Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 3

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This page is an Archive of the discussions at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion and covers discussions held roughly between Nov 2004 and ___. (Some in that time period were also archived in Archive2.) As an archive, this is no longer considered a live page. Further discussions or disputes should be made on the current talk page. You may, however, link to or copy old discussions from here as necessary.

Proposed - Images moved to Commons

Now we have the ability to use commons images it seems sensible to do so. I believe there is going to be an easy way to move images to commons in the future. But in the mean time, I think any images moved manually to commons can safely be deleted here (if they otherwise comply with the speedy criteria - i.e. the moved image is exactly the same as the image to be deleted). Thoughts? -- sannse (talk) 17:19, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Basically agree, but if I've understood correctly, using images from the commons is just a search preference: the software first searches locally, and if it doesn't find an image, it tries the commons. Has anybody thought about the new opportunities for vandalism or just plain confusion in this scheme? Assume an image doesn't exist on en:, but on commons, and is used in an article. The article thus shows the image from the commons. If somebody now uploads an image with the same name on en:, the article will show a different image. And that image page on en: will give no indication whatsoever that in fact some other image should be used. Or have I misunderstood the way things work? Lupo 19:21, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree; anyway it seems to be just an application of the speedy deletion rule: "An image which is a redundant (all bits the same or scaled-down) copy of something else, and as long as all inward links have been changed to the image being retained" Thue | talk 20:01, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm told by Eloquence that this suggestion is a bit too early. It is not yet possible to provide images for download from Commons that are specific to a particular Wikipedia - which is needed for distribution to others using our content. So it's probably best to wait on this for now. He also said that he would add a warning that will appear if an image is uploaded here, if the same name is already used by an image on Commons. Which will solve the problem Lupo pointed out. He's going to put this into the new version of Mediawiki though - so it won't be available for a while -- sannse (talk) 00:32, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A warning when uploading is better than nothing, but only solves the "confusion" part of the problem. If somebody goes ahead despite the warning, the resulting image page on a local wiki should have some indication that an image with the same name exists on the commons. For instance, an interwiki link could be added automatically. That would help dealing with the "vandalism" part. Lupo 10:00, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yep - that sounds sensible too. -- sannse (talk) 16:30, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

BTW, just wanted to point out that the "vandalism" case is not just theoretical: something like that just occurred on Image:RalphNader.jpg. Lupo 13:34, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's way too soon to do this. Problems include:

1. It discards the license information from the dump, making any use of a GFDL or other image requiring attribution (effectively, all but PD) a copyright infringement for anyone who tries to reuse the image in their copy of Wikipedia.
2. For countries with moral rights laws, the removal of the creator information is going to be contrary to that law, which gives the creator a right independent of copyright to have their name associated with their work.
3. It discards the copyright date for any original images, making it harder to determine the end of their copyright term.
4. It may have a different uploader, discarding the audit trail of who actually uploaded the image originally and who is therefore primarily responsible for any copyright infringement. The second uploader, to Commons, may end up being blamed.
5. The protection and vandalism concerns mentioned by others.
6. Commons itself may end up without a valid license. Someone uploading to Wikipedia has arguably granted an implied license for what Wikipedia does but that implied license isn't transferred to Commons, IMO, since it is a different project and probably didn't even exist at the time. Commons itself would have to actually comply with the GFDL. For most images, this is probably doable if the image is accompanied by a complete copy of the GFDL on the image description page at Commons (not a link to it - the license doesn't accept a link). Last I knew, Commons wanted to ensure that images were as clean as possible legally, so reusers can be confident that they are safe. Simply copying from another project doesn't usually meet that goal.

Personally, I'm not keen on causing every reuser to infringe the license of every GFDL image from Commons. We cause reusers to do that every time a non-PD Commons image is used today and for that reason I'd personally choose to upload an image from Commons here, copying all of the details including the copyright date and original uploader details. Not really ideal, but at least I know I won't be causing reusers to infringe copyrights. Commons has lots of potential but it is too soon to be deleting things from here because they are there. Worth revisiting the question in six months though - by then Commons support is likely to be significantly better and hopefully most these issues will be gone. It's an area Eloquence and I have been discussing, trying to make sure that we end up with license compliance and effective use of the Commons. Still more to be done, but it'll get there. Jamesday 07:00, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How about allowing public domain images uploaded by someone, and uploaded by the same person to commons, to be speedied? Or at least public domain images also created by that user. --SPUI 23:33, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Is there any update on the commons policy ? In the german wikipedia moved images are speedy-deleted but their image caption/text is restored, why shouldn't it work here ? -- Denniss 00:54, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

From above: A warning when uploading is better than nothing, but only solves the "confusion" part of the problem. If somebody goes ahead despite the warning, the resulting image page on a local wiki should have some indication that an image with the same name exists on the commons. For instance, an interwiki link could be added automatically. That would help dealing with the "vandalism" part. Lupo 10:00, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To me the easiest way to solve this is for the software to automatically add a prefix to the image. So if someone tried to upload an image called RalphNader.jpg to Wikipedia when there is already an image by that name on commons the user would get warned to that effect. If they still persisted with the upload the image would be renamed WP-RalphNader.jpg Thryduulf 09:41, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

I would like to propose expanding this idea to include all articles properly transwikied after a VfD resulting in a vote for transwiki. Currently a number of dicdefs which have been moved to Wiktionary are being listed on VfD, and I think this is excessive.--MikeJ9919 20:39, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Formal proposal

See my formal proposal at Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 15:10, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For convenience, the proposals are:

1. Any article whose contents consist only of an external link, "See Also" section, book reference, category tag or template tag.
2. Extremely short articles which add no information beyond what is obvious from the title (e.g. Swazi embassy to Mozambique which said "The Embassy of Swaziland is the home of Swaziland's representative to Mozambique.")
3. Extremely blatant vanity articles. (e.g., bands that have never released an album, contain no members that are famous for reasons other than being in the band, and have no press coverage—also, people where the article makes no claim of notability and the person gets virtually no Google hits, not including any of Wikimedia's websites or mirrors.)
4. Any article consisting only of a dictionary definition (dicdef), which either already exists at Wiktionary, or is not appropriate for submission there (i.e. made-up words, neologisms)
5. Any article that consists only of content in blatant, easily verifiable violation of copyright or which is not immediately verifiable as compatible with the GFDL, unless said article was submitted by a user or IP with legitimate contributions or has since been subsequently edited by another user. The creator must subsequently be informed on their talk page that such deletion has happened, with an external reference to the existing material, and instructions on how to prevent any recreation of the article from being deleted again.

Jamesday 18:32, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Proposed cases

The following cases are proposals only, and until a vote to approve them has been held, they should not be used as reasons for a speedy deletion.

1. (Proposed) Extremely short articles which add no information beyond what is obvious from the title (e.g. Swazi embassy to Mozambique which said "The Embassy of Swaziland is the home of Swaziland's representative to Mozambique.")
2. (Proposed) Any article whose contents consist only of an external link, "See Also" section, book reference, category tag or template tag.
3. (Proposed) Extremely blatant vanity articles. (e.g., bands that have never released an album, contain no members that are famous for reasons other than being in the band, and have no press coverage—also, people where the article makes no claim of notability and the person gets fewer than two Google hits, not including any of Wikimedia's websites or mirrors.)
4. (Proposed) Obvious joke, prank, hoax, or fabrication.

Of course, the Sandbox is exempt from these rules and should not be deleted even though it may satisfy some of the criteria.

Athought I agree with proposals, IMO listing them along with actual policy is creating confusion. Several admins unilataraly delete articles falling into proposed catheories. Read VfD. --Wikimol 08:17, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

{{isd}}

I've created Template:isd ("images for speedy deletion") for tagging redundant images that may be speedily deleted according to the current policy. This template adds images to Category:Redundant images, which is a subcategory of CAT:CSD. Perhaps {{isd}} could be listed here and/or on Template:Deletiontools. Any objections? --MarkSweep 09:28, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Page name

It just occured to me that this policy page's name is a bit misleading. Since it does not actually list out the candidates but just documents the policy. How about renaming to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion? It'll still be "WP:CSD". -- Netoholic @ 18:54, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

I don't have strong feelings either way - but the suggestion seems reasonable -- sannse (talk) 19:42, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have no strong feelings on the matter either, but this page describes candidates for speedy deletion, just like say templates for deletion isn't a bunch of templates, but a discussion of a bunch of templates. --fvw* 19:47, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

I have also long felt the name of this page was problematic, I have thus moved it to Netoholic's suggested title. - SimonP 02:54, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps then you can complete the job and fix the hundred or so redirects to the old page and the old talk page? —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 05:08, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

There is never a reason to only edit pages to bypass a single redirect. What if we change our collective mind later? -- Netoholic @ 05:29, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)

Seems like a long-overdue change. You're quite right - the old name was misleading, and this one is more accurate. →Raul654 05:33, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Parent page context

This has bothered me since it was added:

1. • Please use "what links here" to check if a parent page provides context.

and I finally decided to remove it for talk. My issue is that a page linking to an article should not have to provide context. An article should be able to stand on it's own to enough degree that the reader can tell what it is about. History of Elbonia doesn't need to include all of the information in the Elbonia article, but it should be be possible to tell that History of Elbonia is about Elbonia and not just a timeline of seemingly random events. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 03:07, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

