to the principle we need to delete these pages on sight. This CSD is clear cut, unambiguous, and easy to understand and use. Please Support as a necessary step in the world we live in. Legacypac (talk) 23:37, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Private information should be WP:Oversighted. --Izno (talk) 00:38, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

• I'm with Izno on this. For private information on minors, deletion isn't enough. That said, perhaps the speedy deletion page should include a short section on when and how to request oversight. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 13:12, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose for two reasons. One, this is what oversight is for which can be asked for here (if you are an admin, one can simply delete the stuff under a discretion-preserving rationale and then call oversight - I believe WP:REVDEL has the policy on this). Two, tagging such stuff as a CSD may make it more visible, the opposite to the intent of the policy. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:04, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as a separate criteria that would effectively highlight these sorts of articles - not something I'm comfortable with, particularly if they're eligible for oversight. The last thing we need to do with oversight-able content is advertise it. Even if a bot courtesy blanks every tagged article within seconds, it's still gonna be in the history and it's still gonna be in the category. I agree that we should deal with pages like these rapidly and decisively, but I don't think this is the best way to do it. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 17:39, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Speaking as an oversighter, this is a terrible idea. This would be like holding up a big neon sign saying "Look here!" when that is the exact opposite of what we should be doing (read the Streisand effect article if you are not familiar with it). We should drawing attention to this as little as we possibly can, the more it's mentioned on wiki the more work you are creating for oversighters and the more chance that we might miss something. Wikipedia is constantly mirrored but we can only remove information from the live version, and there are people who troll the differences between dumps to try and find what has been deleted or removed, the more edits that are removed the more likely the changes will be noticed. The more attention you bring to them the more likely that they will be looked for and the more likely they will be examined if found. Thryduulf (talk) 00:34, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
• Weak support for something like this for children under 13 to address COPPA, because I've had to have user pages deleted for a <13-year-old putting a little TMI on the wiki, and at least at that time there didn't seem to be any firm policies about that, but consensus was to delete her page. I don't think we need this for children over 13 because we oversight anything inappropriate regardless of someone's age., and I would strongly oppose having something like this apply to the user pages of anyone 13+ PCHS-NJROTC ^{(Messages)Have a blessed day.} 03:21, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per Streisand effect. Potentially dangerous information, including information dangerous for the child to be disclosed, should not be publicly tagged. Firstly, beware "personal information hysteria". A disclosure of being under 18 years old is not a disclosure of sensitive personally identifying information. For where personally identifying information has been left by a minor, see Wikipedia:Oversight#Policy #1. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:31, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Terribly poor idea to encourage editors to publicly tag pages as including information about a minor. Instead, contact an admin for revdel, who will contact an oversighter for oversight. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:34, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment given the apparent WP:SNOW oppose here (mostly along the lines of something ought to be done, but this isn't it), the lack of awareness about Oversight, and given that most editors trying to remove children's personal info will be thing in terms of DELETE not in terms of OVERSIGHT then Twinkle & other tools should implement a Special:EmailUser/Oversight option alongside the CSD options with a pre-populated email along the lines of "Child's personal info at articlename". Cabayi (talk) 11:48, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Twinkle change requested at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle#Children's personal info. Cabayi (talk) 10:48, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Very correct, I'm finding this info in Draft and Userspace pages that need to be deleted not just have some pieces of info oversighted. It often takes the form of "Mary Smith, born 1/1/2008, known on YouTube as Smithster, attends Local Elementary School in Springdale. She has a sister named Sue and is best friends with Matt Jones. Here are her intragram, facebook, and youtube pages. She is actor, youtube personality, and awesome person." If functionality could be built into Twinkle we will see an uptick in reports and removals. Legacypac (talk) 12:41, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose, redundant to A7 if the person is non-notable and does not arise sufficiently often otherwise. Oversight can mop up the edge cases. Stifle (talk) 12:47, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

A7 does not cover Draft and Userspace Legacypac (talk) 04:18, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Email an admin or arbcom privately and have concerns deleted. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:08, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose If you don't know about RevDel then you don't know enough to tag an article for CSD. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:01, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's too hard to draw a line in this situation. We'll have only a few cases where deletion for this reason is warranted and where deletion for any other reason isn't, and in those cases it can be IAR speedy. If you speedy it for this reason and immediately send it to oversight, anyone objecting can be pointed to oversight. Nyttend (talk) 06:03, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion of WP:G5

See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Plea for a slightly less blunt WP:G5 for the beginnings of a conversation about WP:G5. Malinaccier (talk) 05:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

CSD criteria for articles with malware intent

Sometimes articles are being created with contents that may pass initial tests (i.e. CSD criteria do not apply in their strictest sense), however the intention of the article can be assumed as malicious, e.g. by inclusion of external links or citations that lead to virus/malware infected external websites. In the past, I have normally removed those links and evaluated the articles on their merits - and possibly sent for PROD or AfD. However, I feel that such potential "trap pages" should be dealt with quicker in line with attack pages or an extended definition of a hoax. I therefore suggest that G3 or G10 be extended to include articles that may have the intention of causing "technical harm" and should come with the courtesy blanking we have with G10 as precaution for other users. _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 16:27, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't see no reason to expand anything. Pages clearly created with the sole purpose of "trapping" users already fit G3 as vandalism and if the article itself is useful but the links are not, removing the links is a better alternative than deletion, isn't it? Regards SoWhy 17:16, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, the more I think about it, the more I believe this may warrant a separate category. Strictly speaking, the hoax and vandalism categories are concerned with disruption of Wikipedia contents, spreading misinformation, adding commercial spam links etc. which I would broadly categorise as "undermining trust in and usefulness of wikipedia". I'd value this of minimal (if any) commercial gain for the person making those edits. The next level I would categorise as "inflicting commercial damage" which I'd subdivide in G12 which may have a negative financial impact from copyright/licensing on the Wikipedia Foundation. The motivation of the editor being unclear - either as genuine mistake or to actively cause commercial damage. G10 is the escalation as commercial damage on Wikimedia Foundation can be assumed as intentional by creating libellous contents (which may also have criminal implication). Creating articles that contain links which are part of distribution of malware (which in some jurisdictions is a criminal offence, too) for whatever reason is a further escalation as it may physically damage users hardware, infringe their privacy and, if ransomeware is distributed, may finance criminal activities through blackmail. So, just bunching up such activity with mere hoaxes does not give the potential severity of the edit sufficient weight in the response. The template warnings are rather soft. And if hoax in conjunction with manual removal of links is used, there may not be a sufficient record of the activity either. Warnings and therefore the awareness of the community increases from G3 to G12 and finally G10. Malware links should - at least - carry a warning with the severity of a G10 given its quality. Yet, G10 definitions revolve around libel, but do not give wiggle room to include potential cybercrime as "off label use". _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 18:09, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Jake, do you have any examples where this would have applied? How often do we get articles that would fit this? To me this fits under vandalism. It is a direct attempt to compromise the integrity of a Wikipedia article. Either the whole article is designed to get someone to go to a site to download malware (which would make the article a G3 vandalism) or specific links in an article are malware links and then those links can be removed and revision deleted. I don't see a need to create something new. ~ GB fan 18:30, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I need to dig a little deeper. There were a few cases I remember in June and July. I had two with malware in the last couple of weeks, but they were G11 at the same time, so not a perfect example: What Can Wordpress Plugins Do For You and Dream Theatre Pvt. Ltd.. However, in any case I'd consider G11 the minor issue, as such the CSD log is misrepresented. Overall I probably have one NPP case where my web shield lights up every other week. Granted, this probably is in the single-digit percentage of all the NPP I do. _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 21:33, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Dream Theatre Pvt. Ltd. was simple spam, it doesn't look like there were any links to malware in it. You tagged it as WP:G11. What Can Wordpress Plugins Do For You was spam also. Your original PROD concern was simply WP:NOTHOWTO. I didn't click on the links in the article but none looked overly suspicious. None of your edits to either article even hinted at the possibility of MALWARE, why would an admin make any comment about MALWARE if the editors tagging an article don't mention it? ~ GB fan 01:08, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

The wordpress article definitely had inline links to compromised websites which I removed before PRODing. I think the Dream Theatre article was similar (definitely have a dreamtheatre domain in my web shield log that day). However, you are actually making my point. A specific category would be useful to a) alert other users of the specific dangers of the site (even blanking it so people won't google whatever it is and get onto the compromised site from search results) and b) alert admins to take special care and urgency when reviewing and deleting such pages. Obviously, other categories may still apply (such as G11, G3), but the malicious intent should additionally get logged as a reportable category and by including the link as we do with copyvio. _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 08:07, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

