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Request for comment: Promising drafts

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of the discussion is that Template:Promising draft cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy nomination, with significant opposition to the proposal.
With regard to the concerns that the previous RFC is "being overturned", please note that this RFC had ten times as many participants as the previous one, and thus the weight of consensus is greater. Additionally, many of the participants had no issue with the template being used, just that it should not be used to indefinitely postpone G13. Primefac (talk) 03:24, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

The RfC

A change made based on a formally closed discussion that stood for a month was reverted today. The change was made based on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 66#Template for promising drafts. The supplementary Template:Promising draft was updated to reflect the editing policy on which it is based today, which is what sparked this controversy. Pinging the participants of the discussion mentioned above: (Calliopejen1—VQuakr—Hasteur—Jclemens—SmokeyJoe—Yeryry—Jjjjjjdddddd—Ivanvector—Hawkeye7—Winged Blades of Godric). Pinging recent editors of {{promising draft}}: (Uanfala—Primefac). I will also post a notice of this discussion at Template talk:Promising draft. If we do not solve this now it will likely only postpone the disagreement to six or so months down the road as well as breed hostility.

Should G13 be restored to stating: "Redirects and pages tagged with {{promising draft}} are excluded from G13 deletion."? — Godsy (TALKCONT) 02:38, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Converted to a request for comment by Fastily at 03:49, 1 June 2018‎ (UTC). — Godsy (TALKCONT) 05:36, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - Contributors should not be allowed to revert changes based on consensus determined by a formally closed discussion because they disagree with it; the proper way to dispute such a close is through close review. That aside, if the {{promising draft}} template does not protect a draft from speedy deletion per G13, then it is pointless (i.e. merely symbolic). — Godsy (TALKCONT) 13:27, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • 20 days < 1 month. That RfC was poorly attended and just after G13 was implemented; many of the 7 !votes noted that they wanted G13 abolished. Neither the RfC query nor the closer specifically mentioned any changes to the wording of policy, and it seems poor form to reinterpret it as such several months after the closure. In the absence of clear consensus to the contrary I oppose the proposed blanket prohibition as unnecessary instruction creep affecting a tiny percentage of otherwise G13-elgible drafts. VQuakr (talk) 03:18, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
    Speaking as the closer of that discussion, my intention was that a properly applied promising draft template should render a page permanently ineligible for G13. I fully endorse the addition of the line to the policy as necessary, and consistent with my close. Tazerdadog (talk) 05:12, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support If someone thinks a draft is promising, there should be a discussion. This is akin to WP:PROD for live articles. If a user is abusively applying the promising draft tag, that is a behavior issue that can be dealt with accordingly. Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:39, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support as already clear from the last RfC. If someone has explicitly tagged a draft with {{promising draft}}, then deleting it just because it hasn't been edited in six months is definitely not uncontroversial and so is squarely outside the purview of speedy deletion. – Uanfala (talk) 06:45, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
    G13 is defined to be untcontraversial. Either it has or has not been edited in 6 months and therefore abandoned. Putting a sticky "prevent CSD:G13" is a huge policy grab and not a single one of these objectors ever comes back to do something with the draft. Hasteur (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
    As the discussion below indicates, deletion under G13 is anything but uncontroversial where another editor has indicated that the particular draft is promising. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:05, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose – The promising draft tag should not prevent G13; it should just be one of the ways an editor can postpone G13 for another 6 months. An actual ==contested deletion== argument can be pre-positioned on the draft's talk page and that is the sort of minimal effort we should expect to signify opposition to deletion and some characterization of the editor's willingness and expectation to carry through. I think it's a great idea for drafts that have been sitting idle to come up periodically for inspection - several people are now on the G13 notification list, so it should not just be a matter of one admin making the delete decision all on their lonesome. It's hard to argue that a draft nobody can be concerned enough to work on should be kept around. — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 07:16, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
    • "Contested deletion" arguments on the talk page are what we require of people who want to challenge the speedy deletion of pages created by themselves. Creators of drafts are already excluded from using {{promising draft}} on their own drafts. – Uanfala (talk) 07:42, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support (yes). G13'd drafts can be refunded on request anyway. Objecting to deletion in advance just saves us a few clicks. If someone really thinks a draft is promising they should move it to mainspace, though. It hardly takes more effort than slapping a tag on it. – Joe (talk) 08:13, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
    • Joe Roe, see my comments below. I’m in agreement with you re: mainspace, but I’m afraid that this proposal will continue what I see as the negative idea that we should keep stuff in draft space until it is perfect. If an abandoned draft is promising and hasn’t been touched for a year (which will likely be the case for anything with this tag) it should be promoted. If it’s not actually promising, why are we keeping it? Either way, this doesn’t make sense. TonyBallioni (talk) 10:57, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
      • @TonyBallioni: Yes I absolutely agree with you there. My support isn't so much for using the tag, but for recognising that if we didn't have it, someone could just as easily put a note saying "if you delete this I will ask for it to be undeleted" on the top of the draft with the same effect. Whatever the outcome of this discussion, maybe we should add some guidelines to Template:Promising draft discouraging people from overusing it. – Joe (talk) 11:41, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
        • @Joe Roe:I would say it is a one-time reprieve and that it should be removed by the reviewing admin. A user can always restore it (which would, in effect, buy the draft another year of violating NOTWEBHOST), but I don't support keeping something around forever that has never been edited just because someone tags it. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:31, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support the justification for having G13 is that we don't want to have pages with no prospect of becoming articles sitting around here indefinitely. If a third party thinks a draft is promising then that is much less likely to apply. This doesn't mean such drafts can't be deleted, just that they aren't the obvious cases speedy deletion is meant to deal with. They can still be deleted at MfD. Hut 8.5 09:21, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Seems like the whole point? Someone can always remove it if they disagree, not like it's binding from ARBCOM... ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:39, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose putting the tag on delays it for 6 months. No need to keep these indefinitely. Mainspace then or delete them. We’re here to build an encyclopedia, not a collection of notes. TonyBallioni (talk) 10:49, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose (perennial) in favour of deprecating G13. On the merits I agree with Joe Roe: if a draft is "promising", promote it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 10:50, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
    • @Ivanvector: Unfortunately, I do not think deprecation is likely. That aside, I know you perennially oppose changes to G13, however, I would argue that supporting this is merely maintaining the status quo. Contributors who did not like the consensus established here (which you supported) have resisted the implementation of it. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 13:18, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
      On reflection I prefer promotion to tagging with a template which effectively says "this could be promoted but the tagger couldn't be bothered". I suppose we can think about it this way: speedy deletion is for universally uncontroversial deletions, and if a page is tagged with a "do not delete this" template then it can be presumed that deletion is controversial. Therefore CSD is out, but MFD remains available. To that end, I see no reason to oppose the change - it's not a "drafts can never be deleted" change, it's just a review marker really. Also, I'm aware deprecation is unlikely, but so are a lot of good things that I'm going to continue vocally supporting anyway. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:59, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support per my reply earlier in the discussion. Tazerdadog (talk) 11:16, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This is just an open invitation to game the system. If people think a draft is promising they could just improve it. G13 is no edits. Literally all they need to do to prevent G13, is improve the article. Including this would permit people who dispute the existence of G13 to completely neuter it just by bulk tagging, and there is no conceivable benefit to offset that: if you think it's promising, improve it and promote it. Draft space is not an indefinite holding ground for articles that are not up to standard. Guy (Help!) 12:16, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • There are plenty of articles where I can recognise notability, but lack expertise to improve sourcing (eg language skills, specialist literature access). If people bulk tag clearly unpromising drafts then that can be dealt with as a behavioural issue. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:29, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support as second option to deprecating G13, per my perennial opposition to it and my comments beside my struck vote a few lines above. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:59, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Some way of moving draftspace towards the communal development space I thought it was meant to be would be positive. When I process batches of G13s there are usually 5–10% that appear potentially salvageable, but not suitable for mainspace as is; however, I rarely have time or expertise to work on them. Next stop, indexing the promising drafts so that other editors can find them... Espresso Addict (talk) 21:34, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - Seems sensible. Also don't see a good reason why the previous discussion shouldn't stand. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:41, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Again we have the same actors touting the same shaky arguments. This template is merely a request to not delete it via G13. It is not policy. A policy would have stemmed from a Village Pump discussion. I note that every single time we have this debate people claim that they will work on the drafts if they template is respected. The template is willfully being abused as a permanant immunization against G13. Not a single editor who places the template actually does anything about fixing it. The template appears to not summon any users to fix the page. If the users are going to force these pages to be put through the burecracy of a MFD, I will be pinging every last one of them to come defend the page at MFD to make them put their money where their mouth is. Hasteur (talk) 01:13, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I have barely made the first attempt to publicise the category, at WT:AfC. The point of the template is “I think this draft is not the normal cruft and should not be auto-deleted, but I personally don’t intend to work on it”. This fits the principal of no time limits, and does not clash with the original motivation for G13. Pinging the tagger when mfding is a very good idea, I even think it should be mandatory. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:23, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Tagging something as a 'promising draft' does not a draft can ever properly be made an article only that it looks like it might i.e. it is promising. After a minimum of a year with no edits and no one willing to 'bump' it again it is reasonable to assume the draft did not live up to its initial promise.
    Should draft space ever be indexed or otherwise made more user friendly having thousands upon thousands of these un-deletable yet untouched drafts hanging about will make it all but impossible to winnow useful material from all of the crap. Making a class of articles automatically immune from G13 will result in the same clutter as not having G13 at all, just with a slower fill rate. Jbh Talk 01:24, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Not undeletable, just not speediable. As others have said it would be equivalent to a declined prod. The current category (which I only realised existed today) has only 109 entries, so it's hardly a flood. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:27, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
It only has 109 entries because I've been sorting through them and either de-templatizing them (because they are patently wrong), submitting them for MFD, asking the author if they want to do something about the page, or submitting them for an impartial review to determine if they're ready for mainspace. The template and category are serving a purpose, just not the one you expect. Also I seriously question your competence if you don't know and understand what a first level template does before using it. Hasteur (talk) 02:41, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
I've never placed it, just come across it patrolling G13s. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:46, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose this has been discussed before and this template should NOT create a class of permanent untouchable drafts. The main users of template have a history of driveby tagging without either accurately determining how useful the page is or doing any work on it. I've seen the tag used on pages the tagger should have immeditely mainspaced themselves, on pages that are already in mainspace (so no need for the draft) and on absolute crap with no promise that should be deleted. There is no consistency at all. It's fine as a flag to suggest a second look and a device to postpone deletion by six months but awful as rule that must be followed because one user with no special expertise or permissions thinks the page promising. Like User:Hasteur I patrol pages with the template to resolve the reason for the tag and either et the page into mainspace or deleted. You can help empty the list of pages with the template too [8] Legacypac (talk) 04:32, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, with the rather obvious caveat that tags added by the draft creator should be ignored for this purpose. Zerotalk 13:57, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Noting here that I've protected the page as that sentence was leading to edit warring. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:02, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support the existence of the template, and the policy that if someone objects in advance it should not be subject to deletion based merely on a date. It can still be deleted if there is a proper reason to do so (although there are not many valid reasons to delelte a promising draft). I missed the previous discussion, but would have been in favor of the creation of this template, and of it serving to exempt a draft from G13. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 17:00, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • No G13 protection: We can trust the deleting admins to read any promising draft tags and hold off on deletion if the draft truly is promising. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:16, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
