Mass creation
After a recent and ongoing incident at AN regarding 70,000+ mass-created articles about places in Iran, I think there needs to be a formal procedure for rapidly handling unapproved, potentially low-quality mass creations. If we intend to apply the same rules for all content pages currently listed in the bot policy, we would have the following:
G15: This applies to books, content categories, files uploaded locally, mainspace editnotices, portals, and articles which make no credible claim of significance, that were mass-created without community discussion or against consensus, and which have no substantial edits beyond creation.
- Objective: It is possible to identify mass creations from an editor's contributions, and if there is consensus on a mass creation.
- Uncontestable: It is generally agreed that these kinds of mass creation should not be carried out without community consensus, as the pages tend to be low quality and often of questionable notability. For articles, we don't have the time to check every page for WP:N and WP:V, but we should avoid throwing out potentially notable pages with actual substance.
- Frequent: While large mass creations are rare, they tend to create a big mess to be cleaned up. For example, it is estimated that Carlossuarez46 (talk · contribs) has created around 40,000 articles about misidentified or nonexistent places.
- Nonredundant: No criterion currently exists for mass-created pages, unless all the pages happen to meet an existing CSD. The AfD that led to the aforementioned AN, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mazraeh-ye Dariush Baharvand Ahmadi, determined that AfD should not be used to process a very large volume of several thousands of articles. PROD nominations cannot be processed fast enough to handle the sheer number of articles in some batches — at an (already unreasonable) rate of 20 articles per day, it would take around 9 months to delete all the pages in the Mazraeh AfD.
–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 04:05, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- I will only support this if there is an explicit requirement to have consensus (at a specified forum) that the creations were inappropriate. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 04:08, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I would support a narrower scope as a temporary "X" criteria. I agree that this is a big mess that requires some serious mass deletions, but suggest instead:
- A mass-created article about a place in Iran or California created by Carlossuarez46 (talk · contribs)
I don't see a need to have this as a permanent speedy delete criteria and suggest narrowly tailoring it to meet the current situation. A second approach is to move all to draft space and just wait the six months for G13. The chance of anyone coming by to save them is basically zilch. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:40, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Strong Support - Articles should not be mass-created without consensus. This is already policy. The problem is that once they are mass-created they are very difficult to get rid of even when made based on bad sourcing. In answer to above commenters: 1) Carlossuarez46 was not the only one doing this, in fact if you look at the list of top 10 article-creators pretty much all of them were doing this to some extent, particularly Dr. Blofeld (who created huge numbers of articles based only on GEONET, an unreliable source), and also Lugnuts (see the two recent ANI discussions), 2) mass-creation requires consensus to create, not no consensus against - people actually have to want these articles. If there was a discussion and no consensus to create was found but the mass-creator went ahead and did it anyway, is that sufficient? I can still support an amended version requiring a prior discussion regarding the mass creations if this is needed for the change to pass. FOARP (talk) 08:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- I agree that it would be helpful to have a general process for handling cases similar to Carlossuarez46. But not all "mass creations" are problematic, by any means, and the proposed wording seems to open the door to anyone being able to simply decide that they are. Annoying as these cases are, we should not be deleting thousands of pages without a strong prior consensus to do so. I'd suggest a CSD template with two required criteria: one describing the set of pages to be deleted, the other linking to a formally-closed discussion. So in this case producing something like G15: Bulk deletion of pages on geographic places created by Carlossuarez46 (link to discussion). That way the reason and consensus-basis for deletion is visible in the logs for each page. There should also be caveats about there being no subsequent substantial contributions by other editors, and an expectation that they are uncontroversial. – Joe (talk) 08:16, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Strong oppose. As Joe Roe points out, not all mass creations are problematic. Hence, there is no reason to have a speedy criterion that allows the deletion of such articles without discussion just because they were mass created. I'm okay with creating a temporary X-criterion for a certain set of articles created by a certain editor after there was a formally closed discussion that resulted in consensus to delete all these articles (like we did with X1). But we don't need a catch-all new criterion. The proposer even admits that these cases are rare, failing the "frequent" requirement of new criteria. Additionally, previous mass creations have not always required CSD to handle them. For example, the mass creation of portals a few years back was handled by MFD mass nominations just fine. Regards SoWhy 08:38, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- I think the statement by Liz at the ArbCom case for Carlos is a very concise framing of the problem written from experience. Remember we still have not only tens of thousands of these Iranian "village" articles written by Carlos, but also e.g., tens of thousands of "village" articles written based on (unreliable) Geonet data by Dr. Blofeld. FOARP (talk) 09:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Having two cases does not make it more frequent and Liz explicitly talks about a "Neelix-like solution". As I said, I don't oppose having temporary criteria for a specific set of articles after an extensive discussion that resulted in consensus to mass delete. Regards SoWhy 09:09, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- And a