If there were links to compromised websites that you removed, why didn't you put that into the edit summary when you removed them? Why didn't you use that as part of the PROD rationale rather than just "WP:NOTHOWTO"? Why do we need a new criterion for something that doesn't happen very often and it is currently possible to document it? ~ GB fan 11:28, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

A comment in the edit summary will not protect the general public as users don't generally look there. A page curtain would. A note in PROD might protect the public, but it would not highlight the case on an Admin's dashboard, where I think it should be as it can be assumed that those cased may not be isolated. It would help quantify the issue more effectively and be more reactive in the identification of patterns and proactive in prevention. _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 15:56, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Malware gets attached to respectable sites often temporarily so I think the links should be deleted but not the whole article. Atlantic306 (talk) 18:17, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. This situation, in which we have malware intent in a page that otherwise doesn't qualify for speedy deletion, really seems rather rare, and it's somewhat subjective too. Getting rid of malware is definitely "improving or maintaining Wikipedia", so if you run into a malware-intent page that doesn't meet a single speedy deletion criterion, ask an admin privately (or leave a note at WP:AN), or simply tag the page with {{db-because|WP:IAR; page is attempting to spread malware}}. You'd be really hard-pressed to find an admin who would reject such a request for any reason other than "you misunderstood; this isn't really malware". Nyttend (talk) 06:12, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

How is attempting to spread malware not intentionally making abusive edits to Wikipedia? So why resort to IAR when there is a perfectly useful G3 already in existence? Regards SoWhy 07:01, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Once again, I'm addressing a situation "in which we have malware intent in a page that otherwise doesn't qualify for speedy deletion". Nyttend (talk) 11:15, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

CSD:G13 application to non-AFC draftspace pages.

I seek a point of clarification based on the recently closed RFCs. It is my understanding that any page in Draftspace that has not been edited by any non-bot actor is eligible for G13. It is also my understanding that even one edit to the page resets the clock for G13. In that case I have the following scenario: Editor A looks at a page that is eligible for G13, but instead nominates (or nominated prior to the new consensus being enacted) for MFD causing a new page revision to take effect. Editor B comes along and decides to nominate for CSD:G13. Is reverting the G13 nomination on the grounds that the page is not eligible because of the recent revision applying the MFD notice in order? I express concern that Editor B's G13 nomination fails the plain text and nuanced meaning interpertations of the rule, fails the "Objective" criterion for CSD, and fails the Uncontestable criterion for CSD. Thoughts? Hasteur (talk) 12:07, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Maintenance/notifications should not count as they are required per process and evidence no intent to work on or improve the draft in any way. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:15, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Proposal: Limit G13 to exclude moves from mainspace

I had asked about this in the G13 expansion discussion above but there was not any real discussion, so since the discussion was now closed in favor of changing G13, I propose a small amendment:

This applies to any pages in the draft namespace, as well as any rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation pages with the {{AFC submission}} template in userspace, that have not been edited (excluding bot edits) in over six months. This excludes articles moved to draft or user namespace without prior discussion or request by the article's creator, unless the page was eligible for speedy deletion under another criterion before the move.

The reasoning is fairly clear. Page movers and admins can move articles to draft or user space without any real oversight since redirects will not be created, i.e. without a second pair of eyes checking the move (as would be the case with R2 taggings of redirects created by such moves). There are 400+ such moves this month alone (cf. database query). With the current unrestricted wording, these pages become eligible for G13 deletion solely because of the namespace and age reasons, thus allowing admins to speedy delete articles that they wouldn't have been allowed to speedy delete in article space. TL;DR: If the article was not eligible for speedy deletion while in mainspace, it shouldn't become eligible just by moving it to draftspace. Regards SoWhy 13:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• If nobody has noticed the page move in six months, perhaps that is an indication the page isn't that important? And if the only problem is a lack of checks and balances, maybe we can get a bot that lists all draftifyings so they can be checked? All in all, I am not convinced that a further restriction is necessary or helpful. If page movers and admins abuse their powers to delete pages that shouldn't be deleted, we should talk to them, not make our rules more complicated. —Kusma (t·c) 13:33, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • If nobody has noticed the page move in six months, perhaps that is an indication the page isn't that important? That's the kind of wrong thinking that was the basis for the opposition to the change, and apparently ignored by the closer admin. According to the new interpretation, all old draft should now be deleted, no matter their quality. Diego (talk) 13:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There are thousands of pages that get (almost) no views for months at a time, for various reasons, for example because they are only about specialized subjects or they are orphans. That does not make them "unimportant" (how is that an objective criterion btw?). And since when is "not important" a reason for speedy deletion in any namespace? The problem is also not abuse here: There is (unfortunately) consensus that pages may be moved to draft unilaterally and there is now apparently consensus that once there and untouched, that's all it takes to speedy delete them, so both the mover and the deleting admin might very well acting in good faith. That does not change the result though, i.e. that articles are made eligible for speedy deletion that otherwise would not be. My point is this: What is not eligible in mainspace, should not become eligible just by moving. Otherwise, gaming the system becomes all too easy. Regards SoWhy 13:51, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I view this as more like a PROD type process, only that it takes six months instead of seven days. —Kusma (t·c) 14:12, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the process that has been approved doesn't require any kind of notification nor third party review, unlike PROD. Diego (talk) 14:19, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• There is a draft guidance text at Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol#Clarification_and_guidance_for_draftification that should serve well to restrict unilateral draftification to obviously ok scenarios. I think it is important that this gets written up. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:48, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Fully agree of course but not necessarily mutually exclusive, no? Regards SoWhy 13:52, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Why not some kind of template to apply to draftified mainspace pages? A big orange notice at the top of the page saying something like "This draft was moved from mainspace by PERSON for REASON (user request, post-AfD, preserve from CSD, whatever), please take that into consideration when tagging for deletion." ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • And then what? The problem is, with no rules against draftifying without discussion and no rules against deleting such draftified pages, the policy currently actually allows people to send pages to draft space, wait six months and then delete them, without any oversight whatsoever. And of course the main question remains: Why should a page become eligible for speedy deletion just because a single editor decided to move it to draftspace and nobody noticed for six months? Regards SoWhy 15:05, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
    • And then the person who is about to G13 it goes "Boy howdy this was draftified by so-and-so for such-a-reason, I wonder if it is actually mainspace-appropriate and I should move it back to mainspace." The template should slot any such page into a maintenance category ("Draftified articles", say) so that it can be reviewed (and possibly restored) by anyone at any time, like any of the other backlog categories. That would provide the possibility of extra layer of scrutiny prior to the G13 kicking in. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:34, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Weak oppose I often think that our discussion by experienced editors needs to take into account what new people actually think rather than what we as experienced editors think that they think. Too often it becomes fights between people on different sides of the "inclussionist/deletionist" spectrum arguing with new users as a proxy over what is really our viewpoint as to what we think Wikipedia should be.
  I say this because while I often see the argument that deleting after 6 months is biting a new user, I don't really think any of them would be surprised to see it deleted then. Hotmail (remember those days!) used to delete the entire email account after 90 days of not logging in, and Yahoo and Gmail also had similar policies of varying lengths. It is often just a fact of life that most people by now realize that stuff you put on the internet on a major site that you don't own isn't necessarily going to stay there forever. If a user hasn't logged in for 6 months, I doubt they would be surprised that on a website anyone can edit, something has happened to their article, and since it hadn't been touched as a draft, has been deleted, but they can get it back.
  This oppose is weak and would naturally be a neutral, because I don't have strong opinions on the draft space: I only care about making things easier for the editors who work there because it is a tough place to work. In my mind, the whole point of the just closed RfC was to make the bureaucracy regarding G13 less arcane. This seems counterproductive to that goal, so I oppose it because I don't really see a compelling reason for the need per my above musings about making this about actual new users and not about our internal ideological things. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:50, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Conditional Oppose If the page is sent to draftspace as a result of a single editor, I think putting a single delay of G13 (i.e. 6 months up to G13, stay, then 6 more months) is reasonable. As the result of a consensus discussion (like AFD) then I think the straight 6 months is reasonable. Hasteur (talk) 14:54, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose nothing new here not brought up and rejectsd in the G13 RFC. This "except this and that and check for another thing" program just obstructs the process designed to streamline the deletion of junk. It's already pretty obvious which pages are moves from Mainspace to Draftspace because they usually have cats and problem tags and stuff on the talk page. Further, G13 deletion involves notification to the page creator. It's not like this is done in secret. Legacypac (talk) 15:54, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, this would essentially allow any draft sent to draftspace from mainspace to either hang around forever, or clog up MfD for routine cleanup. If a draft hasn't been edited in six months, which is an awfully long grace period, we can probably safely presume that it's truly abandoned and no one has interest in resuming work on it. And on the few occasions that presumption was incorrect, G13 deletions are restored for the asking. This is a solution in search of a problem. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:06, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support The move/G13 combo is broken -- backdoor deletion without any oversight. If being in draft space makes a page more vulnerable to deletion then obviously one has to avoid draft space or move pages out of it. Let's just make it simple and get rid of draft space altogether. It's not working and so it's time to roll back the creep. Andrew D. (talk) 17:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • @Andrew Davidson: With respect, I can think of only 2 cases in which a page would be sent from Mainspace to draftspace. Either via a AFD (for which the community consensus felt it was not worthy), or via a New Page Curation action (WP:NPP). As I indicated above if it's the page curation action I think 1 year of unedited is a reasonable time to remedy the problem. If it's AFD, 6 months is a reasonable time frame as a community consensus (not just one editor) saw problems with the page and an Administrator enacted the consensus. Hasteur (talk) 17:47, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

