Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

Proposed New "Not Notable/Hopeless" CSD

(Follow on from discussion above)

• Cryptic, this "empower the reviewers" idea is objective on the following points: (i) Two reviewers hold the opinion that the draft is hopeless; (ii) The two reviewers hold the NPR right that can be easily removed if others don't trust them; and (iii) in DraftSpace/AfC, the two reviewers' opinion is to be trusted.
  RE (iii): I think a formal rejection and deletion process for drafts that are hopeless but don't fail a subjective criteria is unworkable. There are simply far too many compared to the number of experienced editors prepared to independently review the nominations, the process costs far outweigh the average value of a draft. Anyway, currently there is no process, WP:NMFD and its RfC is worth a re-reading. Currently, reviewers are not empowered/trusted to formally reject any draft; they just give advice or make empty threats of repeated rejection if problems aren't fixed, and so the hopeless drafts accumulate, until discarded under G13. The authors of the hopeless drafts get no clear timely message that their draft was hopeless. Thus, I suggest empowering the reviewers to be decisive with their decisions. Yes, it depends on two reviewers subjective opinion that a draft is hopeless, but that is not really any different to G10 relying on a single admin's opinion of what is an attack. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:11, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

User:SmokeyJoe two reviewers is a very nice idea but would require building some new system. CSD already includes two sets of eyes the nominator and the Admin who does the actual deletion.

CSD Gxx "Unsuitable/Not Notable Topic Draft". Any draft tagged for AfC on an evidently non-notable topic. If an AfC approved user and the patrolling Admin agree => delete. That would cut way down on the resubmissions of hopeless pages to AfC and reduce the wait. The submitter would get a CSD notice like "Welcome to Wikipedia. Standards exist that guide which topics are considered "notable" and suitable for a stand alone topic in the encyclopedia. The draft topic you submitted does not appear to meet these standards and may be removed. We encourage you to read ___ and ask any questions at the help desk."

Current we reject thousands of pages a year as not notable but we encourage the submitter to fix the page and resubmit. You can't fix notability. Legacypac (talk) 06:12, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Two NPR qualified AfC reviewers, and an admin to do the actual deletions, yes. WP:NPR approved, not AfC approved. There is no AfC approval system. The NPR right must be requested, and can be removed if the reviewer does bad.

The two reviewers would have to agree that the draft is hopeless, the topic is not notable, as in definitely not notable. Such pages should be deleted immediately, the author should not be invited to fix the page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:33, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok, we can almost do that within the existing system:

• Reviewer 1 rejects as Not Notable.
• Reviewer 2 sees the resubmission and agrees it's Not Notable - they CSD it under a new criteria
• Admin sees it, and if they agree, deletes. It's a 3 strikes system with three different people reviewing.

AfC is esentially a user right as you must be Admin approved to use the script and various user's have access revoked from time to time. No need to tie to NPR.

abusing the new CSD and doing real damage would be hard as three users are required. That's more participation than many MfDs amd AfDs get. Legacypac (talk) 06:55, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Reviewer 1, in the normal course of reviewing AfC submissions, tags the draft "Rejected, not even close to notable". Steer clear of the borderline notable topics, it is a huge task to evaluate all sources that exist.

Reviewer 2, who likes to review the rejected drafts, marks all for deletion that he agree with. He ignores the others.

CSD backlog working admin, who gets to know which reviewers are trusted and reliable, deletes all, with just a cursory look.

More than enough checks. An advantage is that nonsense submissions can be caught and deleted within the hour. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:40, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Yup that works well. Create a new Decline Reason (or use the existing ones?), a new subCat under Category:Declined_AfC_submissions (or use existing ones?) and a new CSD "Non-notable AfC Submissions" I think a new decline reason for the hopeless ones is better to separate out the most obvious ones to delete. Legacypac (talk) 08:04, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

It calls for some stronger declined templates. I see many hopeless rejected drafts where the message is too soft, not clearly telling the author that fixing is probability not an option. Short of speedy deletion, the harshest would be, say, “{{hopeless1}}. When agreed by a reviewer2, they tag it {{hopeless2}}, which categorises the draft category:Hopeless drafts seconded. We could populate this category and review its contents before agreeing that everything out in it should be speedy deleted from now on. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:58, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I've just nominated Draft:Lilybella Bayliss for MfD. Perhaps a useful case in point? Why can't AfC reviewers end the pain sooner - reducing the backlog and avoiding the author making the 'hopeless little tweak-and-resubmit' cycle? Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 15:46, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

• "you can't fix notability" is the wrong concept entirely. You can show something notable by finding more references. The only way to be sure there are not mroe references to be found is to look for them, and the only method we have here for getting people to to that is XfD. There are, to be sure, some subjects which are clear on the face are extremely unlikely to be referenceable, but actually specifying them tends to require some knowledge of the general subject area. DGG ( talk ) 21:40, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

However, a stronger decline message is a very good idea. I have been saying "Please do not submit again unless you can find good references."but it could be a little stronger than that. DGG ( talk ) 22:29, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

By "you can't fix notability" I mean that every topic is either notable or not notable before a word is written. We instinctively know some topics are notable and that others are not. In between are many topics were searching for sources sorts out notability, the cases DGG is talking about. I see this CSD path as for the clear cut cases, like how all CSD criteria work.

Typical examples where nothing about the Draft suggests notability:

• Joe is a youtuber with 25 subscribers
• Jane is an aspiring singer who hopes to record someday
• Xyz.com was founded in 2017 to market widgets
• Mr Black teaches 8th grade science in Springfield

Legacypac (talk) 23:01, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

So why not extend the A7/A9 "credible claim of significance" filter so that it becomes applicable to AfC drafts, say at second time of submission?: Noyster (talk), 11:21, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Since the A7 use in NPP is considerably wider, we will confuse them. There might be a possible wording tha twould not be confusing-- I'm thinking of a rather general "altogether non-encyclopedic". DGG ( talk ) 00:16, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

"No indication topic qualifies for inclusion" ?Legacypac (talk) 00:25, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

"altogether non-encyclopedic" makes sense. I agree with DGG on the fact that A7 use in NPP is considerably wider and therefore this might have the potential to confuse NPP editors (like me). (But the caveat is that "no indication" for NPPrs is a condition met only when both the material within the article or sources presented within the article and sources available through reasonable research of the deletion requesting editor don't indicate notability; I know A7 doesn't mandate research by the deletion editor; but most NPPers I know follow the mentioned good form). Lourdes 02:49, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I'm speaking a little out of turn, but I find it hard to believe that we can see if a topic is notible purely on the text written. We base a topic for notability by its references. Using one of the examples above; "xyz.com was founded in 2017 to market widgets", in itself isn't notible, and the subject isn't. But we can't guarentee that there isn't a high-media level coverage regarding the subject for something else. Maybe the company got media attention due to copywrite infringement or similar. I think some topics are clearly more likely to pass WP:GNG, so maybe different strengths of wording for different submissions would be suitable.

On another note, is there a suitable way to automatically decline articles that are re-submitted without any changes? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:43, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

(regarding your final point) That was discussed and rejected in a discussion at AFC. Long debate short, we don't want a bot doing a human's work (i.e. there are too many valid exceptions to make it realistic to implement). Primefac (talk) 12:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I think you can (and we do) decline (and could CSD) many pages based solely on what is written. It is up to the submitter to put in the info that makes the topic notable, which instinctively everyone does. Some even embellish. If a submission comes in about a Nobel Prize winner that does not indicate their significance and it gets deleted, the page was junk and should be TNT'd anyway. Legacypac (talk) 17:31, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Our goal here is to improve the encyclopedia. It is unlikely that we will get to consensus on a proposal to make it easier to delete what will be seen by some editors as work in progress. The whole WP:DEMOLISH thing is unresolved an unlikely to be resolved with a proposal like this. ~Kvng (talk) 17:32, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

• This is rather defeating the point of drafts. It's fine if a draft doesn't adequately demonstrate notability, that's part of the reason why the page is a draft and not a mainspace article. There's a huge difference between "not notable" and "doesn't demonstrate notability", and it's perfectly possible to write an article about a notable subject which doesn't demonstrate that the subject is notable. The reviewers for this criterion will be focusing on what's in the article rather than what the subject is, and I highly doubt an AfC reviewer is going to conduct a detailed search for sources. Hut 8.5 21:40, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

G7 query

Hi, let's say a page is taken to XfD, someone comes along and !votes Keep, then the creator of the page !votes Delete. Does G7 apply here as the creator now wants the page deleted, or should the XfD run to closure as someone wants to keep it? Iffy★Chat -- 09:21, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

• Note that G7 requires the tagged to be the sole author, ignoring bot edits, usually ignoring minor edits, including gnoming. Adding categories doesn’t make an author. If these conditions are met, there is usually a good reason to let it be deleted, such as a COI and inclusion of private information. I would ping the keep !voter and EnquiriesNZ as to whether they might change their mind given the new information of the sole author !voting delete. If the keep !voter intends to recreate following G7 deletion, do not G7 delete as it will lead to copyright non-compliance. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
• In my view, the moment someone says to keep at AfD, G7 is done with. There's no harm in letting the AfD finish its seven days. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:03, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
• G7 is a speedy deletion criterion and those usually require that deletion is not controversial (G10 and G12 excepted to a limited amount). If someone argues to keep an article, G7 is moot because now the deletion is controversial. If there are other reasons for deletion, like private information, these can usually be handled by revision deletion without deleting the whole article if the subject itself is found worthy of inclusion and the information was removed by editing, so I have to disagree with SmokeyJoe on that. Regards SoWhy 07:56, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
• This just happened with 'Murica. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 January 31#'Murica was closed earlier today with a "retarget" close even though the creator supported deletion. A couple hours later, a random IP slaps a a {{db-g7}} tag on it and RHaworth deleted it. -- Tavix ^(talk) 22:12, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, but that's an issue with the patrolling admin not actually looking into the situation and simply clicking "delete". I've had a number of G12s deleted out from under me when (I assume) they just looked at the copyvios report, saw a high number, and didn't investigate further. Also, for what it's worth, it's only happened once since I made this change, which is why I haven't said anything to RH directly. Primefac (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

  To wit, I've restored it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• Agree with all the above. G7 should be halted once someone even starts asking if should be kept. As SoWhy points out, "non-controversial" is the operative phrase. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Clarify R3

