Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 00:17, 1 June 2008

Read this before proposing new or expanded criteria Shortcut WP:NEWCSD Contributors frequently propose new (or expansions of existing) criteria for speedy deletion. Please bear in mind that CSD criteria require careful wording, and in particular, need to be Objective: Most reasonable people should be able to agree whether a page meets the criterion. Often this requires making the criterion very specific. Uncontestable: It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully. Frequent: Speedy deletion is intended primarily as a means of reducing load on other deletion methods such as Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion and Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion. These processes are more discriminating because they treat articles case-by-case, and involve many points of view; CSD sacrifices these advantages in favor of speed and efficiency. If a situation arises only rarely, it's probably easier, simpler, and fairer to delete it with one of the other methods instead. This also keeps CSD as simple and easy to remember as possible, and avoids instruction creep. Nonredundant: If the deletion can be accomplished using a reasonable interpretation of an existing rule, just use that. If this application of that rule is contested, consider discussing and/or clarifying it. New rules should be proposed only to cover situations that cannot be speedily deleted otherwise. If you do have a proposal that you believe passes these guidelines, please feel free to propose it on this discussion page. Be prepared to offer evidence of these points and to refine your criterion if necessary. Consider explaining how it meets these criteria when you propose it. Do not, on the other hand, add it unilaterally to the CSD page. this header: view • edit

Redirecting the {{Di-}} series

Special:Prefixindex/Template:Di- lists about 25 templates which are much more commonly used to tag images than the {{db-iN}} series. Since all of these templates should refer directly to a CSD criterion, it should be possible to convert them all to hard or soft redirects to the relevant Db-series template. Is there any reason why we'd not want to do this? Happy‑melon 12:03, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not completely sure, but Template:Di-missing article links for example does not seem to be equivalent to a speedy deletion. First, it gives users a week of time; second, it does not necessarily imply that the image will be deleted (the image may be removed from pages where a fair-use rationale is missing, but the image itself is not deleted if it's used on a different page with valid rationale.) --B. Wolterding (talk) 09:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• This template series is used to tag delayed speedy deletions (per CSDs I4 through I7), to notify uploaders of the impending deletion, and to mark in the image captions that the images are liable to be deleted. They are not redundant to db- templates. Stifle (talk) 08:53, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Empty by year categories

I'd like people interested in CSD criteria to participate in the discussion here on whether or not we should speedy-delete empty "by year" categories. Thanks, Pascal.Tesson (talk) 02:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Policy clarification, please?

Greetings, all. I'm trying to better understand CSD. I nominated an article for SD, and an administrator cancelled the nomination (which I don't have an issue with, per se; I realise anyone can do this for legitimate reasons per policy). My confusion stems from his edit summary Article has been like this for over a year so "speedy" is impossible at this point. In response to my request for clarification as to how the latter follows from the former, the admin stated that in general, speedy delition requires a previous revision that could be reverted to, and that WP:CSD#G11 is intended for articles that were recently created for no other reason than to advertise for the subject. To me, these statements don't seem to agree with the criteria as written; the first paragraph of the speedy deletion protocol states In this context, "speedy" refers to the simple decision-making process, not the length of time since the article was created, and I'm not finding anything about requiring a previous revision to revert to. Perhaps there are countermanding provisions (maybe elsewhere?) I'm not aware of. If so, could someone please point me to them, or explain them to me? My request to the admin for clarification has gone unanswered. Thanks. —Scheinwerfermann (talk) 17:24, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Not an admin, but I think I see where he was going so I'll take a stab. In the initial coments on speedy deletion it's mentioned: consider whether it could be improved, reduced to a stub, merged or redirected elsewhere or be handled with some other action short of deletion. Perhaps the admins reasoning was that when you have an article that's been worked on by many editors for about four years, it's more likely then not that there's a way to salvage the article from being too promotional. If it's likely, then an outright instant nuke would certainly be controversal and at minimum a community discussion at AFD should occur. That's how I read the situation, hope i'm close to the admins thoughts.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:53, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Just saw this over at Misplaced Pages:Wikiquette alerts#Admin potentially dictating policy... I tried to explain it there.

It might be worth mentioning somewhere on the policy page that CSD is discouraged for pages with a long edit history from multiple independent editors, with the only exceptions being pure copyvio or attack pages (and even then, you have to wonder how a page with multiple independent editors could be 100% copyvio, right?). It doesn't actually say that anywhere on the page, but I think it would be relatively uncontroversial...?