third case? FOARP (talk) 09:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Carlos' mass creations were mostly done in 2009 to 2014, Dr. Blofeld's were from 2011 (?) and was deemed "No policy violations" at least back then. The question is not have many cases but in what timeframe. It's not like there are mass creations every week, is it? Regards SoWhy 09:23, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- My honest response is "yes, there probably are". The Turkish "village" case was just last week, and despite everything that was said in it, including, right before the discussion was hatted due to a concerning message being posted on their talk page, a very strong consensus forming to remove autopatrolled from the editor concerned, they are still creating such articles, albeit at a reduced rate. Dr. Blofeld has now stopped and apparently regrets these creations, but the articles they've made are still out there in very large numbers. Moreover the number of such incidents may be less significant than their size (tens of thousands of articles). FOARP (talk) 09:43, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- PS - as another example, this editor's mass-created copyvios, which came to light last month. FOARP (talk) 19:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Copyright violations can be speedy deleted under criterion G12 already so that does not demonstrate a need for a general criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 00:13, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- They can't be G12'd unless it literally won't establish notability without it. G12 won't cover everything and I can guarantee that only a fraction of articles will be G12 deleted compared to the mass creation that has to be cleaned up.
- Plus I'd rather not shove this responsibility to CCI. CP is already a nightmare for the admins. Sennecaster (What now?) 00:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Copyright violations can be speedy deleted under criterion G12 already so that does not demonstrate a need for a general criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 00:13, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- PS - as another example, this editor's mass-created copyvios, which came to light last month. FOARP (talk) 19:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- My honest response is "yes, there probably are". The Turkish "village" case was just last week, and despite everything that was said in it, including, right before the discussion was hatted due to a concerning message being posted on their talk page, a very strong consensus forming to remove autopatrolled from the editor concerned, they are still creating such articles, albeit at a reduced rate. Dr. Blofeld has now stopped and apparently regrets these creations, but the articles they've made are still out there in very large numbers. Moreover the number of such incidents may be less significant than their size (tens of thousands of articles). FOARP (talk) 09:43, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Carlos' mass creations were mostly done in 2009 to 2014, Dr. Blofeld's were from 2011 (?) and was deemed "No policy violations" at least back then. The question is not have many cases but in what timeframe. It's not like there are mass creations every week, is it? Regards SoWhy 09:23, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- And a third case? FOARP (talk) 09:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Having two cases does not make it more frequent and Liz explicitly talks about a "Neelix-like solution". As I said, I don't oppose having temporary criteria for a specific set of articles after an extensive discussion that resulted in consensus to mass delete. Regards SoWhy 09:09, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- I think the statement by Liz at the ArbCom case for Carlos is a very concise framing of the problem written from experience. Remember we still have not only tens of thousands of these Iranian "village" articles written by Carlos, but also e.g., tens of thousands of "village" articles written based on (unreliable) Geonet data by Dr. Blofeld. FOARP (talk) 09:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Strong oppose a general criterion per SoWhy. There is no way to make such a general criterion meet the frequent and uncontestable requirements. Support a temporary X criterion to deal with the Iran and California articles created by Carlossuarez46. If there are other cases in the future where there is a strong consensus that speedy deletion is required to cleanup specific mass creations then temporary X criteria can be added at that time. Thryduulf (talk) 11:03, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Comment- the rapid-fire, partially automated creation of almost contentless substubs typically involves an order of magnitude less time and effort than it does to PROD or AfD them. And if you AfD more than a handful a day, there is a lot of bitter screaming about HOW DARE YOU!?! This tends to make the substub crapflood a case of WP:FAITACCOMPLI:
It is inappropriate to use repetition or volume in order to present opponents with a fait accompli or to exhaust their ability to contest the change.
Reyk YO! 12:57, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose a general criterion, per SoWhy and Thryduulf. Support a temporary X criterion, for dealing with the geography stubs created by Carlossuarez46. As others have noted, not all mass creations are problematic. As far as I can tell, the number of situations that has really required addressing at this scale so far appears to be equal to two (Neelix and Carlossuarez46). When such cases do arise, I think they need to be handled as they arise, by creating temporary criteria when necessary. I think there needs to be a clear community consensus that a particular series of mass creations is problematic and deserves to be deleted (such consensus certainly exists in the case of Carlossuarez46 stubs). A permanent general criterion for situations that are so rare is not needed, and it could be easily misapplied and misused, leading to more problems than it solves. Nsk92 (talk) 14:55, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Support in some form - We need a systematic way to deal with poorly-sourced mass-created stubs and this fits the bill. I'm all for making stub deletion as quick and easy as possible, but the process might go more smoothly if we followed Joe Roe's suggestion to require community consensus for each case since editors wouldn't be able to challenge individual CSD nominations as easily.
