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A7 hastiness

I am aware that one shouldn't tag articles A1 or A3 shortly after their creation, and that it is considered a WP:BITE violation. I am formally proposing an expansion of that policy to cover A7 and A9 too. It clearly falls within the spirit, and I believe that hastily tagging an article for any non-critical criterion is bitey. A7 tags are applied (often wrongly) so often I believe that hastily tagging articles with is is just as bitey as A1 and A3. A few months ago, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz: added A7 to the uw-hasty template, an act which I fully agree with, but it was recently reverted due to no consensus. In many cases, articles which meet A1 and/or A3 at inception also meet A7 or A9, so I really don't see why this "protection" doesn't cover those criteria as well. I've lost count of the number of articles I've seen tagged A7, just minutes, sometimes even seconds after their creation. Adam9007 (talk) 02:32, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

A1 and A7 are different animals. An A1 or A3 might get better with more time, but most A7s usually contain enough information to provide a pretty good idea of significance or non-significance early on, and I'd guess (hope) that most quick A7 taggings are pretty obvious. We have to balance avoiding bitey behavior with the ability to filter out the junk in an efficient manner. --Bongwarrior (talk) 03:22, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Honestly I don't think that's true. While I think people should search before nominating an article for A7 speedy deletion, I've seen plenty of cases where that does not occur. It seems like a requirement for a wait time would allow editors time to put a more explicit claim of significance and hopefully encourage reviewers to spend a minute or two to check and make sure it truly has no credible claim of significance (and maybe search, for example JamiiForums didn't have much of a CCS but I found a reasonable number of sources with a quick Google search). Appable (talk) 04:32, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

The policy requires a claim of significance, not a search, so that there is a streamlined process for filtering out articles that obviously don't belong here. In my experience, a small minority of such articles are incrementally edited in the first 10 minutes, so the notion that page patrollers need to wait seems to be arbitrary and of little value. If a new user ignores the instructions to read WP:YFA and is here only to promote their website, band, or start up company, then I'm not concerned about biting them; I'm concerned about protecting the encyclopedia.- MrX 12:19, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm aware it's not a requirement but I don't think it's a bad thing to do at all since article improvement, if possible, is better than speedy deletion. My point is a wait time might encourage NPPs to actually do a courtesy search rather than flag and move on. Newcomers sometimes don't see those policies and just know that there's no article for something, not always to promote it — if I recall correctly I didn't read any of the policies when I wrote my first article, I just knew that I should include some sources and such. If my article had been tagged for speedy deletion quickly after because I didn't include an explicit credible claim of significance that would be very bite-y. Appable (talk) 13:02, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree that searching is a useful tool for page patrollers, and I use it almost always before tagging an article for speedy deletion. In fact, I approach new page patrol with the attitude that every new article is presumed to be worthy of inclusion in the encyclopedia, and then progress from there based on what I discover. I don't think that a 10 minute rule necessarily encourages page patrollers to conduct a search, although that might apply to users who are new to page patrolling, provided that they are educated about best practices. - MrX 19:39, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

• Related discussion - Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace#Consensus_for_adding_A7_to_Uw-hasty Adam9007 (talk) 21:22, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
• A7 and A9 shouldnot be applied too hastily. New pages should be given a good chance to get a claim of importance without getting edit conflicts. The people that apply too hastily should be warned. And if there are too many cases, (say 4 over hasty CSD tags) they should get a block (starting short), in the same way a vandal would. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:14, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

• I've wondered if A7 is somewhat flawed as a policy in that it assumes any article without a credible claim of significance needs to be deleted quickly with no requirement for warning, wait time, or anything like that. To me, while not having a credible claim of significance indicates the article should not be kept on Wikipedia, it's a bad idea to make it so fast and between just two users, especially in light of how it's been misused quite often.

What I wonder is what if we had a mandatory wait time for A7, such that after tagging the article could only be deleted one day later? Additionally, with that you could have a category that contains all expired A7s and non-expired A7s. This is similar to the policy with WP:F11 and wouldn't cause any more of a backlog since if the same number of A7s are started, the same number will expire. So I think that'd give more time for authors and potentially 3rd party reviewers to check and fix articles nominated for deletion under A7 while maintaining the general concept that we can bypass a full AfD if there's no credible claim of significance. Appable (talk) 14:47, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

I think that would be a large step backwards. If someone posts an article to main space, they have already been warned of the requirement for new articles. There is a false, or at least unproven, assumption that articles eligible for deletion under A7 are able to be improved. My experience is that the article about the little girl from Pakistan who has a Facebook page and likes ponies will never be able to be improved. Nor will the article about a mixtape that will be released in the near future, by an unknown rapper with a Soundcloud profile. If we were to prevent articles from being speedily deleted for a day, or even hours, they would slip far down in the queue, all but ensuring that they wouldn't be reviewed at all.- MrX 16:10, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

I honestly never saw policies when I created my first article, I just happened to reference it well. A few messages explaining notability that can be easily overlooked are not enough. Looking through speedy deletions, I and a few others (I think Adam, Vquakr, and DES) have noticed quite a few A7 tags that probably should just go through PROD. Sometimes the author hasn't written the important content before it gets deleted, I've seen significant article improvement after an improperly-placed A7 was removed. Appable (talk) 17:06, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Apropos to one of my examples above: Young pencil. The entire article contents: "Young Pencil (also known as YP) is a recently created rapper with his first mixtape set to release April 20th, 2016. Very little is known about Young Pencil, potentially because of his extremely small name in the game of rapping."- MrX 02:19, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett: I agree with the second part of your comment. Anyone who continues to hastily mark article for deletion in a disruptive manner, after multiple warnings, should be blocked. The first part of your comment though doesn't ring true. First, placing a speedy deletion tag may result in a single edit conflict. Whether that one edit conflict happens in the first ten minutes, or in the first 30 minutes when an editor is really ready to dig into editing their new article, it is still equally frustrating.

Second, if the reason for not placing A7 deletion tags in the first 10 minutes is to prevent edit conflicts, then we should forbid all forms of editing by other users in the first 10 minutes, including improving the article, placing cleanup tags, categorizing, and so on.

If you want to convince me and others that a 10 minute rule is meaningful, then let's look at some factual data. Review the edit histories of all A7 deleted article from the past 30 days, that were CSD tagged after 10 minutes. This will reveal the percentage of the articles that were incrementally edited withing 10 minutes. If that number is greater that let's say 25%, you will have my full support. Otherwise, I have to maintain my stance that this rule is well-intended, but completely misguided and ultimately detrimental to the encyclopedia.- MrX 16:10, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

• My experience is that at least half of all the pages tagged for A7 that I reveiw already contain a claim of significance. I don't think that as many as 25% are edited within 10 minutes to add one, but those that are but are then deleted, or that would have been cause frustration to new editors of the exact type that WP:BITE is meant to prevent. Moreover, in at least some cases, new editors seeing a speedy tag give up when they might have been going to add content. if even 5% of new editors are discouraged in this way, that is too much in my view. What is the harm if we delay 10 or 15 minutes in tagging a page with A7? There is already advice to NPPers to patrol from the back of the queue in any case. DES ^(talk) 16:45, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

  There's no harm in waiting 10-15 minute when it's plausible that an article could be expanded to include a claim of significance. That should not prevent experienced page patrollers from tagging articles with A7 sooner when there is clearly no possibility of a claim of significance, as in the examples I mention above.- MrX 22:23, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

• My point to all of this is that if an article's subject is within A7's scope, then it is pointless to protect new such articles from an immediate A1 or A3 but not A7. If A3 applies, so does A7. If A7 does not apply, neither does A3, and most likely A1 also. This is a loophole that can be and is exploited to hastily add tags and bite newcomers anyway despite the "grace period"'s protection. Under the current rules, one can simply tag what would otherwise have been an A3 as A7 instead and get away with it (there's a difference between refraining being good practice and it being a requirement; until the requirement covers A7, this loophole will continue to exist and be exploited). This totally defeats the purpose of A1 and A3 protection, as it makes no difference whether an article is deleted under A1, A3, or A7. This loophole must be shut ASAP. Adam9007 (talk) 21:17, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

  I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense. If a patroller tags an empty page with A7, they're doing it wrong. If they tag a page with a completely ambiguous subject with A7, they're doing it wrong. The solution to that problem is to educate the patroller so they stop doing it wrong.- MrX 22:12, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. It makes no sense for policy to forbid hasty A1 and A3 taggings, but not hasty A7 taggings. One problem with educating patrollers is that we often can't use the uw-hasty template, as many people treat Wikipedia:Don't template the regulars as policy, even though it isn't. I notice many people who add tags hastily are regulars. Also, empty pages don't contain credible claims of significance, so if A3 applies, A7 also applies, at least in theory. Adam9007 (talk) 22:22, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

If there's no content or no context, then you can't tell if it's an A7able article subject; the article title's not sufficient. There may be reason to discourage very early A7 tags - I'm not convinced, one way or the other - but hypothetical gaming of the system by deliberately mistagging an A1 or A3 ain't it. —Cryptic 23:01, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

People often judge an article by its title. Adam9007 (talk) 23:46, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

See what I mean? Adam9007 (talk) 00:31, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

So? That doesn't mean the tag was correct. That A7 tag was no more accurate than calling it a duplicate file or a cross-namespace redirect. The difference between what happened here on one hand, and those two tags and your putative A7 tags used to deliberately avoid an A1/A3 restriction on the other, is that the former is clearly a case of mild sloppiness that can be fixed with a polite talk page note, while the latter indicates disruption. —Cryptic 20:54, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Another extremely hasty A7 tag. Less than a minute old. Adam9007 (talk) 21:21, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, just like A1 and A3, A7 should not be used immediately after the article is created. Draft space exists, but give people a bit of time to do incremental edits. 30 minutes should be plenty. Hobit (talk) 13:12, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I think there's leeway for two ways to assess articles against A7 shortly after creation, especially when it comes to biographies.

• Suppose an article's text two minutes after creation is "Soraya Sarnoff was born in Detroit in 1986 to Boris Sarnoff, a carpenter, and Marla Carrolla, a high school biology teacher. She went to Blitz Elementary School." This could be about the author's unremarkable next door neighbor and may be going nowhere. It could also be about the greatest nuclear physicist of the 21st century, but the author, already taking it as given that this is an important person, doesn't realize that her significance should be stated up front, and may be taking a purely chronological approach. This is the crescendo approach, building up to a climax.
• On the other hand, suppose an article's text two minutes after creation is "Jason Surratt is co-captain of the Grand View High School lacrosse team. He lives in Oakmont with his mother and two sisters and two cats." This article is a decrescendo, a high point followed by an anticlimax. I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that the author has already written the most important thing he can think to say about this person. It's unlikely that he chose to write about the co-captaincy before mentioning, incidentally, that Jason has also received a patent on a method of instantaneous teleportation. —Largo Plazo (talk) 19:36, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I think waiting 15-30 minutes before tagging an A7 is a good guideline. However, as Largoplazo notes, it can depend on the specific circumstances. The best solutions I have seen are to use the "{{hasty}}" template or to gently discuss the concern with the tagger. It's just as important not to bite our existing volunteers as it is to not bite new editors. I see that following up on the example cited above has apparently lead to the departure of one editor.[1]--Mojo Hand (talk) 21:02, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Just for kicks, here's Victoria Sandoval, which I just submitted for A7 deletion four minutes after it was created: "Victoria Rose Sandoval is in a relationship with Michael Stevens. It is a fact that she is the cutest most gorgeous woman of all time!! Victoria has one of the most beautiful sounding voices in the world. She has an amazing personality and she is very creative. Below is an example of the first poem that she wrote to the last love of her life Michael Stevens;". Can I see a show of hands from all those who think I was too hasty? —Largo Plazo (talk) 01:42, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Obviously no justification in a time delay there. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:14, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Another good reason for this guideline.. Adam9007 (talk) 14:48, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

OK, and I see you notified the tagger of the concern. Is there really a need to publicly shame them here as well?--Mojo Hand (talk) 15:13, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

@Mojo Hand: No, but I need to give examples because this happens far too often, which is the whole point of this debate. Adam9007 (talk) 15:27, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't see anybody arguing against waiting (in most cases). If someone is hasty in their tagging, you talk to them. Are you proposing some other course of action?--Mojo Hand (talk) 15:53, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

@Mojo Hand: And another one by my old friend Swpb. When I rightly notified him, he said my input is worthless. Say it all about his attitude. In fact, I'd go as far as to say he think he owns CSD A7, given our past. I believe I have told him about hasty taggings before, but he has clearly failed (deliberately?) to heed me. Not sure if this is the right place to report it, but he has done nothing but smash WP:RESPECT into a million pieces during our dealings. Adam9007 (talk) 20:24, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

This isn't the venue for that. I would hope that you each recognize that the other editor has a valid point of view, but I am not going to hold my breath.--Mojo Hand (talk) 13:46, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

All editors start with my respect. Some lose it through their own action, as Adam did rapidly. I don't think I'm obligated to continue to respect someone who puts his own ideas above consensus; I avoid interaction with such users. I probably have been hasty with A7's, and I'll adjust as consensus (not one misguided user) dictates. —swpb^T 13:20, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

@Mojo Hand: I'm more than willing to recognise his point of view (even if I strongly disagree with it), but he's clearly demonstrated that he has no intention of recognising mine, or those of anyone else he disagrees with (such as Appable:). He came down on me like a ton of bricks when he first confronted me, so it's no wonder I was reluctant to listen to him. I'm bringing this up here because, given his behaviour, I have strong reason to believe that he will just continue like that regardless of what (if any) consensus we reach here. If I feel it appropriate, what is the correct venue? EDIT: He did it again, despite my notice. Adam9007 (talk) 14:53, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:CONDUCTDISPUTE is what you're looking for. —Largo Plazo (talk) 17:44, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: Thanks. Adam9007 (talk) 21:04, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

@Swpb: I think you'll find a lot of people are agreeing with me if you look at the many discussions there have been about A7. I lost it with you because you lost it with me (if I remember correctly, you admitted that yourself). Adam9007 (talk) 13:31, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Like I said, I'll go with the consensus. If you're on the same page as the consensus, that's good for you. Our history does not incline me to give any weight to messages that come only from you and no one else. I think it best that we avoid interaction with each other, since I have nothing nice to say about or to you. —swpb^T 13:38, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

@Swpb: I don't think you realise just how controversial A7 is. I'd argue there's no such thing as consensus here yet. I am simply trying to establish one. Adam9007 (talk) 13:46, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Don't expect it to support the retention of articles about 13-year old boy scouts on the basis of their merit badges. It still blows my mind that you fought for that, let alone that you never conceded how wrong you were; is it any wonder I don't value your opinion? —swpb^T 14:34, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

There's a difference between an article not surviving A7 and it not surviving at all. A7's standard is a lot lower than most people think. Though I have been told (by other people) I might be pushing it too low. Adam9007 (talk) 15:14, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

"Though I have been told (by other people) I might be pushing it too low." is a massive understatement. You've been told by many people that your idea of A7 is way out of line with most people's. Maybe that message is starting to sink in with you, whether you choose to admit it or not. —swpb^T 16:24, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

No, it isn't. Take a look here. You'll see many people agreeing with me about what constitutes a CCS. There are other discussions too. Adam9007 (talk) 16:29, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok....Adam9007 and Swpb. If you are done sniping politely at each other....you have diffent opinions, fine...do you really think you will convince the other that he might be wrong? Take a step back, both, please. Have a cup of your favourite beverage in RL. Cheers. Lectonar (talk) 14:49, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

No, I don't believe I or anyone else will ever convince Adam that he has ever been wrong about anything. That's why he's a danger to the project. —swpb^T 15:03, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

I'd say the same thing about Swpb. Done sniping, just had a cup of one of my favourite beverages in RL (literally!). Adam9007 (talk) 15:14, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Here's a case where, just now, I was noting a particular page, Anshuman yadev, to reconsider it in a little bit, when User:SwisterTwister tagged it for both A1 and A7 three minutes after it had been created. Five minutes later, User:Adam9007 placed a {{hasty}} tag on top of that. The article itself consisted of nothing but a heading consisting of a repetition of the article's topic—which was the user himself, User:Anshumanyadav121.

OK, first of all, A1 didn't apply because there was no content (beyond a repetition of the subject). But A3 would have been correct. However, as WP:A3 states, "Don't use this tag in the first few minutes after a new article is created."

Second of all, if there isn't any content yet, then it's terribly premature to be assessing whether the article has made any claims of significance or not! An A7 evaluation shouldn't be made until enough has been written to make it clear that the author has no credible claim of significance to make (because it's just ramblings about his girlfriend, or because it implies that being the captain of his high school chess team is the highlight of his life to date).

On the other hand, this is an autobiography. We strongly discourage people from writing about themselves. I'm not saying we have to be nasty about it, but WP:BITE doesn't override this guideline, and "strongly discourage" means more than simply having the words "strongly discourage" appear multiple times in the guideline. I don't know that we need to be overly worried about a little bit of haste when people are writing about themselves—because it's OK for us to discourage them—strongly—from using Wikipedia in that way. Perhaps that perspective explains SwisterTwister's early tagging.

I haven't arrived at a verdict on this case, but these are the considerations I'm weighing. —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: WP:Autobiography states it's "strongly discouraged", but that's not the same as "strictly forbidden". Adam9007 (talk) 18:52, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

That's correct! It also isn't the same thing as "warmly welcomed", "prohibited on pain of death", "optional", "de rigueur", "occasionally tolerated", "mildly frowned upon", "provocative", "boring", "fashionable", "inspirational", "mundane", "breathtaking", or "fabulous". Is this a game where, when one person says something, another person comes up with something it isn't the same as? —Largo Plazo (talk) 19:37, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

No, I notice a lot of people take "discouraged" to mean "forbidden". Adam9007 (talk) 19:50, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Many people confuse "infer" and "imply". However, when I wrote "implies" above (using it correctly), if you had chimed in to advise me that "imply" isn't the same thing as "infer", I would have been nonplussed. I wouldn't see where you expected your remark to take the conversation. As is the case now. —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:00, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

I meant that there's a difference between the two. Many people take "discouraged" to mean "forbidden" and that's why I think they're hastily tagging such articles. Adam9007 (talk) 20:06, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Is it true that people take "discouraged" to mean "forbidden", or are you guessing this? It doesn't seem a likely explanation for haste in speedy-tagging because even if autobiographies were forbidden, there is no CSD pertaining to autobiographies. I doubt people are thinking "Even though there is no CSD for this, I'm certain that I'm entitled to request speedy deletion, so I'll pretend that one of the existing CSDs applies even though it doesn't." —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:37, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Educated guess, judging by common behaviour. Adam9007 (talk) 01:08, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I would have waited at least 10 minutes before tagging, as this was essentially a blank page and you never know what may be coming. However, I would not be holding my breath--Mojo Hand (talk) 20:28, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't either. I've been disciplining myself to take a note on articles like this, when I come across them in their infancy, to check on them later. Sometimes I'm surprised to find that a fully fledged article (with sources!) has appeared. —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:39, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

30 minute delay before appearing on New Page Feed

I suspect the real answer would be to have a 30 minute delay before anything appears on the new pages feed. This effectively applies this delay to every page. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:54, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

That will just allow copyvios, vandalism, and attack pages more opportunity to survive. They must be deleted ASAP. Adam9007 (talk) 01:35, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

• If someone wants to work incrementally without risking A7, we've got draft space and userspace sandboxes, where they're welcome to take their time. Articles in mainspace should reach certain minimum requirements from the time the save button is first pressed; one of those minimums is to have a credible claim of significance. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 14:03, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

I've seen pages in those namespaces tagged for A7. If they've been abandoned, there should be a criterion for abandoned drafts (maybe we should expand G13 for this purpose? As it stands, G13 only covers AfC submissions.). Adam9007 (talk) 16:51, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

They may have been tagged, but the tags were not valid since A7 only applies to articles. We don't need G10's and other content with potential legal implications to stay online for even 30 minutes. What we do need is administrative restrictions on overly hasty tagging. VQuakr (talk) 19:21, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

• Yes, just like A1 and A3, A7 should not be used immediately after the article is created. Draft space exists, but give people a bit of time to do incremental edits. 30 minutes should be plenty. Hobit (talk) 13:12, 13 April 2016 (UTC) (In wrong section, sorry). Hobit (talk) 22:52, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
• Not a bad idea, so long as it only applies to A1, A3 and A7. Any A7 tagging outside article space should be removed and the tagger contacted and gently explained to - and that would apply to any other A numbers too. Peridon (talk) 18:21, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

  The proposal is not to disallowing tagging for 30 minutes, it is to hide pages from the New Pages Feed for 30 minutes. BethNaught (talk) 18:30, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Good point - there wouldn't be a way of delaying the appearance of a tag on a page. (You'd get strings of tags popping up if it could be done, as others wouldn't know...) It can't be a blanket delay because of the G ones that require ASAP treatment. And there is the problem that people work at the new end of the list. I used to work in Edits by New Accounts, and I got the stuff that had been missed in NPP - often I was 12 hours or even more behind the NPPers. If no-one's working that list any more, who's going to get the stuff that's been given a 30 minute grace? I'm tired, and can't see a way round this except for admin holdback on the actual deletion (I allow 45-60 minutes usually before I delete A1, 3 or 7). Peridon (talk) 21:27, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

• This ought to be a non-starter: it would effectively allow a 30 minute grace period for attack pages, within which time they will quite likely have been indexed and cached by Google et al. A solution needs to be behavioural, not technical. BethNaught (talk) 18:30, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
• No I am not sure that this would be technically feasible, but if it were, it would be a most undesirable change. As others have said, delay in dealing with copyvios, attack pages, and hoaxes is not good. What is needed to deal with A7 hastiness is a behavioral change, really, although if the curation tool could warn when tagging a recently created page with A1, A3 or A7 CSD tags that would help. DES ^(talk) 23:17, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

CSD tagging for webhost or promotional violations

Hi, all,
I am seeingan overeagerness of some editors to tag user pages for these G11 and U5 grounds when, at times, it is simply an editor including a sentence with their name, where they are from and perhaps where they went to school. There are some longtime editors who have incredibly lengthy and involved biographies on their user pages that are far more egregious and I think that having a bit of personal information on a user page or sandbox should be grounds for deletion.

I'm not talking about editors that write autobiographies of themselves in hope they can move them into main space or with those with long bios more suitable for LinkedIn. Those are clearly not suitable. But considering that most regular editors have some biographical on their user page (and some have dozens of userboxen), we shouldn't be so harsh on new editors who want to include a bit of biographical information on their user page or place it on a sandbox.