    • Would you trust the deleting admin to do the same with respect to prodded articles, and hence prevent anyone else from de-prodding them? But even that rests on the assumption that the admin will actually look at the draft before they delete it. I don't know how things stand at the moment, but when I was dabbling in drafts a few months ago, almost all G13 tagging was done by a bot, and the majority of the subsequent deletions were performed by admins who did not seem to ever look at what they were deleting. – Uanfala (talk) 18:14, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
      • Are you suggesting that we have admins going around deleting anything with a tag? Declining CSD tags happens all the time. We allow people to be administrators in part because of their knowledge of policy and apparent common sense. If this weren't the case, we might as well create a CSD bot to go around deleting any article with a tag. Natureium (talk) 23:08, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
    • Here are a few examples of drafts admins deleted despite multiple prior G13 postponements (the old equivalent of promising draft): Draft:Nomoli statues, Draft:Priming effect, Draft:William Healy. I'm sure I could find more examples (I found these in about 10 minutes of looking), but all of these are reasonable first drafts of seemingly notable subjects. And though deletion was repeatedly delayed by user(s) who thought they were worthwhile, eventually a 6-month period rolled around when someone forgot to postpone... And the drafts were deleted. Calliopejen1 (talk) 08:39, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Speedy deletion is per definition for uncontroversial deletions. If someone places this tag, the deletion is no longer uncontroversial and thus outside of the scope of speedy deletion. People actually using this tag to try and game the system can and should be dealt with like all such attempts. But the possibility of abuse (that always exists) does not mean that good faith taggings should be ignored. Regards SoWhyMobile 17:24, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support because we should be respectful of well-intentioned editing in draft space. However, against that there is the problem that if a {{promising draft}} goes to MFD, such as Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:History of Thailand since 2001, it may lead to an embarrassment that is neatly avoided with speedy deletion. Thincat (talk) 17:59, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Can the proponents of this exemption point me at any articles at all that, after being tagged promising but before a move to mainspace, were improved by someone who hadn't already been working on it? —Cryptic 21:18, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure, but if the answer is none, that would be an argument for more aggressive moves to mainspace (where articles get improved), rather than an argument in favor of deletion of drafts. (Except perhaps for medical articles, BLPs, other cases where underdeveloped articles could do real harm.) Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:57, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
      • This is part of my concern - there's no legitimate method to challenge a promising-draft tag. The tag is aggressively purported by its users to be unremovable; there's strong consensus against moving a draft into mainspace when you think it should be deleted instead; and MFD refuses to consider deletion on notability grounds. If we're going to enshrine this kind of catch-22 into policy - and WP:CSD is the single most prescriptive, least descriptive policy on Wikipedia - there really needs to be some sort of demonstrated, tangible benefit to it. —Cryptic 22:34, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
        • I agree there needs to be a method to challenge it. Maybe MfD policies need to be changed (or else these drafts go through AfD, which might actually be the most appropriate outcome). Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:36, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
        • I'm not well acquainted with WP:MFD, but I see that of the 14 currently open discussions there, 10 are about drafts (incidentally, many of them are in response to the placement {{promising draft}}). A quick glance shows that the deletion rationales have mainly to do with sourcing and notability. Is WP:NMFD ignored in practice? If yes, is this a bad thing? If we care about due process, I think we'd all prefer to see the notability of drafts evaluated at any discussion venue (even one not "authorised" to deal with notability) rather than have it handled by the automatic machinery of G13. – Uanfala (talk) 23:12, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
          • My anecdotal and very intermittent experience with MFD is that lack of notability is an aggravating factor, but some other, non-notability-based reason for deletion is put forward too. Or at least, that's always been the case with pages that end up on my watchlist for whatever reason and then find their way to MFD. —Cryptic 23:29, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
          • The other draft deletion RfC is clarifying what NMFD means: if someone repeatedly resubmits a draft without substantial changes and there is no chance of it going to mainspace, then it can be deleted (this is the current practice, and that RfC has another week to go, but in all liklihood, NMFD will be updated to read that way in 7 days time). TonyBallioni (talk) 17:43, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is a template that is added without review as the opinion of one editor. This should not be used as a method to create untouchable drafts. The only point I see for using this tag is to express your own opinion to whoever is looking at it to reconsider before G13'ing. Natureium (talk) 23:05, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose The whole mess seems to be process just for its own sake. If a passing editor sees a draft they truly think is "promising", they can just, you know, edit it themselves (radical notion, I know). The only function this has is to allow an editor to say: "I like the idea of some-one else working on this article but I can't be bothered myself." That's not merely useless but worse than useless to building the project. The entire idea should be scrapped and any nitpicking about who can and can't apply templates or remove them or what have you is just navel-gazing. Nuke the template from orbit -- it's the only way to be sure. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:49, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - If a draft isn't promising, and someone tags it that way, then giving it 6 months to be brought up to main-space standards is ample time. Even if it is promising, 6 months is still ample time, and if it's deleted as G13, so be it -- it can always be restored uncontroversially. I really don't see the point of this tag, other than for someone to express an opinion about a draft. Furthermore, a "promising draft" tag should be as easily removable as a prod tag or a speedy deletion tag. It's just someone's opinion. There should not exist a tag for permanent protection from G13. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:52, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
    Removing a promising draft tag is not the same is removing a prod tag. Removing a prod tag forces a deletion discussion; removing a promising draft tag circumvents a requested deletion discussion. It therefore makes sense that one tag is "sticky" and the other is not. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:59, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support I'm going to try to cut the baby in half and support a compromise. I support the language that drafts with the {{promising draft}} language should not be deleted G13. I don't support that only the editor that placed that tag can remove it; no maintenance tag on the project should work that way. Some drafts with initial promise will never become articles. There should be discussion of the removal (if the removal is disputed) and then a fresh 6-month delay for G13 after the tag is removed. The only other "reasonable" alternative I see is to modify the tag to say that a specific user wants the draft to be moved to their userspace in lieu of a G13 deletion. power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:02, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
    At very least, removal should require (1) a valid reason to the posted to the draft (and not just "unreferenced", because if the topic is notable, then references will exist); and (2) notification at the template placer's talk page so that they can contest. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:37, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
I presume you would also demand the same of anyone adding the tag, since anything else would be arbitrary and inconsistent. I certainly would be much happier if addition had to be justified, just like every other tag. Guy (Help!) 07:43, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
I too would be much happier if the addition had to be justified. I think the following two statements should be required: (1) why the topic is suitable for inclusion; and (2) why the page cannot be moved to mainspace in its current state. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:20, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, that's fair, and should help other editors to move the draft forwards. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:50, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose And frankly this template should be removed as an obvious attempt to game/get around G13. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:14, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. As other editors have said above, this template is basically a way of saying "I don't want to work on this but somebody else ought to." It inherently passes the buck. As a result, it should be only a temporary reprieve - if no one is willing to improve and promote to mainspace after another 6 months after the template is applied, is it really all that promising? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 13:46, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
    • @Premeditated Chaos: There are many ways the tag can be used, some more appropriate than others. Take 005 (video game) for example; I tagged it as a promising draft then took measures to improve it then eventually promoted it to the mainspace. That aside, and more to the point, active and deceased users can retain userspace drafts forever. The main difference between draftspace and userspace is that draftspace makes the draft more likely to receive collaboration; why should we discourage drafts from residing in a more open place? — Godsy (TALKCONT) 15:45, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
      • Honestly, I respect your willingness to work on someone else's abandoned content, but you didn't need the Promising Draft template for that. Your continuing edits would have been enough to spare the page from G13, which only proves my point. Slapping the template on it and walking away without improving it is an attempt to pass the buck. Actually working on a so-called "promising draft" resets the G13 counter on its own and is a much better way to make sure the content gets preserved and promoted to mainspace eventually, if it is good. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:23, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Otherwise, might as well have the editnotice say "use {{promising draft}} if you want this draft to stay forever". wumbolo ^^^ 19:47, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above. If a draft is "promising", then it should be either a) promoted, or b) userified. The draft namespace was never intended as a storage space to indefinitely store miscellaneous writings. -FASTILY 20:33, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - if an editor feels that a stale draft is promising enough to postpone its deletion, they should either work on it and promote it to mainspace, or userfy it to work on later if they really want to. The process as it stands with the language above as part of G13 would IMO lead to a lot of drive-by tagging and a massive clean-up backlog. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 20:58, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Getting rid of drafts purely for reasons of elapsed time is contrary to WP:CHOICE and WP:DEADLINE. The template in question is a reasonable way of mitigating this. Andrew D. (talk) 22:14, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: The template should either be deprecated, or the one applying it should commit to completing the article, otherwise as Firefly states, it would simply lead to drive-by tagging.⋅ AFAIK admins check G13s before they delete, if they are, not far more than enough, to ascertain if the original creator has any intention of working on the article. There is a popular misconception across Wikipedia that we have a permanent editorial team that exists solely for the purpose of completing and rescuing any junk that is dumped on us. Just because an article might meet basic criteria absolutely does not mean that it is suitable for an encyclopedia and that our database of knowledge would be enriched by it. At 5.6mio articles, the time has passed when we need to scavenge the trash cans for content. WP:WikiProject Promising Drafts may sounds like a good idea SmokeyJoe, and I rarely disagree with your opinions, but this would simply revive under another name the Incubator that we successfully deprecated. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:21, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - As per User:Ivanvector and others. The way to ensure that a Promising Draft isn't blown out to nirvana is to make improvements to it. Permitting the use of the tag to preserve drafts indefinitely simply will make them almost invisible as Someone else's problem. Make it your own problem or let the calendar run on it. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:55, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment - Noted. I still oppose. Robert McClenon (talk) 07:32, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I like the idea of honouring a request not to delete with that promising draft. But I can see that these too will become stale. Also the problem of the tag being put on what is really unpromising stuff without the capability to remove it means I actually will Oppose this proposal. Deleting admins can read the request and just detag a g13 if they really believe it is promising. However From a few recent undeletes I have done I can tell that this won't always happen. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:14, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