A G13 deletion of a page that started in mainspace involves a NPP making the decision, the creator accepting the move (doing nothing to protect their creation), a G13 nominator (maybe a bot) and an Admin to actually delete the page. And after all that WP:REFUND is easy. That is a whole lot of eyes on something that is likely useless someone spent 2 minutes to create in mainspace. Legacypac (talk) 18:00, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, none of that is certain. There is no rule against moving old, unwatched articles to draftspace whose creators have long gone. There is no rule that the person moving and the person deleting have to be two different people. And there is nothing in the current wording of G13 that exempts such pages from speedy deletion. Considering how many articles are already deleted by admins applying the speedy deletion policy far too liberally as it is, it's no stretch to imagine some admins patrolling G13 will delete such "drafts" liberally without caring where they came from. If you agree that such move/deletions should not go unreviewed, where is the harm in actually writing it down? Regards SoWhy 20:34, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Yup, someone could go through all the months and effort to take most of those steps themselves to some old page no one is watching ... or they could take a few seconds to redirect the offending page to some other page, an act no one needs to approve. Seriously, this assumption of bad faith against editors and assumption people are out to destroy valuable content is a little old. Legacypac (talk)

Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule what "valuable content" actually is. I'm merely stating a known fact when I say that there are more than enough editors who have biases against one kind of articles or another ("cruft" etc.) so someone actually doing what I described above is probably not a matter of "if" but as matter of "when". Merely saying an article should go through the proper processes is not an assumption of bad faith however. Regards SoWhy 09:43, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

If you accept blanking and redirecting as viable solution for unwanted content, why on earth do you need the G13 and what's the need for permanent deletion of the pages? No one answered that question in the RfC, even though it was one of the major points of contention.

Reading the history of a blanked page is way easier than a WP:REFUND, but now you've imposed a huge burden on anyone who wants to review the actions of a serial deleter. Diego (talk) 20:55, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose The proposal doesn't make the abandoned draft any less abandoned. WP:REFUND is available if the author regains an interest in developing the draft to a mainspace-ready level. Cabayi (talk) 07:08, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Huh? How can it be an abandoned draft if it was an article before someone else moved it to draftspace? After all, don't we tell editors that don't own the articles they created? So how could they "abandon" them? Regards SoWhy 08:46, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I've looked at 100s of pages moved from Mainspace to Draftspace and then abandoned. With rare exceptions they are not appropriately referred to as "articles" for they lack things we expect in articles like sources and/or a claim of notability and/or meaningful content. Seriously SoWhy, I know you are an Admin but your continued harping on this G13 topic and repeated failure to properly interpret consensus (like claiming there was no consensus for G13 expansion when it was over 70% in favor) and lack of support for existing policy around G13 makes me wonder about your judgement. Your posts are getting disruptive. Legacypac (talk) 09:05, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I fear you are somewhat missing the point of my objections. So instead of attacking me personally, why not answer my questions above: How exactly can someone "abandon" an article if they don't own it?

I accept that the community has decided to delete old drafts (without any need) but I don't think they accepted it to be a way to circumvent the deletion policy. We have clear policy in place on how to handle problematic articles, mainly the deletion policy and the editing policy. There are processes described there in length on what can be done or not done to handle such articles. I am merely arguing that these processes should not be circumventable by a single editor's decision. Regards SoWhy 09:43, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy I think you're reading "abandoned" as an action of the author where I'm writing about the state of the draft. I take your point about WP:OWNership of drafts. Would it help to specify some good practice in relation to draftifying? Perhaps ensuring that the draft is tagged for a couple of projects to minimise the chances of the draft becoming abandoned & maximise its chances of improvement? (Putting the suggestion into practise for our poster child draft at Draft talk:The Octopus Frontier) Cabayi (talk) 10:13, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we are talking about different things here, Cabayi. I was not talking about pages created as drafts that were abandoned - here the word "abandon" makes some sense. As I said elsewhere, I believe draftifying should not happen without permission of the creator or community discussion and I suggested making this a rule but that was not supported. The problem keeps being the lack of oversight when someone draftifies an article without discussion and no amount of taggings will alleviate this because in most cases the only time people really notice such pages is when deletion is discussed. Regards SoWhy 11:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac:--Whilst surely there are fundamental differences between your's and SoWhy's interpretation of rules and/or intentions et al in these areas, I think he's far from disruptive--a word quite strong.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:34, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy:--As much as I appreciate your efforts and think the concerns to be valid enough, I think you are looking for solutions to problems which will be prima-facie rare or absent.I think NPPReviewers and/or page-movers use their discretionary power judiciously enough. Also, I am of an opinion that G13-eligible drafts should not be mass-deleted just because the policy states so and the reviewing admin must expend some thoughts as to possible notability etc.Also, since you seem to have a good technical know-how, is it possible to create a bot that maintains a list of pages moved from Article namespace to Draft namespace; other than by the creator.That would give us a rough idea about the numbers!Regards:)Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:34, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@Godric on Leave: Running the query I mentioned above without restrictions will give you (after some time because the tables are quite large) 20,700+(!) moves to Draftspace without redirect since December 2013 (and another 4,400+ [https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/21136 with redirects). I'm not a bot creator but it shouldn't be too hard to create a list based on that query, filtering out the few moves by the creators. Regards SoWhy 11:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy:--Will be shortly taking a look! Thanks!Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 11:37, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy, as I've mentioned before: I don't actually have firm opinions on draft space: I'm only placing this here for context, but we speedy deleted 24,895 articles from 1 January 2017 to 1 April 2017. That's almost as much in one quarter as articles moved to draft in four years. Assuming deletion rates have stayed about the same, we've speedy deleted 375,000 articles since December 2013. That's roughly 3 draftifications for every 50 speedy deletions if I'm doing my math right. I'm happy to let people make of that what they wish :) TonyBallioni (talk) 03:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: This is, unfortunately, an incorrect calculation because it assumes that such moves happened at the same rate for almost 4 years. The mass-moving of articles of draftspace only really started this year though, with 20,184 such moves (or ~80%) having been made in 2017 (at the time of this comment). This means the ratio of draftifying to speedy deletion was approximately 16,8% to 83,2% in 2017, i.e. more than 3 in 20 articles or 1 draftification for every 5 speedy deletions (based on 100,284 this year so far (careful, large query)). Regards SoWhy 10:35, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Note: I updated the numbers above to match the numbers I just managed to pull from the database. Still pretty high. Regards SoWhy 11:00, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that update: makes sense. I was going off of the December 2013 rate, since we know that the deletion rate as a percentage of articles created has been about the same for the last six years. I think the 5:1 number is also significant for context, and thanks for providing it. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:50, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

The whole idea of G13 is to allow any mainspace article to be speedily deleted if it hasn't been edited for six months. Move it into the draftspace and immediately speedily delete it under G13. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:05, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

No, a move is a non-bot change. A page that has just been moved to draftspace won't be G13-eligible for 6 months. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: You seem to be very confused.

1. Abducting mainspace pages into Draft space for no other reason than it's 6 months old is 100% out of process and not supported by consensus. Once a page is in mainspace, it's generally accepted that is the permanant home (obviously barring CSD/NPP deciding it's not ready yet/AFD/etc).
2. Even if it were the case, moving the page back to Draft space is still a non-trivial action and as such resets the 6 month clock on G13 eligiblity.
3. Your entire thesis is based on bad faith actions of an editor to the level of pointy edits.

For these reasons I don't think your scenario could ever take place. Hasteur (talk) 14:34, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

If I am very confused, then maybe other people are too.