Jaysweet, thanks for your explanation over at the WQA. I like your proposed text here; if there'd been such a provision somewhere on WP:SPEEDY, it would've answered my "Why'd he do this?" question immediately. —Scheinwerfermann (talk) 18:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Here's the thing about speedy deletion. The criteria for deleting an article in this way is very rigid and specific. On the other hand, the criteria for removing a CDS tag are almost non-existant. Other than ther person who created the article, anybody can remove the tag for any reason. So there's certainly no policy violation or anything going on here. -Chunky Rice (talk) 18:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Can someone explain...

How a deleted user can create a page? (See CSD G5) W1k13rh3nry (talk) 21:12, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

By using another account. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:16, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, it's banned user, not blocked user. Bans can occasionally be to specific topics only. Taemyr (talk) 21:41, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

My Hatred of Speedy Deletion

There are two different types of articles that fall into speedy deletion; crap and the unknown. Dividing these two categories may seem to require a leap of incredible genius, but amazingly this is not the case. If one is unsure if the article you are looking at is a complete piss-take or half-arsed then take a leap of faith and think about believing in it. Flag it if it seems poor. But let's face it if I'm white, born in Kent, England, and have never left my village; who the hell am I to speedy delete Brazilian Ball Games, posted by a Brazilian person who has mailed 50 articles on the Brazilian handball league. Speedy deletions cause more harm than good, they destroy people's confidence to partake in Misplaced Pages. If an article has stood for months unchallenged then flag it as needing reference to allow authors to get the information to strengthen, not delete. Speedy Deletion is wankfest, and if that's not an official Oxford dictionary word now, it will be in ten years. Please review speedy deletion; it doesn't work. ThanksFruitMonkey (talk) 01:16, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

It appears you're talking about Bryncoch RFC which was deleted by one of the most strongly deletionist admins. Did the article actually assert importance? If so it shouldn't have been deleted. But otherwise... articles do need to assert importance. Ones that don't are not doing a fundamental thing an article needs to do. --Rividian (talk) 01:44, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

No assertion of importance, just "suchandsuch is a rugby club from whosewhere in wales" and an infobox.

Apologies, my first statement was drink fueled and too strong. But neither comments answer the initial statement regarding my dislike of A7. I just don't like the fact that someone can have no knowledge about a subject and can then sweep through someone elses work speedy deleting without even a basic "I'm giving you two weeks to give this article notability". And lets face it my notability is not your notability. Also how do I argue back if I can't remember what was on the article. It may have had fantastic notability, but once it's been deleted I can't argue the point back. I just think that A7 gives people too much leeway to delete ad-hoc without a reasonable chance for the defenders of the faith to argue back. I don't like.FruitMonkey (talk) 23:13, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Viridae 10:13, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

For specific cases, try deletion review. Unless you can present evidence of an enduring and wide-spread problem with the speedy deletion system, I doubt anything will be done here. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 03:47, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I think for stuff that truly doesn't need to go "NOW.", we could do speedy deletion more like speedy deletion for Images, give them a countdown of sorts, like maybe...

This page may meet Misplaced Pages’s criteria for speedy deletion as an article about a real person, an organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not indicate the importance or significance of the subject. Unless an indication of importance is added to this article, this article will be deleted one day after this template was added. If you created this page and you disagree with its proposed speedy deletion, please add {{hangon}} below this template and explain your rationale on the Talk page, but do not remove this template from pages you created yourself. If you are not the creator of this article, and this article does not qualify for speedy deletion, please remove this template.

Kinda like this? It works for images. Of course, this will only be implemented for things that aren't "truly" needing speedy deletion (so, not for stuff like spam, copyvios and stuff) ViperSnake151 15:26, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Hated? Over a web site? Buddy, it is not worth it to feel hate over a web site. Take a nice walk, smell the flowers. _{1 != 2} 15:30, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

One sometimes has to use strong language around here to get any attention. The deleted article says the team is 4th ranked in Wales, with a reference, is well formed and is marked as a stub. That does not seem like a speedy candidate to me. --agr (talk) 15:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