    • @Graeme Bartlett: If this proposal passes, a discussion can be (and should be) started about when and how the template may be removed; that aspect is not set in stone. Poor placements and overzealous removals are both problems at the moment. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 03:19, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment - I disagree as to the timing, which is one reason that I oppose. If this proposal passes, there will in all likelihood be no consensus that it can be removed, and the template and the non-removal will therefore be set in stone. I may support a more reasoned version of this proposal that already specifies how the template can be used and removed. As it is, no, because there will be no subsequent consensus. Robert McClenon (talk) 07:27, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Query. Everything in draftspace essentially is subject to a slow-motion prod process. Instead of seven days after which it will be deleted automatically, it is six months. When a user removes a prod tag, this action forces a community discussion about the appropriateness of keeping an article. When a user adds a promising draft tag, it does the same thing. (We could imagine the draft deletion process being set up a different way -- suppose there was an autodeletion countdown tag that a user could remove, instead of adding a promising draft tag.) I'm genuinely curious about why there seems to be a consensus for allowing a user to unilaterally force a deletion discussion in mainspace (via prod removal), but not in draftspace (via promising-draft addition). Thoughts? Calliopejen1 (talk) 05:47, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
    When a user removes a PROD tag, this action forces nothing, except in a negative way: it prohibits a subsequent PROD. A follow-up discussion (AFD or otherwise) is not mandatory. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:24, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose If an article is not good enough for mainspace, it should be deleted, and not permanently put in draftspace. -- » Shadowowl | talk 09:42, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - per TonyBallioni and Guy. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:52, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The only thing this tag should do is let the deleted admin (or whoever places the G13 tag) know that someone may object to its deletion. Draftspace is designed to be a temporary working space, not an alternate Wikipedia where notability rules don't apply. Bradv 12:41, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - There's already enough ways to hang on to drafts that have promise. (Editing the draft to reset the clock, asking for refund, etc). The current proposal encourages saving drafts without adding any incentive to actually improve them. If anything, it removes any sense of urgency, and has the potential to be abused. Sergecross73 msg me 12:46, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose This template is just incentive for indefinite hosting of non-notable and non-encyclopedic stuff under the guise of vague labeling "promising". Instead of random-tagging multiple drafts, the tagger would do Wikipedia much more beneficial service if they improve single "promising" draft into mainspace-worthy stub and move it to mainspace also. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:15, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Speedy deletion is for uncontroversial cases. If an uninvolved editor thinks something shouldn't be deleted, it warrants a deletion discussion (except in cases with legal implications like G10 and G12). {{Promising draft}} is just an expedited, easily visible way to implement this fundamental consensus about speedy deletion in the particular case of stale drafts. As others have noted, abuse of the template should be treated as a behavioral issue, not some problem with the template itself, which is firmly grounded in general speedy deletion policy and a previous RfC on this issue (as noted by Tazerdadog near the beginning of the discussion). All that said, I can see which way the wind is blowing on this, and would like to plug my essay on the subject as a solution that may satisfy the needs of both "draft deletionists" and "draft inclusionists". A2soup (talk) 17:53, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I would rather have editors simply remove {{db-g13}} tags and have deletion be postponed by another 6 months to allow further work on the draft (which is current practice, I believe) than have the draft languish in the draft space indefinitely with absolutely no work done. The draft space is not a web host or a place to indefinitely store articles that aren't ready for mainspace, which means that we expect drafts to be actively worked on so that they will eventually be a part of the encyclopedia in the future. This is the core reasoning behind G13 speedy deletion. Mz7 (talk) 18:28, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
I don't have statistics on it, but I am sure the the average time between {{db-g13}} application and deletion does not allow this to be a viable solution. A2soup (talk) 18:43, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
User:A2soup You are looking for Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions (over 4000 pages generally, listed for 30 days I believe) and Wikipedia:Database reports/Stale drafts with another 1000 page backlog that can be nominated G13 right now. Enjoy. Legacypac (talk) 18:56, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Well, it would be the same interval of time you would have to apply a {{promising draft}} tag to a draft tagged with {{db-g13}}. If you are talking about preempting the {{db-g13}} tag in the first place, I think that solution is problematic for the reasons that Premeditated Chaos cited above. A better way to preempt the tag would be to actually edit the draft, do something that actively improves it. Mz7 (talk) 18:59, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm opposed to the use of this template as stated. [I'm sleepy, so I'm having a little trouble figuring out what simple "support" and "oppose" mean.] Drafts aren't supposed to be long-term; either they should be moved to mainspace, or they should be deleted after a while. One or two G13 postponements or restorations are fine, but if you keep postponing or requesting undeletion, you get to the point that your postponement should be ignored and your request may be ignored. Why should we have a template that must remain on the draft as long as it's a draft? The only templates that should stay on the draft long-term are ones directly related to the AFC process, ones such as {{Afc comment}} and {{AFC submission}}, and that's only because the process wouldn't work as well without them. They don't impair what can be done with the drafts on which they're placed, and that's the big problem with this template. Nyttend (talk) 21:38, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose, although I have no problem with using the template to fulfill the "any edit" requirement to extend deletion for six months. However, if no one rescues it out of the Category:Promising draft articles category in six months, it's likely to just languish there forever, so making it G13-invincible makes no sense. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 20:44, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I agree with Legacypac and Hasteur here in that content should not be stored indefinitely in draft-space. I also agree with the fact that the template is "being abused as a permanant immunization against G13. Not a single editor who places the template actually does anything about fixing it", certainly where I've seen it is just as a permanent buffer against G13, which shouldn't be happening and undermines the whole point of G13 in the first place. jcc (tea and biscuits) 21:00, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support; there is a dual purpose to AfC--one is to prevent promotional articles and those that for other reasons will never be able to show notability from getting into mainspace, but the other is to help those that fdo have promise to be improved so they can get--and stay--in mainspace. Obviously this will always be a matter of judgment, and considering the way AfD works will never be more than a rough approximation to the erratic conclusions of an ill-defined process. It's a preliminary screen, and cannot expected to be more. Altogether too many article drafts are lost because nobody is immediately able to work on them. It it takes a year to improve a potential article, its good that it eventually gets improved. If it take 2 or 3 years, no harm is done either. Removing such a draft costs us a contributor. On the other hand, if a promotional article should by accident pass afc , it will nowadays very soon be remove by NPP. No admin should ever be deleting G13s without reconsidering them by themselves, just as they should not be blindingly accepting the nomination at Prod or CSD, no matter how responsible the person who nominated. DGG ( talk ) 08:00, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose as any drafts that have promise that get deleted by G13 are WP:REFUNDable by anyone who wants to work on it. If nobody cares enough to edit a draft and save it from G13, or to REFUND a G13 deleted draft, then quite frankly, there's no reason to keep it around in draftspace. Iffy★Chat -- 10:26, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose, it is difficult enough to deal with stale, abandoned, or unviable drafts without putting more roadblocks in the way. Stifle (talk) 12:57, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The line should not have been removed out of process, and in violation of the standing consesnsus. The correct action would have been to bring the matter up here before reverting the change. That being said, I don't agree with the original action, so I'm opposing. I agree with others that this must not be used to further slow down the procedure. If the draft really is promising, it should be edited or moved to mainspace. This would serve only to encourage more drive-by-tagging. Tamwin (talk) 20:21, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - {{promising draft}} should be enough to delay deletion for a further 6 months - not to forestall it forever. Cabayi (talk) 13:56, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose If someone can be bothered to put on a template, then they could make some improvements instead. Ronhjones  (Talk) 17:08, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per TonyBallioni and Guy.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 11:01, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. If someone marks the page as promising draft, deletion is not uncontroversial. It is beside the point whether or not the tagger intends to improve the page. Drafts on potentially notable subjects should not be deleted. SpinningSpark 15:53, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose This proceeds from the false belief that Wikipedia needs more articles by any means necessary. If you don't want your draft deleted, keep it in user space. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:32, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The deleting admins should be accorded the same confidence for checking G13s before deletion as they are for evaluating CSDs or expired PRODs. The WP:Incubator was deprecated some years ago, and this proposal should not become a substitute for it. G13 like PROD, are refundable with a minimum of fuss but claims for undeletion should be accompanied by some volition to improve the draft to acceptable mainspace standards (or at least a credible 50/50 chance of surviving AfD). With 5.6mio articles, a vast number of which remain perma-tagged for various reasons, en.Wiki is no longer so desperate for content that it needs articles of any kind just because they 'might' at some stage meet minimum content and/or notability standards or can be re-edited to remove blatantly promotional content. Anyone adding a {{promising draft}} template should be prepared to do some WP:BEFORE just as they would(should) before taggiing for deletion. To fully understand the balance of the content and quality of new articles, commenters may wish to to spend some time examining the special:NewpagesFeed and the AfC lists. Our capacity is well beyond the point where the editors who work their way through certain tag categories will ever be able to address them all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:48, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Speedy deletion is only for uncontroversial deletion - i.e. pages that nobody would have a good faith objection to deleting. If a page has been tagged as a promising draft then this cannot be the case, and so it needs discussion before deletion. See also WP:DEADLINE. Thryduulf (talk) 09:08, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
  • weak support I don't agree with the idea really (seems trivial to abuse with a meat puppet) but there was an RfC in a reasonable place (here) and the outcome wasn't insane. Just ignoring it wasn't the right way forward. As to the underlying issue, I'd support a 6 month delay on a G13. As far as arguments that "well WP:REFUND exists" that assumes a lot more understanding of our processes than most editors have. Hobit (talk) 11:07, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
    • @Hobit: I would note that when I ran the G13 bot nominations, any edit reset the G13 clock (as opposed to the less strict interpretation that is currently the community consensus excluding bot edits and maintenance actions such as tagging). Even placing the promising draft template or {{AFC postpone G13}} gave the draft 6 more months of runway to move to a more complete state. This entire campaign is some editors who have next to no experience with actually working on these trying to neuter G13 into irrelevance by creating a class of permanently g13 immune drafts. Hasteur (talk) 13:01, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
      • I understand and even agree with you about how things should work. But once that RfC was closed the way it was, your bot shouldn't have deleted the drafts. Of course missing the RfC is perfectly reasonable, but once it was pointed out, you needed to either A) start a new (and hopefully better-attended RfC) or B) modify the bot. Hobit (talk) 02:45, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
        • Hobit just to your points 1) the bot is not an admin bot. It did not delete anything, only an admin could, and simply the process off adding the tag delayed the bot for 6 months. 2) this is the new better-attended RfC so supporting something you don’t believe in based on the past RfC makes no sense. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:09, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
          • I did misunderstand how this played out. If I have it right now, the RfC happened, the policy was updated and then later contested via what looks like a mild edit war. This RfC was born of that, raised by someone who wanted the RfC outcome enforced. After the RfC the bot was still tagging articles for speedy deletion. Do I have that right? If so, my objection still stands. If you don't like the way an RfC was closed, you don't just change things and then revert others when they revert your changes. You bring up a discussion. To do otherwise is disruptive. So it's a case of "I agree with what you want to do, but have done it in a way I can't agree with". If I'm still misunderstanding the situation (and I might well be) let me know. But I do view edit warring to overturn an RfC outcome to be disruptive and it looks like that is what happened here. Hobit (talk) 04:10, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose, there are enough avenues available to prevent G13 deletion (edit the page, for example) and most truly "promising" drafts should be in mainspace anyway. —Kusma (t·c) 12:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - If a draft is promising, it should generally be moved into mainspace as soon as possible unless there was a good reason not to do so (i.e. WP:TOOSOON concerns). The "promising draft" tag shouldn't be a get-out-of-jail card for drafts that don't have a chance anyway, and there's always editing the draft if you want to avoid G13. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:25, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Support In case if someone thinks a draft has potential and places the template, the deletion does not remain uncontroversial. CSD is not the place for uncontroversial deletions, MFD is. Anyone can then take the draft to MFD if they don't agree with the user who placed the draft. Pratyush (talk) 10:27, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We already have procedure for contesting speedy criteria in general as well as dealing with stale drafts in particular. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:52, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Appearently the Promising Draft template is permanent and can't be removed

