Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

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Oft referenced pages

• Wikipedia:Deletion policy (talk)
• Wikipedia:Deletion log (talk and archives)
• Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators (talk)
• Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal (July 2005 proposal to expand WP:CSD)
• Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/New criteria (Summary of suggested changes as of November 2005)

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New image deletion criteria

In an effort to reduce the number of copyvio images on Wikipedia, I'd like to suggest the following new criteria for speedy deletion:

• CSD I6: Missing fair-use claim. Any image tagged only with {{fairuse}}, with no fair use rationale, may be deleted seven days after it was uploaded.
• CSD I7: Invalid fair-use claim 1. Any image with a clearly invalid fair-use tag (such as a {{logo}} tag on a photograph of a mascot) can be deleted at any time.
• CSD I8: Invalid fair-use claim 2. Any image that is from a company that makes money off of providing those images (such as Google Maps) may be deleted at any time.

--Carnildo 03:32, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

The first two seem fine (although you're going to hear massive screaming if you don't grandfather in existing {{fairuse}}-tagged images), but I don't think the third one is correct. My impression was that using, say, an example image from Google Maps on an appropriate article (i.e. Google Maps) could qualify as fair-use, regardless of what purpose the company produces said images for. —Kirill Lokshin 04:58, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Kirill here.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 05:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Problem is, people are using arial photos from Google Maps to illustrate articles on geographic locations, and are using images from the Associated Press and other news services to illustrate current events. --Carnildo 06:24, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

This would have to be opened up for wide community examination before it could even think about being made into a CSD. If someone is using an AP photo inappropiately but claiming fair use, remove the photo from the article in question with a note that it "may not be" fair use. The burden in on them to show that it is before they replace it, and we've already got a blocking policy to enforce that. I don't see that we need another CSD for this. - brenneman^{T}{L} 22:09, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I6 and I7 are quite all right, as long as you make it to be images after some target date. I8 is not so good. Use {{fairusedisputed}} instead. Stifle (talk) 10:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Every discussion we've had about what you're calling I6 and I7 seems to end up with "Yes, that's a good idea, just go slowly about it." Let's just implement them. Jkelly 18:25, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I've created {{db-norat}} for CSD:I6 (no rationale), and {{db-badfairuse}} for CSD:I7 (bad rationale). A system similar to the current {{subst:orfud}} and {{subst:nsd}} will be needed to make CSD:I6 work. Additionally, {{subst:badfairuse}} can be used to notify people on their talk page if an image is tagged or deleted under I7. Stifle (talk) 14:14, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really sure these should go into CAT:CSD. I think it should be a {{no license}} and {{no source}} type thing, where it gets deleted seven days after it's tagged as not having a fair use rationale, not 7 days after being tagged with a fair use tag without a rationale. This gives the uploader an opportunity to add a fair use rationale after it's tagged, like giving them a chance to add a source or whatever (except adding a fair use rationale can't really be abused by adding fake licenses or whatever ;)). --Rory096 06:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I just want to make sure we're on the same page here. If there is no rationale, the image is held for 7 days to add a rationale, then deleted if one isn't added. If there is an obviously invalid rationale, then it goes straight away. This parallels the lack of any license at all — if an image has no license, it's held for 7 days, but if it has a bad license (e.g. {{cc-by-nc}}), it's deleted immediately.

Is that OK with you or would you prefer bad rationale and no rationale to both be held for 7 days? Stifle (talk) 09:07, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I meant I6 (no rationale) being put straight into CAT:CSD if the image was uploaded more than 7 days ago. I'm saying that it should be something like being tagged for 7 days, so the uploader can be notified that it needs a rationale. --Rory096 09:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that where there is no fair use rationale provided, we must allow the uploader time to provide one - seven days after being tagged fits with other lag times. I don't think that we need a speedy deletion criteria for "bad" fair use claims, we should use {{fairusedisputed}} instead - if there is a backlog here then maybe that system should be strengthened, possibly along the lines of {{PROD}} - but that is not a discussion for here. Thryduulf 09:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

At the moment, the fair use dept. is rather backlogged (if you don't believe me, check out Category:Fair use magazine covers and see how many of them are actually being used to illustrate articles on magazines, not a lot...) This CSD refers, in any case, to the most obvious things like a photograph from Getty Images being tagged as {{symbol}}. Stifle (talk) 10:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Rory: Yes, that's how it's been implemented, although the categories and tags haven't actually been done yet. Stifle (talk) 10:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

We absolutely need something like I7. It does not make sense to me to give 7 days (or whatever period of time) for someone to correct the license on an image after they have already lied about it once (whereas giving time for them to provide a license when they didn't bother to pick one seems reasonable). If you lie about the license an image is under, that image should be deleted immediately. Nandesuka 11:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that assuming good faith implies assuming that an incorrect license was a mistake rather than a lie. There's nothing wrong with giving an uploader seven days to correct a mistake. Angr (t • c) 11:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure, there's something wrong with it. It puts the project at risk. Jimbo has already indicated multiple times that the Foundation lawyers are extremely concerned about the number and seriousness of copyright infringements in the image space. Putting the wrong license on an image is a substantively different act than uploading without one: it's an affirmative statement of either dishonesty or carelessness. Either way, such actions should never be allowed to jeopardize the encyclopedia. In this area, we really can't afford to assume any better faith than will be assumed by the various jurisdictions in which the project can be sued. Nandesuka 11:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Then why don't they stop being wishy-washy and prohibit fair use images altogether? German Wikipedia gets along just fine using only public-domain and free-license images. Angr (t • c) 08:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've redirected {{db-norat}} to {{No rationale}} (which was actually conveniently created in April by Carnildo), and also made various redirects, like {{norat}} and {{norationale}}. The {{subst:nsd}} type thing is {{subst:nrd}} (nr = no rationale). --Rory096 23:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, we need a warning template like {{image copyright}}... --Rory096 23:46, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

That'll be {{Missing rationale}}. Stifle (talk) 18:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

See Category:Images with no fair use rationale. --Rory096 06:24, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I changed {{db-norat}} to match {{db-unksource}}. --Rory096 20:03, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I changed "before 4 May" to "after 4 May", which is what the policy has said. Stifle (talk) 10:46, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

IP talk pages

I just saw User:Tawkerbot add a Talk:IP that I watch to Category:IP talk pages for speedy deletion. It refers to WP:CSD#U2 on this page:

Recycling IP pages. User talk pages of non-logged in users where the message is no longer relevant. This is to avoid confusing new users who happen to edit with that same IP address.

1. Adding the category sends them a "new messages" box, doesn't it? If this is to avoid confusion, then any list of to-be-deleted pages should be managed externally, not through category edits to the talk pages.
2. Is deleting the pages going to be at all necessary in the first place? I think the history of an IP may present useful information. After all, the edits of those IPs are preserved in the edit history. The related warning messages should be too, even if years old.

Shouldn't irrelevant old messages simply be removed by blanking the page (thus essentially archiving it)?

Femto 12:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

In reference to your second point, I've always thought that CSD criteria U2 was odd for the same reason, i.e. old IP talk pages should simply be blanked. That fulfils the stated purpose of avoiding confusion for new users of that IP address, whilst also keeping the history of the page if needed. Petros471 13:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Femto's propositions and resolution seem perfect. Any objections?? --Gurubrahma 13:50, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no objections to blanking, it probally is easier on the admins too (those 2500 pages are less than 1% of the bots run) -- Tawker 19:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

After giving this some thought, page blanking would be much preferred over speedy deletion of a talk page. Some of our best vandal fighters are anonymous editors, and if we delete these pages outright, they and other non-administrators will have no way of to telling if there is any relevant history associated with a recurring vandal. Best regards, Hall Monitor 19:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree; blanking makes a lot more sense. android79 19:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Likewise here, blanking is better, and asked a few other admins as well, there's no need of deletign the talk page (and thus hiding its history). I'm removing U2 since consensus seems to be that blanking is better. -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 20:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Yep. Mainly because I think it's impossible to determine when an IP talk page message has become "irrelevant"; I've often seen IPs repeat the exact same kind of vandalism after gaps of several months or more. Postdlf 20:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, tawkerbot has been adding this to user pages with useful templates on them such as User talk:213.84.230.131, which has an informational sharedip template. --DDG 22:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Why were we deleting in the first place? Blanking makes so much more sense. In fact, we could probably add a header that says something like "This IP Talk page has been/is periodically recycled by blanking. To see older comments, please view the (link to history page)history(/link)." We'd need some good constraints on what constitutes a talk page that needs to be recycled though, to avoid unscrupulous vandals blanking their talk pages to hide previous warnings. Werdna648^T/_C\^@ 08:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Users blanking their own talk page (when it contains warnings) is generally considered vandalism anyway, I don't see why this should change. Talk pages should only be blanked by RC patrollers and include a good edit summary for reference. Petros471 11:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I can only echo the sentiments expressed above. It makes no sense to delete (rather than blank) IP talk pages, and I just noticed that Tawkerbot tagged my college's talk page (which only contained a notice identifying the IP address as a shared entity and advising users to register accounts) on 3 March (the day on which this discussion began). —David Levy 14:51, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for blantantly unencyclopedic articles

I want to propose CSD A9, which states

9. A page that is blatantly unencyclopedic, i.e.:

• • Clearly a blog
  • A discussion of what happened in school
  • An obvious hoax, including facts that are impossible to happen in reality
  • An attempt to start up a website on a Wikipedia page

-- King of Hearts | (talk) 19:53, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

The term "unencyclopedic" is too vague. Also, some blogs are clearly notable. —Guanaco 20:00, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I suspect (correct me if I'm wrong) that King of Hearts means a page being treated as a blog, rather than an encyclopedia article about a blog. Right? Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 08:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this CSD 9. It seems to imply one thing that I like: topic's merits=/=article's merits. One problem is that a BS article on a worthy topic is kept as a "potentially good article" and then nobody does anything (fixes it). Either fix it now, get a taskforce, or delete it and put it on Request for Creation, but please lets not just leave blogs here. And when he said blog, I think that he meant the article IS a blog, not about a blog.Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 20:02, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, by "blog" I meant some guy writing a blog on Wikipedia; basically almost everything that has nothing to do with writing an encyclopedia. -- King of Hearts | (talk) 01:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Again, the more we speedy, the less chance encyclopedic topics can be reviewed by other authors and fixed, even if they're being used incorrectly to start. {{prod}} is perfect for this. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 03:08, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm with King of Hearts on this one, except I'd reword it as "Articles that are blatantly and unredeemably not suitable for an encyclopaedia". Basically, a page in articlespace that is not an article. This could cover Resumes (most of these can be speedied under A7 anyway, but for the resume of a notable person we need something), source texts, instruction manuals, et cetera. Interestingly enough, perhaps many of these should be "speedy transwikied", as many of these types may not be useful on Wikipedia, but may be interesting on Wikibooks, WikiSource, et cetera. An interesting proposition, but one that needs to be objectively defined. Werdna648^T/_C\^@ 08:18, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Speedy-transwiki used to be the normal interpretation of transwiki. Any page that was moved from one WikiMedia project to another was not considered "deleted" because it could easily be recovered (by transwiki in reverse) with no loss of content or history and without the use of any special administrator powers. The leftover page in the source project was immediately deleted by default unless there was a compelling reason not to. In fact, that was the origin of speedy-deletion case A2. It standardized what had already been the existing practice. (The case is worded specifically to the foreign language projects but remember that at that time the only other WikiMedia projects were the alternate language encyclopedias. We hadn't yet created Wiktionary, WikiSource, etc.) Over time, that meaning got lost and people began to believe that we had to both transwiki and go through a formal deletion process to get rid of the leftover. I would like to return to the original interpretation of the transwiki process. Rossami (talk) 20:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I just reverted this addition. I did not think this discussion ended in a consensus to use this, otherwise I'd've expressed my opposition while it was current. I just don't see having so many speedy criteria that I can't memorize them. Use prod. NickelShoe (Talk) 05:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I was trying to revert this addition, but NickelShoe beat me to it. I think the criteria is to vague. Also, now that we got PROD, we have an effecient way of eleminating obvious cases, that don't fit a speedy criteria. -Rob 06:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

This is too subject to interpretation to be of any use. And indeed, as Rob says, {{subst:prod}} is perfect. Stifle (talk) 10:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Propose to change template db-empty

Please see this proposal to add the A3 reasons to the db-empty template here. cmh 06:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of image uploaded for speedily-deleted article?

What we do for orphan images which were obviously uploaded solely for an article which has now been speedily deleted? In particular I mean this one which was only placed on a non-notable vanity page, now deleted. Do we speedy these images too? And should we consider adding this as an explicit speedy deletion criterion for images? --RobertG ♬ talk 17:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I generally use common sense and just speedy them. Unless they are definitely free images. Those *might* some day be of conceivable use, so it's probably best to leave them alone. Johnleemk | Talk 17:16, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Huh. I'm surprised this isn't already a CSD. It seems relatively non-controversial an idea (though I've always been surprised at what turns out to be controversial). What's the proposed language? Something like "Pictures which were used or explicitly intended for use on pages that have been speedily deleted, and which have no reasonable use on undeleted pages"? (Obviously, tweak as you will...) Of course, Johnleemk is right: common sense typically does prevail here. JDoorjam Talk 17:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I thought it was common sense, and I'm pleased to see others agree. If no-one objects, I propose tweaking JDoorjam's wording thus: "Images used on speedily deleted pages may themselves be speedily deleted if they are of little encyclopedic value" which removes the requirement to guess at the uploader's motives. Meanwhile, I'll speedily delete the image in question per Johnleemk! If this gets approval I'll add it as a criterion some time next week (unless someone else gets there first). Thanks. --RobertG ♬ talk 17:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

That image looks like a probable copyvio anyway. While I'm not opposed to a more general criterion such as suggested by JDoorjam above, simply waiving the seven-day requirement of I4 and I5 for "images uploaded for use in a deleted article" would probably suffice in most cases like this. Generally, if an image is free and properly sourced, we might as well let it be and see if anyone finds a use for it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

If they're fair use, then there's already {{subst:orfud}} to deal with them. If they're free use, then they should probably go to IFD, but I don't see any real objections to people WP:IARing. Stifle (talk) 09:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Porposal for expansion of Articles item #7

I've just been told that an article dealing with obscure elements of popular fiction which have no notability on their own are not speediable. I've re-read the criteria, and shockingly, I have to agree. To address this terrible loophole that allows for torrents of non-notable cruft, and yet allow for "valid fancruft" which is notable in its own way, I propose the following ammendment:

7.

a.

Unremarkable real people or groups. An article about a real person, group of people, band, or club that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AFD instead.

b.

Unremarkable fictional subjects. The determining factor between remarkable and unremarkable fictional subjects is the question of notability relative to the genre or work from which they arise. Non-notable subjects would include characters or places in a story which have no impact on its plot or the establishment of the setting or tone of the story. However, if the article title refers to a discrete character, event or setting, it may be of value as a redirect. If this is the case, the article should be merged and redirected to the appropriate work of fiction rather than deleted.

Without this additional criteria, the door is left wide open to waste the time and effort of those debating truly controversial notability of other articles in the AFDs. It also wastes the time of those who, like myself, attempt to patrol new articles. -Harmil 19:36, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Or, you could see if it has no chance of becoming more than a worthless stub and merge with the article for the work of fiction, or you could use {{prod}} to see if anyone's capable of expanding. Why rush to speedy? --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 19:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, you bring up a valid point, and I'll modify the above inline to reflect it. However, as an example of an article which explains my point, see Typical Earth Alliance Permanent Space Colony. I'm almost tempted to request a new criteria: so many separate violations of Wikipedia policy that cleanup would present a serious mental health risk. ;) But aside from my distaste for the article, it is clearly about a topic which, even as a redirect, would have no value for Wikipedia. -Harmil 20:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

What makes you think it holds no value? Genuinely curious. I dunno, I just feel like we're looking for excuses to speedy stuff, as opposed to fixing these things. Fictional information only exists via a fictional universe, and most works of fiction that would have individual articles for characters, major and minor, would at the very least have a page for its source material to redirect to. The smaller ones can be redirected to that article or to a list of characters, the larger ones kept. Speedies just tend to create ill will and warring, when a redirect with merging worthwhile info keeps the info and discourages recreation. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 20:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm with BDJ on this one. I find that crufty stubs (which sounds like a skin condition) are better as redirs if the articles don't warrant standing on their own. JDoorjam Talk 20:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree that it's sily to speedy them. Just redirect. I don't see what the deal is with people wanting to speedy delete everything, like it's the end of the world if it exists as a redirect or takes five days to get rid of. NickelShoe 21:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Jeff as well; redlinks encourage recreation of crufty stubs (how's that for a medical condition?), whereas redirects encourage people to find the main article. -- nae'blis _(talk) 23:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Tooootally already made that joke three postings ago. ;-) JDoorjam Talk 23:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

First off, I think someone very much missed the point. I know that there's a lot of the same coversations over and over here, so I imagine it's easy to assume that you can categorize any request and give a standard answer. However, you've missed the mark here. We're not talking about deletions that would cause redlinks here. Let's throw out some examples. I might create a page called, Earth Alliance Space Colony. Ok, now that clearly meets the above criteria for redirecting. It's just not terribly notable within the genre nor impacting on the plot of the show (though there are specific colonies that are notable and have pages, as they should), but it's something that people might link to or otherwise reference. On the other hand, Typical Earth Alliance Permanent Space Colony is not referenced external to Wikipedia. It borders on (but isn't quite) original research. We could create hundreds of thousands of this sort of article per genre, I'm sure, but they have no encyclopedic value, even as redirects (since no one is going to be looking for that name). Next: to the point of hyperbole. I do not "want to speedy delete everything, like it's the end of the world if it exists as a redirect or takes five days to get rid of." Please lay off the hyperbole and evaluate suggestions on their own merits and the contributions of their suggestors. Thanks. As for the question of why speedy vs. AFD/prod? I like to think that we involve the community for articles where their value is in dispute (or could be), not just to serve as a distraction. How many users respond to the average {{prod}} these days? How many {{prod}} are added on a typical day? Could a user reasonably visit and read them all? half? -Harmil 21:26, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

If it borders on OR, then start hunting people down who can give sources? The more we use prod, the more people will respond and the more useful it becomes. No need to speedy most stuff whe it can be prodded. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 23:21, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to say that the page given as an example, Typical Earth Alliance Permanent Space Colony, is a perfectly valuable and valid Wikipedia and I personally have no problem with it remaining on the site. John Coxon 13:56, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

neologisms / protologisms

I see that this has been discussed before, but without apparent result / consensus.

I'd like to add a CSD criteria to make articles about unambiguous protologisms / neologisms speedyable. This would not include new words with very limited usage. I'd like it to focus only on the various "this is a word we made up last Friday" or "we're trying to get this word into common parlance" type articles.

I don't know if this needs a brand-new section, it could easily be a subsection of CSD/A7, a la CSD/A7(1).

Basically, without causing instruction creep, I'd like to avoid having prolonged debates on WP:AFD about clearly unremarkable and unused new words, of the type that are caused by words made up on Internet forums, and defended solely (but extensively) by forum denizens. Policy shouldn't require a week of that :)

The language I'd like to add is something like:

• Neologisms: Articles clearly created for the sole purpose of injecting a new word into circulation, that do not assert the importance or common usage of the word.

What say you? — User:Adrian/zap2.js 23:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I still think this would be better handled by prod. There's enough quibbling on some words that might be notable where I think speedying is a poor idea. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 00:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to disagree. The description calls only for the speedy deletion of words that are unambiguously non-notable or contrived. {{prod}} and WP:AFD would remain the venues of choice for controversial deletions, as is right and proper. This wouldn't make speedy deletion of questionably notable / legit words a discretionary function.

— User:Adrian/zap2.js 01:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

And I'm saying that speedying tends to bite newcomers that may not be aware of our notability standards, as well as doesn't allow for the possible expansion of articles that don't initially look notable. prod is for uncontroversial deletions, not controversial ones, and if a word is truly non-notable and worthless, it'll get deleted as such. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 01:45, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. There's a balance between not biting newcomers and maintaining an orderly community. If the priority was *always* to avoid displeasing newcomers, we wouldn't speedily delete anything at all. Your arguments work against every speedy deletion criterion, but the existence of WP:CSD in the first place is a nod to the needlessly laborious nature of some elements of deletion process. Since you've evidently put some thought into this, I'd be interested in your take on why plainly nn people or organizations have speedy deletion criterion, but words don't. Cheers! :)

— User:Adrian/zap2.js 02:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah. I note now your generalized opposition to multiple parts of WP:CSD, per your userpage. If you have thoughts on this that aren't raised there, I'd still like to hear them, but I'd be more interested in your feelings on the question: If words *had* to be included in WP:CSD, what would be the least harmful way to do it?