- I would be genuinely curious to see a set of articles that meet the criteria (particularly the "no credible claim of significance" part) and shouldn't be deleted. It might be helpful to compare them to, say, Carlossuarez46's creations to find any easily-identified characteristics that set them apart.
- We shouldn't underestimate how frequently this would be used. The California GNIS cleanup task force has been sorting and deleting articles like this on a daily basis for almost a year, and that's just one US state. The Geography AfD category shows a steady stream as well. Replacing these processes with CSD would still require a significant amount of work but would also lift a significant burden from AfD. –dlthewave ☎ 16:55, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- If the criterion requires previous consensus for the specific case, then it's by definition not a speedy deletion criterion. It's a deletion based on that consensus. A temporary criterion is sufficient for Carlossuarez46. —Cryptic 00:38, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Support at least the general idea. Community discussions on large-scale creation of vaguely inappropriate pages usually result in some sort of mass deletion, and as pointed out anyone who does large-scale automated or semi-automated page creation without community consultation is already breaching policy. I don't agree with the frequency objections, although this situation only comes up a few times a year each one will likely involve hundreds or thousands of deletions, which would put the overall number of deletions over, say, a year in line with other well-established criteria. Hut 8.5 07:54, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- What matters for frequency is not the number of articles that will be deleted, but the number of occasions it can be applied. I am extremely sceptical that this will come up as often as a few times a year, given that this is only the second time there has been anything approaching a community consensus that pages created by a single user should be speedily deleted, and the first was several years ago. Thryduulf (talk) 11:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- What matters is how much time the criterion will save, that's why we have the frequency criterion. At the moment the only way you can deal with this situation under policy is to nominate the articles for AfD/PROD one by one, an extremely time consuming process which will also be protracted because you can't nominate too many articles at once. This is exactly what speedy deletion is designed to avoid. The other alternative is to pass a special criterion for each particular case, which will require a lengthy discussion or RfC - again very time consuming. If that is our standard response to such situations then it would make more sense to pass this criterion once. I have personally come across three cases in the last three years or so where this would have been useful to have, and I'm sure there are more I haven't come across. Hut 8.5 12:26, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- What matters for frequency is not the number of articles that will be deleted, but the number of occasions it can be applied. I am extremely sceptical that this will come up as often as a few times a year, given that this is only the second time there has been anything approaching a community consensus that pages created by a single user should be speedily deleted, and the first was several years ago. Thryduulf (talk) 11:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- To back up what Hut says, I can see three in the past year (Carlossuarrez46, Lugnuts, Ruigeroeland) and another one that has been slowly emerging over the past few years (Dr Blofeld). Lugnuts promised to clean up the thousands of Turkish articles he created based on an unreliable source so maybe they get a pass? But Carlossuarrez46 refused to get involved and has now retired under a cloud ahead of being almost certainly desysopped, whilst Ruigeroeland retired years before their copyvios came to light and is now blocked, Dr Blofeld clearly regrets their mass creations based on an unreliable source (Geonet) but given that they created nearly 100,000 articles just doesn't want the task of cleaning them up and would rather the lot were redirected. It is no coincidence that these are basically a list of Wiki's top article-creators and probably the other ones in the top ten also did the same thing - we're very probably looking at 100,000+ articles that need deleting just between Carlossuarrez46, Ruigeroland and Blofeld. FOARP (talk) 12:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- So you have possibly three, all of whom created different sorts of articles and all of whom created articles that should not be deleted as well as ones that should. So for each of them you need to work out what reliably distinguihses the articles that should be deleted from the ones that shouldn't. That cannot be done other than by detailed examination of a large set of articles they created and so will be different for each editor. There is therefore no advantage to a general criterion over specific ones, but significant potential for harm from deletion before consensus that mass deletion is required and from pages being deleted that should not be. The more I look into this the firmer my opposition to a general criterion becomes. Thryduulf (talk) 12:49, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Blofeld and Carlossuarrez46 were both mass-creating copy/pasted Geostubs, Ruigeroeland was mass-creating species articles by copy/pasting field-notes - not entirely clear to me that these were exactly doing different things. The advantage is to avoid having to take every single one of them through the AFD system, a load that will clearly over-load it. FOARP (talk) 15:15, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, @FOARP, but we need to review these cases and determine that they actually are inappropriate creations, as well as determining which of these inappropriate creations should be deleted and which ones shouldn't. This is why having a general speedy delete criteria is not appropriate. In the past, we've created temporary "X" criteria to address the specific situation, which is how we should handle it this time - Once we've determined how to decide which pages get deleted. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 16:34, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Blofeld and Carlossuarrez46 were both mass-creating copy/pasted Geostubs, Ruigeroeland was mass-creating species articles by copy/pasting field-notes - not entirely clear to me that these were exactly doing different things. The advantage is to avoid having to take every single one of them through the AFD system, a load that will clearly over-load it. FOARP (talk) 15:15, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- So you have possibly three, all of whom created different sorts of articles and all of whom created articles that should not be deleted as well as ones that should. So for each of them you need to work out what reliably distinguihses the articles that should be deleted from the ones that shouldn't. That cannot be done other than by detailed examination of a large set of articles they created and so will be different for each editor. There is therefore no advantage to a general criterion over specific ones, but significant potential for harm from deletion before consensus that mass deletion is required and from pages being deleted that should not be. The more I look into this the firmer my opposition to a general criterion becomes. Thryduulf (talk) 12:49, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- To back up what Hut says, I can see three in the past year (Carlossuarrez46, Lugnuts, Ruigeroeland) and another one that has been slowly emerging over the past few years (Dr Blofeld). Lugnuts promised to clean up the thousands of Turkish articles he created based on an unreliable source so maybe they get a pass? But Carlossuarrez46 refused to get involved and has now retired under a cloud ahead of being almost certainly desysopped, whilst Ruigeroeland retired years before their copyvios came to light and is now blocked, Dr Blofeld clearly regrets their mass creations based on an unreliable source (Geonet) but given that they created nearly 100,000 articles just doesn't want the task of cleaning them up and would rather the lot were redirected. It is no coincidence that these are basically a list of Wiki's top article-creators and probably the other ones in the top ten also did the same thing - we're very probably looking at 100,000+ articles that need deleting just between Carlossuarrez46, Ruigeroland and Blofeld. FOARP (talk) 12:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- This seems like the wrong way around. Our WP:MASSCREATE/MEATBOT articles are unclear on this matter, and should be updated to clarify when deletion is appropriate before creating a speedy category. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 12:41, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- I created this discussion a few days back: Wikipedia_talk:Bot_policy#Cutting_and_pasting_=_"semi-automated_content_page_creation",_right? to try to clarify whether pure cut/paste article creation falls under WP:MASSCREATION + WP:MEATBOT. At least Headbomb seemed pretty clear that it did. But then you have discussion after discussion where people say that they didn't use tools so "WP:MASSCREATE doesn't apply" even where the article creation is blatantly cut/paste creation of an article every 90 seconds for hours.
- I'm not sure the policy really is really that unclear and Headbomb (or at least my reading of what they said) was probably right, I just think people don't want to accept that this is against policy unless there is something saying explicitly, in simple words, that it does. Until there is something that says "don't cut/paste create 25+ articles a day without first getting consensus" then it won't change. FOARP (talk) 13:12, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- This is mass creation against policy. But a) a lot of people don't really care what the bot policy says, especially when they're not running "bots" but rather doing semi-automated editing (even though the same policy is used for that). b) there is no consequence spelled out for violating that policy. The policy clearly states that malfunctioning bots are to be blocked, for example (see WP:BOTBLOCK). But what's to be done about editors, and their edits, who are violating WP:MASSCREATION? Policy is unclear. ProcSock (talk) 12:32, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- Support - I wasn't around for the Neelix or Blofeld stuff, but I was here for the "portal wars" a couple years ago. I'm too lazy to diff this, but I remember the discussion at AN in the beginning about an X3 CSD criteria to delete all those automagically-created portals; the so-called "nuke from orbit" proposal. I remember it was supported numerically by something like 60% of editors but still closed as no consensus by (in my view) a supervoting close. Thus began a more-than-year-long process of hundreds of MFDs of individual and bundled portals. At the end of that process, none of those automagically created portals were saved, and IIRC over a thousand more manually created portals were deleted. We also lost, by my count, four long-standing highly productive editors, three of whom were admins. This is the cost of having a thousand deletion discussions. All because some people, and frankly I recognize some familiar names here, wanted to make sure that no page was deleted without proper consideration. Well, people are more important than pages in my book. A thousand contentious discussions is a recipe for disaster: burnout and blowups. I said then and will always say: if someone takes five minutes to create it, we shouldn't take more than five minutes to decide whether to delete it. So I support in principle a permanent CSD criteria for mass-created-without-consensus pages. The proposal drafted here looks good to me. I also support a temporary CSD and/or something more narrowly focused like the revised proposal below, if a permanent CSD doesn't gain consensus. Levivich harass/hound 15:37, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- Support a general criterion because we need a way to deal with WP:MASSCREATE violations. The status quo of (somehow) shifting the burden to other editors to sift through mass creations and compile lists for deletion is not really logical and is a time sink. The point of this criterion should be to mostly restore the status quo before the mass creation event that shouldn't have happened in the first place (as it's a policy violation). Without an enforcement mechanism, the policy is toothless. We would, of course, need to devise a system that decides when the criterion may be used. One logical solution may be BAG approval (as mass creation currently seems to require BAG approval too), or a clear consensus at AN like with the Carlos situation would work too (at the cost of consuming a lot more time). ProcSock (talk) 16:37, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