According to this user anyone can place "Promising Draft" but no one can remove a poorly placed tag. I believe that is not correct. [9] Combine that with the silly notion written atWP:NMFD that editors at MfD are too dumb to consider notability and we now have a system where any editor can tag a non-notable Draft as "Promising" and indefinitely and forever prevent deletion. Legacypac (talk) 16:16, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

I find the above comment to be "promising"... :)  --Guy Macon (talk) 17:11, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Technically there are two authorized ways to remove it. The first is deleting the article at WP:MFD. The second is to improve the article and move it to mainspace. Whether there needs to be a third way to remove "indiscriminate additions" of the tag is unclear. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:33, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
So basically the entire idea is to eliminate G13 and allow any editor who so chooses to irrevocably prevent stale drafts from being deleted other than through MfD. IO kind of thought as much. Guy (Help!) 19:19, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
The motivation of G13 was to do something with the tens of thousands of unsorted mostly worthless cruft and spam drafts. Manually templated (sorted) promising drafts are decidedly not what was intended to be auto-deleted. The motivation for template:Promising draft is to enable positive sorting of the draft pile. Previously, all that was done was disposal via speedy deletion of the worst end of the draft pile. With no positive-end sorting, it was no wonder that no normal content improving editor would play in the draft pile. This template makes it more tempting to play in the draft pile, because you can go straight to the drafts with at least some substance. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:16, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
Are there any templates that an editor can throw up there and no one is allowed to remove? This seems very strange to me. Why would this opinion tag be permanent? Natureium (talk) 22:59, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

The Template:Promising draft has been thru many versions but it currently reads:

"An editor has indicated that this is a promising draft and requests that, should the draft become abandoned, it not be speedily deleted as WP:G13. This draft can still be nominated for deletion at WP:MfD."

Appearently it needs to read:

"An editor who probably can't be bothered to do anything with this draft themselves demands that it not be speedily deleted as WP:G13. Further the page can not be deleted on the basis it lacks Notability and no one may ever remove this template for any reason except promotion to mainspace."

I support honesty in our templates. Legacypac (talk) 00:19, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

A core wiki principal is to make it easy to edit in something and easy to edit out something. The rules around this template fly in the face of that. Anyone can thoughtlessly add the template and no one can - even after serious consideration - remove it or the page it is on. That is not the Wiki Way. Legacypac (talk) 13:57, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

How about this: there are templates {{in use}} and {{under construction}} which place pages in Category:Pages actively undergoing a major edit and Category:Pages actively undergoing construction respectively. There are bots which patrol these categories and remove the template from pages so categorised if a certain period of time has elapsed without any edits taking place. We could ask the operators of those bots to similarly patrol Category:Promising draft articles and remove {{promising draft}} if there have been no edits within, say, the previous thirty days. Removal by bot would make the page eligible for G13 at a later date, and this would mean that G13 is not indefinitely deferred. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:10, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

You can already reset the timer for G13 by making any edit, so I don't know that this would add anything. Am I missing something? The point of promising draft (from its proponents' perspective) was exactly that it would forestall speedy deletion indefinitely (meaning an MFD would be required), so this doesn't accomplish that goal. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:34, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Inappropriate removals of promising draft