It did not say the team is ranked 4th in Wales, it said the team is in the the 4th highest league in Wales - they're certainly not the same thing. Hut 8.5 15:47, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Amazingly enough, we already have a template that gives a countdown to deletion. It's called {{prod}}. ;) Now getting a few select editors to be a lot less bitey and tag articles for prod or improvements instead of speedy deletion is another matter altogether.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 17:04, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The proposed system here is different than PROD because it (apparently) requires the problem that lead to the deletion nomination be fixed before the tag is removed, whereas PROD can be removed for any reason. We already have 3 deletion systems though (speedy, prod, afd) a fourth seems like just a bit too much. --Rividian (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Anybody who is thinking of getting rid of speedy deletion ought to be aware of a few statistics. In April 2008, Misplaced Pages deleted about 3000 pages through PROD, and another 2000 through AfD. But A7 alone accounted for about 15000 deletions. If we replaced all speedy deletion with PROD (which is the obvious option) then the proposed deletion process would get absolutely swamped. Plenty of speedy deletion tags get removed by the creator even though the template explicitly tells you not to, so its fair to say that plenty of people will remove a template that effectively invites the author to remove it, which will force loads of full-scale AfD discussions about articles that are mostly awful. FruitMonkey's proposal of abolishing speedy deletion is completely unworkable. Hut 8.5 17:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Very good point. Just to clarify my position, articles of the type "Jason is a cooool guy" absolutely should be A7'ed, and I have no problems with it being done within minutes of creation. I do have a problem with speedy deletion when a new editor is making a good faith effort to create an article in multiple edits, and gets hit with an speedy tag immediately. Especially when the tagging editor didn't take 10 seconds to do a google search.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 17:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

With 15,000 deletions per month there are going to be some mistakes of reading comprehension and judgment. So maybe a few hundred that shouldn't have been deleted, and probably many thousands that ought to be deleted but got spared or overlooked somehow. No big deal. I would just recreate the article and either claim importance and/or include appropriate citations this time. One would think a sports team would assert its own notability simply by being in a league, but for those who don't get it, just include some claim that it's the primary team for a particular town, or something like that. There seem to be a few hundred news mentions so almost certainly something in there to demonstrate notability. No big deal. If an administrator is too trigger-happy or sloppy with the deletions, they'll usually get called to task on it, or watch a lot of their deletions get overturned or just recreated. It's only when administrators become officious, rude, or vindictive about it that it's a problem, and that's not very common. Wikidemo (talk) 18:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

For the "good faith effort to create an article in multiple edits" problem, I have two suggestions: (1) start working on a version of the article in your own userspace and don't move it into mainspace until it is sufficiently complete and sourced as to be obviously not a speedy candidate, or (2) edit it offline until etc. It's not required that every article start life as a one-sentence microstub. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:05, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

My point is that new editors don't understand this, and nothing in the speedy deletion process helps them to understand.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 19:10, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we need to place a thing on the edit page that comes up when creating a new article discouraging this. Say, "please don't press the "save page" button until your article is finished; use show preview instead". Except reword it so that it's clear it means "when you're finished" rather than "when the article is comprehensive", in a way the newbies can understand. —Scott5114↗ 20:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

This is a long-debated problem with CSD - there's already a warning on the page about it. Really though, this is an artifact of how CSD is done: using Recent Changes. If there were some easy way to view all changes occurring exactly one hour ago, I'd say it would be much preferable to say "all articles get one hour before they're eligible for CSD." Regardless of how harmful or stupid an article is, one hour to give them a chance to clean it up or finish it wouldn't hurt.

I maintain the position that A7, G11, and T1 are too subjective to be good CSD criteria, and on top of this they're widely abused. An "assertion of importance or significance" can be quite subtle and require knowledge of the subject area - the rugby team example is a good one, because people not familiar with the leagues and pyramid system can't tell whether or not being in a certain league implies significance or not. If we must have a CSD for subjects of no importance, we need something more objective. My suggestion would be a list of specific, but fairly liberal requirements based on the notability guidelines for each specific topic area (e.g., a band should have at least one of the following or some other explicit claim of importance). It might also be helpful if, just for these three criteria, we had a "review" system where another admin reviews each article either before or after deletion for validity. Dcoetzee 19:55, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be great if there was some automated way to have admins wait an hour, but not increase the number of ones that fall through the cracks. This would require software changes though... creating the time-based view, and automatically preventing people from removing tags on pages they created.

I think A7 and G11 are good ideas if applied conservatively... the abuses come from the 0.1% of deletions where admins apply something that was never intended, and basically try to delete an article because they predict it would fail AFD. But with humans involved, mistakes are just going to happen... that's what talk pages and DRV is for. There's really never going to be a policy that's worded so well it prevents any abuses or mistakes from ever occuring. --Rividian (talk) 20:11, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the one hour issue, please see {{Hasty}}, which I created about a month ago in an attempt to address this very issue.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:16, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I can't comment on recent changes because I only do that through Lupin's anti-vandal tool, but I frequently do NPP, and there is an easy way. I simply hit "page down" and start working from the bottom up. If I filter out already patrolled pages first, that usually gives me pages 3-6 hours old. I haven't gotten very far when I suggest this technique to some of the more bitey NP Patrollers. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 20:22, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The claim that speedy deletion criteria are frequently abused needs some evidence. The one survey I know of (see User:Mangojuice/a7 and User:Mangojuice/a7.2) concluded that the vast majority of articles speedy deleted under G11 and A7 had no chance of surviving AfD. (T1 deletions are, in my experience, extremely rare.) Hut 8.5 20:39, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

