Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion/Archive 67

If an article is G5ed, it seems to me that it should not just be deleted but also salted. I don't know if there is way to set up the salt so that before an admin allows recreation of the article, a check is done to see if the new creator is a sock, but this would seem useful. Jytdog (talk) 00:42, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't agree with the salt, as quite often an article with the title would be valuable to have. Others could write it. Sometimes after deleting I will create a stub with the title. But if there was some special list to add the title to to check on recreators that could be useful as sock alert checking opportunity. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:03, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:BEANS, I will not describe how anyone could use this to effectively deny coverage of their competitors' organizations, brands, and products. I will leave it as an exercise for others. Jclemens (talk) 05:34, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I've been asked in the past to leave such titles unsalted as honeypots. I also understand Jclemens' issue. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:57, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

It depends on whether salting would likely prevent further disruption. This type of admin action cannot be made algorithmic. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 17:26, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Salting just puts controls on re-creation -- it doesn't deny recreation of a quality article, right? An article created by a sock was likely an undisclosed paid editor, and the purpose of the salt would be to provide an opportunity to check for return of yet another sock to create it again... there would be nothing to prevent any good faith editor (including a disclosing paid editor) to create it... But I am hearing the resounding "no". Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The problem is this: If a page is deleted according to G5 and another - good-faith - newbie wants to create it, they should be able to. Salting is sometimes necessary when a spammer does not get it but with all protection, it should be used conservatively and only to prevent further disruptions, not because of a single past disruption. Regards SoWhy 18:00, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely not. G5 deletions are about the contributor, not the content. G5 deletions of articles about notable topics are necessary (otherwise banned does not mean banned: the only difference between a banned and a non-banned editor is that good edits/articles by the banned editor are not welcome. Bad edits are not welcome no matter who makes them), but there is no reason to make it difficult for others to write about the topic. In fact, in some cases it might be best to delete per G5 and immediately start a new stub. —Kusma (t·c) 18:20, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The salting should not be automatic as per the comments above. If the subject is not notable etc. the admin is the right person to make the decision on whether to salt it. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 06:30, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

SALT may be used by any admin who can justify doing so - and persistant sockpuppetry is certainly, already, a good enough reason. No need to require it, though. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu

As an aside, I would be supportive of using extended-confirmed level salting to deal with specifically undisclosed paid editing sockfarm articles because there is a high likelihood the company will hire another undisclosed paid editor to try again. This happens regularly. Forcing those articles through AfC is not a bad idea. I think the existing protection policy allows this, since the fact that a company has hired an undisclosed paid editor to create an article suggests future disruption. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 04:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support -- it's quite likely that another sockfarm would recreate the article. Many articles in Deletion-sorting Companies have been deleted in the past, so might as well protect from recreation "at the source". K.e.coffman (talk) 05:23, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Sockmasters are just as capable of thinking of alternate article names as they are of new sock names - this cluster of sock attempts finally overcome by a paid meatpuppet, sticks in my mind (and in my craw) Barbera Caffè S.p.A., Cafè Barbera Franchise, Barbera Coffee, Barbera Caffé, Barbera Caffè, Franchise Café Barbera, Barbera coffee, Barbera Coffee Co., Barbera Coffee Company, Cafe Barbera.

The honeypot notion just tests a sockmaster's ability to think of new sock names, very little else.

Just like its real world analogy, the food needs to be tasted before salt is added. It should remain discretionary, though a pretty standard choice. Previous G11s & G5s in the article's deletion log are a good pointer. Cabayi (talk) 07:51, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose The fact that a sock farm has written an article does not necessarily mean that an acceptable article cannot be written. About 9/10 of the time it does, but the other 1/10 is thousands of potential articles.. The usual standard of 2 previous recreations is a fairly safe one, but it still shouldn't be automatic. Administrating WP is like editing WP -- it needs to be done by people using human judgment, not arbitrary rules. DGG ( talk ) 09:39, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - that said, I do periodically salt articles which are repeatedly recreated, but a long way from doing so by default. Sometimes salting a title which a sockfarm is repeatedly recreating will deter them long enough for them to go do something else, but about equally often it will inspire them to recreate the article at a slightly modified title instead, or with "Draft:" prepended, or with special characters, or in a different language, etc. ad nauseam. For example, see Syed Aman mian sharma, Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Tiger), Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Miya), Draft:Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Tiger), Syed Aman Mian, Sayyad Aman Mian Sharma, Draft:Syed Aman Mian Sharma, Draft:Sayyad Aman Mian Sharma, ... this isn't all of the variations this editor has tried. My point is that deleting these is like whack-a-mole already, adding salt just wastes more time. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:13, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment The Honey pot idea is an interesting one. The problem is that CU is not pixie dust and does not reliably connect all socks. Using salt more often is a good idea IMO but should not be done automatically. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:13, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose If a subject is notable, then an article should not be salted. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:58, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
• Absolutely oppose. Lots of G5s are for subjects which should have articles. VQuakr (talk) 18:32, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