Hasteur has removed the {{promising draft}} from several drafts including from Draft:Naphthalene-1,5-dione. Per Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 66#Template for promising drafts: "Editors should not remove this tag unless they placed it themselves or the page creator placed it." Even if Hasteur wants to continue to ignore community consensus, the tag should be allowed to remain if someone restores it after his removals (because that implies others than the tagger think it should be there). That aside: If this discussion affirms the promising draft tag, a discussion can be started about when and how the template should be removed; if not, the matter is moot as the template is pointless. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 17:00, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Please oh great font of wisdom: How is a procedurally generated page for where there is no prose, no content, no references how is that PROMISING. If anything YOUR drive by tagging of the draft and unexplained restorals are disruptive and out of order, so kindly desist. Hasteur (talk) 17:05, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
@Hasteur: My restorations are supported by community consensus while your removals are based solely on your opinion. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 17:06, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Drive by templating is never authorized. Procedural generation of directory listing, without any idea of if this compound is notable, without any prose. These are things that Wikipedia has expressed on multiple times that is not desirable or authorized. Hasteur (talk) 17:09, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
You are simply incorrect (WP:DRIVEBY is part of a failed proposal; if that is what your referring to, I'm not sure because you did not provide any links). A third removal, eh? Well, I am not willing to edit war as you are. It is unfortunate that those willing to do that so often get their way (at least in the short term). — Godsy (TALKCONT) 17:14, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Godsy, there is an old saying; "if you want to convince people that there are too many people being held in prison for minor offenses, don't pick Charles Manson as your example." The draft that you are fighting to keep the tag on is one of the least promising drafts on Wikipedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:22, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Godsy is correct in that the RFC closed saying that the template could not be removed. However let's say that this is an WP:IAR removal. The page has no real sources, and it appears the data came about by running EPISuite software to predict properties. How is such a draft promising? The template applicator has made a mistake, but is the only way to get the template removed to persuade the person who put it there to take it off? I think WP:BRD should apply. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:28, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
@Graeme Bartlett: I take who tagged the draft into account. Winged Blades of Godric is active, has been around since 2013, and has accumulated over 20,000 edits. Whatever they saw in the draft, why should Hasteur unilaterally overrule that? If we were talking about an inexperienced editor, I would feel differently. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 23:56, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
That was a mistaken tagging and I apologize.But, I'm genuinely at a loss to understand the edit-warring by Hasteur.AFAIS, I've a t/p that is accessible, quite like MFD is......~ Winged BladesGodric 05:05, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Let's take this as an example of an inappropriate removal: [10] (on Nils Forsberg). The problem is that there are so-many delete-happy editors and admins that there needs to be a way to force a discussion about drafts that other editors think are worthwhile (even if not yet ready for mainspace). If you put on the promising draft tag, it's liable to be removed. And here is a list of worthwhile drafts that were actually deleted as G13 (there are many, many more). Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_65#Sample_of_some_worthwhile_articles_that_have_been_deleted_under_G13. Without safety mechanisms, worthy content keeps getting deleted. Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:32, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I've taken to patrolling G13 when I have the time/mental energy. I have several times had the entire 50-article set deleted by another admin in the time it took me to type a single article title into Google and eyeball the results. I might be wrong but I suspect some admins consider the job to be a bot-like process, where all that needs to be ascertained is whether the draft has indeed lain fallow for the requisite 6 months. There has to be a better way of dealing with this issue. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:41, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
Looking through the deletion log for the past couple days, the typical deletion rate is 3-4 per minute, with rates as high as 8 per minute observed. I find it implausible that admins are doing more than a quick skim of the article, and a check of the history to ensure 6 months unedited when deleting faster than 3/minute. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:03, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
If a trusted user or the bot did the nom as part of a batch off the G13 list, you know it is G13 eligible. You don't need to drag out a calender. It does not take very long to see 2 or 11 AfC rejections which tells you the page has been reviewed by trusted reviewers and rejected. If not through AFC many are easily assessed as spam or other crap. I know this because I've nominated thousands of G13. Legacypac (talk) 03:38, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
@Legacypac:--Whilst, you mght be the person on this project with the longest CSD log and whilst the actions by Calliopejen1 to directly mainspace the draft were sub-optimal, that doesn't excuse your's out-of-process de-taggings.And, since you've brought this issue at some other thread, I'm afraid that in case of continued misuse, as much as an user can be banned from accesing the AFCHS script, people can be T-banned from the CSD arena, with equal pleasure.
And, don't remove any validly placed promising-draft template, unless the close of the previous RFC is overturned.You ought to know where MFD or the t/p of the template-tagger lies......~ Winged BladesGodric 05:29, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
User:Winged Blades of Godric It's not like that. Notwithstanding the RFC closer comments (which over reached the discussion and were more a suggestion than a prescription) subsequently there have been several discussions where groups of editors clarified how we treat the promising draft tag. The consensus has been that we try to respect it but that the overall quality of tagging was suboptimal and that any editor could remove or ignore/G13 a page they felt was not actually promising. I actually ran a batch of the less promising ones through MfD 6 months after 100 or so pages were tagged initially and nearly all were deleted. The tagger never showed up to even defend the pages which then factored into the discussions on how seriously we took the tag. The tag itself has always been worded as a "request" and requests are not requirements. I've been acting on this consensus. Legacypac (talk) 15:06, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Legacypac that extremely fast deletion rates are reasonable. Most drafts are utter garbage. My concern is that drafts that are not the usual garbage are deleted with the same gusto. Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:47, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
By the way, when I go through drafts that are up for deletion to apply the {{promising draft}} tag as I think is appropriate, I normally tag about 1-2% of drafts. The rest can be thrown away and no one will miss them. (There may be some notable topics in the remaining 98% but for those we're talking one-sentence or few-sentence articles which lack sources and for which recreation would be trivial.) Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:52, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
You appear to have missed the point of draft space. It's for drafts being worked up into articles, It's not an indefinite holding ground for things people can't be arsed to make into articles. The obvious answer with teh Forstenberg article was to promote it. I started looking at User:Calliopejen1/Postponed AFC. There is a fuckton of spam in there. Guy (Help!) 07:50, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
There is some garbage there, but plenty of reasonable starts on notable topics. Just a couple examples I found right now: Draft:Nomoli statues (coverage in Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines), Draft:Priming effect (soil biology article with five journal references), Draft:William Healy (with this linked biographical journal article, describing him as " a pioneer psychiatrist and criminologist"). Calliopejen1 (talk) 08:21, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
Healy's clearly notable; I'll try to work that one up. Some of the early declines (that one was submitted in 2012!) seem to have been a bit scattergun. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:23, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
I don't dispute that, but waving that list in front of people as evidence of a problem, as some have done, is tendentious when it contains, as it dfoes, obvious spam. But I think this is mostly a philosophical disagreement about draft space. We all agree it's there to allow people to work up articles, but in the end if someone's not working on it and can't be bothered to get it into mainspace then we are into WP:WEBHOST territory. I think it would be much better to subscribe tot he upcoming G13 bot notifications, review them and edit or promote the minority that are worth having. In the end, if the article's not in mainspace it's not part of the reason we are here, so mainspace or the bitbucket is not an invalid view I think. Guy (Help!) 07:21, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
Also, if draft space is only for things actively "being worked up into articles" then we should be forbidding bold moves from article space to draft space (those moves would be inconsistent with the purpose of draft space unless the mover plans to work on the article there or has reason to believe someone else plans to do so). Calliopejen1 (talk) 08:28, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
I think the rules for draftifying, as documented at Wikipedia:Drafts#Moving_articles_to_draft_space, I think are pretty good, clear, and widely agreeable. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:42, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
There are a number of articles coming up for G13 deletion that were moved to draft space under different circumstances. (e.g. unsourced and author didn't respond to query about sourcing -- Draft:San Antonio Island (Spain) and others) Is the correct course to move them back to namespace? Calliopejen1 (talk) 08:46, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
ec. Only if the draftification was inappropriate. I am yet to see a seriously inappropriate draftification. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:49, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
I almost decided it was a hoax, before finding an appropriate redirect target. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:01, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
The Catalan article is better developed, with a good government source. It's not immediately self-evident that the island doesn't qualify for an article. Calliopejen1 (talk) 09:06, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
Calliopejen1 collapsed with "hatting some discussion that strayed from the topic... (my fault) Calliopejen1 (talk) 09:16, 3 June 2018 (UTC)". I object to this hatting of my input as if it should never have been discussed. Reference to Wikipedia:Drafts#Moving_articles_to_draft_space, in particular, needs more attention, not hiding. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:17, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

G13 has been mentioned as PROD below, but I'm thinking the opposite. Why isn't the promising draft template treated more like a PROD in that anyone can add it, but then anyone can remove it and it can't be added back? Natureium (talk) 17:11, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Noting for the record that Draft:Naphthalene-1,5-dione (referenced at the beginning of this Personal Attack section) was promoted to mainspace to "Preventing out of hand deletion of a promising draft" by an administrator without any sources, claims of notability, or verifyable facts. It was subsequently sent to AFD where consensus was resoundingly against it's inclusion. Just another piece of evidence that 1: The Promising Draft template was unwarranted for this draft. 2: All editors need to check their opinions/beliefs at the door lest they be brought before the community to question if the administrator still retains the trust of the community in their exercise of privileges. Hasteur (talk) 02:25, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Barking up the wrong tree? (G13 mistagging experiment)

Well irretrievably poisoned by unsanctioned and ill-advised “experiment”. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:11, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

It's nice that we're spending so much time debating one small aspect of the rules, but this whole exercise rests on the assumption that these rules will be be reflected in practice. For the moment, let's leave aside the little known and seldom used {{promising draft}}, and get back to the basics: WP:G13, the speedy deletion criterion that only applies to drafts that haven't been edited in six months. I made an (unethical) experiment where I slapped {{db-g13}} on seven normal-quality drafts that were edited noticeably more recently than six months previously, and were hence ineligible for G13. Three of the deletions were declined (by three different admins), but four drafts got deleted (by two different admins).[1] This is a small sample and so might not be representative, but the result is consistent with what I perceive to be the general sentiment in this area.[2]