Thanks! — User:Adrian/zap2.js 02:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that I disagree with the premise outright. Certainly, CSD is useful in SOME cases, but it should never be used for things that may be notable or may not have proper sourcing and could be better served by a larger community review. Save CSD for nonsense, for libel/slander issues. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 14:22, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I don't see why we can speedy NN people and not equally-obviously NN words. --Fang Aili 20:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Personally I'm in favor of a general increase in ease of deletion; obvious neo/protologisms should easily fit the bill. In the mean time though, {{prod}} should be more than sufficient. --Cyde Weys 21:22, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Handling it by PROD should be good enough. Also, it is difficult to say a priori as to what a notable neologism is. For example, I have seen the word "titsup.com" used many times on en-wiki mailing list. Had I not been on the mailing list, I would not have come across that word and would have probably speedied the article, if the rules ncluded that. Thanks to the exposure I got to the word on the mailing list and to my subsequent secondary research, I have started it instead. --Gurubrahma 10:52, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Having read it, I believe that you should not have started that article in Wikipedia. It is an entry about a word, not a real company or a broad social concept. What you have is a definition that belongs in our sister project, Wiktionary. I mention it not to criticize your motives but because that has been true in essentially every neologism case that I've reviewed. They are articles about words (or sometimes phrases). They cause controversy in Wikipedia but would have been perfectly acceptable in Wiktionary. I believe the right answer should be to transwiki any neologism article to Wiktionary and immediately delete (or redirect) the Wikipedia version.
Note: Wiktionary does not keep protologisms but they are better equipped to make the determination when a word is reaching wider acceptance. Rossami (talk) 14:53, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm be a little hesistant about adding this because, based on various AFDs, even experienced editors don't fully grasp Wikipedia's policy on neologisms. I'm not against a CSD for it, but it should be very, very explicit. I'd say at the minimum it should have no Google hits outside of Wikipedia and its mirrors before being speedied. Turnstep 04:35, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

New image criteria proposal

Hi all. While working on the untagged images project, I've come across a number of images that were uploaded to the Commons, and then had their description page here modified. In some cases, this is warranted, such as adding the image to a category on Wikipedia. However, occasionally there are images (for example, Image:Platform Sandal wood Buffalo brown.jpg) whose description page replicates the Commons description, or does not include any new information.

I think that we should add a criteria for speedy image deletion that would allow administrators to delete such images (presuming that they would look through the history and ensure that there hadn't been any vandalism, removing categories and such) since I can't really think of any reason not to delete them. Thoughts? ~MDD4696 22:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

That particular image is a special case: it has never been uploaded to enwiki. The image is only present on Commons and the page here is redundant entirely. I have deleted it since having, effectively, a fork locally means that any updates to licensing/soucing/wording will not appear here. That is bad for obvious reasons. Perhaps this very particular case needs a CSD to make it clear, or perhaps it's just occasional enough that (what I hope is) common-sense is enough. Note that what I just did is very different from deleting the image: I am not able to do that, since it is not present on this project. -Splash^talk 22:53, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. I would think that admins would know enough that it qualifies for speedy deletion, but it might help non-admins to have a specific item addressing this issue when determining whether or not to add the {{db}} tag. ~MDD4696 23:34, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed CSD

How about articles that are patently original research, and by that I mean they explicitly state that that is the case in their text? I have seen a few of these lately and they seem like common sense speedys to me. Has this been discussed before? Ramanpotential (talk | contribs) 00:02, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not use {{prod}}, with a note as to why? I've seen some of these, and the authors often don't know about WP:NOR, and apologize when they find out. The trolls who post OR should probably see the consensus of AfD anyway, so they don't come back. Septentrionalis 15:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Handling G7 and A3

I think admins have to be alerted that while deleting under G7 one has to make sure no other editor has edited the page, and while deleting under A3 one has to make sure that earlier versions of the article also satisfy some CSD criteria. As explained in User talk:Wavelength, List of environment topics:F-G was deleted after the page was blanked but other people (including me) had edited the page and hence it didn't fall under G7, and its earlier versions didn't satisfy A3 and are actually important to preserve the history of List of environment topics:F and List of environment topics:G. -- Paddu 09:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

This is in the order of "stop or I'll say stop again." Admins are already meanto to do everything contained in the new notes. If they aren't then telling them to do so again when it's written everywhere else (templates, admin how-to, etc) isn't going to help.
brenneman^{L} 01:25, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Non-notable articles

I've seen a couple of pages that I've tagged as 'db|non-notable subject' (or something more specific under subject, ie website or comic) that were rather plainly non-notable moved over to prod recently on the grounds that there is no CSD criteria. Besides the fact that I think that the basic db template exists. Moreover, the CSD criteria currently doesn't include anything on notability, despite the fact that the various A7 templates (db-bio, db-group, db-band and db-club) all argue for speedy deletion on notability grounds. This seems like a minor oversight more than anything else, but it also seems that there's room for an additional consensus to speedy delete articles that are clearly non-notable but non-human subjects under A7 as well. --DMG413 15:39, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Notability is contnetious, and will never command general consensus as a deletion criterion nevermind a speedy one. What is notable? Is a school, a company, a church, or a verse of the Bible? Actually A7 does not allow the speeding of non-notable bios, it only allows a speedy where there is no assertion of anything which anyone might regard as notable, and other decision must be reached via prod and AfD. The following are often given as reasons for speedy, but do not qualify: 'advert' 'spam' 'not-notable' 'essay' 'rant' 'neologism' 'not on google'. Having said that, there are some obvious cases where deletion is not in doubt and admins will use common sense. --Doc ^ask? 15:47, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I echo Doc, but add that WP:PROD is a good alternative to a technically invalid speedy. Most times people try to speedy delete for something not in CSD, you see where they're coming from... but those aren't speedy delete criteria for a reason. PROD gives everyone 5 days to improve the article, so there's less chance of deleting a potentially good article. It's a good choice when there's a chance the article can be improved.

Articles that genuinely assert notability generally shouldn't be speedied. The exception is obviously false claims, like "Joe Blogs was just elected King of England", etc. But something like "Joe Blogs is a famous professor" should probably not be speedied, PROD, then AfD, is a better choice ultimately. --W.marsh 16:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

The points above are valid, but it still remains confusing why a human subject on which there is no assertion of anything regarded as notable can be speedied but a non-human subject on which there is no assertion of anything regarded as non-notable cannot. For pages that clearly violate WP:WEB, for instance, and have no assertion to anything resembling notability, it seems reasonable to speedy them to me. I realize the uses of WP:PROD, but my concern about it is that it allows someone to come back and remove the tag a couple of days later before deletion, and unless someone is watching things very closely, it may slip through. --DMG413 22:25, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Well that's what watchlists are for, yes? If you prod an article, put it on your watchlist if you're concerned about the idea of it not getting deleted. NickelShoe (Talk) 22:28, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget the list of previous nominations. It's easy enough to use to keep track of previously prodded pages. howcheng {chat} 06:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

And Special:my contributions is useful too: If you're still the top edit 5 days after the PROD, it hasn't been fixed or removed; if you're not, go see what happened. Septentrionalis 15:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

G5 clarification

G5 is for banned users. But what about proven sockpuppets of permblocked users? Shouldn't they be speedied as well? (example: User:Doe, John) `'mikka (t) 20:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes. It's the user that's banned, not the account. --Carnildo 02:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

G9?

Any objection to a G9 criteria for legal threats (where the only page history is legal threats). In the case where the history contains other page history that is not riddled with legal threats, it may be possible to do a full deletion/partial restore without the legal threats. —Locke Cole • t • c 09:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good in principle. We already have an "I-know-it-when-I-see-it" criterion in A7, so perhaps this wouldn't be too bad. I think there are many edits which are borderline on this rule though. (ESkog)^(Talk) 11:16, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

k, I'll wait a bit more for comments before adding it. For those curious, this was suggested as a result of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Daniel Brandt (which was closed as delete). —Locke Cole • t • c 20:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's a rough stab the language I'd use:

9. Legal threats. In cases where legal threats are intermixed with good content, the page can be deleted, and then only the non-offensive revisions undeleted.

Though I suppose, if we want to cut down on instruction creep, we could just use:

9. Legal threats.

And leave it up to the acting sysop to decide how to handle it/deal with it. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

It would be well if the language made it explicit that the intention is that articles containing legal threats can be speedied, not that an article can be speedief if somebody makes a legal threat about it. (Yes, this should be obvious, but never underestimate the stupidity of human beings). On a more general note, is this really a sufficiently widespread problem that prod/*fd cannot handle it? Henning Makholm 14:56, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh I'm certain that this is uncommon enough that *FD/PROD could handle it, the idea is that people shouldn't have to wait a week (or have it put to a "poll") whether or not the page should be deleted. CSD not only makes it possible to speedy these things, it also determines that there is no need for discussion or debate. (As we wouldn't, for example, debate whether or not a page created with only the word "penis" on it should be deleted or not). —Locke Cole • t • c 00:03, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Needing to poll/discuss the deletion is a cost, yes. But adding a new CSD criterion is a cost too, in form of instruction creep (as then every admin patrolling the SD category would have an item more to remember). All I'm saying is that these two costs ought to be weighted against each other. Henning Makholm 00:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed CSD criteria for Portals

The CSD currently has no criteria for Portals, although the policy page for these states that "Portals are not appropriate for every topic. Only create portals for broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." However, we currently have on MfD Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Malaysian expressway system and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Famous Slaves (both leaning heavily towards deletion as inappropriate for a Portal), and we have recently deleted Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Arlington, MA and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Family Guy as too narrow (compare Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Oz, kept). In Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Kenya, the Portal was deleted for being a stub which had not been touched in months (compare Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Uganda, kept). In light of the much higher standard imposed on Portals as opposed to articles, I propose the following criteria for speedy deletion of Portals:

Portals

For any Portals that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion.

1. Any topic that would be subject to speedy deletion as an Article.
2. Any Portal based on a topic for which there are not a non-stub header article, and at least three non-stub articles detailing subject matter that would be appropriate to discuss under the title of that Portal.
3. Any Portal created as a skeleton, a stub, or a simple collection of links for which no other work has been done in over 60 days

This is more or less a seed, and I seek the consensus of the community in this proposal. Cheers! BDAbramson T 15:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

One and two look good, but I don't quite like number three; simply because something hasn't been worked on shouldn't automatically qualify it as something that should be deleted. Perhaps take off number three as a speedy criterion and instead ask that such portals be taken to MfD? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 20:11, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

For articles I would agree with you completely, but portals are supposed to appeal to a community of interest. If no one cares enough to work on them, they should disappear... however, I see your point. How about putting portals under #3 in prod (presuming they have no sub-pages)? BDAbramson T 23:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I support the first two proposed criteria. I would hesitate on the third one. Most portals in such a state should probably be deleted, but probably isn't good enough for speedy deletion. --TantalumTelluride 21:33, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I too support the first two, but would not include the third in its present form as a CSD. Sure, most portals it describes ought to be deleted, but most =/= all; let WP:MFD handle them. --CComMack 11:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll support all three. We had a crude Portal:South Park hidden away for ages that was a no-brainer that couldn't be no-brained.Steve block talk 17:51, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined at this point to say definitely post the first two, and seek greater community input on handling apparently abandoned portal skeletons/stubs. BDAbramson T 18:43, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I have posted the first two criteria. The third I've raised for discussion at WP:PROD. Cheers! BDAbramson T 20:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Random underlines?

Maybe I'm missing something, but in the guideline

"Very short articles providing little or no context (e.g., "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."). Limited content is not in itself a reason to delete if there is enough context to allow expansion."

is there a reason for the underlining? An explanation would be appreciated... >> \\/\//esleyPinkha//\/\\ | 00:46, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Basically, it's ok for an article to be short, i.e., to have little content. It'd be nice if it could be expanded, of course, but shouldn't be deleted just because it's small. However, and article that doesn't explain what it's about isn't very useful. If you read the article and have no idea what you just read about, then there's not enough context, not enough grounding the article in such a way that it can be understood by people who aren't already familiar with the topic. The underlining is to express the important difference in changing that one little letter, from content to context. I hope that helps, JDoorjam Talk 00:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

See the various discussion starting about here for the need to emphasize the difference between a lack of content and a lack of context. Until we added the underlines, it was a source of considerable confusion. Rossami (talk) 12:46, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

A modest proposal

The following statements on userboxes are all, I believe, consensus:

• There is no consensus on userbox policy
• All the other speedy criteria are intended for cases where all reasonable admins are likely to agree that something should be deleted; that's why they're so narrowly phrased.
• Speedying userbozes can, and has, caused division and ill-will.
• TfD'd userboxes tend not to be taken to WP:UBD; and if they are, deletion tends to be quietly and quickly endorsed.

(There's just been another example of this ill-will on WP:UBD and its talk page.) If these are in fact consensus, they should be added, with a suggestion to consider alternatives. Septentrionalis 21:56, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I propose, therefore, the following:

There is no consensus on userbox policy. Other speedy criteria are intended to cover cases in which all reasonable editors would agree there should be a deletion; that's why they are narrowly phrased. Speedying userboxes has caused division and ill-will.

If a userbox is creating an emergency, other administrative action should be considered, as well as speedying. If it is not, the situation may be resolvable more quickly and calmly by

• Discussing one's concerns with the makers and users of the box; or
• Nominating the box for deletion on WP:TfD. TfD consensuses are rarely brought up, and very rarely overturned, on WP:UBD.

I have not done a exhaustive study on the last point, but I am watching the page. The rest of this I believe to be consensus. Septentrionalis 15:32, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Right. I only just found this section. No, I do not think that the stuff above belongs on the policy page. They aren't part of the policy, which is a 'straightforward' sentence or so. Adding "there is no consensus..." is strange because that then becomes part of the policy, requiring consensus to establish that there is no consensus and consensus to establish a new consensus. It's the sort of material that belongs on a userboxes page somewhere, being essentially an editorial opinion on the policy rather than part of the policy itself. It is tempting to add these things to policy pages; the usual result is an ever-expanding wrapping of cotton wool on the actual policy for little executional benefit. -Splash^talk 22:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. These statements belong here on the Talk page (or perhaps a guideline page), not on the policy page. Kaldari 02:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Let's try this again

In an effort to reduce the number of copyvio images on Wikipedia, I'd like to suggest the following new criterion for speedy deletion:

• CSD I6: Missing fair-use claim. Any image uploaded after April 13, 2006, tagged only with {{fairuse}} or {{fairusein}}, with no fair use rationale, may be deleted seven days after it was uploaded.

--Carnildo 01:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

This really needs to happen. Our current system means that any user who knows that those tags exist can upload any copyright-infringing media that they want, tag it with one of those tags, and thereby avoid all of our otherwise automated copyright problem systems. Images with any kind of reasonable fair use rationale would still go to WP:IFD, but all of this media belonging to to someone else that no one here has taken responsibility for need to be treated exactly the same as incompatibly-licensed images. Jkelly 01:40, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. No need to make this retrospective for now, but we need to stem the tide of new images that have the potential to get us in hot soup. Right now it is damn freaking easy to game the copyvio system by claiming any copyvio to be fair use. Johnleemk | Talk 08:05, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I've suggested an alternate way to bring these images back into our cleanup process at Template_talk:No_license#Extending_template. Jkelly 16:26, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for new CSD template

I often come across newly created pages which I'm sure are infringing a policy, but due to not being an admin and having not read the policies thoroughly I can't pick the right CSD template. Furthermore, there are often pages which, due to your unfamiliarity with the subject matter, you cannot tell whether they should be deleted or not. For instance, sometimes you come across a brand new stub, and it may not be obvious whether this is a stub on a notable, encyclopedia-worthy subject, or whether its just plain vanity or something else.

The proposed template is: {{db-attention}}/{{db-suspected}} or similar. It places the page either the CSD category or a subcategory called "Suspected CSD's" or similar. The idea is that you are bringing the page to the larger attention of the admins at CSD, because you suspect that it's a CSD, but you dont have the expertise to say exactly why or you require a CSD peer review. In short the proposal is a template that "brings a page to CSD's attention". -- Alfakim --  talk  16:12, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

If prod weren't having technical difficulties, that would be a good time to use prod. Also, you could simply use db-reason. No one should be deleting it if it doesn't qualify for speedy even if it's improperly tagged. NickelShoe (Talk) 16:19, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Clarifying, this is more of an "I'm not an expert on this subject, but someone more knowledgable would certainly know whether this was CSD, so I'm bringing it to their attention"-template.-- Alfakim --  talk  17:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

If you can't be bothered to check the speedy criteria, don't use speedy. If you're not sure of the names of the templates or want to be more clear about your concern, use db-reason. If the article looks bad but you lack the knowledge in the relevant subject area to tell, notify the article creator, add maintenance tags, and/or submit to AfD or prod. NickelShoe (Talk) 17:46, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there anywhere I can get a list of maintenance tags? Please reply on my talk page if so. -- Alfakim --  talk  15:52, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup. Putting on your talk page too, at your request. NickelShoe (Talk) 16:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

With WP:PROD as policy...

...does anyone think it might be worth moving some of the less offensive speedy candidates to a PROD system. What I have in mind is A7, which could be better served (and, in fact, often has been in spite of its speedy candidacy) having multiple eyes look at it via prod? I've had a couple articles, most notably Mark Eitzel, prodded as a nn-bio for a musician, when in fact the article simply needed expansion and sourcing. Instead of speedying these, and given we have a policy in place now that would keep the majority of them from going to AfD (which was the point of the A7 expansion in the beginning), does anyone else think it might be a good idea to at least attempt in practice? A3 could also qualify here, as we could have more eyes looking at articles that may not have immediate context, but could use more eyes looking at it. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 16:29, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I would agree strongly, but you might want to wait a few days and see what happens with prod now that we're not able to use the toolserver...see WP:PROD, and help us solve this problem satisfactorily. NickelShoe (Talk) 16:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm assuming a good prod outcome here, I did notice that note, but we're not 36 hours officially down yet, either. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 16:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually, A3 (no content) is probably the CSD I most frequently use...did you mean A1 (no context)? Probably worth prodding it if it's no context, although usually I'd just give it a {{context}} tag if it looked like it might have potential...I usually go for maintenance tags first and put the article on my watchlist to watch out for removal, but go for deletion (speedy or otherwise) in cases where it's more obvious that there's no hope. NickelShoe (Talk) 16:43, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I kinda meant both, although A1 is harder for even someone like me to justify moving to prod initially, but thanks for pointing that out. I just feel as if the more eyes looking at articles that aren't blatant nonsense or attack pages there are, the better the result could be. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 16:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes context is easily fixed. Frequently articles lacking context have incoming links which give context and such can be added to the article. If there aren't any incoming links, usually the author could easily provide context. I've speedied articles under A1, but with prod there's five days for the author to explain what in the world they meant. I've noticed, however, that what I consider context (as far as CSD is concerned) is less stringent than some. I just want the field of study or profession of the person or whatever. A useful predicate for the introductory sentence.

Lacking content, on the other hand, annoys me enough that I'm probably biased. (Who writes an encyclopedia article that doesn't tell anything about the subject?) If it's not even a dicdef, we're not helping anybody by keeping the article. NickelShoe (Talk) 17:53, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Ammendment to deletion policy

This is a proposal that seeks to change our approach to the deletion process by removing content of a page as a criterion for deletion, only the topic can be judged in deletion debates. Please discuss the proposal at the talk page. Thanks a lot. Loom91 19:15, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

db-web

Please discuss the TFD nomination of {{db-web}} (a newly made speedy deletion tag) at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Db-web. --Rob 05:19, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposal: I1a

Note: It could be I2 if the other are bumped down, but that would probably annoy people who have to rememorize the numbers, so in my opinion I1a is best, since it's very similar.

1. a. Any image tagged with {{NowCommonsThis}} that is public domain, or any image that is GFDL with the description and file history of the page copied to Commons.

This should allay any fears of messing up the license. PD images don't need anything at all, and GFDL just need to show who created what when. By copying the file history, it does meet the requirements. This only applies to {{NowCommonsThis}}, though, because {{NowCommons}} would require that all uses be replaced (though we could add something where "if all uses are replaced then it can be speedied" or something). --Rory096_(block) 21:03, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal, many admins already speedy images that are already in commons --Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 21:11, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I strongly object to the proposal. Until such day as we have a tool to automatically migrate history and information to Commons, I don't trust people to reliably migrate information or the admins to check that it was migrated correctly, which in my experience with my own work, it almost never is (e.g. links to en.wikipedia material are broken, file histories and dates are deleted, attribution is messed up, etc., etc.). Also, I am opposed to the idea that having an image on Commons inherently makes an image on EN redundant, since EN can have an English description and be watched for vandalism here while Commons ought to have multiple language descriptions and can't be watched for vandalism. Dragons flight 21:34, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

As for the first part, I can't make you trust anyone to do things, but right now, it rarely even gets checked at all; it's moved to Commons, well or sloppily, then listed on IfD and almost invariably deleted in a few days. Making it a CSD would help bring an admin's attention to it and hopefully check, rather than just seeing that it was on IfD for 5 days and just deleting it. For the second part, we can still have our own image description if we want, and why can't we monitor it for vandalism? If we see that the image isn't what it's supposed to be, we can just go to the commons page and revert it. If anything, it would make it less likely to be vandalized for long because there are less vandals on Commons AND there would be any countervandals on both Commons and other projects that may be using the pic watching. --Rory096_(block) 23:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Going through IFD gives the image uploader time to see the tag and make corrections/protest/etc. Secondly, the way the software currently works, if an image is on Commons but not here, it will display the Commons' image, the local image description page (if any) and then the Commons' image description page which creates ugly redundancy if both places are using image descriptions. Having a full local copy ensures that only the local image description is used. I'm not worrying about the image appearance being vandalized, but rather the image description being vandalized, which is much more common in my area of work (global warming/climate change). Moving an image to Commons makes it much more difficult for me to monitor changes to the image descriptions. I also disagree that it is substantially less likely to be vandalized, since it is just one extra click to get to the Commons page after finding the image used on an article in EN. Dragons flight 23:45, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Object, for one thing CSD is already backed up most times without having to go through a time-consuming check on whether the history has properly been migrated, for another it isn't really necessary since most images under this category can go through IFD normally. Stifle (talk) 14:31, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

While true that images can go through IfD (though I'm not so sure about CAT:CSD being backed up much), it's a real PITA. One has to notify the uploader, format a template so it has both the uploader and the reason in it, then enter it onto the page, for EVERY image. There's a reason CAT:NCT is backlogged. --Rory096 05:22, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

author requests deletion

The current policy allows speedy deletion for

Any page for which deletion is requested by the original author, provided the page was edited only by its author and was mistakenly created. If the author blanks the page, this can be taken as a deletion request. Note: Please check the page history to make sure there is only a single author.