- What you are describing is the current system, i.e. having a discussion at AN(I) or another relevant forum and then creating a X-criterion to handle a specific set of mass-created pages if there is consensus that this set needs to be deletable. Regards SoWhy 18:54, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
- We tend to do these on an ad hoc basis every time the issue comes up, which hasn't been often enough to codify our approach. I think a discussion should be held every time, but I'm not sure that we actually need a CSD for this. But having a CSD might help to settle the fundamental issue "should we do mass deletions?" once and for all and without invoking some degree of IAR. —Kusma (t·c) 21:00, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
- What you are describing is the current system, i.e. having a discussion at AN(I) or another relevant forum and then creating a X-criterion to handle a specific set of mass-created pages if there is consensus that this set needs to be deletable. Regards SoWhy 18:54, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
- Support. Mass creations are by definition hard to do quality control of. Inaccurate place names in particular (especially from non-Latin-alphabet languages) lead to an entire fallacious online ecosystem of misinformation about the fictitious or misnamed place. We had a similar situation of hundreds of faux placenames supposedly in the UAE created by John Carter, based on a ridiculously inaccurate British guidebook from the 1800s or so. Alexandermcnabb (who lives in the UAE) had to painstakingly go through them, and check and AfD them. It took untold wiki manhours by numerous participants to clean the enormous mess up, and by that time Google had accepted the information as gospel and spawned thousands of fake reports. (One alternative to mass creation could be a form of unwikilinked List Article, with citations.) Softlavender (talk) 08:26, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
Revised proposal
How about the following criteria to address this situation, we can call it X3 for now:
- A mass-created article about a place in Iran or California created by Carlossuarez46 (talk · contribs) that does not make a credible claim of significance
Would everyone support that? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:25, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Oiyarbepsy: I think you should have this discussion on a noticeboard or forum which attracts people interested in these topics (e.g. the talk pages of the WikiProjects under which those articles fall). Once there is consensus there that the majority of those articles need deletion, we can implement an X3 to handle it (cf. this discussion that enabled deletion of Neelix-redirects and this discussion that led to the creation of X1 and X2). Regards SoWhy 06:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- @SoWhy, There already is a very clear consensus to mass delete at the Admin noticeboard discussion linked at the top of the section. This discussion is merely about how to implement that consensus. What more consensus could we possible need? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:50, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Oiyarbepsy: The first discussion only lasted four days and later there seems to have been some more detailed discussion, especially after Alexis Jazz requested time to filter articles themselves. I'm not opposed to creating a X3 like that, I just would like to see some indepth discussion on which of those articles to delete and which not before doing so. They have existed for years now, so is there really a problem with waiting a few days? Regards SoWhy 09:21, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- @SoWhy, There already is a very clear consensus to mass delete at the Admin noticeboard discussion linked at the top of the section. This discussion is merely about how to implement that consensus. What more consensus could we possible need? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:50, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Unfortunately being a populated place is arguably an claim of significance (because it may well pass WP:GEOLAND), so this will apply to almost nothing. Hut 8.5 07:36, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Hut 8.5 That is a good point. Perhaps setting a minimum population? Discussion above suggests that any place with less than 100 persons will not have legal recognition in Iran. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 16:35, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Possibly. I would also suggest specifying that the article can't have any significant contributions from other editors. If other people expanded the article after its creation then it's much more likely to be real. Hut 8.5 17:26, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Be careful with this. We specified unedited by others with Neelix redirects at first, found like 50k eligible redirects, checked them all, and then when we were closing out, I asked someone to generate the list that had been edited by others. Lo and behold, 30k more redirects with no noticable change in quality. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:30, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Possibly. I would also suggest specifying that the article can't have any significant contributions from other editors. If other people expanded the article after its creation then it's much more likely to be real. Hut 8.5 17:26, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Hut 8.5 That is a good point. Perhaps setting a minimum population? Discussion above suggests that any place with less than 100 persons will not have legal recognition in Iran. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 16:35, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
F5 Criteria