In general, I think there should be more focus on removing copyright or BLP violations and vandalism from articles and policing user space and sandboxes (which few editors or readers ever see) should be a much lower priority. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:21, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

The part about "which few editors or readers ever see" doesn't account for the primary concern behind U5, which isn't about Wikipedia readers coming across these pages. It's about these users treating Wikipedia as, well, a web host, so that they can then, for example, include the address of their user page in email signatures or promotional materials or resumes: "See my home page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WhateverMyNameIs", for example. —Largo Plazo (talk) 03:43, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

There's been quite a bit of discussion/contention lately about how to deal with old, abandoned user pages. You may have seen some of it at ANI. There's a fairly comprehensive RfC about it going on now at Wikipedia:User pages/RfC for stale drafts policy restructuring, so weighing in there may carry more weight than your note here. A2soup (talk) 03:48, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

@Liz: I think there should be a 'not' between 'should' and 'be' in your second sentence... If an editor is working here usefully (or showing real signs of trying to), they shouldn't be tagged U5 - and shouldn't be for merely having a neutral statement when they've only been here for days. As to G11, if they're not showing the signs of being or becoming a real editor (i.e. they are confining their editing to their user page, or writing only about themselves wherever), they are fairly certainly in breach of NOTWEBHOST, and self-promoting. Putting something like 'I love aardvarks.' is quite harmless, but putting a link to their website about aardvarks is promo. Otherwise, if they ARE working here and are promoting on their user page, it should be pointed out to them. They might have done that before they became 'real' editors. Blatant promo for other things should be tagged anyway. I do have a fairly long user page, which like Topsy 'just growed'. It gives no contact info or clues to my ID, and so would be not much use for promoting myself (and for the record, I am not connected to any of the bands mentioned there - I just like them). It has given entertainment to several editors over my years here, so I believe. Peridon (talk) 10:05, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't it annoy you?

You legitimately remove a speedy tag, but it gets deleted under the same criterion anyway without explanation. This happens to me a lot with A7. It happened just now with GFBiochemicals. It most certainly did have a credible claim of significance (co-founded by a notable footballer), but it was deleted A7 (not merely re-tagged) just minutes after my tag removal. Highly annoying, and it's happening too often. Adam9007 (talk) 21:25, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Difference of opinion of when it's applicable. Admins don't have to tag the page I think (although I do) so a more aggressive interpretation kinds of win over time. To be fair, it's mentioned at Mathieu_Flamini#Business_Career so there are sources. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:55, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Did you ask the deleting admin, User:JoJan? For most CSD tags, if it was disputed once it needs to go to AfD. If the admin's explanation is not ok, go to WP:DRV. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:58, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

This one was deleted by User:RHaworth, and yes I have asked him. I'm still waiting for a response. I'd also like to ask what the point is in us being allowed to remove speedy tags, if admins can just speedy delete it anyway? Adam9007 (talk) 22:07, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

RHaworth has more experience with deletion on Wikipedia in general, and speedy deletion in particular, than any other person in the world. You may want to at least consider that maybe he knows what he's doing. Or at least give him more than ten minutes to respond before you escalate. —Cryptic 22:10, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

In my experience, RHaworth applies A7 extremely liberally. It's not the first time I've seen him get A7 wrong. Adam9007 (talk) 22:16, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Then you are itching to take him to DRV. Your message on his talk page doesn't articulate the problem very well. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:21, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

No, I just used that as an example. I'll only take it to DRV if necessary. Adam9007 (talk) 22:27, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

In my experience, RHWorth uses consistently good judgement with speedy deletions, as far as I have observed. You claim that having a notable co-founder is a claim of significance. Obviously he disagrees. I would also disagree that having a notable executive or founder is a valid claim of significance, as I have discussed with you previously.- MrX 22:51, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

This search turns up loads of stuff, so it obviously is a credible claim of significance. Adam9007 (talk) 22:56, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

A notable co-founder is not a claim of significance. See WP:NOTINHERITED. Is the topic listed on the co-founder's biography? Does the amount of material justify a spinout article? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:01, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm getting really tired of people using the WP:NOTINHERITED excuse. That is an essay and doesn't even apply to CSD!. Significance is also a much lower standard than notability, and that essay is about notability, not significance. Adam9007 (talk) 23:02, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

A notable co-founder is not a claim of significance. However, if you removed an A7 CSD tag once, it should have gone to AfD. I advise you to add material to the co-founder's biography. I don't like the chances of the topic passing AfD when judged against WP:CORP. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:12, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

It's no good just repeating that it's not a CCS. Why is it not a CCS? Adam9007 (talk) 23:14, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Because co_founder is very weak. Is everything Larry Sanger lent support to significant? No. If that was the only claim, then A7 is reasonable. You are not happy, well challenge it, ask the deleting admin to undelete and take it to AfD. At DRV, I would say "Speedy list at AfD", as someone wants a discussion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:03, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Lending support to, and co-founding something are two quite different things. And A7 requires no claim of significance. Adam9007 (talk) 00:06, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree that the non-trivial news coverage for this company means it should have been discussed at AfD rather than summarily deleted. I think there is a good chance that a DRV would end up overturning the deletion, on the basis that it has a fighting chance of being notable, and that you as a good-faith uninvolved editor disagreed with and removed the A7 tag prior to the deletion. I don't agree that having a notable co-founder in itself constitutes a credible claim of significance, but if it has become a significant news story as a result of its co-founders prominence, that is too nuanced a situation for A7 to possibly apply. Thparkth (talk) 23:10, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

If it gave an indication which gives it a "fighting chance" of notability, that is a credible claim of significance. Adam9007 (talk) 23:43, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

@Adam9007: I am not clear on what changes to the policy are being proposed here. This seems like a pretty straightforward, "wait for a response from RHaworth; if not satisfied take to DRV" situation. Our existing policy already supports that. VQuakr (talk) 00:09, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

@VQuakr: This isn't the first time it's happened. I'm not sure what the solution is, hence I brought it up for discussion. Adam9007 (talk) 00:10, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

My response above would still apply. VQuakr (talk) 00:15, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Looking at the article

GFBiochemicals (GFB) is a company specialising in the the levulinic acid. One of GFB's co-founders is professional footballer Mathieue Flamini.

There is no claim to significance. CSD only applies to what is in the article, not what sources can be found in searches. So this is a valid A7 deletion. -- GB fan 00:17, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Investigation of the claim "One of GFB's co-founders is professional footballer Mathieue Flamini." turned up lots of stuff. Therefore it is a credible claim of significance. Adam9007 (talk) 00:23, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Write a better stub them. On the basis of this discussion, I would endorse the speedy. I continue to recommend that you add material instead to Mathieu_Flamini#Business_Career until you get beaten back by WP:UNDUE. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

There is no requirement for an admin to do any investigation. Admins base the decision to delete on what the article says not what could be found. The article did not make a credible claim to significance. I would say that the tagging was premature as it was tagged 1 minute after creation but then it sat for 10 hours before being deleted. There is a good possibility that RHaworth did not see your removal. He probably opened the article before you saved your edit removing the csd tag and deleted it. -- GB fan 00:39, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: You still don't get it do you? Significance means it might be notable. That claim turned up things that help establish notability. It is a credible claim of significance. Adam9007 (talk) 00:42, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

You don't get it, what turns up in a search means nothing in a csd. All that matters is what is in the article and this one had no claim to significance. -- GB fan 00:46, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

No. Did you not read what I said? That claim gave a fair few sources. That is a claim of significance. It does matter what a search might turn up. All of what I've said is backed up at WP:CCS. Adam9007 (talk) 00:48, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I gave the whole article above. There were no sources in the article. I don't follow how you read a credible claim to significance in the words of the article. -- GB fan 01:10, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Adam9007: Did it every occur to you that maybe it's you who don't get it? For example, you removed the A7 that I placed on Bob Sanders (politician), but I'm at a loss to understand what you thought was a significant claim in the article.- MrX 00:50, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm at a loss as to how people think significance means notability, as that's what seems to be happening here. Adam9007 (talk) 00:53, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

MrX, that's a bad example. That article does contain a CCS. VQuakr (talk) 00:56, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Adam9007 was correct to remove the A7 tag from Bob Sanders - being an elected politician, at any level, is a credible claim of significance. Thparkth (talk) 00:59, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not aware that that's a widely held view here. I know there are editors (and admins) that would refute the idea of that being an elected politician is a claim of significance.- MrX 01:04, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

This is why we have AfD. If a CSD is disputed, take it to XfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:06, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good protocol.- MrX 01:17, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

WP:A7 and WP:CCS (an essay linked in the policy) both make clear that significance is a much lower standard than notability. VQuakr (talk) 01:12, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I assure you, I understand the difference between notability and significance. There's a large gray, middle area where determining whether something is significant is a matter of opinion.- MrX 01:17, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Heard. "Alderman" doesn't really fall into that gray area, though, in my opinion. Particularly not the the extent of reacting to the contested A7 as if it were problem behavior. Could his various elected positions have plausibly resulted in press coverage meeting the GNG? Sure, so: AfD not A7. VQuakr (talk) 01:21, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

People retire from sports with lots of money and often spend the rest of their lives dribbling it into business venture after business venture after business venture. It's unremarkable. As far as I know, most of them are unknown to almost everyone. So the fact that a given business venture might have, among its "founders", a person who happens to have made his money in sports doesn't make it stand out, at least to me, in any way from every business venture whose founders don't happen to number among them someone who made his money in sports. Maybe I'm not sufficiently starry-eyed over sports figures, but that's my perspective. —Largo Plazo (talk) 01:05, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

The essay WP:A7M also backs me up. It's been suggested that I launch an RfC to see if it should be promoted to a guideline. Given the opposition here, I don't think that's likely. However, I've left a message on his talk page about it. Adam9007 (talk) 01:10, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

If one of the reasons you're tired of people bringing up WP:NOTINHERITED is that it's only an essay, then why are you citing WP:A7M, which directs to a single person's opinion expressed in his own user space? —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:26, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

It's not just because it's an essay. 1) It's about AfD, not CSD. 2) It's about notability, not significance. It's about it not being notable purely by relation to something notable, whereas significance is about whether it may be notable (there's a difference). 3) I'm not implying inherited notability by removing an A7 tag. Anyone who thinks that clearly doesn't understand what significance actually is. Adam9007 (talk) 03:08, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

It certainly annoys me if a contested speedy is deleted anyway. OTOH removing a speedy sounds like a bad case of IAR. –Be..anyone 💩 03:11, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean? We're allowed to remove speedy tags. Adam9007 (talk) 03:14, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Good question, maybe the do not remove blurb with a contest button affects only {{copyvio}} in the file namespace (images etc.) –Be..anyone 💩 03:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

@Be..anyone: anyone except the page creator can contest a speedy by removing the template. VQuakr (talk) 06:24, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for info, I wasn't aware of it (obviously, my first "contest speedy" attempt). –Be..anyone 💩 06:28, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the main issue Adam brought up, I believe that speedy deletion should be uncontroversial and therefore, like PROD, any editor (who isn't involved with the article) should be allowed to remove the speedy deletion without allowing the same criterion to be applied again. Exceptions would be attack page, copyvio, etc. Absolutely have seen the issue Adam brought up many times, and I strongly believe it should have gone to XfD or PROD at least. Appable (talk) 17:07, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

• I know it will be dismissed as an outrageous suggestion but has nobody among the contributors above considered the possibility of starting a new, properly referenced article about GFBiochemicals? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 19:17, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

• Now you're just talking crazy talk. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 20:21, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
• The point is that while it may not be a notable company, and while I doubt anyone cares too much for recreating the article, it should at least get a discussion or some time through a process such as AfD or PROD. Speedy deletion bypasses those processes and therefore should only be used in very limited, narrow conditions. We aren't debating right now whether the article should be on Wikipedia, we're discussing whether, in cases like these, articles should be deleted under a speedy deletion criterion. Appable (talk) 21:32, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
• Well, we probably could have, but that isn't the point. Adam9007 (talk) 21:21, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

• I agree that once the speedy tag is removed by an uninvolved editor, the article should be sent to AfD rather than just speedied baring serious problems (BLP, copyright, etc.). Hobit (talk) 05:44, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

@Ricky81682: @Thparkth: @Appable: @VQuakr: @SmokeyJoe: @GB fan: @MrX: @Largoplazo: @Be..anyone: @Ultraexactzz: @Hobit: (I hope I haven't missed anyone) FYI, I've taken this to DRV, as it looks like nothing more's going to come out of this discussion and related discussions. Adam9007 (talk) 23:03, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Draft:Iowa Lakes Community College

Is this a valid G13? It meets all of the criteria for an abandoned draft except for one -- it was never submitted to AFC. There is now a much better draft for this topic at User:Kurtisokc/Iowa Lakes Community College. I would like to move the user page to draft space, but the apparently abandoned draft is there. Is there some other way to get rid of it? Robert McClenon (talk) 14:49, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

The history is that there was a promotional article in article space, and it was speedy-deleted as G11. The author is a promotional-only account that has not edited in a while (but I can't see edits to speedied articles). Robert McClenon (talk) 14:49, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I will be MFD'ing the draft, but is there a quicker way to get rid of the draft? Robert McClenon (talk) 14:49, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

As I read things, no. It's most likely abandoned, is a COI creation (but not promo in wording), but wouldn't be subject to CSD for notability in main space as it is an educational establishment. G13 is for submitted or unsubmitted things in the AfC 'space', but for anywhere else, they have to use the AfC template format. This is purely a Draft space creation with no special format, and G13 doesn't apply. You are right to take it to MfD. There is now an article Iowa Lakes Community College by Kurtisokc, so this draft is redundant. Peridon (talk) 12:56, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

• Agree with sending it to MFD... Redundant now that we have an article (in Mainspace) on the topic.

Note that the page we are discussing is in Draftspace (not Userspace)... Which means that the recent discussions on what to do with "abandoned" Userspace drafts should not apply. Blueboar (talk) 13:16, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

• No, G13 has been rejected repeatedly for non-AFC draftspace drafts in part because people don't consider there an abandonment standard there. It's supposed to be a common-area for people to work on stuff, not an userspace where we can definitely point to one user and check on staleness that way. There is no shortcut to MFD. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:48, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: prolong period of postponing deletion of empty categories from 4 days to 14 days

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

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The risk of deleting empty categories (per C1) is that they were merely emptied in order to bypass CfD, there aren't any checks on this that I know of. Proposal here is postponing the actual deletion of an empty category to 14 days after tagging it as empty, instead of 4 days after tagging, so that editors of articles will have more time to revert a category removal from their article in case the deletion is controversial. Then a C1 deletion should no longer be called "speedy", of course. Please comment on this proposal. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:21, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

I see the merit of this proposal. On the other hand, 14 days is not "speedy" any more. After all is said and done, I think there is no real need for this, because 1. Many admins check if the category wasn't emptied out of process before deleting 2. It is easy to restore a category, should it prove to have been deleted unjustly. Debresser (talk) 21:35, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Support changing to 7 days: per most existing processes. I might add that unnecessarily having different wait periods for different procedures violates WP:CREEP. Mdrnpndr (talk) 22:59, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

There are no other speedy criteria for categories that have a 7-day period, only the criteria that pertain to files and T3 have a 7-day period, so speaking about "most existing processes" is factually completely incorrect and misleading. That having said, I agree with your point in and of itself, and in view of the call to prolong the period, 7 days is a good idea. I just want to clarify, superfluously perhaps, that the request can be denied before that, e.g. if the category was emptied out of process. Debresser (talk) 07:15, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

@User:Debresser: Sorry if I wasn't clear enough – I meant existing processes across Wikipedia, not just those relating to categories or even speedy deletion. And yes, the request can certainly be denied before that. Mdrnpndr (talk) 03:18, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

• 7 days would be fine with me as well, and to take it further across all existing processes even better. How should we actually implement this? Do we need a further discussion elsewhere to begin with? Marcocapelle (talk) 07:07, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

User:Marcocapelle, I suggest starting an RfC in a new section here. (A new section should be used so other editors don't think the RfC is too old to comment on.) Mdrnpndr (talk) 13:25, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

I'd be fine with 7 days. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:42, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

I see consensus for 7 days, and don't think an Rfc is necessary. I propose somebody make the edit. Debresser (talk) 18:00, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Come to think of it, you're right. Maybe ask someone to close this section formally and then make the edit? WP:AN/RFC? Mdrnpndr (talk) 18:04, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Editing the WP:CSD page won't be enough. You will also need to amend Template:Db-c1, Template:Db-catempty-notice and Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion; and inform bot operators as well. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:59, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't really see any harm in extending the period for C1, but I also don't see any evidence of a problem. Can you cite any examples of editors controversially emptying categories?--Mojo Hand (talk) 01:32, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

That's kinda difficult, as although cat membership changes may be watchlisted (new feature, as of a few weeks ago), they're not logged in the cat history. So you really need to catch somebody in the act, either by having watchlisted the cat and spotted a whole heap of removals, or by having watchlisted one or more of its members - once you see a category removal, you look at that editor's recent edits to see if it's one of several. See for example recent activity of Arius1988 (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 07:44, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

I remember that it used to happen quite often. Debresser (talk) 10:46, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

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

RfC: Does G8 apply to category redirects?

Question answered as all of the pages referenced in this discussion have all been deleted per WP:CSD#G8. A complete 30-day RfC period is no longer necessary to address this. Steel1943 (talk) 22:25, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

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Does WP:CSD#G8 apply to category redirects such as Category:Possibly unfree files‎ and Category:Wikipedia files with unknown source for deletion in dispute‎, which are soft redirects to the deleted Category:Wikipedia possibly unfree files? 24.205.8.104 (talk) 03:03, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

• Yes, soft redirects to a target that has been deleted are clearly "Pages dependent on a non-existent or deleted page". If the target has been renamed and the soft redirect is still useful pointer to it then the page should be updated, otherwise it can be deleted per WP:CSD#G8. If you wish to contest the speedy deletion of a soft redirect, you may nominate it at WP:RFD. Thryduulf (talk) 10:39, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
• I agree with Thryduulf, it does apply to those redirects. I think they meant nominate at WP:DRV instead of WP:RFD. -- GB fan 13:02, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I should indeed have been more clear. If you want to challenge before deletion then do so at WP:RFD, if you want to challenge after deletion then talk to the deleting admin followed (if necessary) by WP:DRV. Thryduulf (talk) 13:06, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
    • @Thryduulf and GB fan: If there was another viable target for a soft redirect deleted per G8, wouldn't it simply be permissible to recreate it pointing there? It wouldn't be substantially identical to the deleted version (hence ineligible for G4).—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 06:56, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
      • I'd say normally yes. Thryduulf (talk) 08:56, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
      • With what we are talking about here G4 wouldn't apply at all to a recreated redirect. We are discussing redirects deleted via G8, G4 only applies to pages deleted via a deletion discussion. So if they are recreated with a valid target they shouldn't grrr speedy deleted. -- GB fan 11:15, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
• Yes, it does. G8 applies to all pages which are dependent on another page where that page does not exist or has been deleted. Category redirects (or any other sort of soft redirects) depend on the target page, so G8 deletion is appropriate if the target doesn't exist. Hut 8.5 16:26, 15 May 2016 (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.

G13 and redundant drafts

Is G13 applicable to redundant drafts, that is to drafts for which there exists a corresponding article in mainspace? If not, should there be some other CSD criterion under which such redundant drafts can be speedily deleted? I am asking because I have just come across such a situation, see Draft:Paul Glaister and Paul Glaister. It appears that in this particular case both pages were created by the same user who, after having had Draft:Paul Glaister repeatedly declined at AfC, went ahead and directly created a corresponding article in namespace (effectively abandoning the draft). Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 19:41, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

See WP:MfD for many cases of this. Often they are deleted, but I think that redirecting the redundant draft to the article is a better course of action because it lets anyone who tries to write on the subject in the future know that a mainspace page already exists. This is not always immediately obvious when the subject is obscure, as the draft author often uses a slightly different title than the previous article author. Redirection stops them from recreating the draft out of ignorance about the existence of the article. As an added bonus, redirecting does not require an admin to review and button-push, saving some valuable time. A2soup (talk) 05:41, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

• G13 was implemented *only* for AfC submissions. That is a matter of history. There is a proposal to amend that, at the top of this page, at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#G13_Drafts, but I would characterise that proposal as derailed and going nowhere. There is a large proportion of Wikipedian who do not support routine deletion of drafts, even if old. A very relevant RfC, Wikipedia:User pages/RfC for stale drafts policy restructuring, is in the process of closing.

On redundant drafts, I think that definitely the best thing to do is to redirect the weaker to the stronger, usually redirect the stubby new draft to the old mainspace article. A positive purpose in doing this is that the draft author will be taken to the better place should he return. And so will any other drafter seeking to draft on the same topic without checking mainspace. If deletion is to be required, it means an administrative overhead cost for every ill-conceived draft, and this cost seriously devalues the net benefit of draftspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:12, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

• RE Paul Glaister

That story confirms my old impression, that anyone who wants to write an article in Wikipedia is better advised to draft it straight into mainspace. DraftSpace AfC submissions is a voluntary process of jumping through extra hoops, is of no benefit for a worthy topic, but its main value is in keeping newcomer cruft out of mainspace. Quite dubious, I think. I think draftspace should be shut down, and new article writers should be require to perform 100 mainspace edits before being allowed to create a new article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:18, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks. Being mostly retired, I entirely missed the launch of the draft name-space. When I did notice its existence, I sort of assumed that it was created to specifically deal with AfC submissions and for no other purpose. But generally, I tend to agree with you regarding both draft and AfC. I don't quite understand why they are really necessary and why we wouldn't be better off shutting them down. When I look at AfC, I find it really strange that some IP editors (or even newly registered editors) are willing to jump through lots of hoops, bureaucratic complications, waiting and rejection associated with the AfC process, but are not willing to register an account, and just start editing, including creating articles in mainspace. It seems like much less hassle, as the editor who created the Paul Glaister article discovered. I also have the impression that AfC creates artificial maintenance backlogs, possibly lingering copyvio problems and somehow discourages some newcomers from jumping into the fray, getting their hands dirty and becoming regular WP editors. But that's just a feeling ... Regarding Draft:Paul Glaister, I do see that it has an AfC category tag, so it is probably easiest to wait until July 19, when it can be CSD-ed under G13. Nsk92 (talk) 02:17, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

• I'd say no just because G13 only applies to stale AFC drafts. I've seen pages deleted as technical non-controversial deletions which is probably true. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:54, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

  "technical non-controversial deletions" being WP:CSD#G6. This criterion is often misused as a kind of none-of-the-others-fit criterion to catch anything that would otherwise fall through the net. This is not its purpose. If the person putting a page up for speedy deletion can't find a valid reason among the many criteria that we do have at WP:CSD, then it's not eligible for speedy. A number of times, I've found pages in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion for unspecified reason because somebody has used {{delete}} on its own. Other than obvious WP:CSD#G7 or WP:CSD#U1 cases, I often deny them on the grounds that it's a drive-by tagging with no thought behind it. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:54, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

• Both are true but I do think a redundant draft would be a plausible use. I've seen it more as an admin taking care of it themself. Either way, G13 is not a valid rationale. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:59, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

• I think redundant drafts should be redirected, not deleted, for the assistance of the author, to prevent the same mistake being made by a later newcomer, and because filling the admin workload and deletion logs with draftspace fails is entirely unproductive. However, I will never formally complain about a specific redundant draft being deleted because that would be a much greater absurdity of mis-productivity. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:43, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

• I generally use G6, under the general principle of NOT BURO, unless it seems that this is the draft for the article when it was started in article space, it which case it should be redirected to the article talk page; The AfC script is supposed to do this automatically, but if article are moved to mainspace outside the script, it is often not done. DGG ( talk ) 05:13, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
• There are several options available for redundant drafts - 1) blank and redirect to the mainspace article, 2) merge and redirect into the mainspace article, 3) Userfy (move into an editor's Userspace), 4) delete. Which is most appropriate to do depends on the state of both the draft and the mainspace article. That can not be an automatic speedy decision... It has to be reviewed. Blueboar (talk) 12:06, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

G11s in Draft Space

I would like to start a general discussion about when the G11 tag is appropriate on articles in draft space. It is straightforward in article space, for articles that are meant for advertising or promotional purposes and cannot reasonably be fixed. However, it is sometimes used in draft space, both by AFC reviewers and by editors who are not AFC reviewers. Can anyone propose a general set of guidelines for when it is and is not appropriate in draft space? In my opinion, it clearly should not be applied as strictly in draft space, because one of the purposes of draft space is to give authors a chance to improve drafts. It appears that a few editors routinely apply it to sandboxes that have any advertising quality. (My assumption is that they see them on New Page Patrol. Maybe drafts that have been submitted for AFC shouldn't be reviewed on New Page Patrol at all because AFC is a better review than NPP, but that is not the question here.) I apply it to drafts that aren't written in anything resembling the formal neutral tone of Wikipedia, in particular, that use the first person plural pronoun and sometimes the second person pronoun, speaking collectively out of Wikipedia to the viewer. I have seen it applied to autobiographies that are written in Wikipedia style, and I am not sure that it should be used on them. Does anyone else have comments about applying G11 to drafts? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:32, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

I am one of the eds. who does use it in draft space, but I use iy much more cautiously than I would in article space. An article is in draft space in order to be looked at and improved, and in many cases the promotional material can be dealt with, even if it takes considerable rewriting of the article. In article space, G11 applies if it would take fundamental rewriting instead of just editing out some promotional sections. I apply it in draft space only to articles that are so entirely promotional that it does not seem any rewriting would help, except for starting over completely.