I had asked about this in the G13 expansion discussion above but there was not any real discussion, so since the discussion was now closed in favor of changing G13, I propose a small amendment:

This applies to any pages in the draft namespace, as well as any rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation pages with the {{AFC submission}} template in userspace, that have not been edited (excluding bot edits) in over six months. This excludes articles moved to draft or user namespace without prior discussion or request by the article's creator, unless the page was eligible for speedy deletion under another criterion before the move.

The reasoning is fairly clear. Page movers and admins can move articles to draft or user space without any real oversight since redirects will not be created, i.e. without a second pair of eyes checking the move (as would be the case with R2 taggings of redirects created by such moves). There are 400+ such moves this month alone (cf. database query). With the current unrestricted wording, these pages become eligible for G13 deletion solely because of the namespace and age reasons, thus allowing admins to speedy delete articles that they wouldn't have been allowed to speedy delete in article space. TL;DR: If the article was not eligible for speedy deletion while in mainspace, it shouldn't become eligible just by moving it to draftspace. Regards SoWhy 13:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• If nobody has noticed the page move in six months, perhaps that is an indication the page isn't that important? And if the only problem is a lack of checks and balances, maybe we can get a bot that lists all draftifyings so they can be checked? All in all, I am not convinced that a further restriction is necessary or helpful. If page movers and admins abuse their powers to delete pages that shouldn't be deleted, we should talk to them, not make our rules more complicated. —Kusma (t·c) 13:33, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • If nobody has noticed the page move in six months, perhaps that is an indication the page isn't that important? That's the kind of wrong thinking that was the basis for the opposition to the change, and apparently ignored by the closer admin. According to the new interpretation, all old draft should now be deleted, no matter their quality. Diego (talk) 13:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There are thousands of pages that get (almost) no views for months at a time, for various reasons, for example because they are only about specialized subjects or they are orphans. That does not make them "unimportant" (how is that an objective criterion btw?). And since when is "not important" a reason for speedy deletion in any namespace? The problem is also not abuse here: There is (unfortunately) consensus that pages may be moved to draft unilaterally and there is now apparently consensus that once there and untouched, that's all it takes to speedy delete them, so both the mover and the deleting admin might very well acting in good faith. That does not change the result though, i.e. that articles are made eligible for speedy deletion that otherwise would not be. My point is this: What is not eligible in mainspace, should not become eligible just by moving. Otherwise, gaming the system becomes all too easy. Regards SoWhy 13:51, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I view this as more like a PROD type process, only that it takes six months instead of seven days. —Kusma (t·c) 14:12, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the process that has been approved doesn't require any kind of notification nor third party review, unlike PROD. Diego (talk) 14:19, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• There is a draft guidance text at Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol#Clarification_and_guidance_for_draftification that should serve well to restrict unilateral draftification to obviously ok scenarios. I think it is important that this gets written up. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:48, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Fully agree of course but not necessarily mutually exclusive, no? Regards SoWhy 13:52, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Why not some kind of template to apply to draftified mainspace pages? A big orange notice at the top of the page saying something like "This draft was moved from mainspace by PERSON for REASON (user request, post-AfD, preserve from CSD, whatever), please take that into consideration when tagging for deletion." ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • And then what? The problem is, with no rules against draftifying without discussion and no rules against deleting such draftified pages, the policy currently actually allows people to send pages to draft space, wait six months and then delete them, without any oversight whatsoever. And of course the main question remains: Why should a page become eligible for speedy deletion just because a single editor decided to move it to draftspace and nobody noticed for six months? Regards SoWhy 15:05, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
    • And then the person who is about to G13 it goes "Boy howdy this was draftified by so-and-so for such-a-reason, I wonder if it is actually mainspace-appropriate and I should move it back to mainspace." The template should slot any such page into a maintenance category ("Draftified articles", say) so that it can be reviewed (and possibly restored) by anyone at any time, like any of the other backlog categories. That would provide the possibility of extra layer of scrutiny prior to the G13 kicking in. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:34, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Weak oppose I often think that our discussion by experienced editors needs to take into account what new people actually think rather than what we as experienced editors think that they think. Too often it becomes fights between people on different sides of the "inclussionist/deletionist" spectrum arguing with new users as a proxy over what is really our viewpoint as to what we think Wikipedia should be.
  I say this because while I often see the argument that deleting after 6 months is biting a new user, I don't really think any of them would be surprised to see it deleted then. Hotmail (remember those days!) used to delete the entire email account after 90 days of not logging in, and Yahoo and Gmail also had similar policies of varying lengths. It is often just a fact of life that most people by now realize that stuff you put on the internet on a major site that you don't own isn't necessarily going to stay there forever. If a user hasn't logged in for 6 months, I doubt they would be surprised that on a website anyone can edit, something has happened to their article, and since it hadn't been touched as a draft, has been deleted, but they can get it back.
  This oppose is weak and would naturally be a neutral, because I don't have strong opinions on the draft space: I only care about making things easier for the editors who work there because it is a tough place to work. In my mind, the whole point of the just closed RfC was to make the bureaucracy regarding G13 less arcane. This seems counterproductive to that goal, so I oppose it because I don't really see a compelling reason for the need per my above musings about making this about actual new users and not about our internal ideological things. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:50, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Conditional Oppose If the page is sent to draftspace as a result of a single editor, I think putting a single delay of G13 (i.e. 6 months up to G13, stay, then 6 more months) is reasonable. As the result of a consensus discussion (like AFD) then I think the straight 6 months is reasonable. Hasteur (talk) 14:54, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose nothing new here not brought up and rejectsd in the G13 RFC. This "except this and that and check for another thing" program just obstructs the process designed to streamline the deletion of junk. It's already pretty obvious which pages are moves from Mainspace to Draftspace because they usually have cats and problem tags and stuff on the talk page. Further, G13 deletion involves notification to the page creator. It's not like this is done in secret. Legacypac (talk) 15:54, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, this would essentially allow any draft sent to draftspace from mainspace to either hang around forever, or clog up MfD for routine cleanup. If a draft hasn't been edited in six months, which is an awfully long grace period, we can probably safely presume that it's truly abandoned and no one has interest in resuming work on it. And on the few occasions that presumption was incorrect, G13 deletions are restored for the asking. This is a solution in search of a problem. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:06, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support The move/G13 combo is broken -- backdoor deletion without any oversight. If being in draft space makes a page more vulnerable to deletion then obviously one has to avoid draft space or move pages out of it. Let's just make it simple and get rid of draft space altogether. It's not working and so it's time to roll back the creep. Andrew D. (talk) 17:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • @Andrew Davidson: With respect, I can think of only 2 cases in which a page would be sent from Mainspace to draftspace. Either via a AFD (for which the community consensus felt it was not worthy), or via a New Page Curation action (WP:NPP). As I indicated above if it's the page curation action I think 1 year of unedited is a reasonable time to remedy the problem. If it's AFD, 6 months is a reasonable time frame as a community consensus (not just one editor) saw problems with the page and an Administrator enacted the consensus. Hasteur (talk) 17:47, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