• Agreed, but the point is I think that it suggests that instead of deleting it you should fix it. In my opinion it should perhaps remain as a hint, but I agree that just because you can construct what the hell the author is on about by checking the links does not mean it stops being a CSD. --fvw* 03:10, 2005 Jan 25 (UTC)
  • Yes I believe these should be fixed and not deleted because they've generally been created by someone clicking on a red link and being invited to fill in the information. If you delete the article you'll probably lose a potential contributor at the same time. Kappa 05:46, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• In cases where there a newbie sees a red-link and creates a new stub that might contain some possibly useful information but did not bother to provide enough context to understand what the stub is describing, it may be helpful to look at the What Links Here first to check if there is a simple way to improve the stub rather than simply speedily deleting the stub. older≠wiser 13:12, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
• It seemed like a useful advisory comment to me. Rossami (talk) 14:15, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't think that it would be bad to check for such context, but I would prefer that it be worded as an advisory comment rather than as a requirement. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 02:00, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Dictionary Definitions

I would argue that dictionary defintions are SD material if they are already duplicated on Wiktionary (thus making it pointless to MOVE the content to Wiktionary). Is there precedence for this, and should there be an explicit case listing this scenario, or is it viewed as falling under one of the pre-existing cases? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:35, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

This was tested recently, and there is no consensus that any dicdefs are speedy deletions. Check out Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Proposal IV (Dicdefs). That only got about 1/3 support. -- Netoholic @ 02:13, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC)

More accurately, there was no consensus that all dicdefs are speedy deletion candidates. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 05:08, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

More accurately, there 'is' consensus that all dicdefs-only articles must go through the full WP:VFD process, if deletion is suggested. -- Netoholic @ 06:28, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC)

Proposal: Articles written in the first person

I think we should add, "Any article written in the first person," under the "Articles" section. This doesn't really fall under, "Any article which consists only of attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title," like articles in the second person would. – flamurai (t) 03:26, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Can you point out an example of this? -- Netoholic @ 04:20, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

Hayley phillips. Not really speediable under any of the current criteria. There was another one I saw, too, but forgot about. – flamurai (t) 04:59, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

That sort of thing doesn't seem to happen very often. In fact, some of those belong moved to User space, so I can't see that class as you descried as an obvious speedy delete. -- Netoholic @ 06:29, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

rearrangement

I made what I see as a very reasonable copyedit of the items on the page, to rearrange the order of the cases. It's pretty straightforward, but I was reverted. I'm going to restore it because this is a fairly obvious way to delineate the items, and because the person who reverted didn't bother to explain why on this talk page. -- Netoholic @ 06:24, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

You know full well that this is a policy that arises a lot of tensions, and that changes are likely to require some discussion. Yet you went ahead and made major changes, including changing the order that they are known in (and which people tend to quote in reference to them), and demoting others further down for no apparent reason. Discuss controversial changes before making them, not the other way around. Ambi 07:18, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The present separation was done me quite a while ago, and seems to have been very well recieved. You are preemptively reverting because you think others might object, while not giving any firm objections yourself. Stop being silly. Yes, it is time to re-order these into a more logical manner, and noone's going to care about the "renumbering". Get over it, there is no controversy here except what you make of it. -- Netoholic @ 07:29, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

I think that Netoholic's division between General and Article classes is sound and very helpful. It closes several loopholes that trolls and vandals can exploit. For example, some "WikiLawyers" have asserted in TfD that templates cannot be speedy deleted, because this page does not explicitly mention them. Obviously, when I (or majority of admins) sees Template:I'm GNAA Sollog Willy on Wheels and you suck! or something similar, it gets deleted, no matter what the strict interpretation of CSD rules is. I'm willing to tolerate the inavoidable change in numbering when partitioning the cases to two sets, but the relative ordering within a section should not be changed on a whim. At least not without discussion occurring first. The numbering matters, because several people refer to the cases by number only. If numbers can be replaced by mnemonics, all the better.

In summary, I support the changes made by Netoholic. Obviously I agree with Ambi that he should have raised the issue in talk or in village pump before making such a controversial change. jni 07:49, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• There is still no controversy here, so I dispute whether its reasonable that this edit required any sort of announcement. I was bold and fixed some clear ambiguity by making the separation, and closed the "loopholes" as you say. For instance, someone added a case for images being speedy deletions if they were formally deleted according to policy before... well, that goes for all namespaces and was moved to "General". Anyway, the renumbering "problem" is moot because the expansion proposal and subsequent changes have already changed them. The new separation actually now makes things easier to reference than even before. -- Netoholic @ 08:06, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)
  • An announcement would have been prudent. I only found out about your rewrite because after vandals rewrote the list this is one of the pages I now watch for vandalism. I, and others like me, refer to the CSD criteria solely by number as a shorthand for speed. There are a lot of such references in VFD discussions. Your rewrite, even though it didn't change any of the criteria (and I suspect that I wasn't the only one who checked the rewrite thoroughly for that), did change the numbering. Many existing references to criteria by number, including several of the more popular ones, suddenly became either meaningless or completely altered. There's a warning on the page move page that is apposite here. If you surprise people by changing the name (or, as in this case, the number) of something that is popular, expect an outcry, almost certain reversion to the status quo ante, and to have to explain yourself. Better that you warn people beforehand. Had you done so, and let it sink in for a few days, you wouldn't be here now and in the middle of a reversion war, I suspect. Inspired by several grumblings on the parts of several people, I'm just about to tackle the {{vfd}} template, and the WP:VFD introduction, quite hard. I'm planning to warn people, explaining my intentions, before I actually put the rewrites in place. Uncle G 13:26, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)
    • Like I said before, I made a very similar change a while ago, and there was no outcry over the numbering. I still think you're blowing this out of proportion. You'd think I'd re-written the Bible or something. Anyway, the only reason you have to propose changes to the VfD template in the way that you are is because that template is protected currently. Anyone else who wants to bitch about my "inaction" of not "announcing" this reasonable copyedit, do so on my talk page. Otherwise, people might mistake this conversation for substantive criticism of the change itself, which I've not heard. -- Netoholic @ 13:37, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

I thought the change was reasonable when I saw it the first time (before the revert war started). A little warning would be nice but we shouldn't abuse people too badly for being bold. I have one requested improvement. Many people (including me) do refer to these by number. It is very convenient, especially when documenting the reason for deletion in that little box on the delete page. The current format will now require me to specify "CSD case General 1" vs "CSD case Article 1". That just seems clumsy. Can we hard-code the numbering instead? I recommend "G1-G7", "A1-A5" and so on. Rossami (talk) 14:48, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. Let's change the lists of cases to use "G1-G7" (and similarly for A, R, I, C, and U letters) instead of plain numbers. This way it's easy to find out what "Deleted per CSD A4" in deletion log means. Is there a way to force an arbitrary prefix to the '#' formatting element? jni 16:20, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Let's do that, but do it informally (i.e. don't actually number the cases that way). A comment like "Deleted per CSD A4" has a timestamp, and so does this page, so ambiguation is small. I still see some rearrangement potential (I didn't want to make too many changes at once), and we shouldn't be too locked in to any one "scheme" when it's not really necessary. -- Netoholic @ 16:59, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

reposted content

Currently, the rule under the "General" section reads: "Reposted content that was deleted according to Wikipedia deletion policy."

It seems that the rearrangement of the sections has lead to some confusion. We need to clear up the conflict between recreated content and "work in progress" pages which are often kept in in User: space with the intent of cleaning up articles and re-submitting them. This practice has been done successfully many times in the past.

I'd like to add to this rule (as a rephrase or a sub-item), something stating that this only applies if the content was recreated in the same namespace. After an article is VfD'd, for example, this rule would allow recreationg in User: space. If a second vote says it should be deleted from User: space, then that stands. This returns this pages intent to the way it was before when the rule refered to "articles" not "pages".

Definitely open to any wording suggestions. -- Netoholic @ 06:44, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)

I do see your point, and I can see how this would be useful, but it needs to be limited to exclude Anthony DiPierro-like abuses. Ambi 13:13, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there was any abuse in him re-creating pages, but it does seem that the recent situations were exacerbated by the gap in clarity on this page. Both sides had valid viewpoints, but tended not to handle themselves well. -- Netoholic @ 16:38, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)

Good idea, but restricting the scope of deletion to same namespace only would be way too limiting. We currently have at least one group of POV-pushers that tries to hide their hate speach etc. to various odd corners of Wikipedia, see for example Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Elsewhere:Richard G./ex-premies and other "ex-premie" related VfDs. (BTW, I really like Antaeus_Feldspar's comment on that page!) It is only matter of time when they learn about 'Image talk', 'Help talk' and other exotic namespaces. I would say first deletion per process enables G4 for all namespaces except 'User' and 'User talk' and that exception be valid only if the associated user exists and accepts the material being in his space. Vandals posting some crap to other's subpages is not an uncommon occurrance. See also 'Proposed Principles' and 'Proposed finding of fact' in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Anthony DiPierro 2/Proposed decision. While that case itself is not very relevant to this discussion, the ArbCom seems to support a partition of namespaces to two sets when it comes to deletion, and I feel that reflects the concensus of the community. Wording suggestions are welcome, I'm at loss how to express this in concise, easy to understand, rules. jni 10:45, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Deletion at the end of transwiki