Under R3, redirects from page moves are not eligible unless the moved page was also recently created. Shouldn't there also be an exemption for pages that were recently moved, since sometimes a redirect might need to be deleted after a page move aimed at fixing unambiguous errors in a page name? ToThAc (talk) 16:06, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Some selected previous conversations showing how we got here. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

The issue is that if a page was at some title for a significant amount of time then there may be other people on the internet who have linked to that article at the former title. If we move it to another title and delete the redirect then we break their links and contribute to link rot. If the moved page wasn't at that title for very long then this problem doesn't arise. Hut 8.5 20:43, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Draft Space Comment

Well, I tagged an article in draft space for G3, and it was deleted as G3. I am reasonably sure that this is the first time I have tagged a draft as a blatant hoax, but it was incredible in that (without references) the story wasn't worthy of belief by a reasoning H. sapiens. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:14, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Draft Space Criteria Again

I think that I will propose something that has been discussed above, and that is two (or possibly more than two) Draft criteria. If there are to be Draft criteria, G13 obviously should become D1, because it is only applicable in Draft space, and is a case of using G because anything else would be worse. The other criterion that I am proposing is D2, which would be drafts that substantially duplicate an existing article. I am aware that some editors say that this should not be a deletion criterion, but that the draft should be redirected to the article. My counter-question then is why is A10 available for articles that duplicate an article? Sometimes the deleted title is the wrong title (and the judgment that it duplicates an article is based on content). If we have A10, and we do, we should have D2, which is not an uncommon use of MFD, and is unambiguous and not redundant. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:21, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

NO G13 does not only apply to Draft namespace. If a page substantially duplicates an existing article (and it's a temporary content fork to work out improvements) redirect it to the existing article and merge any useful content to the already mainspace article. Hasteur (talk) 04:30, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• G13 by design applied to userspace and WT:AFC subpages AFC drafts. We could now close of G13 of userspace and WT:AFC subpages, now that drafts are more clearly directed to go into DraftSpace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:18, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
• I oppose the suggested "CSD#D2 drafts that substantially duplicate an existing article". Redirecting is superior, more efficient, less troublesome for making sure the action is always right, and provides for the remaining redirect to point the author to the right place, and to contain the newcomers edit history. Any editor can do the redirect, and a mistake is just as easily undone. WP:ATD is policy for a reason, and all the reasons apply equally or more so for drafts. Does A10 even get much used? I guess that it is needed for when the the new title is not a plausible redirect. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:18, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
• G13 applies to drafts and rejected/unsubmitted AfC submissions, the latter aren't necessarily in draft space and can be in user space. It is perfectly fine to have a draft which is substantially a duplicate of an existing article, people sometimes do that so that they can work on modifications to the article without their modifications going live immediately. There is no reason to stop people from doing that. The difference with A10 is that we don't allow content forks in mainspace and A10 only applies when the article is not a suitable redirect target. Hut 8.5 07:37, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't think content forks should be allowed in draftspace either. People forking to draftspace typically don't let others know what they are doing, and content forks create attribution hazards, for example. Instead, I think WP:SPINOUTs should be discussed on the article talk page, and then done, all at once, to a new mainspace page with the spunout material cut from the article at almost the same time. Article wholesale re-writes are usually done on talk subpages. I think there should be a clearly stated rule: no forking to draftspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • There's no reason we couldn't move G13 to a D1, with the understanding that D* criteria applied to drafts no matter their namespace, if we had more than just the one Draft criterion. I can't see any admin declining to delete "{{db-a7}}[[John Doe]] is [[Pakistani] Humanitarian,[[Internet activist]], Was born in [[Johi,Dadu]].an [[E-Hacker]]." solely because it was created in Wikipedia: or Template: or Category: or whatever namespace. —Cryptic 07:57, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
• Hello, @Robert McClenon:. What other draft CSDs were you thinking about establishing? To my mind, we definitely need a draft equivalent of WP:CSD#A7 so that the community does not need to waste its time with obviously hopeless cases like this. Or perhaps a kind of hybrid of A7 and U5, since I know that some draft articles don't contain any assertion of importance yet but the author eventually intends to correct that. What do you think? Pinging @Legacypac: and @Zyc1174: because they brought the issue up initially. Reyk _YO! 08:48, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Also, for the benefit of future readers of this talk page, the entire content of the Lokender draft was this: Lokender Singh Adhikari, an Avid Traveler, a Day–Night Dreamer and a Passionate Lover of Himalayas who has a high zest for driving whilst exploring new places in Himalayas & sharing back those Himalayan Travel experiences with the other fellow Travelers. Reyk _YO! 08:51, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I agree with you on that. Now to convince someone to draft _{(pun intended)} this up for review as a new CSD criteria. However, this brings up another issue: We already have close to 50 CSD criteria, which isn't exactly handy, so maybe we can merge some other criteria to make way for the draft category? Zyc1174 _chat? ^{what I did} 09:40, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, since you ask, I would support D3 for drafts on persons that have no references and that are not do not look like encyclopedic draft articles but directory entries or social media profiles. That sort of submission really only has to do with people. Similar submissions about companies aren't common enough to be frequent and can either just be declined or tagged G11. Robert McClenon (talk) 11:37, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I also think that "Duplicating an existing article" should be a valid deletion reason in ANY space. In userspace almost all are copy paste of the mainspace version with no attribution or changes usually by an account with less than three edits. Redirecting adds no value, does not help the long gone user and clutters up the "what links here".

Another group of articles are Draft space Dups which you can evaluate in Category:Declined_AfC_submissions specifically Category:AfC_submissions_declined_as_already_existing, Category:AfC_submissions_declined_as_needing_to_be_merged, and here: Category:AfC_submissions_declined_as_a_duplicate (duplicates another submission). We typically decline these pages and G13 them eventually, not redirect them.

The biggest problem Category:Declined_AfC_submissions is Non-notable Bios (6500 in last edited the last 6 months, plus more specific types like music, academic, etc. and many of the "lacking reliable 3rd party sources" There are borderline cases where the creator can add refs to demonstrate notability, but in many cases it is VERY obvious that the subject does not merit an article or even a mention on Wikipedia.

The second biggest issue is organization declined as non-notable (3200 pages) or advertisement (1500 pages). Legacypac (talk) 17:14, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Comments

I have taken a trek through Miscellany for Deletion. I don't think that the volume of MFD can be significantly reduced, only slightly reduced, by adding CSD criteria. Nearly all of the pages that are nominated for MFD are in draft space or user space, and nearly all of them are drafts in the general sense of being apparently intended for article space. Most of them have been tagged because they are crud, but I can't write an objective unambiguous definition of crud. I would suggest three Draft criteria:

The first, D1, is the current G13. All of these should be applicable in Draft space or User space, so the D doesn't refer exclusively to draft space, but to drafts that could be in draft space.

The second, D2, is drafts that duplicate or substantially duplicate existing articles.

The third, D3, should, in my opinion, be a carefully written subset of drafts that would be A7 in article space: A draft page about a person that has no references and does not make a credible claim of significance. In my experience, drafts of this type, which are usually one sentence, are common, and have no references, and are social media directory entries, but Wikipedia is not a social medium or a directory, and the submitter usually doesn't have a clue what Wikipedia is and is not.

Robert McClenon (talk) 03:40, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

One of the most well written "D3 No credible claim" Drafts I've seen in a while Draft:Christine_Liu. Legacypac (talk) 06:31, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? You postponed a G13 of a non-notable person just so you could make a point? Primefac (talk) 14:26, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Commenting on the need to delete it and using as an example of something that could have been deleted earlier under a new CSD does not prevent G13 in a few days. There are 1000 plus more pages ready for G13 right now. Legacypac (talk) 14:36, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

First point is organizing deck chairs on the Titanic. It's just renaming/moving the identifier to help justify the creation of the category. If all of these are applicable in multiple namespaces, they belong in the G series CSD. No for me.

On the second, you keep trying to argue that we should delete instead of spent a little time looking for alternatives after being fed this advice by multiple editors. No for me.

On the third, you seem to have forgotten the point We don't test notability/significance in draft space. I note the CCS you links is an essay on the A series notability CSD criteria. Draft space is supposed to be where people have a place to start developing articles without the excitable main space police looking at every nook/cranny to try and delete an article. As long as the author is improving the draft we grant them wider latitude in what they can have in draftspace.

TLDR: None of these would get my support at this time Hasteur (talk) 14:15, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

User:Hasteur - I'll point out that I took the trek through MFD in response to the thinking of some of the other editors here who thought that we needed more criteria for CSD in order to reduce the need to use MFD. In particular, some editors thought that we needed criteria to get rid of crud. I am in favor of getting rid of crud, but 'crud' isn't an unambiguous criterion. The proposed G14, hopelessly non-encyclopedic, isn't an adequate unambiguous criterion for crud. I didn't see any criteria that would significantly reduce the use of CSD. If you don't agree with my D2 and D3, then maybe you also disagree with the more general complaints that we need a G14, which I don't think can pass. Comment? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:57, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I disagree with the thesis that we need a G14 as well. Go back to the criteria list and show how these are Objective, Uncontestable, Frequent, and Nonredundant. Frequent I can see is reasonable, non-redundant is reasonable, but the way that this is phrased I don't think it meets the first two criterion as a few I've been seeing do seem to benefit from the discussion that MFD provides. In one specific case it raised visibility of an editor disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point (regarding draft namespace) after they had been sanctioned for disrupting wikipedia to prove a point (regarding draft namespace). That MFD is being snowed under many candidates is unfortunate (and perhaps Legacypac could reduce the rapidity at which they nominate into MFD) but it's not overwhelming as far as I can tell Hasteur (talk) 02:36, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposed CSD:G14 WP:NOTEVERYTHING

"Pages that clearly are not encyclopedic content except for Dictionary definitions"

Rational:

• WP:NOTEVERYTHING is Policy not just a guideline. It is hard to argue we need to preserve content that fails WP:NOT.
• A G criteria would cover Draft and Userspace (where this is most needed) as well as Article and other spaces where it is still useful (though overlaps with some A type CSDs).
• This fits with User:DGG's idea of "not encyclopedic" several sections up. It does not cover Duplicate topics (which may be hard to get consensus on a CSD for).
• As NOT policy evolves the CSD will always match.
• While this covers a wide range of inappropriate content, if the reviewing Admin can't immediately see which type of NOT content it is, it's probably not a clear NOTEVERYTHING CSD case and should be sent to a discussion.
• We should not need an XfD to delete a clear NOTEVERYTHING case.
• We should not be wasting time rereviewing NOTEVERYTHING AfC submissions. Currently the page is declined (often multiple times) than reviewed for G13 eventually, then deleted, which means at least three editors review it.
• I suggest carving out DicDef because these drafts may be expandable or mergeable. I don't see valid DicDefs as a problem in Drafts. Legacypac (talk) 18:59, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
• Make CSD A criteria apply to draft space instead, for the same reason. Draft space is for drafting articles; if content in draft space is not relevant to the building of an article it should be deleted, and any of the A criteria are suitable for this. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:20, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
• (edit conflict)Far too broad and far too vague for a speedy deletion criterion. It would also allow me to speedily delete your userpage. Not that it's an objectionable userpage or anything, but it clearly isn't encyclopedic content. Hut 8.5 19:22, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Good point - how can we narrow to allow acceptable content? Legacypac (talk) 19:48, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure you can without making it something completely different. Look at A11: it only considers a small case within WP:NOT, it's a case where everyone agrees the article should be deleted and it imposes a relatively objective test on the article. A criterion considering the whole of WP:NOT, by contrast, is always going to be extremely broad and depend heavily on subjective judgements. Editors frequently argue about whether some article violates WP:NOT and if so whether the problem is serious enough for deletion. I don't think this G14 would be much better than having a criterion of "anything the reviewing admin doesn't think is appropriate for the encyclopedia". Hut 8.5 20:30, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

agreed. not all the A criteria should apply. A7 for example, because the draft may just need expansion for this. but A3 might:

I adjustedthe wording a little to clarify this. DGG ( talk ) 19:30, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Consider also the wording of A3:

"This applies to articles (other than disambiguation pages, redirects, or soft redirects to Wikimedia sister projects) consisting only of external links, category tags and "See also" sections, a rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks, chat-like comments, template tags, and/or images. This may also apply to articles consisting entirely of the framework of the Article wizard with no additional content." I think this is just as applicable to drafts. I'm not sure it applies to everything in userspace, though, so either we could add that it applies to drafts as well as articles, or add it as a Drafts criterion. DGG ( talk ) 19:30, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Also consider G6 blank draft."db-blankdraft - For userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text, created by users who have been inactive for over a year." G2 test pages is also used to delete blank or nearly blank (ie repeat of title is only content) Drafts. Legacypac (talk) 19:48, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

DGG, I would not think a category A CSD would apply to the draft space. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:22, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose per Hut 8.5. This proposal fails both the "objective" and the "uncontestable" requirements for new criteria. Whether a page meets WP:NOTEVERYTHING or not is frequently a debtated question in many XFDs (especially the WP:NOTPROMO, WP:NOTDIR, WP:NOTCRYSTAL sections which would all be covered by this proposed criterion). What is or is not encyclopedic is not a question admins should be allowed to judge without discussion. There is a reason why WP:NOTCSD mentions Reasons based on Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Wikipedia is not: "a dictionary", "an indiscriminate collection of information", "a crystal ball", "a how-to list", etc. as the first item on a list of invalid reasons for speedy deletion. This proposal would also violate both WP:WHATISTOBEDONE (a part of WP:NOT!) and WP:PRESERVE, as well as many other policies that clearly state that most WP:NOT violations can and should be handled by editing, not deletion, whenever possible. Regards SoWhy 20:06, 8 February 2018 (UTC
• (edit conflict)Fairly strongly against this, in particular the G aspect. The concept of "encyclopedic content" mostly only refers to actual content, so this would at best be an A criterion. Beyond that, though, most CSD are supposed to be routine, noncontroversial, and fairly straightforward (some, like copyvio, can be complicated, but likewise must be dealt with speedily). While the lists at WP:NOTEVERYTHING isn't controversial, whether something applies could easily be subjective. Many articles are not created fully-formed, and may be built in stages by new editors. That's why A7 doesn't apply if something claims importance, even it doesn't have verifiable, reliable sources proving notability, despite WP:V and WP:NPOV being policy all the same; we send them to AfD. AfD is the proper venue for this sort of thing, and it can handle it just fine. I fear this proposal would be used to WP:BITE newcomers, be quite subjective, and isn't even necessary. I do not share the fears of clutter in Draft space. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:21, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

As per SoWhy, I don't see G14 being made objective or uncontestable. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:20, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

I will comment in passing that I, for one, think that the guideline not to Bite the newcomers does at least as much harm as good, at least as it is applied. I won't disagree with any proposed criterion only because it is bitey. A few newcomers need to be bitten. But I disagree with proposed A14. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:20, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

WP:A11 obviously invented

This should be expanded to a G to catch User and Draft space pages. Legacypac (talk) 19:37, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Are drafts of obviously invented subjects really created so frequently that MFD/G13 can't handle them? Regards SoWhy 20:12, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, they are numerous. They waste MfD time. G13 requires 6 months unedited, which is 5 months and 29 days longer than these type of pages should be allowed to exist. Unless there is an argument that "obviously invented" content is desirable in parts of the site, there is no good reason not to broaden this CSD's coverage Legacypac (talk) 21:33, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Do you have any examples? I've just looked through all the drafts currently nominated at MfD and I didn't see any I thought would qualify. That suggests that either there aren't many of these things or that they aren't being sent to MfD. A11 also has a significance test borrowed from A7, which isn't a good idea in draft space. Draft space is intended as somewhere articles can be developed until they are suitable for mainspace, it isn't appropriate to apply all mainspace standards (such as significance/notability) to them. Hut 8.5 21:50, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• I would trust Legacypac to tag pages as obviously invented. Obviously invented by the author and involving no others. Having made that assessment, it would be better deleted promptly to give a quick clear message to the author, and to prevent other editors wasting time on it.
  To trial the idea, someone could make a categorising tag for Legacypac to use. Later, we can review the pages he would tag, and if agreed all should be speedied, start deleting them then. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:47, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

"This applies to any article that plainly indicates that the subject was invented/coined/discovered by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant." The "test" excludes pages with a credible claim of significance from being CSD'd, which seems a fine exclusion in Draft Space as well. I'll post some examples from decliend AfC submissions (they exist in userspace and non-AfC Draft too) Legacypac (talk) 22:05, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Examples:

• Most everything that lands here: Category:AfC submissions declined as jokes
• Many pages that land here: Category:AfC submissions declined as a neologism like Draft:Meaf, Draft:Millenimony, Draft:Wuzy,

Legacypac (talk) 22:08, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• • Actually there aren't many pages in the first category I'd be prepared to delete under A11. Quite a few qualify as vandalism (and I've deleted some as such) but there aren't many where the author invented some new concept and then decided to write about it. Drafts are intended as a safe space where it's OK to write something that doesn't have to be acceptable straightaway. That includes writing about a topic without having to demonstrate that it's notable, which means that applying significance-related tests isn't a good idea. Hut 8.5 22:24, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Note that these categories might over-represent borderline cases, as clear cut cases might have been squeezed into other criteria. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:39, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
    • And various editors patrol these categories and seek deletion (vandalism etc) so there are many more cases then the cats suggest. Legacypac (talk) 00:51, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
      • If people are able to get these pages deleted as vandalism or some other speedy deletion criterion then we don't need to expand A11 to cover this case. A large portion of those neologisms were declined on notability grounds and make it very clear that the concept wasn't invented by the author (such as by providing citations). Hut 8.5 07:41, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
• User:R.prasanna2892/Prasanna Venkatesh's Crazy equation Legacypac (talk) 07:02, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 February 2018

Can we bold or put "note" in all caps here -> Note: Not all numbers are used, as some criteria have been repealed.

TaxAct2018 (talk) 20:41, 8 February 2018 (UTC) TaxAct2018 (talk) 20:41, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. Primefac (talk) 21:08, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: apply all article speedy deletion criteria to pages intended to be articles in any other namespace

Clearly not happening; withdrawn. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:28, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

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

---

What I'm proposing at summary level is that the A-series criteria should apply to any namespace in which encyclopedic content is expected to be produced (i.e. sandboxes and userspace drafts) but I'll accept that this is likely more palatable as a proposal only to apply the A-series criteria to the Draft: namespace. Reviewing the currently active criteria (A1, A2, A3, A5, A7, A9, A10, A11) I see none that should not also apply to qualifying content posted as a draft. I've suggested this several times in other places but never myself as a formal proposal, so I'm doing it now.

The rationale is that the Draft: namespace is intended to develop content meant to publish as an article, and for no other reason. Drafts, like articles, that show no indication that their content will be of use in constructing the encyclopedia should not be hosted even temporarily. While we're lenient with drafts that are of poor quality that show some indication of future utility (and we should be) we needn't keep around content so obviously unsuitable that it could never contribute to an article or part of an article. As one example from today, Draft:Bryce Morgan is a new draft about a high school athlete with approximately 0% chance of notability. Were this article posted as an article it would have already been deleted, but since it's been posted as a draft it will remain there for seven days while an MfD discussion proceeds to attract nothing but "delete" !votes, unless the creator comes back around. We should be able to skip this process.