I suggest to add, after "edited only by its author", the following phrase:

not counting edits which call for (1) deletion or (2) speedy deletion of the page, or which question the (3) importance or (4) veracity of the page

I think that at least (1) and (2) are uncontroversial -- an edit that adds {{afd}} or {{db}} obviously should not prevent a speedy deletion that is requested by the author. Also editors who add {{hoax}} or {{importance}} would probably be happy to see the page go, if the original author him/herself suggests that. --Austrian 22:19, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

• This is common sense... do we really need to explicitly add that clause? ~MDD4696 22:35, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• If we must guard against overly literal readings, I think a better choice would be to change "provided the page was..." to "provided the text of the page was ...", with the understanding that cleanup tags, stub markers, categories and so forth, are not part of the text. But I'd really prefer that such common sense could be left to the deleting admin. Henning Makholm 22:57, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• That clause has always been interpreted as only applying to significant edits. So, for example, (5) correcting spelling or grammar and (6) minor wikification of headers or links also do not count as "edits" for the purposes of this clause. The list of possible exceptions is large. We trusted the user enough to make him/her an admin. Unless there is evidence to the contrary, we should continue to trust them to exercise common sense and discretion. I'll reconsider if you can show evidence that the current wording is creating real problems but in general, cluttering up the page with more instruction creep is a bad thing. Rossami (talk) 22:58, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree that listing situations is not necessary, but perhaps rewording to something like the only "contributor of content" instead of only editor, which is just wrong. NickelShoe (Talk) 04:43, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Common sense should prevail, but often doesn't. I've edited to "provided the page's only substantial content was added by its author". Stifle (talk) 14:29, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Adding more examples to A7

I would like to add some more examples to A7's description because I do not feel that the current wording encompasses the full scope of the policy change that was approved in December 2005: "In short, my proposal is to expand CSD A7 to include non-notable groups of people as well as individuals. This would apply to bands, clubs, organizations, couples, families, and any other collections of individuals that do not assert their importance or significance." [1] (my highlighting) Specifically, I would like to add the following words (in bold) to the current description:

7. Unremarkable people or groups / vanity pages. An article about a real person or group of people—for example, a band, club, family, online community, company or other organization—that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AFD instead.

I want to emphasise that this is not intended to change the agreed-upon policy in any way. But I would like us to use our existing policy to its full extent. Why? Because it's doing an incredible job, but it could do more. About 90% of deleted articles are deleted via speedy deletion. But AFD is still overflowing with 120-150 articles per day, and many of those are obvious deletions with no opposing "keep" votes.

Two of the new examples—families and organizations—are copied directly from the proposal. The other two—companies and online communities—are also included in this policy, but it is useful to mention them specifically:

• A company is "an organization of individuals conducting a commercial or industrial enterprise"[2], but it is also an entity that stands to gain financially from using and abusing Wikipedia. As Wikipedia grows in prominence, it is increasingly becoming a target for blatant (and not so blatant) self-promotion. Currently the most egregious examples are being dealt with by the (mis)use of the {{db-copyvio}} template, but strictly speaking it is not "blatant copyright infringement from the website of a commercial content provider"—it's advertising material being copied with the full permission of the copyright owner. In A7 we have the appropriate tool to deal with this. Let's use it.

• An online community is also a "group of people"[3], but it is one that can (and often has) mustered its members in an attempt to overwhelm Wikipedia's defences. While these attempts rarely (if ever) succeed, they can waste a tremendous amount of our time and effort. We could save ourselves an awful lot of hassle if we could deal with these cases swiftly and decisively, where appropriate.

Please comment, and share your thoughts and opinions below. Thank you. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 09:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose there's no need for further expansion. PROD has now avoided past reasons for repeated CSD-expansion. PROD gives an easy way avoiding AFDs, for straight-forward matters, unikely to be contested. If a deletion is contested, it should go to AFD. Basically, the only reason for expanding a7 yet again, is if you want to speedy more things that some wish kept. That wouldn't make much sense to me. If we get expanding a7, we might as well hand over the keys to admins, and quit pretending the community approves content by discussion and consensus. --Rob 10:12, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Rob this is not a policy proposal, and there is no need to vote. Voting for this finished in December. This is not an expansion of A7: this is policy that has already been voted on and approved. The discussion now is about how it could best be expressed, and explained. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 10:26, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
    • The policy page has had current wording for a while. So, it will take a consensus to change it. So, what you're asking for now, is in fact, an expansion, and change in policy. It would be different, if you tried for that wording earler. But, any new wording now, requires a clear new consensus for support. And yah, it is an expansion. If it wasn't, you wouldn't have any reason to propose it. --Rob 10:30, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
      • I am not proposing any changes. I just want to improve the current wording so that it fully express the policy proposal that was approved in December. You said yourself that "if anybody wishes to change policy, please seek changes to the WP:CSD page, and try to gain consensus first." I know that you don't like this policy because you originally voted against it, but if you want to overturn it then you'll first have to obtain unequivical consensus for doing so. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 11:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• I see no reason to expand A7 further. Again, I'll reiterate that I'd much rather see A7 thrown into a PROD situation to allow more eyes to look at such articles rather than deleting them quickly. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 12:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• This is very sensible rewording of the A7 policy. I couldn't agree more. Especially companies abusing Wikipedia for self-promotion are becoming a nuisance. And it is not always so easy to find out if they fall under the guidelines of WP:CORP, especially if they are situated in countries such as India, Pakistan etc... JoJan 12:59, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• No. The idea of including website and companies in speedies has been often suggested and uniformly rejected. It was rejected again in December, as evidenced by the fact that it did not manage to remain in the policy as it came to be rewritten. I see no case for not taking such things to AfD at present, or through PROD or copyvio as appropriate. I do not agree with the assertion that the expansion proposed has support already, or it would already be present in the policy. -Splash^talk 13:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
  • It's interesting. When I looked through the page's history for the days after the "groups of people" policy was implemented, I see only one person removing criteria from A7. That person removed "This includes bands, clubs, organizations, couples and families." here and "This includes bands, clubs, couples and families" here. These were all criteria that had been specifically mentioned in the proposal. It is simply disingenious to claim that their current absence is due to some kind of consensus.
    This edit was the only clarification to survive, perhaps because it may even help to narrow the criteria further. With it in place the wording actually implies that that only clubs and bands are considered to be "groups of people"—which is a far cry from the broad "any other collections of individuals" that had received 80% approval. That's probably why the only templates to be created were for bands and clubs[4], and that in turn is probably why bands and clubs are the only groups of people that tend to be speedy deleted nowadays. I am not proposing any kind of expansion. I would just like the wording to accurately and clearly reflect our existing policy: policy that has already been properly proposed, voted on and unequivically approved. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 09:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose This is an expansion, because A7 is not currently used this way even if it could be interpreted this way. I would support getting rid of A7 entirely; I certainly do not support expanding it. As Rob said, with the existence of prod, this serves no purpose except to delete articles people want kept, and there are better ways to handle that than zapping without discussion. NickelShoe (Talk) 14:21, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
  • This is not a vote. Nor is it an expansion of A7, nor indeed is it any kind of policy proposal. You don't have to like A7, but you are always free to put forward a proposal to revoke it. Until then our policy is the policy that was voted on and approved in December 2005: "This would apply to bands, clubs, organizations, couples, families, and any other collections of individuals that do not assert their importance or significance." The question for us should rather be: what is the most thorough and effective way to describe and explain this policy? GeorgeStepanek\^talk 09:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
    • You're unilateral edit to a7 was undone by me. I see no consensus here for a new wording. So, please wait till that happens before editing it again please. Incidently, there were two other edits after yours, I didn't undo them. So, everybody should look over the recent changes. --Rob 05:34, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
• Expanding CSD seems pretty silly at the moment as PROD, which has virtually the same overhead, seems to be working pretty well. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:36, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

As the originator of the original expansion, I believe that consensus has dictated that companies and web sites are specifically exempted from this. I really tried to find a wording that would indicate that this is to be applied only to informal groups, because really, you could broadly interpret "collections of individuals" to mean cities, for example, which would certainly be beyond the scope of A7. Perhaps it would help if we listed examples of what does and does not qualify for speedy deletion under this criterion in the instructions. howcheng {chat} 23:49, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Copyedit

Hi, I rewrote the opening paragraphs, because I found them a bit disorganized and unclear. I was careful not to make content changes; I hope it's an improvement, and my apologies if it is not. Kaisershatner 14:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

A7 and companies

A7 is sometimes (wrongly) attributed to companies (see above). This is a Bad Thing (it is far more ambiguous in these cases) however the reason is clear and has a serious point: many articles are created which are blatant spam for companies which are not even in the same time zone as WP:CORP. At present we can {prod} them or take them to AfD, and we can revert the spamminess, but we can't just remove them. And unfortunately many editors forget to undo the spam links and remove the flummery. Sometimes they are a straight copy and paste from the company website, but that is not a CSD copyvio since these are not sites which sell the content.

Is there any support for proposing a CSD "blatant spam" criterion? I am in two minds about it myself. Just zis Guy you know? 15:55, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Try a couple sections up from here. -Splash^talk 15:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I saw. But I am not being very clear today. I need to think about it more I guess. There is a difference ebtween spam and non-notable companies, and that's best handled by a separate critrion (in my view), which is very tightly worded to exclude being used for neutrally worded articles on companies of no or doubtful notability. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the arguments above. Just zis Guy you know? 16:00, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't really support this idea, though I understand it. It's just too subjective what is spam, and differentiating between cleanupable spam and unredeemable spam. I'd hatchet it down (Joe Corp is a bubble gum company based in Florida, USA) and stick a notability tag on it and go from there. I don't think speedying is necessary, personally. NickelShoe (Talk) 16:53, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• I've seen some laughably blatent spam - just off the top of my head, a "Free iPods click here THIS REALLY WORKS" kind of article, and people with links to cheap vi@gra. In the spirit of WP:IAR I deleted these, technically it doesn't meet a criteria, but come on. Perhaps there's some way to codify the difference between outright spam and someone posting a flowery article praising their company (which should probably be prod'd/afd'd). Perhaps "Article exists only to attempt to sell a product, service, or get people to click a referral link"? But this might be so uncommon that we can just go on with the status quo... "rouge deletes" and whatnot. --W.marsh 17:01, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
  • If it's working, why fix it? It seems to me that trying to fix the problem would only worsen things. You can never make a hard and fast rule without striking out the fast part of the equation; right now admins seem to be doing the right thing, IMO. Johnleemk | Talk 17:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, I'm aware of that... but I also think the optimal system is one where you don't have to break rules to deal with daily occurances. Also... I think people do want to speedy anything deemed spam, even if it's about a notable company, and really the issue is about WP:NPOV... cleanup is often more in order than deletion. I think a rule clarifying what should be speedied and what shouldn't would help there. But I'm mostly thinking aloud... I want to avoid instruction creep as much as anyone. --W.marsh 17:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, you put your finger on it: it's handling a pretty routine ocurrence (pretty much every time I do a session at CAT:CSD I find some articles tagged as "spam") without writing a special set of rules. Most of the time removing the spam links and {prod} ing is the right thing, but there are a significant number which simply shouldn't be allowed to sit around for a week. Just zis Guy you know? 17:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I think you can safely have a speedy for spam if you limit it to newly created articles (say under 48 hours) with major edits by only one user. We need to try to toast the stuff before it gets to Google (and mirrors), as that's the "gold prize" for the spammer. Once a company's page has been around for a while, its best to give it a PROD or AFD (if anybody wishes it deleted), as there's little harm in taking the time for one. As for the definition of spam, I'm not sure of what wording to use. --Rob 17:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there a basic timing thing for how long it takes for Google to grab an article from here? --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 17:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps: Articles created within the last 48 hours which serve to promote a commercial subject and which make no assertion of notability per WP:CORP. Actually on reflection I think we should apply the 48 hour limit to all criteria - speedy is designed as a counter-vandalism measure, an article which has been around for a couple of days can probably survive another week, unless it's a blatant attack, in which case it should be stubbed. Just zis Guy you know? 21:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's need of putting a 48-hour limit on speedying. It's annoying to make everything so technical. It's a good idea not to speedy old articles, but let's not make it a rule unless we have to. NickelShoe (Talk) 00:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I think 48-hours makes a good anti-spam rule. In general, I would prefer not to speedy unless we have to, or the deletion is a no-brainer. Septentrionalis 02:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

So a possible addition to A7: including articles which are blatant advertising for a commercial organisation, created in the last 48 hours.

Or possibly, add the 48 hours to the header along the lines of in general speedy deletion is only appropriate for articles which are the work of a single editor, or which have been created very recently - within the last 48 hours or so. For articles which have been around for longer or which have input from several editors, consider using the proposed deletion process instead.

Thoughts? Just zis Guy you know? 13:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

It's too subjective. {{subst:prod}} is fine. Stifle (talk) 14:27, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Suggested addition to intro

Before the last para of the intro I suggest something along the lines of:

If the problem is with the content rather than the subject - for example an excessively florid description of a company, or a highly critical biography of a public figure - consider fixing the problem, perhaps by reducing the article to a verifiable stub, rather than nominating it for deletion.

Jimbo says: "Mostly, if we (any of us! for any reason!) stub a controversial article and demand careful sourcing for rebuilding it, that's fine, EVEN IF THE ARTICLE SUCKS FOR A FEW DAYS." - it didn't apply to this instance, but I think it has relevance here. Just zis Guy you know? 21:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I like it. It might not be bad to mention prod there, too, as an alternative in some cases. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 21:41, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Interestingly, an early title of what became AfD was "Article names for deletion". I think there should be more awareness that you can do more with a "bad" article than just delete it. If there's anything salvagable, by all means, people should salvage it. My suggest for wording:

If the problem is just that the current version of the article isn't acceptable, but a good article could be written on the topic, considering fixing the problem, even if it means reducing the article to a verifiable stub, rather than nominating it for deletion.

I dunno, probably not much better but it's a thought. --W.marsh 02:57, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

A3 used in a way that hampers my ability to create something useful for the reader

I am an active participant in WP:HOT - the wikiproject to make sure we have articles on topics that other encyclopedias have. As part of this I create a butt-load of redirects from A.N.OTHER naming conventions to our naming conventions. This is all good and helps the reader find the information they are looking for when they come to Wikipedia. However sometimes an article title comes up that in a sense needs to be "redirected to two places". Consider for example the topic "Flemings and Walloons" that describes the similarities and differences between the two major groups of Belgians. Now our articles are at Flemish people and Walloons, so at Flemings and Walloons I write a short stub that is more-or-less a pointer to those two articles with the bulk of our content. Now occasionally some well-meaning editor doing about 50 edits a minute slaps an A3 on it - saying "no content". Now I agree that it doesn't have much content, but the page is undeniably useful, because it helps direct the reader to the information they are searching for. It certainly wasn't the intention to delete such articles when we invented A3. Does anyone have any objection if I re-word A3 to make it clear that we don't have this sort of thing in mind? Pcb21 Pete 17:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't putting a {{dab}} tag on it alleviate that problem? It sounds like that's what it is, and no one expects a dab page to be full of enriching information. Blackcap (talk) 17:29, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

If it stops others making mistakes then I will use that if necessary.

However it isn't, conceptually, the right tag to add. The dab template says "This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title". The two-or-more things I want to point to people don't have the "same title". There is no ambiguity between "Flems" and "Walloons". Given how big the disambig category is already, it seems wrong to overload it even further. Hence my alternative characterization of "signpost article". Better names very welcome and thanks Blackcap for your input. Pcb21 Pete 17:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we should have a "signpost article" cat and template, as a subcat of the dab cat, thus avoiding that problem. Blackcap (talk) 18:01, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I am in favour of that. And maybe if necessary, we can add "This does not include disambiguation pages or signpost articles" to A3, but that could come later. Pcb21 Pete 18:05, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Added into A3 here. I'm about to go and make the cat. Blackcap (talk) 18:35, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey, whaddya know? It already exists. I'll go and make the template now. Blackcap (talk) 18:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

All right, here's a start. Whaddya think? (Oh, and further converse should go here.) Blackcap (talk) 21:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Pcb21 unilaterally recreated Category:Signpost articles, which was deleted per a debate that he deemed "bogus." (I've re-deleted it.) The corresponding "guideline" page (which Pcb21 introduced without discussion) also was unanimously rejected by participants in its deletion debate.

Disambiguation pages are used to list topics that might share the disambiguation page's title, not merely each other's title. —David Levy 00:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

It was a great shame that I was away when that debate occured because it was bogus. To repeat, the dab template says "This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title" (my emphasis). You may also care to look up "ambiguous" in the dictionary. It makes no sense to add further meaning to the category that would take it outside its natural meaning in English, as the category is already extremely large. To have a sister category that actually says what its makes a lot of sense.

I am very sorry that the purpose of the category was not made clear during that deletion debate. But now that it has been (I hope!) please do not hinder the improvement of the encyclopedia by process-fiddling.

In addition I notice you have been creating inappropriate redirects to try hide the fact that we need these signpost pages! Pcb21 Pete 01:31, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The following reply to Pcb21 was written by David Levy:

It was a great shame that I was away when that debate occured because it was bogus.

Then take your grievance to Wikipedia:Deletion review. That's what it's for.

To repeat, the dab template says "This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title" (my emphasis).

Yes, and that's referring to the disambiguation page's title, not to the individual articles' titles.

You may also care to look up "ambiguous" in the dictionary.

Perhaps we should change the name. Why don't you propose that?

It makes no sense to add further meaning to the category that would take it outside its natural meaning in English, as the category is already extremely large.

It's merely a project category. It isn't used for article navigation, so size isn't a major concern.

To have a sister category that actually says what its makes a lot of sense.

You're welcome to formally propose your setup (a step that you've repeatedly bypassed), but please stop ignoring consensus.

I am very sorry that the purpose of the category was not made clear during that deletion debate.

It was clear. The participants rejected your reasoning.

But now that it has been (I hope!) please do not hinder the improvement of the encyclopedia by process-fiddling.

You believe that this would be an improvement, but others disagree. As a veteran sysop, you know better than to force your viewpoint upon the community.

In addition I notice you have been creating inappropriate redirects to try hide the fact that we need these signpost pages!

No. I replaced some of your inappropriate "signpost articles" with appropriate redirects as I emptied the category. —David Levy 02:09, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The following reply to David Levy was written by Pcb21:

Then take your grievance to Wikipedia:Deletion review. That's what it's for.

DR is for reviewing any mistakes the

Yes, and that's referring to the disambiguation page's title, not to the individual articles' titles.

This is simply untrue Pcb21 Pete 12:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The following reply to Pcb21 was written by David Levy:

DR is for reviewing any mistakes the

Your thought appears to have been cut off.

This is simply untrue

I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. The purpose of a disambiguation page is to direct readers to various articles that they might seek by typing (or clicking on, but such links should be repaired) the title of the disambiguation page. The titles of the individual articles may be similar, but this is not a requirement.

You believe that your "signpost articles" serve a unique purpose, but this is because you misunderstand the scope of disambiguation pages. —David Levy 16:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Moving back over to the left... I think that the intention of a signpost article, as differenciated from a dab, is that a signpost article is a page pointing a person to articles that, though they wouldn't be confused, are commonly grouped together enough that someone might enter them as a search term, whereas a dab is a collection of links disambiguating between (semi)unrelated topics with similar names. Additionally, I'm under the impression that a signpost article is intended to be an article, albeit perhaps a short one. Seems like somewhat of a difference. Also, next time you have a problem with a page, could you talk it over before you go and delete it? That's not very polite, especially when you then go and say "you know better than to force your viewpoint upon the community" to another fellow. Pcb21 made a poor choice in unilaterally undeleting it, but then you didn't do the wisest thing either by deleting it when there was obviously discussion about the issue, which is exactly what would've happened had he taken it to WP:DRV anyways. Blackcap (talk) 07:04, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The following reply to Blackcap was written by David Levy:

I think that the intention of a signpost article, as differenciated from a dab, is that a signpost article is a page pointing a person to articles that, though they wouldn't be confused, are commonly grouped together enough that someone might enter them as a search term, whereas a dab is a collection of links disambiguating between (semi)unrelated topics with similar names.

A disambiguation page may be used for all of the above. The titles of the individual articles need not be similar or remotely interconnected. They need only relate to the title of the disambiguation page.

Additionally, I'm under the impression that a signpost article is intended to be an article, albeit perhaps a short one.