• "Abuse" may be the wrong term, because that implies malice. I find that there are a significant number of articles tagged for speedy deletion (as opposed to actually being deleted) which can be salvaged. --Eastmain (talk) 21:49, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Unfortunately a great deal depends upon the particular admin involved--we are still dealing with a certain number of people who insist on deleting on the grounds of not thinking it would pass Afd; perhaps we need to say that any admin can reinstate if justified without worrying about it being thought discourteous. For a particularly dramatic example of abusive deletion, see . (Thi swas a case of single=handed deletion--perhaps we should also say that no admin may delete without review (instead of just tagging) except for copyvio and attack. )DGG (talk) 04:43, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Dr Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love CSD

Twice now in the last two days I've come across new users with problematic pages; both were tagged for deletion; and in both cases I offered the new users an alternative of which they were obviously not aware - one, userfying the page, the other, blanking their upage. The results speak well of my efforts: . This kind of work of course is much more labour-intensive than tagging and deleting, but the end result can be that the new editor is not immediately turned off (or worse, rebels by trying the same thing again or becoming disruptive), and can continue to work away and hopefully in the meantime absorb some of the structure and ethos of Misplaced Pages. What I'm getting at here is, is there some way to modify the CSD-notice templates to let new users know they have alternatives and they are not just being crushed by a faceless machine? We do after all wish to attract new editors and help them to learn more about how the site works. IMO the worst way to start wikipeding is to begin with creating a new article, but a lot of people do - so is there a more informative way to help, rather than spitting the noobs out like watermelon seeds down the back alley? Franamax (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

You're right, creating a new article is a terrible introduction to Misplaced Pages... doing it right (i.e. not attracting the ire of any new page patrollers) involves being fairly skilled in formatting, referencing, tone, templates and categorization... none of these are obvious concepts to a newbie. Instead of making it CSD's job to educate these people though, I think we need a sane article creation process... a wizard that helps steer them away from common errors. Right now we just give them an empty box... no wonder so many new articles are not very good. Even Urban Dictionary has a better content submission process than Misplaced Pages... it's pretty sad that after all these years we still have nothing. --Rividian (talk) 03:02, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me there is something somewhere about making an article that has a wizardly aspect, but dang if I know where it is. The newcomers are already working on their first page before they even get a welcome - though there's another avenue, maybe the signup process should drop you a welcome and a big coloured thing about "Before you create your first article!". I'm not saying that CSD/NP patrollers should have the responsibility (though it would be great if they did, and took the time to guide the sincere creators) - rather I'm thinking more along the lines of extra links in the templates to show the options, maybe a new-article-help-desk staffed by volunteers who already know how to userfy, a category that volunteers could patrol called ]. You're right that the empty box doesn't work well (!), is there some way to modify the process rather than rely on the dev's to pull something out of their hat? Franamax (talk) 03:18, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I know, most of the work would be on us (the people who do stuff related to new pages). I guess we're so busy dealing with new pages we never have time to outline what a proper wizard would be? I think Mr. Z-Man (I forget exactly how his username is spelled) was working on a wizard at one point, but it was never implemented. --Rividian (talk) 03:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

It's User:Mr.Z-man and I've asked him about it. I've just gone through the help pages a little and I remember now how stunningly bad Misplaced Pages is at help. Not that anything in particular is wrong, there's an amazing amount of effort been put into explanation, but it's just so dense. Eventually it has to be that way because of the complexity of the wiki, but I do remember my initial frustration trying to find what I thought were simple things. And I was going slow, I can only imagine the new user coming here with a burning desire to make an article on that great guitar player they just saw down the street. No, this is not just the NPP's burden, but all of your thoughts on how to ease the newcomer situation can only be helpful. Franamax (talk) 04:03, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The nascent wizard is here and it looks as though Z-Man has lost interest in completing it: , although persuasion might help ;) A mandatory diversion for new users through a creation process would surely help.