Several people asked about the transwiki process and specifically whether the article needs to be submitted for VfD at the end of the transwiki or whether it can be immediately deleted. Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Deletion at the end of transwiki. Thank you. Rossami (talk) 22:56, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki is not legal and probably won't be legal until the edit history is copied over cleanly and automatically (like Special:Movepage does within a single wiki). Until this is fixed, nothing should be deleted speedily; even many deletions currently made after listing on IfD are illegal. -- Toby Bartels 21:20, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Image criterion

At Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Images/Media, it says

An image which is a redundant (all bits the same or scaled-down)

I propose to change "bits" to "pixels". That way a GIF version of a PNG image could be speedy deleted. Also, should we clarify what "scaled-down" means exactly? Like, if you ask MediaWiki to thumbnail the bigger image to the width of the smaller, it produces the same image. (Of course "same" here means "identical", not just "looks the same". In principle one would have to use some program to check. On Linux, pnmpsnr does the trick.) dbenbenn | talk 21:00, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I second the proposed change of "bits" to "pixels". I don't think "scaled-down" needs further clarification. If you ask MediaWiki to thumbnail the bigger image, it will use ImageMagick to scale down the image. It is quite possible that ImageMagick will use a different interpolation method than the one used by the program that produced the duplicate thumbnail in the first place, which means the MediaWiki thumbnail will not match the existing thumbnail pixel for pixel. I would still support speedy deletion in situations where the thumbnails don't match 100% but where it's reasonable to suppose that we are in fact dealing with a thumbnail (often one can tell from the filenames). --MarkSweep 05:42, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The importance of pre-emptive redirects

I have edited tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles. On many occasions I have created pre-emptive redirects. In some cases their value is very obvious (e.g., I see the someone created a redirect from "complex societies" to "complex society"; I've done the same thing hundreds of times). In other cases the question of their value or its lack is delicate and may require input from experts in the field. An obvious case is a redirect from a misnomer to a correct name. By that of course I do not mean to suggest that misnomers are NEVER appropriate article titles; the question of whether a misnomer is the right title is precisely the kind that may require expert input. The page I protected was nothing but an incitement to wholesale vandalism until I added a conspicuous warning against the "policy" of vandalising pre-emptive redirect pages. I realize some practitioners of that policy were judicious in their application of it, but the statement of the policy did not reflect that at all; it just incited unthinking vandalism. It actually encouraged the use of the word "broken" to refer to any redirect whose target does not exist! That is destructive of Wikipedia's purposes, to say the least.

Here is what I think the policy ought to say:

Redirects can be immediately deleted if they have no useful history and:

1.) They refer to non-existent pages and have no value as pre-emptive redirects. An obvious case of a valuable pre-emptive redirect is one that redirects complex societies to complex society. A more subtle example is one that points from a misnomer to a correct title; in some cases, a misnomer may be the more appropriate title (e.g. fundamental theorem of algebra) and in some cases a misnomer may be merely a popular misunderstanging that should be redirected — pre-emtively if necessary. The question of whether a page has value as a pre-emptive redirect may be delicate in some cases, sometimes requiring input from experts in the field. Consequently, one should not treat such pages as candidates for "speedy" deletion, but rather one should list them at "votes for deletion" so that their merits can be soberly discussed. Also, before deleting a redirect, check to see if the redirect can be made useful by changing its target.

(The proposal above was from Michael Hardy.)

Such redirects provide no positive value to readers, and cause a reduction in value by causing links to appear as if they actually lead somewhere. If you believe that an article should be at a given title, then make the links point there. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:19, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I should point out that I already attempted to start a discussion on that matter. Whether it continues here or there, it'd be nice to keep it in one place. Scattered discussions are a pain. --Fbriere 22:23, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I do not think pre-emptive redirects to non-existent articles add any value and as Cyrius points out there is a very serious negative side-effect in making the non-existent redirect look like it links to an article. older≠wiser 23:33, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

The red links problem needs to be viewed as a major bug. If you do not see their obvious value, explain which parts of my arguments for their value are wrong and why -- see above. Michael Hardy 23:43, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, IMO everything you point out as a positive value is pretty much outweighed in an overwhelming proportion by the red link problem. I mean, as much as I hate sub-stubs, if you come across a situation in which you think there ought to be an article, then create a stub for it rather than simply making a pre-emptive redirect to a non-existant article. older≠wiser 02:13, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Bkonrad completely. -- Netoholic @ 02:33, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)

I think pre-emptive redirects are still useful. The first pre-emptive redirect I created was CAFC. Before I could write a stub for that topic, someone has created a pretty long article. The bottom line: If you find a pre-emptive redirect linked by many articles, do not delete it without any investigation. -- Toytoy 18:45, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

The value of pre-emptive redirects

I do not think pre-emptive redirects to non-existent articles add any value and as Cyrius points out there is a very serious negative side-effect in making the non-existent redirect look like it links to an article.

You have not answered my specific points about why certain kinds of pre-emptive redirects are valuable, and you have also neglected the fact that that negative side-effect can be averted by a bug fix.

Eastern Sudanic redirects to Eastern Sudanic languages, which does not yet exist. The value of that is something I would have considered obvious, but I'll explain it. Eastern Sudanic is an abbreviation in standard use for obvious reasons, but the non-abbreviated form is the appropriate article title. The pre-emptive redirect avoids the future creation of two disparate article by authors who cannot work together because they are unaware of each other's work, which would later need to get merged.

Similarly, complex societies redirects to complex society.

And a misnomer sometimes redirects to a correctly named article.

A software bug has been reported, which, if dealt with, will make a red link to appear when a link points to a pre-emptive redirect whose target does not yet exist. Michael Hardy 22:47, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I rejected your specific points in their entirety. Sorry if you're not satisified that I remain unconvinced by your arguments. I still think making pre-emptive redirects to non-existent topics is a bad idea. older≠wiser 23:37, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Where did you give your arguments? I haven't seen them. Michael Hardy 02:49, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My "arguments", such as they are, appear in the section immediately preceding this one. I really don't make any argument per se, more like stating my opinion and agreeing with what others had said. My primary objections are 1) the red link problem which is quite serious and should not be defered upon the hope of a someday technical fix; 2) If you really think there should be an article with a specific name, then create a stub for it rather than simply creating a redirect to a non-existant topic; 3) Your rewording of the policy is Instruction creep. The criteria at present is pretty straightforward. Adding conditions to it only makes more difficult to administer. older≠wiser 03:12, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

That often cannot be done. For example, I know enough to know that Eastern Sudanic should redirect to Eastern Sudanic languages, but I could not posisbly write even a stub article about that. A Wikipedian could easily know, from having read a variety of instances, that coupled harmonic oscillator is not one of those phrases that are always plural, so the plural should redirect to the singular, but may not know whether the topic is physics or music or New-Age philosophy. Such a person could not possibly write a stub on that topic, but could easily write a valuable pre-emptive redirect. Michael Hardy 01:01, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This so called bug does exactly what I'd expect it to do. Have any of the developers acknowledged it is a bug? RJFJR 02:21, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Last I heard, it's "open", i.e., they haven't made their decision yet. I have given them various reasons why pre-emptive redirects are important, so that this should be treated as a bug. Michael Hardy 02:48, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've just noticed that my critics and I were both mistaken about what the long-standing policy actually says. What confused us was that the emphasis in the statement of the policy was misleading. Read the paragraph starting with "However" after item #6 at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. In view of the list of exceptions in the paragraph beginning with "However...", I've revised item 6 at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion in a way that is really just a changed in emphasis and I hope will avoid some rash deletions-without-due-deliberation. It now reads as follows:

1. 6. If the redirect points to an article that does not exist and does not help avoid the accidental creation of duplicate articles, it can be deleted immediately; but first you should check whether there is an alternative place it could be appropriately redirected, and whether any of the exceptions noted below are applicable.

Michael Hardy 03:54, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The WP:RFD does not define speedy deletion criteria. I have updated that page to point here exclusively. -- Netoholic @ 04:11, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

Michael Hardy made this edit, which I reverted. ALL rules related to speedy deletions, and exceptions, should be part of this page, not referred elsewhere. Michael - make your suggested change here on Talk. -- Netoholic @ 23:00, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

Undelete a page...

If a user has accidentally listed a page for speedy deletion how would that user go about undoing his mistake? The page in question is Wikipedia:Once upon a time... Jaberwocky6669 03:37, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Hi! To undelete, all you have to do is revert the page to its previous content. Pages filed for speedy deletion aren't manually listed anywhere; it's the {{delete}} template that adds them to a category. --Fbriere 04:30, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is not actually undeleting (which only sysops can do; see Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops for further information). If you've listed something for speedy deletion and it hasn't been deleted yet, simply revert it to its previous content. If it's already been deleted, then leave a note for the sysop who deleted it (which will be recorded in Special:Log/delete, and s/he will probably be kind enough to undelete it for you. — Dan | Talk 04:36, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If asking the deleting sysop fails, try Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:07, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Speedy criterion: "non-notable"

retitled from "Vanity/non-notability" by Xiong

I see that someone has attempted to emphasize that "vanity" and "non-notability" are not criteria for deletion, and there have been two reversions of that statement. I think it's worth pointing out that pages are continually being speedy deleted as vanity, and frankly a lot of them are obviously vanity about completely non-famous people and would just clog up Votes for Deletion. Kappa 19:14, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pages are speedied on these grounds, but this is incorrect. These grounds are too subjective to allow speedy to operate here. "Vanity" is a loaded word. Who is "notable"? Which one of us is truly important? A Martian might think no human was any more interesting than any other; a Chinese peasant might think the village headman was notable. Some say every human person is notable enough to mention here. Others disagree. There is way too much gray area here.