One might be led to believe that (because Pcb21 didn't select the term "signpost pages"), but the ten "signpost articles" that I eliminated (all of which were created by Pcb21) were nothing more than pointers to the existing articles.

If one wishes to create an actual article (assuming that a reasonable amount of original content can be written), there's no need to apply a special designation. Simply include links to the individual subjects' articles. (Sonny and Cher is a random example.) If the subjects are notable only as elements of a broader subject (and not individually), their respective pages should serve as redirects. (Zac Hanson is a random example.)

Also, next time you have a problem with a page, could you talk it over before you go and delete it?

I did participate in such a discussion. Pcb21 unilaterally deemed it "bogus" and restored the category without discussion of any kind.

That's not very polite, especially when you then go and say "you know better than to force your viewpoint upon the community" to another fellow.

I'm not forcing my viewpoint. I'm following policy by honoring community consensus.

Pcb21 made a poor choice in unilaterally undeleting it, but then you didn't do the wisest thing either by deleting it when there was obviously discussion about the issue, which is exactly what would've happened had he taken it to WP:DRV anyways.

The category wasn't deleted until after a discussion (which Pcb21 decided to ignore) had concluded. It should not be recreated until after a discussion leads to such a consensus. Keep in mind that this isn't merely a category; it's a significant alteration to the encyclopedia's structure. At no point has Pcb21 formally proposed such a setup. Instead, he introduced it (without any discussion) as part of our Manual of Style. This addition was unanimously removed, but he still believes that it's appropriate to reintroduce his "signpost articles" without any discussion. (He began doing so long before this thread existed.) —David Levy 16:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

You're right, you're right, no two ways about it. I should've thought this over more, thanks for pointing out my errors. Blackcap (talk) 17:01, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it was a mistake to undelete the category. To-reiterate why I did that:

The deletion debate took place on the assumption that it was a duplicate of the disambiguation category, which as you point out it is clearly not. So the deletion debate had no particular value. Deletion pages are not somehow a "greater authority" whose mistakes cannot be corrected.

That the deletion debate took that direction is partly my fault. I did not document the new category well enough and so it began to be misused.

I should've have spent more effort on it.

You are both experienced Wikipedians and know that to suggest Deletion Review as an appropriate place to make a structural alteration to Wikipedia (however minor) really is not a flyer. The debate is always about counting the number of votes and nothing else!

But of course no-one is paying me to improve Wikipedia so I see little point in butting heads with David who must have his own reasons to maintain the status quo (though he has kept them to himself so far). I will find another way to contribute which involves draining less time on obscure project talk pages. Pcb21 Pete 12:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The following reply to Pcb21 was written by David Levy:

The deletion debate took place on the assumption that it was a duplicate of the disambiguation category, which as you point out it is clearly not. So the deletion debate had no particular value.

That's your opinion. I disagree, and I don't appreciate having my input (and that of others) dismissed by someone who believes that he's entitled to overrule community consensus.

Deletion pages are not somehow a "greater authority" whose mistakes cannot be corrected.

Of course not, nor are you somehow a "greater authority" whose wisdom allows him to unilaterally decide when mistakes have been made. Again, feel free to raise the issue at Wikipedia:Deletion review.

You are both experienced Wikipedians and know that to suggest Deletion Review as an appropriate place to make a structural alteration to Wikipedia (however minor) really is not a flyer. The debate is always about counting the number of votes and nothing else!

WP:DRV "considers appeals to restore pages that have been deleted. It also considers disputed decisions made in deletion-related fora." Why do you insist upon bypassing the appropriate process?

You are, however, correct in stating that you never took the necessary steps to "make a structural alteration to Wikipedia." You should have {{proposed}} your setup (and you still could).

But of course no-one is paying me to improve Wikipedia so I see little point in butting heads with David who must have his own reasons to maintain the status quo (though he has kept them to himself so far).

What do you mean?! I've repeatedly explained my reasoning (which is shared by others). You, conversely, decided to simply ignore consensus and once again create your setup without any discussion. —David Levy 16:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

db-absurd?

Why isn't blatant absurdity a ground for speedy deletion? I find it really annoying that a user can create an article about himself, claiming (say) that he invented time travel and is the king of the universe, and there is no official justification for tagging this for speedy deletion (after all, these claims, if true, would certainly make the person notable). Thus we have to go through the prod (and probably) AFD process, wasting everyone's time. It makes no sense to me. dbtfz^talk 19:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

There's {{db-nonsense}} and {{db-bio}} for situations like that. --Zsinj^Talk 19:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

{{nonsense}} covers patent nonsense, which that is not. Blackcap (talk) 19:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't think anyone's going to argue with deleting articles where the claims to notability are obviously false. If nothing else they can be deleted as vandalism (G3). Of course, this requires being a bit of discretion... absurd claims like you mention can be safely declared obviously false... but seeking out verification, or using Prod/AfD is more appropriate for claims that are merely dubious. --W.marsh 19:31, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I think db-vandalism works for the situation I've described, so I'll use that from now on. dbtfz^talk 19:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I am talking only about claims that any sane person could immediately recognize as obviously false. I agree that prod/AfD is the right course of action for other cases. dbtfz^talk 19:36, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

You seem to understand what to do quite well. Don't be afraid to tag common sense speedies, whether they exactly fit a category or not. We don't have an official policy for this stuff but the deletions of obvious junk are fairly uncontroversial. Friday (talk) 19:39, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --Zsinj^Talk 19:44, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the good advice.  :-) dbtfz^talk 19:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

New template deletion criteria

CSD T2: Any copyright tag that asserts "All rights reserved", that does not assert "fair use", and does not provide a valid fair-use rationale.

Now that OrphanBot's assisting with tagging of recently-uploaded images, I'm seeing a bunch of image copyright tags that simply assert "all rights reserved" go by. It would be nice if I could simply tag the template for speedy deletion, rather than having to run it through TFD. --Carnildo 22:10, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

How about redirecting the templates to Template:Nld? Jkelly 22:15, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

That template says that there was no license. The problem Carnildo describes is one where the user has created a template for an invalid license. My only reservation is whether this problem is really big enough to justify yet another CSD criterion. Couldn't we just do a one-time clean-up and be done with it? How many different templates are there with these invalid licenses? How often are new ones created? Rossami (talk) 02:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I've seen two of them go by in the nine days that OrphanBot's been doing new-upload tagging: {{SKT}}, created on the 22nd, and {{Indiancopyright}}, created on December 10, 2004. I've also seen a number of invocations of the nonexistant {{RightsReserved}}; sooner or later, someone's going to get the idea of actually creating it. I expect to see more as time goes by.--Carnildo

No. They shouldn't be speedied as much as giving the uploader a chance, if possible, to find the correct copyright or replace it with a proper-license image. Few things chap my behind more than seeing images go bye-bye without an opportunity to rectify the problem. --13:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm talking about templates here, not images. The templates will be deleted, it's only a question of if it will be as soon as they are discovered, or seven days later. --Carnildo 01:33, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course, this travesty is the real reason to speedy-delete these. Two people voted that the template should be kept because some images really are all-rights-reserved, and so the vote was closed as no consensus. --Carnildo 01:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

The CSD:T2 speedy rule would be good. Admins should toast these on site. Otherwise, innocent, well meaning users, will see the tag, and assume it is ok. They would think that the only reason the tag exists, is because it is ok to use. Better to delete the template early, then the image later. --Rob 01:29, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Just redirect the templates to {{db-noncom}} or the like. No need to speedy these. Stifle (talk) 14:26, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

New criterion proposal for redirects

CSD R4: Redirects in any talk namespace caused by a move, where the associated article (project page, template, whatever) was changed from a redirect into a distinct page.

A case in point is Talk:Nickel (coin), which is a redirect to Talk:Nickel (U.S. coin), but the article it's attached to is a disambig page also including the Canadian coin. Clearly the redirect is inappropriate, and deleting such a redirect should not be controversial in the slightest, especially since there is no edit history to worry about, because that was moved at the same time.

There is already precedent for this: Talk:Lingua Franca was boldly deleted by Commander Keane - it used to be a redirect to Talk:Lingua franca. Lingua Franca was moved to Lingua franca because its capitalisation was wrong, but someone later created a distinct page on the old name. At that point the page you got when clicking on "discussion" on Lingua Franca no longer bore any relation to that article.

See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Multiple_pages_with_differently_capitalised_names.

Hairy Dude 15:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Or you could just blank the redirect. That seems like a complicated rule when it's not like you need to get rid of the history. NickelShoe (Talk) 18:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Patent hoaxes

Why, o why aren't "patent hoaxes" a speedy criterium (or at least included under patent nonsense)? I have come across quite a few articles where the claims made about a person were clearly nonsense (e.g. Joe Bloggs invented penicillin, was made king of the world, etc), but the article couldn't be "legally" speedied under either CSD G1 - patent nonsense (specifically excludes hoaxes) or CSD A7 - non-notable biography / vanity about a person or persons that does not assert the notability of the subject (it does assert notability, although false). Do we have a loophole here, or am I missing something?

Please note that I do not neccessarily include all hoaxes under this category - some may indeed be complex enought that they have to go on proposed deletions or AfD, but some hoaxes are so glaringly obvious that one should be able to "legally" speedy them.

Elf-friend 12:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

After writing this I did notice the "db-absurd" section above, but that just suggests workarounds ... I would rather prefer to have a seperate category (for example G9:Patent hoax) or have the definition of G1 broadened. Elf-friend 12:34, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, you note the above discussion, I don't think it's exactly a work around. Posting obviously false claims is vandalism... be it in an existing article or to a new one. The problem is with a hoax that isn't obviously false, which most aren't. I personally don't feel comfortable speedy deleting an article just because I, the ignorant American, have never heard of it. CSD, if interpreted strictly, tends to avoid those kind of judgement calls... and I think that's a good thing. Deal with hoaxes via PROD and AfD.

You also run into the problem of people speedy deleting established and verifiable pseudoscience articles as hoaxes, and also probably other repercussions. Ultimately being a hoax isn't truly why we delete something, being unverifiable is. And I like to reduce the margin for error when deciding that. --W.marsh 14:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Privacy vio

Privacy vio should be on the list, e.g. personal details, private correspondence etc. Phr 01:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Private correspondence needs a very limited scope to prevent abuse. --_{Avillia (RfC vs CVU) 05:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)}

Categories relating to AfD deletions

The CfD debate at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 April 27#Category:Online Soccer Project Alpha made me wonder whether we should add to C1 a permission to speedy delete categories which have become empty as a result of an AfD debate — or, more generally, the deletion (rather than recategorisation) of all articles under the deletion policy. Perhaps with a grace period of four days of emptiness? —Whouk (talk) 15:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't categories be deleted on their own merits, not whether they're being used? Who's to say they wouldn't be used again? And if they're redundant for whatever reason, why does it hurt to send it to CfD and make sure the consensus is there? --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 15:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a case for not having any CSD category criteria, isn't it? My point is that if a category that's empty and never been populated can be deleted under C1, a category which has only had as content articles/templates which were deleted could potentially be considered as analogous. —Whouk (talk) 17:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is any sort of reason to speedy delete categories outside of attack categories (i.e., "Category: People who think badlydrawnjeff is a moron") or nonsense cats. But maybe I'm missing something here. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 18:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

How can we tell if the category has ever been populated? (This is not a rhetorical question. I'm not a Wikipedia expert, but I don't know where to look in the logs for that information.) I think there should be a CSD for categories; but G1 should take care of most of the cases I've run across. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

T1 and userboxes: how about a more precise wording?

I've noticed that quite a few userboxes have been speedy deleted citing T1, but there seems to be no consensus as to how T1 should be interpreted, and thus many users get annoyed at having their userbox deleted. I agree with the sentiment of T1, but speedy deleting these userboxes can often lead to divisiveness and inflammatory statements as well. What's the solution here?

Also, I'd be interested in seeing how Jimbo Wales's endorsement of this criterion was worded. It may provide some insight into this situation. -- T.o.n.y 14:54, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

If criterion CSD:T1 were in a template, it would be speedily deleted under T1, and rightfully so. It definitely needs to be reworded, but "we" editors (or even "you" admins) cannot do so without more input from Jimbo. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:58, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I believe that all of Jimbo's pronouncements on the subject can be found here. Do any of them prohibit rewording or qualification of T1, and if so, which? Septentrionalis 22:04, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I see nothing there supporting T1. Without Jimbo's suggestions, it wouldn't be present policy, as there has never been (visible) consensus supporting it. Hence, we have a policy created by fiat (and apparently not Jimbo's). The simplest solution would be to revert to the status quo ante T1 -- delete T1, undelete all templates deleted under T1 unless they violate WP:NPA, and do not re-delete as "unused" if they were ever used. Then, perhaps, a reasoned policy could be obtained by consensus. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 07:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, especially with userboxes and other templates used (almost) solely in the User namespace. While I can understand Jimbo's sentiment concerning userboxes, I also know that people in any community want (and possibly need) a channel for self-expression. It helps others in the community learn about each other and identify their reasons for being in the community and their motivations behind the work they contribute to the community. Userboxes provide an easy way in this community to express oneself and (for the most part) don't inherently create division or heated debate. Of course, they can be misused, but that goes for almost any tool available to editors here at Wikipedia.

However, I think that any changes made to speedy delete criteria should reflect the general consensus of the community. While Jimbo's (inferred) opinions have considerable clout in this community, he is but one person. I think we should put this up to a vote. -- T.o.n.y 18:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

• First, Voting is evil. It is much too premature to attempt to put this question to a polarizing vote. But more importantly, before you all lock in on this chain of reasoning, I'd ask everyone to please reread the many archived discussion pages leading up to the decision. Jimbo did not impose this policy out of the blue. There was rampant abuse and dissension being created by some userboxes at the time. Now that they've been deleted, it's all too easy to forget the worst examples which forced us into this (perhaps draconian) solution. Many people would agree with the assessment that the community has not yet reached consensus on this issue. But it is not fair to imply that Jimbo was alone in his opinion. As far as I know, he doesn't even have an opinion except that we should all get back to the real work of creating the best possible open-source encyclopedia. Many, many users heartily supported his decision. In my own observation, they were doing more harm than good to the project. I don't miss them. Rossami (talk) 22:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree; the thing to do is to stop fighting the Userbox Wars, and go on from where we are. Genuinely divisive userboxes can (and should) be TfD'd; the editors they offend will vote to delete. They are no loss. Removing (or even modifying) T1 is enough. Septentrionalis 02:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind political, etc., userboxes being speedily deleted if we had a clear policy that allowed it. They are at best a waste of template space. Currently, however, we are seeing userboxes that are clearly not "divisive and inflammatory" being speedily deleted. An example was a userbox that said simply, "This user is a transhumanist". I don't see how this could be considered divisive in itself, since we are (generally) tolerant people, so we are not likely to be divided against each other merely by expressions of subscription to philosophical views that we may not happen agree with. In a tolerant community, such statements of ones's views are not met with the kind of hostility and active opposition that is implied by divisive. I realise that such a userbox, if in template space, could theoretically be used as an instrument for undoubtedly divisive activities such as votestacking, but it's not obvious to me that that theoretical possibility amounts to the userbox itself being "divisive". Even if the word "divisive" could be stretched so far, which is very doubtful, I don't see how the mere polite, non-provocative statement that "I am a transhumanist" could be considered inflammatory. As an absolute minimum, I think that T1 should be altered from "divisive and inflammatory" to read "divisive or inflammatory". That would capture any genuinely divisive userboxes as well as those that don't create particular divisions but simply arouse reasonable people to anger. I think that some indication should also be given that the word "divisive" is meant to be read in a broad sense to include any userbox (or other template) that lends itself as an instrument for factionalising etc, though I have no particular words to offer at this stage. Meanwhile, I don't think the current words should be interpreted and applied in an unnaturally broad way, as often seems to be happening. The words "divisive and inflammatory" are clear enough; they simply don't stretch as far as some of our colleagues would like them to. Metamagician3000 08:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I would like to see T1 say "all political, religious, or philosophical" rather than "divisive and inflammatory". I can make the argument that any political view is divisive. Not just Nazism. Simple change, and would get us out of a lot of divisive and inflammmatory discussion about whether something is divisive (a judgement call that's hard to make) and move it to whether something is political (a lot easier call to make). ArbComm has held that T1 is policy. I support that. Now get it to be clear, easily applied policy. ++Lar: t/c 14:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It could say both "all userboxes that express a religious, political, philosophical, or similar point of view, or are otherwise divisive or inflammatory". There will be grey areas no matter how it is worded, and deletion review would still be necessary, but this sort of language would put the issue beyond doubt with most userboxes. Metamagician3000 14:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Or better still, we could adapt Jimbo's own language: templates that "express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues, or which are otherwise divisive or inflammatory". How's that? Metamagician3000 14:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd support either of those formulations. I've mostly stayed out of the userbox debate because, frankly, I think most people's User pages are boring (including my own) and I never read them. But having read up on the issue I have to say: the more wiggles room we leave on this the worse it will be. Wikipedia is not a blog, and is not myspace. While people are welcome to write what they want on their user pages, within policy, there's no reason to waste our time weighing the merits of these various templates. Religious, political, philosophical, or similar...delete them all, regardless of whether or not they are divisive. That's my $0.02, anyway. Nandesuka 14:29, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Agree strongly with Nandesuka. People will wiggle but let us give them little room to do so. Agree with MM3K as well, (dude, your ID is too long!!! Grin) that Jimbo's wording is fine. It's far more precise and inclusive (of what we want to see deleted within process) than my suggestion. I'm not hung up on the exact wording. I just want it to be less wiggly than "divisive" which is just way too wiggly. ++Lar: t/c 14:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm starting to lean toward that, as it's clear that the admins (possibly encouraged by Jimbo, but there's no public evidence that Jimbo agrees that it should be policy) will delete userboxes, controversial or not, by whatever means necessary, and that, although the majority of active Wikipedians may disagree, there's clearly not enough weight to overturn that fiat. Hence, although that policy is clearly harmful to Wikipedia, the wheel warring is worse. (Note that I am assuming good faith, just noting that those admins mistakenly believe that the deletion of userboxes is good for Wikipedia, and that this outweighs the violation of existing process.) However, all userbox deletions, unless the text itself is objectionable on a userpage, must be subst'ed and converted to Template:Userbox format. However, even Nandesuka's formulation leaves enough wiggle room for wheel wars. My counter-proposal would be to delete all userboxes except wikiproject boxes. Note: I would still prefer restricting T1 to those templates which would be considered "attack templates" — but that rational appropach is not going to happen. My more restrictive form is probably the best that can be achieved. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Arthur Rubin, your good faith is quite clear, but you're mistaken in your implicit claim that "violation" of process is a Bad Thing, that might or might not be "outweighed" by some particular Good Thing. I can't pin down a particular guideline or essay that taught me to see it this way, but "acting out of process" is part of the perfectly healthy and normal functioning of Wikipedia. That's how process evolves - someone starts doing something because it's the right thing to do, others see them and mimic them, because it's clearly the right thing to do, and eventually when someone suggests writing it into the guidelines, a bunch of people say "oh, I thought it was already there".

The trick is to let people do what they do, and try to document the best practices once they're identified and selected for. For whatever reason, the interpretation of T1 that's rising to the top seems to be that "all userboxes that express a religious, political, philosophical, or similar point of view, or are otherwise divisive or inflammatory" don't get to be publicly transcluded, and shouldn't even be here. I'd also say there are very good reasons for that, but I don't want to double the length of this post, and it's all been said several times.

I support rewriting T1 according to Jimbo's formulation. -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:58, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

No edit on this page can reflect Jimbo's formulation: He said nothing about speedying. What has happened, btw, to what Jimbo recommended: asking people to remove their political/religious userboxes, and so changing the culture one person at a time? Septentrionalis 23:09, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

My concern is that the T1 criteria are too subjective to allow for speedy deletions. They are good as deletion criteria, but not so good for speedy deletions. Powers 12:01, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I would agree. Deletion without discussion (i.e. a speedy) is an extreme measure, and should only be used in cases where harm would occur if the target remined in place for the duration of the discussion (copyvios, attack pages, etc), or where a discussion was held previously (e.g G4). As it stands, the speedy deltion of neutrally worded templates is proving to be more devisive than the original templates ever could be. Regards, MartinRe 20:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

If I may try to add to the discussion, I would like to say, having recently come across a speedy deletion of a userbox I found funny, non-divisive, and non-inflammatory (unless one considers non-explicit references to sex divisive or inflammatory), that the speedy deletion of a userbox sufficiently unclear with respect to the criteria discussed here is extremely frustrating, disheartening, and alienating. On this end, not holding discussion thus feels like an abuse of procedure and seems in bad faith. I understand the dislike for userboxes, and I even sympathize with not wanting them in template space, but choosing speedy deletion over TfD, now, prior to reaching consensus on what is to be done about userboxes and after an initial deadlock on trying to reach such a policy? I fail to see the good faith in that. Just venting saying. ---Bersl2 07:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Change in T1

(Per GTb just above...)