A G13 deletion of a page that started in mainspace involves a NPP making the decision, the creator accepting the move (doing nothing to protect their creation), a G13 nominator (maybe a bot) and an Admin to actually delete the page. And after all that WP:REFUND is easy. That is a whole lot of eyes on something that is likely useless someone spent 2 minutes to create in mainspace. Legacypac (talk) 18:00, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, none of that is certain. There is no rule against moving old, unwatched articles to draftspace whose creators have long gone. There is no rule that the person moving and the person deleting have to be two different people. And there is nothing in the current wording of G13 that exempts such pages from speedy deletion. Considering how many articles are already deleted by admins applying the speedy deletion policy far too liberally as it is, it's no stretch to imagine some admins patrolling G13 will delete such "drafts" liberally without caring where they came from. If you agree that such move/deletions should not go unreviewed, where is the harm in actually writing it down? Regards SoWhy 20:34, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Yup, someone could go through all the months and effort to take most of those steps themselves to some old page no one is watching ... or they could take a few seconds to redirect the offending page to some other page, an act no one needs to approve. Seriously, this assumption of bad faith against editors and assumption people are out to destroy valuable content is a little old. Legacypac (talk)

Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule what "valuable content" actually is. I'm merely stating a known fact when I say that there are more than enough editors who have biases against one kind of articles or another ("cruft" etc.) so someone actually doing what I described above is probably not a matter of "if" but as matter of "when". Merely saying an article should go through the proper processes is not an assumption of bad faith however. Regards SoWhy 09:43, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

If you accept blanking and redirecting as viable solution for unwanted content, why on earth do you need the G13 and what's the need for permanent deletion of the pages? No one answered that question in the RfC, even though it was one of the major points of contention.