• Support as proposer; as usual I am open to suggestions on how to improve the language of the proposal, although I think this one is pretty simple. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 22:11, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
• As written Oppose. Again we have the same arguments. There are some CSD that I would like to apply to Draft space without having to go through MFDs for (A1, A2, A3, A5, A10 (though you could argue that a protected redirect to the mainspace would be better), and A11). A7 and A9 I have a very hard time on. A7 and A9 touch at the heart of notability and verifyability that Draft space is supposed to protect nacent articles from in mainspace. I could see a deferred A7/A9 (if after X period there isn't a Credible claim of significance) but the problem is if there's a tool out there, it runs the risk of being misused. cc @Ivanvector: Hasteur (talk) 02:51, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
• I advocated a variant of this (any A-series criterion on a draft that hadn't been edited in 6 months) for a long time, but it was made redundant by G13's expansion to non-AFC drafts. I don't follow MFD much; is it really that urgent that these can't sit for six months and get a totally-routine G13 deletion? Or do we see enough of these high-school athlete drafts that get continuously edited and/or re-re-re-submitted enough that they're never G13s?
  At a minimum, I'd much rather see an A3 analogue used for blank/essentially-blank drafts, instead of watching people continue to abuse G2 and G6 for those. —Cryptic 04:12, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose The G criteria already sufficiently deal with non-mainspace pages. The A criteria are rightly only applied to mainspace articles; draft space and user space drafts of articles should be given a LOT more leeway, because we encourage users to use that space to build future articles over time. Speeding deleting such work defeats the whole purpose of allowing new article work the space to breathe outside of the mainspace. --Jayron32 04:20, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose the fact that a draft would meet, say, A7 doesn't mean the draft has no value to the encyclopedia, because draft space is intended for developing content which isn't suitable for mainspace right now. Applying all mainspace standards to drafts defeats the point of having draft space. Hut 8.5 07:42, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Jayron32 and Hut8.5. We created the possibility to have "safe" spaces exactly so people can develop articles in peace. Considering the rush to delete already evident in mainspace, I don't see how driving people from Draft- or userspace is going to be in the best interest of the project. With WP:ACTRIAL we already force new users to create articles outside mainspace. Let them at least develop their articles there in peace. Regards SoWhy 07:54, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
• No You cannot easily tell the purpose of the sandbox or draft. Draft space does not have to be for whole articles, and some people develop fragments, lists of helpful information or templates there, which are not ever going to be articles. Some sandboxes are basically junk, and are used to practice editing or markup. There is no need to delete these with any article criterion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:46, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
• Not to pile on but oppose per above. G covers what it needs to just fine, and applying A criteria to drafts and userspace defeat the whole purpose of drafts and userspace. Do some folks abuse those areas? Yes. But the goal is to work on projects without the quick and harsh scrutiny given to articles in mainspace, hopefully encouraging creation. It is too much to expect folks to create articles whole cloth. Drafts are cheap and as GB says, we cannot know what a draft will become. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:11, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
• Per SoWhy and others. Piling on to oppose this proposal seems prudent to me, as variations needn't recur. Logic fails any suggestion that editing space given as sanctuary from the expectations of mainspace editing can be regulated to the same stringent standards while delivering any respite at all. The end escapes me that calls for such contrary means, without justification (please do tell)?--John Cline (talk) 04:06, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - the draft space is intended for users to be able to write their articles out of the way, gradually, over time. Requiring users to ive up to mainspace standards in the first revision is unreasonable. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:32, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
• Not a good idea for draft or user namespace. I do admit I have applied something like this in some other namespaces (mostly the Template namespace, most other namespaces are hard to reach accidentally), but I am not sure this is worth codifying for these namespaces. —Kusma (t·c) 22:29, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

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

Template:Promising draft

{{Promising draft}} (edit talk history links # /subpages /doc /doc edit /sbox /sbox diff /test)

Around the time G13 was expanded to include all old drafts, the template "Promising draft" was created to flag drafts that showed enough promise that they should preserved. Some viewpoints on the template at the time, ie [1], [2] assumed that such a template would amount to a delay, similar to an AFC comment or a dummy edit to give the draft another 6 months of time for improvement. Others were of the opinion that a mere delay in speedy deletion was insufficient, ie [3], and drafts with the template would be permanently immune to speedy deletion under G13.

The discussion here touched on the topic, but the focus was not really on the wording or finality of the tag, and discussion was somewhat distracted by the fact that the G13 expansion was still under discussion.

In practice, we are around 6 months after the G13 expansion so a couple hundred of these drafts, which generally were tagged and then not improved in the last half year, are coming up for G13 again and being consistently (though not unvaryingly) deleted at MfD ie:

• WP:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Delta Force (film series)
• WP:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Charles do Vale de Souza
• WP:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Ali Anjum
• WP:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Julius Espat.

I suggest that it would be a better use of Wikipedia's collective administrative time to advise stale draft patrollers to do a sanity check on tagged drafts and promote to mainspace or AfC if acceptable and otherwise tag for G13 (leaving MfD as the exception rather than the rule), as opposed to forcing ~100% of such tagged articles through a rubber-stamp MfD. My proposed rewording would match the "delay" practice, while the existing wording corresponds to an "indefinite" practice. Since the template talk page is probably poorly-watched, bringing it here for discussion more focused on the template's workflow. Thoughts? VQuakr (talk) 23:08, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, my intention as the closer of that discussion was that the delay on G13 should be indefinite for articles tagged this way. That said, I'm saying this after only a brief look at the discussions, and consensus can change. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:20, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

• Comment as a heavy processor of G13 pages I've encountered many of these tags. I even did a search for them to quantify the amount of use. Quality varies from "the tagger should have moved the page to mainspace" to "whay the heck did they tag this??" I'm currently extrememly inappropriately restricted from moves to mainspace so I've been submitting the semi worst to MfD, the beter ones to AfC and a few of the worst directly to G13 (after the template changed to not require MfD). A few dozen were SvG draftified pages that got wacked recently. Someone changed the template back to the original version which requires MfD, which I don't support. If someone thinks a draft is worth preserving, postpone deletion 6 months or even better actually work on it or even move it to mainspace yourself. Just leaving a template that is supposed to insulate the draft from normal deletion process without even adding a comment about why the topic is worthy or doing anything to move it forward is a little annoying. Legacypac (talk) 23:54, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Legacypac, I think you should not send any {{Promising draft}} tagged pages to any CSD criterion, but instead list them at MfD, noting your opinion of the promising tagging, and pinging the tagged to the discussion. CSD criteria are for cases where there is no conceivable plausible reason for discussion. If any editor has asserted that the page should not be deleted, they have self-nominated as a defender of the page. One useful outcome of the MfD discussion could be the education of an editor who too easily applies that tag. Misuse of the tag is disruptive, and MfD is the appropriate forum to review its use in specific cases. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:25, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

My bottom line: I think this template would work best as a sort of reverse prod. The rationale: When G13 was expanded to all drafts, the consensus seemed to be that if a draft is promising, it should not automatically be deleted after six months; administrators should use their discretion. This just creates a mechanism for that to be formalized. (By the way, when editors were simply leaving AFD comments about a draft being promising, drafts with these comments were routinely deleted. I can provide examples on request.) I see no problem with "insulating the draft from [the] normal deletion process", where the normal process is everything gets thrown in the trash after six months. Some articles may not be ready for mainspace but could be improved by future editors, which is what this template is for (and originally what the draftspace was for). The rationale for the creation of G13 was that garbage was piling up, and this template is designed for drafts that aren't garbage. If someone disagrees with a tag, what is the problem with exposing the draft to the light of day at MfD for other editors to review? Is there too high a volume of tags for the drafts all to go through MfD? If someone is applying the template indiscriminately, that's a behavior issue to bring up with the tagging editor. We don't have a problem with dealing with PRODs this way. Is something different here? (Is the fundamental problem that some editors think no drafts should be hanging around >6 mos without active improvement? If so, that's a whole different can of worms.) Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:09, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

No one is proposing here that G13 be automatic. The problem is that a significant portion of the drafts tagged with this template and unedited for the last six months quite clearly are garbage, and running them through a token MfD is a waste of time (and yes, a not insignificant burden on MfD). VQuakr (talk) 00:22, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

How do you propose that truly promising drafts be insulated from deletion? Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:30, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I described that in my proposal above. VQuakr (talk) 01:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Also, it appears that this tag is being used on ~120 drafts.[4] I clicked through some and most seemed like reasonable drafts. Even if 50% were to be nominated at AfD, that is only 60 drafts we're talking about. Am I missing something? Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:34, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

As near as I can tell, of the 17 drafts that have been brought to MfD and closed in the last month, 14 were deletes. Of the three that were not deleted, two were lists of refs (not really drafts) that were determined to still be useful and one was a rather unusual special case involving a recently-indeffed user. That's a pretty poor keep rate. Typical load at MfD is only ~3-5 pages per day so giving patrollers and admins discretion will make a difference and let MfD focus on the stuff that actually merits discussion. VQuakr (talk) 01:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Sure, but there is not necessarily a reason to think that those 17 are representative. Perhaps the worst of it is getting nominated for deletion first. I'm not terribly concerned about the workload associated with 17 MfD discussions... Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:30, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

As best I could tell there were about 220 pages tagged but a lot were SvG pages which I applied the widely agreed to mass delete (using G13) as the pages were way past the allotted review salvage time. Some have been deleted G13 or under other CSD and some were sent to main-space as is, which should have been done 6 months ago instead of tagging.

Normally when I look at a Six month stale draft I have discretion. If I CSD it, the reviewing Admin also has discretion. This tag proports to remove every other editor's discretion and overturn the widely agreed to G13 process for selected drafts - just because a single editor exercised their discretion without giving any rational. @User:SmokeyJoe why should we need to ping the tagger?They should have these pages on their watchlist, but since the taggers are not showing up to defend the pages, maybe they don't. Legacypac (talk) 01:24, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Legacypac, it is important to overtly ping the allegedly inept tagger because the MfD discussion is the forum that reviews inappropriate tagging. Either you or they are wrong, and it is very bad for different editors to be working at cross purposes in ignorance of each other. You can’t rely on watchlisting, you can’t rely on pinging either, but both are useful tools. Explicit pinging also ensures that others coming to the discussions, such as me, can see immediately who you allege is tagging inappropriately. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:18, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

This tag ensures that there is a discussion before the unilateral deletion of a draft that at least one user believes is promising. We're talking about less than 100 articles passing through MfD, given the current tagging situation. To be honest, this has to be one of the more depressing discussions I've encountered on Wikipedia. It's too much of a hassle to discuss less than 100 articles, so we are going to expose all of them to the threat of unilateral deletion? Let's not kid ourselves, if CSD says something can be deleted after six months, eventually some administrator is going to look at it while moving too quickly and delete it. I guess I'm too old-school in terms of eventualism (no room for that even in draft space these days, apparently!). Maybe I just need to be much more aggressive in terms of moving marginal articles to mainspace, where they at least will need to pass through AFD. Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:28, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

There are currently 127 drafts that are tagged with {{promising draft}}. Spot-checking a handful of them, I see that many look to be nearly acceptable as articles. These 127 drafts represent only a tiny percentage of all draft articles. I have no problem with them existing indefinitely in draft space and I don't see how this could be detrimental to Wikipedia in any way. Unfortunately, some of them will just linger there, but some will become useful articles. Any that have been inappropriately tagged as promising drafts can be sent to MFD without overwhelming it (or even affecting the throughput there in any meaningful way). -- Ed (Edgar181) 14:23, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't mind the tag too much, but I'd prefer the tagger just move the best pages to mainspace amd try to avoid tagging the worst pages. Legacypac (talk) 08:54, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Expand G1 to include userspace AfC submissions

Patent nonsense in userspace that is submitted to AfC no longer affects only the user that wrote it. I propose that G1 be slightly broadened to contain the caveat "unless submitted to WP:AfC" to the exclusion from userspace, similar to WP:G2. Proposed modified text of WP:G1 would be:

This applies to pages consisting entirely of incoherent text or gibberish with no meaningful content or history. It does not cover poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, implausible theories, vandalism or hoaxes, fictional material, coherent non-English material, or poorly translated material. Nor does it apply to user sandboxes or other pages in the user namespace, unless submitted to WP:AfC. In short, if it is understandable, G1 does not apply.