I have so changed it to use the exact wording. See this version, under the Bold-revert-discuss paradigm. Revert me if you must but it's time we move to this level. ++Lar: t/c 16:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I would just like to remind everyone at this point that T1 refers to all templates, not just userboxes, and it has been used to justify the speedy deletion of templates that were not userboxes. Even if the language is changed to apply only to userboxes, Lar's new wording allows for the speedy deletion of Babelboxes (which up till now have generally been considered "good" userboxes) for levels xx-0 through xx-4, since stating which foreign languages one has chosen to learn (and therefore which ones one has not chosen to learn) certainly expresses "personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions" and in some cases even "viewpoints on controversial issues". Angr (t • c) 16:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

That may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but if so, it's a price to be paid that I'm willing to pay, and I suspect others are too. The wording could be revised to exclude those, but I think there's merit in using Jimbo's words as is. ++Lar: t/c 17:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you have to do unreasonable backflips to interpret "I speak language X" as "I am expressing a political viewpoint." So I disagree with you that this impacts babelboxes. If we wanted to be super-careful, we could specifically carve an exemption for them, but I don't think it's necessary. Nandesuka 17:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

There are certain situations where saying "I speak language X" is practically synonymous with "I am expressing a political viewpoint". For example, if a user from Northern Ireland says "I speak Irish" or "I speak Ulster Scots", their political affiliations will in most cases not be difficult to discern. Likewise "I speak Greek" vs. "I speak Turkish" for a user from Cyprus. I don't want to "carve out an exception" for the Babelboxes; I want everyone to be aware that Babelboxes can be every bit as "inflammatory and divisive" as any userbox already speedied under T1. Angr (t • c) 20:31, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

User:Xaosflux reverted with the edit summary: rv "When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus." Signifigant policy changes should be discussed (in depth) first.

Xaosflux, are you reading this page? How has this not been discussed in depth? The very impetus for this particular edit was the emerging consensus at WP:DRV/U. Please state your objection to Lar's version. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:00, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I subscribe to 1RR so I will not revert back, I leave that to others. But I think the conensus was pretty clear. This broadening is, IMHO, a change whose time has come. ++Lar: t/c

I will not revert this again either, although I 'strongly disagree with it for the reasons I've listed below. Apparently someone else has already reverted it again, if it goes again it seems to be a demonstration that consensus has not been met. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:12, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict note)I've reverted "Templates that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues, or which are otherwise divisive or inflammatory. (Note that this criterion was established with an endorsement from Jimbo Wales and now uses his exact wording.)" <-- that change to T1. It is too broad, just because a template expreses a controverisal issue does not mean it has no use. We have plenty of articles about controversial issues, this would go so far as to mean a navbox between several related controverisal articls would be speedily deletable in my interpertation. This is a criteria for all templates, not about "userboxes" If this change is trying to be specific to "userboxes" the best place to establish it's change would be in a userbox policy, IMHO. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:03, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

(double edit conflict) e.g. Template:Christianity is a "template that expresses an ideology", is it not? It doesn't support or condone it, but it expresses it. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, the thing is that I changed T1 from PART of Jimbo's wording to ALL of it. Arguably not an intent change, just a clarification that gets rid of the wiggle room that causes so much trouble. As for a userbox policy, been there, done that, got the tshirt, that dog don't hunt. People are speedying these things and I argue that the broadened T1 I put up is what they are using. I vehemently disagree with that because it's out of process, and yet I agree with their reasons for doing so. How to fix it? RfAr all of them for doing what is probably right? No. Change the criteria so it supports their actions. That gets to the right outcome and keeps us process wonks happy. ALL that said, I still dispute that this change doesn't reflect emerging consensus. If others agree I invite them to support this view with discuussion. (not votiing because voting is evil) ++Lar: t/c 17:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It might be helpful to include a link to his statement, but I do think the templates described (an infobox for example) would really meet it. If the template used in an article already expresses a view, it probably should be at least NPOV'd. Also, can we archive some discussion off of this page? Kotepho 17:20, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up on WP:VP, I forgot about it... as for Template:Christianity, it's used in mainspace. I doubt it would pass TfD much less CSD. Yes technically you could argue it expresses an ideology but I think it's a bit of a stretch. I don't see it as expressing, merely describing. No attribution to any person is intended. ++Lar: t/c 17:30, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Christianity is part of the encyclopedic content, and let's be honest, T1 isn't made to deal with encyclopedic content. --Cyde Weys 17:31, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Christianity doesn't express anything; it's a signpost to related articles. That's encyclopedic. "This User is a Christian" expresses something personal, and non-encyclopedic. There's no danger of confusion there - it's a red herring. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Concur with GTBacchus - there's a world of difference between "this is part of a series of articles on X" and expressing value judgements on X. The first is part of making the encyclopedia feel cohesive and nice. The latter is part of the messy stuff we've been dealing with. A good way to understand the difference is

1. Does the template talk about its author/user specifically?
2. Does the template invoke a value judgement? (this can get slightly fuzzy in some cases)
3. Is the template intended for userspace or for articlespace?
4. Does the template make the encyclopedia better (in a way unrelated to the "toss users a bone" argument)?

--Improv 20:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

T1 doesn't say anything about an exception being made for "encyclopedic content" (a concept not defined anywhere in Wikipedia AFAIK). Template:Christianity is a perfect example of a non-userbox template that has been made speediable by the new wording of T1. Angr (t • c) 20:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Could you suggest a different wording that still carries the power of Jimbo's words but does allow for commonsense exceptions (since you feel it's deletable under T1. I don't, really, but if there is a clarification that works and retains the wording strength... I'd support it)? ++Lar: t/c 21:00, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I can't. I don't think there is any wording that will uniquely capture the intent behind T1, because that intent is both subjective and arbitrary. And although I have objected to your new wording, it should be clear I was never a fan of the old wording either. The true intent behind it always seemed to be "any userbox any admin doesn't like", although it was always worded in such a way as to applicable to non-userboxes as well. And indeed the only templates I have ever argued should be deleted under T1 were used in article space. Angr (t • c) 22:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, no. How does Template:Christianity "express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues"? That's nonsense. It's a big table of "see also" references. How does Jimbo's wording spill over and make any encyclopedic template speediable - I just don't see it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the confusion is a result of two different meanings of "express". The slightly broader meaning is to "show sign of" or "provide information about", but that's clearly not the one that is meant. The definition we want is closer to the "profess" meaning. I don't think that, provided precident is set properly by initial application of the expanded rule, we'll run into problems. I don't think the four clarifying questions I ask above are too far off the mark either. Even if what is encyclopedic is controversial in some areas, it is pretty clear that in this case, it's fine -- I don't think that anyone could say that providing bumper stickers are part of the goal of an encyclopedia. The vast majority of userboxen are simply that -- self-expression in the style of bumper stickers, and not helpful (often harmful) to our goals. I think the chance of confusing the Template:Christianity thing to "Template:User Christian" is negligible. If there is grey ground here, it's not particularly easy to see. --Improv 22:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of the definition of "express" you choose, Template:Christianity expresses all sorts of personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, and viewpoints on controversial issues. It includes the Trinity as part of Christianity, though some Christians do not believe in the Trinity. The section on the Bible excludes the Book of Mormon. It lumps all of Eastern Christianity into "Orthodox Christianity" while splitting all of Western Christianity into "Catholicism" and "Protestantism"; there are lots of Christian denominations that would not consider themselves as belonging to any of those three. Sounds pretty inflammatory and divisive to me. Angr (t • c) 23:30, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It does not express any personal commitments such as "I am a Christian" or "I support Christianity". That is the kind of thing we don't want a template to say. Or at least I hope we can agreement that that is the sort of thing now considered speediable that should be expressed in T1. The words I suggested yesterday still seem to me to make the distinction we want, but I'm prepared to see better formulations. Metamagician3000 00:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

We all know what we mean - this is just words lawyering - but how about: User templates that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues, or any other templates which are otherwise divisive or inflammatory. - that seems a reasonable clarification of Jimbo's words. --Doc ^ask? 00:50, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I would happily support that tweak, it's a good clarification. ++Lar: t/c 00:55, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Doc's proposal is very good. Nandesuka 01:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Any change along those lines has got to be better than the current words. And if it is just wikilawyering about precise formulations in the future, then we can either shrug it off or continue to fine tune. Someone going to be bold enough to make the change or do we await a broader consensus? Metamagician3000 01:08, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I see it currently has "my" wording. ;) Well, I for one won't object if someone boldly tweaks it. Metamagician3000 01:13, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

In for a penny, in for a pound. Tweaked. ++Lar: t/c 01:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Angr, regardless of whether I think these things are inherently deeply problematic or not with Template:Christianity, I do appreciate that that statement does provide enough information to move the conversation forward. I might guess that we should overinclude rather than underinclude, even if that means potentially offending people. If, for example, some followers of Orthodox Judaism were to say that Reform Judaism is not really Judaism, I don't think we should feel that it's getting involved in that struggle over the meanings of words to include a link in a Template:Judaism. A preference to overinclude when it comes to contention over definitional content will probably serve us well. --Improv 03:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

All right. Now we await the community's judgment as to whether we had adequate consensus here, and generally whether this will stick. I think we've done the right thing and that some wording like this should have been adopted from the beginning. Still, the events of the past few months have taught us what was needed. Metamagician3000 02:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

So, how does this proposal differ from the one roundly rejected in January, at ; Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/userbox templates concerning beliefs and convictions? Septentrionalis 04:50, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the resemblance. The intitiative taken here involves a change of policy not a vote on a bunch of userboxes under existing policy, and the circumstances are now quite different. E.g,. there's now been plenty of time for people to userfy and customise their userboxes and generally come to grips with the fact that sooner or later these sorts of userbox templates would cease to be accepted. Metamagician3000 06:08, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm reverting, as this actually covers something like "This user thinks that pink is for girls." (and that actually did get tagged as a CSD under T1), or even "This user's favorite color is blue," which expresses a personal belief. This is far too broad, and I don't see any real consensus for it. --Rory096 06:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted this back, but I don't want to get into a revert war over it. Just think, though, before you keep reverting, why would we want a userbox expressing either of those opinions in template space? If someone wants to tell us their favourite colour, by all means let them do so on their userpage (which could be by way of a customised userbox). But this is not what template space is for, and I'm still betting that there is now a rough consensus about that, at least among those who care about the issue and the project. Metamagician3000 07:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Templatespace is not articlespace, it's not like it has to be encyclopaedic content. We could have a Userbox: space too, but nobody wants that. --Rory096 07:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Let's do a straw poll or something.  Grue  11:50, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Let's not. Policy pages are not legislation - they are a record of what actually happens. T1 is being interpreted in this way, and a growing consensus is endorsing such deletions. So update this page to reflect consensus. m:Polls are evil --Doc ^ask? 12:03, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• This wording is an improvement in one respect: it is much less subjective, so there will be greater agreement about when it applies.
• However, there was 88% consensus against deleting such templates in January. The discussion now underway at WP:UBD about Template:User Christian looks to be about even (and most of the advocates of the present policy have already voiced their opinions). There is no consensus on this policy; if it is forming, it has not yet formed. Septentrionalis 18:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Just because you and some other admins interpret it this way doesn't mean you have the right to change policy to suit your needs. This kind of proactive policymaking is unacceptable. I won't even comment such silliness as "growing consensus". There either is one or there isn't one.  Grue  20:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Just to reinforce my point that if T1 is going to be useful at all, it should not be restricted to userboxes: just today, User:Freakofnurture quite appropriately speedy-deleted Template:Axis of Evil (a box consisting of "Iraq (former member) – Iran – North Korea") under T1. Rather than using T1 to whack userboxes, let it do its useful work of eliminating inflammatory and divisive templates from article space. Angr (t • c) 20:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be better to have separate criteria for templates in user and article space, so that we can draw each as narrowly as possible. I've edited T1 to say 'User templates.' Maybe we could have a T2 saying initially about the same thing, but 'Article templates,' and see how it develops. Tom Harrison ^Talk 20:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I would endorse the view that there is no consensus for any version of T1 at this time, so that it should be completely removed from this page. I think it would be possible to develop a more limited consensus for adding language akin to "Templates used only in user space that describe a user, are inflamatory, and that express more about personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues than would help another editor to understand the using user's point of view." Then we could have a separate T2 that functions as Angr describes above "Templates used in the main space that are divisive, inflamatory, or inherently POV." 20:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by GRBerry (talk • contribs) .

Endorse that a community consensus does not exist at this time. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

No, of course it doesn't, but that doesn't matter. Jimbo himself readded T1 after it had been deleted, and whether we like it or not, Jimbo's actions trump consensus at Wikipedia. Angr (t • c) 21:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The criterion Jimbo readded is not the present text, which is far more sweeping (and much more workable as a speedy criterion.) Septentrionalis 22:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, and in the absensce of both consensue, or any update from Jimbo, I would suggest it remains as it was at that point, namely "Templates that are divisive and inflammatory."[5] Regards, MartinRe 21:57, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

You would honestly remove our only speedy deletion criteria? So no matter what someone puts in a template, it would have to go through the rigamarole of WP:TFD? What if someone made a template whose sole content was "Fuck all Wikipedians up the ass"; we can't speedy that? Don't be ridiculous. --Cyde Weys 22:01, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a misrepresentation. The general criteria would still apply. Do please try not to confuse this with straw men. Septentrionalis 22:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Such a template would of course be speediable under G3. Angr (t • c) 22:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Not that I'm weighing in either way, but the eight General criteria apply to Templates too... —Whouk (talk) 22:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Endorse all opinions that the General provisions apply to all pages, and would easily cover a template stating "F*** all Wikipedians up the a**" just as they would support removing someone typing that on their userpage. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

There is no consensus whatsoever to support CSD:T1. But, Jimbo overrides any consensus as and when he wishes. I completely agree with the Grue above - there are several drastically bad userbox speedies happening, and it is getting worse. Stifle (talk) 22:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Then he should certainly be notified of any change; such as the one made yesterday. Septentrionalis 22:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

It is being discussed on the English Wikipedia mailing list, to which Jimbo subscribes. It's up to him whether he wants to get involved any further or exercise the option of masterful inactivity. Metamagician3000 00:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Addition to G4

I would like to add a clause to G4 to say that articles deleted under WP:PROD and then re-created should not be speedied under G4, but rather taken to AFD, as the re-creation of a PRODded article amounts to the same thing as contesting the PROD. I think this is common sense, but it doesn't seem to be explicitly stated anywhere. Any objections? Angr (talk • contribs) 09:34, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Seems logical; incidentally, G4 already covers the case for articles that were speedy deleted (saying that the administrator have to check whether the article actually meets WP:CSD), so this is a natural extension. - Liberatore(T) 10:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like a good idea. No objections here. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 14:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Support. —Ruud 15:00, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Generally support, although I believe it should be up to someone else (perhaps even the prodder) to take it to AfD. Removal of PROD doesn't automatically mean AfD, and articles shouldn't just be AfD'd just because they were prodded once upon a time. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 15:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

You're right of course. By "taken to AFD" I meant "taken to AFD if you want it deleted". Leaving it alone is of course also an option. Angr (talk • contribs) 16:44, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Support. Snoutwood (tóg) 15:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

There having been some support and no opposition, I'm making the addition now. Angr (talk • contribs) 19:13, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Abuse reports

Although I've posted this on AN, I'm posting it here again so that all of you notorious vandalfighting lads are sure to hear about it.

If you have a IP address that has been warned, blocked, blocked again, and still keeps coming back, list him at the page mentioned in this header: WP:ABUSE. This is a process, similar to WP:AIV and WP:RFCU, that contacts the ISP of an IP address that is a repeated abuser. The page went live about ten minutes ago, and we're itching to try it out. Please read the guide and the main page before posting, that's all we ask. Thanks, lads. Snoutwood (tóg) 23:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

A7 too subjective for CSD

It is my impression that CSD criteria should be sufficiently clear and follow consensus opinions enough to have one person able to objectively decide on an issue. Since Notability has not been decided on how can someone justify using criteria pre-emptively developed using the essay to delete without discussion in an objective way. I propose that the guideline be scrapped as it does not fit the consensus model currently. Ansell 07:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

A7 is for articles with no assertion of notability. If there is any reason to suspect someone might disagree, it can't be used. -- SCZenz 08:39, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

How low an assertion is "no notability", considering that the tag can be used after the first edit to a page while it is still in a stub stage? Why are their tags called nn-bio if they are not really referencing the notability criteria, only the lack of any part of it? If the criteria are not used at all then how is notability able to be determined by an isolated individual, as in the CSD process? Ansell 10:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Somewhere, perhaps on WP:YFA, there ought to be an advice to article creators that if they create an article in multiple edits, they should start by writing the part that explains why the topic is notable. But in any case, an article does not even reach stub state until the notability is explained. Without information about why to care, the arctile fails to fulfill even a stub's function. You are wrong in assuming that the criterion calls for anyone to determine notability itself; it just says to look whether there is any claim in the article that if assumed true, even though unreferenced and unlikely, would constitute notability. Henning Makholm 11:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

And the bar for potential notability should be quite low. If someone thinks an article has an assertion of notability that they think wouldn't save it from AfD, that does not mean it can be speedied. -- SCZenz 17:44, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

An article on a person (or group, band, club, etc.) can only be speedied under A7 if it does not contain an assertion of notability. "Katie won the spelling bee in 1993" is such an assertion, and an article with that line could not be speedied under A7. (It might be possible under A1, but that's another discussion.) Once an assertion of notability exists, it must go to prod or AFD. Stifle (talk) 17:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

"Katie won the spelling bee" could (and should) most certainly be speedied. We also speedy things that contain assertions of notability like "Bob is the Ruler of the Entire World", and this is hardly controversial. We just need to use a bit of common sense here. Friday (talk) 17:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Friday and Stifle are entirely correct. We do, I think, set the bar for assertions fairly low, and I suppose that's altogether appropriate. Katie won the spelling bee surely qualifies for {{db-empty}} or {{db-bio}} , while Katie won the 2006 Kansas state spelling bee and represented her region at the Scripps National Spelling Bee seems to assert notability, even as I'd surely support "delete" at AfD (per WP:BIO). I do think common sense can properly dispose of 99 per cent of entries to which a speedy tag is appended; it's not difficult, IMHO, to differentiate between an article without an assertion of notability and an article with such assertion, even where the achievement/characteristic adduced to demonstrate notability does not fit within one's own defintion of WP:NOT; in the other 1 per cent of situations, inasmuch as one isn't certain whether an assertion is really made, speedy is likely inappropriate (in those cases, I think the admin removing the speedy tag might do well to refer the article straightaway to AfD—with no recommednation if one wants—although surely the initial tagger ought also to watch the article). Joe 06:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Notifying contributors should be enforceable policy

Notifying the original contributors to an article before tagging it should be an enforceable policy, not simply an optional nicety. This would ensure that people thought clearly about what they were doing when placing such a powerful tag on a page. Ansell 07:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I politely disagree. We are not required or expected to notify anyone about any other kind of edit (including a complete rewrite). As it says very clearly and in bold at the bottom of every edit page, "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it." The original contributors have no more rights to the article than every other reader/editor in the project. See WP:OWN for more. Rossami (talk) 14:33, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Is it policy or simply practice that a contested CSD tag should become an XfD nomination instead? If the former, it would certainly be polite to give major contributors notification. (And either way, this page should say something about it.) Septentrionalis 16:29, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles go to AfD if someone nominates them. I don't know of any policy other than that. -- SCZenz 17:49, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

To contest a CSD tag you need to make a comment on the talk page of the relevant article, optionally placing {{hangon}} on the article while you type the comment. However, if the article meets the criteria, it can still be speedied by an admin. If the article does not meet the criteria, or is improved after being tagged, the tag can be removed by anyone except authors of the page. In any case, if the tag is removed, the page can optionally be taken to ?FD. Stifle (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with Ansell. This would be exceptionally time-consuming procedure. When I go on new pages patrol, I can speedy up to five pages a minute. Requiring me to come up with a notification for each and every one of the authors of those pages would cut this by 80% or more. The articles shouldn't be there, my deletion summary gives a clear and concise reason why I deleted the article, and people can put a message on my talk page at any stage if they need another explanation. This proposal has come up a few times; I regret that it appears to be instruction creep. Stifle (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Stifle. However, you COULD encourage it by adding a template for the user's talks to the bottom of the CSD notice (similar to how {{db-copyvio}} has {{nothanks-sd}} at the bottom). It shouldn't be mandatory, but it would make it easier. --Rory096 06:26, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

A very simple method, {{subst:DRVU note|section heading}} ~~~~ is already available for userbox deletion review, how much harder would it be to integrate a method of this type into the current process for speedy deletion. I cannot really accept the fact that it will slow the process down as a factor, as I consider this to be the most vulnerable of all processes to be possibly abused and should be totally transparent. It is the transparency that would be increased by mandatory notification, as this could possibly be the only non-log record for the deletion in any part of wikipedia. Ansell 07:39, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Protection of this policy page

• 22:03, 7 May 2006 Geni protected Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion (Edit rate is far to high for a policy page. [edit=sysop:move=sysop])

There had been 13 edits on this page in the previous seven days. I don't think this qualifies as "far too high" even by the strongest stretch of the imagination.

Moreover Geni has inserted a bespoke notice which says "This page is protected since it is a key policy page so changes should not be made without considerable discussion."

I don't consider that an adequate reason to protect this important policy page from editing.