Speedy is for obvious, non-controversial deletes -- things anyone of sense can agree on immediately -- patent nonsense, technical reasons, mistakes, deliberately and pointlessly offensive, etc.

Speedy must not be used as a "snap shot" against a page with which one does not agree. Either it succeeds because the creator isn't watching that minute, which is sneaky; or it fails, in which case the adverse party tags it VfD at once, which is what he ought to have done in the first place.

Speedy is useful only so long as it is non-controversial. No admin wants to be the one who speedied an article to the Bit Bucket only to return to a war over the deletion. — Xiongtalk 00:52, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

Poll: Speedy criterion: "non-notable"

Shall the assertion that the subject of an article is "non-notable" be grounds for speedy deletion?

Poll is open. 00:55, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

NB This pole was created by Xiong who opposes the measure proposed (as do I) Kappa 18:12, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The issue brought on by this poll was resolved several weeks ago. I'm marking this poll closed so future readers don't feel that they are obligated to continue to add votes. Rossami (talk) 13:50, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Support:

1. Absolutely. We don't care about your grandmother, your dog, or that oak tree in your backyard. Wikipedia is not a phone book. →Raul654 01:12, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
2. Weak support. I sometimes clear out entries from Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, and anything that looks like a vanity article, except perhaps the most blatantly ordinary cases, or abusive articles, I move to VfD. I moved a dog obituary to Vfd a few weeks ago rather than speedy it (it was a particularly moving dog obituary). Frankly, I would like to have a little more discretion available to me in deleting vanity articles, but this proposal does need more definition. What would be better would be a proposal that articles which didn't establish notability could be speedied, ie an article which says "Fred Dagg is a high school student at blah and his interests are blah". Any article about someone who might make the pages of their local newspaper should go through Vfd rather than being speedied, and that might include professors, businesspeople and criminals. Someone who is a student, a website contributor, or who seems particularly attractive to the person writing the article should be speedied if that's the only justification given for the article existing.-gadfium 02:40, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
3. Subject, of course, to common sense and discretion, and only for articles with no history. — Dan | Talk 04:30, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
4. If the administrator has any doubt, or feels it might be controversial, then they should excercise their discretion. Just because something can be speedily deleted, doesn't mean it must be speedily deleted. If necessary, the articles can eb undeleted anyway Thryduulf 23:20, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
5. Most definitely. RickK 23:32, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:23, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) I could support this only if someone can come up with a clear bright-line definition of extreme non-notability, as exemplified by "your grandmother, your dog, or that oak tree in your backyard" and if the policy applied only to these extreme cases. We do speedy what might be called "incoherent substub vanity pages" under the rubric of "newbie test" and that's fine. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:23, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
2. No. I've changed my mind on this. Notability encourages beauty contests. We end up deleting perfectly verifiable, fully referenced, useful information that nobody can find in Google, simply because nobody is at hand during the VfD to make the case for keeping. We already have a verifiability criterion, and that's enough. If I write a fully referenced, verifiable article on something you have never heard of and are not interested in, you're welcome to go and read something else. The fact that it's verifiable means I'm not making it up and someone else is interested in it. Is it just me and my mate with a website? Fine, delete it. Verifiability is a hard criterion, not something that can be finessed. Non-notable is not even an accepted criterion for VfD. Making it speediable is silly. It would mean I'd have to spend half an hour every day grubbing through the speedies in case an admin accidentally deleted something good. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 01:31, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

   Hate to steer this off course, but who would have to "accept" non-notability before it was a valid VfD reason? Doesn't the fact that many, many people vote based on notability show that there's a good deal of support for deleting non-notable articles? I don't support adding it as a speedy criteria, but I certainly think it can be a valid reason to vote delete. Rhobite 05:51, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

   Who would have to accept? I should think that we'd have to accept it by consensus. Non-notability isn't a reason to delete (ie not in the deletion policy) and there is no established consensus on it. It may well be that we could adopt it here and now by consensus, but that would be a different matter. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:29, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

   Go forth then, and start striking out VfD votes, if you don't think there is a consensus to "accept" non-notable votes. Rhobite 18:31, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

   It doesn't follow. People are at liberty to cite any reason they like when they list an item on VfD (that is, there is no consensus that items to be deletable *must* fall within the deletion policy), and those who vote are not required to restrict their considerations only to the deletion policy. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 19:09, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

3. Dragons flight 01:48, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC) Too much room for controversy.
4. Oppose. Many, if not most, deletions are due to non-notable content, and this might streamline the process, BUT a speedy deletion process might not allow for enough time to discuss whether an article is non-notable (there are often disagreements). Paradiso 01:50, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
5. We can't even get consensus on vfd that "non-notable" is a valid reason cause for non-speedy deletion, and it's shown there several times every day that two people aren't enough to determine whether a given subject is notable. Like Dpbsmith, though, I'd be in favor of legitimizing speedying of extreme cases (as is already done quite frequently anyway). —Korath (Talk) 02:21, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
6. Oppose. Notability is too subjective for a speedy deletion criteria. I agree with dpbsmith that the most extreme sorts of non-notability are currently speedily deleted under other criteria without too much problem. older≠wiser 03:18, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
7. Oppose. It can be a criteria for VfD nomination but is too controversial for speedy. Rossami (talk) 04:07, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
8. While I believe subjective criteria have their place, they need to be held in check through the actions of other editors. Speedy deletions generally only involve one or maybe two people. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:30, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
9. Nope. I wish every admin could be trusted to make the right decision about notability, but I am sure this would be abused. Needs to go through a full VfD. Rhobite 05:48, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
   • I'd say "mistaken", rather than "abused", but I agree about trust.Mikkalai 05:51, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
10. Oppose. In general, the idea is good, and in 80-95% (whatever) people do agree that a particular article is non-notable. But the remaining percentage failed votes for deletion that claimed nonnotability is large enough, showing that this criterion is a bit vague. Mikkalai 05:51, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
11. Oppose. The criterion is stupidly subjective, notability isn't even a valid VFD reason, and we get enough stuff nominated for VFD where the nominator measures human knowledge by the breadth of their own ignorance or inability to work Google. There are no good points to this incredibly awful idea - David Gerard 09:44, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
12. Oppose. At the very least this needs a clear-cut defenition, in which it's patently clear what articles (dog & grandma for example) are included. There's too big a chance someone without knowledge of a subject walks by and speedies something, just because they don't know it. I'd hate to see what would happen to some West End theater actors (f.e. Ben Watton) if this would be implemented. Mgm|^(talk) 09:47, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
13. Oppose. Articles on non-notabe subjects should be deleted, and I've VfD a few in my time. But the decision is seldom so clear cut that they could be Speedy deleted. It often takes several days for the article creator to notice a VfD tag. It needs time for reflection. -- Solipsist 14:08, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
14. I've said it before (at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Matthew Alford for example) and I'll say it again here. Although there are many cases where an vanity article or article on a non-notable subject garners no "keep" opinions at all, enough vanity pages have been rescued from deletion as rewrites, name disambiguations, and whatnot, to show that two editors are not enough. And there is no simple test for telling ahead of time what will be deleted, that can be turned into a speedy deletion criterion. The normal deletion mechanism should be used for such articles. Expansion of the speedy deletion criteria to cover "obvious" vanity and unimportance is argued on the grounds that the normal deletion process requires the attention of more editors. However, the fact that normal deletion causes more editors to review vanity and non-notable articles is precisely the point. Two editors are not enough. I have been removing speedy deletion tags applied for reasons of vanity and unimportance, where no other speedy deletion criterion applies, advising editors to take the articles through the normal deletion process if they want the article deleted. No. Uncle G 15:08, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
15. Oppose: people often make the mistake of thinking something is non-notable whose notability is promptly established on VfD. Also, this would be an invitation for exclusionists to remove swathes of material claiming that it is (in their view) non-notable. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:49, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
16. Very Strong Oppose countless times, I've seen something listed on VfD as "not notable" and it turns out that the nominator simply had the wrong idea about the article (misread it, didn't bother to Google it, listed it to make a point, made an honest mistake, etc.). The point is that what is notable is by no means absolute, and this is why we have VfDs, so we can chew on it and come up with a consensus. Notability as a speedy criterion? No way. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:28, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
17. Oppose. Even as a deletionist, speedy-delete for non-notability doesn't allow any discussion to determine said non-notability. It's just wrong to allow one person to decide this on their own. That said, non-notability should definitely be a criterion for normal delete, even if it is subjective, as after all, a consensus determines the final outcome. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 03:33, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
18. Oppose. Non-notable is much too subjective. As voters above note, there might be an article about someone you never heard of, who is very notable in some other domain. As one example, a stub bio was once considered non-notable by some on vfd, but the person was a US senator and a cabinet member some 50+ years ago. (Granted, it was a very poor stub.) I think that the cost of a non-notable article is much lower than the cost of turning someone off by deleting the article that he's been working on. Morris 18:49, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC) (BTW, I'm not sure if the comments below are meant to be in the middle of the votes, but I'm assuming not.)
19. Oppose. Nonnotability should definitely be established as a criterion for normal deletion (which at the moment it isn't), but it shouldn't be a criterion for speedy deletion. (I do think vanity should be a criterion for speedy deletion, though, but unfortunately that wasn't the question.) --Angr/_(comhrá) 20:48, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
20. Oppose. Nonnotability is ill-defined. --SPUI (talk) 00:59, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
21. Oppose. This is a dangerously stupid idea. No-one, not even an administrator should be able to delete anything merely because they haven't heard of it. If this passes I will refuse to tag articles on that ground. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 12:23, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
22. Oppose. "non-notable" is a very subjective reason for deletion and as such I feel that more than two people should pass such a judgement on any given article. Rje 14:35, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
23. Oppose. Too subjective. VfD is proper place. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 15:55, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
24. Maybe we should get "non-notability" as a reason for deletion before trying to get it as a reason for speedy deletion! :) Pcb21| Pete 21:11, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
25. Oppose, simply because "notable" is impossible to define non-subjectively. Certainly, my next-door neighbor might be non-notable, but what about say, a semi-obscure rap group or a mid-card wrestler for a small-time wrestling promotion? At least, with it being a VfD criterion, we can reach a consensus of what is notable and what is not; as a SD criterion, who decides? --HBK 00:43, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
26. Oppose. Notablility is too subjective. Such articles need time on VfD just in case someone can dig up some possible credible references and sources. Doing Special:Newpages patrol, I come across a few questionable articles that, when I spend time looking through Google, can be made into reasonable stubs. Zzyzx11 00:54, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
27. Oppose non-notability too much to to lay on a single person/ Rich Farmbrough 22:33, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
28. Oppose notability is rightly not even an official reason to VfD a page, much less speedy it. I would, however, support the speedy deletion of vanity pages. - SimonP 22:37, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
29. Oppose, strongly. Those unwilling to settle for VfD'g the non-notables should go do something easy; "Dying is easy; Wikipedia is hard work."^{I place this quote in the public domain.--Jerzy (t) 14:16, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)} Relying on "common sense" to keep of speedying non-notables harmless is nonsense, bcz the kind of "common sense" that would be useful in this is a myth: that myth is sustained by the value of "common sense" as a term of abuse for use against those you disagree with, when you are too tired, bored, or enraged to state a rational argument for your own point of view. --Jerzy (t) 14:16, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)
30. Absolutely oppose. Meelar (talk) 14:20, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
31. Completely and utterly. I thought I'd said so already, but ok. Who's to determine an article's notability? There were even people who wanted to kill my Christian Terrorism because they could only find 400 hits - first, I got twice that number no matter how hard I tried, and second, even if we introduce Google as our "notabilimeter" - where does the line go? 50 hits? 100? 500? What's not notable? Bah. --TVPR 16:53, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
32. Oppose Of course not. Paul August ☎ 17:16, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
33. Oppose. Notability needs to be discussed. Dave the Red (talk) 06:01, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
34. Strong oppose. Many discussions I have taken part in on VfD has shown that people are highly split on this. While it might seem annoying to fight these fights for every single VfD, instead of in the policy room, that is still a very poor reason for turning something so divided into a speedy deletion. However, if you are talking about "Hi, I'm George at U of Somewhere, I like drinking beer, he haw", then I would agree, but to me the problem with that article is far worse than lack of notability. Houshuang 21:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
35. Oppose per Paradiso 01:50, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) and Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:28, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC) and Mgm|^(talk) 09:47, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC). (This vote is listed as open still, surprisingly.) —msh210 02:53, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
36. Oppose SchmuckyTheCat 06:20, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Comments