One very important practical purpose of Draft space is to try to get rid of the advertising material, and it does help do that--it probably removes about 3/4 of the material that would otherwise enter mainspace and need to be speedy deleted there. Most of this gets removed by being repeatedly rejected until the ed. gives up--and if they do not after 3 or 4 tries the draft often gets taken to MfD & deleted there.

We could I suppose make a special rule for draft space, but I think the problem of advertising in WP is so extensive that we need to retain the maximum flexibility. DGG ( talk ) 20:00, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Adding a footnote to expand the clarification for A11

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Hello all. On March 11 this year I had posted a suggestion on this talk page about adding a footnote for A11. It garnered one response and then got archived. Copying the discussions that happened then and requesting for any other comments. Thanks. Xender Lourdes (talk) 02:30, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

The previous archived discussions
Xender Lourdes (talk) 02:30, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Hello. I am adding a footnote to A11 to expand the clarification of A11 to reduce the errors of CSD tagging of A11. The footnote is as follows: <ref>For the CSD A11 tag to be applied to any article, it is not enough requirement that the subject seems to have been made up one day. There has to be an evidently visible plain indication – without the need for additional research – to any neutral editor viewing the article text and the related contributions of the author, that the author or someone they know may have invented/coined/discovered the subject of the article. The criterion does not apply to any article where such a "plain indication" is not evident. At the same time, the requirement of a plain indication does not preclude attempts to reasonably confirm the existence or significance of the topic. Editors are strongly encouraged to undertake such reasonable research on the topic before nominating an article under this criteria.</ref> If any updations/deletions/additions are required, do please suggest. Thanks. Xender Lourdes (talk) 05:10, 9 March 2016 (UTC) That footnote uses language that seems a bit redundant. If you says "there must be a plain indication", repeating "it doesn't apply if there isn't a plain indication" is redundant and condescending. If there is consensus for this change, I would suggest modifying it to something like: <ref>For the CSD A11 tag to be applied to an article, there has to be a plain indication – without the need for additional research – that the author or someone they know may have invented/coined/discovered the subject of the article. At the same time, editors are strongly encouraged to confirm the existence or significance of the topic before nominating an article under this criteria.</ref> However, I'm not sure that there is consensus for the "without additional research" clause. Imagine, for example (and this is similar to a real case I came across not too long ago), an article created by JohnDoe105412 for the term Oraspulatic, that says "Oraspulatic is a term popularized by the website oraspulatic.wordpress.com", the website in question starts with "I developed the term oraspulatic a few years ago to describe how awesome I am", and the only other websites that mention the term are message board and reddit threads started by JohnDoe105412. In this case, the article plainly indicates that the term was created by a website, the website plainly indicates it was created one day, and the reasonable attempts to confirm significance failed. There is still a plain indication that the subject was "made up one day", it just requires a bare minimum of additional research. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 16:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC) Thanks Ahecht. Is there any other change anyone might wish to recommend before I put the footnote? Xender Lourdes (talk) 02:11, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

• Any comments below this line please. Xender Lourdes (talk) 02:30, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

• I don't see that the proposed footnote really clarifies anything. It seems to be just a long-winded reword in of the A11 criteria. Do you have examples of problematic taggings that this is trying to address? Whpq

• Whpq thanks for the response. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ouch my toes are burining was an issue which I ran into. Xender Lourdes (talk) 13:41, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

• What I see from that example is that you did not understand the A11 criteria. Now you do. So what problem remains?--Whpq (talk) 00:25, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

• Whpq, to ensure avoidance of mistakes by relatively lesser experienced editors. If you think this is unneeded, we can archive this discussion as other editors too have mentioned the same here. Xender Lourdes (talk) 01:47, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose - no indication that there is any problem needing to be addressed. --Whpq (talk) 01:51, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:CLUE. Guy (Help!) 13:54, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

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

Guidance required please

Is there a CSD criteria/tag for images that are attack/vandalism images? If yes, can you please guide me to that? If not, is there a possibility that we can have the same? Thanks for your time. Xender Lourdes (talk) 11:09, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

For attack images: WP:G10. For vandalism images: WP:G3. Though see WP:VANDAL for what is and is not vandalism. Please note that these criteria do not apply to images hosted on Wikimedia Commons. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 11:22, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Quite helpful. Xender Lourdes (talk) 11:25, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

The G criteria apply in all namespaces except where specifically excluded, such as User: space being excluded from WP:CSD#G2. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:36, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose64. Understood. Xender Lourdes (talk) 11:45, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Merge A9 into A7?

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

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I don't see the point of A9 any more. Per this RfC having a notable recording artist would likely constitute a credible claim of significance anyway (those that have articles tend to be notable), making the no-recording-artist-having-an-article requirement totally redundant. I've seen articles about musical recordings whose artist does have an article tagged A9 when it's clear the artist's article will be deleted (they technically don't meet A9 until it has been deleted). I'm proposing that we scrap that requirement and merge what's left of A9 into A7; it's senseless to have them as separate criteria. Adam9007 (talk) 23:47, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose' Well-defined. No harm even if redundant. When merge many things into one, you will have to explain which "bullet" of the rule is applied. Also, I don't see how the merge resolves the "circular nonnotability" you described. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:59, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
  • "Circular nonnotability"? Huh? Adam9007 (talk) 02:10, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose I'd agree there's a strong argument that A9 is a subordinate variety of A7 but A9 has a bright-line component ("none of the contributing recording artists has an article") as well as the more subjective question of significance. The presence or lack of an artist's article is a strong guide to the significance of the recording. As such it's less prone to the subjective assessments which surround A7. for (;;) (talk) 10:15, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Consider the case where somebody creates an article on Bringers of Darkness, citing a few local news reports and some mentions on regional radio shows. (The details don't really matter, but the point is to have an article that can clear A7 but not AfD). At the same time, they create My love for you is swimming through the rapids like a broken arow EP with a full tracklisting. Now, A7 doesn't apply to albums, and neither does A9 while the parent band article exists. Fortunately, a more seasoned chap steps up to the plate and nominates the "Bringers" for AfD, claiming the sources just aren't enough to make an article exist, and a week later, it's gone. Now A9 comes into play, because who wants to have another AfD discussion about the parallel EP? Nobody. A9 without A7. So there are situations where the two criteria work independently of each other. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:00, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
  • @Ritchie333: So are you saying that song and album articles are dependant on the artist's? It sounds to me like you're saying that when an artist's article is deleted, all articles about his songs or albums are automatically eligible for speedy deletion. That sounds a lot like G8 to me, which is not what we're talking about. If that is the case, then we may as well scrap A9 and let G8 handle it. It makes no sense to have 2 criteria for the same thing (whether A9's a "subset" of A7 or G8). Adam9007 (talk) 00:04, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Per above...TJH2018talk 04:41, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose, Ritchie illustrates it well. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:53, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. More generally, I don't see the value in condensing the CSD criteria for the sake of condensing. If the community decides a certain type of article should no longer be speedily deleted, that's one thing, but getting rid of one criteria and reworking another without changing what actually gets deleted isn't worth the administrative overhead. ~ Rob^Talk 05:39, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reason A9 is a separate criterion is because it has an additional condition? That condition is now redundant, and A9 is now essentially A7 but for songs and albums. It seems the only reason we're suggesting they remain separate is because we're too lazy to clean up after ourselves. Adam9007 (talk) 00:04, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

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

There was an RFC that effects this page

In case anyone else didn't see it, there was an RFC and the outcome effects the interpretation of A7. It can be found on the essay talk page at, Wikipedia talk:Credible claim of significance#RfC: Can SIGNIFICANCE be inherited?. -- GB fan 23:17, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

G3 vs A11

Suppose there is a page about a self-declared nation which was obviously made up by somebody. Would that be eligible for G3 (hoax) or A11 (made up) or maybe even both? I was doubting which one to apply to RIBBS. - HyperGaruda (talk) 14:49, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Apply both if you're sure about it being a hoax and being "obviously made up by the article's creator or someone they know personally". Xender Lourdes (talk) 16:45, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

In my view, it is a question of intent. If they are trying to trick people into thinking their made up thing is real, then its a G3 Hoax. If they straight up say they just created it, or otherwise make it obvious, I'd say its A11 (assuming its not also disruptive in a more serious way). But ultimately, if it is obviously getting deleted either way, the specific rationale isn't a huge deal, it really only matters on the close calls. Also, Admins can always delete under what they view as the correct criteria even if they disagree with the specific tag you applied. Monty₈₄₅ 02:53, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Monty took the words out of my mouth. Building onto that, I'd like to note that G3 is also used for "pure vandalism" for a reason. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:01, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

In A11, there is an element of AGF. It may not be encyclopaedic, it may not be notable, it may not even be significant for more than a class at a school somewhere - but there is a chance that it is true. G3 (hoax) is for things that are deliberate misinformation, posted possibly as tests for us, or as showing off to the author's mates, or to try to deliberately lower Wikipedia's value. A self-declared nation could be as 'real' as most of the micronations get - that is one's parents' house plus a mate's bedroom and a disused hut in the park, and an entry in the micronations wiki - but if it is declared here to be self declared, then I would put it in A11. I'd use G3 for something on the lines of San Seriffe that appeared in the Daily Telegraph one April 1st, and which didn't indicate anywhere in the article that the country was fictional. That is misinformation, and easily provable to be so. Bedroom micronations are hard to disprove, as are new drinking games and neologisms, and it's for things like those that A11 was introduced. It should not be used for people, IMO. A person who doesn't exist, and isn't a genuine legend or myth or published fictional character, has to be a hoax. (If stated to be a character in an unpublished book, A11 would apply.) Also, a possibly real person who is stated to be a millionaire who founded his company at the age of six, is now 10 and dating Lady Gaga, is an obvious G3. This is how I see the differences between A11 and G3. AGF applies to A11 - but an element or more of vandalism means G3. And if there is doubt, go to AfD. Peridon (talk) 11:01, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

@Peridon: I remember the occasion, and it wasn't the Torygraph, it was in the Guardian. My parents were keen Guardian readers and Liberal voters, and would never allow that other organ in the house. But they did spot the spoof straight away, it was a supplement in the centre pages. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:19, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

My apologies. Yes, the Grauniad was the one not the Jellygraph. Peridon (talk) 19:19, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

• Example G3 - "Death of Jon Bon Jovi - Jon Bon Jovi was pronounced dead at 3am EST June 14 2016. A statement revealed the death was owing to nautral causes. No suspicious circumstances were reported." (also arguably G10 if obviously false)
• Example A11 - "Frustration Ball - Frustration Ball is a variation of netball where people have to make the most frustrating moves possible. The game was invented by Shayne Tracey and Tim "Kinnie" Kingsworth when breaking off rehearsals for their "hardcore" band, "Bringers of Darkness" show at the Lobster Thermidore au Crevettes Club this coming Tuesday." Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:10, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. That all cleared things up a lot for me :) - HyperGaruda (talk) 20:55, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Extending A9 to books

Not to derail the discussion about merging A9 into A7, but: Would it make sense to extend A9 to books? Largoplazo (talk) 10:36, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

On the basis of my reasoning in the RfC, yes, a bit of factual grist to the CSD raises it above an opinion of what constitutes significance. Obviously there will always be exceptions (Primary Colors (novel) springs to mind) but since it's phrased as AND, not OR ("both conditions must be met"), this would be a welcome extension of A9. for (;;) (talk) 12:48, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

If somebody can supply me with a recent corpus of book AfDs, all of which closed in unanimous snow delete, it may be worth considering. Otherwise, it's probably not worth it. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:01, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

How about successful PRODs? I'm asking because I typically see these snow-worthy entries getting deleted through the PROD process. Largoplazo (talk) 13:14, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, closed AFD debates no longer carry a category indicating their field (in this case, fiction and the arts), so it's not as easy to do a search as one might hope. Largoplazo (talk) 13:20, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

• oppose this has been discussed several (maybe many) times previously. There is always a very strong connection between one or more artists and a musical recording such that it is extremely improbable that an article about a recording by a non-notable artist will be itself notable. The same is just not true of books, where the product can be more notable than the creator(s), translator(s), editor(s), etc. and that's even just when these people are known - the Voynich manuscript for example could be speedily deleted under an A9 applied to books, as could most encyclopaedias, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 06:51, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

• I don't see how the Voynich manuscript or an encyclopedia is any more an argument against A9 treatment for books than songs like Alouette and Michael Row the Boat Ashore and Greensleeves are arguments against A9 treatment for songs. That's what the credible claim of significance provision is for. Largoplazo (talk) 10:24, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
• User:Largoplazo, because A9 is not songs, but musical recordings, a very big difference. Those folks songs you mentioned were songs long before anyone recorded them. Similarly, a song like Maple Leaf Rag doesn't qualify either, as it was published as sheet music, not a recording. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:24, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose per every other discussion we've had on this for the last 6 years at least. I don't see what's changed about this proposal or books in general that would make this proposal the one to get accepted. Appable (talk) 22:21, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose unless someone can show me that we have a problem with otherwise not speediable book topics(e.g. several books in AFD per day)--Müdigkeit (talk) 22:34, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
• Comment A9 is an AND gate, not an OR gate. The Frimley manuscript would be deletable under the new A9, as it would be non-notable (you first heard of it here...) and its author would be unknown, and the finder of this incomprehensible work (a house painter called Augustus Frimley, who discovered the document in a terraced house in Rawtenstall, UK in 2015) would non-notable. The Voynich manuscript has a history giving it the notability to escape A9 even though the author is as unknowable as is the meaning of the document. In the case of self-published books, I could see a use for this extension as they are very rarely notable, and nor are the authors. Any exception to this will fairly certainly be widely enough known to pass notability. Books by regular publishers are far more likely to have notability (although this is not guaranteed), and would be better handled by prod or AfD (unless promotional, of course...). Peridon (talk) 10:42, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Merger of U1 into G7

Hello everyone. I think that it is possible to merge CSD U1 into A7 as they all say "someone request deletion". NasssaNsercontribs 10:35, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Neither of them says "someone request deletion". One says the person who created the page requested deletion, and the other says the person in whose userspace the page is placed requested deletion. Those are two quite different things, and I don't see how it would improve anything to merge them. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:29, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

In practice, G7 could apply to most U1 requests. The major difference seems to be that a U1 request can be applied to a userpage even if other editors have made substantive edits to that page. Given that difference, I think it makes sense to have to have separate criteria.--Mojo Hand (talk) 14:51, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

I've never thought any of the mergers of speedy criteria we've done in the past have turned out to be net positives. They all described different situations that, while related in theme, have to be assessed differently by the reviewing administrator, and all have different exemptions that each really only apply to one of the merged criteria. Look at the mishmash G8 has become: [[Article 1]] redirecting to [[Article 2]] which redirects in turn back to [[Article 1]] is very different from [[Category:Articles transcluding some deleted template]], which is in turn different from [[Talk:Some deleted article]] (and even that has to be looked at with a different mindset from [[Talk:Some article that never existed]]). U1 vs. G7 is no exception. (Expansions of criteria, such as A6 "attack articles" into any namespace as G10, are a different matter.) —Cryptic 02:51, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Hasty tagging

There is a template {{hasty}} and associated message template {{uw-hasty}}, basically telling people not to tag articles for meeting certain criteria when the article has only just been created. However, I don't see anything about this policy on this project page. Does this mean:

• It's been overlooked?
• There is no such policy, and as such the templates are nonsense (and therefore qualify for T2)?
• It's just a request, not a policy?

Even if 3 is the case, there probably should be something about it here. At the moment, there's no way that editors new to the speedy deletion process are likely to know that they are supposed to wait 15 minutes after an article was created before tagging it as A1, A3, A7 or A9.

Moreover, I've just had my arm slapped for tagging an article too soon even though this time window had elapsed. True, it had been edited several times in the intervening period, but these edits didn't actually add any content. But the creator did actually add some content a few minutes later, so thinking about it now I suppose it was essentially an instance of hasty tagging, though it doesn't meet the 'official' definition.

As such, I think we need to decide by some means or another whether we should have a 'hasty' window relative to the time an article was last edited, what length of time this window should be, and whether it should be relative to the last edit whatsoever or the last edit that actually added content. What are people's thoughts on this? — Smjg (talk) 10:44, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

It is a suggestion, or a best practice, to be applied with common sense. The reason it's not part of a guideline or policy is because it's not supported by consensus. You may want to read some of the previous threads that discuss it in the archives of this page.- MrX 12:04, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree that it's a best practice, and to be applied with common sense. That seems to be the consensus in most discussions. If so, it probably should get a mention in the main page.--Mojo Hand (talk) 13:43, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

WP:NPP#Special:NewPagesFeed says "a good rule of thumb is to wait about 15 minutes after the last edit before tagging the article". It's long been suggested that Special:NewPages should be patrolled from the back of the queue - i.e. those pages which are not the newest in the list, but the oldest. The thing is, some people simply start at the top and work down - which means that they are patrolling from the front, and are only considering the newest creations; this means that the oldest creations may never be reached, and they drop out of the 30-day queue.

Except in certain specific cases - such as attack pages and copyright violations - it does no harm to let the page stand for an hour, a day, a week. Putting something created by a newbie up for e.g. WP:A1 soon after creation is WP:BITEy. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:38, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I like to see WP:G11 (obvious advertising) vanish as soon as possible. I cannot imagine us leaving blatent free spam to stand on visual display for a day or a week. I suppose we each have our own particular allergies to which article triggers faster tagging...Fylbecatulous talk 19:52, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

My two examples were not an exhaustive list. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:15, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Not sure there is consensus to wait a day or a week, but there seems to be historic consensus to at least wait 10-15 minutes before tagging some pages. In addition to the NPP instructions, I just recalled that footnote 6 on the WP:CSD page refers to this consensus for A1 and A3 tags.--Mojo Hand (talk) 21:37, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

If a page quacks knock it on the head immediately in this case it didnt quack and I would have thought very obvious traits of something more like that of an experienced editor ie infobox(with content) and cats an hour isnt all that long to wait. Gnangarra 23:12, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

A7 for products

I know this has come up in the past, but responses seemed to be split between "don't expand A7" and "it seems logical to add it." I'm in the latter camp. Products in particular often suffer from NOTPROMO, and many times, once that is trimmed, there is a remainder (thus not "blatant promo" under G11), but that remainder is "A is a B made by C" with one source left (so it can't be A1). So it seems that products are one of the things that can easily fall through the cracks of CSD. As we don't have the levels of participation at AfD as we did even a few years ago, I'm all in favor of not overloading that process wherever possible, and it seems to me that sending a blatant WP:ENN article with one source to AfD isn't a good use of the process. I also don't feel it's overextending A7, because the fundamental use of A7 is "Unremarkable X (with no assertion of notability)." Is it worth revisiting as an RFC? MSJapan (talk) 19:16, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm curious what you think has changed since the last times this was brought up (obviously you're aware that this is a fairly common discussion and never has had consensus). Unless something significant has changed since prior discussions, I don't see much point in bringing up another perennial proposal.

For reference, here are some previous A7 product discussions (that had some participation):

• Software products, from 2007
• All products, from 2010
• All products, from later in 2010
• All products, from 2013
• All products, A9 expansion, from 2014

While the number of product articles has expanded somewhat, in general I don't see why another discussion would lead to a different outcome than any of the above discussions. Appable (talk) 19:40, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

My personal impression is that products are such a broad category (and one that is kept relatively frequently at AfD) that it makes far more sense to use PROD or AfD than risk speedily deleting articles. In my view, speedily deleting articles that could be improved (without rewriting) hurts Wikipedia significantly. While A7 as a policy has not changed for a while, it has increasingly been applied quickly to articles that do include credible claims of significance. Many products don't appear notable at first in AfD discussions until another editor finds more sources, so it seems like products would be particularly susceptible to being deleted by quick applications of A7 under this proposal. Additionally, the definition of product is fairly contestable - do books constitute products, for example? That gets into a different discussion as well. Appable (talk) 19:50, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Heck, even the wikipedia article "product (business)" sucks. In any case, if put here, it must be in sync with WP:CORP. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:34, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

If a product is by a notable author/owner, the solution is simple: "merge". If notability of both product and author are questionable, then IMO wikipedia is not a vehicle for their promotion. Is speedy deletion was contested, there is no hassle to restore, otherwise (i.e., no product champion comes to the rescue) why bother? Wikipedia is encyclopedia not product catalog; no big deal we miss one or two of borderline notability. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:28, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

My hit rate for CSD is really poor...

but I'd have though that Treponema spirochetes, which doesn't exist in real life but exists on WP because somebody misread the single source that the article is sourced to, could have been CSDed as a WP:HOAX even though it was not maliciously so. It was declined, which is fine, because the decliner AfDed it and it's clearly going to go away, so I'm not going to undercut the AfD, but it definitely seems that CSD is a lot narrower than it used to be.