I am notifying Geni and I am asking him to remove protection. --Tony Sidaway 17:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

~2 edits a day is far to high when they continue at that rate for day after day week after week. People should not be comeing along and casualy changeing this page. If you want to change it disscuss and debate. Get a reasonable level of support and page protection isn't going to matter.Geni 18:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this page is controversial? Kim Bruning 21:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I second Tony's request that Geni unprotect this page. Yeah, it's tweaked a couple times a day, but I don't remember this leading to any crises recently. I'd rather have this page stay nice and Wiki. If ridiculous changes are being made to it, they'd get reverted. Let's not set a precedent of hardening policy pages. I agree with the sentiment, Geni, but don't think locking the page is the answer. JDoorjam Talk 22:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Fine. However I stand by my position that we need to reduce the edit rate on policies to give the admins half a chance of keeping up.Geni 23:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

This talk page is edited half-a-dozen times a day; I don't have trouble keeping up with it. Septentrionalis 05:28, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

we have rather a lot of policy pages.Geni 06:42, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I do find it interesting that the first edit after unprotection was vandalism. Looking at the history of the page, this is one of the more aggressively and continuously vandalized pages in the project. The vandalism was immediately reverted but perhaps some level of protection would be appropriate just to keep that under control. Rossami (talk) 13:33, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed; I don't think semi-protection would be out-of-order for a page that so often gets attention from vandals. —Cuiviénen (talk•contribs), Thursday, 11 May 2006 @ 02:54 UTC

We don't protect pre-emptively. This page isn't that seriously vandalised. If vandalism steps up, then we'll protect. Otherwise, it should stay as it is. Snoutwood (talk) 05:04, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree. Pre-emptive protection is reserved for the likes of WP:HRTs; semi-protection might not be out of order but it would have to be permanent, and protected pages are considered harmful. Stifle (talk) 11:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Protected articles are harmful, but I see nothing wrong with long-term semiprotection of a Wikipedia policy page. The only legitimate reason I can think of for an anon or brand-new user to edit a policy page would be to correct a typo; for that, a note on the talk page asking someone else to correct it is sufficient. Angr (t • c) 14:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

If vandalism of this policy page were to become a serious problem, I wouldn't object to semiprotection. However it's a very closely watched page and most of the edits are serious attempts to improve Wikipedia, so it shouldn't be semi'd as a matter of course. --Tony Sidaway 15:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

What Jimbo actually wrote

I wonder if you might consider simply removing your political userboxes and asking others to do the same. This seems to me to be the best way to quickly and easily end the userbox wars.

Userboxes of a political or, more broadly, polemical, nature are bad for the project. They are attractive to the wrong kinds of people, and they give visitors the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.

I think rather than us having to go through a mass deletion (which is what is likely to happen if the userbox fad doesn't go away), it will be better to simply change the culture, one person at a time. Will you help me?--Jimbo Wales 10:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[6]

I therefore propose the following language to qualify T1:

Unless there is some unusual circumstance, which should be noted at WP:ANI, deletion under this rule should be preceeded by

• Discussion with the author or transcluder of the template, or
• Modification to NPOV, e.g. changing This user supports X to This user is interested in X.

Templates which may or may not fall under this criterion should be sent to TfD.

Regards, Septentrionalis 05:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I would support such a change. Deco 07:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I also support this, particularly the last line (which I would italicise for emphasis) - I've seen too many DRV/U discussions where there is clearly no consensus whether the template falls under the speedy criteria or not, only to have the deleter say "it doesn't matter about consensus if I think it is divisive then it gets deleted". Having a devisive template discussed for a week is less harmful than a vitriolic deletion review. Thryduulf 09:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I would support qualifying language, within reason, the criteria should be fairly easy to apply without having to fire up your internal parser. As for Jimbo's exact message I am thinking that a footnote giving it might be the best way to show it. But consensus is, in my view,forming around making T1 more precise and having it state the broadness that we're seeing in practice. ++Lar: t/c 10:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I am nervous about instruction creep with T1, but I think a big part of the problem with T1 is how its every use inflames the contributors using the affected template. It'd be nice if there were at least a friendly suggestion that it be used only as a last resort after more diplomatic means have failed, such as rewording the template or talking to the user. Deco 15:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I am not proposing to include Jimbo's words; although a linked subpage is an idea. Septentrionalis 18:03, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this suggestion is a very good idea. We will save ourselves a lot of angst in the long run if everyday users who happen to have these userboxes and haven't been following the debate (believe me, they do exist!) are politely informed about a template's deletion and the reasons for it before they notice a redlink on their user page and get upset about it. I would even support a further emendation, that any user page which still has a template transcluded onto it at the time that template is deleted under T1 should be subst'ed with the raw code of that template. If we're going to do this, let's not let it be New Year's all over again. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:23, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, of course; I should have thought of the subst requirement. (Although for I hate X boxes, this increases the necessity for discussion also.) Septentrionalis 23:10, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I am strongly opposed to T1. More broadly, I am strongly opposed to userbox deletionism. Those userboxes do not hurt anyone, they do not harm the project, and more importantly, they have no impact on the encyclopedia content. Whatever it is you think that makes them "bad for the project", it's in your head. More importantly, whatever it is you think "it means to be a Wikipedian" is entirely in your head. That remark smells of repressive dictatorial sentiment and does not earn you credibility. If you do not have the tolerance to let people decide for themselves what it means to them to be Wikipedian, then you are the wrong person to dictate any policies, rules or guidelines in defiance of community concensus. Now please stop this bickering and let the people who want their userboxes have them. — Timwi 19:01, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

No. If you decide that what it means for you to be a Wikipedian is to participate in partisan politics at Wikipedia, for example, then you're just wrong, and have to go. You seem to be suggesting that Wikipedia is whatever each user decides it is. That's utterly irresponsible, and implies a complete abandonment of focus on the task at hand, which is writing a free, neutral encyclopedia. Oh, and that smell of repressive dictatorial sentiment - it's entirely in your head. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

You have entirely misunderstood me, and misrepresented me accordingly. Firstly, just because someone puts a userbox on their userpage doesn't mean they "participate in partisan politics". That's ridiculous. Suggesting that having userboxes even allows people to turn Wikipedia into "whatever each user decides it is", is even more ridiculous. Furthermore, I never said any such thing. — Timwi 00:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Why the new T1 is a good idea

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a battleground for social, moral, or religious issues. Userbox templates and user templates group Wikipedians into competing factions. This infrastructure has been used in the past to abuse our decision-making policies by vote-stacking. If you really feel it is necessary to proclaim your religion on your userpage, you can do it, but you don't need a template to do so. By letting these templates remain we are passively endorsing them and giving outsiders the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian. --Cyde Weys 21:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

No one is saying that every template must stay, we are debating on whether there should be a discussion before deleting them or not. A speedy deletion is a deletion without any discussion and is an extreme measure, and not to be used lightly, which is why the crtiteria are so narrow. In my opinion a speedy deletion should only be used in cases where it would be potentially damaging to have the material there for the duration of the discussion, (copyvios, attack pages, etc.). All other cases are non-urgent, and should go to the appropiate *fd. The original T1 "Templates that are divisive and inflammatory"[7] was fine, it allowed speedy deletion of templates that were the template equilavent of attack pages, which could be seen as harmful enough to delete right now. However, I don't think any of the recently deleted templates were potentially harmful enough to do the same, if anything the speedy deletion of them is proving more devisive than the orignal templates ever could be. Many userboxes aren't of much relavence to the enclyopedia, true, but WP:NOT is not a blanket justification for speedy deletion, either in article or template space. Regards, MartinRe 22:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Precisely. They should be deleteable, they should not be speediable. Reasonable editors may differ on when a userbox is harmful to the encyclopedia, far more often than they will differ on when an article is gibberish or makes no claim of notability (and so on down for the other speedy criteria.) Septentrionalis 23:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Our deletion process and protections exist to prevent encyclopedic content being deleted without discusson, unless it is obviously junk. Userboxes are not encyclopedic, they simply do not deserve the procedural protection and consensus requirements due to article deletion, because their deletion is at worst neutral to the encyclopedia. There have been literally hundereds of POV-celebrating userboxes, and thousands of others created int he last months, so if there is a consensus to get rid of POV userboxes, it would simply be impractical to use TfD. TfD is for debates over encyclopedic templates, we really don't want to clog it up processing myspace junk. --Doc ^ask? 23:50, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Doc underestimates the advantages of TfD. It encourages discussion; it encourages civility; it requires consensus. All these are good things, which the present situation sorely lacks. It is also, quite often, faster.Septentrionalis 01:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

MartinRe, the problem is that if broad consensus is what T1 says it is (that all religious, philosophical, polemic, political, etc, userboxes do not belong in template space) but when any particular one is taken to TfD, it survives, then the process is broken. As surely everyone by now knows, I am a huge fan of process, when it works (which is almost all the time). But when the process does not work, it needs to be changed so that it will work. All these userboxes need to be speedied. With warning, with a chance for people to subst first, with consensus beforehand, but they must go. It has been long enough. That they typically do not survive DRVU suggests that the broad consensus is what it is being said to be. That they survive TfD suggests that TfD is broken. Further, there are times when consensus is not the only thing. At the root, the foundation, and Jimbo have some considerable say. And they want them gone. (I think I'm channeling Tony Sidaway here... yeesh!!!) ++Lar: t/c 01:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that there is a big difference between saying "political, etc userboxes don't belong in template space", and "political, etc userboxes don't belong in template space, and should be speedied". I agree that they don't belong in template space, but think this is not the best way to solve this problem. Even Jimbo suggested changing it one editor at a time, so I think a more gradual process would be more effective in the long term. IMO, It is more important to do something right, than do it 'right now'. I agree with the original T1, devisive/offensive templates are valid speedies, as the template equivalent of attack articles. However, the expanded T1 is proving to be very devisive, the fact that tfd and DRV/U give different answers is a clear indication that there is no consensus either way. I too am a big fan of process, and sometimes process gives different answers to what you might expect, but agreeing with processes only when it gives the answer you want is very risky, which makes decisions look arbitary, and gives potential legitimacy to rogue admins doing what they like, destroying the trust of the community in the process. I would strongly suggest that the speedy criteria remains restricted to material that does immediate harm, and to approach userboxes in a more restrained way. For example, one idea would be to do the following steps:

1. Separate userboxes from categories (reduces auto cat add used for vote stacking, and also allows them to be transferred to {{userbox}} format.
2. Convert all userboxes on the main pages to use {{userbox}} format, so new editors copying them in are already semi-subst'd. (I believe using the userbox template is the best way because it's simplier than raw HTML, and any text added is in user space, no edit wars over original template, as they are unlinked)
3. Require any new templates designed for user space to use the above method. (and new ones created differently speedied)
4. Gradually convert all templates to use the above format, and then delete the orignals when complete.

That I believe would end up with all the user POv, etc, out of template space, not as fast, yes, but I believe more effective in the long term. Regards, MartinRe 11:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Allow me to dissect Cyde's text piece by piece. (Is it even Cyde's? I thought it was from Jimbo. But that's irrelevant for the argument.) Timwi 00:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

It's Cyde's; what Jimbo said is at Wikipedia:Jimbo on Userboxes. Septentrionalis 02:07, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a battleground for social, moral, or religious issues.

Wikipedia already has userpages, and userboxes do not add any additional potential of turning Wikipedia into a "battleground" than userpages already do. Timwi 00:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Template userboxes allow easy votestacking. User pages do not allow easy votestacking. ++Lar: t/c 01:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Userbox templates and user templates group Wikipedians into competing factions.

That is simply not true. But even if it was, it is doubtful that userboxes would do that any more than any other mechanism, including user-categories or WikiProjects, already does it. Timwi 00:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

User categories associated with these userboxes need to go too. We have not seen egregious stacking due to projects. Censure for users that do it should be considered regardless of how the votestacklist is developed ++Lar: t/c 01:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

This infrastructure has been used in the past to abuse our decision-making policies by vote-stacking.

This is a strawman argument. Vote-stacking is a problem either way; forbidding certain userboxes doesn't solve it. Timwi 00:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

This used to be my argument too. Not any more. Removing these userboxes does not hurt, and can help. As well as get rid of divisiveness in general. ++Lar: t/c 01:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Nor will it help; attempts to prevent clique voting by inhibiting communication will not work: There are too many ways to communicate, many of them off Wikipedia entirely.Septentrionalis 01:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not just about clique voting, it's also about presenting an appearance that encourages an unencyclopedic perception of Wikipedia and Wikipedians. When a newcomer sees a bunch of these boxes, they get the wrong idea about Wikipedia, that this is a place to be partisan. This is a place to try our best to rise above partisanship, not to fight or represent for our pet causes. It's an article of culture that we're not doing a great job at communicating. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:32, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Jimbo that the desirable way to change a culture is to appeal to editors one at a time. The Userbox War debased our culture noticeably; and yesterday's antics suggest that Userbox War II would be no better. The way to encourage people to be reasonable is by discussion and consensus; T2 is neither. Septentrionalis 02:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

If you really feel it is necessary to proclaim your religion on your userpage, you can do it, but you don't need a template to do so.

This is strictly correct, but doesn't mean you shouldn't use templates. Timwi 00:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't mean you should either. If there are other ways that don't have the downside, they should be used.++Lar: t/c 01:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

By letting these templates remain we are passively endorsing them...

It is doubtful that "passively endorsing them" is any worse than or even different from passively endorsing the idea of giving every user their own userpage where they can write what they want. Timwi 00:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

...and giving outsiders the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian.

Templates do not give any significantly different idea than userpages already do. "What it means to be a Wikipedian" is hardly something any single person can decide or define, much less impose on others, outsiders or insiders. But even so, the idea outsiders are supposed to get is that we are an encyclopedia; they are not supposed to be concerned with who writes it. Timwi 00:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Solution to votestacking

Why not just remove the categories from ubxen (which I think everybody agrees we should do anyway), and subst them, so whatlinkshere doesn't work? That allows us to keep the pre-made ubxen so people don't have to type too much stuff when creating a userpage (if you have to type everything out manually, doesn't that mean people would be focusing more on their userpage rather than the encyclopaedia?) and votestacking is unlikely to impossible. --Rory096 03:24, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

A reasonable proposal, but it won't solve votestacking. There are too many other ways to communicate. Septentrionalis 03:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well it won't solve votestacking, but it would stop it from being made easy because of userboxen, which is one of the main (and only really legit, IMO) concern regarding ubxen. --Rory096 03:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The other methods are no harder, starting with the (perfectly legitimate) method of having the Fooian Nationalists watch all the pages on Fooland. I can think of at least three others that would be more effective than that, but are no more trouble than userbox cats; but it would be WP:Beans to detail. This is the argument for non-partisan phrasing; if the Barlanders can join Category:Users who are interested in Fooland, it won't help with votestacking. Septentrionalis 14:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

True, but those don't really have anything to do with userboxen. --Rory096 22:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

CSD:Tx

I may have gone out on a limb here, and will not revert this change if removed by any registered user, but it seems that Jimbo's addition of T1 is not really the problem here, it is an expanded definition for userboxes, and arguing over it may unintentionally damage the original intent. To that end, I've restored T1 to a version placed by Jimbo, and forked all of the user template related items to T2. This does NOT mean that I endorse this version, just that there seems to be a pretty good community consensus on how normal templates should be dealt with. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The distinction is useful and should be kept. If we decide on one of them, we can always comment the other out. Septentrionalis 02:15, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I'm fine with this change into two criteria if it makes things clearer. I liked the note about things being speedied needing to go to TfD if they get undeleted, till this comes to rest, although I'd rather see them go to DRV. ++Lar: t/c 01:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I support T1 as a criteria for speedy deletion. I absolutely oppose T2 as a criteria for speedy deletion. I think we could craft a significantly more restrictive version as a criteria for deletion, but not as a CSD. GRBerry 01:30, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I think both should be criteria for deletion. The problem with T1 is that reasonable editors will (and have often) disagreed on what it covers; producing much of the chaos now with us. Septentrionalis 02:14, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

As far as T2 goes, the goal is WP:NPOV, not the elimination of userboxes. If doing something as simple as changing "likes/doesn't like" to "is interested in" eliminates the speedy deletion issue, then even attempting to have a speedy deletion policy appears to be the real issue in this case. Just clarify the usage guidelines for Userboxes with this type of syntax, put AWB on the case and be "done" with it. This is an opportunity for education on NPOV, don't make it a demonstration of intolerance. Rfrisbie^talk 02:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

It smacks a bit too much of instruction creep for my taste, but I'm going to treat the proposal with respect and not revert without seeing more discussion. It's obviously a good faith effort to advance consideration of the issue. Metamagician3000 03:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed some statements which appeared to be of a generic nature (xfd is always an option). I also think that the section "it would be civil..." is unnecessary and somewhat patronising. I think it should probably be removed. --Tony Sidaway 13:02, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

These are largely Jimbo's recommendations; if they had been generally followed, there would be less ill-feeling now. Please reword to adjust the tone. Septentrionalis 13:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I've done that since Tony's remarks - and I've tried to keep the intention intact.--Doc ^ask? 13:40, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that's too weak; it's certainly weaker than Jimbo was. How about We recommend? Septentrionalis 14:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Things have moved on, the writing has been on the wall for a long time, etc., etc. I do not condone the mass userbox deletions that happened in the past, of which I was one of many innocent victims, or the shenanigans with the "User Christian" userbox. But there has now been ample time for people to adjust to the idea of not having these things in template space. I think we all just have to accept that concept and make it official. Jimbo didn't say to stop taking strong action forever.

I say that we should keep the criteria as simple as possible. I do hope admins will show some sensitivity and take action to substitute, etc., before deleting, when it is practical, to try to look after people who don't know about all these debates. That will have to be a matter of discretion, though; this shouldn't turn into a new nightmare with all sorts of procedural challenges to people who are essentially doing the right thing. We have to trust admins to administer this with good sense. Metamagician3000 14:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Metamagician3000 100%. The train has left the station. Current practice is that any userbox template that expresses political, religious, or similar opinions may be speedily deleted. The CSD need to reflect that practice. Any formulation which ignores this reality is unacceptable. Nandesuka 16:02, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Is this ("current practice is that any userbox template that expresses ... similar opinions may be speedily deleted") even true, and does it have consensus? I don't think it is true, but that's only my impression from the pages I watch. --AySz88^-^ 16:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

T2 is a special case of T1. As such, it either should be renumbered to T1.1 or the terms "divisive and inflammatory" should be inserted, notwithstanding Nandesuka's revert and justification of "current practice." Practice should follow policy, not the other way around. Rfrisbie^talk 16:48, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

No, policy pages are supposed to reflect practice, not the other way arround. --Doc ^ask? 17:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Really? That's interesting. I'll go and speedy delete all articles relating to France now, and then come back and write a new speedy criterion A9 "Articles relating to France", shall I? Angr (t • c) 17:50, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

You missed the part where we're editing an encyclopedia, and not myspace.com. Nandesuka 18:00, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I didn't miss that part. We're discussing the userspace portion of the encyclopedia. Not one bit of information on anyone's user page has any relevance to the encyclopedia. Not yours, not mine, not Jimbo's, no one's. Either userspace is allowed to contain unencyclopedic information (that status quo since Wikipedia began), or the entire User: namespace should be deleted. Angr (t • c) 19:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I thought we're talking about templatespace, though. Userboxes, the ones we're talking about, live in templatespace. I have subst'd userboxes on my user page and I've been arguing all along that knowing my POV helps others help me be a better editor. But in templatespace, they're part of the encyclopedia. ++Lar: t/c 19:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Templates are not viewed by readers in isolation; they're seen on pages. Templates that appear on articles should be judged by the same criteria as articles. Templates that appear on user pages should be judged by the same criteria as user pages. There are already lots of non-userbox templates intended for user pages (see Wikipedia:Template messages/User namespace and Wikipedia:Userboxes/Large/Licencing; the latter aren't userboxes despite the name). Presumably these are now all speediable under T2. Angr (t • c) 23:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

In less-inflammatory words... I'd say policy reflects consensus (or Jimbo's will) but consensus is not necessarily reflected by practice. Consensus needs to be shown for the practice first if you want to say "policy reflects practice". --AySz88^-^ 18:03, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Go to WP:DRVU and scroll down to achieves - notce how such speedy deletions are increasingly being endorsed by the community. It isn't just that some admins are interpreting T1 in this fashion, it is that the community is endorsing it. That's policy in the making. --Doc ^ask? 18:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Deleting a template because it is divisive and inflammatory is not the same as deleting it because it characterizes a point of view. Using one argument to justify the other is unfounded. Rfrisbie^talk 18:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the last two debates, my rough count looks like use athesist 13Del 17Undel, and user christan 20Del 22Undel, which is far from consensus to me, it's more like split down the center, and isn't devisiveness the exact thing we're trying to prevent?? MartinRe 18:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Which suggests that when consensus goes up against fiat, you get funny results. We've been asked to get rid of these out of templatespace for some time but DRVU sometimes comes up with funny results. ++Lar: t/c 19:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it might help if it was first easier for people to move it to user space. Yes, they can subst, but many of the templates subst to complex html, instead of using a userbox template. Also, if the the templates listed at WP:UBX were updated to user {{userbox|a,b,}} instead of {{User abc}} it might reduce the number of new users linking to the templates as they would then be cutting and pasting in pre-subst'd code. I agree that these need to move to user space, but I just don't think speedying them like this is the correct way. (not yet anyway!) Regards, MartinRe 19:50, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

You should also look at the debates and see how much of a walled garden DRVU is, also DRVU does not show consensus as only a bare majority is needed. Kotepho 18:29, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Templates for CSD I6

Just thought you guys might want to know that you can use {{subst:frn}} for images without fair use rationales uploaded after May 4, and {{subst:Image fairuse rationale|Image:image name}} for their uploaders' talk pages. Johnleemk | Talk 08:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks like we've had some duplicate work. Rory096 got a little ahead of you, see the top of the page. Since he created them first and they are slightly more in line with existing tags, I'm going to boldly redirect some and propose the extra categories for deletion. I hope you don't mind. Stifle (talk) 19:07, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. The templates actually stemmed from a discussion at the talk page of the fair use wikiproject, which led me to believe we didn't have any such templates yet. Johnleemk | Talk 13:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

New proposal

The present state of WP:UBD demonstrates that there is no consensus for T2 as a speedy criterion. I suggest therefore we add the following to Wikipedia:Deletion policy:

Many Wikipedians disapprove od user pages templates that are frivolous or which express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues. They may be perceived as unencyclopedic, or as condoning partisan behavior. It is always in order to suggest that such templates be substituted into user pages; or to reword them in a non-partisan fashion (for example, replacing This user likes x with This user is interested in X). If this fails, they can be listed at Wikipedia:Templates for Deletion; a consensus shall delete them if they are harmful to the project.

and comment out T2.