Comment A recent data point. Jessamyn West was recently nominated for deletion. And, by the way, I have no problem with the nomination whatsoever. The entire content of the article when nominated "Jessamyn West, AKA the Rarin Librarian. One of Library Journal's Mover & Shakers, West is best known for her 'blog, librarian.net." The question I'm asking is: if non-notability were a CSD, would this article have been at risk for speedy deletion? Because it turns out that a) there is a clearly notable author named Jessamyn West on whom, for some reason, we had no article, and b) on investigation, I'm inclined to think that the activist librarian herself is probably notable, too.

But before wringing hands too much over this possibility, it's worth noting that had the article been speedy deleted it would not have been a epic tragedy. I don't think it would have impeded creation of an article on the Indiana Quaker novelist, and the activist librarian could have been VfUed. Good-faith mistakes and accidents are usually corrected without much dispute or animosity.

But it does show how things can crop up. In the case of "notability," it sometimes takes a certain level of expertise to recognize a person as being notable, and five days and a chance for more than one person to participate in the decision is not a bad thing. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:12, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You're missing an important point: bogus deletion might not impede the recreation of an article, but it will be a bitter introduction to Wikipedia for the article's original author. When the deletion is bogus anyway we might not care, but being told "your article is worthless" and it being a bogus statement of worthlessness does put editors off even bothering. VFD and CSD are Wikipedia's immune system, and of fantastic importance - I just did a Special:Newpages patrol and it was about fifty percent clearly speedyable utter shit - but I submit that putting editors off contributing in the first place is not really the right solution - David Gerard 22:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You're right. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:49, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think some kind of third way is needed. A large proportion of VfD's are due to non-notability, but actually nominating them for deletion is a little convoluted. I sometimes see a vanity article that should be nominated but can't be arsed because of time. A little boiler plate for notabilty deletions would be good. Jackliddle 10:01, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• You could use a {{cleanup-importance}} tag and someone else will probably nominate it for you. Kappa 10:35, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Temporary measure

The poll is still open, but it seems that considerable opposition exists to the criterion. The grounds given by Kappa Netoholic for his deletions to policy (deleting the notice that this criterion is not policy [1] [2]) were that this criterion is policy. That point appears to be debatable, and during the debate, I suggest it is unwise to take action difficult to reverse on its basis.

As a temporary measure, I restore the deleted notice to this policy page. The poll is still open, and there is always the possibility of a groundswell of support for this criterion, at which time we can figure out What To Do Next. Meanwhile, I ask that the notice remain. — Xiongtalk 09:22, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

• I'd like to point out that I didn't make any "deletions to policy", and that this poll was not my idea. Kappa 12:15, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • You are right; I am wrong; and I actually have no idea whatever, why I so abused your handle, Kappa. My most sincere apologies to you. Perhaps I was merely trying to convince myself that a certain user had allies. You did not initiate the chain of events that led to this poll, and it was my idea. — Xiongtalk 03:32, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
• I oppose the inclusion of the notice (which currently reads "Note that vanity, non-notableness, and dictionary definition are not criteria for speedy deletion at the moment" and is placed just above the "General" cases). While the poll above shows strong support for the sentiments expressed, that is not a mandate to clutter up the policy page. I consider the notice to be a relatively minor counter-example. There are many other things that are also "not criteria for speedy deletion". You've singled these out because they happen to apply to a current dispute. I understand your point and it has been adequately made on this Talk page. Disputes should be resolved through other means, not by allowing or encouraging instruction creep in the policy page. I do not agree that the notice belongs permanently enshrined in the list of cases. Rossami (talk) 19:05, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

May I ask please, who is "you", Rossami? Whom do you address? I hope it is not I. I have no stake whatever in criteria for speedies -- maybe Someday, but right now I do not have a dog in the fight. Nothing I created, nothing I've ever touched, is up for speedy, so far as I know -- unless I called for it, and then only on stuff I've created. I don't see how anyone can be more neutral than that.

The reason for the notice is plain: there is not unanimous agreement on the point, and I daresay pages have been nominated for speedy on such invalid grounds. It's common sense to put up signs on sharp curves, where people are liable to run off the road; and it's just being argumentative, at best, to remove such signs.

In any case, I have to ask you to respect the wishes of a 4-to-1 majority. I've already put a certain user on notice for vandalism unrelated to this issue, and this latest stunt of his is going to go right along with the rest. Please don't contribute to his efforts. Let's try to remain rational, and not merely logical. — Xiongtalk 06:45, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Geez, am I the only one that reads? That poll above is whether to add "non-notable" as a reason for speedy-deletion, many people oppose. The poll was not about whether to add the phrase "Note that vanity, non-notability, and dictionary definition are not criteria for speedy deletion at the moment." to the page. There are TONS of things that are "not criteria", that doesn't mean we should list every single one. Keep this page purely to the universal criteria and the established exceptions only, not random "this doesn't count" items. -- Netoholic @ 16:25, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

If I mis-stated the controversy, I apologize. Looking from the outside, it did appear to be a confrontation between User:Xiong and User:Netoholic. To Xiong's other comments:

• Xiong's analogy to a "sharp curves" sign is well-taken and reasonable. To the extent that such advisory comments elaborate on and clarify the policy, they can be valuable. However, we must balance those gains against the dangers of instruction creep. Unnecessary elaboration will dilute and ultimately damage the very policy we were trying to clarify.
• I am not yet convinced that the current policy is actually in dispute. The poll above did not ask the people voting "support" if they already consider non-notability to be a speedy criteria. It asks if it shall be considered a speedy criteria. Several people have long argued that it should. That does not mean that they are acting on their opinion. Xiong alleges that speedies are being conducted with this as the given reason. And I'm sure that newbie mistakes are made by users who don't yet understand the difference between speedy and regular deletion. I can find no evidence that those nominations are being acted upon instead of being corrected. (I'll change my tune if someone can provide evidence that the current policy is being misinterpreted in a way that is having actual and systemic impact on behaviors or decisions. Remember that we have VfU to resolve the occasional bad calls.)
• I'm afraid that I also have to disagree with Xiong's interpretation of the poll above. The poll asked only if non-notabiliy shall be a speedy criterion. I (and many others) have consistently held that it should not. The poll did not ask whether this particular clarification should be added to the list of cases. There is not "a 4-to-1 majority" for keeping the notice. So far, only 3 people have expressed an opinion on whether the notice is an appropriate elaboration on the policy page. That count stands at 2-to-1 against.