However, why is there no CSD criteria by which an article that is a) obviously incorrect (to the point where it is indistinguishable from being made-up); b) can't be fixed (because the topic is nonexistent) but c) wasn't intentionally created as a hoax (meaning with intent), deletable? It seems like that's a perfect CSD candidate, but there's no CSD criteria it actually fits. MSJapan (talk) 05:39, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever heard of the case you describe before today. See the header of this very page for the criteria for criteria for speedy deletion. Namely the third point: 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. Indeed, even the concept of A11 has been up in the air long before it was actually officially added as a CSD. →Σσς. (Sigma) 05:53, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I would think that A11 could cover cases similar to this one. The made-up criterion is for cases that are treated with AGF - they could be correct but there is no good evidence for them. However, in the case of a very long established article, I prefer AFD as it gives a larger consensus and puts the reasons for deletion clearly in front of the public. It's a discussed deletion, not an arbitrary one by a single user and an admin. Peridon (talk) 09:11, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

As to CSD being narrower - at times some admins take rather too wide a view, while at times a 'bold' delete is called for. The range of topics subject to CSD is intentionally narrow and subject to discussion and change. CSD is really a shortcut for certain things that are fairly obvious, or clearly harmful (attack and copyvio). Sometimes things are obvious to some but not others - I rarely touch Indian films or American football as I find both hard to understand at the best of times. Peridon (talk) 09:41, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

• To me there's a difference between "a source isn't accurate" and "this doesn't exist at all." It could entirely be possible that there's another source for the subject that isn't the source on the page that actually does discuss the subject. For that, a blatant hoax is different, something like "The Kalamazoo Kangaroos just won the 2016 NBA Championship is obviously a hoax" in contrast to what is here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:51, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

It might be obvious to you, but I just had to look it up. Never heard of them, and wouldn't know who would be in the running for the 2016 NBA Championship (or whether it's been played yet or not anyway). (Come to that, I don't know who won the FA Cup this year either, but I do know the Kangaroos wouldn't have been in the running for it in any year...). Peridon (talk) 11:09, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

It's true, nothing is obvious to someone lacking the necessary background knowledge! ("Grass is red." "I don't know whether that's a hoax, I've never seen grass before.") I mean, you'd also have to know what the NBA is. I think it's fair to say that "obvious" here implies "given basic, easily obtainable, undebatable background knowledge". Once you look up Kalamazoo Kangaroos and see that they were an indoor soccer team that operated only in the 1980s, one can be confident that not a single person at AFD would argue for even the possibility that they won a basketball tournament in 2016, whether or not that tournament has transpired already. Good enough to call an "obvious hoax". Largoplazo (talk) 11:32, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

My example wasn't meant to be on the Kangaroos, it was more about the 2016 NBA championship which is clearly sourced to NOT be the Kangaroos. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:01, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

G13 Drafts

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

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RfC added to CENT (and I also put in the RfC template).

--QEDK (T 📖 C)

The rule currently reads:

This applies to rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation pages that have not been edited in over six months (excluding bot edits). This criterion applies to all WikiProject Articles for creation drafts in project space and project talk space, as well as any userspace drafts and drafts in the Draft: namespace that are using the project's {{AFC submission}} template.

This is now out of date considering the various permutations and changes in the AfC project. Some people are interpreting it as not permiting the deletion of Drafts that do not have an AfC banner, although that is now how most of them appear. I propose to replace it with the much simpler

This applies to rejected or unsubmitted drafts that have not been edited in over six months (excluding bot edits). This criterion applies to all pages in the Draft or Draft talk namespace, all project space and project talk space, all drafts in the Wikipedia Talk:Articles for creation/ naming system, as well as all userspace drafts.

This was the original intent, and the various ways of naming them shouldn't matter. I consider this just a technical change to avoid ambiguity. DGG ( talk ) 17:29, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

• Support - I've been reviewing a lot of old userspace drafts recently, and I can't see a good reason why they shouldn't be covered by G13. Let's resolve any ambiguity.--Mojo Hand (talk) 18:38, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support - I have been reluctantly declining G13s on abandoned drafts with no AfC template, because I presumed the words "that are using the project's {{AFC submission}} template" must have been inserted for some reason during the debates when G13 was first set up, and I don't like to IAR speedies. But I don't see what that reason is, and I'm happy to remove the words from the definition of G13. JohnCD (talk) 19:19, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support as well, as I had recently been asked about that, if they were still G13 applicable even with no AfC banners and tags. Aside from that, I have had no serious troubles about this but simply clarifying it for future use would be beneficial. SwisterTwister talk 19:48, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support per all the above. STALEDRAFT should apply regardless of the way the page is formatted or where it is. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:08, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support A good clarification and updating. Without this, Draft: will get into the mess AfC did. Peridon (talk) 20:43, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

But to make it clear, I'm referring to Draft: space there, not user space. I wouldn't argue about two years inactive for user space, but I think one year is realistic. Peridon (talk) 11:12, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Support - no reason why a draft must have {{AFC submission}} attached in order to qualify as a stale draft. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:52, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose many people have drafts in development that take longer than six months between edits. Such rules should only apply if the user responsible has gone inactive for two years. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:54, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
• I'm willing to support if you drop userspace from the list. Userspace in most cases should be up to the user to manage, and we shouldn't interfere without good reason. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 01:26, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support I see no good reason to keep stale drafts in any namespace. — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:37, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support. I'll be glad to not have to flood MFD with requests to delete all these old drafts. Category:Stale userspace drafts still has just over 40k pages and that's going back to 2004 so this will allow for much quicker resolution of those really old pages. However I do note that WP:STALE requires one year of inactivity before considering moving or deletion or whatever so it may be necessary to set stale to six months to harmonize these rules. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:50, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Support but limit userspace ones if the user is similarly inactive for six months For reference, User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report is a report of all draftspace articles that are more than six months since their last edit but do not have a AFC tag and thus not G13 eligible (although a number have been deleted under G13 for some reason). There's similarly over 40k userspace pages that have not been edited in over a year just so people get the numbers involved here. This would actually restrict AFCs in userspace more but I think if the editor is inactive and the draft is inactive, six months is sufficient. They can always be restored. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:27, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Technically I'm voting below on the revision so no double voting. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:06, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose - Many editors take wikibreaks or even temporary retirement for far longer than 6 months. I would also speculate that some newbies dabble in editing, get scared off, and then return much later. Both types of editors are exactly the ones we need to not annoy/antagonize by deleting their work just because... because why again? Userspace and draftspace are default NOINDEX and there is more than enough server space. I agree with Graeme Bartlett that two years of inactivity is more reasonable. Over the past couple months, I've come the the conclusion that since there are some costs (admin time and potential user alienation) associated with these deletions with no benefits whatsoever, I see no reason to ever delete good-faith, non-AfC userspace drafts. If drafts are problematic enough to warrant deletion, that should happen as soon as they are found - staleness, whether 6 months or 2 years, is not a factor. For this reason, I am now opposed to any "expiration date" for good-faith, non-AfC userspace drafts. A2soup (talk) 07:41, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - per A2soup and Graeme Bartlett. 2 years of inactivity is a much stronger sign. No need to be impatient with a slow moving user. Trackinfo (talk) 08:15, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I am revising my opinion to a stronger Oppose with no allowance for a time period. I relate this beyond theory to my personal experience after this initial remark. I discovered the existence of a draft article deleted under G13 here. It took me weeks to get that restored and it was not a simple request and reply. Most editors would not have gone through the trouble or could even be expected to figure out HOW. The piece of trash draft became Richard Ganslen. In my case this "stale draft" was a blocked draft because the novice editor didn't know how to source things. Hostility by experienced editors does not help. Actual help was needed and failed to materialize. The failure of editors to assist brought the G13. That work would easily have been lost. G13 should be removed. There is no such thing as a stale draft. Time is not relevant. Find another criteria to delete it under or leave the work to be available for subsequent editors to build upon. Trackinfo (talk) 12:14, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

• Supporting changed version: [...]as well as all userspace drafts as well all userspace drafts involved in the Articles for Creation process or of users inactive for at least two years. Drafts that have a reasonable chance to survive in the main article space should not be deleted, but moved to the main article space instead.

There is no need to disrupt active users. And to delete drafts that could be articles in mainspace instead is not good for the encyclopedia. --Müdigkeit (talk) 08:35, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose per A2soup and Graeme Bartlett; whereas 6 months was ok for keeping AfC tidy, it feels too short for any and all draft articles. I'd support the change in wording if the time was, at minimum, one year. Sam Walton (talk) 09:02, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• strongly oppose Deleting any "draft" after 6 months in a user's space, even no matter whether is active or not seems a clear no-go to me. If anything it leads to needless aggravation of active authors (our most important resource) with providing any real benefits. In addition it is imho good practice and a matter of good collaborative climate not to mess with other folks user spaces, unless there is an important policy violation or another really problematic issue. An otherwise unproblematic text, which simply lacks edits within the last 6 months provides no such reason.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:28, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Per Kmh. In fact we shouldn't be deleting anything in userspace ever. I didn't realize G13 deleted those too, that should be reversed.

• Support if userspace part is limited to long-time inactive accounts with no substantial mainspace contributions. —Kusma (t·c) 10:27, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose: As worded the policy would catch rejected policy drafts in project space (WP:NLAW?) and provides no clear way of distinguishing between draft essays and essays in place (WP:NII jumps right out at me). Furthermore, active users with forgotten drafts in their userspace shouldn't be disrupted. Instead, they should be reminded that they have a draft-like page in their userspace that hasn't been edited in a certain period of time, along with the suggestion that if they are abandoning that work, they could tag it for deletion. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 10:47, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose as written. We want to authorize people to speedily delete, without any discussion or review, drafts by active editors in their own userspace? That is completely inappropriate, not to mention unnecessary. Are these cases really so unambiguous that speedy deletion is appropriate? Is this such a big problem that speedy deletion is necessary in the first place? Thparkth (talk) 13:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose The policy was only made for a specific purpose, to filter stale mainspace requests from IPs. I see no reason why we're seeking to extend G13's coverage. This should be a community-wide RfC if it has to be accepted because it affects everyone at large. --QEDK (T 📖 C) 13:43, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support - but only if the draft has been untouched for over one year, in which case it's pretty stale. JMHamo (talk) 15:20, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - There is no good reason to delete userspace drafts for being stale, U5 and G11 already cover almost all unwanted content that can be created in userspace. Unfinished drafts in userspace should not be deleted for inactivity because it serves no purpose, you aren't de-cluttering a project space and you aren't saving space on the servers, you are just wasting admin time. Winner 42 Talk to me! 15:53, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Comment - If the wording was a little more clear that it was only user space drafts that were created through the Articles for Creation process, and not all userspace drafts, that are eligible for db-g13, I would support this. Also, opposers please remember that these deleted drafts are easily refundable if the users return after a break, and that a large notice with a button to push to get the draft back is always left on the user's talk page. I agree that the draft shouldn't have to have an AfC banner on it, provided that it once did have one. I don't consider it a waste of time to delete these; I think it saves time in the long run for our active regular users, as many of these pages would otherwise end up at WP:MFD and have to be read over and commented on by several people. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:13, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose per many of the above. Mucking about with the userspace is a non-starter. I might be persuaded to consider it in the other cases if the editor has been inactive (0 edits) for 2 years, and then only if they get pointed to WP:REFUND. If there's some draft that really does need to be deleted out of the userspace, it likely violates some other criteria that would serve. CSD is for unambiguous cases, and when we go about trying to figure out if cases are unambiguous or not - guess what? They're not. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 17:49, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support as proposed, and per Beeblebrox. The creator gets a warning about impending deletion just as they do for any other CSD criterion. For what I have seen of AfC (and that's quite a lot actually, having deleted hundreds of G13 already), many draft creators have little or no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:02, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Speedy deletion of userspace pages without good cause is disruptive. For example, DGG has had the page User:DGG/smell in his user space for over 8 years now. I suppose that it has something to do with an article and so is some kind of draft or notes. Removing such content without any discussion would be impertinent and offensive. As 99% of the content in mainspace is well short of perfection and mainspace is our priority, we should let sleeping dogs lie. Andrew D. (talk) 23:35, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Userspace is absolutely beyond the remit of your proposal, DGG. I have a couple userspace drafts I was able to rescue from the clutches of AfD. I can't necessarily get them fixed up and published in six months, nor should I have to. Next time I would recommend wordsmithing your ideas before your request comment. Chris Troutman (talk) 09:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support all, removing clutter is good. Stifle (talk) 17:00, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Strong oppose as currently worded. I work with student editors who, more often than not, develop drafts in userspace and then copy portions of their articles (or sometimes the whole thing) into existing mainspace articles. When you have several editors working together to craft an article (or a portion of one), attribution history is only properly preserved in the sandbox edits. Given the current wording, I could see a lot of these sandbox articles being deleted, thus breaking the attribution histories. Guettarda (talk) 19:11, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose I might be inclined to support the variations below which do not include userspace, but I see no reason to add a CSD which allows someone to delete pages in userspace. Protonk (talk) 19:13, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose for a start this is not some kind of correction to return to the original intention of G13, it's a massive expansion of the criterion. From a very early stage discussions about the proposed G13 consisted solely of AfC submissions, not other kinds of drafts. AfC is used by unregistered or very new editors who aren't likely to stick around for very long, if one of their drafts is inactive then it is very unlikely to lead to a usable article, especially if it's been rejected. This proposal on the other hand would allow us to delete drafts in the userspace of active experienced editors, which isn't the same thing at all. I know we don't allow article-like content to remain in userspace indefinitely, but six months is far too short to conclude this. Hut 8.5 22:29, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. I have no objection to the general idea (in particular, I'm fine with the proposed expansion as far as the Draft:namespace is concerned), but userspace pages shouldn't be G13 deleted unless they have the AFC template and got rejected or abandoned. Don't touch userspace drafts unless the creator has specifically put it up for AFC, unless it has bigger issues than mere abandonment, or unless you think it's important enough to warrant the time for an MFD. Moreover, who's going to decide whether a userspace page is a draft or not? Where's the line between a draft page and a tracking page? A quick check of the history of User:Nyttend/Pennsylvania NRHP/Philadelphia 2 will demonstrate that it's a tracking page (it's a group of sites with {{GeoGroupTemplate}}, and I remove sites that I've visited), but what about my sandbox? At points it's been a tracking page, at points it's held obvious drafts, and at points it's been ambiguous. Consider [2], which is similar to how it was for a total of a few years. Is this a tracking page, or a draft for a List of Something, or both, or neither? Is User:Nyttend/KY Courthouse Project merely a collection of images, or the draft for a list of courthouses? Having someone come along and tag these for G13 would be thoroughly unhelpful and rather starkly at variance with how we've always handled userspace. Nyttend (talk) 19:25, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose (for userspace drafts only) per Nyttend. While I kind of support this proposal for other kinds of drafts (and honestly I never understood why this wasn't done sooner), userspace drafts are trickier. For example: does this apply to drafts which are on user sandboxes; in fact, does this proposal affect user sandboxes? There are also cases where these user drafts, while not being actively worked on, could eventually be worked on in the future, and having it deleted just for the user to request a refund (if possible) is kind of a waste of time. Perhaps if this only includes userpage drafts which went through AfC, then maybe that would be understandable, but what about those that didn't? The proposal does not seem to differentiate between drafts created using the AfC process and non-AfC userspace drafts. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 14:02, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support. This is logical, and let's all remember that there is a really simple fast-track process for recalling deleted stale drafts - which, incidentally, shows that most of these deletions are uncontested. Guy (Help!) 00:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support. Cut the clutter. And: easily restored via refund. Lectonar (talk) 10:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose any deletion of drafts where contributing editors are still active or where the page could not be deleted were it in mainspace. WP:REFUND is useless to anyone except the original editor, as he/she will be the only one who knows the draft ever existed. SpinningSpark 15:25, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support DGG's change as written. Although I oppose existence of this criterion at all, there is consensus for it and it is sensible for it to apply to all pages which are clearly drafts rather than just those which happen to be in one particular space. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

but question - why would a draft be in project space? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:21, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

AFC drafts all used to be (and some still are) in the AFC project space. SpinningSpark 21:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment As per the above discussion, the only place that it makes sense to extend G13 is in userspace where the user specified that the draft was to be guided by the AfC process.  In those cases, the article can be speedily restored with a button if the G13 speedy deletion was inappropriate.  Those who think inactive drafts should get more attention need to work together to do just that, as being inactive is not a problem with the draft.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:49, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't like the idea of using G13 for unsubmitted drafts, and this proposal would greatly increase the scope for speedy deletion of unsubmitted drafts. In my opinion, it would be better to write a bot which automatically submits all unsubmitted drafts (at those with AfC templates and those in normal AfC namespaces) if the draft hasn't been edited for some time. That way, the pages would be reviewed, and eligible for G13 half a year later if rejected and still abandoned. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:41, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose any application of this to userspace drafts. We are all volunteers and should not have arbitrary deadlines placed on our volunteer work. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  19:43, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support as written, though I wouldn't oppose alternative #2, either. Particularly, I would rather have more time allowed if we're going to somewhat expand/clarify the definition and intent of G13. Even though it doesn't "cost" us much to allow this stuff to remain, we really shouldn't have to be a collection of cruft from abandoned drafts and nonsense like "His hero is his grandmother. He is most likely one of the most influential characters of our time, with very little publicity. He will most likely go down in history as a lover, thinker, giver, mentally gifted young man." Or examples like this article that has been around since May of 2014, and the IP editor that created it hasn't touched it since. For Etamni, I think that if something shows potential or activity, someone isn't likely to CSD it. Anyway, that's my two cents. Chrisw80 (talk) 07:51, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @Chrisw80: You are incorrect in saying "that if something shows potential or activity, someone isn't likely to CSD it". The whole issue with G13 is that the CSD nominations are made automatically by bot and are mostly deleted procedurally without review. If the page has had recent activity (six months) it is not even eligible for G13 so that doesn't come into it. SpinningSpark 10:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

That simply isn't true, Spinningspark. Look at Category:AfC postponed G13 which contains 2,167 articles that were tagged G13 and which an admin or editor decided to save or postpone for another six months. Some of these articles have been postponed several times. It is incorrect to say that admins delete G13 tagged drafts without review or this category would not exist. I know that I have postponed at least two dozen drafts that I thought had potential to be actual articles in the main space. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:17, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I didn't say that no article ever gets reviewed and saved, only that most don't. My experience of reviewing G13s is that currently 10% are saveable. In the days the backlog was being gone through maybe higher at 15%, especially the older ones which could be very badly reviewed. If every admin was reviewing at that rate there would be tens of thousands in that category, not a miserly couple of thousand. In any event, there is no requirement for anybody to review at any stage, either the proposer or the deleting admin. Which is bound to lead to good stuff being thrown out. SpinningSpark 01:04, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

• • @Chrisw80: Actually, they tag for speedy deletion or nominate at XfD stuff that should be kept, all the time. They also tag and nominate cruft that should be deleted. The Gilberto Neto article (linked above) can be (and probably should be) nominated for deletion at WP:MFD. Anything in user space that needs to be deleted can be nominated using the same process. The point is not to have one person nominating for speedy deletion, and one person with the bit agreeing, and nobody else gets a say, and the only recourse is WP:REFUND. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  11:34, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose G13 applying in userspace unless the draft is tagged with an AfC template. Draft-deletionist editors are not discriminating between userspace notes and userspace drafts, and userspace pages were never the monumental problem that motivated the creation of G13. In fact, I remember support for G13 being conditional from some on any editor being able to move their work into their userspace to avoid G13. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:16, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
• Strong oppose, and the author of the RfC is wrong saying that the original intent of G13 was to delete all stalled drafts; the WP:Draft namespace is not solely about Articles for Creation, and has never been. The wording restricting it to articles with the {{AFC submission}} tag was deliberately crafted through careful consensus so that the speedy criterion couldn't only possibly apply to articles that came through the AfC process, and not drafts from other sources such as decisions at Articles for Deletion. Greatly expanding the criterion in such way would run against this careful consensus that achieved at WP:Draft. As other have pointed out, drafts that really need to be deleted will fail some other content policy, and at the very least a formal discussion should be held, instead of allowing to speedily delete any possible kind of content regardless of its nature. Diego (talk) 10:51, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support. This was the sense of the original plan and users shouldn't be able to evade deletion of cruft and substubs simply by virtue of them not having a particular tag. Stifle (talk) 09:15, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
• Not Sure - If this is intended to apply db-g13 to drafts created through the Wikipedia:Articles for creation process, whatever namespace they end up in and whether or not the original AfC template has been removed, then I agree that that was the intention of the original proposal which set up db-13 and I can support that. However, there was specifically no the intention to make drafts not created in this way, and also never submitted to AfC, eligible for db-g13. I'd like to be sure that only Wikipedia:Articles for creation related drafts are to be considered for deletion under db-g13 before supporting.—Anne Delong (talk) 00:02, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
• Support more-or-less based on the rationale behind WP:NOTWEBHOST. Of course, as with all G13 nominations, the deleting admin should assess whether the draft has value. If it does, reset the timer and maybe even work on it yourself. ~ Rob^Talk 04:22, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Alternative proposals

A1: DGG's original (see above)

A2: This applies to rejected or unsubmitted drafts that have not been edited in over one year (excluding bot edits). This criterion applies to all pages in the Draft or Draft talk namespace, all project space and project talk space, all drafts in the Wikipedia Talk:Articles for creation/ naming system, as well as all userspace drafts.

A3: This applies to rejected or unsubmitted drafts that have not been edited in over six months (excluding bot edits). This criterion applies to all pages in the Draft or Draft talk namespace, all project space and project talk space, and all drafts in the Wikipedia Talk:Articles for creation/ naming system.

Thoughts? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:17, 25 January 2016 (UTC) @Peridon, Oiyarbepsy, Ricky81682, Samwalton9, and Kmhkmh: Would either of these address your concerns? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:20, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose all as not adequately defining what a "draft" is when it lacks the banner. My main concern is what happens if someone tags a failed policy draft in project space (which for the most part are kept for historical purposes), or what to make of project space essays that often have the look of essay drafts. Unless the proposal clarifies that G13 applies only to "draft Wikipedia articles" (or some other language that would make it clearer that it did not apply to non-articles, such as policy drafts) regardless of namespace. Perhaps it sounds like I'm being unduly anal about wording here, but the nature of CSD as speedy and subject to the sole judgment of the admin who acts on the request, clear language goes the furthest towards ensuring consistency in application between admins. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 14:02, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose all for now - It's a CSD criteria that's not typically on my radar because I see it as exclusively the domain of AfC. It sounds like some people want a better process for cleaning up old draftspace and userspace content, but I don't think it should be CSD (except insofar as it would fall under one of the existing CSD criteria like G11). I find Ricky's suggestion of "Support but limit userspace ones if the user is similarly inactive for six months" and Nikkimaria's A3 to be the best options presented, but I'd prefer to see PROD expanded for use this way (MfD certainly seems cumbersome), rather than use CSD. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:22, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose all I still see no good reason for a CSD in the user space simply based on edits/(tempoarily) inactivity. It is even questionable whether there is any need to clean up inactive user space at all. That spaced is not getting released anyhow and doesn't required additional resources nor will it be taken over by another user, so there is usually no need for any cleaning. Micromanaging a user's "private" workspace absent of any serious policy violation is generally bad idea, that will aggravate some of our editors. In addition it seems rather questionable that request for streamlining the AfC process now expands to include users not participating in it and interferes with their workspace, which from my perspective is completely unacceptable (not to mention that such a step might require feedback from the larger community anyhow and sort of vialotes the Uncontestable criteria at the top of the page as well)--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:43, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose all. Oh dear. As a minimum we would need a highly non-contentious understanding of what a draft is (or is not) otherwise everything in userspace untouched for six months would be liable to speedy deletion. Would we think all these over six months old would be liable? Or how would we sort the sheep from the goats? DGG can see what has been deleted but suppose an ordinary user had created User:DGG/LG, would it be reasonable to speedy it? Thincat (talk) 16:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Conditional support for A2 - I will support this if project space is left untouched and anything in userspace is limited to those pages with the {{AFC submission}} template. The WikiProject might be working on something and decide to put it on the back-burner while concentrating its efforts elsewhere. Any deletion requests in project space should come from the project and should not be eligible for G13. — Jkudlick • t • c • s 16:43, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Comment I may be missing something here, but if something says Draft: in front of the title, how can there be any doubts about it being a draft? Peridon (talk) 22:07, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Weak support for A3 If the point of this exercise is to help AfC clear out drafts, unsubmitted or not, I can go along with deletion of abandoned drafts. That said, pushing editors into the AfC process and then deleting their unfinished drafts runs against the spirit of WP:DEADLINE. Chris Troutman (talk) 09:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support, in the order A1, A3, A2. WP:DEADLINE applies but so does WP:WEBHOST. If they haven't fixed it in three months I doubt they are going to, and a lot of these articles are, to put it charitably, not a great use of server resources. Guy (Help!) 00:56, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose any deletion of drafts where contributing editors are still active or where the page could not be deleted were it in mainspace. SpinningSpark 15:28, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose  For drafts where the community is identified as the champion for the article, inactivity is not a problem with the draft, but is rather a function of the editors available to work on the draft.  Those who think inactive drafts should get more attention can work together to do just that, and if not, might consider supporting the pace of those working on the drafts.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:57, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
• still oppose a s written Actually i have little to no objection to posted posted detailed clarification. However the clarification is not part of the policy suggestion and the text of the policy is not written in such a way that the clarification is or will be obvious to everybody. In other words with current formulation unintended(?) "misinterpretations" are to be expected and I see absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be formulation that explicitly states the affects (or lack thereof) on the user space and avoids any room for misinterpretation.--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:35, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose all of the variations above. The original G13 criterion was carefully an intentionally limited to pages created via the AFC provcess, and IMO it ought to continue to have that restriction. If you want to include drafts initially submitted by the drafter or at the drafter's request, but which were later removed from the process by editing to remove the template, that would be alright with me. But not this kind of wholesale expansion. DES ^(talk) 00:00, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Explanation and Revision

The point of my proposal was not user space--the point was items in draft space that lacked AfC submission banners, because their removal under G13 has been challenged.