And again, if the deletion templates showed an alternative process and an easy way to contact someone experienced enough to move the page into a sub-space, a whole lot of process and frustration could be avoided. Franamax (talk) 05:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a pretty spiffy wizard. I don't know if mandatory is a good idea for it, but a link to it (after it is finished) on the page creation buisiness would really help. It looks like it could also use a bit of updating. Let me know if there's anything I can help with on it. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 13:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

My suggestion is like prod--that any admin can on request undelete an article if potentially justified without needing to go the the trouble of asking the deleting admin purely as a matter of course DGG (talk) 11:10, 27 May 2008 (UTC) (signature added later--sorry)

That's a valid (though unsigned :) comment. The problem I can see there is that the new users creating articles are plainly unaware of even the existence of admins, much less the concept of asking admins to do things. So again, there's a need for the templates to be modified so there is a clickable spot where a new user can easily post a request for an admin to restore a deleted page into uspace. Once it's there, they can go about the huge learning process. The question is how to get the new page into a space where the new user can start learning about how things work. Franamax (talk) 05:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

←I think a clickable spot is a great idea. Which is why I'm putting this comment here. :) I would like to note, though, with respect to the above by Rividian that we do give them more than "an empty box". At the top of that empty box is the following

• Before creating an article, please read Misplaced Pages:Your first article, or search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title.
• To experiment, please use the sandbox.
• As you create the article, provide references to reliable published sources. Without references, the article may be deleted.

If new contributors would notice that and read it, a lot of their misconceptions about Misplaced Pages could be cleared up. :/ Sadly, we tend not to notice the "small print" around us. And I say "we" because it took me forever to notice that there was something below the bold Do not copy text... warning at the bottom of the screen. That said, I think an automated welcome is also a good idea. I've often felt bad for contributors whose first interaction with other editors is a CSD warning. OTOH, at least they got one. I feel worse for the contributors whose articles have been deleted who don't. --Moonriddengirl 12:09, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I've tried to get the message accross before that people who do the new page patrol should be nicer. But it never went anywhere, given what I still see when I look at the talk pages of page authors on WP:SDL. I mean, we've got stuff already that should tell us to be nice to the new people, and I'm not sure it's really working. We could try to make the small print you get when creating a page larger, perhaps so you have to scroll down before you can actually start to create the page. And then change it back to normal for autoconfirmed users, so we don't interfere with established editors who already know the policies and such. Just a thought. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 14:50, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Any thoughts as to whether an automated welcome message would in any way be useful for addressing this problem? That is, every account would receive a welcome notice, which would include some instructions for editing and creating new articles, as soon as the account is created. Currently, editors are often not welcomed until after they make an edit or create an article, or are never welcomed at all. While some users will ignore the notice, some will read it. I know that automated welcome by a bot (or the MediaWiki software) is criticised as being "impersonal", but how useful is a "personal" welcome (a lot of these are mass-distributed and most are standard template notices) that comes too late or never comes? –Black Falcon 15:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much of the problem it would actually solve. Many (most?) users contribute as anonymous users for a while before creating an account. If they are bitten badly enough to go away, it is likely to be as an anon. But creating notices for every anon editor will backfire because of the way that dynamic IPs get assigned. The welcome would go to the wrong person and the anon still gets bitten. The automated welcome would have to be restricted to people who actually register accounts. I guess it could be somewhat valuable there but even there I'm a bit skeptical. Many established editors already manually add the {{Welcome}} tag but I don't see much evidence that the new people read it or change their behaviors because of it.
Still, it would be a fairly cheap exercise. It couldn't hurt to test it for a while, then maybe follow up for a while with a questionnaire about whether it was helpful or not. Anyone willing to run the test? Rossami (talk) 16:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't we already have a welcoming commitee? Someone over there should be willing. If not, we can draft a proposal for a bot to do it. That might be the best way to test. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 16:27, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Just FYI, the whole idea of welcome bots has been proposed before and has not gotten consensus for approval; see Misplaced Pages:Bots/Frequently denied bots. Personally, I think if there was an automated message in the software it would just make things a little more annoying. All this small print everywhere amounts to noise to most people and making it more in-your-face will only be more irritating, it won't get people to actually READ what they need to. Mangojuice 16:49, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