(I chose this wording because:

• Mentioning votestacking is WP:BEANS.
• Technically, This user likes X is NPOV; it's a (possibly verifiable) fact. Rather than encourage that dilatory argument, I used non-partisan.

But improvements are welcome.)

Combined with a {{tprod}} tag, which would be an in-line {{prod}} for templates, this should accomplish all the legitimate goals of T2. Please comment Septentrionalis 13:58, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the tl|prod idea is a good one - at the moment you can't prod a template - so I'd strongly support that. You will need to discuss it with folk on the prod page first, I think.) As for T2, I disagree. I don't think it is really a new criterion, it is an interpretation (all be it a broad one) of T1 - personally I'd not have split it off. Many of us have been interpreting t1 broadly for a while (and will continue to do so evenif T2 was removed). That broader interpretation is gathering increasing support - as can be seen by recent consensuses on DRV. CSD are not primary legislation anyway, they are a reflection of what actually generally happens - they are a record not a permission. --Doc ^ask? 14:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

This broad interpretation of T1 is causing unnecessary discord. Please stop. Septentrionalis 14:15, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I concur. At what point does "broad interpretation" become "bias"? Rfrisbie^talk 14:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

All the same could be said for 'narrow interpretation'--Doc ^ask? 14:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Criteria for speedy deletion should be objectively verifyable, needing minimal interpretation, thus, minimizing the likelihood of any form of biased interpretation. Rfrisbie^talk 14:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's what T2 tries to do - spell out more clearly what T1 might mean. --Doc ^ask? 15:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, it tries and fails. That's why I added the section below. Rfrisbie^talk 15:24, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support. T2 circumvents due process on topics that are, by definition, controversial. POV in and of itself is not cause for deletion. In fact, in a userbox, it supports full and frank disclosure. Rfrisbie^talk 15:55, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

• What possible reason do we have for annealing layers and layers of "due process" around content that is in no way useful to the building of the encyclopedia? For templates in article space I agree. For templates in user space, give me a break. Nandesuka 16:00, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
  • To avoid the reality, and the appearance, of arbitrariness and oppression; and to keep a handful of users, on both sides, from making fools of themselves. Septentrionalis 23:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
    • How is it oppressive to ask users to type their opinions or affiliations on their user pages, rather than having them in templates? How does spending time and resources on maintaining blog-like content meant for personal use in template space advance the cause of building an encyclopedia? Answer: in no way whatsoever. Nandesuka 00:09, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
      • How is promoting and supporting collaboration being counter to the cause of building an encyclopedia? Rfrisbie^talk 00:31, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
        • If you're unable to collaborate without a pretty HTML box stored in template space, you might want to look for a site more suited to what you hope to achieve. Nandesuka 00:40, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
          • You keep bringing up myspace, as if having userboxes on one's user page were tantamount to making them myspace pages. A faulty comparison at best -- and ironic considering you yourself have no fewer than three userboxes on your own user page "that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues". Angr (t • c) 01:07, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
            • I have zero templated userboxes on my own user that meet that criteria. So I think your understanding of that phrase is simply wrong. If you're talking about the babelboxes, then I will claim that you're the only person in the entire universe who believes that "I speak French" is a "personal belief, ideology, ethical convinction, or viewpoint on a controversial issue." Nandesuka 01:45, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
              • Of course I'm talking about the babelboxes, and of course I am not the only person in the universe, or even the only Wikipedian, who considers a statement of which languages you have considered worth learning to be a statement of a personal belief; and, as I already mentioned above, one which in many cases (perhaps not yours) can have clear political indications. I am not saying we should get rid of Babelboxes. I am saying we should get rid of the idea that it's possible to draw a clear line between userboxes that do and do not meet the criteria of T2. It is furthermore utterly absurd that only templates on user pages should be subject to this restriction. Templates are just a convenient way of storing information to be placed on other pages. Restrictions on the content of templates should be relative to the pages on which they appear. Templates appearing on articles should be subject to the same conditions as the articles themselves. Templates appearing on user pages should be subject to the same conditions as the user pages themselves. If you say "templates appearing on user pages must not express personal beliefs etc.", that is functionally equivalent to saying "user pages must not express personal beliefs". If you're worried that a colored box saying "This user is a Christian Socialist" makes the user page look more like a myspace page, then you must feel the same way about a plain text sentence saying "I'm a Christian Socialist". Whether the statement is written in a template, substed from a template, or written in plain text is completely irrelevant. Angr (t • c) 09:21, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

(de-indenting) You say: "If you say "templates appearing on user pages must not express personal beliefs etc.", that is functionally equivalent to saying "user pages must not express personal beliefs"". To which I reply "well, except that it really isn't functionally equivalent to that at all, in any way." So again: I simply think you're wrong. Kind of the same way that your claim that "I speak French" is "expressing a personal belief" turned out to be wrong also. Again: the entire point of expanding T2 is to avoid having to make these sorts of value judgments. No one (let me repeat that: no one) has suggested deleting babelboxes, except you in a sort of roundabout WP:POINT way, and I believe there would be consensus for carving out an explicit exception for babelboxes if that was a legitimate concern. But it's not a legitimate concern, it's a ridiculous example taken to extremes, and that's why no one has added that exception. Nandesuka 13:11, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you're going to have to defend your statement "well, except that it really isn't functionally equivalent to that at all, in any way." If I have information about my religious and political beliefs on my user page, it's completely irrelevant how it got there and what the code looks like. People keep saying "template space is for encyclopedic content only", except that it isn't and never has been, as a glance at Wikipedia:Template messages/User namespace will show. That page is full of long-established, well respected templates without a shred of encyclopedic content, intended for use on user pages. As for Babel boxes, I have never suggested deleting them: I have always only pointed out that any attempt to write a policy banning any subset of userboxes will wind up applying to Babelboxes too, because it's impossible to draw clear lines as to what are "good" userboxes and what are "bad" ones. Angr (t • c) 18:20, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Tack on the words "this policy does not apply to babelboxes." There, done. Your concept of "impossible" is extremely unambitious. Nandesuka 18:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

And how do we define babelboxes? Is {{User en-5}} a babelbox or just a "fun" userbox? What about {{User AmE-5}}? {{User tlh}}? I amend my statment above to "it's impossible to draw clear, non-arbitrary lines as to what are 'good' userboxes and what are 'bad' ones." Angr (t • c) 19:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

T2 confuses POV for bias, making it inappropriate

T2 characterizes a "point of view" about a controversial subject. By inclusion here, it then appraises expressing such a POV as unacceptable, thus meeting a criterion for speedy deletion. This policy statement is inappropriate because it confuses POV with bias.

Some contributors to Wikipedia misuse the term POV, taking it as an antonym to "NPOV", implying that a particular article or passage is affected by an editor's point of view. This is not what the term POV means, and should be avoided. The term they are groping for is "biased". (Describing points of view)

In adition, T2 implies a form of objectivity that is not intended by the NPOV policy.

There's no such thing as objectivity
Everybody with any philosophical sophistication knows that. So how can we take the "neutrality" policy seriously? Neutrality, lack of bias, isn't possible.

This is probably the most common objection to the neutrality policy. It also reflects the most common misunderstanding of the policy. The misunderstanding is that the policy would have said something about the possibility of objectivity. It simply does not. In particular, the policy does not say that there even is such a thing as objectivity in a philosophical sense... (There's no such thing as objectivity)

Further, T2 pushes the boundaries of using Lack of neutrality as an excuse to delete.

There's sometimes trouble determining whether some claim is true or useful, particularly when there are few people on board who know about the topic. In such a case, it's a good idea to raise objections on a talk page; if one has some reason to believe that the author of the biased material will not be induced to change it, we have sometimes taken to removing the text to the talk page itself (but not deleting it entirely). But the latter should be done more or less as a last resort, never as a way of punishing people who have written something biased.

For reasons such as these, T2 is an inappropriate criterion for a speedy delete. Several less intrusive options are availiable, such as the example of replacing User likes X with User is interested in X. Beyond that, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion should be used to guard against the potential for abuses of this policy through its biased application. Rfrisbie^talk 14:02, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The following templates seem to express a POV:

{{test1}}

{{test2}}

{{blatantvandal}}

{{sockpuppet}}

etc., etc. These are templates expressing an opinion that are designed for user space. In the war against userboxes, let's be careful about the collateral damage we open ourselves up to. JDoorjam Talk 18:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

• On the other hand, these are templates explicity in the service of the encyclopedia, with long histories, etc. Also, I think we usually subst those. Mackensen (talk) 20:20, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

  On the contrary, these templates are opinion based to some extent, they desire to express ones point of view with regard to vandalism. Remember, there is a thin line between vandalism and content disputes, the templates are quite easy to misuse in content dispute cases, where they are "divisive and inflammatory". Also, I think the subst debate is entirely different to the debate about the purpose of userboxes, it merely transfers the argument to look as it the user coded the HTML, however, without knowledge at this deep level, the users intentions are completely identical. Ansell 07:07, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Does moving userboxes to userspace solve any problems?

I started a conversation about Moving userboxes from Template space to User space. Does this solve any problems discussed here, or is it just rearranging deck chairs? Rfrisbie^talk 19:42, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

In my view it does. Especially if images and categories are removed at the same time and if users are asked to subst or use {{userbox}} rather than transcluding each other's pages. Those all cut off avenues for easy votestacking (yes, votestacking is still possible, but harder). ++Lar: t/c 19:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

So, is "votestacking" the underlying issue (or at least a primary one)? If so, does this potential threat outweigh the potential benefits of "community building"? Rfrisbie^talk 20:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Some of the problems it solves are: a)makes it more difficult to vote stack as attached categories are removed. b)moves all potential POV text into userspace. c) removes the edit war possibility, as everyone's userbox is independent.

I think converting all the {{user ABC}} templates to {{Userbox|A|B|C}} would do a lot to help, as currently many templates are subst's to raw html, which makes users likely to revert the subst. I think if it was substs to userbox templates, it would not be as complex (it's wiki format) but yet would move it out of template space. Also, I think if we were to encourage this method, it would be better to re-write WP:UBX to use userbox format (except in cases of very offical templates), to try and stem the tide first, before trying to reverse it. Regards, MartinRe

Okay, since there's no technical reason why a userspace userbox can't be categorized, I assume deleting categories is another issue. IMHO, that seems to be getting closer to the heart of the issue, at least in terms of the votestacking concern. However, categories have a tendency to be more neutrally worded, e.g., "Wikipedians interested in bla, bla, bla" even when the userbox might say something with a more POV tone. From this perspective, they serve two highly useful (also IMHO) purposes for writing content - networking around a topic and community building. Attempts at wholesale banning of the communication functions userboxes serve through deletions of the boxes and categories out of votestacking fears is like trying to ban cell phones because terrorists use them. The potential costs of overly restricting these communication tools far outweigh the potential benefits of responsibly using them in an open environment such as this...IMHO. ;-) Rfrisbie^talk 21:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

p.s. Moving userboxes from Template space to User space demonstrates that "moving userboxes to userspace" does not necessarily make userboxes independent. They still can be transcluded (if that's the proper term for it). Maybe it's just me, but looking for ways to handcuff the use of an available technology intended to facilitate collaboration seems a bit odd to me. Rfrisbie^talk 21:24, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

As it happens, I've been working on extra features for my userbox substing script. One of these is the ability to automatically convert ("un-subst") an existing userbox template back into a tidy {{Userbox}} call. It's not perfect yet, but it already works more than half the time — it should be able to handle any userbox that was originally created using {{Userbox}}, {{Userbox-r}} or {{Userbox-2}}, but a lot of userboxes have nonstandard modifications that have to be allowed for. I've got some plans for a more robust version which I'll try to implement after the weekend. (Pathoschild also has an AWB-based solution at User:Pathoschild/Projects/Userboxes.)

Basically, I started thinking that it might make sense to start a project to subst all the userboxes "that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues" in one pass. This would be much more efficient than doing them one by one, since the time required for script-assisted substitution scales proportionally to the number of user pages edited but is mostly independent of the number of boxes substed on each page. I have no desire to force this thing through in a hurry — but if the criterion I quoted above sticks, I feel it'd be better to subst the boxes before people start deleting them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see userbox policy

This discussion is not about CSD; it's about userboxes. Please see Wikipedia:Userbox policy. You may wish to edit this policy to reflect your concerns or you might like to discuss it in the appropriate place. John Reid 23:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, maybe, but I think it's about CSD criteria. There have been attempts to develop new CSD criteria and this seems the place to discuss that. ++Lar: t/c 03:04, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is the appropriate discussion page. That doesn't necessarily preclude discussion elsewhere, but discussion here is totally appropriate. Metamagician3000 10:11, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

"And" -> "or"

A couple of days ago there seemed to be clear consensus that userboxes that are divisive or inflammatory should be deleted. There is quite clear arbcom precedent to say exactly that. T1 used to say "and/or" before it was deleted in the last flurry of changes a few months ago, and I think that when it was reinstated the wording with "and" was not intended to mean that henceforth a userbox had to be both divisive and inflammatory, even though that is what it literally said. The intention was surely that divisive userboxes and inflammatory userboxes would be deleted. Often, the rationale for deletion of userboxes has, in practice, just been "divisive".

However, someone has changed the "or" back to "and" over the last couple of days. As far as I can see, no explanation was given as to why this was done. I have taken the liberty of changing it back to "or" to reflect:

• practice;
• the original aims of T1;
• arb. com.'s clear language;
• what seemed to be the consensus here.

Metamagician3000 00:47, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it should remain as "and" as per the diff referenced on the main page. Many things could be regarded as devisive, even {{user admin}} divides users into admins and non-admins. I don't think it's the division that's the problem, it's if there is hositily attached to it as well. That's why I think it should remain as "and" to allow the swift removal of anything that splits people into them/us in cases where this would create unnecessary tension. Regards, MartinRe 00:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

On second thoughts, I'd probably just simplify it to say inflammatory, as not all divisive issues are bad, but generally all inflammatory one are, even if they're not devisive. Regards, MartinRe 01:00, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreeded, or is MUCH broader than and. I don't mind removing divisive myself, but we should form consensus on chaning this policy first. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:41, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I just reverted an and-->or back to and. This is the exact version that is in the citation where Jimbo added this. This section apparently is just starting to discuss this proposed change. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:39, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I do not think "or" was the original intent of Jimbo's creation of T1. My logic goes like this: Interpretation of T1 should be placed in the context of the {{User paedophilia}} controversy at the time, with which "divisive and inflammatory" more probably meant the kind of backlash and division created in the community by the existance of the userbox. It probably doesn't mean "divisive" on its own, which could be interpreted horrendously broadly to include male/female or "I think the singular they is acceptable". (Unless, of course, Jimbo has clarified it since.) --AySz88^-^ 04:33, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Well this unanimous arb com ruling seemed pretty clear on how the arb com interpreted the situation. Metamagician3000 10:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo did have the polemcial version around at one time (mailing list?), but polemic != divisive. I'd be fine with or if we were going back to polemical. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, I would almost say that polemic == "divisive 'and' inflammatory", but the latter is easier to understand for most people, as the former isn't a very common word, ime. MartinRe 12:00, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

"Polemical" actually seems like a weaker word than "divisive" to me. Anyway, I'll leave this alone for a while and get back to a mix of (1) editing an encyclopedia and (2) real life. Metamagician3000 12:09, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

It is weaker, if you are referring to the breadth of it's scope, but that may be by design. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, one of the boxes deleted as part of the referenced Template:User paedophilia controversy was the box Template:User pedo, which follows precisely the formulation suggested for alternatives to divisive and inflammatory boxes (i.e. "This user is interested in Pedophilia"). The creation of that template led to a two month ban for the wikipedia who created it - it might be nice to place a little warning to that effect along with the suggestion that such a formulation is acceptable. My 2¢. --67.168.249.84 23:08, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Another idea

Another idea to throw into the mix before I hit the hay. Currently the discussion is about whether or not a template can be speedy deleted, or required to go to Tfd. However, because of the nature of templates, do we not have a middle option of "speedy subst+delete" that might be worth exploring? Would that option help reduce some of the tension as a half way house? So "really bad" templates get speedy deleted, "okay, not template space worthy, but would cause ill will if outright deleted" get substs to userspace, and all other go to tfd where the discussion can say delete, subst+delete, or keep. Comments? MartinRe 01:15, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I could support that if it included removing categories and images at the same time (both can be used for votestacking) ++Lar: t/c 01:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Substituting first is good practice, but not always practical if a very large number of people have a userbox. My feeling is that with a userbox like "This user is a feminist" the best thing to do is change the template to "This user is interested in feminism". But there will be many situations, and I think we have to leave it to the good sense of admins. Let's avoid instruction creep. And yes, I know that not all admins have always used good sense in the past, but most have been quite cautious.

Responding to this point specifically, it took me about 40 minutes to fix all the 300 or so pages transcluding {{User Christian}}. Anyone can do this with a tabbed browser (optional but recommended) and a bit of javascript. Also, the script can easily do multiple userboxes at the same time, and can be run by multiple users. At a guess, the time needed to subst all the religious and ideological userboxes, once the groundwork (deciding which boxes to subst, copying them to userspace, replacing the HTML code with a tidy {{Userbox}} call) has been done, would be measured in hours or days at most. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:27, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The main thing is to clarify what kinds of userboxes are not supposed to be in template space to stop the endless disputes when admins take actions that don't fall literally into the words of the old T1, with resulting inconsistencies, depending on the vagaries of how reviews go. We all know what kinds of userboxes Jimbo doesn't want to be in template space indefinitely. His views on this are widely shared, at least among the admins. It's time to ensure that formal policy is worded in a way that clearly conforms with this. That's what I'm trying to achieve, and what I think Lar, Doc, Nandesuka and so on are trying to achieve. I don't understand why anyone would be against this - as opposed to being against deletions that don't match the words of the policy.

I mean, if Jimbo steps in and says we are going too far in trying to get this policy change to stick, of course I'm going to back off and eat my tasty dessert of humble pie. But at the moment this seems like a necessary and overdue step. Once it is taken, admins should be able to act in sensible ways without too much controversy. If some admins then go on a wild spree to delete userboxes en masse without attempts at substitution I'll be disappointed in them, but I don't want a whole lot of instructions tying admins in knots. Keep it simple. Metamagician3000 02:22, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Precisely. I'm willing to get behind various ideas, even if they take things too far in the complexity direction, because I tend to go along with good faith efforts, but, as User:GTBacchus told me on my talk page yesterday, every once in a while it may be prudent to take a whack at all the exceptions, butifs, special cases, and etc and simplify back down to essentials. So sure, MartinRe, if you can get this to stick, fine. But I think going to how MM3K and I and everyone else were trying to get T1 to be worded (without T2 and all the special cases) is simpler and perhaps better. Jimbo said points of view in userboxes are divisive and asked us to get rid of them if we would. We haven't.

It's time to be crisper about this. Stuff that helps people transition is goodness but is not the main point here. The main point is that while it's OK to have a point of view (any point of view), having it in a box in template space is divisive, and it has to go, per Jimbo. He asked. Sooner or later he will tell us instead I think. I'd rather we took care of this ourselves if we can.