• Revised proposal

This applies to rejected or unsubmitted drafts that have not been edited in over six months (excluding bot edits). This criterion applies to all pages in the Draft or Draft talk namespace, all project space and project talk space, and all drafts in the Wikipedia Talk:Articles for creation naming system.

The status of userspace drafts needs separate discussion. Are those who oppose the original aware that several people active at AfC, not including me, have been moving thousands of userspace drafts to Draft space giving the reason: Preferred location for draft articles? DGG ( talk ) 16:48, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

and other people have been moving other people's unready drafts to main space to try and get them deleted more easily. Thincat (talk) 17:04, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

That seems even more questionable and imho all the more reason to follow a general "hands off" rationale as far as the user space is concerned.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:12, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@DGG, your statement above; "...several people active at AfC, not including me, have been moving thousands of userspace drafts to Draft space giving the reason: Preferred location for draft articles?" is not accurate. The established AFC process includes moving only userspace drafts that have already been submitted to AFC for review, to Draft-space. The standard edit summary for such moves (built into the AFC submission template) actually says: "Preferred location for AfC submissions". AFC only becomes aware of, and interested in, the existence of drafts when they are submitted for review. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:24, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Comment this proposal I might support, efficient cleaning up of the project space (rather than the user space) is appropriate and something we need. However the question remains whether deletion should be merely on inactivity over a certain period. Suppose we have lengthy draft of good quality that is about 80% complete but for whatever reason has been inactive for 6 months. Is it really wise to delete such a case speadily? I would doubt that at first glance. However if all people actively involved with the AfC project see it that way, then that's fine with me.

As far as the mass moving is concerned, no I was not aware of that and it first glance it strikes me a bit dubious. Even more so if this becomes simply a tool to sideline opposition against CSD in the userspace. Simply moving drafts from the userspace to the project space, because you couldn't delete them there but you will be in the project space seems inappropriate to me.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:11, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Still oppose as written, sorry. How do you identify a draft in project space, if it is not clearly labelled as one? There is no objective, incontestable answer to that question, and as such, this is not a plausible CSD criterion. And are there really so many aged-out drafts in project space that they must be speedily deleted without review?

Everyone should remember that there is currently no project-wide consensus that drafts should even be deleted for mere staleness, not even in the relatively-new Draft: namespace. That alone should indicate how inappropriate it would be to even consider making this criterion apply to all drafts. G13 as written is specifically intended only to apply to drafts which are unambiguously part of WP:AFC, and not to any others. This is how it should be.

This is not the place to discuss AfC itself in detail, but there has never been a consensus for placing all drafts in all namespaces under the domain of AfC, and no consensus requiring regular editors to use or interact with AfC at all if they don't want to. That project's participants are overreaching if they are moving other people's drafts into its system without their agreement, or seeking to delete non-AfC drafts under AfC rules.

Thparkth (talk) 17:34, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I see I need to explain in more detail.

1. G13 was adopted in the first place in order to remove a backlog of many tens of thousands of hopeless discarded drafts that nobody was working on , and nobody was likely to work on. It was only approved on the condition that the people who had edited it would be notified one month in advance, as this is being done by Hasteur's bot. It also has the condition that any draft removed under G13 could be restored on request, the same as Prod.
2. I and 3 or 4 other people systematically try to rescue any such drafts that are potentially usable, or at least postpone their deletion for additional six month periods. I have done this for about 10% of the stale drafts I get to, & I think this has now resulted in at least thousand rescued or postponed drafts from my screening, and at least an equal number from others. Of these, about 1/3 of which have been turned into articles or redirects, or used for merges. The others have either been given up on and deleted, or remain as part of he backlog. We need more people examining these and willing to work on this.
3. These drafts were originally in Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/ space as a kludge. There was consensus to replace this by Draft space, there was consensus to move the existing ones, gradually not in a mass, because it was realized most of them would end up deleted or accepted by normal processes. At least 95% of those present at the time have now been accepted, deleted or moved.
4. The question I sought to address now was what to do with the drafts in Draft space (or the old WT:AfC/) that have never actually been submitted. These are even more likely to be truly abandoned than those that have been submitted, and several people have been gradually listing them for G13 and the >95% of hopeless ones have gradually been deleted, by almost all admins who encounter them, on the basis that this was really part of the original intent. By proposal was basically meant to formalize that.
5. I agree there has never been a consensus for moving all userspace drafts to Draft space, nor in my opinion should there be. Someone who wants to work into an article can quite reasonably do this.Draft space is mainly intended for beginners and those with a coi, for which approval is desirable before they get into main space, as most of the ones by beginners and almost all the ones with coi should never get into main space. (The accepted standard by everyone at AfC is to move to mainspace any draft that would probably be accepted if brought to AfD; the usual interpretation is about 60 to 70 % probable, though essentially not a single one of the ones I have personally moved have been deleted except for a few cases where others caught copyvio that I had missed.)
6. It is accepted that stale drafts should not be kept indefinitely if nobody is going to work on them. They've been being removed for years, usually by MFD, sometimes by various speedy criteria. We've rarely deleted any by active editors. I personally almost always !vote at MfD to keep any which might conceivably become an acceptable article.
7. I consider moving them to draft space merely for the purpose of deletion improper. Moving them to draft space if the original editor is totally inactive so people can see and work on them is another matter, and I think should be encouraged.
8. I'm pinging other people involved who have not yet commented: Kudpung, Hasteur, Brianhe . DGG ( talk ) 19:13, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi DGG,

G13 was always intended to apply exclusively to drafts created through the AfC process, as the RFC which gave birth to it made very clear. My main objection to your proposal in its various forms is that it removes any language restricting the applicability of G13 to AfC drafts. That is a rather major change.

I think if you had included language like "drafts created through the AfC process" in your proposed change, you would not be facing much opposition. So I must ask, is that actually the point of your proposal - that G13 should apply to non-AfC drafts - or rather is this just an unintended side-effect of rewording G13 to include AfC drafts that currently don't meet G13 on a technicality?

Thparkth (talk) 19:31, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

You've got it exactly:My point is indeed to deal with those AfC drafts that have not been submitted. Can you reword it to say just that? I'd be grateful. DGG ( talk ) 19:50, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose again: I'm still not seeing an attempt to address the problem of how to identify a draft Wikipedia article versus something else that shouldn't be G13'd. You need to define draft in a way that doesn't leave it to the reviewing admin's judgment. As I have pointed out twice already, there are so many things in project space (let alone userspace!) that can be called "drafts" that absolutely should not be CSD'd. I don't feel comfortable leaving that to the discretion of any hypothetical reviewing admin. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 19:55, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Comment Neither supporting or opposing any of the proposals, however several users are correct in that G13 and Draft namespace were created with the explicit requirement that the namespace and CSD criterion would not be applied to anything outside of AFC submissions. There have been several preivous attempts to put non-AFC members of Draftspace under a "Stale" speedy rule, but each time it has been thuroughly shot down because of the same initial promises about what Draft Space and G13 were going to be for. I have no problem creating a new CSD rule that explicitly calls out non-AFC draftspace articles (and willing to code a bot that processes them), but I strongly suggest that these have a longer stale-ing time because the users are not explicitly warned that their draft can be deleted if not worked on the way that AFC submissions are. Furthermore I oppose trying to jiggery-pokery the G13 rule to cover both cases as non-afc submissions do not have a way to procedural scan for a category of when they were created or last submitted, making it a absolutely large web interface query to run. I could use the same query that generates MusikBot Stale Drafts and fork forward on that if the community does endorse the solution to delete old non-AFC draft namespace articles. Furthermore Anne's mention above about drafts that have been removed from AfC, I have also proposed a rule that prevents drafts from being remove from AfC and had that shot down because nobody is compelled to use AfC for creating pages. And with that I'm going to vanish again because I'm supposed to be not here (See User page). Hasteur (talk) 21:01, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
• Comment (EC) - the drafts that we've been seeing at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion are old user drafts created by the article wizard - exactly the sort of thing that would probably be created through AFC nowadays. For an example, see User:Bekerhank/Noah Sennholz as one that did not qualify for G6 (though possibly could qualify for U5). This is not the most pressing issue for Wikipedia, but it does make it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff at Category:Stale userspace drafts.--Mojo Hand (talk) 21:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

MFD provides a better example of the drafts at issue here. Looking at the most recent ones right now, there are old drafts in draftspace like the one being discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Hodge spectral sequence and old userspace drafts (which doesn't seem popular to speedy) like Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Vassyana/Early Christianity right now. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:08, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Funnily enough, I think the editor who created Draft:Hodge spectral sequence, TakuyaMurata, is emblematic of the problems with this proposal. He seems to create many one-line drafts and immediately let them languish, but occasionally come back to them. Most importantly, he is highly aggravated when people try to delete his drafts for staleness. See his response to the (currently improper) G13 deletion of his Draft:Principal orbit type theorem. This prompts the deleter to lash back when another of Takuya's drafts arrives at MfD. These arguments are exactly the sort of thing that drives editors away. Why cause these frustrations? Wouldn't it just be better to let Takuya's drafts alone? A2soup (talk) 15:31, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely he should be left alone, and anyone messing with him should be given a severe trouting. This is exactly why I have been saying that any draft (AFC or not) that has an editor that is still active should not be eligible for a stale deletion. SpinningSpark 15:40, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support expansion to add non-AFC drafts in draftspace alone to G13. Draftspace is fairly obviously limited to drafts; no one is storing project pages or other things in draftspace or shouldn't be anyways. I think that would be sufficient for all parties as WP:STALEDRAFT would then permit the "adoption" of any page (after one year inactivity on both the page and the editor) with an adoption being conducting by movement to draftspace (with or without AFC) after which point if the draft is subsequently not edited for another six months from there, an admin can speedy delete it. I think that's a fair middle ground here since MFD is still always an option for old problematic drafts. We can add a requirement to WP:STALEDRAFT that notice must be provided before any such transfer (MFD clearly requires notification, movement doesn't) so the editor is notified at the time of movement and not just when G13 comes in play. I'd suggest that someone request an outside editor to close the prior proposals as rejected and withdrawn for the most part. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:05, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

No, the intent of the moving option at WP:STALEDRAFT is to allow other editors to complete a draft, i. e. such a move should occur if there is another editor available who want to complete the draft. It is not intended to simply move any inactive draft automatically to draft space to potentially delete it there later on. Taking a draft and completing it is clearly beneficial for WP and more or less follows the users original intentions. However simply moving a draft out of the userspace and potentially deleting it down the road, has no obvious benefits for WP.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I didn't say the point is to move a draft to have it deleted in six months; if you wanted it deleted, take to MFD today. That would be an odd passive-aggressive and not particularly productive thing to do. If people wanted to do that, they could be mass moving a lot of stale drafts right now. The point is that the original editor, after their own inactivity, and after the movement, has at least six more months before the draft is even eligible for speedy deletion. If someone moves it and works on it for even a month or two, then we're talking 19-20 months since the original creator hasn't touched it before we're considering it for speedy deletion (and that's even presuming it isn't mainspaced or moved again into someone new's userspace or a project or whatever else people do). That's why I don't think its necessary to extend the time limit at the start since there's so many stopgap requirements before a draft is even in this scenario. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:06, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes it would be passive-aggressive move, that's why it might be a good idea for the project rules not to sanction it or at least provoding the opportunity to formally justify such behaviour.--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:19, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• Question: If the problem is that drafts created through AfC aren't tagged as AfC drafts, then shouldn't the project (or a bot if possible) be tagging these AfC drafts as such (ie, with {{AFC submission|T}})? Wouldn't this solve the problem without changing the wording of G13? - Evad37 [talk] 03:02, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

They aren't created through AFC. They are either directly created or moved there. The question is whether draftspace is presumably for AFC drafts or can it be a dumping ground of sorts for the thousands of pages like Draft:Burrill B. Battle that are there. Those are essentially the same as userspace pages in that there's no automatic process to review let alone delete them so it's all about finding them and taking them individually to WP:MFD. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:37, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Or simply leave them where there are. There's neither an objective need for the project to delete them nor a consensus.--Kmhkmh (talk) 06:49, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

• Comment, since I've already opposed. An IP editor raised a good point, and I'm struggling to come up with an answer - what harm do old drafts in the userspace cause, exactly? UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 14:36, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

There's no real "harm" in letting all drafts remain here eternally I suppose. I think the point is to give some tools to the people who go through the stale drafts to find ones that people might work on. It's the same reason G13 exists. That said, I see the point in the opposes in that userspace has a different uses and expectations, and it's not always clear was is a draft article.--Mojo Hand (talk) 15:11, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Well though the (deleted) IP comment was unacceptable in tone I do understand and to degree share its general sentiment, that is I neither really understand nor condone this urge to "clean up" other people's business (aka userspaces). The imho weak argument is, that some people want to comb through the userspace to salvage/complete articles and that this activity becomes somewhat "easier" if unsuitable drafts/articles in user space get deleted. While actually salvaging old stale drafts is certainly a desired activity, it is not clear however whether we really need to delete (nvm speedily delete) all the rest in the userspace. And what's worse this activity somewhat conflicts with traditional "hands off" approach for userspaces (as long as their is no abuse) und ignores that userspace and project space have different functionalities and requirements. Imho it is fair to assume that most editors will view a deletion in their userspace without their consent as a rather unfriendly act. This makes in particular some of original suggestions for G13 (6 months inactivity of the draft in userspace without even considering the activity of the editor) highly problematic. Now the revised versions do at least partially address that but I still fail to see a really convincing need for having these deletions in the first place or to paraphrase the IP: Can't you simply leave the userspace alone?--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:27, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

You're also ignoring the fact that certain content is deleted in mainspace because it's never sufficient for an article, say for example, articles on a rapper who's never released an album or say an obscure video game that doesn't have any sources about it. The problem is whether that same content (ignoring the U5 solution) just remain in a userspace version if it wouldn't survive in mainspace. That's ignoring the fact that it's NOINDEXed and the like. There's also numerous pages there that exist following an old deletion discussion so if consensus is to delete an article years ago, should the user then just get to keep it around forever in userspace? As to the "ease" of use issue, we aren't talking a few hundred pages; we are talking literally tens of thousands of userspace drafts that are identified because they are tagged which is likely a minuscule amount of actual userspace drafts out there. And there's never been a "hands off" approach when the user leaves, everyone is generally hands off for active users (even then, we had the userbox wars years back showing that it's not as hand off as people think it is). If the concern is that one year from your last editing is not enough to be considered inactive, that's a different matter. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 17:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

If you are concerned that the tagged userspace drafts are cluttering Category:Stale userspace drafts, wouldn't a better solution be to simply untag them? It accomplishes the same result (uncluttering the category) while being much less potentially aggravating for the author and it doesn't eat up valuable admin time. A2soup (talk) 19:18, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

First, do you propose that no one ever be able to take on the work that someone else started and improve it? Else, what am I untagging? Drafts that specifically aren't CSD material nor copies of current mainspace material nor ready for mainspace nor drafts that I think someone else could take on? Why not just propose deleting the entire category then so that I can't actually do anything if that's the goal? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:49, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

It would be ideal for other people to take on the work, no problem with that. I'm not sure I understand your objection that you wouldn't be able to "do anything" - what is it you want to do? If you want to improve a userspace draft, go ahead and do so. If you want to make the categories less cluttered (and don't think the draft has much potential), untag it. If you want to start from scratch, you don't need to worry about it since userspace drafts, being subpages, don't block each other. This last situation might be an issue in draftspace, where names do block each other. In that case, you could just blank the page and start from scratch (who knows, there might be something useful in the old draft you missed and will be grateful to have in history), or you could go MfD if you're really concerned with your created articles count. But to answer your question, if all you want to do is delete stuff, I have no problem with you having nothing to do in userspace (or draftspace) outside of the AfC process. A2soup (talk) 00:07, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

• Conditional support and re-word. I think that as long as this specifies that it's meant only for drafts created via/for the AfC process, there should be no problem with this. There's a squidgy sort of area that needs to be discussed when it comes to userspace drafts, but that's a separate discussion entirely.

This applies to rejected or unsubmitted drafts that have not been edited in over six months (excluding bot edits). This criterion applies to all pages in the Draft or Draft talk namespace, all project space and project talk space, and all drafts in the Wikipedia Talk:Articles for creation naming system that were created via the AfC draft creation process. This would also apply to any articles that were declined at AfC, where the article was submitted for approval.

This would cover the following: anything created via the AfC creation process and anything that was declined at AfC. Now the reason I'm mentioning this last part is because I've moved articles to AfC and tagged them with {{AFC submission/draft}}. This speedy criteria would not cover articles that were tagged in this manner and not submitted via AfC, just the ones where the editor chose to submit it for review since that would be considered a tactic agreement that it was then an AfC draft. If that seems a little bit too much like wikilawyering, feel free to remove that last part. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:13, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Wouldn't that more restrictive than what we currently have? Unsubmitted AFC drafts, regardless of creator, can be deleted via G13. You're requiring that the tagger and author must match, right? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:42, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

• It's not intended to be - my thought is that it's going to cover anything that would be along the lines of an article that was moved to AfC to prevent mainspace speedy deletion. Basically, I mean that if the article was moved and not edited or otherwise submitted for active review, it could possibly fall under the veil of a userspace draft. That's a tricky area though. I've edited it to just say articles submitted and declined at AfC. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:40, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
• This could also cover the ones that are in the userspace (ie, User:Tokyogirl79/Random quirky title) that were submitted for AfC but aren't at something like Draft:Random quirky title. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:45, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose as written - Any and all documents in Project space are the responsibility of the Project. If all language regarding project space is removed from this rewording, I can support it. — Jkudlick • t • c • s 17:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• Comment I would just like to see G13 (or something similar) extended in a fashion much like T3 so I can tag drafts (in userspace, etc.) for deletion when an existing article already exists. It seems detrimental to have many copies of an article's content floating about when one could just as easily work the content into the existing main page. If there is an existing speedy criteria for such I would like to know (I could not find it). I would like to get rid of things like User:Akash1806/Django (web framework) in light of Django (web framework). 50.126.125.240 (talk) 01:46, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose the premise of this discussion. No draft article should ever be deleted if it could not be deleted were it in mainspace. Deletion because it has not been edited in a long time, or because the editor has apparently left Wikipedia are both unhelpful actions. Those would not be valid deletion rationales for an article, they should apply even less to a draft. I am fine with nominating a stale draft for speedy deletion because the nominator thinks, for instance, that it is non-notable, but I am far from fine with deleting them just because they are old. I agree with user:DGG's assessment: about 10% of G13s I review are salvagable. Unfortunately, most of them don't get reviewed by someone trying to salvage. That means we have deleted tens of thousands of potentially viable pages. SpinningSpark 15:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support We aren't the place to host a page about your friend's band --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 21:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @Guerillero: Nobody is arguing that we should be, that is a strawman. The question being addressed is whether drafts should be deleted because they are stale regardless of their content. SpinningSpark 21:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Whether they should be speedy deleted regardless of their content. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:37, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support I can not understand complaints about these proposals based on perceived lack of clarity over what a "draft" article is. It is simply any article that is in Draft space, this is not an attempt to comb through editor's subpages and delete articles they are working on. These proposals are meant to cover stale drafts that reside in the Draft space that have never been submitted to AFC. That's all it is. I don't know whether it should apply to Wikipedia space or WikiProject space but I think the main focus is to clear out old, abandoned article drafts in Draft space. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

That's exactly the problem though. If this is really all that there is, why can't it be stated clearly to avoid misunderstandings? Why do we keep seeing where from the text suggestion as written it is not clear whether or how the user space is affected?--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:29, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support per Liz. I think this revised version is a very simple approach and that our sysops have the ability to use common sense to define what a "Draft" is. I can see from the previous proposal that there is a lot of contention over this applying in userspace. This proposal is better in that it takes userspace out of the equation all together. We can either get consensus for an alternative userspace criteria, incorporating some aspect of user inactivity, or we can just continue to handle userspace drafts at MFD. --Nick⁠—⁠^Contact/_Contribs 19:52, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
• oppose as written. If this were modified to limit it to pages created via the AfC process, or submitted for AfC review, that would be different. But anything and everything in the Draft namespace, plus several other locations, judged purely on namespace apparently, is simply not acceptable. It is far too likely to delete pages with potential along with stuff that in fact should be deleted. DES ^(talk) 00:06, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Removal of STALEDRAFTs

Given the complete rejection of this concept, I've proposed deleting the entire idea of STALEDRAFTS at WT:UP. There is no support for deleting old drafts so we could get rid of the idea entirely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.171.121.147 (talk) 19:04, 27 January 2016 (UTC) This is a longtime banned user thus is of no benefits to this, see this for clarification. SwisterTwister talk 06:39, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