I'm really not trying to be obnoxious but I feel very strongly about the dangers of instruction creep. Adding these few counter-examples will set a precedent allowing others to add their own favorite counter-example. Then the next person does the same. The process continues on and on until the original list becomes unreadable. The final result becomes less clear than the original version. This has been a plague to many of our policy pages over time.
If this particular danger is demonstrably real, let's post the warning sign. If people are not skidding off the road, though, we should be very conservative about adding text to the policy page. (Okay, I've probably pushed that analogy too far but it was hard to resist.) Rossami (talk) 17:23, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Proposal IX (Deprecation), a much wider poll specifically about this issue, which failed to gain support at 2 votes to 108. —Korath (Talk) 19:42, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Ahem... The reason I, with some trepidation, put the "vanity and non notable" reminder on the policy page was simply that a signifcant minority of the speedies I see are for vanity or non-notability. I suspect I am as guilty as the next admin of leaving speedy requests in clearly vanity articles, and there I have a problem with some of the stuff that the policy says we should leave for 5+ days, but I would like to improve the operation of the speedy delete process as is, while discussions continue about better ways of weeding out the dross. There may be better ways, if so, lets hear them. Rich Farmbrough 22:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Warsaw/Vote

It seems to me that this entire page is clearly a troll. But I see nothing on criteria for speedy deletion that would allow me to delete it. It seems to me that polls created in the main namespace as trolls should be speedily deleted. Any thoughts? john k 16:21, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Whats your problem? everyone have the right to create votings (please stop to call me a troll/idiot etc. Wikipedia:No Personal Attacks)--Schlesier 17:37, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, a vote should only be called if there is a failure to come to consensus on the normal talk page. And I make a personal exception to the no personal attacks rule for you, Schlesier. john k 05:50, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, maybe it is this, and maybe it is that, but it clearly says it is a poll, and those do not belong in mainspace, but neither are they speediable. I moved the page to where it belongs: Wikipedia-space. The question of whether it should be allowed at all is a matter for Somebody else; this issue does not belong here. Okay? — Xiongtalk 06:54, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Change #A2?

I think that speedy criterion #A2 should be changed to:

2. Articles that already exist on another Wikimedia project, as a result of having been copied and pasted in to Wikipedia after their creation elsewhere, or as a result of having been moved via the transwiki system.

In other words, remove the "Foreign language" requirement, as the criterion was written before Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikisource, ect. were started. – ABCD 17:50, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Transwiki is not legal and probably won't be legal until the edit history is copied over cleanly and automatically (like Special:Movepage does within a single wiki). Until this is fixed, nothing should be deleted speedily; even many deletions currently made after listing on IfD are illegal. -- Toby Bartels 21:32, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)
  • Well, Jamesday posted the opinion that it "appears" to conflict with the law and he usually does good research. However, so far that is only one opinion. He posted it on 29 March 2005 and there has been neither endorsement nor contradiction so far. It did inspire me to read the statute. I'm not yet sure that I completely agree with his conclusion. There is a reasonable interpretation of the law and of GFDL that the appropriate definition of the "part of the work" to which derivative copyright applies is at the article-level, not the section-, sentence- or word-level. Under that argument, as long as we keep track of who contributed to the article, we are not obligated to track each edit. Further, the limits on liability section does seem to apply to the transwiki process. Now I'm not a lawyer and neither is Jamesday. Until someone who is a lawyer weighs in with a legal opinion, it is too strong a statement to say that "transwiki is not legal". Rossami (talk) 02:11, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • The assertion that transwiki is not legal is not borne out by the vast number of non-wiki uses of the GFDL. See m:Talk:transwiki for details and further discussion. Uncle G 10:32, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)
• I agree that A2 is quite badly phrased. But loosening it to allow the speedy deletion of (say) an encyclopaedia article transwikied from Wiktionary to Wikipedia, as the above actually does, seems to be unwarranted. What specific problem are you trying to address here? Uncle G 10:32, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

Duplicate images

Duplicate images (unless they were just created in error) should be redirected; there is no need ever to delete them.

One of the many, many things that I liked about Wikipedia when I first arrived was that old links would always continue to work. The redirect protocol is fantastic not only for how WP works at any given time; it also means that I safely give a URL reference to a WP article (or more generally to any resource on Wikimedia) in print, confident that the URL will continue to work as long as the Wikimedia Foundation can keep on its feet.

This has been eroded lately, especially (as far as I've noticed) with regard to images moved to Commons. They are getting deleted, on the basis of criterion I1, when they should be changed to redirects. I wouldn't dare cite an image URL in print now!

Criterion I1 should be removed; we should use redirect instead.

-- Toby Bartels 21:32, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

• A redirect from Wikipedia to Commons won't work. Interwiki redirects have been disabled (or, at least, had been disabled the last time that I checked, a few days ago). Uncle G 09:21, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

Substubs

People shouldn't post speedy deletion templates on substubs. Sometimes, a substub can be based off of factual, notable culture that somebody dosen't generate much detail about (e.g. Monika, Angel of Mine, Men in Black (song).

The difference between a stub and a substub is that it has some value. If it shouldn't be deleted, it's not a substub. john k 04:10, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

People shouldn't write substubs and expect the rest of Wikipedia to fill in the blanks. Please add requests to Wikipedia:Requested articles or spend some time doing actual research before writing articles. Rhobite 04:16, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

• Men in Black (song) was an adequate start to an article. Kappa 17:22, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Templates

I notice that there are no specific criteria on this page for deletions of templates, but I see several votes for "speedy" on WP:TFD for templates that don't match the general criteria for speedy deletion. For example, there are the templates Template:= and Template:*, which are obviously unnecessary but not really covered under any of the "General" criteria. While these are extreme cases, are there any guidelines we want to set down as to the Criteria for speedily deleting templates? I use this guide frequently when deciding how to process articles in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, and some additional guidelines on how to handle templates would be appreciated. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 03:06, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

For things like Template:=, people don't necessarily intend for "speedy" to mean "meets the WP:CSD". It's usually more like "This is so dumb it shouldn't be necessary to wait five days". Not a technically valid vote, per se, but it certainly makes the point. I can think of one potential addition to the CSD's :

Templates containing prose intended for use in articles. - Wikipedia:Template namespace says "Templates should not masquerade as article content in the main article namespace; instead, place the text directly into the article.".

I'm not sure how to phrase something to cover Template:=, since occasionally these seemingly non-sensical templates do survive - see Template:-, which lived through a TFD vote. -- Netoholic @ 03:22, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

• How about 'template is short and has no non-trivial content'? E.g. if template:dot contains a dot. So what? It's easier to type a dot. Radiant_* 16:22, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

"-Stub" Templates

Just today I have seen about a dozen templates for storing stubs up for deletion. Often there is no need for them, which is why they're up for deletion anyway. Perhaps the server should auto-tag any new stub templates for speedy deletion consideration before the well-meaning creator goes adding them to 50+ pages? I don't know how well that would work, but considering the small number of stub-storing templates that are actually useful it seems that this would work better. If it could be scripted, I don't know about the technical limitations or anything. Master Thief Garrett 06:28, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jerzy's edit

Something is wrong with this edit. Either the grammar is confusing me, or the context is escaping me, but I just don't get it. -- Netoholic @ 03:22, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

R1

I boldly moved the bolded warning "the appropriateness of this item is disputed" to the end of the sentence because it was too easy to misinterpret. It made the whole thing read as "Redirects can be immediately deleted if they have no useful history and: the appropriateness of this item [what item? the redirect I want to delete?] is disputed." For the same reason, I changed the word "item" to "criterion" to make it more clear that the warning applies to part of the process. FreplySpang (talk) 11:16, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

stale old subpages

So, why aren't stale old subpage redirects deleted? SchmuckyTheCat 19:54, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can you give an example of what you mean? -- Netoholic @ 03:18, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)

Example: Peoples Republic of China/Economy → Economy of the People's Republic of China. Answer: see Wikipedia talk:Redirects for deletion#Sub-page redirects. —Korath (Talk) 12:32, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

Talk pages of deleted articles

Criterion 8 said "Talk pages of already deleted pages unless the discussion is linked to Wikipedia:Archived delete debates." Now that all delete debates are preserved in vfd/subpages, presuably the "unless" also covers cases where the talk page is linked from the particular vfd/subpage. I have tried to add it but there may be a neater way. --Henrygb 01:33, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You misunderstand. That was instituted when deletion debates were archived to the talk pages. Nowadays, we archive (well, more like leave in place) the debate on the VfD subpages. Since we can easily find the deletion debates, your recent change doesn't fit with then intent. Someone should revert it to the previous wording. -- Netoholic @ 03:14, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)