F5 of the speedy deletion criteria specifies that non-free images may be exempt from speedy deletion if they were uploaded for use in an upcoming article. I uploaded an image that I believe qualifies for this exception (File: 2021 I35W Pile-up.jpg), which I intend to use in an article I’m currently developing in my sandbox page. The image will be automatically deleted in 7 days. How do I use this exception to prevent the speedy deletion of this image? Thanks. Nordberg21205 (talk) 17:17, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
- Get the article into mainspace and once there, ensure that it uses the image. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:15, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
VP proposal to abolish G5
I've just become aware that there was a proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Abolishing G5 section of Speedy Deletion criteria to abolish CSD criterion G5. The proposal has already been snow closed as "clearly not going to pass" but it's worth noting here for future reference. Thryduulf (talk) 10:27, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
- I agree. Good pages should not be deleted based on the user who created the page. The deletion of good pages is detrimental to encyclopedia building, as it prevents progress. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 20:08, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
- I generally agree however, bans and blocks are not effective if they can be circumvented by creating good content. Regards SoWhy 07:34, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- But once you publish something, it is not yours. Nobody owns an article that they create, it belongs to the community. Deleting articles of good quality solely based on the user who created the article is detrimental to content-building and the functioning of an encyclopedia. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 19:10, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- It does belong to the community, who has decided to delete it. If these guys have a problem with that, then they shouldn't have gotten banned. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:34, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- However, as long as the page is well made and has many sources, it does not matter who created it. What I am trying to say is that we should not delete constructive contributions by ANY user, sockpuppet or not. Always Assume good faith. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 21:34, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- A non-banned editor is always welcome to recreate the work of banned users. This way, an editor in good standing gets the credit. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- But it just doesn't seem morally right for a user to get credit for another users work. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 16:45, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- A non-banned editor is always welcome to recreate the work of banned users. This way, an editor in good standing gets the credit. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- However, as long as the page is well made and has many sources, it does not matter who created it. What I am trying to say is that we should not delete constructive contributions by ANY user, sockpuppet or not. Always Assume good faith. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 21:34, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- It does belong to the community, who has decided to delete it. If these guys have a problem with that, then they shouldn't have gotten banned. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:34, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- But once you publish something, it is not yours. Nobody owns an article that they create, it belongs to the community. Deleting articles of good quality solely based on the user who created the article is detrimental to content-building and the functioning of an encyclopedia. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 19:10, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I generally agree however, bans and blocks are not effective if they can be circumvented by creating good content. Regards SoWhy 07:34, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 1 May 2021
Would you remove "Corbis" from it's text parameter, which is now part of Chinese-owned stock photo company Visual China Group (via Getty Images). 2001:4452:44D:2800:D45A:54FC:D027:5253 (talk) 01:14, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
- Done. It appears Cobris now sells images under the name Getty, and the Visual China name is not heavily used, so I simply removed Corbis. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:13, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Problem with the G8 criterion (and possible G4 process error)
I recently created a needed template redirect that apparently had been deleted previously. It was then tagged for speedy deletion under G4, which I understand. The G4 template says that if you have an objection to the deletion, you should post on the template's talk page, and has a handy link to do so. I posted my objection on the talk page. A few minutes later, my objection was deleted along with the template page.
I was in the middle of adding to my previous comment on the talk page when it was deleted, so I saved the page, apparently creating it again. That talk page was then tagged as G8, since the template page did not exist. I see two problems with this whole experience:
- Explicit apparently deleted the template page, and the talk page containing my objection, despite my following the instructions to object on the talk page.
- G8 was then applied to the template talk page by Pppery, even though it contained a proper objection to the speedy deletion process.
It appears that neither of these editors actually looked at the content of the pages before (1.) deleting them or (2.) applying a speedy deletion tag. Or perhaps I am misunderstanding this whole sequence of events.
Was this all just itchy trigger fingers and failure to actually follow process on the part of the editors who deleted and tagged the pages? If the deletion and tags were applied properly, what is the point of offering editors a chance to object to speedy deletion? Should G8 contain an admonition that a talk page should not be speedily deleted if it has been edited within a certain period of time?