Reading the history of a blanked page is way easier than a WP:REFUND, but now you've imposed a huge burden on anyone who wants to review the actions of a serial deleter. Diego (talk) 20:55, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose The proposal doesn't make the abandoned draft any less abandoned. WP:REFUND is available if the author regains an interest in developing the draft to a mainspace-ready level. Cabayi (talk) 07:08, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Huh? How can it be an abandoned draft if it was an article before someone else moved it to draftspace? After all, don't we tell editors that don't own the articles they created? So how could they "abandon" them? Regards SoWhy 08:46, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I've looked at 100s of pages moved from Mainspace to Draftspace and then abandoned. With rare exceptions they are not appropriately referred to as "articles" for they lack things we expect in articles like sources and/or a claim of notability and/or meaningful content. Seriously SoWhy, I know you are an Admin but your continued harping on this G13 topic and repeated failure to properly interpret consensus (like claiming there was no consensus for G13 expansion when it was over 70% in favor) and lack of support for existing policy around G13 makes me wonder about your judgement. Your posts are getting disruptive. Legacypac (talk) 09:05, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I fear you are somewhat missing the point of my objections. So instead of attacking me personally, why not answer my questions above: How exactly can someone "abandon" an article if they don't own it?

I accept that the community has decided to delete old drafts (without any need) but I don't think they accepted it to be a way to circumvent the deletion policy. We have clear policy in place on how to handle problematic articles, mainly the deletion policy and the editing policy. There are processes described there in length on what can be done or not done to handle such articles. I am merely arguing that these processes should not be circumventable by a single editor's decision. Regards SoWhy 09:43, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy I think you're reading "abandoned" as an action of the author where I'm writing about the state of the draft. I take your point about WP:OWNership of drafts. Would it help to specify some good practice in relation to draftifying? Perhaps ensuring that the draft is tagged for a couple of projects to minimise the chances of the draft becoming abandoned & maximise its chances of improvement? (Putting the suggestion into practise for our poster child draft at Draft talk:The Octopus Frontier) Cabayi (talk) 10:13, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we are talking about different things here, Cabayi. I was not talking about pages created as drafts that were abandoned - here the word "abandon" makes some sense. As I said elsewhere, I believe draftifying should not happen without permission of the creator or community discussion and I suggested making this a rule but that was not supported. The problem keeps being the lack of oversight when someone draftifies an article without discussion and no amount of taggings will alleviate this because in most cases the only time people really notice such pages is when deletion is discussed. Regards SoWhy 11:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac:--Whilst surely there are fundamental differences between your's and SoWhy's interpretation of rules and/or intentions et al in these areas, I think he's far from disruptive--a word quite strong.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:34, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy:--As much as I appreciate your efforts and think the concerns to be valid enough, I think you are looking for solutions to problems which will be prima-facie rare or absent.I think NPPReviewers and/or page-movers use their discretionary power judiciously enough. Also, I am of an opinion that G13-eligible drafts should not be mass-deleted just because the policy states so and the reviewing admin must expend some thoughts as to possible notability etc.Also, since you seem to have a good technical know-how, is it possible to create a bot that maintains a list of pages moved from Article namespace to Draft namespace; other than by the creator.That would give us a rough idea about the numbers!Regards:)Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:34, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@Godric on Leave: Running the query I mentioned above without restrictions will give you (after some time because the tables are quite large) 20,700+(!) moves to Draftspace without redirect since December 2013 (and another 4,400+ [https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/21136 with redirects). I'm not a bot creator but it shouldn't be too hard to create a list based on that query, filtering out the few moves by the creators. Regards SoWhy 11:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy:--Will be shortly taking a look! Thanks!Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 11:37, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy, as I've mentioned before: I don't actually have firm opinions on draft space: I'm only placing this here for context, but we speedy deleted 24,895 articles from 1 January 2017 to 1 April 2017. That's almost as much in one quarter as articles moved to draft in four years. Assuming deletion rates have stayed about the same, we've speedy deleted 375,000 articles since December 2013. That's roughly 3 draftifications for every 50 speedy deletions if I'm doing my math right. I'm happy to let people make of that what they wish :) TonyBallioni (talk) 03:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: This is, unfortunately, an incorrect calculation because it assumes that such moves happened at the same rate for almost 4 years. The mass-moving of articles of draftspace only really started this year though, with 20,184 such moves (or ~80%) having been made in 2017 (at the time of this comment). This means the ratio of draftifying to speedy deletion was approximately 16,8% to 83,2% in 2017, i.e. more than 3 in 20 articles or 1 draftification for every 5 speedy deletions (based on 100,284 this year so far (careful, large query)). Regards SoWhy 10:35, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Note: I updated the numbers above to match the numbers I just managed to pull from the database. Still pretty high. Regards SoWhy 11:00, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that update: makes sense. I was going off of the December 2013 rate, since we know that the deletion rate as a percentage of articles created has been about the same for the last six years. I think the 5:1 number is also significant for context, and thanks for providing it. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:50, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