• Delete G13 completely Stale drafts do no harm. If they don't do any harm, there's no reason to delete them. If there's some reason to delete a stale draft (BLP violation, copyvio, whatever), then fine. But, just because nobody has worked on it for a long time? That doesn't cause any harm, so there's no reason to delete it simply because it's stale. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:51, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Exactly so, see my post above. The proposer should be obliged to give a reason that would get it deleted if it were no mainspace. "Stale" deletions are entirely against the mission of Wikipedia. SpinningSpark 16:01, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Are you actually serious? G13 was built as part of the AFC project to allow some ability to clear out old drafts. The Article Wizard didn't have it, the prior userspace draft system didn't have it, it's necessary to simply the volume of new clearly inadequate pages that are created very single day. Even if you don't want it for anything else, throwing out G13 entirely is utterly ridiculous. Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions has over 2100 pages in it and without a speedy deletion method to get rid of them, it would just overwhelm and shut MFD down to a complete standstill. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:34, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
    • @Ricky81682: The problem is that G13, as currently constituted, does not just clear out old "clearly inadequate pages". Remember, the bot tags unreviewed AFC submissions as well, and there is no obligation on the deleting admin to do any kind of review (and most don't). SpinningSpark 11:17, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
      • @Spinningspark: I'm having a hard time figuring out how a draft can exist with an AFC template on it for longer than six months without having been reviewed (and declined) at least once. Even during the worst backlogs no draft that entered the AFC process was left unreviewed for as long as six months, iirc the backlog has never been longer than about three months. There is simply no way that an unreviewed AFC submission can get to be older than six months because a draft enters the AFC system only when it is submitted for review for the first time. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:55, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
        • @Dodger67: It's very simple. Drafts in the AFC project are initially tagged as unsubmiitted drafts. They only become unreviewed drafts when the author (or somebody else) clicks the submit button. Many drafts are never submitted, so never get put in the needing review category. However, the bot tags drafts for G13 regardless of whether they are unsubmitted or reviewed and declined. SpinningSpark 14:20, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
          • @Spinningspark: How does the draft become tagged but not submitted? The {{submit}} template puts the draft into the queue to be reviewed. There's clearly an error in the logic somewhere. The first "submit" should be what starts the clock, because it's only then that the review system actually "notices" the existence of the draft and shows it to the reviewers. Is it something that the article wizard does that tags the page as an afc draft without submitting it? I've never used the article wizard so I have no idea how it works. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:58, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
            • @Dodger67: Oh for goodness sake, try reading the documentation of the template you just linked. There are thousands of unsubmitted drafts in Category:Draft AfC submissions; just look at a few at random like this one, or this one, or this one, or this one. Literally tens of thousands drafts in this category have been deleted that would have made perfectly usable articles, at least as a starting point. SpinningSpark 20:04, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
      • Perhaps the bot can be told to only tag those drafts for G13 which have been declined for reasons other than "already exists" (because then, a merger may be appropriate).Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
        • @Jo-Jo Eumerus: The bot scans the sub-categories of Category:AfC submissions by date. This category is sneakily added by the {{AFC submission}} and {{AFC submission}} templates. The bot trolls either the Day/Month/Year roll up categories and looks at every single member to see if the very simple condition "Has there been no edit to the page in at least 5 months". If it is, the bot gives notice to the creator of the page to let them know the page will soon be in danger of being deleted under the G13 rule. If not the bot moves to the next page. At the 6 month mark, the bot re-checks the pages to see if the page is still eligible and if so, perform the procedural nomination under G13. There have been multiple proposals in the past for the bot to do multiple nomination reasons, but I did not want to do that, because the bot cannot and should not be evaluating the decline reasons to see if the decline reason is accurate (and potentially add more rationalles to nominate). The bot does a simple check on the absolute last edit date to determine G13 eligiblity. Some editors enlarged G13's mandate to include "non-bot edits", however the bot and the template have never been changed to support such a workflow, making it much harder for the admins processing the G13 nominations to know if the G13 is valid or not. Because the Bot scans the category to find things it can potentially notify/nominate on, it does not pick up drafts that are outside the AfC workflow. Ideally, All AfC submissions should be in the Draft namespace, however not all pages in the Draft namespace belong to the AfC project. Editors are free to delist a draft out of the AfC workflow as they are not required to use it (which I've objected to on multiple occasions and proposed a rule to revert that kind of change). Overall this discussion is about how many pages live in the Draft namespace without any kind of oversight/evaluation/searchability. Finally, I note that Ricky's "The Wiki is burning down because of this crap" screams are grossly over-exagerated. Less than 2 years ago, we were at 40 thousand drafts that met the simple definitions of G13. It took us nearly 9 months to get the years (back to 2009) long backlog trimmed down to something much more reasonable. Hasteur (talk) 20:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
          • 40 thousand under the simple G13 definition with a speedy deletion mechanism took 9 months to reduce to basically 2k or zero even at times. There was still another 46k of userspace drafts which weren't under this system starting in November and which has been repeatedly rejected as a speedy option (which is fine) so it's going at a much, much slower pace. If there was no G13 system and the AFC system could only be reduced entirely by clogging up MFD, it would be a different discussion. That is precisely my point. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:00, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
• Keep STALEDRAFT partly because WP:NOT#WEBHOST and because stale drafts do create a large amount of distraction (e.g when looking through categories for stuff to work on or while policing for copyvios). I wonder if the issue is that some stale drafts can be salvaged (that is, turned or merged into articles eventually) and other can't but G13 by default assumes that "stale = unsalvageable", and reworking a potentially salvageable draft is much harder than pressing a delete button. Maybe this would be worth working on?Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:19, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • That is precisely my objection. The proposer of a G13 should be forced to give a reason other than "stale"...but that would mean it could no longer be done by bot. SpinningSpark 16:27, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Well, if the draft being declined (which, assuming the decline was correct, means that the draft is not suited to be an article) counts as a reason for deleting other than mere staleness, that would make it bot actionable still ... although some declined drafts may be mergeworthy.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:51, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
      • I have rescued numerous G13 proposals that have been declined for non-deletable reasons. People shouldn't do that, but they, do and drafts get deleted as a result. As far as I know, none of my rescues have ever been deleted from mainspace (although I can't be sure, I no longer watchlist all of them). But putting that aside, because it is not the central issue, G13 does not require that a draft has been rejected, only that it is within the AFC project. More than that, this debate has occured because some editors are assuming G13 can apply to other drafts that do not explicitly carry the AFC template, particularly those created through the article wizard, which will never get an AFC review. Pages can most definitely be correctly deleted under this process that are actually perfectly good articles. SpinningSpark 19:04, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
• Comment I usually do give an additional reason: no hope of a acceptable article. But that is not a formal speedy criterion by itself and should not be, as it sometimes needs discussion, especially if there is an active editor. But added to the fact that no improvement is being made on the draft, it is much less ambiguous. Remember that A7 specifically does not apply to draft space, because the article is still in progress and significance might be shown by a future edit--but if the article is abandoned, that's not going to happen.

declined drafts can still e rescued, and I , like SpinningSpark & others, have rescued a few thousand over the last 2 years, either by writing what has been given up on, merging, or simply accepting what should not have been declined. But I am one of the very few people systematically checking for this, and more people would do it if there were an easier way.

Though errors can be made, we have to balance this with a practical speed of operation--having hundreds of MfDs a day will not really improve things. The most important improvement I can think of is listing drafts by subject, so those likely to be interested can see them. The next one would be finding a way for people to find deleted ones if they search by keyword. (obviously this will have to apply only to G13--others should not be made visible to anyone) DGG ( talk ) 19:23, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that everything is sent to MFD, only that a rationale be offered for the speedy. This is especially a problem with unreviewed drafts, at least those with an AFC review have a decline reason that can be assessed by the deleting admin whether it warrants a deletion. Oh, I take it back, that's not the only thing I'm suggestion, I'm also calling for G13 not to apply to any article that has an active editor in the editing history. SpinningSpark 20:29, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• I don't like responding to proposals by banned editors, but the IP happens to have mirrored a sentiment I expressed in my essay User:Ivanvector/Drafts are cheap (which is itself a draft, how meta), that deletion of pages in draft space for the sole reason that they are old does not benefit the project. Sure there are plenty of pages there which are of no benefit to keeping, but I've always thought that this should not be a speedy criterion - if pages need to be deleted (copyvios, hopelessly unnoteworthy topics, attack pages, WEBHOST violations) there are already other speedy criteria to apply. I find G13 to be much too broad. To DGG's point above, yes, pages can be rescued via WP:REFUND and many users are keen on working on this, but then why delete the pages in the first place? It's a completely unnecessary hindrance to most users. It's nice to have the viewdelete glasses I'm sure, but most users have no way of seeing deleted drafts to be inspired to rescue one, if they were to be interested in participating. Maybe "rescuing abandoned drafts" is an avenue to attract new editors to the project. "Rescuing invisible pages of indeterminate content by applying to a bloated administrative review process and hoping for a favourable result before you get to edit anything" is much less likely to do so. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:39, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

And yes, I know there's a bot that notifies interested users about drafts which are about to be deleted. I see it as a ridiculous solution to an invented problem. It would be more beneficial to not have this path to deletion in the first place. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:42, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Ivanvector, viewdelete has the problem that it would apply to all deleted articles, and the WMF will probably veto this for anyone who does not have community approval in a process like RfA, so they might as well run for admin. I am not certain whether it would be feasible for a viewdelete to be programmed that would apply only to G13, but I will ask. As a practical matter requests for undeletion of G13s are almost always granted unless there is a reason why not. The problem is finding the deleted material, and viewdelete alone will not help all that much. Even for admins, there is no way I can scan for a deleted article except by title in the deletion log. To look at the content, there is no single click procedure; I'm fairly fast at the steps, but it takes 4 times as long as looking at undeleted articles (This probably could be fixed also.) DGG ( talk ) 02:16, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

The problem is that many of the pages that need deleting, contrary to what you said, do not fall under a speedy criterion. The majority of these are non-notable people/orgs/bands and notability is not a speedy criterion. To a lesser extent, there are also promotional articles that do not quite make it to G11. What I am suggesting is that G13 should be more like PROD so that the deleting admin can see that at least one editor has assessed it as NN, NOT, ADVERT, or whatever. SpinningSpark 20:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

So there are reasons to delete which have nothing to do with the page's creation date. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

All reasons to delete have nothing to do with the page's creation date—because the page's creation date is not a reason for deletion. SpinningSpark 00:06, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I realize just now that where I said "page's creation date" I had meant to say "date of its most recent edit". Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 17:35, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@DGG: what you said above is sort of what I'm talking about. I don't think that the solution is to give more editors access to viewdelete (very bad idea) but the solution is to not delete stale drafts in the first place, unless there's some non-age-related problem which requires their deletion anyway. Each and every draft that doesn't suffer from such an issue is a potential future article; age alone is not a problem. What problem is it solving to delete drafts just because they're old? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:33, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

• Delete G13 completely per RoySmith. It serves no helpful purpose IMO. As others have said--drafts are cheap. There may be other reasons to delete them, but being old isn't a good reason IMO. Hobit (talk) 04:05, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
• Remove "STALEDRAFT" completely. It was slipped in without anyone realizing what people would make of it, it never was a sufficient reason for deletion. It has been extensively and confusingly entwined with various things at WP:NOT, and it is a very poor substitute for WP:NOT. The only so-called stale things that should be deleted are things matching a specific problem listed at WP:NOT. I have for years found "STALEDRAFT" particularly troublesome because its use seems to attract lazy nominators who can't seem to be bothered with details, and they do sometimes nominate things that should not be deleted.

There is no benefit to deletion of old drafts that do not violate anything at WP:NOT. Doing so is just a ridiculous overload of busywork. Deletion doesn't free up space; the process creates more storage, adds trivial items to the logs, and consumes valuable volunteer time with unimportant tasks.

True, it is hard to find quality stuff amongst the drafts, but it is there. The notion that there is advantage to editors looking for quality drafting is good. However, the sorting of wheat from chaff doesn't require burning the chaff. It can be just as easily done, more easily done, much more easily done, by application of quality tags to drafts. Let's assume the WP:NOT violating pages are deleted. The remainder may be divided into {{Draft of no or negligible potential}}, {{Draft of unclear potential}}, {{Drafts assessed as having potential}} etc. These templates should auto-categorize, and the good quality categories should be a pleasure to peruse. Anyone who wants to volunteer by sorting the quality drafts is free to do so, without needing to burden other project processes. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:36, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

General discussion of G13 update proposal

@DGG: Is there a particular reason you have proposed this criteria to be updated to now apply to the "Draft talk:" namespace? From what I have seen, drafts are never stored in that namespace; that, and if its parent page in the "Draft:" namespace is deleted, then the corresponding page in the "Draft talk:" namespace would be deleted per criterion G8. Stating that G13 applies to the "Draft talk:" namespace seems like misleading instruction creep. Steel1943 (talk) 18:46, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

completeness; they aren ot supposed to be there, but I remember seeing one or two there, either by accident or deliberately. DGG ( talk ) 20:34, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Related question: do speedy criteria apply generally to pages which are put in the wrong space? For example if someone wrote a speediable article in Category: space, would we insist that the A-series criteria don't apply, or would we just get on with deleting it? Also, the G-series criteria apply everywhere anyway, so is the change redundant? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:35, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Nah, the fix for misplaced stuff is to move it to the right place. If the article that was misplaced in Category: is A7 eligible I'd probably move it to article space and tag it for speedy deletion there. Or I'd kick it to Draft space, depending.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:30, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I know this is just a bureaucratic nonsense line of questioning anyway, but if you were an admin and happened to come across an A7-tagged page in Category: space, and it is unquestionably an article with no claim of significance, would you just delete it, or would you move it to mainspace, then delete it, then G8-delete the redirect left behind in category space? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 22:41, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The distinction is mostly in terms of dotted i's and crossed t's, so I'd probably deleted as A7 and add in a note in the deletion summary about this being a misplaced article, in that hypothetical universe.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:55, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll respond here to a few comments to keep the above !voting clear of extended discussion: @Etamni: and @Spinningspark: Thanks for your reply! It's true that some editors are a little over-eager about pulling the trigger. That's why an admin is needed to actually delete the page. In my opinion, examples like the Gilberto Neto article is obviously abandoned, and shouldn't waste people's time at MfD. We give admins the bit in the hopes they will exercise good judgement. I understand the concern about deletion without proper review, but I think that's a larger issue better addressed elsewhere or with the specific admins. I also think it's still less laborious to do an occasional WP:REFUND following a CSD than it is to go through the whole MfD process for something that's most likely to never be undeleted. I'd be VERY interested to see the number of articles that end up getting completed following a WP:REFUND in these situations. I believe that the admins do a pretty good job, even if I don't always agree with them. I do support increasing the time from 6 months to 1 year, and would strongly prefer it. Again, thank you for your response! Chrisw80 (talk) 18:38, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

There is an awful lot wrong with what you have said here, and you clearly haven't read my response to you at your "support", or else you have taken no notice of it. G13 tagging is automated, there is not usually any question of being "over-eager", the requirement for G13 tagging is simply that the page has not been edited for six months and in the vast majority of cases it hasn't. There are next to no mistakes. That is not my objection and it is not the issue. Relying on the deleting admin to review the page before deleting is completely wrong-headed. G13 does not require the admin to do any review other than to confirm that the page has not been recently edited (and currently, it is within the AFC project, but this proposal wants to take away that check). Most admins do only that, confirm that the draft has been abandoned and then delete it. They may not have the time, or the inclination, or the skill, to review every article, and they are not required to. So a page could be a Featured quality draft, and still be tagged and then deleted perfectly in accordance with this policy.

REFUND is useless to anyone except the original editor since no one else will know the draft exists once it is deleted. It is more important for builing the encyclopadia to keep potentially useful material than it is to clear out the hopeless cases. It is even more important not to piss off content creating editors who may have just taken an extended break, or perhaps are still around but have just not got around to finishing off a project.

I have never said that every page should be sent to MfD, I am fine with the idea of clearing out abandoned rubbish with a CSD process. However, what I think is objectionable with the current G13 is that it requries no assessment of the quality of the material being deleted and we certainly shouldn't be extending such an authoritarian system into userspace generally until a) there is an assessment, b) there is a procedure to deal with the page if it is kept, and c) editors who have been active in the last two years have their userspace excluded. SpinningSpark 20:16, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

It's not wrong-headed at all to expect administrators to do a quality review - we're all here to improve the encyclopedia. I know I've done so for every G13 I've deleted, and I take second and third looks if it's Hasteurbot that tagged it instead of a human. Leaving something you're unsure about in unindexed draftspace for a while for someone else to inspect is less harmful than just about any other class of speedy. We may not subscribe to the overinclusive "if it might possibly survive AFD it should move out of draftspace right away" mentality some folks advocate; but show me an admin who intentionally speedies your hypothetical featured-article-quality draft on a technicality and I'll show you someone who should be desysopped for cause. —Cryptic 20:52, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, how about this: The admin looks at it. If it is obviously not suitable for article space, it gets deleted. If it would be an article of sufficient quality, meeting GNG and quality minimum standards, it gets moved into article space. If neither, it goes to XFD.--Müdigkeit (talk) 21:26, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Draft titles don't appear in search results for outside readers, but unless deselected they do for logged-in editors, so there is some need for an exhaust pipe to avoid clutter building up without limit. I'd give it 12 months rather than 6. The issue should be considered in conjunction with the open RfC on how articles get moved into draft space. Oh, and if deletion from user space is still under debate, that shouldn't normally happen; it's quite plausible to have a collection of rough notes and internet links kicking around for months until the user gets a block of free time to work it up: Noyster (talk), 12:08, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Fundamental question being asked

Because several editors are confused about what's motivating this, it's time to dispense with the cow feeces. Fundamentally this proposal is to retroactively give authorization for editors to nominate for speedy deletion any page that lives in the Draft namespace (i.e. Drafts:...) under a argument that "No edits to this draft are visible to the general editing public in a certain amount of time, therefore it's not useful and should be deleted".

This is a significant expansion of this CSD criterion because previously it was only applicable to drafts that were part of the Articles for Creation (AfC) process. Editors who used the AfC process were warned at the outset that they needed to make effort to improve their proposed article otherwise it could be subject to deletion on the stale grounds.

Draft namespace was specifically created with the understanding that several previous projects and initiatives (Abandoned drafts, Incubation, etc.) would be shut down and pages under their aegis would be centralized to pool all the collaborative drafts that people might be interested in. As part of the initial RFC and subsequent proposals, the consensus was that there should be no deletions of Draft namespace pages (excluding the previously mentioned AfC pages) on the grounds of the page being stale.

AfC is not a requirement for using the Draft namespace. AfC is recommended for new users, not required to be used. I have seen arguments both for and against CSD:G13 being applicable to pages that are in the AfC process that are in individual users space, but have taken the conservative view with the bot that User space shouldn't be touched. It's my impression that when AfC volunteer reviewers look at a pending submission (meaning the creator of the article asked for a review to determine if the page is ready to be promoted to mainspace) and determines that while the page has potential (but not enough to move it to mainspace) they will move it to an analagous Draft namespace title. If the draft doesn't show potential, then it will remain in the user's individual space and the bot will not consider it for speedy.

Yes this is very long, but it helps to understand where the proposers are coming from and what they're asking for. Hasteur (talk) 13:30, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Well we could always say "G13 applies to all drafts created after, say, April 1, 2016." We did that with Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people which only went into effect after March 18, 2010. But the point I think for you is that isn't the way to handle these pages which I think is fair. I'm not certain there's even going to be a good way to say "this draft has no potential ever" that isn't either content-neutral and time-based like G13 if it doesn't have an AFC-like reviewer mechanism. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:45, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

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

G4 clarification

Does G4 only apply to pages deleted via a full XfD that went its whole course, or can speedied pages still be deleted under G4 if it was speedied during an XfD? Adam9007 (talk) 01:36, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

"This applies to sufficiently identical copies, having any title, of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion." The outcome of the discussion has to have been a delete consensus from the discussion. If the discussion was closed as "speedily deleted", then the page wasn't deleted via the discussion; no one ever affirmed a consensus. Largoplazo (talk) 01:52, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

So the recreation of this isn't a valid G4 then? I surmised as much, but the admin believes it was a valid G4, saying the discussion resulted in the speedy. Adam9007 (talk) 02:06, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

The closure was done as both speedy and per WP:SNOW, so it was deleted after concensus via discussion was reached. --Whpq (talk) 02:28, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

He also said it would still have been a valid G4 even if it hadn't been snowed. Adam9007 (talk) 03:03, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

If the page was speedy deleted during an XfD, what was the speedy deletion criterion used at the time? If that criterion also apples to the newer version of the page, then use that criterion again. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:11, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

As long as the admin gave a conclusion that was based on the discussion, I would say that it applies. But the admin, as far as I'm concerned, is wrong to say that G4 would still have applied even without the snow. G4 means the ruling from a discussion persists. A ruling can't persist if it never existed. "We canceled the discussion early because the article was speedied" isn't a ruling, it's a record of why the discussion was cut short before reaching a ruling. Largoplazo (talk) 11:05, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

This discussion would have been better served if Adam9007 provided a link to the actual discussion that took place rather than his interpretation of what took place. See User talk:NeilN#Gran Turismo LA. I don't see that user:NeilN ever stated that it was eligible for G4 without the snow clause. -- Whpq (talk) 12:46, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Largoplazo, this sums up my position: "For example, if a new editor takes an article to AFD and five editors say speedy delete, and the admin SNOWs it as a speedy delete, any re-created article is going to be G4'd or A7'd or whatever." A ruling was made that caused the speedy delete. The speedy was not done independent of the ruling. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:15, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

@Whpq: Actually, he did say that, if you read it carefully enough. Or at least that's how I'm interpreting it (correct me if I'm wrong NeilN). He said "Incorrect. The speedy was a result of a deletion discussion". That is, the discussion apparently resulted in the speedy and was therefore a valid G4. Note that he hasn't even mentioned the snowball clause yet. Only after did he say "Note that WP:SNOW was also invoked by the closing admin". The "also" implies that it was a separate reason, and therefore either one alone would have meant that it was a valid G4. @NeilN: I still don't see how the discussion resulted in the speedy. I don't know if it was tagged, but nobody in the AfD actually said speedy G3 (there's a difference between that and "I think this is a hoax". One person said speedy A11, but A11 is not G3.). As far as I can tell, Jimfbleak simply came along and decided it was a G3 blatant hoax and speedied it. If that's the case, then it wasn't speedied because of the discussion; it was speedied despite it. The discussion was mostly talking about WP:GAMECRUFT, something entirely different. The snowball clause was also invoked because it was clear that even without the speedy, the discussion would have resulted in delete anyway per those concerns. Adam9007 (talk) 15:30, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

From a practical standpoint, if it was properly deleted before by a non-prod process, and is still substantially the same, it is either eligible for deletion via the same Speedy criteria as before, or was deleted as the result of a discussion, and is thus deletable under G4. In the absence of an argument that the article should not be deleted at all, where the listed deletion reason isn't unambiguously wrong, arguing over which one should have been used doesn't serve much purpose... The AfD close is a bit murky, but again, as long as well all agree that the article should be deleted for some reason, we don't really need to worry about it. It is sufficiently subjective that we should deal with it on a case by case basis where someone is actually advocating for keeping an article. Monty₈₄₅ 15:50, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Adam9007, I see no useful purpose in continuing to debate minutiae and your parsing of my and other editors' words and actions with you. Others - if you have other viewpoints I would be happy to listen. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:53, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

A source of confusion here may be the distinction between a snow close and a speedy close. We sometimes use the terms as if they were synonymous, but they are not. They both result in immediate deletion of the article, but they are different. A SNOW deletion comes as the result of an AfD discussion where the result is so obvious it doesn't need to run the full seven days. That reflects consensus and is just as valid an AfD close as a seven-day one - so an article which is recreated after a snow deletion is properly tagged as G4. A SPEEDY deletion is done as a result of one of the CSD criteria, and G4 should probably not apply if it is recreated (although the same CSD criterion could be used again). In the case Adam brings up here, the closing admin cited both speedy (G3) and snow, and so IMO it was quite appropriate to remove the recreated article per G4. --MelanieN (talk) 16:55, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