VQuakr (talk) 08:32, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Support these pages show up in AfC tracking categories and require MfD or G13 to get rid of currently. Make your own userspace nonsense on your own but when you force others to review it, expect to see the nonsense deleted. Legacypac (talk) 08:51, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• @VQuakr: Just so your aware, the insertion of "unless submitted to WP:AfC" of G2 is being challenged (and reverted) below, as it was not brought up for change properly, like you are doing so yourself. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 09:28, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Or maybe the open edit with a good clear summary on one of the most heavily watched project pages was the correct way to tweek policy. Legacypac (talk) 09:49, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Valid G1 deletions are rare. While back in The Good Old Days™, G1 was often used as a carte blanche, today admins know that G1 should almost never be used and rightfully so (as far as I can tell, there have only been 18 such deletions this year so far and most all of them were incorrect (which is not surprising considering the admins who performed them)). Expanding a criterion that should almost never be used makes no sense because such changes certainly fail the "frequent" requirement for new or expanded criteria. It also does not make sense for another reason: The existence of a submit-template does not imply that the draft is finished. Oftentimes new users don't realize that they should not submit articles for AFC before they are done with it and will submit unfinished drafts. Before proposing this change, please elaborate with examples why you think this change makes sense. Regards SoWhy 10:04, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

  One of the deletion was truly "incorrect", but all of the other pages should have been deleted. I believe most admins these days know that "nonsense" is not the same as "patent nonsense". Deletions under "wrong" rationales are common, but that is true for many of the CSD. A10 is one that pages that do not need to be deleted are often wrongly tagged with (half of the duplicate titles make plausible redirects). —Kusma (t·c) 16:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

  As I said, I don't contest that most of those deletions were correct per se, just that G1 did not apply. Regards SoWhy 17:12, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Instead as pointed out below, remove the afc template to keep it out of the system. It is very likely the submitter did not realise what would happen with the test. Deleting the page would like increase their lack of knowledge. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:54, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support - the rationale for excluding the userspace is that a user, to a limited degree, owns his/her userspace; however, once a user calls a page in his/her userspace an AFC article, it ceases to belong to that user. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Graeme Bartlett. Just remove the AFC template. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:50, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Delete G1

As I've long suspected G1 has become so narrow it is completely useless. If SoWhy's review is correct there is zero reason to keep a CSD that has zero correct applications in who knows how long. Legacypac (talk) 10:37, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

It's not become narrow, it's always been so narrow. I do agree with you though. I considered a removal of G1 but I wanted to check more examples first. The set I checked was from this year and it's possible that there are actually valid deletions happening. So some more research is certainly needed before we consider removing a criterion that has existed for more than a decade. Regards SoWhy 10:55, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Could be from ACTRIAL; there have been 695 G1 since 2017 January 1st. 60, 78, ~90, and ~90 were the counts for the first four months in 2017.(just searching 201703 etc) Looks like a cut down of 10x since ACTRIAL.

However, many of them, pre and post ACTRIAL have coherent titles, and while I can't view the pages they are seem like they would be more of the very confusing rather than incoherent text/gibberish. Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:57, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

either the criterian has narrowed or the application and understanding of it has narrowed. The ones I've seen in draft/afc generally have coheriant titles but garbage content. Legacypac (talk) 11:03, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

That was my point. Since only admins can view the deleted pages, one needs to check a larger sample (the DB lists 677 such deletions in 2017 total). I'll see if I can find the time (and any interested admins can feel free to help of course). Regards SoWhy 11:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

All 695 are in this table, User:GB fan/G1 Deletion 2017 through 22 Feb 2018. ~ GB fan 13:36, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Heh, I had the same idea and added them to User:SoWhy/G1 but yours is more elegant, so good job. Mind if I add some notes there? Regards SoWhy 13:39, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't mind, better to have them all in one place. ~ GB fan 13:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Btw, don't know how you extracted them but you seem to have problems with encoding. Compare the first line of your table with the first line of mine to see what I mean. Might want to fix that before people add notes. Regards SoWhy 13:46, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Something went wrong with the non-latin characters, I have fixed some of them. ~ GB fan 14:07, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• As a CSD, it is not among the least commonly used (that honour goes to P1 and P2, the most useless criteria ever). —Kusma (t·c) 16:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• It's not the least commonly used CSD, in mainspace A5, A2 and of course G9 should be less used. There are valid G1 deletions and those are not situations where you want to have to wait for PROD or AfD. I don't think removing it would be a good idea. Hut 8.5 18:45, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• G1 is still used quite frequently outside of the article namespace: only 20 out of 151 total in 2018 were in mainspace, and 789 out of 1392 in 2017. ACTRIAL is almost certainly the reason for the drop in articlespace percentage, and we're still on track to match the 2017 non-main-namespace numbers in 2018. Anecdotally, most of my own G1 deletions weren't actually tagged as G1, but as some other criterion that was a worse fit. —Cryptic 02:43, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• No, G1 is fine. It doesn't need to be removed at all. It is still valid. --Jayron32 03:13, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
• No. Nonsense still gets posted in article space on a regular basis, this is a perfectly valid criterion. Beeblebrox (talk)
• No. New Criteria Criterion #3 "Frequent" is a good and proper requirement for going throught the hassle of making the case and approving a new CSD criterion, but that doesn't mean it is a reason to retire an old criterion. Its infrequency of application may be a consequence of its long good practice. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:13, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
• No, per above comments. Even if it's not being used even at all right now, it still describes a situation in which speedy deletion would be warranted. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:32, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

G2 applying to AFC

I just reverted a change that seems to be completely contrary to what G2 was meant to be used for in the first place. The change made is that it was expanded to include anything submitted to AFC, even that in userspace. The original text stated that the userspace was exempt from this criterion. I have brought it here for discussion to obtain opinions on the issue. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 09:26, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Good job reverting that. Userspace is the place you can make your tests. That's why we have it. If a test page is submitted to AFC, don't delete the page, just remove the AFC submission tag. Regards SoWhy 10:06, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

(+1) to what SW said.Just remove the AFC tag!~ Winged Blades^Godric 17:05, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

This is an AfC draft management issue and the minor change steams from many doscjssions at AfC amd a lot of practical work with draft management. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#G1,_G2,_and_AFC and other discussions at AfC. Removing the tests increases the average quality of G13able pages, which makes reviewing them for useful controbutions more worthwhile and less depressing. It helps reduce the number of pointless resubmit & declines at AfC. It also closes off WP:REFUND busywork on blank and obvious testing. Clearing AfC decline categories helps identify pages that editors wamt reviewed again (perhaps ghey broke the submit template), or which should be reviewed again, but the accumulated clutter makes screening much harder. Legacypac (talk) 10:54, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Good revert. If someone has a problem with the AFC template, remove it rather than deleting the sandbox which is there to make tests. I missed when this was added earlier this month and declined a G2 nomination for a test page that had been submitted to AFC. It is now at MFD, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Linton.zeng/sandbox. ~ GB fan 11:21, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

From the various discussions, might one possible approach be to simply blank these troublesome userspace pages? That way they are no longer in the realm of AfC. Anyone can do it (or undo it). It would be too BITEy to do it on the very first time the nonsense is submitted, but, on any subsequent submission or repeats by the same user, fair game? I'm not sure if there would need to be some adjustments at WP:User pages. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 16:54, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I already blank rgular sandboxes to remove the decline. The issue is named userspages, many of which have spammy names. Legacypac (talk) 17:05, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Then use G11, don’t abuse G2. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:28, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

• Good revert. It was a pretty bad sneak huge expansion of CSD. Userspace is for testing. AfC templates do not, any more, get to userspace by themselves. Any still there are there by design. Old legacy AfC pages should have been moved. If there is an AfC templating issue in Userspace, it is better fixed by clever template coding than by userspace deletions. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:26, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Going to take a slightly controversial view. If the user submits their work for AFC review it means that their happy with the state and want it to be promoted to main space. If they are still working on it, then it should not be submitted for AFC review. I am opposed to hasty G2 nominations, however if the user has received 3 or 4 of the This submission seems to be a test edit and not an article worthy of an encyclopedia. declines without improving the submission then I could see CSD:G2 being in order to dispose of the disruption with less investment by AFC/NPP volunteers. Hasteur (talk) 17:43, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

If the user submits their work for AFC review it means that their happy with the state and want it to be promoted to main space... or they don't understand what AfC is, or the difference between an AfC submission and a user sandbox. If someone submits something to AfC which is fine as a user sandbox but will be rejected by AfC as a test submission then you can just remove any AfC templates and explain the difference to the user. There isn't any reason to use G2, and sandboxes are the one place where it's OK for people to make test edits. Hut 8.5 19:08, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hut 8.5: Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is willful nonsense (paraphrased from The Moscow rules and Goldfinger (novel)). Pleas read my comment again. I said if they've received 3 or 4 of the "G2 warning" declines on their draft then they deserve the G2 nomination. Hasteur (talk) 01:51, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

What you're talking about here is a behavioural problem: somebody doesn't understand what the AfC template is and is using it inappropriately as a result. It should get the same treatment as other behavioural problems, by educating the user so they don't do it again, and escalating if they don't. The suggested policy change doesn't impose any requirement on the number of declines, and people clearly aren't going to interpret it that way, as several people have already tried to use it to get sandboxes deleted which have only been declined once. Hut 8.5 11:28, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Wow, your willful ignorance astonishes me. I am opposed to hasty G2 nominations, however if the user has received 3 or 4 of the This submission seems to be a test edit and not an article worthy of an encyclopedia. declines without improving the submission then I could see CSD:G2 being in order to dispose of the disruption with less investment by AFC/NPP volunteers. What I propose (and you repeatedly overlook) is the finesse of the rule so that G2 is not in order after a single or few declines, but when the message is not being recieved by the submitter, we have to break out the tough love to communicate the message. Your "If you make a tool, someone might misuse it" bogeyman argument is so laughable to the point of exdending (by Argumentum ab Absurdum) that we should take away Twinkle, XFDcloser, CSDs entirely because they might be misused and cause harm to editing. Remember that a CSD (in usual cases) takes at minimum 2 editors agreeing in the deletion, the nominator and an admin. Under your argument, the nominator is abusing the rationalle, but it still takes an Admin to decide if the nomination is valid. Hasteur (talk) 13:31, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Um, no. I'm not suggesting this as a hypothetical situation, let alone a "laughable" "bogeyman argument" deserving ludicrous comparisons. As I've said, several people have already tried to use this to get userspace sandboxes deleted under G2 in the brief time it was in the policy. Take a look at this MfD, or this one, or this one. These were all editing tests where the author added an AfC template once and it was declined once, but someone nevertheless tried to get it deleted under G2 and then MfD. These are just the cases where the admin declined the deletion, and in each case the admin declined because they were applying the previous version of the policy. Funnily enough if we write a policy saying that editing tests in userspace can be deleted under G2 if they are submitted to AfC, then people will use that to delete editing tests in userspace submitted to AfC, and we can't really blame them. In your example of a user repeatedly adding AfC templates to an sandbox we can do what we always do when a new user repeatedly does something they shouldn't: tell them not to do it again and proceed with sanctions if they continue. Hut 8.5 18:39, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