The whole idea of G13 is to allow any mainspace article to be speedily deleted if it hasn't been edited for six months. Move it into the draftspace and immediately speedily delete it under G13. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:05, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

No, a move is a non-bot change. A page that has just been moved to draftspace won't be G13-eligible for 6 months. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: You seem to be very confused.

1. Abducting mainspace pages into Draft space for no other reason than it's 6 months old is 100% out of process and not supported by consensus. Once a page is in mainspace, it's generally accepted that is the permanant home (obviously barring CSD/NPP deciding it's not ready yet/AFD/etc).
2. Even if it were the case, moving the page back to Draft space is still a non-trivial action and as such resets the 6 month clock on G13 eligiblity.
3. Your entire thesis is based on bad faith actions of an editor to the level of pointy edits.

For these reasons I don't think your scenario could ever take place. Hasteur (talk) 14:34, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

If I am very confused, then maybe other people are too.

1. What I am seeing is that thousands of articles are being moved from the mainspace to the draftspace. Looking at the comments on some of the moves is not encouraging. They point to things like "poorly sourced" and "not yet shown to meet notability guidelines". It seems that articles are being BOLD-ly moved into the draftspace in circumstances where CSD does not apply and AfD might not succeed. An article on Taylor Swift's latest album gets moved to the draftspace. Admittedly, it is then moved straight back again with the comment "Completely out of consensus redirect. Album and release heavily verified by multiple reliable sources and easily passes WP:GNG. Send to AfD to gain consensus if desire deletion or gain consensus on talk." That would likely be my response if it happened to me.
2. G13 applies to pages that have not been edited. I accept your contention that "moving" qualifies as "editing", but if you could supply a link where this is explicitly stated, that would be great. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't have a link except WP:G13. I know the pages that started in mainspace and make it to G13 are almost all junk that should have been CSD'd but mercy was shown. I'm sure there is the occasional one that goes to Draft, gets fixed and returned to mainspace. Imposing the restriction asked for here creates an unreasonable burden on reviewers to confirm the page history (which is not always obvious) and might make bot work impossible. Legacypac (talk) 22:48, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. When we move pages from mainspace to draftspace, they usually sit there indefinitely. Until I see stats suggesting these pages will ever result in mainspace content, I'm opposed to using draftspace as an indefinite holding ground for content that met mainspace CSD criteria but were moved to allow someone a second chance to build them. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:14, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: I think you misread my proposal. I proposed exempting pages that did not meet any speedy deletion criteria before moving because the move itself should not be all that changes that. Regards SoWhy 06:47, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy: Then the article shouldn't be moved out of mainspace? The only reason an article should be moved out of mainspace is because it doesn't meet our standards for articles. If that's the case, we shouldn't hold it indefinitely in draft. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 13:09, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Articlespace has some of the richest/most expansive CSD rules possible. If editors move a page that is CSDable into draft space to dodge the CSD, I'd give a very critical eye to the action as it seems like gaming the system in order to get the page out of less than receptive hands. Hasteur (talk) 13:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: We agree on that. Unfortunately, many others do not (see this discussion for example and there seems to be consensus that it's perfectly okay to move articles to draftspace even when they do not meet speedy criteria. My whole proposal here was to at least exclude those articles from G13 deletion (that's why the proposal reads "unless the page was eligible for speedy deletion under another criterion before the move" at the end). Regards SoWhy 13:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• Ok, editors with malicous intent to delete valuable content but who don't have the gumption to use CSD or AFD surely have been moving thousands of pages to draftspace in the hopes no one notices and with prophetic insight that G13 would be expanded this week and the hope someone would blindly delete the pages. Since some editors have convinced themselves wonderful content is being lost from this vast covert effort I propose a solution. Interested editors should patrol Draftspace for quality content! It turns out it takes just one editor to promote a page from draft, just like it takes one editor to demote a page to draft. So go forth and find great comtent to promote. As we clear the junk it is getting easier and easier to find good drafts. Legacypac (talk) 02:11, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose this seems like a solution in search of a problem (or at least, a solution so such an improbable problem that we have it already covered by WP:IAR). In my experience, most moves from mainspace to draftspace are by new page patrollers that see some hope for a new article that is just too poorly developed or marginal to be suitable in mainspace. If someone starts moving clearly good pages to draft space, someone will notice pretty quickly and they will be blocked. SoWhy mentions admins and page movers, but of one of them turns evil it seems like they could come up with much more exciting ways to mess our stuff up. See also: WP:CREEP, WP:BEANS. VQuakr (talk) 04:44, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - G13 should be deprecated; I oppose all other proposals to change it. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:45, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