Now, if the long established and widely known fundamental rule of G13 is more often disregarded than followed, then I don't think it's reasonable to expect that the niceties of obscure rules like the one for promising drafts could be respected to any greater degree.[3] What all this suggests is that we're currently focussing on the wrong problem: any changes to the rules for deletion of drafts will not make much of a difference. We should switch our attention away from the point of deletion and go one step back in the production chain. The ultimate purpose of G13 is to help separate the wheat from the chaff, and if the approach from the lower end (i.e. the efforts to stop G13 from engulfing potentially everything up the quality scale) isn't working, then we should start from the higher end. We need to come up with a robust way of systematically sorting drafts and then bringing the minority of promising ones to the attention of possibly interested editors and wikiprojects. Time to get back to the drawing board? – Uanfala (talk) 00:09, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Drafts deleted: [1], [2], [3], [4]. Deletions declined: [5], [6], [7].
  2. ^ See for example this discussion above.
  3. ^ To be fair, if admins don't check that a draft is really eligible before deleting it, then it might be simply because there has been no history of abuse and so they assume good faith on the editor who tagged it. And also, checking for G13 eligibility involves going to the trouble of clicking through to the history, whereas a {{promising draft}} tag, if placed at the top of the article, is a bit more difficult to miss. If correct, the last observation suggests that if the A* deletion criteria are adopted instead, they will be used with greater fidelity, as they usually involve some sort of inspection of the content of the page.
WP:POINT much? You've now thrown another chum bucket into the water. (and you can't even get facts straight...) It's been my understaning previously that some admins try every last G13 on a case by case basis, Others look to see who nominated the draft and rubber stamp the decision. Hasteur (talk) 00:16, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It is unbelievably POINTy of you to have done that and frankly I think you ought to be embarrassed to come here acting like you've proved something by deliberately acting in bad faith. Certainly admins are responsible for checking what they delete, but there's an underlying assumption that editors will have applied G13 (and other CSD criteria in fact) in good faith, after having done the appropriate checking themselves, and not as part of an experiment. Speaking of which, your bad-faith experiment proves nothing about anything - as you admit above, your sample size and time frame are indeed far too small to be significant or generalizable. One click in the other direction and you'd be looking at four declines and three deletes, which sort of undoes the point you're trying to make. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:29, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
@Premeditated Chaos: I fail to see how the possibility of four declines and three deletes invalidates his point, given that the ratio should have been exactly zero deletions and seven declines. In fact, if you want to plug his result into a probability test, you will find that p=0.0152; in other words, there is a merely 1.5% chance that the difference between his 4 deletions and the desired 0 was the result of random chance, so his result was, in fact, statistically significant (arguably his sample size wasn't large enough, but probabability calculations account for this, so the results are strong enough for our purposes). —Compassionate727 (T·C) 01:56, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
For the record, in case this came off weird, I'm not faulting you for not doing a probabality test. It wasn't even going to be part of my point, but then I became curious. I hope you didn't misintepret it as me expectating that random users know somewhat technical statistics calculations, because that wasn't what I meant to communicate at all. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 02:03, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You can't generalize statements about small sample sizes, particularly over a short time frame, and without any control group to compare it to. Any number of random outliers (like, say, how three of those deletes are from the notoriously trigger-happy RHaworth, courtesy ping) could wonk your statistics one way or the other, making them inapplicable to the general population of administrators. (What if anyone else but RHaworth had been at CSD at that moment?)
I'm by no means a stats expert, but I know that mere probability isn't enough to assure confidence in the results. Assuming there are, let's say, 100 G13's in a day (quick guess from looking at the deletion log), a sample size calculator tells you that you need a sample size of at least 80 to get a confidence level of even 95% in such an experiment. The result of a bad-faith experiment on 7 random drafts tells us nothing. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:16, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
The test tagging was done in several installments over a one-month period. But there definitely is a bias: six of the seven taggings were done within two hours of 12:00 UTC. And yes, one admin is dispropotionately represented in the results, but that's only because they're responsible for a huge proportion of all speedy deletions. And that's beside the point: we aren't interested in generalisations about what admins do, but about what happens to drafts. – Uanfala (talk) 21:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
You're right; we can't generalize statements about small sample sizes, and I'm half-assing the science and math here anyway. For example, there is indeed no control group here: in fact, there are no groups at all, because this is an observational study, not a correlational study or a survey. I plugged in 7 declines for my second group, because all I really want to know is how likely it is that the difference between what we did see (4/7 deleted) and what we would expect to see (0/7 deleted) was the result of chance. But neither of us knows enough about this to argue with certainty whether the above results were halfway useful or not at all, so I'll just drop it.
To answer the more concrete questions, I do personally suspect that had this experiment been performed over a longer interval, we would have seen similar enough results. For example, RHaworth performs such a large portion of all speedy deletions that he would factor heavily regardless. And if he hadn't been there? I can't saying too certainly, not being familiar enough with many specific admins' behavior to call them out on it, but I know for example that Fastily has at times used the nuke extension to delete every page I've tagged for U5 simultaneously (something I have no reason to believe he wouldn't do at G13, a less ambiguous criteria). Between various admins' greater or lesser attentiveness, I'd expect we'd see it all level out at some point, with similar enough results.
Similar needs quantification, of course, which is not something I'm comfortable doing. But we got that 50% of G13 deletions would be erroneous. Suppose our confidence interval is an absolutely gross ±25%. Isn't the minimum value of 25% still sufficient to say that admins aren't paying enough attention to G13s? That's really the point I was trying to make above with the t test. If we take our 2% chance of randomness and assume it to actually be ridiculously larger than that, I think we still find ourselves within a range that is not acceptable. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 02:51, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
Moreover, seeing as the four deletes were done by two of the three who declined, there's not one thing that can be learned from this NEWTiness. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:55, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Seeing the writing on the wall.... Now that {{Promising draft}} will not prevent G13, hopefully its use will become less controversial and there will be less grief over "incorrect" taggings. Perhaps a button could be added to WP:AFCH to check whether a draft appears promising or not when declining. That way, interested editors could seek out those drafts that are promising and mentor writers as appropriate. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:37, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Example of the Postpone G13 functionality already in AFCH
There is. It's called {{AfC postpone G13}} and has over 500 transclusions. Perhaps instead of trying to create non-policy walled gardens you could ask if something had been tried before and use things that already work. Oh wait I gave you this advice at the outset of the Promising drafts template. AFCH requests are that-away, if it weren't already existing. Hasteur (talk) 01:07, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
That doesn't work, because worthwhile drafts (even postponed ones) frequently get deleted under G13. See e.g. previously deleted Draft:María Vallet-Regí, Draft:Nomoli statues, Draft:Priming effect, Draft:William Healy. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:47, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
I know 100% of my G13s are off bot generated lists and hand checked by me for usefulness. Yes there are over 100 pages a day up for G13 as Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions has 4300 pages over 30 days generally and that does not include unsubmitted abandoned Drafts not AfC tagged. Trying to fool Admins is bad faith. Legacypac (talk) 02:29, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

One of the declined G13s was not only a too soon G13 but an obvious G11 that does not deserve Refund "songs that are great example of his uncommon lyrical prowess, as well as his ability to turn a beat into a massive explosion of heavy grooves and infectious melodies. this skilled wordsmith is only 18 years old, but he knows a thing or two about creating dope rhymes, and he's year to kill it, one verse at a time. Passion is the first element in his mix of genuine lyrics and powerful beats, and listeners will certainly notice from the get go. Don't miss his releases, King at Work an explosive single, as well as a brand new album he dropped with MC-SEVEN-E, a fellow talented artist who is growing in the local music scene and beyond." and that's just a sample. Why did the three reviewers not CSD this garbage instead of declining it? Legacypac (talk) 02:54, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Probably because the first thing they did was check the date of the last edit, discover it was too soon and decline it, without ever actually reading the draft (because they never needed to). It is reasonable to assume that nominators will apply all reasonable criteria to a page they are nominating. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 02:57, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

information Administrator note If there is stil an appetite for discussing the broader issues involved, please open a new thread not related to this “experiment.” Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:53, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1: of 18:47, 5 June 2018 (UTC) Ok, you want to play that game... AfC postpones G13 6 months (per the strict interpertation of the rule). It never permanently immunizes against G13. Draft:María Vallet-Regí was postponed twice buying it from September 4th 2012 through August 8th 2015 with an IP editor that only ever edited on one day. Are you saying that DGG's efforts over 1.5 years were improvements? With Draft:Nomoli statues I see a Postponement by DGG again, a G13 nomination in August 2015 (which was turned down by DGG), a G13 nomination by 1989 what was sustained, and lo and behold your name again restoring it from the grave. Draft:Priming effect: Postponsed in January 2014, G13ed in 2017, and resurrected by you. Draft:William Healy: Postponsed in December of 2013, Nominated for deletion in July of 2015, Postponed for deletion in August of 2016, Nominated for deletion and sustained in April 2017, and resurrected by you. Frankly I'm now seeing a pattern. Your personal views substituting for the community endorsed policy and practice. Resurrecting Drafts that have been deleted for nearly a year because you see hope in them. This only furthers my belief that you need to hand in your administrator bits as your judgement is so impaired that you have lost the community's confidence. Hasteur (talk) 01:03, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
For the last few years, I have normally been concentrating at AfC on drafts in my area (academic biographies , and history); those which I think adequate I have accepted, and essentially none have ever been deleted at AfD. Those where I think the people or other subjects are notable, but the evidence inadequate to unambiguously meet WP:PROf or other criteria, I have usually upgraded and accepted if I could immediately do so, and almost all of these too have never been deleted at AfD. Those I think notable, but do not have immediately the time or facilities to demonstate it unequivocally, I have normally deferred--and I have a long list of those I intend to work on; some I have not caught in time, and those I have tried to keep a list of, with the intent of restoring and upgrading them. More recently, I have been forced by the priority of removing promotionalism to work less on these than I would like, but each time they come up for the 6-month AfD review, I try to upgrade a few into articles, and defer the others again. I have a very long term horizon here, and there are many articles or possible articles I have worked on at intervals over 5 or 10 years. One of the things I liked best about WP when I came here, is the principle that there is no time limit. I intend to continue to work in this fashion--if it becomes impossible to do it on wiki I will do it off-wiki, but I prefer to work on wiki, because sometimes someone sees one of my deferred drafts and upgrades it themselves, just as I do those that have been deferred or previously declined by others. This is a cooperative project, and we should be trying to help each other, not interfere with each other.
The only test for a borderline article is to put it into mainspace and see what the community things at AfD. No reviewer at AfC should try to exercise the power to decide on borderline notability. I have sometimes accepted drafts I am not sure of, and immediately sent them to AfD for a decision. The role of a reviewer at AfC is not act to keep articles out of WP, but to decide which ones might be considered notable , and let the community decide. I may have been declining too many, & it may even look like desire to keep my acceptance rate at AfD immaculate However, my reason is that in some cases I think that if I keep it at AfC I am the most likely person to be able to fix it, whereas if I send it to AfD I might not have time to do so. This will always be a balance. I don't see how anyone at all familiar with the idiosyncrasies of AfD could think there is any sure way to do this, or any one right path to follow.
Calliopejen1 is doing exactly as they ought to. It is those who try to interfere with rescuing articles who need to rethink their position. DGG ( talk ) 07:46, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Advice for insulating your Draft from all deletion

Nope.All draft-creator(s) are forbidden from slapping the template, on their own draft and the template has been accordingly removed.~ Winged BladesGodric 04:57, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

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.

[11] just make this your opening edit. Legacypac (talk) 23:08, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

The promising draft cannot be applied by the article creator. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:08, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
There is little about this template that makes sense to me. Natureium (talk) 23:11, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Well it WAS applied during edit #1 and according to the "rules" neither you nor I or anyone else can take it off the page now. Legacypac (talk) 23:15, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
To quote the close of the last RfC on the topic (which is I guess what you mean by "the rules"), Editors should not remove this tag unless they placed it themselves or the page creator placed it. – Uanfala (talk) 23:20, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Shouldn't G13 (stale draft deletion) be a PROD-like process?