How about this for a modest proposal (and I caveat this by saying I am as much of a deletionist as they come, so writing this goes against the very core of my being, but here goes): would things really be so bad if a user's first article (and ONLY the first article) were exempted from A7 and similar CSDs (obviously not from the CopyVio CSDs) and had to go through PROD instead (or fixed in another way, such as userfication)? Creating an encyclopedia requires users who participate and know WP policy and process, and what better introduction than on their first article: they could learn much more in five days than in the few seconds it takes for CSD to run its course. If the article is truly unsalvagable, how bad is it to have it around for just 5 days? I think WP would be much better having gained more skilled, participating users, at the cost of having a few more truly bad articles around for five days. Thoughts? UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:27, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I assume that CSDs of attack pages, recreations of deleted matterial, and articles created by banned users in violation of their ban would also be allowed? --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 16:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Correct, similar to COPYVIOs. I am only suggesting we exempt good faith first articles. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:37, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) So if I'm a new user, and my first action is to create an article consisting of "Fred Bloggs is 14 years old and goes to Somewhere Secondary School. He is really cool." the article has to hang around for five days going through PROD? And suppose I come back to look at the article, see the prod tag and remove it (which it invites me to do if I disagree with the deletion)? We'd have a full-scale 5 day AfD debate over an article which is a blatant waste of space. And looking at the five articles currently up for deletion under A7, three of them were created in the user's first edit. At that rate (using the statistic I quoted earlier in this discussion) the number of articles going through PROD would quadruple. Hut 8.5 16:39, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you have a sample size problem. You are extrapolating your 3 out of 5 to April's 15000 A7 deletions to imply that 9000 users had their first article deleted via A7 last month? I just don't believe that is true. You are also ignoring the other options besides prod, especially userfying. And why is the PROD process under any strain, anyway? UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The figure of 3 out of 5 may well be wrong, it's just the only one I had to hand. It will certainly be a fair fraction of the 15000 A7s per month, which equates to a lot of articles. The whole point of prod is that other editors get a chance to review the article before it gets deleted, and if we start sending significantly more articles there then the amount of review each one gets will go down quite a lot. If the process gets enough articles then it will end up being an example of the "delayed CSD" proposal that has been made here, as nobody will review the articles. PROD was originally designed to take the strain of uncontroversial nominations from AfD, and it will become less effective in that respect. Hut 8.5 17:34, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, 3/5 is probably an underestimate. I just went through the 19 articles I deleted per A7 when I last did A7 patrol (excluding several declines, two AfD noms, three userfications, one G10, two G7s and one A1 speedy) and found that all but three had been the creating account's first article (often their first edit) and that none of the accounts except one had edits from more than a day before. (The one exception had a G10 speedy from a week earlier.) None had created an earlier article that hadn't been speedied. Back is the old days most A7 articles used to be created by anons. Now that we no longer allow anons to start articles, they register an account to do that. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

a few numbers from others--I check the most recent 10 A7bios just now: 8 absolutely impossible, 1 good A7 but possible good faith, 1 incorrect A7.-- all of them first edits, or reconstruction of earlier first edits. But this is in the PM after school period in the US. Looking 11 hrs earlier, with a much more varied assortment, I found something more alarming: 5 absolute junk a7 bios, 2 good A7s but possible good faith, and 3 incorrect a7s, and 1 of the 3 could probably have passed AfD. this is a higher rate of error than I found a year ago. Essentially all of these were first edits. Suggestion: we need a more precise way of specifying what constitutes a speedy deletable facebook page. I did not check other deletion rationales, though there were A2s and G11s which probably could equally have been A7. JThat really incorrect A7 was "Dejan Bandović is a Bosnian football goalkeeper born on June 11th, 1983 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Currently he plays for NK Široki Brijeg." That's a team in the premier league, so if true, he's notable. I'll leave someone who knows about football to follow up that one. DGG (talk) 22:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break (delayed A7)

What about using the suggested template above (near the beginning of this thread) instead of the usual CSD templates? It's still a speedy, just a slower one. Then there wouldn't be the strain on PROD and if removed the edit could just be reverted. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 16:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I like that "slow-speedy" template, but it could also suggest the possibility of userfying, which I think many new users haven't considered. It's got to be depressing to put in a lot of work (which you think is important and good), then have it just disappear. We might end up with a lot of crappy user sub-pages, but they can be addressed in a separate process. Three days might be good too, keeping in mind that this is for the non total-garbage articles only. Franamax (talk) 19:59, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I would be much happier about userifying once user space is made no-index. DGG (talk) 21:02, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a serious concern, which I was mulling but not bringing up :) User sub-pages need to be kept out of (especially) the Google index for this to be feasible. I'm not sure if robots.txt can wildcard a sub-space, but maybe the whole User: space should be excluded anyway. In any case, proceeding down this path will only get the search situation resolved more quickly. Franamax (talk) 05:15, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

(outdent, at Franamax)How about like this:

This page may meet Misplaced Pages’s criteria for speedy deletion as an article about a real person, an organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not indicate the importance or significance of the subject. Unless an indication of importance is added to this article, this article will be deleted one day after this template was added. This template was added {{subst:#time:Y F j}} and the article may be deleted after {{subst:#time:Y F j|+1 days}}. If you created this page and you disagree with its proposed speedy deletion, please add {{hangon}} below this template and explain your rationale on the ], but do not remove this template from pages you created yourself. You may also ask for this article to be saved in your userspace in a subpage of your userpage by using the template {{userfy}}. If you are not the creator of this article, and this article does not qualify for speedy deletion, please remove this template.