2 questions, quick one first:

Should we make a Wikipedia talk:CSD A7 specifically dedicated that notorious criteria, and so that the rest of us non-A7 gurus can learn about it with current examples?

Is Emdad Sumon, soon to be deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Emdad Sumon, A7 worthy? I view the lead He is the Sole owner of Popular Bangladeshi Record label CD Choice Music. He produced the movie "Eito Valobasa". His first written song "Bolona Valobasi" in this movie was more audible as satisfying A7's t indicate why its subject is important or significant…makes any credible claim of significance or importance. Am I not understanding the makes any credible claim of significance or importance part or what? Thanks, L3X1 (distænt write) 02:03, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't think we need a special talk page for one criterion. WP:CCSI was an attempt to collect examples and results of discussion regarding A7. I'd invite you to help there in an act of shameless self-promotion. As for the example, I don't think A7 applies. Apart from the sources which I cannot read and thus will AGF that they are reliable sources about the subject (which should be sufficient to fail A7 every time), founding a notable label is enough because it presents a valid merge/redirect target per WP:ATD. Regards SoWhy 06:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

• There is a dedicated essay at Wikipedia:Common claims of significance or importance, and you may like to use the talk page Wikipedia talk:Common claims of significance or importance. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:51, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Just wanted to advertise a template I created a while back that you may not know about, and which is intended to make informing NPPers of declines a very easy process indeed, once you know the template's ins and outs. Use it or not but if no one knows about it...

• {{subst:sdd4|Inform tagger: article not speedied – invalid reason and why it did not apply.}}

When you supply the CSD code (all are recognized; uppercase and lower case will work), it will automatically tailor a message to that criterion, with intro text describing what the criterion covers, for the context of your decline reason.

The decline reason you supply in the third parameter–the reason criterion did not apply above—will place whatever you type after: "That criterion did not apply because..." and the documentation has suggested language to insert for that parameter, covering many commonly misunderstood erroneous tagging bases, broken down by criterion. The documentation is a bit elaborate, on purpose, but not complicated. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:03, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

It continues to be clear that any draft that hasn't been edited in 6 months can and likely will be deleted. In the RfC, many people commented about checks and balances, not automatically deleting, etc. yet here is another example in which a draft gets hit in Legacypac's mass tagging and the reviewing admin sees no problem in deleting: Draft:History of Kottakkal. (SpacemanSpiff in this case, whom I mention primarily to notify, not to point a finger at). Not only is there substantial content with some references, but it was split off from the main article. It took about 20 seconds for me to determine as much. Material from Kottakkal was moved over to History of Kottakkal, developed a bit, and subsequently moved to draftspace and now deleted.