PROFANITY REDACTED.... how hard is it to get it into your head. I am not advocating for one AFC decline arming the G2 button (quite the opposite in fact). What I am saying is that when one user repeatedly wastes AFC/NPP volunteer time sorting through nonsense that would never cut it in Mainspace we should use the finesse of G2 to dispose of the page instead of having to waste more time with MFDs that have no outcome besides Delete. If these pages had 3 or 4 declines for "Testing", then I would rule G2 in order. Personally I think going directly from one AFC decline to MFD is unnecessarily BITEy, but because we're arging from peaks of involatile principle, I'm going to continue pointing out how all of your responses to my original reasoned view are setting us up for storing content that does not have a hope in hell of making it to mainspace and signing us up for endless wastes of time having to argue out MFDs for which there is a foregone conclusion of deletion. Hasteur (talk) 20:31, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I really don't see why you need a G2 expansion to deal with these pages. There is nothing wrong with them other than the fact they have an AfC template, and they aren't tolerated for any mainspace potential. You can deal with them by removing the AfC template and explaining to the user that AfC isn't for editing tests. If the user puts the template back then they are being disruptive and they can be dealt with in all the normal ways that we deal with disruptive editors. I haven't seen any examples of people repeatedly sending a test page to AfC, and none have been presented here. Certainly MfD does not have a tidal wave of such pages. Hut 8.5 22:11, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

• Good revert. In WP:UPYES there is a table; in that, the third row covers "Work in progress or material that you may come back to in future" and the ninth row of the same table covers "Experimentation". In the same page there is WP:STALE which gives a number of suggestions as to what to do with abandoned drafts in user space - only two of them may result in deletion: one ("if the material is promotional, or otherwise unsuitable, and the author was never a serious Wikipedia contributor") where WP:CSD#U5 may apply; and the other ("if of no potential and problematic even if blanked") is by filing a case at WP:MFD.
  These indicate to me that attempting to expand WP:CSD#G2 to cover drafts in user space and tests in user space is the wrong thing to do, and may even be WP:CREEPy. First get Wikipedia:User pages amended to move those kinds of activity from WP:UPYES to WP:UPNO, and then we can expand G2 accordingly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:17, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

ToU violation

It has always seemed strange to me that we can freely delete articles created by someone banned by the community, but not explicitly for someone banned by the Terms of Use, though G5 could certainly be interpreted in that way. I see two options:

G5. Creations by banned or blocked users

Further information: Wikipedia:Banning policy, Wikipedia:Blocking policy, and Wikipedia:Terms of use

This applies to pages created by banned or blocked users either in violation of their ban or block or by virtue of violation of the Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use, and that have no substantial edits by others. G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates or to categories that may be useful or suitable for merging. For a banned or blocked user:

• To qualify, an edit or article must have been made while the user was actually banned or blocked. A page created before the ban or block was imposed or after it was lifted will not qualify under this criterion.
• To qualify, the edit must be a violation of the user's specific block or ban. Pages created by a topic-banned user may be deleted if they come under that particular topic, but not if they are legitimately about some other topic.
• {{Db-g5|name of banned user}}, {{Db-banned|name of banned user}}

Gx. Violation of Terms of use

Further information: Wikipedia:Terms of use

This applies to pages created in violation of the Wikimedia Foundation terms of use, and that have no substantial edits by others.

To qualify, the edit or article must have been made by a user demonstrated or admitted to be in violation of the Terms of Use. Specific categories of violation include:

• Harassing and Abusing Others
• Violating the Privacy of Others
• Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud
• Committing Infringement
• Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes
• Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities
• Paid contributions without disclosure

The article must have been created by an editor in violation of the terms of use and have no substantive content edits by others. Guy (Help!) 16:59, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

!votes

• Support as proposer. Guy (Help!) 16:59, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support long overdue. Legacypac (talk) 17:46, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose for all the reasons from last time. Propose speedy close of this RFC considering the last one ended less than six months ago and this proposal does nothing to address the reasons the last one failed. Regards SoWhy 18:35, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support extension of G5 to include clear ToU violations by blocked or banned users prior to user's first block. Am in support of retaining the wording "this applies to pages...that have no substantial edits by others". ☆ Bri (talk) 19:17, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose most of these are either covered by existing criteria (G3, G10, G12) or are a bit nebulous for speedy deletion criteria (e.g. point 3 would apply to articles which contain deliberate factual inaccuracies, even if not blatant). The major exception is undisclosed paid contributions, and while I'm sympathetic to a CSD on those grounds if we're going to have that then we should just say it rather than wrapping it up like this. Hut 8.5 19:34, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

  They are covered if you turn your head sideways and squint. I don't see why violations of the ToU should require creative interpretation of the rules. Guy (Help!) 19:42, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

  I think most of them are pretty clear:

  • "Harassing and Abusing Others" covers "harassment, threats, stalking" - would be G10 or G3, "spamming" is the definition of G11, "vandalism" is the definition of G3
  • "Violating the Privacy of Others" - most of this is pretty nebulous and covers content forbidden by any applicable laws, which turns us into lawyers if we want to enforce it properly. The one specific case is "Soliciting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18 for an illegal purpose or violating any applicable law regarding the health or well-being of minors" - this would already be nuked from orbit under Wikipedia:Child protection.
  • "Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud" covers "libel or defamation" - pretty much the definition of G10, "posting content that is false or inaccurate" - if blatant that's clearly G3 (hoaxes), if subtle it's something we'd want reviewed through another process, "Attempting to impersonate another user or individual" and "Engaging in fraud" are a bit more nebulous but they don't happen often and I don't think it's much of a stretch to delete either under G3
  • "Committing Infringement" is basically just copyright violations, which come under G12
  • "Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes" nebulous stuff covering content which violates any applicable laws, except for child porn
  • "Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities" - this is basically various ways of trying to hack the site, which would come under G3.

  So they're all either very nebulous or basically covered under existing criteria except undisclosed paid editing and paedophilia, and I don't think we need a new criterion to get rid of the latter. Hut 8.5 19:59, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

  I am wondering about "child porn". I've seen deletions on Commons for that reason, sometimes performed by WMF staff and sometimes by volunteer admins (presumably when they make a "better safe than sorry" deletion before calling the Foundation). "Privacy of others" I usually see deleted under the "non-public private information" rationale or some euphemism. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:13, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

  I am mainly trying to remove the distinction between someone who is not allowed to edit Wikipedia because we say so, in which case their articles get nuked, and someone who is not allowed to edit Wikipedia because the Foundation says so, in which case they don't. That is back to front. As it stands, to delete an article created by an impersonator, we'd first have to decide that the impersonation was harassment. That seems bureaucratic. Or imagine if someone dropped an article on a school shooting survivor who dared to open their mouth. It may not be obviously harassment, it may be a fanboi even, but it could very well still be an obvious infringement of privacy. As I say, the thing that seems inconsistent to me is that if we say you may not edit Wikipedia then G5 applies, but if the Foundation does, we have a potential drama-fest. I do like the idea of making blocks for violation of ToU effectively retroactive, but it may be a bit rouge for some. Guy (Help!) 20:52, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

  Wouldn't we delete those articles because they are bad articles instead of caring about who created them? —Kusma (t·c) 20:57, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose, "undisclosed paid editing" can't be found out without some digging, and may need to be dealt with through some other process. Everything else is already deletable (G3 and G10 are pretty much a catch all for most abuses and script kiddies). Also, undisclosed paid editing is either bad (and then most of the results is deletable under A7 or G11) or good, in which case other editors might want to adopt the page and do some rewriting. Either existing criteria are enough or speedy deletion isn't a good answer. —Kusma (t·c) 20:56, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Procedural Oppose and also suggest a speedy close per SoWhy. Proposer should consider opening a separate discussion without the straw poll and see what can be crafted, rather than re-arguing the exact same subject from 6 months ago. --Izno (talk) 21:08, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• support this is a useful umbrella ToU construction. It would be helpful to avoid having the community waste more time - the lifeblood of this place - dealing with bad faith contributions. The community is moving itself steadily to deal with steady onslaught of promotional articles that flow into WP based on the notion that WP is an essential platform for promotion for companies, authors, actors, celebrities, etc etc. There is no doubt that many people see WP that way. We have been dealing with that, for instance with ACTRIAL, automatically community banning serial socks (which are generally paid editors using throw away accounts), raising NCORP standards and the like. Getting this passed (yes it is somewhat perennial) is another essential tool. What we all want it to spend our time building an encyclopedia and not to waste so much time dealing with industrial waste that has been dumped into our beautiful project. Jytdog (talk) 21:51, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose too much of a wide remit, as an editor blocked for being disruptive may have created some good articles not connected to his block. Would support just adding UPE but these can also be deleted by prod as for example last month I prodded 4 UPE articles and 3 were deleted Atlantic306 (talk) 11:49, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Basically per my questions below; I understand the theory, but in practice this doesn't make sense to me. Basically, it boils down to two criteria: undisclosed conflict of interest, and illegal activities. The latter does not need a CSD for it to be swiftly dealt with, and the former, as noted, requires significant effort to out, not lending itself to CSD anyway. More to the point, it feels backward. These would apply to pages made illegally/via undisclosed paid editing, but you're talking about the users. It's not like the foundation regularly calls down to enWiki saying "Hey this editor here is trying to do illegal things, y'all should delete their pages." It would be an editor here determining that "this page violates the ToU" and then taking action, but that 1. is already what happens, and 2. does not need a CSD to be effective. On the off-chance the foundation finds something before we do, there's G9. I get the logic, but it doesn't seem to play given the reality on the ground. I suppose I could support adding something (to G3?) like attempts to violate US law but that just seems overly fraught and not particularly helpful. In short, a well-meaning solution to a problem we don't have. One could also make the argument that, once someone violates the ToU, they're "banned" whether they or the community knows it, thus G5 would apply, but that's... weird. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:32, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Consider undisclosed paid editing, then. It is not permitted per the ToU, but some people will, almost as if to make a point, oppose deletion of "good" (subjectively defined) content because they repudiate the no undisclosed paid editing rule. So actually the current situation causes exactly the issue you identify: it complicates the cleanup of edits that should never have happened in the first place. G5 was written for exactly that. An edit should not have been made, an article was created by a user sh hould never have been editing, so it is nuked. But if the user cannot be tied to some previously blocked spammer, at present, we can do nothing. Of course, quite a few of these "brand new" spammers will be old spammers returning. A motivated spammer will have little difficulty in circumventing CU, even. And under current rules, on;y the WP:OFFICE can speedily nuke articles created in violation of the ToU, unless someone can definitively link the spammer to another spammer already blocked. And even then, if the other spammer was blocked after the first spammer registered, we can only speedy from the first bloc, so earlier spam will remain. Someone can register a dozen accounts and until the first one is blocked, all articles created by all the accounts are not eligible for speedy, even though the abusive behaviour was there from day 1. Guy (Help!) 23:09, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I still think you're mixing cases here. If an article is spammy to the point of violating ToU, it's an easy G11. If it's not obvious spam, then not only would these criteria not apply, but we wouldn't even know we had a problem anyway. Like I asked below, it matters whether these are designed for an article or a user violating the ToU. You've said the article, but you're arguing the user. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