Just throwing my thoughts onto the already well-heaped pile in case anyone thinks this is a proposal worth discussing -- I think G13 should be a PROD-like process, and not a CSD one. In short: abandoned drafts (the current 6+ months seems reasonable) can be tagged as "proposed for deletion", if nobody edits or objects after a week, it can be deleted without MFD (and restored at WP:REFUND as usual). If anybody objects (by editing, by removing the PROD, by tagging as "promising", etc.), the discussion-less deletion can no longer happen because such a deletion would obviously not be uncontroversial, and thus discussion (MFD) needs to take place. Fundamentally it does not change much, but PROD is a fairly familiar concept for Wikipedians and framing draft-discussionless-deletion as a PROD-like process might help users understand and navigate through it. Any objections in any form to the deletion of a draft means its deletion is not uncontroversial and must be discussed. MFD isn't that busy, especially nowadays. Most of the old old old draft crud has been purged already. Just my 2¢. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 18:36, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure this is necessary, but I would happily support it as a second option / compromise option. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 19:08, 6 June 2018 (UTC) Struck per discussion below - this is unlikely to help. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 21:19, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
This is effectively what the {{promising draft}} template was trying to achieve, except without an interested editor needing to notice the article in the precise seven-day period (or whatever) it might be up for prodding. It's a preemptive objection to a prod (or CSD). To be honest, I don't understand how the opposition to {{promising draft}} coexists with the support for {{prod}}. If calling it "prod" would get people to come around, I would support. But {{promising draft}} is a better solution than prod for the reason I explained. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:39, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Firefly: Why do you support prod and oppose promising-draft? Genuinely curious. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:40, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Calliopejen1: It's the pre-emptive objection that I'm not comfortable with. I fear it would lead to editors drive-by 'shielding' drafts from deletion without any real intention of working on them themselves. There's also no defined 'scrutiny flow' to coin a phrase for drafts - they could sit there indefinitely. Whereas with G13-PROD, they would be automatically PROD'ed after six months of inactivity, if someone objects then they go to MfD, if nobody objects then they get deleted. Either way, something happens with them. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 20:38, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Firefly: I'm not sure I entirely follow... A user who removes a prod template need not commit to working on an article. Why should a G13-prod remover be any different? By the way, we're talking about a few hundred {{promising draft}} templates applied in the history of the template existing, to give you a sense of the scale of the tagging. Right now I believe fewer than 100 drafts are tagged. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Calliopejen1: I understand that the scale of the tagging is currently limited, but we should consider the potential future implications if the tag could permanently prevent summary deletion, as in the proposal above. To be honest, it's the second concern that is more important to me - the fact that with a "6 months pass unedited > PROD > MfD if contested / delete after 7 days otherwise" process there is a defined flow for stale drafts, rather than having them sit around indefinitely. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 20:52, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Firefly: What happens in your view if the MFD result is keep? Wouldn't that also result in the indefinite retention of the draft? Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Calliopejen1: Absolutely, but following a full deletion discussion. That is entirely different to indefinite retention based on one editor's opinion. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 21:07, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Firefly: Except removal of the prod doesn't automatically result in a deletion discussion... (Someone needs to nominate.) And in practice people are deliberately nominating {{Promising draft}} articles for deletion. So I think we end up at exactly the same place but with a different template scheme... (I don't think anyone proposes that {{promising draft}} should permanently immunize an article from any deletion--just that it permanently immunizes it from deletion without a discussion.) Anyways, no need to respond if you don't want to. Thanks for talking this through. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Calliopejen1: Hmm... ideally the MfD nomination would be automatic upon the PROD being declined, but I'm not sure how we could implement that. I hadn't considered that fully, and therefore am striking my support for this idea. I think the original G13-after-six-months is probably the way to go to ensure stale drafts don't sit around forever, with REFUND as a backstop (which needs some work to make it more user-friendly, but that's out of scope for here). ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 21:19, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Why? AfD is not automatic after a contested PROD. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 21:28, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
The idea of a stale draft PROD came up before G13 mooted the whole thing. While I prefer {{Promising draft}} per Calliopejen1, I support stale draft PROD and think it is a great compromise idea. How far we have come from the times when this debate centered around whether staleness alone was a legitimate reason to delete drafts at all!! Now we are debating whether such deletions are open to any objection. *sigh* A2soup (talk) 19:49, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
I see promising draft tagged pages as a pool to either promote, redirect or send to MfD if they are not really promising. So if you tag a page as promising, but it's not, expect a fast track to MFD because G13 is not going to sweep it up anyway. Tag too many incorrectly as "promising" amd expect a trip to AN for a topic ban. Legacypac (talk) 21:34, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Tagged promising drafts, whether left in draftspace, or moved to a WikiProject, is indeed a pool of pages likely to need promotion or redirection. If they need MfD-ing, that is a sign of injudicious identification of drafts. I think ANI is premature and overkill for talking to someone about injudicious taggings, posting at WT:AfC or WT:Drafts would be better, with ANI as the last resort. An injudicious tagging should be able to be remedied by removal of the tag with notification to the tagger. MfD is for actual disputes, not mistakes. Personally, I would trust Legacypac to review the pool to identify for mainspace, redirection, or cases of injudicious taggings. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:41, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
One positive effect of my side losing this discussion is that hopefully application of the {{promising draft}} tag should become less contentious. Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:05, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
HELL NO This is just the root question Should G13 be restored to stating: "Redirects and pages tagged with {{promising draft}} are excluded from G13 deletion."? masquerading as annother process. "Should G13 be treated like PROD" only re-casts the "You can only G13 ever" meaning we will have reams and reams of pages that were G13ed, Refunded, and now consigned to either sit in Draftspace limbo in perpituity or spam up MFD with dicusssions that will have a backlash authorizing a Super-Delete that can be used at will. CSD is not defined by uncontraversial, it's defined by uncontestable. In G13's case the rule is designed to address pages in AFC or Draft space that have not been edited in 6 months. Either it has or it hasn't. Hasteur (talk) 22:24, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
No, as so few people watch individual drafts, the g13 would make many disappear without the writer noticing. A lot of crud would go, but so would potential good pages. Perhaps a G13 applied after 6 months of inactivity could have a 1 week timeout, to give rescuers or the writer a chance to respond. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
The bot already notifies the creator a month out and the CSD tells them about a pending deletion and a refund. System works. Stop trying to change the system for the odd useful page that might be deleted. There are countless more worthy topics that need attention in mainspace, or help newbies with their AfC drafts Legacypac (talk) 22:55, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
(Assuming we keep the CSD system without promising-draft exception) I don't think a time-out is needed. All we need is for Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions to be a more useful category. Let's break it down by day like PROD. It's impossible to see what is imminent peril. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:23, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Calliopejen1, that category is sorted by timestamp, but on a daily basis rather than by seconds. Primefac (talk) 15:42, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
@Primefac:, I just clicked some entries in descending order at random, and they do not seem to be sorted by last edit. Here is the sequence: 1/5/18, 1/1/18, 12/10/17, 12/31/17, 12/14/17, 12/27/17, 12/30/17, 12/7/17, 12/13/17, 12/17/17. Am I missing something? Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:29, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, read the wrong cat sort. They're sorted by month submitted, and then alphabetically. I suppose we could sort by submit date. Primefac (talk) 17:31, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
@Primefac: Do you know if would be technically feasible to sort by last-edited date? Submit date isn't really that useful because it is only very loosely correlated with when the article is at risk for deletion. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:36, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
That's already how it sorts; the cat dependency is based on {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}}, which goes off the last edit. Primefac (talk) 00:20, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
@Primefac: But then why is the ordering so wonky? That series of links I posted above (dates reflect last edit date) were in the category in that order. Do you know what might be going on? Or who should I ask if not? Calliopejen1 (talk) 05:48, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
The ordering is "wonky" because while, as Primefac says, the sortkey is based on REVISIONTIMESTAMP, it's only based on the month, as he says earlier. (If I'm reading it right, the sort key is actually the last two digits of the year added numerically to the month number; so either the sortkey or my reading is very, very wrong.) Seems to me simplifying it to just {{{revisionts|{{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}}}}} would do the trick. —Cryptic 06:27, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
@Cryptic: Ah, got it. I was confused because Primefac said "month submitted" above. Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:29, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
@Cryptic: Where should that revision be made? It would make the category 1000x more useful. Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:30, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
The sortkey I'm looking at is buried in {{AFC submission/draft}}. ... I'm afraid to touch it. I haven't done anything more complex with templates than remove links to deleted articles in more than ten years. Proceed with caution, and don't assume I'm anything resembling competent here. —Cryptic 06:35, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
Okay, I still don't really understand because I'm far from a template master myself. Left a comment at Template talk:AFC submission. Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:45, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
 Done. Primefac (talk) 12:49, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
You are confused. There is no "promisimg draft exception". That was rejected by concensus after the first batch of randomly tagged pages were run through MfD and deleted. Don't confuse a "request" with a "requirement" Legacypac (talk) 00:23, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
The bot's not notifying anybody. —Cryptic 23:30, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Good reason for that Hasteur (talk) 23:40, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
@Cryptic: Indeed, see my post of 21:40, 3 June 2018 (UTC) on this page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:39, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
I've deleted 2468 pages citing G13 in the deletion summary; 105 have been restored afterward, but hardly any (on the order of a dozen) were edited after that other than minor gnomish formatting tweaks. Exactly 6 of those titles are currently bluelinks: one's in mainspace, one survived an MFD nomination and has been edited subsequently, and the other four are still on track to be deleted again six months after their undeletion. Maybe two or three others have been moved into mainspace and their redirects from Draft: deleted (those are harder to query for). So if my experience with G13 has been anything like typical, the overwhelming majority - more than 90% - of drafts that would be deprodded under this scheme would never be touched again.
Graeme, as long as you're commenting here anyway - you undelete a significant chunk of the G13s requested at WP:REFUND. Do you watchlist them afterward? Any guesses at how many get worked on afterward, even minimally? —Cryptic 23:30, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Well I don't normally watchlist, as my watchlist is already too big just from things I have written. So I will have a look at my undelete log and see some idea. When I looked about a year ago it was about 50% got some action. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:03, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
For restores from the first half of May:3 turned into articles, 15 were edited, 22 not edited, 2 only were deleted again. So a bit over half are ignored totally. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:21, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
I see it a little differently: almost half were actually worked on. I consider that a very satisfactorily high proportion. DGG ( talk ) 07:47, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
These are drafts that someone went to the effort to ask to be undeleted, so I would have expected a higher percentage. Natureium (talk) 17:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
  • There's a key advantage of stale draft prod, if it is used to put the drafts in a visible list that the whole community can look at, just as regular prod. This will encourage other people than the original contributor to possibly work on the articles, and will also give the community a clearer view of where the problem areas are. I've always considered the worst defect of the AfC system is that it essentially isolates the material from other editors, and thus fails to take advantage of one of the key virtues of WP, the size & diversity of the editing community. It will at least help to deal with the defect that someone who might want to resurrect a G13 deletion other than the original editor will never have a chance to find it. Thinking about this, I consider it a very promising suggestion , and we need to consider more carefully its merits. DGG ( talk ) 08:00, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
  • It ought to have been "draft-prod" from the beginning, really. It already functions as one, being the only CSD criteria that is automatically WP:REFUNDed on request and the only one that the creator of a page can block (by editing the draft). And per WP:CSD, speedy deletion is reserved for "the most obvious cases [...] with no practical chance of surviving discussion". I don't think most G13'd drafts actually fit that basic criteria. – Joe (talk) 11:18, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The trouble I see is the difference between the ideal that article tags are intact promising, and the reality. If editors had to give a valid reason for adding a Promising draft tag I probably wouldn't oppose, as long as others could challenge the reason. However at the moment if a "Promising draft" is still un-edited after 6 months, either the reason was obscure and should have been cited to help it progress, or its just been put on because someone just likes the subject, or miss judges its promise. One editor being able to tag with no reason should not give immunity. Six months is a long time for no one to edit at all even though it's flagged up in Category:Promising draft articles. However maybe a compromise would be it gets extended to 12 months, and if not one of the editors that care so passionately about promising drafts can manage a single edit then it's really isn't very promising. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 14:48, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose because there's no point in waiting a week when they've already been abandoned for a full 6 months. Adding another step to the process is unnecessary. It's not someone's eager article they are working on and will be devastated by deletion. Natureium (talk) 17:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose we have G13 soon cat already with 4300 pages to be deleted in the next 30 days. That is like a PROD. Advertise it better if you want. @Joe "the most obvious cases [...] with no practical chance of surviving discussion" perfectly discribes 99% of the pages deleted G13. They either are half baked, exist, are Copyvio, non-notable, spam, or are otherwise useless. I can easily tag 1/3 of the G13 eligible pages under another CSD without even looking for copyvio since so many are G2, G11, and even some attack pages. No one wants 4300 pages a month run through MfD hence why we have G13. Legacypac (talk) 17:36, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Like others above me, I think a draft should continue to be eligible for G13 even after the {{db-g13}} tag is removed; it'll simply be eligible again in another six months if absolutely no work is done in the intervening time. When I first read this section header, however, I thought it would be a different proposal. I might be sympathetic to implementing a grace period between tagging with {{db-g13}} and deletion. If a user thinks they can improve the draft, then they need only to remove the {{db-g13}} in the grace period, and the draft will be eligible again in six months if it is abandoned again. This isn't entirely unprecedented; WP:F4, WP:F5, and WP:F6 all provide seven-day grace periods between tagging and deletion. This might appease the editors who think stale drafts are getting deleted too quickly. Mz7 (talk) 04:32, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
    • Ah, just scrolled up and realized this was already thrown out there by Graeme Bartlett above. Turns out, a bot already notifies (or notified, before the bot operator retired :P) the page creators a month before their drafts are to be deleted, and all these soon-to-be-eligible are sorted in a category that interested editors can review: Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions. The grace period is probably unneeded, then, I suppose, since it is already redundant to current practice. Mz7 (talk) 04:43, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
  • @Primefac, Legacypac, and Cryptic: Does Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions also include pages that aren't tagged for AfC but are in danger of G13 deletion? I don't think it does. If it doesn't, there needs to be some way for those pages to be monitored. We have Wikipedia:Database reports/Stale drafts but this is only for pages that already qualify for deletion. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:19, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
    No, because they're not in the AfC process. You could always ask MusikAnimal to create one though. Primefac (talk) 15:30, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
    All drafts will soon be included in Special:NewPagesFeed (as part of the 2018 AfC improvements), which will help with this. — MusikAnimal talk 16:39, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
    @MusikAnimal: How will that help? I don't think NPPers are going to unilaterally move drafts to mainspace (particularly at the beginning where they are actively being developed) so promising drafts are still likely to be forgotten about and deleted after 6 months. Unless I'm missing something? Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:47, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
    These changes are meant to be for the benefit of AfC reviewers, too (or anyone, for that matter). Having drafts in Special:NewPagesFeed means you get sorting by creation date, filter by review state (unsubmitted, in your case), and so forth. The plan also includes incorporating ORES scores, so you'll be able to sort by draft quality and assessment prediction. This should allow you to easily find likely promising drafts (according the ORES models). User:SQL/AFC-Ores gives you a small taste of this feature. That list is just for AfC submissions though, I think. — MusikAnimal talk 18:34, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Leave {{promisisng draft}} in place but allow challenge