I came across this at Talk:Creation anthropology, where the main article was deleted. The talk page is linked to from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Creation anthropology: it is mentioned in the debate, and also in Template:Vfd top. There seems to be no justification for deleting the historical talk page. --Henrygb 08:47, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree, this is not a good deletion criteria. If a deleted page has a non-empty talk page, 9 times out of 10 that talk refers to whether to delete or not (often contains material in addition to the delete debate). Thus if the page is re-created, this information is useful. What possible gain is there in deleting it? Moreover, why not, as a matter of course, have the talk page of the delete page transclude the deletion debate? Pcb21| Pete 09:24, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's like saying "why don't we just blank pages rather than delete them?' Talk pages oif deleted pages should be deleted. We have no driving need to keep Talk pages, which are for discussing the related page, if that page was deleted. We need only maintain a record of the decision to delete. Please replace #8 in it's long-standing form "Talk pages of already deleted pages unless the discussion is linked from Wikipedia:Archived delete debates." -- Netoholic @ 15:05, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)

Clarification needed on what exactly is "reposted content"

There have been several cases recently of articles speedied as "reposted content" (detailed in RickK's RFC). One of them has been undeleted, and the redeletion debate resulted in a clear consensus to keep undeleted. The other one is currently on VFU and has a majority for undeletion. There seems to be a consensus that "reposted content" must be largely equivalent to the original, but at least one admin sees things differently and has been speedying new articles with different content because the first article on the subject was deleted. --SPUI (talk) 05:05, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is just my personal opinion, but I would argue that if the "recreated" article is substantively and clearly different it does NOT count as a "recreation" for purposes of Speedy. Under this criterion, Falling Up (band) version 2 would NOT be subject to Speedy Delete. -Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:18, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

For the record, the old and new Falling Up articles are at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RickK#Response. --SPUI (talk) 23:19, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I was just about to post the following at the village pump when the you have a message came out. ==Recreation of an Vfd'ed article== Is the recreation of an article Voted for deletion, a violation of any polices? Does the Vfd itself extend to the idea of the article? Is the recreation considered a run around to a Vfd? --Jondel 07:59, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To my mind, something would only qaulify for speedy deletion if it was substantially similar to the deleted article. Taking the hypothetical article William Key:

"William Key is a student at the University of Florida who is 6ft tall"

This would (quite righty) be deleted on the grounds of non-notability. If the exact text was recreated it would obviously be speedy. If the recreated article was:

"William Key is a politics student at the University of Florida who is 6ft tall. He was born in New Hampshire".

That would (imho) be speediable as it doesn't improve on the original text in any substantial way - i.e. it doesn't address the reasons for the deletion. If however the recreated article was:

"William Key (born 14 July 1983 in Lebanon, New Hampshire) is a post-graduate politics student at the University of Florida]], who shot to fame in 2005 for being the youngest person to secure the Democratic nomination for Senator since Theodore M. Wales became a senator for Rhode Island in 1891."

That would not be speediable, if there was any question over its apropriateness (e.g. if, like the above, it was untrue) then it would have to go to VfD. Thryduulf 10:22, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My own opinion: a deleted article can be speedied when the reposted content (however much it has changed) would have no chance of changing the VfD ruling. For instance, if we decide a certain band isn't notable at all for whatever reason, then no article should exist there and any text there could be speedied on sight (excepting the rare possibilities that new information may indicate that the band is notable, or that it may belong in a new or different article, etc.). Or if an article was deleted because of blah blah blah, and the new text still blah blah blahs, then it can be speedied because the ruling would not change. It's when the article has changed in such a way that the old reasons for deletion might no longer apply that the article should be kept and, if deemed appropriate, go through VfD again. - furrykef (Talk at me) 11:56, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Minor changes to the policy page

In this edit, Netoholic made some minor changes to clarify the wording of one clause of the criteria. Four days later, Firebug reverted the changes saying that the "change to the policy was not discussed on the Talk page". I think this was an over-reaction. I and presumably many other people reviewed Netoholic's edit and found it to be a reasonable clarification. (I believe that I can say "many other people" because so many people have this page on their watchlists - proven by the speed with which true vandalism is reverted.)

I do not think that every miniscule tweak to wording needs to extensively discussed and voted on before changing the page. Policy pages may be held to a little different standard than the average article but this is still a wiki. All users are still encouraged to be bold. Furthermore, after four days the burden of discussion has shifted. Firebug should have brought his/her concerns here, not simply reverted the edit.

Okay, I'm done venting. Since at least one person apparently does consider this edit controversial, let's discuss it. I think it was a minor but reasonable clarification of the policy page in order to update it to the community's current practice. Rossami (talk) 17:48, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm one of the many with this page on my (extensive) watchlist. I didn't spot Netoholic's change, but did spot Firebug's reversion and assumed it to be related to Netoholic's ArbCom case. Having looked more closely following Rossami's comment above, I think Netoholic's version, with a slight amendment (see below), is better. For clarity I've presented all the versions below. Thryduulf 22:29, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Old version (bold highlights changes to Netoholic's version):

1. Were created by moving user pages out of the article space. (Sometimes new Wikipedians accidentally create user pages in the main article space. Move them into the user space using the "Move this page" tool to preserve their history, and consider waiting a day or two before deleting the resultant redirect.)

Netoholic's version (bold highlights changes from old version):

1. Were created by moving pages into the User: namespace. (Sometimes new Wikipedians accidentally create user pages in the main article space, or create personal Templates. Move them into the user space using the "Move this page" tool to preserve their history, and consider waiting a day or two before deleting the resultant redirect.)

Thryduulf's proposed version (bold highlights changes from Netoholic's version):

1. Were created by moving pages into the User: namespace. (Sometimes new Wikipedians accidentally create user pages or personal templates in the main article space. Move them into the user space using the "Move this page" tool to preserve their history, and consider waiting a day or two before deleting the resultant redirect.)

(note that the above all relate to criterion 2 for redirects. Thryduulf 22:33, 4 May 2005 (UTC))

I can't think of anything more fitting to say than what Rossami has already said. Firebug has made a number of edits, votes, and comments lately which can best be described as anti-Netoholic. I could care less about the comments, but reverting this change was just random disruption. I suspect he's been scouring my recent edits to further his campaign. I hope someone reverts this page, since my change was minor and appropriate.

Thryduulf's version is fine by me, even if he did throw in a minor jab at me in his comments. -- Netoholic @ 22:35, 2005 May 4 (UTC)

I appologise for that, it wasn't how I intended it to come accross - I was merely expressing that I thought Firebug was reverting a change that violated your temporary injunction. I realise now that wasn't the case. I would adjust my comment above but I can't think of a succinct way to rephrase it. Thryduulf 22:56, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Slander

Recently a rather unusual article popped up at Nederland 1 which appeared to be either a humourless joke or a man's rather pathetic attempt to slander his ex-wife's new husband. It contained an extensive list of unsubstantiated allegations against the man, with all of his personal information. I put it up for deletion right away of course. Someone speedy deleted it, but as far as I can tell we have no specific speedy delete rule for this sort of thing currently. I undeleted it, to wait for its non-speedy death, but it was re-deleted, this time based on the theory that it could get us in legal trouble. See discussion at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Nederland 1.

Besides asking what we should do in this particular situation, some questions are raised. Should the speedy delete policy be amended for this sort of thing? This case is clear, but I can imagine a case where a stream of slander about a notable person could be NPOVed into a good article. What about other criminal uses of articles, like organizing a robbery, inciting a riot, or committing treason? Deco 09:05, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can't answer the slander charge, but I would think that other crimes could be speedied as an attempt to correspond. Best, Meelar (talk) 09:42, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Seems like this is too much of a one-off, and I'm not sure a CSD rule could be written to encompass it. I don't think it's worth it. My suggestion would be to blank the page and VfD it. If someone suspects that it's going to bring us legal trouble even after it's been blanked, we should let a Foundation board member decide to speedy delete it. -- Netoholic @ 16:39, 2005 May 8 (UTC)

Election-box-related metadata

There is a bunch of tiny articles which were used as metadata for {{Election box candidate with party link}} (for example British_National_Party/meta/shortname). As far as I can tell they have all been moved to the template namespace and so they are actually REDIRECTs now, but they are all showing up on Special:Shortpages. Are these candidates for speedy deletion? --Phil | Talk 09:25, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Improved example for #A1?

It has struck me often that the example for #A1 isn't ideal. if somebody really had created an article for Anthony H. Wilson that said...

He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great.

...my instinct - and, I think, that of many editors and admins - would be to wikify it and add {{substub}}. This example contains at least two notable and verifiable facts, and is can clearly be expanded to an encylopedia article. This criterion, IMNVHO, was really intended to stop somebody adding and article for, say, Hednesford Town...

The greatest footy team in the WORLD!

Can we change the example on WP:CSD accordingly, so it better matches how things really work? sjorford →•← 09:27, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Redirects to deleted articles

Athough I've noticed that speedying redirects to nonexistent articles is debated, an issue was raised on WP:AN regarding redirects to articles that have gone through VfD. Normally those redirects should be deleted when the main article is, but some admins forget to check for incoming redirects. A number of those redirects have consequently appeared on RfD recently. Could we add those to the list of speedy deletion criteria for redirects? Perhaps something along the lines of

1. They refer to pages which have been deleted through the normal Votes for deletion process.

The wording is of course quite open to revision. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 23:08, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Per policy, these are already speedyable. The issue raised by the WP:AN posting was simply that some admins doing VfD deletes are forgetting to delete incoming redirects as well as the article (which makes more work). Noel (talk) 21:14, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Ah; okay. Someone had marked the relevant passage in WP:CSD as contested when I posted my message; it's since been fixed. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 15:37, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Are redirect reasons a superset of article reasons?