Anyone who says to go to WP:REFUND is missing the point. I noticed two problematic taggings just among the handful of drafts on my watchlist. Those that have already been deleted aren't visible to the vast majority of users and so cannot be scrutinized (and are unlikely to have anyone watching). If I hadn't seen Draft:History of Kottakkal, what are the odds that material would be recovered? As per the fundamental sentence in the policy's lead: "Speedy deletion is intended to reduce the time spent on deletion discussions for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion." Draft:History of Kottakkal is just one example of a deleted draft that would clearly have a "practical chance of surviving discussion." Therefore time limit cannot be the sole criterion, and it's problematic for anyone to proceed as though that's the case. Is another RfC really needed to clarify this basic element of CSD? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 06:30, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

You're assuming that I didn't check that before deleting. This was what was copied over from the original article, with cn tags carried over from 2010. THe draft had a total of three sources -- one Wikipedia mirror that tries to sell airline tickets, one spam site soliciting home workers and a third that is an Ayurveda clinic. If this kind of stuff doesn't qualify for G13, I have no problem staying away from this and have no interest in wasting my time on this in future. —SpacemanSpiff 07:05, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

• Material split off from the main article and left elsewhere for extended periods becomes an attribution hazard and is best deleted. If the split of material is wanted back, retrieve it from the article's history. If anyone made valuable edits to the forked page, they should be prompt in ensuring it gets history merged back into the main article. Sometimes, doing this is a good idea, but almost always it is not. Sandboxing should be very short term only. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:08, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
• DraftSpace should be treated as scratchspace. A place to play with dubious topics. It is de facto a place to send people who don't know what they are doing so that they do not mess up mainspace so much. People who know what they are doing shouldn't go there. Intending contributors should be advised to not go there because very few people are there to help them. The main game is in mainspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:11, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I've sent many possibly useful pages to AfC. Look there for stuff to work on, not in the thousands of deleted pages. Admittedly there may be some useful stuff deleted along with the garage bands, copyvio, unattributed copies of mainspace, and attack pages, but I doubt there is anything worth getting excited over. Legacypac (talk) 07:27, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

• Really, that looks like a draft that should have been deleted. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:32, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

P I've nominated thousands of drafts G13 and reduced the non-AFC Draft backlog to zero today. Even if the three examples raised are bad deletions, and they are not, my accuracy rate is around 999/1000. Legacypac (talk) 10:28, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Fair responses, all. Thanks for clarifying, SpacemanSpiff. My impression was that the content had been developed, but it's entirely possible it wasn't (or wasn't in any meaningful way). Sorry, I should've left a message for you before opening this thread. Ok, well, after starting two sections on this topic, I'll go ahead and take some extra AGF pills and leave it be. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:55, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

• I personally have lists of about several hundred articles on academics that were deleted, almost half of which can be rescued. They were deleted in the days of massive G13s. when I could not get to them all, or when the notifications weren't working. There are probably at least an equal number that I didn't even catch for the lists. If other subjects are similar, we should indeed have tools for mining the backlog. DGG ( talk ) 16:10, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

User:DGG many deleted pages could potentially be a valid topic, but are so poorly developed or ref free that it's better to start over. There are not enough editors to work through G13 postponed or current draft pages so mining deleted pages seems pretty low priority. Legacypac (talk) 16:52, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

most of the ones I had in mind were ones that needed some proper material to support WP:PROF added. This is easy, but time-consuming--especially in the quantities involved. Remember that in the earlier years of AFC people were rejecting pages for trivial reasons. My practice at the time was to try to fix them before accepting them; nowadays I simply accept, if it looks notable, and fixable in main space. I would be very glad of a simple way to find and see them again--even looking at a deleted p as an admin is a multi-step procedure. And the principal reason I gave for becoming an admin at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/DGG was to check deleted articles to see what could be rescued. I fully understand the current need to deal with promotionalism as an emergency, but that's not what I ever wanted to do here. DGG ( talk ) 18:15, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I know we expanded G13 coverage. I thought that was the result of this discussion, but now I am not sure.

What seems clear is that an old draft, in draftspace, can be deleted per G13

I thought, but I do not see that userspace drafts, (emphasis, in userspace not draftspace) could be deleted if they had been submitted (and rejected, although that should go without saying), and six months without an edit had passed.

I don't see that mentioned in the link, so did I miss it, is it elsewhere, or am I wrong?

I did not think that old drafts in userspace that were never submitted would be covered.

I am bringing this up because there are several in the CSD queue as I write this.

E.g:

• User:Jbayarong/Lighthouse Amihan Football Club
• User:Ff153/Tatsuo Miyajima

Are therethey eligible?--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:57, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Upon reading G13 again, they aren't. Sorry for the mishap. J947^{(c) (m)} 20:06, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Unsubmitted/rejected old drafts in userspace are eligible if they have the AFC tag, otherwise not. That predates the RFC. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:11, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

OK thanks.--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:45, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Yep. G13 originally strictly covered templated AfC drafts. The RfC expanded it to include any page in the draftspace. However, this is not to be confused with "any draft". Just any page in the draftspace. Swarm ♠ 04:34, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

The formulation (as I understand it) is currently:

• Has one of the {{AFC submission}} templates and is at least 6 months unedited.