I expect there are some people raising their eyebrows at my taking this stance at this time, because back at the time of the New Years deletions I was pretty adamant about how the out of process deletions were a bad thing. I still feel that way and there is no inconsistency, but it's clear to me now that when policy or process fail to give the right result, the policy and process have to be changed or fixed, because constantly just invoking WP:IAR over and over in the face of incorrect policy or process is NOT the way to go. ++Lar: t/c 03:02, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I also agre that overuse of IAR is not the way to go, and I also would like userboxes out of template space, but I feel that most of the solutions try and do too much in one fell swoop, and that doing in it in steps, while not as quick, will work better overall and end up in the same place, but without as much chaos. When policy and process give the wrong result, the problem is people, and that can't be changed quickly. I think the first step was done ages back, namely specifying every template designed for user space was prefixed with user, and I think the next step is to first stop the increase of those being created before we try and reduce it. In that light, I would support the speedy deletion of a) any template designed for user space without the prefix user and b) the sppedy deletion of any user templates created after X day which do not have clear use to the enclyopedia (to allow more {{user aid}} style, which I assume people believe are fine. Any new "userboxes" created must be created using the userbox template, and may be added to WP:UBX in that form only. All templates existing prior to that date (including those on UBX), either get speedy deleted if covered by the old T1 (devisive and inflamitory) or go to tfd, where the only results are "use to project, 'officalise' in section of UBX", "delete" or "de-cat, userboxify, subst, and then delete". UBX should be monitored to ensure that those "project useful" templates are in an appropiate labeled sections, and any others are re-edited to user userbox format. (e.g. by tagging templates with "userboxify this on ubx by X date or it will be removed from there". At that point, there may be still many userboxes on user pages, but they will all be in userspace, and I believe that without a central and simple place to create {{user is XYZ}} the number used will slowly wither away. And I think it'll be that allowing to wither away rather than abrupt removal that will allow it to work. For better or worse, people are seem to get attached to, and value more anything you try and forcibly take away. Think of a large group of people as a child with a toy, try and take it away to tidy up, and the child will throw a tantrum and claim it's their favourite. Simply ignore them and they'll eventually throw it away in boredom. Both end up at the same point, but the latter case, while not as quick, is handled without screams. Regards, MartinRe 09:39, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

PS so, if anything, I support a harsher speedy delete than proposed now (delete everything without a claim of "usefulability", (A7 for templates? :) albeit applied only to a subset created after an agreed date. Regards, MartinRe 09:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Votestacking is simply not enough of an argument here. There are tons of ways to locate editors besides userboxes, and most of the methods can be used for as much good as bad. It's like saying that automobiles should be outlawed, because you could use them to run somone over. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I oppose bundling categories with templates on this issue. The potential benefits of collaboration facilitated by the use of wikipedian categories by topic far outweigh the potential costs of any form of aoutmated wikipedian groupings used to facilitate votestacking. Rfrisbie^talk 03:30, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Templates are merely transclusions

Templates are part of "omni-space". Templates are merely transclusions. If there are objections to substance contained in templates, then the same substance should be removed from User:space. If there is no objection to substance, then there is no reason to remove the transclusion of that substance. Bits are bits are bits. --William Allen Simpson 15:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Bits is bits, and policy is policy. The critical issues revolve more around which policies apply. They are different for mainspace and userspace. The question then becomes which policies apply to which templates. Since transclusions are not "inherently" substantive, it makes sense that templates that are restricted to specific namespace(s) should be subject to their corresponding policies. In the case of userboxes, for example, they should be subject to userspace policies. Rfrisbie^talk 16:35, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. There's a number of things that we wouldn't allow in one namespace, but would in another. This sounds like you're talking about the userbox thing, so here's what I think about that: We wouldn't have a Wikipedia: page about wombats, and we shouldn't have a template page either. Anything on this encyclopedia exists to further to encyclopedia. Jokes and humor are fine, but keep it confined to userspace where people won't be the impression that these templates are what we're about. Snoutwood (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The argument "Anything on this encyclopedia exists to further the encyclopedia" can lead to the entire deletion of User: space, and possibly Help: space, Wikipedia: space, and MediaWiki: space as well. Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. Angr (t • c) 18:54, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that is a matter of concern, since there's no definition of what "furthering the encyclopedia" does or does not include. -- grm_wnr Esc 19:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

About the first post: I agree that templates which are used (or meant to be used) in User space are already governed by User policy, and other spaces by their policies - however, there is one difference with Template space that I know of: things controversial or borderline as to whether they are detrimental to the project probably shouldn't be allowed in Template space, since wide proliferation of those things is undesirable in favor of better alternatives. But that doesn't really change the point - in the end, the "it doesn't benefit the encyclopedia" argument (and some other arguments, probably) still doesn't really fit in here, since the argument is really about whether it should be used in User space and is about changing userspace policy, not the templates. If that argument has any weight, one should change the userspace policy to disallow such things.

I don't see a reason why that wombat box would be deleted. Since the wombat userbox is meant for userspace, if the joke is agreed to be acceptable in userspace (and I don't see any reason why it would ever be thought of as harmful to the project), there is no reason why a template would be unacceptable. Any such template would be used on userspace, where they've already been determined to be acceptable.

Especially with these joke templates, which I don't think can be construed as damaging to the project, whether or not those are within Template space seems meaningless to me, since there's no reason why having it in Template space is any worse than having it in User space. What good would it do to move these to User space if there is no reason why having it as in Template space is bad and most would agree that it would be acceptable in User space either way, and why not allow the harmless templates since they're not damaging the encyclopedia?

Also, saying that there would never be a Wikipedia: page about wombats is probably not correct, since one never knows the context in which one might be appropriate. And, you know, there's already one about tigers.--AySz88^-^ 20:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Wombat! Rfrisbie^talk 22:11, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Any speedy deletion criteria specifically targeting userboxes are premature

Clearly, the use of userboxes is controversial. In addition, previous attempts at establishing a policy about their use have been unsuccessful, e.g., Wikipedia:Proposed policy on userboxes. Further, many attempts to speedy delete specific and even classes of userboxes have proven to be controversial and divisive. Thus, attempts to create speedy deletion criteria specifically targeting userboxes, such as the current T2, violate their own principles. If the underlying principles of T2 were applied to itself, it would qualify as a candidate for speedy deletion.

A fundamental problem with any attempts to target userboxes with speedy deletion criteria is that these criteria currently have no basis in a broader userbox policy. Until such a policy is in effect, speedy deletion criteria specifically for userboxes fail to have the guidance of policy-level consensus, exacerbating the likelihood of provoking exactly the type of divisiveness it purports to eliminate.

Because of these inherent pitfalls in the current situation, any attempts to develop speedy deletion criteria specifically targeting userboxes are premature. In the meantime, speedy deletion criterion T1 is in effect for all templates, including userboxes. If a userbox violates T1, it can be dealt with accordingly. Consequently, I propose the following.

• Delete T2.
• Hold a moratorium on developing userbox-specific speedy deletion criteria until such time that an approved userbox policy is in place. After the policy is in place, determine whether any additional speedy deletion criteria are necessary, and then proceed accordingly.
• Work toward developing consensus and approving a userbox policy. A current proposed policy can be found at Wikipedia:Userbox policy.

Thank you for your good faith consideratrion of this proposal. Rfrisbie^talk 00:28, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that many people are trying to rush in their point of view into policy claiming current practice dictates it without thinking about a long term solution that has consensus to start with. Ansell 12:45, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Explanation of User:Tony Sidaway's revert of an edit by User:Matt Yeager

Matt_Yeager (talk · contribs) edited T2 from:

Templates designed for user pages that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues.

to:

(Proposed criterion) Templates designed for user pages that express divisive and inflammatory personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues.

I have reverted this edit for the following reasons:

1. templates are already being routinely speedied for expressing "beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues." This is largely just an interpretation of T1. Examples of such speedy deletions that were endorsed at deletion review include the deletions of the "No Marxism" template, the "Communism" template and the "against Saud" template.
2. the repetition of "divisive and inflammatory" appears to be an attempt to weaken the clause, and doesn't really make much sense.
3. the inclusion of the term "proposed criterion" is prejudicial. WP:CSD is the place for speedy deletion policy. We don't put mere proposals there (they would be discussed on the talk page).

--Tony Sidaway 12:16, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The proposal is so broad that it encompasses everything. There are administrators who would take everything to be included in the category. You shouldn't justify your policy decision based on current practice, there has to be an objective reason why we should outlaw any expression of POV on user pages, and NPOV policy is not it. The inclusion of proposed criterion is perfectly fine, otherwise this debate is a foregone conclusion, and it most certainly is not a foregone conclusion. Maybe the proposal should be deleted and developed here since it is actually still a mere proposal. The repetition of divisive and inflammatory is what I think defines a scope for the whole proposal, it deserves to be there. Ansell 12:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstand the purpose of these CSDs. They don't "outlaw any expression of POV on user pages" at all. They merely limit and hopefully effectively erradicate the ongoing abuse of template space, categories, whatlinkshere and the transclusion mechanism to promote partisan views.

This principle has already been well expressed in past debates. The thesis that we shouldn't based written policy on current practice is simply fatuous. That's what policy on Wikpiedia is. --Tony Sidaway 12:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Explanation of User:Tony Sidaway's removal of the "recommendations" section from T2

On reflection, I have removed the following subclause from T2:

(We recommend such options as: requesting users remove the template in question; attempting a more neutral rewording of the template, - e.g. replacing User likes X with User is interested in X; and substituting the template before deletion.)

Firstly, rewording a template that says (say) "This user is pro-life" with "This user is interested in the ethics of abortion" doesn't really resolve the problem; there will probably be a number of separate templates around each reflecting a separate view, and the best way to tackle this is to remove the templates completely.

Secondly, substituting alternative text is problematic because it does not reflect the transcluding user's intent.

Thirdly, speedy deletion is for the removal of obviously unsuitable material (such as that which asserts a political point of view) Our reason for using speedy deletion to do this is because userbox adherents tend not to be acculturated Wikipedians, they tend instead to be imbued with a "myspace" ethic, a belief in their unassailable right to express their partisan opinions using electronic bumper stickers in template space. At this stage we're well aware that asking the users to remove the templates (which I might add is not a recommendation in the case of any other class of speedy deletion) is likely to achieve nothing except dumb intransigence. If we're to remove these unsuitable templates, we should do so as expeditiously and unapologetically as possible. While there may occasoinally be room for doubt as to the encyclopedic value of an article, a userbox template by definition can never have encyclopedic value, so there's even less reason to pussyfoot around the issue that in the case of, save, CSD A7. --Tony Sidaway 12:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Why does NPOV apply in this case when it doesn't apply to the content of user pages? Considering you use it as your reference for neutral above. Sorry, you removed that section :) Ansell 12:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

That is an extremely dangerous precedent, 1, to call userbox enthusiasts as unaccultured in your view, and 2, to delete things quietly because it might cause a fuss, if there is such a huge fuss to be caused then maybe an actual userbox policy should be formulated to fall back on when the inevitable cruch comes to the few who are being so hasty in deleting something on the basis that it is not encyclopedic in their view. Ansell 12:53, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

"Speedy" and "quiet" perfectly describe the way in which many thousands of articles are speedy deleted every week. It's how speedy deletion is meant to work. You might think this "hasty", but it works well. --Tony Sidaway 13:26, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The articles in question are being deleted in this way using well-defined criteria with community consensus. It is hasty to delete things based on criteria that may appear on the CSD page even though heavy discussion is still in order as to their exact wording. The lack of the "well-defined criteria with community consensus" puts them outside of the typical speedy situations. Ansell 13:47, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

T2 Clarity

Some contention on this issue may be the result of a lack of clarity due to all the conditional in the statement: "Templates designed for user pages that express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues." Does this mean:

• (Interpretation a) Templates ... that express (personal beliefs or ideologies or ethical convictions or viewpoints) on controversial issues.

OR

• (Interpreation b) Templates ... that express (personal beliefs or ideologies or ethical convictions or viewpoints on controversial issues).

The latter is much broader. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:43, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see the difference. Could you give examples of where a template would seem to fall under the second, "broader" criterion but not the first? --Tony Sidaway 12:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The question is about the scope of "on controversial issues": does it modify "viewpoints" alone, or does it modify "personal beliefs", "ideologies", and "ethical convictions" as well? For example, "I think orange juice tastes good" expresses a personal belief, but not a personal belief on a controversial issue. If T2 has interpretation (a), a template saying "I think orange juice tastes good" is not speediable; if T2 has interpretation (b), such a template is speediable. Angr (t • c) 13:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not a good example. We'd obviously delete a template that said "I think orange juice tastes good" for its sheer fatuousness. As a communicable sentiment of supposed relevance to the encyclopedia, it's well below the event horizon. --Tony Sidaway 14:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, you'd obviously delete such a template. I don't see that it's any more fatuous than "This user understands that no user on Wikipedia 'owns' any of its pages and welcomes the assistance of others in making this page perfect" (which should be blindingly obvious to anyone who's read WP:OWN), yet no one has ever deleted {{User page perfect}}, or even nominated it for deletion. But that's not the point; I was merely trying to explain the difference between the two interpretations of T2. Angr (t • c) 14:55, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Another attempt to explain the different interpretations:

1. Templates ... user pages that express (personal beliefs or ideologies or ethical convictions or viewpoints) on controversial issues.
2. Templates ... user pages that express (personal beliefs) or (ideologies) or (ethical convictions) or (viewpoints on controversial issues).

Shouldn't the "correct/official" meaning be made explicit in the policy language? FWIW, so far in practice the broadest (second) interpretation seems to be favorite. Jimbo's exact words read as version #2: "It should be noted that use of [userboxes related to beliefs, ideologies, viewpoints on controversial issues, and ethical convictions] is strongly discouraged at Wikipedia, and it is likely that very soon all these userboxes will be deleted or moved to userspace. Their use and creation is not recommended at this time." AvB ÷ talk 17:02, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I think something along the following lines would be much clearer:

Templates, insofar designed for user pages, that express viewpoints on controversial issues, personal beliefs, ideologies or ethical convictions.

or even:

Templates that are designed for user pages and express one of the following:

• viewpoints on controversial issues
• personal beliefs
• ideologies
• ethical convictions

AvB ÷ talk 17:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

It still seems silly to isolate templates this way. Either user pages are allowed to have "viewpoints on controversial issues, personal beliefs, ideologies or ethical convictions", or they aren't. If they are, those viewpoints etc. should be expressable by means of a template, which is nothing more than a convenient tool for holding text. (And as the page Wikipedia:Template messages/User namespace shows, templates have never been restricted to article space.) If they aren't, then the speedy criterion should be U2 rather than T2 and say "User pages that express viewpoints on controversial issues, personal beliefs, ideologies or ethical convictions." Angr (t • c) 17:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

No one is trying to censor viewpoints expressed on user pages. Rather, the point is that the use of templates to express personal beliefs in this way does nothing to advance the cause of editing an encyclopedia, and does a few things to hurt it. T2 is clearly intended to read the second way (since a major goal of the recent refactoring was "remove guesswork and the likelihood of bias from these speedies." Nandesuka 18:13, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I still don't believe that using templates to express persnoal beliefs hurts the encyclopedia in any way. Nor do I believe that anything at all in userspace, regardless of how it's presented, advances the cause of editing an encyclopedia. If editing an encyclopedia were really all we were interested in, we wouldn't even have userspace. For the encyclopedia, it's useless. Userspace is just for users. Angr (t • c) 18:20, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for new fancruft CSD criteria

Here's the proposal: any article should be speedy deletable that is written as fiction rather than about fiction, such that it lacks real-world context and fails to reference what specific work of fiction the character or subject was portrayed in. This reference must be more specific than a general reference to a fictional world (such as Star Wars). A contributor should be able to at least note what novel, video game, film, or comic book a character came from; otherwise, they're obviously just copying a fan site or fan reference guide (which should not themselves count as sufficient works of fiction).

The articles that this targets pose two problems: 1) articles that fail to do more than summarize fiction are worthless to this project; 2) articles that merely repeat "information" presented in fan reference material (such as Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe) are likely copyright infringements. See, for example, The World of Kong, an encyclopedia of creatures set in the fictional world of the movie, but which exist only within its own pages; in addition to an article about the book itself (which is appropriate), someone has created individual articles for most of the beasts, which collectively constitute a copy of the book that directly competes with it. This is not a fair use.

This has been a recurring issue, and was again just raised on the village pump. Postdlf 18:37, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Support! -- Malber (talk · contribs) 18:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent criterion for regular deletion, but not for speedy deletion. It's too vague, and too easily fixable within five days. Angr (t • c) 19:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Strong support in principle, and as a CSD. The details need wordsmithing to clarify exactly what counts. I would support a fairly expansive version myself, in which an article has to show real-world notability for the specific subject of the article, not just the work of fiction or game it's part of. So a minor character or location in a work of popular fiction wouldn't qualify just because the the work was popular, and of course any character from or summary of fanfic would be right out (not to mention the fact that authors tend to view fanfic as infringing or threatening their IP rights). Please don't call it fancruft, though; I love that expression, but it's too polarizing for official use. · rodii · 19:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: I am open to a speedy along the lines proposed, but I would want an assurance, such speedies could be easily undone, if somebody comes forward willing to fix the problem (e.g. add in missing info and/or merge into an appropriate article in context). There's nothing at all wrong, with giving a summary of fictional material. The problem is only when the entire article is the summary, and there's a lack of context for it. --Rob 19:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm fine with that. Postdlf 20:03, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Support in that case. --Rob 20:15, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

CSD is for material that's irredeemably garbage, not for enforcing vague (and quite obscure) stylistic guidelines. What benefits, exactly, would there be to deleting this stuff immediately, rather than in five days (or, even better, just adding the missing elements)? And would these hypothetical benefits outweigh the price—measured in numbers of contributors leaving after everything they've worked on is suddenly deleted—that we would pay for implementing such a policy? Kirill Lokshin 20:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Shhh. Don't use rationality and good points - you'll only confuse them. Phil Sandifer 21:03, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

This proposal is a non-starter. Speedies are only for obviously unencyclopedic material. Lack of notability cannot ever be a criteria for speedy deletion (A7 only allows it when there is no assertion whatsoever of notability - which is different) --Doc ^ask? 21:06, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. But I do think it would be a good idea to expand WP:FICT to say that any article on a fictitious person, place, or thing must discuss the topic's relevance to the real world. Any character/place/object for which no significance in the real world is claimed should be at most mentioned in a larger article, but may not have an article of its own. Failure to meet the criteria of WP:FICT is, of course, a valid reason for either of the five-day deletion processes (WP:PROD or WP:AFD). Angr (t • c) 21:19, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

An article about a fictional subject that lacks any real-world references, and instead only describes fiction as if it were real, is lacking in meaningful context, so in that sense this is an elaboration of A1. An article about a fictional subject that does not assert the specific work(s) of fiction whence it derives utterly fails to assert its notability—the fictional counterpart to A7. That's what I had in mind, not the more "expansive" version Rodii urged in which notability is judged. And I believe an article on a fictional subject that does not exist outside of an encyclopedia of fictional subjects is perhaps unavoidably a copyright violation, and should be treated as inherently non-notable, so such sources should not count to satisfy the "work of fiction" requirement. In my proposal, the simple statement "X is a fictional character appearing in the (novel/film/video game/manga/cartoon/flip book) Y" would suffice to make an article survive this CSD criteria. I think that's far more objective than A7, and not obscure or vague in the slightest. Postdlf 21:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that "X is a fictional character apprearing in the (novel/film/etc.) Y" without any reference to the real world should not be speediable, but I do think it should deletable after five days for not meeting the criteria of WP:FICT. I also think an article that says only "Xantor is the King of Perfidion. He ascended to the throne after murdering his brother Myopsius" is already speediable for lack of context, so there's no need for a new speedy criterion. Angr (t • c) 23:06, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support. This is an important and positive step to help keep the project on-topic. Hopefully all affected information will be made available on other wikis though... --Improv 21:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strongest possible oppose. No, no no no no. No. No! Terrible idea, horribly divisive, doesn't fit into anything normal, and can easily be dealt with via {{prod}}. Kill this before it spreads. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 22:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
  • How is it divisive to insist that an article about a fictional subject at least mention what work(s) of fiction depicted it? Postdlf 22:16, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
    • {{sofixit}}. An article that doesn't contain references to its source material needs to be expanded and articulated, not cut off at the knees. Oppose this as unnecessary scope creep. -- nae'blis _(talk)
      • You've equivocated "source" as the references for an article with "source" as I have used it, the work(s) of fiction that are the only context in which the fictional subject exists. Postdlf 22:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

No one who has voiced opposition to this proposal has addressed the issue I raised of articles about fictional subjects that are only depicted in fictional encyclopedias. My suggestions are that 1) "articles" about such subjects are unavoidably copyright infringements, 2) the lack of any depiction outside of such a fictional reference work should make a subject inherently non-notable. No thoughts? Postdlf 22:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts, then:

1. This doesn't seem at all obvious to me; if you can get someone with actual legal expertise in copyright matters to comment on this, fine, but let's not base deletion policy on wild guesses about copyright law.
2. How do you propose to determine whether a subject has been depicted only in an encyclopedia of fiction rapidly (and reliably) enough for this to be workable as a shoot-on-sight criterion? Kirill Lokshin 23:04, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

1. I actually am a lawyer, and my suggestion isn't a "wild guess," but I've also posted that issue on Wikipedia talk:Copyright to get more comments; hopefully my explanation there will be more clear.
2. Absent CSD criteria requiring an article on a fictional subject to mention in what work of fiction the subject originated, this would have to be an AFD criteria, unless someone has a way to make it work. Postdlf 23:15, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

1. Fair enough; my apologies for not realizing that. (I'd still be interested in a more detailed explanation of how discussing something that appears in an "encyclopedia" of fiction differs, in terms of copyright, from discussing something that appears in a work of fiction itself, as it seems rather counterintuitive.)
2. If it can't be made to work as a CSD criterion, why are we even discussing it here? Just write it into WP:FICT and go from there. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 23:21, 15 May 2006 (UTC)