"If an article is spammy to the point of violating ToU, it's an easy G11."??? No, that is not true. It is very easy to make a spammy article G11-proof, ("pages that are exclusively promotional") just add a small amount of properly sourced material that can be re-used when the spam is cut. And violating the ToU, being an Undisclosed Paid Editor, is no impediment to G11-proofing the not "exclusively promotional" spam. The typical ToU violating UPE writes a page using some properly sources facts and pads it with veiled promotion. These pages are not G11 eligible. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:55, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

• Support - it looks like this is just about undisclosed paid editors. UPEs are banned by the TOU from adding anything - they are just not allowed to edit. Not removing their edits once they've been found out just looks like an attempt to nullify the ToU. Why do folks want to do that? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:50, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support. The “Terms of Use” needs teeth. Specifically, “No Undisclosed Paid Editing” needs teeth, and the onus for communication needs to be on the paid editor. I would be happier if this were tied to “promotional content”, specifically for-profit companies, their products, or their CEOs/founders. Leave open undeletion options if the editor(s) subsequently properly disclose, or if an experienced editor in good standing offers to take responsibility for the article and future activities of the paid editor. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:49, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support While many, if not most, ToU violations are addressed by other CSD criteria we should have this which directly addresses breach of ToU. In particular having the ability to reach back to the time of the first breach of ToU and deleteall "fruit of the poisonous tree". Right now bad actors have incentive to violate ToU (particularly UPE) because they still get their articles in. Beyond that we simply need a specific way to enforce the ToU that does not get caught up in all of the 'if, well, AGF, blah, blah' crap that comes up when we try to back-door ToU enforcement with other CSD criteria. Jbh ^Talk 04:05, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support – in principle – option 2, "Gx. Violation of Terms of use". We have considerable precedent for such speedy deletions, amply sufficient to show that the community does not oppose them in principle. This goes back at least as far as Orangemoody, where a large number of articles were deleted at essentially the same time as the check-user blocks were made (when they were thus not technically eligible under CSD G5). It should be perfectly, dazzlingly obvious to everyone that content created in violation of the terms of use cannot be kept and must be immediately removed, but until we formalise that in local policy the "not supported by policy" argument will continue to be put forward. So it's high time we did this; the precise wording and scope will need to be hammered out. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:06, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - Criteria should generally focus on page content, not editor behavior, expect when narrowly deemed necessary (e.g. WP:G5 and WP:XCSD); this is much too broad. Furthermore, generally, pages "Harassing and Abusing Others" are eligible for deletion per G3 or G10; pages "Violating the Privacy of Others" are eligible for oversight; in regard to "Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud", "Engaging in False Statements" is too broad and unfortunately subjective; pages "Committing Infringement" are eligible for deletion per G12; in regard to "Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes" and "Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities", a separate discussion on these two aspects may be due; "Paid contributions without disclosure" was already shot down at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 66#New criteria. A new or expanded criterion should not be too broad or overly redundant. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 19:52, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Did you notice how the terms of use don't say you can do these things if the content is good? And neither does G5? The whole point of "edits that are not permitted int he first place" is that they are, well, not permitted, regardless. Guy (Help!) 22:47, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

However, neither the ToU nor the current WP:PAID policy does not contain any language that require deletion of such material. As I said last time, IMHO no change to this policy should be made without first updating WP:PAID as described on that policy's page. Regards SoWhy 13:09, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose This is covering way too much stuff. The G5 proposal really does nothing, because the WMF actually bans people (the WMF itself uses that word) and banned means banned whether WMF or us. The GX mostly duplicates what we already have. The arguable new items (privacy, paid-editing) should have their own stand-alone discussion. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:31, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support, though as UPE goes, we should consider everything a UPE creates to be covered by G5. They were never allowed to be editing in the first place, and were therefore for all intents and purposes defying a ban. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:49, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as redundant and unnecessary. If the content created by a TOU-violating user is bad it is already deletable. If the content isn't bad we shouldn't be deleting it. If it's unclear whether it's good or bad then send it to AfD/MfD. If there is specific content that you think is bad but which isn't deletable currently, then get a consensus about that content - either it will become deletable or you'll find that the consensus is that it isn't bad. Thryduulf (talk) 00:49, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support, mostly moral support since this is highly unlikely to pass. Of course, deleting anything by UPEs is a necessary part of an incentive system to encourage disclosure. Regretfully, the community has already rejected the idea of an UPE CSD, so not sure if veiling this as something else is helpful to the overall effort. There are many different angles from which this problem can be approached. One is extending the G5 criterion as proposed by Oiyarbepsy below. Another is a TOU Prod that was proposed and gained significant support following the previous RFC regarding a TOU CSD. Rentier (talk) 03:29, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - this is far too broad, and many of the bullets listed in the proposal are things likely to require a discussion to determine that a ToU violation has occurred, meaning the criterion is neither objective nor uncontestable. I would support a much narrower CSD on deletion of articles created by undisclosed paid editors. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:10, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Comment per bot request on user page. I strongly oppose conflating editor behaviour with article constriction and maintenance. If an article is poorly written we have means of taking care of that. Some of the language invites harassement, for example, allegations of false statements. Who decides what is false. I see the potential for abuse in attempts to control article space as well as damage to well meaning editors.(Littleolive oil (talk) 16:14, 1 March 2018 (UTC))

RfC discussion

It is weird that an editor who is blocked for some minor infringement will be subject to G5, but an editor who is violating a Wikimedia Foundation mandated policy, for example by impersonating someone, is not. Some of the ToU can lead to speedy deletion:

• Harassing and Abusing Others - G10
• Violating the Privacy of Others - RevDel / oversight, potentially G10
• Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud - potentially G10, may be G3
• Committing Infringement - G12
• Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes - includes child porn and other issues, not covered by CSD at this time (though undoubtedly likely to be nuked per WP:IAR)
• Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities - e.g. viruses, malware etc, would typically be handled as IAR but not covered by CSD
• Paid contributions without disclosure - not covered by CSD, may qualify as G11 but PR material is often not blatantly promotional.

Violations of the ToU are grounds for indefinite blocking or banning, but we make this worth the gamble because some or all of the articles may "stick", and thus the abuser gets their abusive article, spammer gets paid or whatever. Guy (Help!) 16:59, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

A few questions to make sure I'm reading this correctly:

1. Would this apply to any page created by such a user, regardless of whether the page itself violates the TOU? The first and last sentences seem to contradict the second sentence on this point.
2. Who would be determining when the editor has violated the ToU?
3. Would this apply only once the user is indefinitely blocked, or before? (relates to the above)

~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:03, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

I think the page creation would have to be a violation, it's only banned users where we would apply a scorched earth policy. Guy (Help!) 20:56, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

• Okay, so this is basically a CSD for "paid contributions without disclosure that are not advertising or about non-notable people" (everything else is already deleted quickly and does not require a new CSD). How often do we currently have pages like that in our other deletion processes? —Kusma (t·c) 18:27, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I've been tagging articles in a current cleanup case as g5/g11, e.g. Matan Gavish. Some interpretations of g5 say that tagging is improper if the creation was prior to the user's first block. I think the gist of this is to get around that technicality and make g5 retroactive if there was clear ToU violation. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:33, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Good question. I would say the page would have to be a violation. So: a user that creates a page with an exploit, the page would be deleted and the editor banninated. Guy (Help!) 19:40, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

• Is it me or didn't we just have this discussion less than six months ago? Regards SoWhy 18:31, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, and the tide of crappy PR articles continues to rise. We have had several paid sockfarms uncovered since then. Guy (Help!) 19:40, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

You might want to present your evidence before starting a new RFC without addressing the reasons the last one failed. Regards SoWhy 20:23, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Ah, so you're not familiar with WP:COIN then? I understand now. Guy (Help!) 20:45, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Please avoid such comments. People might consider them belittling and that won't help anyone. Instead of just WP:VAGUEWAVEing to another page, show some statistics how there are so many more problematic pages now then there were six months ago that speedy deletion is the only way to handle them.