This change leads me to believe that all the general reasons that apply to ordinary pages also apply to redirects (i.e. that the reasons for speedying a redirect are a superset of the general criteria). I have therefore modified the text of the redirect section to make this explicit. If not, let's figure it out. Noel (talk) 22:10, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Your change is a bit redundant. The "General" rules "apply to contributions made in any namespace". This applies to redirect, images, templates.... whatever. By making your change, you're reducing this application. I'm going to revert, since I think this was just a missed point. -- Netoholic @ 22:56, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't obvious to me; I - and the instructions at WP:RfD - went for years thinking the only reasons for redirect speedy deletes were the 4 listed under redirects. So it could presumably have been non-obvious to someone else as well. I fail to see the harm in the one-line note that all the general reasons apply to redirs as well, but I have no interest in getting into a revert war about it. Noel (talk) 13:32, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

The proble I see is that if we make it super-explicit for redirects, we may accidently insinuate that for other types of pages, they don't apply. -- Netoholic @ 16:19, 2005 May 17 (UTC)

Not Policy!

This page is not policy! You may like it to be policy, but saying it is policy does not make it so. The page is still in flux; different users are adding and subtracting criteria all the time. It is not appropriate to try to tag a page as "policy" without serious discussion right here in talk.

Pleas do not try to tag this page as policy just because you think so. This is a group; we all have opinions; and concensus is how we set policy.

Thank you. — Xiong熊talk* 09:30, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

• There are few pages that are better examples of "policy" than this page. Of course it is still in flux. This is a wiki. The community standards are changing as we learn more about how to write an open-source encyclopedia. But that's true of every policy page. I'm not sure that the "policy" vs. "semi-policy" etc. tags are really necessary but to say that this is "not policy" is absurd. Rossami (talk) 12:36, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
• Yes it is policy. It's been in use as such for over a year. Radiant_* 12:44, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
• It's rather irritating to have long-standing policies (for which consensus is implied by their constant and unchallenged use) called "not policy" simply because there's never been a vote on the matter. Its being in flux is irrelevant; nothing on Wikipedia is static. We don't need any more bureaucratizing. — Dan | Talk 14:31, 2005 May 18 (UTC)
  • There have been several votes. Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD is a pretty clear indicator that this both has been and is official policy. And the complainant's own prior actions indicate that this is official policy. Xiong xemself even initiated a further vote to expand this official policy, earlier on this very page. Uncle G 08:42, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

Template/cat crossover

#Categories that are populated solely by a template, iff the template was deleted per WP:TFD policy, and the cat was nominated there as well

See Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_deletion#Speedy category deletion. It was discussed there (with a link from WP:TFD/talk) and deemed common sense. Avoid duplicate discussions. This isn't strictly speaking a 'speedy' criterion, but more a case of co-nominating a cat and template if they are corresponding, and deleting both if TFD vote passes. Radiant_* 12:44, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

As I said on the other page, this is NOT an appropriate "speedy deletion" item. Don't add it. What you're suggesting is a process where templates and associated categories are voted on together. CSDs are to describe situations where no vote or comment is needed. -- Netoholic @ 15:07, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

misuse of patent nonsense template

In the lst few weeks I've hd a few articles that I've started, some marked inuse and some marked stub, have people (sub sorters or RC patrol) come in during the middle of the edits and mark it as nonsense, which puts it on track for speedy delete. nonsense is for things like random characters and other real gibberish. an inuse or stub article may contain outlines, silly statements as placeholders, etc, but these things are not random characters. Might I ask what recourse is there for these occurences? SchmuckyTheCat 16:06, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you that the term "patent nonsense" is misused, and perhaps the template also. Probably depends on what the articles looked like at the time, and how long you've left the {inuse} tag on it. I'd suggest that if you're going to create a page which isn't ready, do it under your user: space or off-line and then post it when it's fairly complete. If you disagree with any of the ones that have been deleted so far, try taking it to WP:VFU. -- Netoholic @ 16:53, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

• when it's done inuse I end up getting the "someone else has..." warning, in which case I just wipe out the template. I've watched my stubs, and even a speedy delete usually takes long enough I haven't seen one deleted, but I'm sure other people have. The other instance was when I was trying to create a dab page out of a redirect, the placeholder text got marked nonsense by a stub-sorter. anyways, I just wanted to raise awareness and say something. SchmuckyTheCat 17:46, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Make a list of pages that you think were deleted inappropriately, and have an admin check them out. -- Netoholic @ 20:34, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

Author's Choice

Is it worhtwhile adding to the criteria those instances where an author wishes hisr article deleted ? This would be restricted to instances where no substantive imptrovement has been amde by other suers, as then the article is quasi-public-domain, but would allow the speedying of items entered in a haze and later regretted. --Simon Cursitor 08:09, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

It's already in the list. See General Case #7. There are two general caveats. First, the definition of "substantive" improvement or change is a judgement call that must be made by the deleting admin. Most people would say that anything beyond minor wikification and the addition or deletion of tags (such as vfd or delete) would trigger the need for a full VfD discussion. Second, it does not imply a right by the original author to "revoke" anything. The author released the content under GFDL when he/she hit the Save Page button. If the content is factual, verifiable and encyclopedic, we get to keep it even if the author later decides that it's not very complimentary. 17:26, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Redirects from Wikipedia namespace into userspace: appropriate?

Redirects from the Wikipedia: namespace into someone's userspace seem misleading to me: someone clicks on a link expecting to arrive at a community page and instead ends up at a page owned by one editor. For example, Wikipedia:Schools/Deletion principles poll currently redirects to Neutrality's private poll, User:Neutrality/Survey. Neutrality is only allowing himself to edit this page and is reverting changes made by others. This redirect seems inappropriate to me; I have attempted to remedy the situation, but Neutrality has reverted my edits. Thoughts?

Update: someone else has removed the redirect for now, too. But my question stands: can such a redirect be appropriate? Lupin 04:08, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• No. Such a redirect is highly inappropriate. It allows userspace content to masquerade as official. Radiant_* 07:11, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Probably just an oversight. I've removed all potentially misleading redirects and whatnot. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:32, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

New speedy criteria?

In an effort to alleviate the load on VFD pages, the discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion_policy/Reducing_VfD_load has started. Among others, it discusses the possibility of creating new criteria for speedy deletion. Please give your comments there. Radiant_* 11:24, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Another proposed new speedy criterion

Because many IP addresses are dynamic, and many computers used by more than one person, we cannot assume that anon talk pages contain messages targeted to more than one user. Often, messages to anon users (test warnings especially) hang around for months or more--far past the point when the person who the message was intended for is necessarily the person that is using the IP number now.

This creates a couple problems. First, many people can get confused--if they stumble on an anon with 5 warnings, they might assume it is one persistent vandal, rather than multiple people getting assigned the same dynamic IP. Secondly, the anons themselves often receive "You have new messages", get threatened with vandalism they didn't commit, and are soured on Wikipedia. For both these reasons, I support adding a new criteria to WP:CSD:

:Talk pages of users who have not created an account, provided they are not tagged with a template such as Template:Cambridge IP or some similar note and that there have been no messages left on the talk page for at least a month.

Thoughts? If there are no objections, I'll add it in, but I'd hope for, at the least, tweaking and tuning of the wording. Meelar (talk) 16:48, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

It's already listed in the user page section: "User talk pages of non-logged in users where the message is no longer relevant (This is to avoid confusing new users who happen to edit with that same IP address)." — Dan | Talk 17:00, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I'll add a suggested caveat. Some anon IPs are associated with persistent vandals. In many cases, the vandalism investigation involves reviewing every edit made by the user. If someone has taken the time to record "I've reviewed edits up to XYZ and reverted the inappropriate edits", that comment should be preserved. It's a huge help because it means that the next editor who needs to review the contribution history can know where to end the search. To be honest, because of the need to preserve those comments, I'd be much happier with just page-blanking the anon's Talk page. That reduces 95% of the new user's confusion without destroying the audit trail of comments about past abuse. Rossami (talk) 17:48, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• smacks head*--This should probably be better publicized, then--I've gotten odd looks from several users, just for blanking (not deleting) anon talk pages. Thanks very much, and I should have read closer before editing. Best, Meelar (talk) 17:50, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Speedying?

The following suggestion for speedy deletion criteria is under discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion_policy/Reducing_VfD_load (please comment there, not here). The idea is that if a certain category of articles is deleted by unanimity VfD, and we can provide a clear wording for it, then it could conceivably be a speedy to save people the work.

• Any vanity page that does not assert notability.

Radiant_* 09:08, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

No New Speedy Criteria

I oppose all proposals for new speedy criteria. Speedy is a bad way to handle most deletions and, by definition, leaves no room for comment. It is an open door to unilateral abuse. Speedy is appropriate in a highly restricted number of types of cases, and only then. Nobody should be editing Csd without extensive discussion and considerable lapse of time. — Xiong熊talk* 12:14, 2005 May 27 (UTC)

• The proposal above was intended to start discussion. If there is not much support by those who read this page there will be little point in putting it to the wider community. Conversely, if there is support here then it will be worth getting wider input. Every proposal has got to start somewhere.
• In this case Radiant wasn't proposing anything other than codifying what already happens - see special:log/delete. Thryduulf 12:46, 27 May 2005 (UTC)