The page in question is linked from Wikipedia:Deletion_review#4 May 2021. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:45, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Recreating a deleted page is usually a bad idea. Recreating a deleted page mere days after a XFD discussion with a clear consensus is definitely a bad idea. The G4 deletion was within process. If you had a case for keeping the redirect, you should've made it when the RFD was open. - Eureka Lott 01:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Please keep the assumption of bad faith to yourself. As with patrolling any page in consideration for deletion, I did read your message on the talk page and found it unconvincing to unilaterally overturn the consensus that resulted in the redirect being deleted. Objecting to a speedy deletion does not grant a page immunity from being deleted under the criteria. You violated consensus by recreating the page and you abused the objection process by recreating the talk page a second time after the redirect was already deleted under G4. ✗plicit 01:27, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- There is no assumption of bad faith in the above, simply a guess that one or more editors missed a step in the deletion process, possibly because of timing. I followed a process that didn't work. The G4 template implies that a reasonable objection will change some part of a process, or at least merit a response prior to summary deletion of that objection. If that is not the case, please modify the wording of the G4 template. It looks like everything went according to how things go here at CSD, so I will await comments at DRV. Thanks for the responses. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:41, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Deleting pages without having looked at them is a desysop offense. You need to back up your aspersions with evidence or retract them. Right now. —Cryptic 01:53, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Is that comment for me? I posted a reasoned objection to speedy deletion, as instructed by the G4 template, and that reasonable objection was not responded to, then it was deleted without comment, and then it was tagged as G8. Are you saying that a reasonable person is supposed to experience exactly this sequence of events, and is not allowed to ask questions about it? Between this discussion and the DRV discussion in which editors have claimed that nobody follows guidelines or policy at RFD, I feel like I am the victim of an elaborate prank today.In my ten years of experience editing Wikipedia with no blocks and very little drama, I have experienced something like this only once before, and it was a similar experience at the hands of admins who refused to even read relevant guidelines, let alone follow them. I have been asked to consider nomination as an administrator multiple times, and I have always declined because of my poor experiences in discussions with administrators. I am sure that the vast majority of admins are well behaved, but this discussion is not the sort of constructive interaction that I am accustomed to as a veteran editor. [Edited to add: Having come here to ask a process-related question and having been accused of abusing a process (which I did not; there is no evidence of intent, because there was none) and of assuming bad faith (which I did not do), I have unwatched this page, since this discussion is not leading to a productive outcome. Please ping me or post on my talk page if you need further information from me.] – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Administrators are not required to respond to talk page messages asking that you don't delete the page. And when an admin does delete the page, you discuss it on the admin's talk page first. You don't air out your dirty laundry to the entire damn community. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:25, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Is that comment for me? I posted a reasoned objection to speedy deletion, as instructed by the G4 template, and that reasonable objection was not responded to, then it was deleted without comment, and then it was tagged as G8. Are you saying that a reasonable person is supposed to experience exactly this sequence of events, and is not allowed to ask questions about it? Between this discussion and the DRV discussion in which editors have claimed that nobody follows guidelines or policy at RFD, I feel like I am the victim of an elaborate prank today.In my ten years of experience editing Wikipedia with no blocks and very little drama, I have experienced something like this only once before, and it was a similar experience at the hands of admins who refused to even read relevant guidelines, let alone follow them. I have been asked to consider nomination as an administrator multiple times, and I have always declined because of my poor experiences in discussions with administrators. I am sure that the vast majority of admins are well behaved, but this discussion is not the sort of constructive interaction that I am accustomed to as a veteran editor. [Edited to add: Having come here to ask a process-related question and having been accused of abusing a process (which I did not; there is no evidence of intent, because there was none) and of assuming bad faith (which I did not do), I have unwatched this page, since this discussion is not leading to a productive outcome. Please ping me or post on my talk page if you need further information from me.] – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Deleting pages without having looked at them is a desysop offense. You need to back up your aspersions with evidence or retract them. Right now. —Cryptic 01:53, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Agnes Kabanda Kyambedde
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I do not agree for the page to be deleted because it is talking about the different things that person has done in the different organization which help the community please look into it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.134.149.41 (talk) 10:07, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Query about CSD G10
Examples of "attack pages" may include libel, legal threats, material intended purely to harass or intimidate a person or biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced. These pages should be speedily deleted when there is no neutral version in the page history to revert to. Both the page title and page content may be taken into account in assessing an attack. Articles about living people deleted under this criterion should not be restored or recreated by any editor until the biographical article standards are met. Other pages violating the Biographies of living persons policy might be eligible for deletion under the conditions stipulated at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Summary deletion, creation prevention, and courtesy blanking, although in most cases a deletion discussion should be initiated instead.