Also, the last RFC failed for a whole number of reasons and you have not addressed any of them. Before reopening a discussion, it's usually expected that the person re-proposing something that failed previously explains why circumstances have changed in their opinion and the previous reasons to oppose no longer apply, especially if the last proposal was only a few months ago. Regards SoWhy 21:35, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Look at COIN. Right now. There are at least five undisclosed paid issues - with sock rings - under discussion there. If you don't frequent COIN you probably won't be familiar with how often this happens, hence the comment. Guy (Help!) 22:56, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I did. And I noticed that oftentimes such articles are cleaned up instead of being deleted. Which was one of the reasons brought up as reasons to oppose in the previous discussion five months ago. However, saying that there are now X problematic cases is not the same as demonstrating that those X cases are actually the result of more such problems. And the fact that it takes discussion on how to handle them is basically a reason against any kind of speedy deletion in itself. Regards SoWhy 13:03, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

• JzG, I've read your proposal as putting forward two distinct options, an extension of G5 or a new Gx criterion. Was that your intention? I ask because others don't seem to have read it in that way, so perhaps it is less clear than it ideally should be. The last discussion on this topic ended as no consensus precisely because of lack of clarity ("arguments in opposition seem to be primarily concerned with the relative vagueness and/or subjectivity"}, and it would be a pity if this one did too. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:56, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, two options, presented as A, B or neither. But in the end I think we still have the issue that a small but vocal subset of editors thinks that undisclosed paid editing is fine, even though it is explicitly forbidden. Guy (Help!) 22:51, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

{{trout}} to JzG for repeatedly lying about his opponent's position. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has said that paid editing is okay. They are arguing that this proposal is poorly thought out, fails to address what was wrong with the last proposal, and that deleting these pages often does more harm than good. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

@JzG: The problem is not the editors, it's the non-notable/promotional/otherwise undesirable content they create. This content is neither better nor worse than the identical content produced by disclosed paid editors and by unpaid editors. This proposal will therefore not address the actual problem it is trying to solve, which is why I oppose it. You first need to identify the content you want to speedy delete that cannot be speedy deleted already using A7, G11 or other existing criteria. You then need to show that this content can be objectively defined AND that all content that meets this definition should always be speedily deleted. The usual requirements for a new speedy deletion criteria do apply to proposals related to the ToU. This proposal both ignores and fails the objectivity requirement, fails the uncontestable requirement, vaguely handwaves in the direction of the frequency requirement and probably at least partially fails the non-redundant requirement (the lack of objectively defined coverage means it's not possible to be sure about this). Thryduulf (talk) 13:36, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

The problem is also the editors, though. There are extensive instructions online now about how to write a spam article so it doesn't obviously qualify for A7 or G11, and those same instructions also tell you how to hire someone to create it for you. There are also instructions on how to break the chain so that CheckUser doesn't track you across too many accounts, so in one case four separate C_checked sock rings were uncovered several of which are highly likely to be the same banned user, but not certainly so. I don't care if we allow retrospective G5 for sock farms or if we enforce the ToU, but I thnk we need drama-free way of nuking spam once abuse is uncovered. That's all. Guy (Help!) 18:43, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

You've declared the problem is the editors, but the actual problem you've described is one of content - i.e. the article is spam regardless of whether it was created by Y (not paid to edit) or Z (paid to edit). Your comments about too many accounts, etc. are things to be considered for the banning policy but are basically irrelevant to content policies like speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 23:18, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

• Questions.
• 1. The proposal seems to be a bit unclear about what exactly should be deleted. If we focus on the contributor, does it say that from the moment User X violates the Terms of Use, they should be treated like a banned editor, and all of their edits after that point deleted? Or should we delete all pages added by User X since they registered their account? If we focus on the edits, the similarity with G5 disappears, so should we only delete all undisclosed paid edits and keep all unpaid edits?
• 2. What happens if a UPE editor comes clean? Can they just request a WP:REFUND of their contributions if they tag them correctly? Do we want this to be "punishment" or would we prefer to encourage compliance with the ToU? —Kusma (t·c) 14:41, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

An alternative solution

Instead of crafting this awkward, vague, and problematic new speedy deletion policy, why not simply allow bans to be retroactive. The idea is that the beginning of the ban is the beginning of the problematic behavior, as opposed to when it was actually discovered. It seems that this would address the major problems about the sock farms - with a retroactive ban, you could delete all the contributions back to that retroactive date. Thoughts? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:45, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Oiyarbepsy This is very true. Making G5 retroactive would be far more effective at combating UPEs than the proposed speedy deletion criterion. I think it would also be far more acceptable to the community. Rentier (talk) 03:36, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

To be 100% clear, I would absolutely not make the speedy deletion criteria retroactive - only the ban itself. Whether to make it retroactive needs to be decided when the ban is decided, and should only be retroactive with good reason. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:13, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

In that case, what would making a ban retroactive accomplish? Rentier (talk) 04:18, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

By allowing the deletion of all the pages back to the retroactive date. The idea being that the retroactive G5 deletes only apply if everyone agrees at the time the user is banned. This shouldn't be routine. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:28, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

So are you saying that if user:Example had been contributing since January 2015, and was banned today then the banning discussion could say that G5 applies to all his contributions since say 20 May 2016? If so, I like the idea in abstract, but I think the chance of getting a consensus on a date in individual ban discussions is going to be pretty slim. Thryduulf (talk) 13:16, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

I think what Oiyarbepsy means is that bans should be made retroactive from the date the reasons for the ban first existed (i. e. ex tunc). Actually, that's probably the only way a speedy deletion of UPE could work objectively (if one agrees that UPE should lead to deletion). The alternative offered is to treat users violating UPE as having been banned from day one because hypothetically, if their UPE had been discovered on day one, they would have been banned immediately. It would not affect other types of bans because the reasons for those bans (like community bans for disruption) only exist from the time the disruption has been determined to be unacceptable. Personally, I believe that content, not contributor should be the deciding factor but iff the community one day decides that UPE creations should be deleted without looking at the content itself, this proposal is the best way to achieve this under the current requirements for speedy criteria. Regards SoWhy 13:30, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

I'd support this, in fact I think I've proposed it myself in the past. A user violating the ToU ought to be considered banned from their first violating edit, not just from when the community decided to enact the ban. It would simplify our work at SPI in a way I've been looking for: rather than finding a new UPE sockfarm and struggling to determine if they're related to any of the existing sockfarms to determine if they're already blocked or banned and whether or not G5 applies or if we need to AfD all of their contribs or if I can invoke IAR or on and on and on, I can just say this is UPE, nuke their contribs. This needs to be discussed at the banning policy but I would very much support it. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:20, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Second that, although I'd like to hear reasons against; it sounds too reasonable. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:05, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

The main reason is probably what I mentioned above, i. e. that there is currently no consensus that content created in violation of WP:PAID should be deleted just because of how it was created, which will inevitably lead to deletion of encyclopedic material created by such editors that otherwise is in line with policy. That was one of the main points brought up last time, i. e. that both WP:PRESERVE and WP:ATD tell us to preserve good content, regardless of how it was created. If the policy is changed, which requires a site-wide RFC imho, we can consider how to implement it. Based on the voices from last time, there seems to be a strong opposition to speedy delete good content this way.

Without abandoning my own position (see above), I think the only objectively fair way to handle such pages - iff their deletion based on creator is agreed upon in the first place - is a sticky PROD like system like WP:BLPPROD that allows any good-faith editor to challenge the proposed deletion based on their belief that the content meets the standards for inclusion. But again, first we need to establish consensus that creator, not content, is a valid reason for deletion. That has yet to happen. Regards SoWhy 16:31, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

I mean G5 already allows (and deletions occur) of otherwise not policy violating articles because of who the creator is;this would work on a similar principle and thus I don't think would be a great change. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:35, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Similar, but not strictly the same. G5 operates under the principle (or that's at least how I have always understood it) of assuming bad faith. We allow such pages to be deleted because it can safely be assumed that the page creator knowingly violated a ban or block that was put in place to prevent them from creating such pages (i.e. WP:DENY). On the other hand, while UPE is forbidden in the ToU, we can probably safely assume that >99% of all editors have not read the ToU before their first edit (I certainly haven't). So while they act in violation of the ToU, they are most likely unaware of that, i. e. acting in good faith. Thus the difference. Which coincides with the fact that we currently have four warning levels ({{uw-paid1}}, {{uw-paid2}} etc.) that should be applied before an editor can be blocked for UPE. Hence such a change to G5 would make this criterion out of sync with how WP:PAID is applied in the rest of the project, which explains why I advocate a site-wide discussion of the underlying question before we consider implementations. Regards SoWhy 17:02, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Not assuming bad faith nor denying recognition, but banned means banned; i.e. if we ban a user but allow them to contribute with a different account, in any way, then bans are meaningless. As for PAID violations being innocent I very strongly disagree: while there are no doubt some users who edit afoul of the policy inadvertently or innocently, and then self-correct when they're advised, they're an indescribably minuscule speck in the vast galaxy of deliberately malicious users who know exactly what they're doing: throwing a continuous torrent of uselessly promotional content at Wikipedia and getting paid when it sticks. The easier we can make it to deal with that problem, the harder we make it for spam to stick, the better for Wikipedia. It's incredibly unlikely that any useful content would be inadvertently removed if we did this, and for that there's WP:REFUND. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:24, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

If we need to protect the good faith UPEs who don't read the ToU and only start to cooperate after the fourth level warning, the retroactive G5 will be still very effective against UPEs if it is limited to users blocked or banned for sockpuppetry. It should be possible to come up with objective criteria that cover the UPE-sockfarms but exclude users like SwisterTwister whose articles we obviously don't want summarily deleted. Rentier (talk) 17:46, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

• I like this idea. When a user is banned, we should say when the ban starts (which may be now or in the past). In practice, this means we are giving responsibility for G5 deletion (or not) of UPE to the ban discussion, which seems to be a good place for it. —Kusma (t·c) 19:47, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
  • This must apply to both blocks (in particular indefinite CU blocks) and bans. It's of no use otherwise. Rentier (talk) 20:23, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Doing this would require an RfC to change the banning policy to allow bans to be retroactive. Thryduulf (talk) 23:20, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

    Why? There's nothing in the banning policy that forbids this. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:37, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

    • An RfC to establish that a Undisclosed Paid Editor (UPE) ban is retroactive is a good idea. I think it is obvious that it must be, but the community needs to be brought along with the decision making process. "Product of an Undisclosed Paid Editor" carries little weight at AfD, I think because the wider community is not up to speed with what a great problem it is.

Someone asked: What if the UPE later discloses? In that case, REFUND is a possibility.

However, is there an actual need to delete? How about moving all UPE product into a repository and blanking it. Leave it available for Wikipedians to review, but unpublished as far as the UPE sponsor is concerned.

Has anyone else begun to suspect that most of the SPA probably UPEs seen submitting drafts are sockpuppets of a much small pool of actual people? I think keeping a repository of discovered UPE product will help shine a light on the networks. --SmokeyJoe (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:38, 1 March 2018 (UTC)