1. What I am seeing is that thousands of articles are being moved from the mainspace to the draftspace. Looking at the comments on some of the moves is not encouraging. They point to things like "poorly sourced" and "not yet shown to meet notability guidelines". It seems that articles are being BOLD-ly moved into the draftspace in circumstances where CSD does not apply and AfD might not succeed. An article on Taylor Swift's latest album gets moved to the draftspace. Admittedly, it is then moved straight back again with the comment "Completely out of consensus redirect. Album and release heavily verified by multiple reliable sources and easily passes WP:GNG. Send to AfD to gain consensus if desire deletion or gain consensus on talk." That would likely be my response if it happened to me.
2. G13 applies to pages that have not been edited. I accept your contention that "moving" qualifies as "editing", but if you could supply a link where this is explicitly stated, that would be great. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't have a link except WP:G13. I know the pages that started in mainspace and make it to G13 are almost all junk that should have been CSD'd but mercy was shown. I'm sure there is the occasional one that goes to Draft, gets fixed and returned to mainspace. Imposing the restriction asked for here creates an unreasonable burden on reviewers to confirm the page history (which is not always obvious) and might make bot work impossible. Legacypac (talk) 22:48, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. When we move pages from mainspace to draftspace, they usually sit there indefinitely. Until I see stats suggesting these pages will ever result in mainspace content, I'm opposed to using draftspace as an indefinite holding ground for content that met mainspace CSD criteria but were moved to allow someone a second chance to build them. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:14, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: I think you misread my proposal. I proposed exempting pages that did not meet any speedy deletion criteria before moving because the move itself should not be all that changes that. Regards SoWhy 06:47, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy: Then the article shouldn't be moved out of mainspace? The only reason an article should be moved out of mainspace is because it doesn't meet our standards for articles. If that's the case, we shouldn't hold it indefinitely in draft. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 13:09, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Articlespace has some of the richest/most expansive CSD rules possible. If editors move a page that is CSDable into draft space to dodge the CSD, I'd give a very critical eye to the action as it seems like gaming the system in order to get the page out of less than receptive hands. Hasteur (talk) 13:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: We agree on that. Unfortunately, many others do not (see this discussion for example and there seems to be consensus that it's perfectly okay to move articles to draftspace even when they do not meet speedy criteria. My whole proposal here was to at least exclude those articles from G13 deletion (that's why the proposal reads "unless the page was eligible for speedy deletion under another criterion before the move" at the end). Regards SoWhy 13:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• Ok, editors with malicous intent to delete valuable content but who don't have the gumption to use CSD or AFD surely have been moving thousands of pages to draftspace in the hopes no one notices and with prophetic insight that G13 would be expanded this week and the hope someone would blindly delete the pages. Since some editors have convinced themselves wonderful content is being lost from this vast covert effort I propose a solution. Interested editors should patrol Draftspace for quality content! It turns out it takes just one editor to promote a page from draft, just like it takes one editor to demote a page to draft. So go forth and find great comtent to promote. As we clear the junk it is getting easier and easier to find good drafts. Legacypac (talk) 02:11, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose this seems like a solution in search of a problem (or at least, a solution so such an improbable problem that we have it already covered by WP:IAR). In my experience, most moves from mainspace to draftspace are by new page patrollers that see some hope for a new article that is just too poorly developed or marginal to be suitable in mainspace. If someone starts moving clearly good pages to draft space, someone will notice pretty quickly and they will be blocked. SoWhy mentions admins and page movers, but of one of them turns evil it seems like they could come up with much more exciting ways to mess our stuff up. See also: WP:CREEP, WP:BEANS. VQuakr (talk) 04:44, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Edit filter solution

Thoughts on implementing an edit filter to track all mainspace to draft moves? This would allow interested admins such as myself and SoWhy to patrol the recent moves to ensure proper articles aren't being moved to draftspace. I see no reason to adjust G13 though. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 13:23, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

A tagging edit filter would be useful so other procedure wonks like myself can also help reverse improper draftifcation (ideally by Technical Move Requests). Hasteur (talk) 13:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Godric has requested a bot to keep a list of such moves at Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Keeping_track_of_cross-space_moves..... Don't know which is the better solution, maybe both, the bot could just filter through all the tagged pages without having to resort to querying the database for all moves. I still don't understand though why these pages should be eligible for G13 if they were not eligible for any other criteria before the move... Regards SoWhy 13:35, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy do you have data that moved pages were not eligible for CSD before being moved to Draft? I've looked at hundreds and most I've seen could easily have been CSD'd or BLPProd'd in mainspace and many could be CSD'd in Draftspace without G13. Legacypac (talk) 04:22, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that seems a good anti-crosspace move vandalism tool. I agree it doesn't require change to G13. VQuakr (talk) 04:44, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

G13: clarification on "old" = abandoned"

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Resolved

 – A page is considered abandoned and G13 eligible if is not edited by a human for 6 months.Draft activity levels matter.Editor activity levels doesn't.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 06:04, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Is a page considered "abandoned" if it's old; i.e., if is not edited by a human for 6 months? This seems a bit of stretch. For example, if a user is still active, a 6-month-old page cannot be considered abandoned, correct? We need to add some clarification. -- Taku (talk) 15:37, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• Is a page considered "abandoned" if it's old; i.e., if is not edited by a human for 6 months? Yes. That was the entire purpose of the G13 expansion discussion above. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • It is important to note that these pages are REFUND eligible. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:43, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • No, isn't the RfC simply about expanding G13 to non-AfC drafts? as opposed to introducing new standard that an old draft, no matter how an editor is active, is considered abandoned. Obviously, that's very strange word-choice. -- Taku (talk) 15:48, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
    • That's not a new standard. G13 used to say that a draft was abandoned if it was submitted to AfC and then not edited for 6 months. Now it says that a draft is abandoned if it is not edited for 6 months. The activity level of any contributors has never been part of the G13 criteria. The draft is abandoned, not the editor. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:52, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
      • Ok. I think you're correct; I misunderstood G13 (perhaps many others). -- Taku (talk) 16:03, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• In draftspace, but only in draftspace. Taku should move his old drafts to his userspace, if he wants them, and is responsible for them. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 15:45, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • That could be very confusing. It's not clear that people who voted in the RfC had "old" = "abandoned" in mind. I think we need to have at least some another RfC to clarify this. -- Taku (talk) 15:51, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
    • No: the RfC above had a crystal clear consensus that it was intended to make any draft that had not been edited in 6 months eligible for deletion regardless of whether or not there was an AfC tag. There is a vocal minority that doesn't like this, but there is absolutely no need to have a new RfC on clarifying the core policy. I'm fine with discussing whether or not there should be a template for "valuable" drafts or something of the like, but the English Wikipedia policy on this is crystal clear. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:00, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
      • (@TonyBallioni: See above. I now see this was my misunderstanding.) -- Taku (talk) 16:05, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• G13 is clear, has been clear, and was resolved as clear in the RFC. The misunderstanding exists with TakuyaMurata and not with any of the policy. Oppose Takuya's attempt to carve out an exception that lets them retain their walled garden in draft namespace. No objection (as I've enumerated many times in many places) for Taku to keep their drafts in their userspace subject to the general prohibitions imposed by the community at large. Hasteur (talk) 16:36, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is this really what people supported in the G13 RfC?

Legacypac has tagged more than 1000 drafts for CSD just since the RfC above closed yesterday. I noticed this when he notified me of a speedy deletion for a draft I started, Draft:The Octopus Frontier. The subject is a work by Richard Brautigan. I had created drafts for most of his works and slowly -- very slowly, in this case, clearly, but why does it matter? -- worked on them a bit and moved them to mainspace. It's been a while since I've thought about it, though, and now I have no recollection of how much, if anything I had in that draft because it was deleted just a few minutes after the tag was placed (i.e. deleted before I could revisit it or have a chance to remove the tag). So now it's deleted. It may have been nearly empty or may have had a source or two and a basic lead sentence. It certainly didn't violate any content policies. Why is Wikipedia better without it? So now I have to go to the deleting admin, RickinBaltimore, and ask for a refund of a draft. Regardless of how much usable content there was, I'm in the position of having to plead for what is, practically by definition, work I'm not particularly proud of (or else it would be in mainspace) but which I would nonetheless like to recover.

Then I received another message from Legacypac about Draft:Women's rights in 2013. This time I got to it in time to remove the tag. It's a draft because it's a huge subject, but it's 15k with 29 references (and precedent for the article format). This made it clear to me that he is mindlessly not taking proper care in tagging and not using the sort of judgment many supporters of the RfC seemed to assure us of -- that just because something hasn't been edited in a while, that doesn't mean it should be deleted.

Is this really what people wanted when they supported the RfC above?

To be clear, this is the CSD talk page and not ANI. I'm not trying to report Legacypac, who is fully operating within the rules. My problem is less with him than with this change allowing speedy deletion of more than it should.