I might have a quibble with this. Let's say an article is put up at AFD. Editors familiar with the area identify it as a hoax and call for a G3. The closing admin closes the discussion after a couple days as "Speedy delete - G3" without explicitly invoking SNOW. If the article is recreated I am very likely to speedy as a G4 as I think it reflects a stronger community consensus (a discussion) to speedy delete the article as opposed to the judgment of two people (tagger and admin). It also indicates to people interested in why the article is a hoax that there's discussion they can look at. The snow close I think is a red herring. The question to ask is if the deletion was the result of the discussion. Now, if one admin speedied the article without bothering to look at the AFD and another closed it, the recreation would not be G4-eligible. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:13, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

In the scenario you presented, there wasn't a "strong community consensus". There was a discussion that was cut short without an administrator drawing a conclusion that there had been such a consensus. That's the problem with invoking G4 in that case. But there's also no reason to invoke G4. Just speedy it as G3 again. Now, if the reviewing administrator in this speedy go-around doesn't think that it's an obvious hoax, then it needs to go to AFD, because no previous AFD has proceeded to a a consensus. Largoplazo (talk) 17:28, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Could you clarify? Are you referring to the actual incident Adam brought up or the theoretical scenario I wrote about right above your post? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:44, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

"In the scenario you presented ..." The one in which you said the admin didn't assert a consensus for deletion from the discussion. The point of G4 is that we can speedily delete anything for which a consensus for deletion has previously been reached—as officially declared by the closing admin, not as some arbitrary would-be speedy re-deleter reads into it in retrospect. Largoplazo (talk) 20:36, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

The only scenario I presented which fits your description is "if one admin speedied the article without bothering to look at the AFD and another closed it" which I've already said is not G4-eligible. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:20, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Can you explain what I said that doesn't describe "Let's say an article is put up at AFD. Editors familiar with the area identify it as a hoax and call for a G3. The closing admin closes the discussion after a couple days as "Speedy delete - G3" without explicitly invoking SNOW."? In this scenario, there is no strong community consensus, despite your premise that it "reflects a stronger community consensus". The discussion is being cut short without an administrator drawing a conclusion that there had been such a consensus. It's exactly what I described, assuming that by closing it as "speedy delete", the administrator meant that he was closing the discussion because the article had been speedily deleted. If someone !voted "speedy delete" in the discussion, that's beside the point. If the administrator had wished to conclude from that that the discussion itself had led to a delete conclusion, then the administrator should have written added that it was a SNOW delete consensus. If the admin didn't do that, then it isn't for the rest of us to imagine that he did. Largoplazo (talk) 01:44, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

SNOW isn't a magic word. If there are five !votes to G3 speedy delete and on the second day an admin comes along and closes the discussion as "Speedy delete G3" and then proceeds to G3 the article I would posit that the ones who say the G3 didn't come from consensus are the ones who have to use their imagination. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 01:53, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

If it's that obvious that it's a G3, then just speedy it again as a G3. Instead of positing. Even if the people contributing to a discussion fervently opined speedy delete instead of just delete, if an admin deletes an article because of the consensus achieved in a discussion, then that isn't speedy deletion, it's just deletion. "Speedy delete" as an outcome means that the article was deleted speedily apart from the discussion, and that therefore the discussion is therefore moot. It doesn't mean that the discussion led to a "speedy deletion", which is a contradiction. Speedy deletion is a route to deletion instead of reaching a decision on deletion by consensus. Largoplazo (talk) 10:26, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Obviously I disagree with your interpretation. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:04, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Obviously, you don't understand that "speedy deletion" is instead of deletion as the outcome of a discussion. Or don't care. And, obviously, you have some fixation on being able to use G4 in a case where there isn't even any reason to resort to G4 because G3 is just as good as it was the first time. It's just silly. Largoplazo (talk) 14:53, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: There's that word again. In which sense are you using it? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:42, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

I never knew about that transoceanic distinction! It's like the disagreement over what it means to "table" a motion. I meant rendered ineffective, no longer applicable. Largoplazo (talk) 19:08, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

"...isn't even any reason..." - obviously you didn't understand my posts above or don't care to. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:36, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Fine. OK. You have a reason to. But it's bad reason because G4 doesn't apply. Because you don't get to make up what consensus a closing admin might have declared if the closing admin had bothered to declare one.

Here are some AFD scenarios:

AFD Case	Reason given	!Votes	Speedy Delete !votes
1	Speedy delete	10	0
2	Speedy delete	10	2
3	Speedy delete	10	4
4	Speedy delete	10	6
5	Speedy delete	10	8
6	Speedy delete	3	1
7	Speedy delete	3	2
8	Speedy delete	3	3

In all cases, the article was speedy-deleted, and the admin reflected that in the finding speedy delete.

Now suppose all these articles are recreated. Please tell us in exactly which cases the closing statement speedy delete meant no more than "the article was speedy-deleted, so this discussion is over" and in which cases the closing statement speedy delete meant "I am declaring a finding that this discussion has led to a consensus of speedy delete".

1. Whatever your choices are, how did you become empowered to be the one to decide what the closing admin meant in each case?
2. If you think there's actually such a thing as an AFD finding of "speedy delete", when the article has not already been speedily deleted at the time the AFD is being closed, can you explain what that's supposed to mean that makes it different from an AFD finding of "delete"? I'm asking to see what answer you would come up with, before I point out that speedy deletion and AFD are two distinct processes for arriving at a deletion. If deletion occurs as the result of going through the AFD process, then, by definition, it wasn't deleted as a result of going through the speedy deletion process (and vice versa).

Largoplazo (talk) 21:07, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

No, sorry, I'm going to use my judgment in each real-life case instead of wasting time on your hypotheticals. You are not empowered to decide what the closing admin took into account either so it's a fruitless dead end. I will leave you with this scenario: G3 is reserved for blatant hoaxes but given Wikipedia's global editing community, not all hoaxes are blatant to everyone. When an article comes up at AFD and is identified as a blatant hoax by other editors who have knowledge in the area, we want to get rid of it as soon as possible, as it could do harm because some readers ignore the tags up top and there are always lazy journalists wanting to write a "Those Wikipedia idiots have an article on the flying anteater of Arizona!" story. So the admin looks at the editors' comments, sees there's consensus, and G3's it. If the article is recreated again, I will G4 it, which indicates to people interested in why the article is a hoax that there's discussion they can look at. Contrary to what you assert, this is useful and not a "bad reason". --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:50, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

• Comment So far as I am concerned, if an article is speedy deleted before the discussion is closed, it doesn't give grounds for G4 to apply. If the discussion is closed as 'Delete', and then the article is deleted, G4 can apply to a re-creation. People in the discussion may call for speedy deletion, but an article shouldn't be closed with 'Speedy delete' as a reason. 'Speedy deleted' is a reason for closing (and one I use when closing, either because I've speedied something that is quite blatant, or have found something deleted where the deleter hasn't also closed). Peridon (talk) 12:02, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Cap on number of nominations for speedy deletion?

I was wondering if we could maybe put a cap on the amount of articles someone can nominate for speedy deletion within the span of 1-3 hours. My reason for this is because there are currently over 400 articles up for G13 deletion, almost all of which were nominated by the same person, Puffin. I've asked them to slow down and it looks like my request was ignored.

This isn't the first time that we've been inundated with G13 nominations. I remember at least two different occasions in the past where we had well meaning editors drown the speedy category with nominations, to the point where several admins complained about the overwhelmingly huge workload that was dumped on their laps in what was ultimately a span of 1-2 hours.

To my knowledge there are only a few admins that actively monitor the board and right now I think I'm the only admin actively working on this excessive backlog of nominations. I really, really think that there needs to be some sort of cap on how many articles someone can nominate in a relatively short amount of time. If this was the first time this happened then I'd likely have just blown it off, but this is about the third time this has happened so far. At some point it just sort of feels counterproductive since the non-G13 candidates are drowned out under hundreds of G13 candidates, which are of far less urgency than say, an attack page or copyright violation. Maybe cap the nominations at 100-200 per every 2-3 hours? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:25, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• This might be a bot that they made, in which case I'd like to lobby that G13 nominations not be done by a bot unless they can maintain a cap. This is just a ridiculous amount of nominations within the span of a few short hours. It's currently at 521. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:32, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
• Agreed. No one needs to nominate so many pages for speedy deletion in such a short amount of time unless there is some sort of emergency and then they should be posting at AN/ANI. Even a cap of 100 is lenient. Jenks24 (talk) 10:42, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• I've asked for help at ANI, but this is just overwhelming. It looked like Puffin had stopped for a short period of time, but it looks like they started back up again. This is just way, way too much. At one point I did an entire page of nominations at the G13 category (about 200 pages according to the category) and didn't even dent the number of tagged articles. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:45, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• G13's criteria are bright-line decisions:

1. In draft space; and
2. No edits in the previous 6 months, EXCEPT

• by bot
• the edit that adds the G13 tag.

Since neither requires any quality assessment, wouldn't deletion by bot be the rational way to handle the load? for (;;) (talk) 10:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• The problem here is that we have an editor who is, in effect, nominating 500 pages in about a 1-3 hour time span. As far as I know, I'm the only admin working on this project. Even if there were 4-5 of us, this is still an obscenely large amount of nominations for people to handle within a short amount of time - and this is on top of any other nominations that could come about, ones that actually do require a very quick response. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:52, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• Then pick one of the other CSD categories to work from rather than Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned AfC submissions. Other than indenting around my previous suggestion your 3 replies have ignored it completely. for (;;) (talk) 11:12, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• What I'd like to ask is that we have no user created bots unless they adhere to a nomination cap - no more than 100 per hour, tops. Users would be held to the same cap. The reason for this is that right now we have a backlog that I cannot keep up with by myself and I think that a fleet of admins would have trouble keeping up with this. I can't QC these like I otherwise would, which means that pages containing copyright violations, veiled personal attacks, and the like could slip through and potentially be recreated at WP:REFUND - and pages containing all of this have been restored at REFUND. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:54, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
• The thing is, bots aren't human. They can go indefinitely and require no sleep or other things that humans like to do while staying alive. They could nominate pages indefinitely. Admins, on the other hand, are human and must delete each candidate by hand. Ideally we're supposed to also look at these and ensure that they qualify - something we can't really do if there are 500 candidates and counting up for nominations. I'm stopping for the day because honestly, I'm exhausted and this would take hours to complete - likely even with help. I'm willing to wield the mop and bucket, but I'm not some deletion machine that can unceasingly delete pages churned out by what is likely someone's bot. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:58, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• According to Puffin, they're not using a bot. This means that they were nominating all of these by hand. It's still wildly excessive. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:06, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• Is Puffin tagging incorrectly? If not - don't shoot the messenger. for (;;) (talk) 11:16, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• I don't know - I don't have enough time to check all of them for all of the various things that I'd normally check. (Copyvio, advertising, attack, etc) It's either do mass deletions or let them be and let the number swell to possibly more than 1,000 nominations. It also doesn't help that Puffin was asked to stop by multiple admins and ignored said requests because they were too busy nominating articles. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:18, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• On the one hand you say you've been handling hundreds of Puffin's G13 nominations, then on the other you say you have no feel whether they are accurate tags or not... I don't get it. for (;;) (talk) 11:29, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
• What I mean by that is that I normally like to check G13 candidates for multiple deletion rationales, not just G13 criteria. AfC has a huge, huge issue with copyvio and advertising, some of which isn't detected despite admins having had their fingers on the articles at one point in time (G13 deletion). Some of these articles are restored and go to the mainspace with these issues, which causes more issues in the long term. Before I started focusing only on G13 criteria, I was checking each article for copyvio and advertising - and found many articles that contained G11 or G12 violations. This means that although the articles were technically G13 candidates, they had more pressing reasons for their deletion. However with the number of nominations quickly rising, I didn't have the time to give each candidate the time I normally would, so I deleted only on G13 criteria. This means that these articles could potentially be restored if someone at REFUND doesn't check for copyright or advertising, which does tend to happen because that board isn't always fully staffed and sometimes the nominations come fast and furious. I've had more than one instance where an article had to be re-deleted for copyvio reasons. My point here is that while G13 is technically correct, Puffin doesn't seem to be checking for anything else because he's nominating too fast and the admins can't really spend a whole lot of time looking for other deletion rationales to prevent future issues because we're trying to keep up with a backlog. If there were fewer pages I could keep up with this, but with 500 pages at any given point in time despite constant attempts to reduce the number we don't really have the luxury of checking for these things. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:37, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
• In other words, Puffin isn't really doing a thorough job of nominations either. Copyvio should be deleted as copyvio, not as G13 and I don't think he is actually checking for this when he's nominating 100 pages an hour. Also it's also considered to be just polite when three separate admins within a 24-48 hour period ask you to slow down on the nominations because you're doing it faster than what they can keep up with. If RHaworth is telling you that you're doing too much, that's as big of a sign as any that it's too much. That man is a machine when it comes to speedy deletions. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:39, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• What if someone came up with an automated tool you deleting admins could use to list all current G13 nominations and tell you whether each of them is objectively valid? And gave you Delete and Untag buttons for each? Largoplazo (talk) 11:10, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• That would be great, but we should also be monitoring these for other issues as well, to prevent issues at REFUND or in other locations, as things like copyvio aren't always detected at AfC. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:18, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• Manual G13 tagging and deletions defeats the purpose of the bright line rules, and are an example of absurdity in inefficiencies. G13 taggings and deletions should only be allowed by a properly set up admin bot, such as User:HasteurBot. I would guess that Puffin is not posting the required author notifications, then waiting, then ensuring REFUND advice is given after the fact. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:40, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Or we should just do away with G13 as a speedy criteria and let draftspace stuff lay around forever. Disc space is cheap. Jclemens (talk) 04:48, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
    • Indeed, disc space is cheaper than volunteer time required to think about it.

Some argued that the dust made it very hard to find the diamonds, and so we have to delete the dust. While observing this is a flawed solution, I also observe that for those who want to volunteer in that way, in helping to find the diamond flecks in draftspace, they can do so even more effectively by taggery. The discussion is here: Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Tagging_drafts. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:09, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

• a straight up observation 400 csd nominations in 180 minutes of unrelated articles is beyond the capabilities of single editor reviewing an article and making a reasonible assessment of the article, IMHO if the person is actively doing this they are being deliberately disruptive because editing at such a sustained rate of edits requires the use of an automated tool whether authorised (or not) with absolutely no care as what they are doing. CSD is about being fast but its about the nominator taking a reasonable step to assess the article as well this why there are so many issues about biting new editors because of careless CSD nominations. Gnangarra 11:59, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what's careless here. These are all legitimate CSD nominations from what I can see, it's just the speed on the move from Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions to the G13 criteria that's at issue. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
• Since User:Puffin has allegedly retired but most definitely has been blocked as a compromised account, can this be closed as moot? As of right now, there's over 400 pages in Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions and 7 under G13. For all intents and purposes, all 400 pages do qualify under the G13 criteria and could be directly deleted by an admin. All we have instead is a separate review by a non-admin reviewer to see whether to consider postponement rather than G13 nomination at this time and then the admin review to confirm prior to deletion. Flooding CSD is not appropriate but we have the same issues at time with people flooding over from the technical RM requests or other kinds of things (Neelix redirects still number in the tens of thousands). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

  @Ricky81682: There's that word again. In which sense are you using it? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:39, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

  @Redrose64: Force of habit but I'm refusing to Mootness. The meanings aren't too far off, it's still debatable but is there is a point now? There's going to be no rule on how many CSDs one can do but it'll fall under WP:DE or in this case, possibly an unauthorized bot given the volume of edits. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:20, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

• Actually, here's an idea: if there's an entire category of articles that might be eligible for G13, why not have that show up at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion? By this I mean these articles aren't listed with the other speedy candidates, rather on a little side bar that resembles the eligible draft infobox:

id1(name) is
evaluating CSD:G13
eligible AfC draftsid2

It could be placed near the location where the other speedy candidates are listed, but the pages themselves wouldn't be listed. If I'm not mistaken, there's a bot that warns users when their pages become eligible for G13. If there's not one that does this regularly, there should be - and it could be one that would warn these users as soon as they fall within G13 territory. (IE, as soon as they become eligible for someone to slap a speedy tag on the draft.) That way the warning would be handled by bots and admins can go through the category at their leisure whenever they see that there are candidates in the category or if it's particularly backlogged. This also means that this would remove G13 candidates from the main speedy deletion category, where they might become so numerous that it'd be easy to overlook something that might be more urgent, like spam or an attack page. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:33, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Eliminate G13

The discussion above shows that G13 remains a crippling failure here. Tens of thousands of hours are wasted on these deletions, none of which is necessary and all of which could just as easily be done by tagging all poor drafts as low potential and ignoring them. WikiCreativeJuicer (talk) 09:27, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

• One concern I've seen cited when ignoring drafts is that a number of them have issues like copyright violations, and that methodically checking every one of them for these issues is not a viable method of resolving such issues. Thus, the blanket deletion method.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:38, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
  • That's G12. Nominate those for deletion. WikiCreativeJuicer (talk) 09:40, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
    • Pardon, but the time and effort at finding such issues is the problem. And not all copyright violations can simply be zapped à la G12, but are still issues.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:38, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
• To be a little honest, I wouldn't have a huge issue with this although I do see the validity in freeing up a little server space for them. At the very least I wouldn't mind the grace period for G13 articles being extended for a year. I do like SmokeyJoe's idea of tagging drafts, though. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:12, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Technically speaking, barring a server-side purge the MediaWiki software keeps deleted stuff around forever as if it had never been deleted.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:26, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
• G13 was created so that we don't have to use our time to check old, abandoned drafts for all kind of problems (G12, but also attack pages, spam, ...) and could simply delete them. Removing G13 would waste "tens of thousands of hours", keeping it around frees up a lot of time though (not server space), as people no longer have to check these pages. G13 tagging is so easy it can be done by bot usually, while the other speedy categories need manual time and effort. Why should we waste that time on non-mainspace pages were no one is interested in working on them anyway? Fram (talk) 11:12, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Look e.g. at Draft:MEDIALAAN, last real edit on 12 June 2015 (one hour after creation), since maintained and declined by others, and minimally changed to avoid deletion by User:DGG (otherwise it would have been deleted about 6 months ago). It's a straight, unattributed copy of the older Medialaan, making it a copyvio. Removing G13 would keep this around probably indefinitely (well, the efforts of some people who should know better already had that effect for now). From the same day as that Draft, I see Draft:Rozdoum (Gentleware Ukraine), a pure G11 deletion kept around by the "cleanup" of User:GoingBatty. That's two out of 7 remaining drafts for that date whch should be speedy deleted. G13 makes this easier, and ensures that the problems disappear after some time instead of lingering eternally (before G13, the backlog stretched back many years). Fram (talk) 12:46, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
• Interesting discussion, my first thought was may be its a problem with the names space or the way the draft process works so the first article I check Draft:Yuichi Asami^{note: article has now been deleted} what I see is that its last edit was related to moving from userspace to draft becaues Article for Creation prefer it to be submitted via draft space. This was in December 2015[3] despite it being in user space not at the apparent request of the user who last edited the article in 2010 when it was userfied after being proded, two subsequent edits were one noting it was a draft in user space, the next a bot in 2012 removing categories. So yes I think there are some problems with G13 not in how its being used but in the way Articles for Creation is operating so what ever we do here isnt going to address the issue Gnangarra 12:00, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
• The principle of G13 is I think necessary. We need to remove junk. Unaccepted drafts that do not meet the requirements and never will are confusing and detrimental to the improvement of those that are possible. But altogether too many improvable drafts are deleted by G13, and the problem needs to be solved. The most critical step has already been taken, o though its implementation is still in progress: the removal of permission to review drafts from those who do not know or will not follow the standards. The next step is the subject classification of drafts so people will naturally review those where they are knowledgable and interested. (and there's more of course, including a much more energetic use of MfD, especially for drafts that have been rejected multiple times. DGG ( talk ) 19:23, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
  • I think the real problem is that people don't police and review Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions enough. In my mind, that should be the focus of review. It's basically a one-month prod notice before deletion. Of course, call it that and there's vehement opposition but that is what how this all operates. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:17, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
• I agree with @Fram:, one of the rationales for creating G13 is to make it easier to remove crap. The criteria were deliberately made objective in a way that a bot could interpret, so that the nominations could be made by bot, rather than by humans. One might argue that if a bot algorithm can identify suitable candidates, why not add the admin flag and let the bot do the deletion as well? I would oppose this at this time. Bots are programmed by humans, and can be in error for a number of reasons. I would hate to wake up to find that a bot had been mistakenly deleting valid content. It might get caught right away, but it might not. I see value in having a human actually do the deletion if only to spot check and make sure the right ones are deleted. I do a fair number of deletions, and I look at every one. That said, my review can be quite cursory in most cases. When the bot does the nomination, I simply make sure it has the green bar. After reviewing tens of thousands, I have never seen the bot make an error. When it is nominated by a human, I review a handful by that human until I get a level of comfort with their ability, then if I see their name and the green bar it goes, with an occasional spot check in more detail. I do see occasional errors, but only by humans. I do not check for copyright vios. I know Tokyogirl79 (talk · contribs) is concerned about the possibility that a refund of a G13 is routine, and may inadvertently restore a copyvio. I have three responses:

1. The draft, by definition, is more than six months old. The time for such a check is earlier in the process, not at the end.
2. Proper copyvio review is very labor intensive relative to making sure it qualifies as G13. I don't think we can justify a copyvio check on every G13, when it should have been checked earlier, and almost certainly is going into a black hole in seconds.
3. My position on restoring G13s under refund is that I will do so routinely. (If it is multiply tagged with a G12, of course not). I generally do so without much fuss (the most recent example on my talk page being a bit of an exception). However, in light of my practice not to check a G13 for copyvio when deleting, and my willingness to restore, I will make sure to do some check when I do the restore, to help avoid the possibility of restoring a copyvio. A small fraction of G13s are restored, so I think checking restored ones is a much more efficient use of time than checking those about to be deleted.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:31, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Agree on the crap removal part. The AFC system is not particularly new but G13 is. The prior idea were reviews (not formalized of course) in userspace but has no mechanism for deletion other than MFD. As such, the Article Wizard had drafts from I'd say 2006-2009 when the backlog volume overloaded it and people just quit touching it. You can see from the deleted categories history when the slow-down occurred. As it stands, there's 23k over 3 years old, almost 20k over 4 years old and over 13k pages over 5 years old there. In contrast there's a total of maybe 8k pages in all of AFC currently, Now it may be cute and all to say that we shouldn't delete anything and just let the same pages float around for all time, but it won't be long until the current backlogs that exist become insurmountable, especially if the solution is just tagging page to be ignored and "forgetting them" as if that's actually a good idea. We'll again be driving away people who will wait to review and clean up these pages just for the minute chance that someone's draft created on a whim a half decade ago could even become at best a tiny stub in mainspace. It's the classic Wikipedia joke about how there's a gigantic page long discussion about a single lead sentence, instead where it's tens of bits of hours of many people's work to deal with a draft that most of the old "contributors" don't even remember making a year later. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:32, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

"if the solution is just tagging page to be ignored and "forgetting them" as if that's actually a good idea". Clearly you don't read well. The tagging idea is to partition drafts. When the pile of "no-hope" drafts is large enough, we can review the contents, checking that the taggers are doing a proper job, and delete the lot. It is about doing it efficiently and openly, as opposed to deleting everything without review, or by broad CSDs that will be misused, or worst, by ad hoc page by page individual MfD discussions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:00, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I think it is legitimate to ask why we would bother to take the time to clean them up, especially in view of the fact that the space issue is a non-issue. However, I think there are some reasons for cleanup. One is the possibility that they contain some copyvios. Our process for cleaning up copyvio issues is taking longer than I would like, but if we officially gave up on this subset, it could be problematic. Hosting copyvios is technically illegal, and I think we will get a pass if we show we have a process for review. If we change the process to say "we don't care about old drafts" we might find we are legally obligated to care.