Note: Parts nowiki'd to show how things would work on the template itself.

{{userfy}} currently redirects to {{notability}}, so we'd want to restore it to the previous version here or something like it. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 02:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

• Disagree with the delay of one day. That gives users time to remove the tag and prevent clearly non-notable bio articles being deleted. Stifle (talk) 14:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

In theory it shouldn't. If the tag is removed by the author the edit removing it could be reverted as vandalism. And if it's removed by someone else, with a good reason, chances are it shouldn't have been there in the first place. Removal of the tag without a reason could just be treated as vandalism the same way author removal is. The idea here is to give people more time. Perhaps just advocating {{hasty}} as well as {{hangon}} for page authors to request time to improve the page could do the same thing. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 15:05, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that a full half of the A7 bios are very clearly articles that could never be made acceptable, and where there is nothing imaginable that could be added that would show notability. Here are the key parts of the most recent five just deleted.

• ".... Daniel plans to do research and experiments converting the modern-day petroleum engine to operate combusting HHO fuel from an onboard H20 electrolysis tank producing hydrogen on the fly. Daniel also plans to peruse a professional basketball career."
• "D9 or frequently known to his friends as Z Bl, is a 15 year old with a difference. For the past three years he has been experimenting with electronic music. D9 is yet to release an album,
• was born on October 6th, 1994, in San Francisco. He later moved up to Portland, Oregon, because of financial difficulty. He is best known for his work with the rock band Hemogoblin. Hemogoblin was co-founded by Nate and his cousin, Ian
• Oliver Asadi is from altofts,wakefield and is skilled
• David Benjamin Brenner (born January 21, 1983) is a software engineer at Cantor Fitzgerald (http://www.cantor.com/) in New York City and currently resides on the Upper East Side. He was born in Montreal, Canada but has French and Israeli passports. He has a few unqiue abilities

Of these, just conceivably the 5th might have something that might be added, though I'd be pretty surprised. The 4th could be incomplete, but again I doubt it will conceivably go anywere.

• • However, a 6th one was not a validy speedy, tho admittedly it is quite unlikely to pass AfD; I have mentioned this to the deleting admin., who refuses to restore it--see my talk page-- because he thinks that asserting that someone having published several non-self published books is not a "reasonable assertion of notability". We have to see about the wording, for I consider such interpretation problematic. I'll be suggesting a change for that--the A7 wording has drifted much too restrictively. As I am going to be discussing it, I moved it temporarily to my user space as User:DGG/Hayes -- DGG (talk) 18:32, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Follow up--the deleting admin, who is being very helpful in working this out, found two reviews for one of the books, and I found another, so we agreed it could be moved back to mainspace. as J. M. Hayes. Q.E.D. DGG (talk) 18:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

My personal rule of thumb is not to speedy anything as A7 if there's any chance it might be salvageable, even if the current version technically qualifies — those get tagged with {{notability}} instead (or possibly PRODded or taken to AfD). That includes checking Google and Special:Whatlinkshere to see if I can find an assertion of notability that might be added. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

perhaps we should require--require, not suggest-- that everyone do such a searchDGG (talk) 19:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

If you think you have to do a google search to confirm it, it's already not an A7. If we add an explicit requirement to google or otherwise check for sources outside of what's within the article, this is just going to result in more cases of admins deciding on their own that what they find isn't enough and speedying things that should've gone to afd. —Cryptic 19:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

A good example, from the same A7 patrol session I reviewed above, might be Mark H. Ashcraft, though arguably that wasn't a valid A7 to begin with, department chairs being presumably notable. Looking at my deletion log, most of the ones I did speedy were more like Joon Lee or Zach Singer. (I do see I may have erred with Paul Minorini — not that it could've passed AfD as it was, but there was an assertion of notability, and someone with better Google-fu might've been able to sort through the chaff to find sources for expansion. At least the content is still there in the deletion log, if anyone wants to rescue it.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:32, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

the Minorini article said he was ceo of something called BHGH, without a WP article, but the link for that is and it just might be worth one.DGG (talk) 19:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