Honestly, if we're going to have a drafts space, then if a draft doesn't violate content policies and was created by a still-active editor, it's a purely negative act to tag it for deletion. Leave a note/reminder by all means, but don't delete it and act as though deletion is harmless because you can ask for undeletion. I mean, there's barely a point to deleting drafts at all that don't violate content policies, but I'm down with the vague principle of WP:NOTWEBHOST meaning some drafts should go, despite it having little-to-no practical impact. But if the editor is still editing pages actively, it shouldn't be speediable. Leave a reminder, move it to userspace, etc. It's common for people to beat the "editor retention" drum while complaining about things they don't like, but I have a hard time seeing the good in deleting the work of active editors when it does no harm at all to leave it be. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:58, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm in the minority, though, in viewing drafts this way. Scanning the CSD log, I'll ping some other active editors who have had pages recently tagged for speedy (a sample taken from the bluelinks) and may be able to give me a reality check: @Captain Assassin!, Gryllida, Karthikndr, Fixuture, FruitMonkey, Gazal world, Greenbangalore, TakuyaMurata, Satdeep Gill, Evolution and evolvability, Kharkiv07, Megalibrarygirl, Doncram, Pieceofmetalwork, Ghoul flesh, Jith12, Zanimum, and Elinruby: ... and apologies if I've accidentally pinged someone whose draft was tagged for another reason other than age. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:58, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• For abandoned drafts I'd propose at least one-week warning in advance before the deletion. Making it a one-month warning maybe could also work well. --Gryllida (talk) 04:10, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• I think it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a bit more warning. I've no real issue with older drafts being deleted, but I see no harm in having warnings 2-months and 1-week before it happens to give people opportunity to remove the tag and reset the timer if appropriate. I don't really do bot programming, but I'd have thought that something like that would be possible. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 05:07, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• There was an RFC that ran for an entire month and had about 90 participants. It was very clear and very well advertised. If you want a one week warning, we can go back to MfDing pages one at a time but that was rarely producing any interest in actually saving pages. Legacypac (talk) 05:14, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• The problem is the "rarely" cases. Good pages are rarely tagged, good pages are rarely deleted, this rarely negatively impacts experienced editors. On a large scale, rare occurrences still happen too often. If there were no other way, I would understand, but why is it too much to ask to say "if there's any viable content [NOTWEBHOST isn't about viable encyclopedia articles] or it was created by an editor with more than 100 edits who has edited in the last 90 days [any arbitrary standard would be better than none], leave a reminder instead of deleting"? If you have the Xtools gadget installed, you don't even need to go into the history. It adds two clicks and a few seconds to each review -- and to me it's clear that a few more seconds would be good. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:56, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, that's what was supported. There will be a temporary backlog as draftspace is cleared out of the thousands (literally) of no-hope drafts that have been sticking around for years, then it will become more normal. This doesn't mean admins shouldn't check each page and determine whether postponing G13 is appropriate. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:19, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• There is a bot that will be nominating for G13 deletion. An "advantage" is it gives a 1 month warning. A disadvantage is it can't tell good from bad and will nominate everything - including complete pages that could be published. I'm sending potentially useful page to AfC for either immediate publishing or to give the creator and other interested parties another 6 months to fix it up.

The 5500 non-AFC Drafts that existed a week ago are almost all garbage, and inspite of my efforts the number if abandoned drafts actually rose week over week last week :( Please help me wrangle the problem into a reasonable situation here User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report instead of second guessing my judgement based on a pages you barely remember but that must have been great because you started it. Also see WP:REFUND it's easy to get things restored. Legacypac (talk) 05:27, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

You personally reviewed 1000 stale drafts and tagged only the appropriate ones? Color me impressed. Jclemens (talk) 06:00, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• Just to be clear, I see a 1 month warning to be a fair compromise to the issues I raise in this thread. I missed talk of that bot elsewhere, it seems. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:58, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) @Gryllida: (Wrong editor) @Rhododendrites: Your presumption of bad faith is a personal attack. I suggest you strike it or better yet close this section and try again with a neutrally phrased question. Hasteur (talk) 06:09, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac: There is no bot currently that deals with Non-AFC drafts. AFC drafts can have a bot nominate on them because the author is told at the outset that at 6 months unedited the page is fair game. I could write a bot that reminds editors that their page is eligible for deletion under G13, but that's effectively the same notice that is given when nomination happens. Can't run ahead of the 6 month deadline because there's no categorization structure and I can't programiticly scan to find pages that have past the 5 month mark. Hasteur (talk) 06:04, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

At large, I'm going to assume good faith that Legacypac is looking at each page and giving at least a cursory google search to see if the subject has a chance. I know that I am when considering several of "Pre-Production" films that I have speedied since the change to CSD took effect. Hasteur (talk) 06:04, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

yes I must be over 1000 pages G13'd now. I'm checking them one by one too. I'm working with the advantage of having already been working the report for several months, so I'd looked at thousands of the drafts already, mentally noting what I'd wait to G13 when that became available. I'm sure there is the odd draft I've sought deletion on someone else would keep, and some I've sent to AfC that will die rejected, but my accuracy is very high. User:Legacypac/CSD_log I should really find another hobby but it's just too hot right now to be running around doing active stuff. Legacypac (talk) 06:11, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Also see we just had the Editor active vs Abandoned page discussion right above this discussion. Legacypac (talk) 06:35, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• You could move your draft to your own userspace and it wouldn't be deleted right? Pieceofmetalwork (talk) 06:57, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
• Experienced editors who know what they are doing should keep their drafts in userspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:06, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

And experienced editors should also monitor that any drafts in their user space or articles of interest to them in main space are not being moved into draft space. Thincat (talk) 08:08, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm. My

I've had Draft:The_Octopus_Frontier refunded (the page that started this thread). It's very short, no references and no content beyond the work's name and author and basic publication details. It's basically an idea for an article with no info that anyone wanting to write up the topic would not already know or woukd find immediately. Legacypac (talk) 07:15, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• "Is this really what people wanted when they supported the RfC above?" - emphatically Yes. It was patently obvious that there would be a new backlog of abandoned non-AfC drafts that would need to be processed and I think we are obliged to Legacypac for diving into the workload and handling the drafts conscientiously. Having had your draft Draft:The_Octopus_Frontier refunded Rhododendrites you've now (intentionally or not) set it up as the poster child for the new policy. Will you improve it in accord with the fuss you've made (proving REFUND works), or will it quietly die another G13 death in 6 months (proving it WAS abandoned)? Indeed, if this G13 deletion has spurred you into finishing up the article, then it's been beneficial in every respect. Cabayi (talk) 08:49, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
• Cabayi has hit the nail on the head.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 08:59, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Excuse me, set it up as the poster child for the new policy - this thread is about two articles that were tagged, Draft:The Octopus Frontier and Draft:Women's rights in 2013. The former was deleted with no practical notice to me, so I wasn't sure what I would now have to request to be refunded. Based on the tag of the other, it's entirely unclear to me whether it would've had usable content (i.e. if the latter could be tagged, I'm uncomfortable not recalling what was in the other). As I said when I opened this thread, the shame is that it was simply deleted and now I have to put myself in the position of making a request to have it refunded while knowing it's probably not something I would be proud of. Indeed, it is not. But again, this is not just about that draft -- it's about the process of learning about deletion, making a determination about whether it's worth saving, etc. before it's deleted. This is not a test of the REFUND process or of some notification process such that it matters when/what I do with it at this point. Speedy deletion is simply a dysfunctional mechanism for persuasion/motivation when it can easily be avoided. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:23, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• FAILURE Examples such as Draft:Women's rights in 2013 are good in confirming that draft space is an experiment which has failed. It has now become a battleground where games are played rather than being a useful aid in building the encyclopedia. I already counsel new editors to avoid AfC and draft space and will emphasise this even more now that the G13 purge has started. I understand the outrage of the editors who have been using it in good faith but counsel them to move their work into mainspace ASAP. If a topic has any merit then it's easy to create a stub for it. I often do this or, if I'm pressed for time, I just create a {{R with possibilities}} such as Women in aviation. Such stubs and redirects plant the seed in mainspace where everyone can find it and nuture it. Some may try to stamp on such seedlings but our existing processes such as AfD ensure that this is done with oversight and some community engagement. Draft space is an unnecessary sideshow which should be shut down per WP:CREEP and KISS. Andrew D. (talk) 09:29, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I could point out hundreds (if not thousands) that points out that this was a resounding SUCCESS.Sans the hyperbole which accounted for much of what you have written above, I find it gravely concerning that an experienced editor(who is involved in several editathons etc.) is asking and councelling people to put all their stuff (which in a majority of cases is garbage)into main-space. And no-body (barring the same old faces) are outraged.Cheers:)Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 11:34, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, and if you just delete the drafts namespace you would likely have far more "successes" than failures, too. The problem is that it's disproportionate in its impact. In one case you're removing a thousand pages with little-or-no viable content that nobody will ever see, created by people who don't otherwise contribute to Wikipedia. In the other, you're lumping into that group drafts with good content and drafts started by people who have been here for 10 years, make a whole lot of edits that aren't worthless, regularly come back to articles sometimes years later, etc. I sort of wish I had noticed this with examples that weren't my own so it wouldn't seem like I'm being a diva. To be clear, this thread will not end with me putting a retirement banner on my user page for a few teeth-gnashing weeks. :) My worry is the people who are simply discouraged by this and don't say anything about it. And again, it's all easily avoidable with minor adjustments to the criterion. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:32, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• Personally I don't have a problem with any of the proposals here as long as the creator/main editor of the draft has fair notice before it is deleted. The drafts of mine that were deleted were abandonded and were correctly deleted. However, I would still appreciate it if I was notified before it was deleted. Jith12 (talk) 13:55, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