OR

• Resides in the Draft namespace and has not been edited in at least 6 months (excluding Redirects).

Anything else is outside of the current authorization of G13. Hasteur (talk) 19:25, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Technically I don't think it would exclude redirects as written, although I don't know if anyone would bother deleting those as G13. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:40, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Under the unexpanded G13 it was AfC tagged pages, and no redirect would be (still) tagged AfC. It seems no one even thought to specify or discuss redirects in Draft as excluded. I'll do that now as it seems very non-controversial. Legacypac (talk) 21:57, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Is that redirects to other deleted drafts, or redirects to the article as moved in main space? Because the reason for keeping the latest is to avoid breaking incoming links if someone have created them. Diego (talk) 12:03, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Ah sorry, I see that you meant to exclude those from deletion. Diego (talk) 12:04, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Redirects to deleted pages can of course be deleted per WP:G8. The idea is that working redirects aren't to be deleted per WP:G13. --Stefan2 (talk) 12:07, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Further the reports and Categories related to G13 exclude redirects User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report Legacypac (talk) 14:10, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

The justification for excluding redirects stems from the "promoted draft" or preserving inbound links. In the grand scheme of things a redirect page is a pittiance compared to the reams of unworthy content. If and when we get to the point that Spam and garbage is being deleted before the 6 month period and we actually need to sort through the redirects we can come back. Until then it's not worth the bytes. Hasteur (talk) 15:07, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Just now, trying to figure out what the precipitating 24 September 2017 event was that prompted this thread on ANI, I noticed that Legacypac has blanked numerous stale/unsubmitted/abandoned/declined AfCs (either with no edit summary or with the edit summary "G13") instead of tagging them for CSD: . Is this allowed? Softlavender (talk) 08:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@User:Softlavender BrightR was annoyed I made this change to a heading of an active ANi thread they started . It was the first thing they mentioned to Cryptic and at ANi.

I only routinely blank normal user sandboxes that elegible for G13 and are not problematic except for being old. Many are just blank AfC submissions. You can't really delete a sandbox completely, it is more friendly than deletion, it takes less edits to blank than to tag G13 (nothing to my CSD log or the usertalk) and lightens the Admin deletion load. It also means no need to request a REFUND required if the user returns, just a undo. Hope that makes sense. If it is an attack page or something we really want gone, I tag appropriately. I also CSD named pages under a sandbox ie User/Sandbox/MyAbandonedIdea as that is not the default sandbox and should not be reused. Legacypac (talk) 08:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I am asking administrators if this is allowed. Blanking (or in any way altering) other users' subpages is not allowed, as far as I am aware. If you want to nominate user subpages for deletion, use WP:MfD. Perhaps I should ask this at AN instead, but I felt there may have been a policy discussion that I was unaware of so I posted this here first, but I can move it to AN instead. Softlavender (talk) 08:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

If those pages are eligible for G13, MFD is not required and G13 does apply to abandoned AFC submissions, even when they are in a user's subspace. Since the sandbox is actually linked to from the menu (at least in Monobook skin), it makes sense not to have it be a redlink. Thus blanking is imho a viable alternative to G13 deletion. Legacypac, you should use better edit summaries though when doing so, so it's clear you are blanking them instead of tagging them for speedy deletion. Regards SoWhy 09:07, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:UP#OWN Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Allowed by WP:UP#DELETE, consistent with instructions found here Lots of sandboxes end up here than here . I think new users mistake the AfC Submit button for a Save button because there are so many pointless blank sandbox submissions. In many cases blanking is just removing the AfC decline placed by an AfC reviewer, not even removing something the user typed. It just restores a blank sandbox for them to use and takes the page off the G13 elegible lists. Legacypac (talk) 09:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Nothing in WP:UP#DELETE or , applies to your blankings; if you believe so please quote the text. In terms of "In many cases blanking is just removing the AfC decline placed by an AfC reviewer, not even removing something the user typed"; I don't see that in the deletions you made that I linked to; I see dozens of deletions of entire articles in their sandboxes. Softlavender (talk) 09:46, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Should probably use {{userpage blanked}} for that, although not mandatory. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2017 (UTC)