See, that's part of the problem, noobs have no clue about deleted content being available, or the possibility of putting the nascent article in their uspace. There is an opportunity here - new people come here with a passion for a single subject, by diverting them into working on their passion in their own space, we can create the possibility that they will absorb some things - like comparing to other articles, seeing problems in those articles, fixing them and seeing their changes stick - oops, hooked another one to Misplaced Pages. Then they get their favourite article into mainspace. And IK, you seem to be quite diligent in your approach, not having done NPP myself, I'd ask you if your outlook is the norm within the NPP community, or do many of them reflect the mindset of "the more articles deleted, the better"? Franamax (talk) 22:17, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

NPP has two opposite problems, tho I admit my experience there is usually only when I have insomnia. First, seeing all the junk in one place at one time -- remembering that about a full half the articles submitted are clearly unsatisfactory--tends to induce feelings of deletionism, even in me. (Spam fighting has a similar effect on those who do it.) The other, is the realisation that what gets skipped the first few minutes may never be noticed again. Patrolled revisions is not being as successful as it might be at this. I usually go a few thousand back, or all the way to "earliest". DGG (talk) 19:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps just including something in the speedy notice messages could work. Such as in {{nn-warn}} and the like (though not {{sd-copyvio}}, obviously). It wouldn't require any new processes and most people on the NPP already use the warnings (from what I've seen over at WP:LSD recently, anyway). How about including this text: "You may also ask for this article to be saved in your userspace in a subpage of your userpage by asking one of these administrators." We could even do something silly like make a template that would do the asking itself, if we've got someone with the template-fu who wants to do it. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 03:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

• I oppose the concept of slow speedy deletion because it's inherently oxymoronic. Sceptre 20:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Userspace

That last suggestion about moving to userspace is a very good one--but remember that we want to keep the template as concise as possible--there are considerable indications that as is, people see it, but do not read it through--can't really blame them.DGG (talk) 19:05, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Something I hope will reduce the number of CSDs

Based on the above discussion, I went bold and forked Misplaced Pages:Your first article from Misplaced Pages:Starting an article. My ultimate objective is to make YFA more newbie friendly (i.e the article just has to be "good enough" - i.e. not a CSD candidate), while SAA can be addressed to all new article creators, and keep the instructions related to helping new articles be "good", not just good enough. (SAA says to "look at a featured article": how helpful is the article on Microsoft to the user creating an article on their flower shop?) SAA also speaks more advanced (and therefore both less newbie-friendly and less likely to be read by them) Wikipediese: talk about policies, guidelines, etc. Any help/comments/feedback in this forking effort is definitely appreciated. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:07, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of a simplified approach for the newest members, anything to get them looking around before jumping into a new article. I think a lot of the problem is directly due to the wiki being very dense with information, so new people tend to glaze over and stop reading anything. The simpler the better.

To Lifebaka's template above, yeah that's getting there, but small print ain't gonna cut it when we already know people are ignoring the big print :) I was thinking a bit more along the lines of something at the bottom (so it's the last thing they read), in large/bold (or big freakin' orange flashing) along the lines of "New users can read Why is my article being deleted?" - that link is a lame draft of the "salvage" instructions I was thinking of, which also points to US's helpful contribution. Franamax (talk) 04:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Call me pessimistic but I just don't see people who come to Misplaced Pages to create an article (a very distinct class of users) being very likely to read, much less follow, 10 points of advice. I'm all for de-densifying documentation and otherwise making it approachable and useful... but a lot of our worst new articles are created by people who are never going to read documentation unless it's a few words in gigantic letters. That's just how it is. --Rividian (talk) 00:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Deleting useful talk page redirects

An administrator who shall remain nameless is deleting talk page redirects and it's causing controversy. For example, very long list X got moved to X/Part1 and half of it split into the new article X/Part2. The talk page was not moved, and Talk:X/Part1 and Talk:X/Part2 both point to Talk:X, which has a long history. The administrator deleted the two redirects. He's done so with other situations in the past few days.

Is this the intent of WP:SPEEDY? If so, I think it should be changed.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

G8 speedy deletion isn't for controversial cases... so if someone reasonably thinks a talk page shouldn't be deleted, speedy deletion isn't a good decision but it should go to MFD if someone still wants it deleted. Unfortunately it seems your problem is one of the handful of admins who seem perpetually unconcerned with speedy deletion's intended role. --Rividian (talk) 00:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

My view is that the principle behind CSD is 'do no harm.' As long as admins follow that, it'll all work out in the end. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:17, 1 June 2008 (UTC)