This is pretty much my feeling on the matter. Elinruby (talk) 22:21, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• Deleting whole topic areas like the lists of historical monuments in Nepal (add insult to injury by doing that right before WLM) without looking at why they were in draft space in the first place, is also a big failure of the process. Agathoclea (talk) 14:08, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
• I don't think the people deleting these drafts are paying any attention at all to the contents. Draft:Exampledraft was tagged and deleted under G13 two days ago. Anyone who even glanced at it would have noticed that it was an example page intended to illustrate what drafts looks like rather than an actual draft. If this really is about getting rid of "no-hope" drafts then I suggest actually reading the draft before you nominate it for deletion. Hut 8.5 14:23, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Well, some of us tried to warn the community that this is most likely going to happen. Too bad we turned out to be right. Regards SoWhy 14:39, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
• I am had a draft in that pile. It was used to collaborate on an alternate version of a contentious article, where absolutely all edits were being challenged. We established that we mostly agreed on a version, which was then used for show and tell. I sent him a message saying I believe we were done with it but yanno it would have been courteous to ask me, a long-time and very active editor, before speedy deleting it. Perhaps the other editor deleted the text and it was blank - if so I have no issue. Otherwise, well... I nonetheless would have preferred to be asked. I had another one that was dormant but still being used, which fortunately someone did ask me about. Speedy delete does not make me feel like embarking on the major and much-needed edit I was going to do today to History of Honduras...Bottom line, storage is cheap. Why are we doing this? This is why we're losing editors, Wikipedia. Elinruby (talk) 15:58, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Alternative versions of contentious articles, probably WP:POVFORKs, are attribution hazards. They can be useful for short term sandboxing, but long term, old and unused, out of sync with the proper mainspace article, these pages should be deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 16:21, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. You apparently haven't had much to do with determined trolls, but they can stop all progress on given articles, and in some cases appear to be getting paid to do so. It is useful sometimes with large changes to have a place to talk about what a large re-organization/different layout would look like and this is in fact frequently done. Again, I am not crying about this particular draft (fake news), as I think we were done with it, but when I had another draft come up under this process (Shooting of James Boyd) I did appreciate being asked about it because yes, it is still an ongoing issue even if it's not currently being worked on. I am not talking about creating a POV fork for crying out loud -- I am talking about a good-faith attempt to rewrite by several editors, without ankle-biters claiming that the New York Times or the Washington Post is "fake news", for example. Yes, the resulting agreed-to text would need to be merged back into the main article, but attempts to reach consensus may be greatly impeded by the sort of editor who is capable of taking the same sentence to three different noticeboards. (saw this on SOPA; also see the history of Ugg boot). They're out there and they seem to be getting paid by the hour. That said, this is twice now that a proposal which affects me hasn't come to my attention until people are nuking things from orbit. Personally I think some people just like to delete things, and the BLP excuse is just that. It is often applied in a very biased way; I have seen the same editor call BLP for Hillary Clinton but refuse to do so for Donald Trump. I mean, I can't stand the man either but we need to be scrupulously even-handed and dispassionate, or stop trying to cover politics at all. Should I be watching the administrators' noticeboard I guess? Meanwhile, I am here to tell you that this does discourage editors; I myself never translate anything anymore because of the X2 and the quaint idea that it's bad if I didn't use a quill pen to write it. And then when I speak up, I am told that I am hurting Wikipedia. Every. Single. Time. I think it would be nice if we all tried to row in the same direction, personally. Elinruby (talk) 22:12, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Elinruby, you are very hard to follow. You appear to originally complain about deletion of abandoned article fork-sandboxes, but then go on to say a whole lot of things unrelated to expanded G13. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:27, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

• I don't understand why Legacypac is allowed to use the words "spam", "garbage" and "junk" to refer to Wikipedia.  My watchlist shows 19 edits today just to this one page.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:17, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
• Why are these G13 deletions already taking place?  Editors have put their work in the incubator believing it would be retained there subject to collaborative editing.  Since the expectation before this recent decision was that if any limit was imposed, edits would be required at least annually, the six-month term is a surprise that came out of AfC.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:17, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes. There was very clear consensus for G13 without delays. If something you want to work on gets deleted, follow the WP:REFUND instructions. Please read this thread and the G13 RFC before posting incorrect information about what was approved. Legacypac (talk) 01:23, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

How is it that you've never learned how to indent your talk page replies?  Unscintillating (talk) 02:22, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Have you got through the last RFC? That's sorta a bolt from the blue! Many people have some well-valid complaints but yours' stand on an entirely new axis--deeming our actions to be non-policy based.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 16:11, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

• Comment -- it is what it is; the RfC was quite clear. There's always WP:REFUND. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:02, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
• The RfC might have been clear but it opened the door to a massive WP:CIR issue and a lot of admin time wasted in (hopefully) checking, deleting, then someone else again checking and undeleting. Draft:List of Monuments in Rautahat, Nepal for example went wrong on three different levels. A prodsytyle solution would have caused a lot less issues. Agathoclea (talk) 14:40, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Agathoclea What particular competence issue are you raising? Seems like you're attacking Legacypac for nominating a page that was at the time of the nomination eligible for G13. It would be better to work the most eligible G13s (oldest unedited), but that's a personal decision. Also if this was going to be important to Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Monuments, in the near future, perhaps they could have done a little effort to verify that all the pages were ready to go and weren't in danger of being deleted soon. Hasteur (talk) 14:52, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
    • The point being that at the time of nomination it was not eligible for G13. So apart from not recognizing from the page history that this was part of a special series, it was tagged without qualifying and checking. It was deleted as R3 obviously without checking either. My point with this not an individual tager (although he has had some outstanding whoppers) or admin (who was most likely overwhelmed by the masses of pages to delete), but the process being geared in deleting drafts in an extreme hurry. That extreme hurry is uncalled for, as harmful drafts would have been deleted long ago and waiting after 6 month for at least another week, would not make any additional workload and harm, but that week could have given interested parties (eg wikiprojects) time to make a decision if they wanted to intervene and a lot of effort saved at WP:REFUND. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Agathoclea (talk • contribs) 15:05, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
    • Could someone tell me again why Wikipedia is better off without this draft, and is better for having a process in which we scold contributing editors who complain about semi-automated deletion tagging and scold organizers of Wikimedia events for not conforming to an arbitrary deadline? And don't tell me it's because of the thousands of good examples because if you're unwilling to change the G13 wording, you want all six-month-old drafts to qualify. [I'm replying inline, but intend the collective 'you']. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:49, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Speedy deletion is intended to reduce the time spent on deletion discussions for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion.

How is this line from the top of WP:CSD reconcilable with deletion of drafts that do have a practical chance of surviving discussion?

Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases.

It seems important to highlight here (again) that the majority of these deletions are uncontroversial (obvious), but there's a persistent unwillingness to make even the smallest concessions or adjustments to the wording that would reign in the current blunt instrument that makes absolutely no distinctions based on the quality of content. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:49, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

That statement is pretty unfair to the editors and Admins that postpone or even fix and promote hundreds of stale drafts with potential found in the backlog. Instead of complaining about how other are handling stale drafts, join in and show us how it should be done. Time spend actually patroling abandoned drafts may change your viewpoint. Here's the link [[[User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report]] Legacypac (talk) 05:05, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

That is not an encouraging response to see in a thread that shows examples of some quite obviously bad decisions. Editing/gnoming any particular task is voluntary, but competence is required of those that choose to take up any particular task. Pointing out someone's errors is not "complaining." VQuakr (talk) 05:15, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Can, not must. G13, similar to most of the criteria is not mandatory. If an editor is nominating an obviously good draft for G13 rather than tagging or ignoring it, trout the editor. If an admin is deleting obviously good drafts based on a G13 tag rather than declining, trout the admin. As discussed above, this is already in line with our speedy deletion policy.