I have a general question about this criteria. The general way it has been used, and way that Wikipedia:Attack page describes an attack page, is negative or disparaging content about an individual. But the header for this criteria states "Pages that disparage, threaten, intimidate, or harass their subject or some other entity, and serve no other purpose" and I guess I'm wondering how broad we consider the "subject" or "entity" to go beyond human beings. I guess companies and organizations fall under the rubric of "entity" but there was a discussion at MFD about a draft where an editor is complaining about the family's pet dog that was suggested be deleted under CSD G10 that seems a stretch of what was meant as an attack page.
Can we consider any negative, unsourced complaining about any "thing" as being a valid page to be deleted under CSD G10 or should it be understood to be more strictly to be attack pages about people? Liz Read! Talk! 00:04, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
G10s are only for living persons. Dogs, companies, or anything that does not fit that definition should not be deleted under this criteria. That being said,the MFD was clearly headed towards deletion and a speedy delete as a result of said discussion is perfectly fine. Primefac (talk) 01:08, 7 May 2021 (UTC) I'm not quite convinced I'm wrong, but I don't have quite the surety as before. Primefac (talk) 12:16, 7 May 2021 (UTC)- Since when? Some history: enactment; "short articles..."->"articles..."; "articles..."->"pages...". The only parts of G10 that have ever been specific to blps are the recreation ban and the examples and counter-examples. —Cryptic 02:26, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- I've added the full text just for reference at the top of this thread, but "articles" being changed to "pages" makes sense because G10 is valid in any namespace. I do suppose (from WP:ATTACK) that
that exists primarily to disparage or threaten its subject
could refer to any type of subject. I guess the main issue I have with both the language here and at ATTACK is that it does almost entirely refer to BLPs and living subjects, which gives the implication that those are the only pages that would be eligible. Primefac (talk) 12:16, 7 May 2021 (UTC)- (G10, then A6, wasn't valid outside the main namespace until that edit.)While I'm not going to concede the point - I mean, you can certainly libel and make legal threats against corporations, and if it were blps only, why specifically say "Articles about living people deleted under this criterion" instead of "Articles deleted under this criterion", and so on - I guess ultimately it doesn't matter much. As I said back in the initial discussion in 2005, just about anything G10able is G3able vandalism too, and having the separate criterion is mostly useful as bright-line guidance. Do you really want an inexperienced new page patroller stopping to consider whether, say, Legalized loan sharks or Draft:New Haven RTC are pure vandalism or not, though? —Cryptic 13:24, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- I see your points, and in thinking about it there are plenty of pages that just about every admin I know (including myself) have deleted under one CSD criteria or another that didn't quite fit but the page still needed deleting. The issue really comes when pages aren't even close to the criteria under which they've been deleted (A7s that have plenty of references, G2s that aren't actually tests, etc). Thus, I don't think anyone is going to complain about a 100% negative draft about a dog being G10'd, but clarification about the language is still probably a good idea. Primefac (talk) 13:40, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- (G10, then A6, wasn't valid outside the main namespace until that edit.)While I'm not going to concede the point - I mean, you can certainly libel and make legal threats against corporations, and if it were blps only, why specifically say "Articles about living people deleted under this criterion" instead of "Articles deleted under this criterion", and so on - I guess ultimately it doesn't matter much. As I said back in the initial discussion in 2005, just about anything G10able is G3able vandalism too, and having the separate criterion is mostly useful as bright-line guidance. Do you really want an inexperienced new page patroller stopping to consider whether, say, Legalized loan sharks or Draft:New Haven RTC are pure vandalism or not, though? —Cryptic 13:24, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- I've added the full text just for reference at the top of this thread, but "articles" being changed to "pages" makes sense because G10 is valid in any namespace. I do suppose (from WP:ATTACK) that
- Since when? Some history: enactment; "short articles..."->"articles..."; "articles..."->"pages...". The only parts of G10 that have ever been specific to blps are the recreation ban and the examples and counter-examples. —Cryptic 02:26, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- While I'm not able to see the content of the draft, I don't see any reason why attack pages couldn't apply to a dog. All dogs have their humans, after all, and they also all go to heaven, so such a page would be inherently false. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:32, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- G10 wasn't really needed to get rid of that draft, which was just vandalism ("DOGS ARE STUPID AS FUCK!!!!!") but in principle I don't see why G10 can't apply to pages about animals, or even abstract concepts. If the sole purpose of the page is to disparage the subject then it's an attack page, regardless of what the subject is. Hut 8.5 19:23, 7 May 2021 (UTC)