A reason for not getting too excited about stale drafts is that they are not indexed. But that could change tomorrow. Google and other search engines respect the no-index, but I don't believe they are legally obligated to respect it. What if they changed their mind, not tomorrow, but ten years from now, and we didn't have a few thousand old drafts, we had a few million old drafts. Who wants to be in charge of deciding whether they can be mass deleted? What if someone trolls though them and posts embarrassing examples of crap, or worse, attacks or copyvios and points that Wikipedia saves these on purpose? We don't need that.

There's another potential problem (I think) that could turn into a problem if we let them accumulate for year. Suppose there's an old draft with a name associated with a real person. Some time in the future someone wants to write about a different person with the same name. It won't be easy to start the draft, because that name already exists. We wouldn't follow our usual dab rules, because it isn't conflicting with an actual article. We could dream up something, but we'd have to dream up something, and over time, it would affect more and more names. Better not to have to deal with it my keeping the stale draft backlog to a manageable level.--S Philbrick(Talk) 01:09, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I think, for inactive drafts, especially by drive-by contributors, it is a reasonable presumption that the vast majority are of no benefit. Consequently, it is inefficient to search the drafts for bigger problems, such as copyvio, and more efficient to sift for the better drafts, rescuing them from the auto-deletion G13 path. An important feature the suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Tagging_drafts is that tagging as {{Promising draft}} is at the top of the instructions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:43, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

• Comment If these deletions weren't necessary, are any deletions necessary? If something as been abandoned for six months, it can mean one of a few possibilities. One is that the author has been run over by a bus. More likely is that they have discovered that editing on Wikipedia isn't quite as easy as it seems at first sight. Another is that they have simply lost interest. Those may leave something worth keeping and improving. Then we have the rest. They may have lost the job in which they were told to create an article. (Companies do this, believe it or not...) In a lot of cases, the article may be a veiled attack, or it may be just innocuous crap about a mate, or just an attempt to show that you CAN post crap on Wikipedia and get away with it. I can see no reason for any of these to be kept, or the ones that are one liners that no-one is likely to fill out. There are some editors who trawl through looking for coal in the slag. Newcomers who don't know about Draft won't look there to see if there is already a beginning in cold storage. They'll just start an article in article space anyway. Things stored in an attic may become valued antiques. Incomplete or insufficient articles stored here won't. Peridon (talk) 11:49, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Peridon, I think you have hit on the right approach. Once a competent reviewer decides something is worth saving, then there should be no time limit. One technique to avoid it is to move the draft to userspace, but this makes it much less visible, and is almost a guarantee that it will be forgotten. Having a tag such as just suggested which would suppress the automatic 6 month G13 would probably be the simplest first step in a solution. The tag would put the articles in a searchable category, which might attract more of us to try to rescue them. DGG ( talk ) 21:28, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
    • We already have editors who edit G13 eligible drafts with some minimal edit just to postpone the deletion (like DGG here making a Draft worse just to postpone the inevitable), but without any further result (in this case, the draft needs to be deleted, as we already have an older article with the same subject and text). Having a tag that instead of a 6-month delay would create an indefinite delay is a bad idea, as it can very, very easily be misused. Fram (talk) 07:42, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
      • True, but easily managed. Marking a draft with a tag such as {{Promising draft}} is a clear assertion of promise. MfD can be used to challenge that, and an indiscriminate tagger will quickly be revealed to have a behavioural problem. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:39, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

• What may help is a bot reviewing outward links(blue link) from the draft article to existing articles and dropping a message on the talk page of the existing article to draw editors from those articles to the draft article. This will help increase knowledge of the new content, will get them seen sooner by experienced editors who can then incorporate the content, point out that an article on the same topic exists or tag for deletion under one of the other reasons. then if the article remains dormant for 6 months it can just be deleted by a bot. Gnangarra 10:44, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Does WP:G4 apply?

Article Blank Banshee was deleted after a deletion discussion (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blank Banshee). LAter, it was recreated as a draft (Draft:Blank Banshee) and submitted to WP:AFC. How do we treat such cases? Should the draft be deleted as WP:G4? Or should it be left? Can it be accepted to main space despite the previous consensus to delete? Vanjagenije (talk) 00:30, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

In this case, I'd say the draft is worded differently enough to avoid G4. However, I have grave doubts about the notability and couldn't see it lasting long in article space. It also looks rather promotional with those quotes. In general, I'd say that if an draft is identical (or only minimally altered and not thereby improved) to the deleted article, it should be liable to G4. G4 covers all spaces. Peridon (talk) 09:11, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

• @Vanjagenije: It ultimately depends on the situation. Normally it's OK for someone to work on an AfC draft, especially if they think that there are enough sources to overturn an AfD consensus. It usually takes a lot for something to get deleted at AfC and normally the only time something is deleted is if the content is inherently problematic (promotional, attack, sockpuppetry, etc) or they're only using the draft as a way to host the information while they cut/paste it back into the mainspace. Sometimes it can be taken away if there are repeated attempts to resubmit the page for review without any attempts to improve the article, where the page is declined and the only edit by the submitter is to resubmit the page. Other than that, it's OK for them to use AfC. As far as accepting it goes, I usually recommend that the person accepting the article talk to the deleting admin, if possible. Especially if there were any issues with prior recreation or other problems.

In this situation it's kind of tricky. The page was created by a slew of sockpuppets in at least two different places, resulting in both pages getting salted (Blank Banshee, Blank banshee). The new user is a little suspicious because of the similarity of his username to confirmed sockpuppets and his interest in restoring the article, but it doesn't seem like there was enough to firmly link them together. At this point I think it'd be better to let him do a few more attempts to get it approved, maybe even try to help find sources. If none can be found or provided and the amount of attempts to improve the page go beyond a specific point (6-10), then it'd be a good idea to gently let him know that it's unlikely that the page would be accepted. I'd recommend looking for sources, though, and explaining to him in depth why the available sources aren't usable since he does seem to be making a good faith attempt to improve the page. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:14, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

• I coincided with Peridon here and they summed it up far more succinctly, but I'll post this anyway. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:14, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

  @Tokyogirl79: You say that it's OK for someone to work on an AfC draft [...] to overturn an AfD consensus. But how we overturn the consensus? Who decides whether the new article is significantly better so that the consensus is overturned? If the draft gets accepted, can it be g4 deleted? Vanjagenije (talk) 10:48, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Of course G4 can be applied if the versions are "substantially identical". Non-admins will only rarely be able to judge whether G4 applies. If the article is thought inadequate and G4 does not apply WP:AFD (but not WP:PROD) is the way to go. However, no-one is required to do this if they think the article is OK – there is no "screening" process. Any past consensus does not need to be formally overturned because the article may now be just fine and dandy. If recreation had been agreed to be a problem the AFD closer would have said so (probably by requiring WP:DRV submission) or by WP:SALT. My personal opinion in this case is that an AFD would be in order if the draft is accepted. Thincat (talk) 13:10, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

• @Vanjagenije: Hmm... ideally the person who accepts the article at AfC should contact the deleting admin (or another one) to check and make sure that the draft resolves the issues at AfD, prior to accepting the article if there's any doubt. It's relatively rare that AfC will approve an article that's identical to the deleted version, but it does happen on occasion. More often than not (when an article has issues and was previously AfD'd) it's usually that someone will accept an article that is written differently but doesn't use more or better sources than they did prior. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:46, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I just noticed that the original title (Blank Banshee) was salted by TomStar81. Does that mean that the person is definitively not notable? Even if the draft gets accepted, it can't be moved to the main space because the title is salted. Vanjagenije (talk) 12:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
    • Salting does not mean that the person is not notable, it just means that the article was repeatedly recreated. It was protected to stop the creation/deletion cycle. If the draft gets accepted only an admin can move it to the mainspace under that title. -- GB fan 12:10, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Basically, 'salting' is a way of cutting down the work of both patrollers and admins. If something considered rubbish (like being deleted five times and only getting minor alterations to each posting) is salted, and someone wants to use that title, all they have to do is contact an admin and show them that there really is something worthwhile to post. This can be because the original poster was a dedicated spammer, and a regular editor shows that the subject has notability and makes a draft in their userspace, or a new draft about Fred Symington-Bogg (who is a Sussex and England cricketer) is not about the same Fred Symington-Bogg (whi is aged 15 and probably a damn nuisance to all his school colleagues in South Carolina). In cases like those, any admin can desalt the title for a move of the draft. Some people get quite creative in their attempts to bypass salting by changing the title a fraction. I'm thinking here about a certain film-maker and a certain singer, who have both probably topped 15 variants so far. All they need to do is actually become notable... Peridon (talk) 17:30, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

The article was salted due to a discovered sock farm that kept continuously attempting to recreate the article after csd deletion of the previous version. The afd handled the recreation by attaching G4 to the article, and the Sock Puppet Investigation identified and blocked three or four accounts running the article. In the interest of full disclosure, Michael lone2004 has been informed at length on his talk page that dealing with this article means sailing into a minefield, and I will also note here that his name was submitted to the SPI investigation page to check against the already identified sock puppets to make sure that he was not one of them (he was cleared). For what it is worth, I would agree that this is a probable case of WP:TOOSOON, but everyone deserves a shot at making magic happen here, so in the interest of WP:AGF I felt it best to let hom run his race, such as it were. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:07, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

A7 and applications

Hi all. Recently I have come across multiple new articles about non-notable applications (apps) for smartphones and alike. I have tagged some of these articles in accordance with A7, however it was declined. I'm just wondering if A7 and web content includes phone-based apps and applications and, if not, the A7 criterion should be amended to include applications. To me, it seems "web content" is an umbrella term of sorts that includes both web-based and phone-based content. -- LuK3 (Talk) 22:45, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

This was rejected not so long ago by a discussion. For software and apps it is too hard to make an on the spot assessment for claims of importance. Just because it is available on the web does not make it "web content". It's only if it is a web site/web page/web only video that the A7 can stick. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:36, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I just found the archived discussion. It just feels like "web content" is a very broad term that could be interpreted differently. -- LuK3 (Talk) 00:02, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Web content is defined under the scope of WP:NWEB, which was recently changed per an RfC (see the talk page) to include only content accessed through aa web browser. I think it's fairly clearly defined. Appable (talk) 01:01, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, this is one of the many confusions/misconceptions about A7. I'm currently writing an essay to address them, including this one. Adam9007 (talk) 01:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

In essence, if it runs on your machine, A7 doesn't apply. If you need an internet connection to use it on their server, A7 can apply. An app will run on your machine even if it fails to connect, so it's not web content; same applies to all programs that you have downloaded. A website comes under A7, and YouTube 'films' do too because they are there to be viewed online. YouTube itself is, of course notable, but that doesn't cascade down to the efforts of the backyard film-makers who only succeed in letting more people know how idiotic they are than would be the case if they used old-fashioned film. Computer games like Jacaranda Jim are not A7 candidates (but are subject to prod and AfD), but anything server based where you play against other people or clans who are using their own machines (and not sitting next to you in your bedroom) comes into the scope of A7. Think Angry Birds as opposed to Minecraft. Peridon (talk) 17:49, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Peridon: I strongly disagree with your last point; such applications use the internet, not the web. They are not the same thing. {{db-web}} explains what comes under its scope, and that doesn't. Adam9007 (talk) 17:59, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Can you explain that more clearly? I can't see anything in db-web that contradicts what I posted. Peridon (talk) 18:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Peridon: Applications of any sort are not similar to any of those, therefore they don't count. Angry Birds is not a browser game. Adam9007 (talk) 18:10, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

That was my point. Angry Birds runs on your machine, like Jacaranda Jim (which runs in MS-DOS 3.0). Minecraft is a game accessible via internet connection. (Both are notable - I'm using them as examples of A7 and non-A7 liability for similar games like Contented Canaries (runs on your phone even underground), and PitStealth (will be a multi-player game when there are more than three players that have heard of it). I'm referring to Minecraft in its multi-player aspect - you may know of a better example that doesn't work independently of the net. Peridon (talk) 18:36, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Peridon: You've missed my point; multiplayer aspects of games and programs that run on the user's machine use the internet, not the world wide web. Web content means just that; web content. Not anything associated with the internet. The world wide web and internet are not the same thing. I explain this and more in my essay (although it's not finished yet). Adam9007 (talk) 18:41, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

But the sites are on the Web, aren't they? Peridon (talk) 18:53, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Peridon: The sites, yes (they're not called websites for nothing :)). But the data the apps send is not transferred via the web; they are sent over a network. e.g. the internet. They may be displayed on the sites, but the app's operation has nothing to do with the site(s) itself/themselves. Adam9007 (talk) 18:58, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Broadly interpreted, software can be considered web content as it is typically obtained via websites. ViperSnake151  Talk  18:54, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@ViperSnake151: Not any more; see the RfC Appable pointed to. Adam9007 (talk) 18:58, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

To Adam - the point I am making is that apps aren't liable to A7. The multi-players connect to a game website to play, and that website is liable to A7. To Viper - you would have to be interpreting very widely to count software into A7. Software used on home or office machines can be prodded or AfDed, but not A7ed. Peridon (talk) 19:09, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Peridon: That's the point I was making; the website is eligible for A7, but the app is not. Even if the app is designed to use the internet or even the website. Adam9007 (talk) 19:12, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

So we're agreed, then? 8-) Peridon (talk) 19:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Peridon: Yes, did I misread what you said? It looked to me like you were saying that apps that use the internet are A7 eligible. Adam9007 (talk) 19:15, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

No, I was trying to say that if something runs on your machine, it's not A7 liable. Jacaranda Jim isn't very well known now, but that predates general web access. It can be downloaded from a website which would be liable to A7 - but it itself wouldn't be. (If you can run a DOS simulator, get it. Great fun. I've never got past the pirate in the cave yet. (Warning: do not kick Yitshak...) I mentioned the more modern games because people would know those names. Anyway, amazing how language can divide people, even when it's the same language. Peridon (talk) 19:48, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Peridon: I've never heard of Jacaranda Jim, but under the old definition of Web content, Operation: Inner Space (brilliant game, one of my all-time favourites) most certainly fell under it, despite it being made for 386 PCs running Windows 3.1! Obviously predates general web access too, but that didn't stop it being categorised as web content until the RfC. Adam9007 (talk) 20:03, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This is my main issue with the use of "web content". It could either be mean websites or anything hosted on websites (YouTube channels for example) or anything that could be connected to the internet, like online multiplayer video games or apps. I'm just trying to disambiguate the wording so the criteria is more clear. -- LuK3 (Talk) 20:10, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@LuK3: As mentioned, software that uses the internet is not web content if it runs on the user's machine. Web content means stuff hosted and used on the web, which is not the same thing as the internet. Adam9007 (talk) 20:18, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

How to prevent professional video gaming articles from being nominated for speedy deletion?

Wikipedia has a rich history of random people with zero notability who create articles for themselves, and it seems gamers are no exception. The problem is, professional gaming has seen a tenfold increase prominence by tenfold in the last decade and there are indeed many articles in that domain that now are notable, including some that have been deleted by AfD or A7 speedied in the past. Understandably, not every person in the world has caught onto the "eSports" phenomenon, including many editors here who skeptible that someone can be notable here for just playing video games. Also, filling pages with references from reliable sources doesn't seem enough in some rare cases, like Maikelele, which was A7 in this state nominated a whole four months after creation. My question is, how do we get people to look past these prejudices and do some searching WP:BEFORE nominating a professional gaming-related page for speedy deletion?--Prisencolin (talk) 23:58, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Sad thing is I really don't think we can. Adam9007 (talk) 02:31, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I guess a related question/proposal: Could we stop speedy deletions for articles more than a week old?--Prisencolin (talk) 03:41, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

There is a very simple way to prevent speedy deletions... Clearly establish that the subject actually is notable, and support that notability by citing quality sources that discuss the subject in depth. Don't expect potential nay-sayers to look for sources... Be proactive and do it yourself. Blueboar (talk) 03:58, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I'd add to that that BEFORE doesn't apply to speedy deletion. It's for nominations to AfD. Speedy applies to what is seen in the article. This doesn't prevent anyone doing research - I've 'saved' a few articles by adding refs. The key is making sure that your refs pass WP:RS and that there is a clear assertion of significance at the least. For long term survival, notability is essential, so aim for that. As to making articles over a week old exempt from speedy - why? Wine, cheese and whisky improve with age but articles either are of use or they aren't. The longer a poor quality article has been here, the more harm it's doing to Wikipedia's standards. The patrollers who do the most of the tagging usually find things very soon, but they can miss things, and do. Others use random searches, or search the edits be recent accounts page (where I began my career in deletion). If something gets deleted, ask for it to be userfied (I know you know this...), and ask the deleting admin for their reasons. Peridon (talk) 08:38, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

The guidelines make it sound as simple as that, but there have been a few times where admins have refused to undelete content or taken a while to do so. How about two or three weeks for speedy deletion? In any case, if there is an article that is truly below Wikipedia standards, it can just be easily PRODed or AfD, with the majority of articles without any chance or surviving those already being speedied within a week of creation.--Prisencolin (talk) 03:37, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

There is no way to stop editors from tagging articles for speedy deletion where it does not apply. We can try to educate editors that we see adding improper tags. In the case of Maikelele the system worked. The speedy deletion tag was added and then appropriately removed. -- GB fan 10:23, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

If you see an article that you think is improperly speedy tagged, you may remove the tag at your own prerogative. Be prepared to defend your decision, however. A2soup (talk) 10:43, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

There is no requirement to even defend your removal of a speedy tag. If you remove it, then the nominator may (and probably will) AfD it, but they cannot simply restore the speedy. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:31, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I beg to differ; I've had all sorts of flak thrown at me for removing CSD tags, including ANI threats and the like. I've been branded disruptive and templated for removing A7 tags from out-of-scope articles for instance (the speedy tags were of course restored). A2Soup is absolutely correct; you'd better be well prepared to defend yourself after removing a CSD tag, even if the CSD was obviously incorrect. Adam9007 (talk) 15:04, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: What you say is true of WP:DEPRODded articles, but a speedy deletion tag may be restored by anybody, including the original tagger, provided that the matching CSD criterion is applicable. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:40, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant A7s specifically (which is presumably the case here). Obviously there are exceptions for obvious vandalism etc., but if a GF editor claims that some subject is notable (by reverting the speedy), then that should be taken as a WP:CCS and it should, at most, go to AfD (and quite possibly deleted there, if they can't back up such a claim). To simply re-add a speedy in such a case is edit-warring, and should be treated as such. We make much of "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" and part of that is to treat our fellow editors as credible. Not RS reliable, but at least credible. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:21, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: I understand the policy, I am just relating the reality of the situation. While it is rare for the tag to be restored, it is common to have to answer for your removals in some place or another, especially if you de-tag with any frequency. I don't like it, but what can you do. You can look through this page's archives for examples, especially involving Adam9007. A2soup (talk) 01:48, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't know whether this will be a comfort but in the future when historians are interested in the development of professional gaming it won't be a problem that articles are being tagged for deletion. Indeed the fact of the tagging (and discussion about it) will be of just as much interest as the content of the articles themselves. Almost all content will be visible to everyone and people will think it was really weird that things got "deleted" rather than being moved out of prime time. I'm thinking of how we now view the wiping of tapes by TV companies. Doctor Who missing episodes are of interest largely because they were wiped. Let's hope deleted articles never are really deleted. Statements like this referred to from WP:Deletion policy#Archiving would be alarming if they were to be taken seriously. Better hurry up with your undeletion requests! Thincat (talk) 11:25, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

They aren't. If people are actually serious about working on these and not just complaining that the article as is should be overturned and stay, WP:REFUND exists and draftspace exists for a reason. Any admin can get those for you. It's not that hard to do. Use both properly and organize these into a cohesive actual notability standard and no one will argue about it. Do you actually this is really a matter of an allegedly older admin corp who simply don't get how popular eSports are? Give a little credit here. The last serious was in 2011 to eliminate eSports from the sports ones. At the very least, people should be able to identify which leagues/tournaments are generally notable to be included and from there, which teams being at those ones are next. Instead, I see numerous AFDs which consist entirely of "but this is the here and now, accept this as is it." -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:02, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

• Well, I'm 69 years old so "an allegedly older admin corp" is scarcely my way of thinking. I don't play computer games and have no interest in esports (I can scarcely understand what they are). And if the developers really do delete "deleted" pages then they won't be brought back, will they? Thincat (talk) 09:38, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

• Are you proposing that eSports be exempt from A7? It's not likely to pass. Otherwise, first work out a list of actual reliable sources. Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources is extensive but not the same as esports and you would be better off policing the actual articles for junk sources than arguing here that "future historians will look down upon Wikipedia because we missed the eSports revolution." MMA articles were regularly deleted for years and after some work, it's not an issue. Second, Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports) is that way. Draft up a proper notability standard (and no, do not expect that "every single player on every team" will qualify right now). Until then, A7 will hit a lot of things. Work from the league to the championship to the team to the players and build it up sensibly. College football has league, championship, team and season notability generally but not players. I'd say that's somewhat on point for eSports but it's not described in detail. Also, suggest mergers, redirects and use draftspace for what it is for: if you think a player is notable but it doesn't fit current policy, draftify the current article and work on it to fit policy rather than just arguing about how no one else understands you. As noted, this is not new and for those of us who remember the other sports going through this, the amount of gnashing and complaining rather than concrete work is why you're getting pushback. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:53, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't think it's going to pass either, but I suppose it's worth a shot. I'm just tired of other editors seeing a and automatically presuming it is non-notable solely because it's about professional gaming. Take this nomination, for instance, in which the editor tagged for A7 and literally typed "article about a video gamer" into the edit summary. There's also a discussion at the WP:VPP where we're drafting up a set of guidelines now, so I suppose there no point to my complaining anymore, although I am a bit annoyed over a current WP:DRV concerning the A7'd page Karrigan, which in at least "claimed" to be notable.--Prisencolin (talk) 03:43, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

A9 when the band/artist is tagged as A7

I've dealt with a few editors here and there where they will first create an article about their garage band (which qualifies for A7) and then create articles about their discography and/or singles (which, once the band's article is deleted, qualifies for A9). I've had an edit request to include "or where the artist(s) article is itself tagged for speedy deletion" declined on {{Db-a9}} for this reason...

Is there any reason why A9 doesn't include "musical recordings by artists or bands whose articles are tagged for speedy deletion under criteria A7" as well, or is it just something that no one has thought of yet? GSMR (talk) 15:58, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Anyone can tag anything with any criteria at any time. What is the emergency that cannot wait until an administrator has determined that tag is valid and acted upon it? Jclemens (talk) 17:46, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

It's not an emergency; it just acts on the premise that a tag for speedy deletion under A7 is done in good faith. GSMR (talk) 18:05, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been around too long to presume that. :-) Perhaps what we need is a contingent A9, that says, in effect, "the parent artist for this article has been tagged for speedy. If both articles are still tagged, please evaluate that A7 tag first before considering this A9." That way, you could place both tags at once and move on, and the evaluating admin would have an obvious roadmap to address the interrelated tags in the correct order. Jclemens (talk) 18:12, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

That works too! GSMR (talk) 18:19, 22 July 2016 (UTC)