This is basic stuff that anyone doing adminning or draft patrolling should pick up rapidly with experience, but if there is too much confusion (as opposed to just teething troubles on a significant CSD criterion change), how about a supporting info page making the nuance more explicit? VQuakr (talk) 05:09, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

The example that started this thread looked like this 10+ months unedited, no sources or indication of why this book might be worthy of an article. [9]. I stand by my tag as correct, and the delete was correct. Had I not tagged it may have sat for years. Legacypac (talk) 05:38, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I know it's convenient to focus on the one I said up front might not have had any real content in it, but two articles started this thread (the other being Draft:Women's rights in 2013, which had many sources and every indication it might be worthy of an article). The point of bringing up the other one was because it was deleted without notice, thus I couldn't even make the determination of whether it should be saved (and also, I'm yet to hear from anyone why Wikipedia is better without it other than WP:VAGUEWAVEs to NOTWEBHOST). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:35, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Without going into too much detail. The sources were for individual women's rights events that happened to take place in 2013, not sources for the 'Women's rights in 2013' - you can make a 'year' article very easily on almost any topic by providing sources for events that happened in that year, it does not evidence that that year is particularly special or worthy of note in the subject. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:59, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Categorization for G13?

@Hasteur: Maybe we should try to get a draft-categorization structure going? We can organize them by month in order to facilitate warning people about impending deletion, and also so that backlog hunters looking to rescue drafts can go through the oldest ones first. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:23, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

User:Premeditated Chaos User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report is already sortable by date so that info is readily available. I've been mainly starting with the shortest each week on the idea they are the most useless and Hasteur has been mainly working from the oldest on the basis those are the most abandoned. Legacypac (talk) 06:29, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I know about the draft report, I just think a category structure would be better organized. Plus it would be automatically updated as opposed to once a week or so when the bot generates a new report. Maybe a bot could be made to slap a date category on each newly-created draft. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:41, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Ask the bot owner to run the bot once a day? --Gryllida (talk) 10:41, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe... I've requested the bot update more frequently while we clear the backlog but MusikAnimal's page says he is away for a few days. Any idea how I can make links turn red on the report for deleted pages? There is a delay and I keep clicking on blue links that already deleted. Like a cache purge or something? Legacypac (talk) 06:46, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's a problem, I have faced too!Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 08:54, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

In your Preferences tab under Gadgets - Appearance, there's options for cache purge links that appear in your top bar. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:12, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean category by topic? If yes, tag drafts with wikiproject tags, or with Categories, or both?? If not by topic, if you mean by date, just let me know, I may have misunderstood. --Gryllida (talk) 10:20, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I said by month, as in, a hypothetical series of "Drafts created in MONTH YEAR" categories, similar to the existing maintenance backlog categories. I personally think tagging by WikiProject is pointless and clutters up talk pages, extra double so on draft pages, but if people want it I don't care enough to seriously oppose it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 10:25, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Use User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report? Reuse its code and notify users or do whatever you wanted to do with this information? What advantage would a category give? 'Rotating' the categories (updating to 'last edited 2 months ago' then 'last edited 3 months ago' etc in the article) might be a unnecessary, if the existing bot algorithm works well. --Gryllida (talk) 10:40, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I've never said anything about categories by last edit or rotating any categories. I think you need to read my posts again please and pay attention to what I'm actually suggesting. We should be categorizing our drafts by the month that they were created in. So if you create a draft today, your draft will fall into "Category:Drafts created in August 2017".

This scheme would facilitate a number of different functions, such as making it possible for Hasteur's bot to pre-warn users that their drafts will become eligible for G13 soon. Users can pick through the drafts by category and either tag for G13 or make edits for postponement as the drafts become eligible. Users who like picking through backlogs can search through the categories for interesting-looking drafts to adopt and improve. The categories will be updated in real time, which is much more useful than an occasionally-updated bot page full of redlinks. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 10:59, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

The purge in Preferences worked great. Thanks! Would created in month cats really help the bot? The clock starts when they stop working on it, not start (granted that is usually the same day). A bot message like "the draft you started 5 months ago on hopeless topic may be subject to deletion soon if not being actively improved".

Start date cats could also help id drafts that someone is just tweeking to keep it from failing stale that may be NOTAWEBHOST or SPAM links problems. Legacypac (talk) 11:20, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I think Hasteur mentioned above that he can't do a 5-month warn with his bot since we lack dated categories, so I think they would help there at least. Plus it would give us a real-time idea of what draftspace looks like at any given time - you could see at a glance how many drafts there are left from any given month or year. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:03, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Tagging for WikiProjects has value. I can use Petscan presently to identify video games articles which are in the dated for deletion pile. I can do the same for all drafts now too. Also, WikiProjects would be a viable talk page to warn about impending deletion, as they will have the most editors able to help. (Of course, such a warning should be opt in.) Perhaps there should be an opt in where I personally can receive a list of pages from a particular WikiProject near the bottom of the backlog. --Izno (talk) 12:54, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, fair enough. I don't love the talk page tagging but I'm certainly not about to start a campaign against it, and I can see its value to other people. I can certainly also see the value of some kind of cross-referenced date/subject subpage for WikiProjects. "WikiProject:Video Games/expiring drafts" or something. I wonder if that kind of thing would increase the adoption rate on old drafts? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 13:12, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Those people would also have the best understanding of the potential of an article. Yes, a list updated somewhere between daily and weekly for topic areas would be very appreciated. Or perhaps we can get the article alerts system to pick up drafts now that the workflow is streamlined some. --Izno (talk) 14:48, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Reply to many: I can use the MusikBot report page to go through and apply a template that marks when the page was created, however this will be a registered edit. Per my personal view, I hold myself to a higher standard when notifying/nominating to mean 6 months un-edited by anything (in order to give the most conservative interpertation of the rule). For that reason it will kick all the pages currently on the MusikBot report back into the backlog for 5 months, then the bot will notify that in 1 month if the page remains unedited, it could be eligible for G13, and finally if it's still unedited then the bot will nominated. Again I reiterate the bot I am envisioning pushes for a more narrow standard on the nominating/notifying, but that is entirely up to the consensus here if they want that. Hasteur (talk) 16:24, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Heavens no. The junk to useful ratio is far to high. Legacypac (talk) 17:55, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Great idea, especially as the ratio of useful drafts being deleted is far to high. Agathoclea (talk) 19:45, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

In line with the above I have made {{Draft creations by date}}. See the description. If there is consensus, I can start working on building the bot later this week so that we can build the year/month/date category hierarchy similar to Category:AfC submissions by date. Hasteur (talk) 17:43, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Rather than trying to steer people to check abandoned drafts, let's focus on non-expired AfC Drafts. This fishing is MUCH better there. An even better pool is postponed G13 pages because someone actually took action thinking they had merit. Legacypac (talk) 17:55, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Article space essays/term papers

This has come up several times recentlyish, and I wanted to see what people's thoughts were on the possible creation of a new criteria for term papers/personal opinion essays. We get a fair amount of them created as new pages either by people trying to advocate for a specific POV or as part of a class assignment (see User:EJustice for the most prominent recent dispute in that area), or both. PROD is almost always ineffective here, as the author will almost always contest, and these type of creations are from what I can tell virtually universally deleted at AfD per WP:NOTESSAY. I've selected several from my AfD log as an example below:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/African American Girls and School Discipline
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Black women and the United States prison system
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prostitution and State Sanctioned Violence
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/British Sri Lankan Tamil: Humanitarian Issues
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Philosophical Evolution of Wing Chun
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vision vs. Mission Statement
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common English Language Mistakes Among Persians

I'm sure Jytdog could probably provide some similar examples from the EJustice situation. Robert McClenon recently raised a similar point about statements of religious faith at WT:NPR. Some argued that G11 would work for those, but I generally take a more conservative view on G11 than most. To be clear: this is not a proposal for anything, but getting peoples' views as to whether G11 could be read to cover these, and if not, whether there is a need for a new criteria, or a need for a more formal discussion. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:25, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I use G11 on the ones that really advocate for something. If created it should be a G?? to cover Draft and Userspace. Legacypac (talk) 22:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree something should be done, but before we move too far down the road: How often do these types of pages come up in Articlespace or other spaces where deletion is needed? What would the threshold between proviging information vs WP:OR/PoV advocacy? I'm concerned that some things that may have previously been accepted as internet static (such as certain OR screeds) would be swept up by this suggestion. Personally I don't think G11 really works for this as we don't have a particular "sell" on those and I'd hate to see G11 interperted that way to disasterous results. Hasteur (talk) 22:43, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I've not been keeping track but wild guess... 30 or 40 in 1000 abandoned Drafts. Userspace... no estimate. Legacypac (talk) 22:46, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I have also seen an annoying number of these personal opinion essays. Before we formulate any proposal, however, it appears that we are starting to conflate two separate questions, which are essays in article space, and essays in draft and user space. I respectfully disagree with User:Legacypac that if we formulate anything it should be a Gn to cover drafts and userspace. I don't think that we should worry much about essays in user space or draft space. The only question is whether we need a speedy An (A13?) criterion to cover opinion essays in article space that are inherently statements of opinion. That depends on how common they are. I think that we definitely do not need a speedy criterion to get them out of user space or draft space. I don't see the harm to them in draft space or user space; sometimes they can be reworked into neutral articles, and sometimes they can't, but we don't need to speedy them. Whether we need a speedy criterion for them in article space depends on how common they are; they satisfy the other criteria for a speedy deletion criterion, and they do need to be thrown out of article space. Let's not conflate article space and draft or user space. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:29, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Robert re G vs A: userspace has U5 if it's a massive NOTWEBHOST violation, and drafts can be improved or dealt with by G13 when they become stale. Re: Hasteur on frequency. If I had to guess it'd be about 1/2 of whatever is seen in draftspace. So around 1-2%. In terms of raw numbers, if we have ~7700 articles created every week, that's about 70-150 a week, which is about 1-2 days worth of deleted articles at AfD. It certainly wouldn't be the most used criteria, but I'd suspect it would be used more than A11. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:42, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I'd use against stuff that can't be fixed. WP:SOAPBOX applies everywhere. Legacypac (talk) 23:49, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Example Draft:MEDIA_FREEDOM Legacypac (talk) 00:33, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I will comment that, while the rule against soapboxing applies everywhere, it, like most of the other rules on what Wikipedia is not, is not a speedy deletion criterion, and, because NOT includes so many things, it can't be a workable speedy deletion criterion. I would support an A12 or A13 for opinion essays that inherently cannot be reworked to be neutral point of view. Basically, it should apply to anything that, in user space, would be U5, and a few other things. I don't see the need for a speedy criterion for stupid essays in draft space. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:48, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I would like to include things written in essay style that are unsalvageable OR as well (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common English Language Mistakes Among Persians.) Something along the lines of An article int he style of an essay, term paper, blog post, or other non-encyclopedic form of original thought that would need to be entirely rewritten to comply with either WP:OR or WP:NPOV. This criteria does not apply to pages that when the original research was removed would otherwise be an encyclopedia article. This would limit it so that encylopedia articles that contain OR are not subject to speedy deletion, but that lists of words that confuse Persians in English with reasoning why wouldn't need to go to AfD. I'd welcome thoughts. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:28, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal by User:Tony Ballioni. That seems well-defined and properly restrictive. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:41, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we should prefer moving back to draft space or sending to AFD over any new CSD criterion. These often go without a hitch, but sometimes they're valuable potential articles--and it's more that their writers missed the boat on the style of writing than it is that they're deliberately OR or NPOV or anything in NOT (most are V). As Tony opens, these are a majority coming out of classes, where any crossing with the deletion crew of any sort will likely result in a lost potential editor (who has been exposed to editing through gradual change). WP:MERCILESS is a thing I guess, but maybe we shouldn't be merciless to people who want to learn. --Izno (talk) 03:36, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

On the one hand, I am not one to worry much about losing new editors. I do think that if we want to actively encourage new editors, we need a meeting and greeting function that isn't just a burden to dump on the New Page Patrol editors. On the other hand, I think that AFD is at least as off-putting to new editors as CSD. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:41, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

What I can't understand is that most people read Wikipedia, likely regularly, before they decide to submit their OR opinion piece or story about how they love some girl or how they started a band or whatever. Where, after reading Wikipedia, do they get the idea any of this is ok? Legacypac (talk) 19:56, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Because this is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Next question.... Robert McClenon (talk) 03:42, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Because they don't read policy pages. Who would, anyway? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:01, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Seriously, there are three possible reasons why they submit the crud. First, as Jo-Jo says, they didn't read the policy pages. That is the first good-faith explanation. The second is that they did read the policy pages, and don't understand them. Third, they did read the policy, and figure that that means that if they can get their spam in, it will be viewed as neutral, to be believed. The third is the bad-faith explanation. I am inclined to believe the third for most [[WP:G11|G11], and something in between the first and the second for everything else (that is, they glanced at the policy pages and didn't pay attention). Robert McClenon (talk) 06:17, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Back to the original proposal, they should not automatically be speedy deleted. Even in the EJustice case some of the writings survived, I believe. Some had suitable material for merging, and one at the tome was completely OK as a standalone article. Term papers will often have some encyclopedic content. WikiEd is trying to get instructors to set suitable Wikipedia exercises. Also for opinon pieces, they will often duplicate a topic or be so promotional that they already get deleted. In some other cases if the topic is notable they can be cut to a two line stub. So we don't really need more speedy delete options for these. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Back to the original proposal, I will support a speedy deletion criterion for those that would need to be entirely written to comply with NPOV. It is true that some of these essays have some encyclopedic content, but most don't. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:42, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I just PROD'd another essay in Hindi. Based on the machine translation, it is an essay that would have to be fundamentally rewritten to be neutral (and would then duplicate existing coverage anyway). As it is, at least it probably will be an expired PROD, while the typical page that is the subject here will not be an expired PROD because the author will remove the PROD. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:42, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

The way I (tried) to word the proposal above would have exempted the EJustice proposals that were worth merging or stubifying. My concern is that we do get a fair amount of OR/POV essays that don't clearly fall into any of the existing criteria where they have SNOW AfDs with people calling for speedy deletion but there being no actual criteria for it. I don't think its a good idea to wrap this up with G11, but this actually does distract more resources than are neccessary at AfD, IMO, for outcomes that are clearcut the second they are sent there.

My concern here is less with whether they get deleted or not: they obviously will, but it is for creating a way that is more respectful of the time of our people doing NPP and those who volunteer at AfD. Robert is one of our more experienced users who is active, and when he posed a similar question at WT:NPR, no one really knew what to tell him. Adding clarity to the issue of how to deal with these I think would be important, even if that clarity is "all essays must be SNOW deleted at AfD". TonyBallioni (talk) 05:22, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• How's about tagging in a db-custom rationale?Would many admins decline?Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:11, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• Yes. Most custom rationales need to be equivalent to G6 to be accepted, which is a good thing in my opinion. TonyBallioni (talk) 11:59, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, my experience differs.I have had a few successes logging the rationale as Orig. research..Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 13:29, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

These "essay" topics are always either "topic is well covered" and therefore duplicates an existing topic or "topic should not be covered". Legacypac (talk) 16:33, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

No, they aren't "always" one or the other. One or the more-recent batches of essays actually lead to Nitrate in the Mississippi River Basin--there are quite a few blue links at WT:WikiProject Chemistry/Archive 40#Essays for a class project. I think . --Izno (talk) 17:22, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

From my brief spot check most of those blue links were redirects. The ones that weren't would not fall under the language above because while they may be oddly specific, they are written as encyclopedia articles not essays. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:00, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I should have been more specific. All such pages I've found are either one or the other, and I've found several hundred over time. I'm sure there is some exception out there somewhere but I trust the nominator or Admin would be smart enough to recognize the rare exception. Legacypac (talk) 18:13, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

• Strong oppose There is no sharp distinction between those essays that can obviously not be fixed, and essays which can. Quite a lot depends on how much effort is used to improve or normalize the new article, or to merge it into other articles in the encyclopedia. Criteria for speedy need to clearly distinguish, because otherwise it is a matter of contestable judgement, and anything involving such judgment needs to be decided by the community. The entire basis for speedy is that there are some sorts of frequently occurring instances where one admin plus an nominating editor can safely predict the inevitable result on behalf of the community. I don't think there will be that many such here that will give a true line of separation. For the ones that are simply naive, Prod takes care of them just fine, because those editors rarely follow up to contest them. A more difficult group are those submitted in class projects or as term papers, which ofter are exceedingly specific in the sense of making an acceptable term paper, where analysis of a particular case of a general problem is often expected, but the analysis is of the sort which is altogether inappropriate for an encyclopedia. Even bad class project articles of any sort unless truly outrageous should not be handled by speedy. The class ambassador will usually contest, and experience shows that quite a bit of ill will can be generate; there is usually need to carefully explain to them and the instructor. Speedy is not suitable for these. DGG ( talk ) 09:34, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Automatic R2

I started a discussion a few days ago about using MediaWiki:Move-redirect-text and Lua to automatically transclude {{db-r2}} on moves from mainspace to the namespaces the criteria applies to. Your input is appreciated. – Train2104 (t • c) 23:24, 31 August 2017 (UTC)