It seems to me that the issue with {{promising draft}} is that some editors don't like the idea that it is permanent. They have a point, but I don't think the template should be removed altogether. It should be left in place to alert the closing admin that an editor thinks the draft has potential. Instead, I propose that a system is constructed that allows the template to be challenged by adding a new field to it. A rationale should be required. An acceptable rationale is that the article would be eligible under some CSD criterion if it were in mainspace. If the page is not eligible for CSD, then we really shouldn't be deleting it, or at least, it should go to MFD for a discussion. SpinningSpark 16:17, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd be fine with this. I think that the template should force some amount of actual thought about the draft, and not just an autotagging after x months followed by an admin coming along and autodeleting it because it hasn't been touched in x months. Tazerdadog (talk) 09:09, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
I think it should be considered the same as a PROD tag. Anyone can add it, but anyone can remove it and it can't be added back. If you feel that strongly that it should be saved from deletion, improve it.Natureium (talk) 15:33, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
No. The whole basis of PROD (and all deletion processes here) is that we default to keep if there is no consensus. A challenged G13 should be treated like a challenged PROD and force a deletion discussion. It is against the principles of collegial discussion and consensus to delete out of hand when opposed without testing consensus, and hence against the five pillars. What I am saying here is that G13 should override that if there is a CSD that would apply in mainspace, and editors should have a system of so marking an article. In any case, it is indefensible to hide from the reviewing admin the fact that the G13 has been challenged by removing the template that says it has been challenged, regardless of whatever criteria are put in place for a valid G13. SpinningSpark 18:11, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
This. On Wikipedia, disputes are resolved by discussion. A contested prod forces an AFD discussion to proceed with the deletion. A contested G13 should result in an MfD unless the draft has problems so severe that it would get speedied. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:50, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
A contested PROD forces nothing, except in a negative way: it prohibits a subsequent PROD. A follow-up AFD is not mandatory. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:19, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
It forces AFD if you want to delete the article. The analogy for drafts is that if two people disagree on whether a draft is promising, the one who thinks it isn't can drop the matter instead of going to MfD. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:14, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
If you want to delete the page, and there is a suitable CSD criterion, you can use that: you are not forced to AFD. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:46, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
I strongly support this proposal and think it is better than the status quo. It balances concerns about abuse of the template against the need for discussion where at least one editor has indicated that a draft should not be deleted. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:22, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Good idea, certainly better than completely abolishing a primary method of preserving good content. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 20:51, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

With some digging for diffs I can assemble a good case that Calliopejen1 has abusively used this template indiscriminately since the tag was created. Another batch of badly tagged "promising drafts" were just deleted via MfD, and that was just the latest. It's time that Calliopejen1 stop pushing every angle to give their oft misguided opinion tag ANY special status or I will become modivated to show they need a topic ban from the tag and/or the tag is used so indiscriminately generally it should be deleted completely. Legacypac (talk) 18:36, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you consider "abusive" but I take the same approach to adding {{promising draft}} as I do to removing prod. Even if it is ultimately deleted, that does not mean that the addition of {{promising draft}} (or the removal of {{prod}}) is abusive. The tag merely indicates that a user thinks the deletion merits discussion. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:43, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
While you are welcome to do so, this is not the place to do it. Comments on the substance of the proposal are welcome, but comments about specific editors are not really germane here. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:50, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Contining round after round of effort to make this tag into anything more than an opinion is disruptive. Please stop. Legacypac (talk) 19:06, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Fictional characters and A7

Forgive me if this has been raised before, but I occasionally come across fictional characters tagged as A7. Fictional characters are not mentioned among the various kinds of things that may be deleted per A7, but it is not specifically excluded like creative works or schools, either. Therefore, I assume - unless it is a web-based character - it is not eligible. Do other admins agree?--Bbb23 (talk) 15:26, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

If it's not explicitly allowed in A7, it's not part of it. Fictional characters are not because in 99% of cases the right way to handle non-notable fictional characters is to just redirect or merge to the work of fiction or a list of fictional characters from this work of fiction per WP:ATD and for th 1% that's left, PROD can handle it. Regards SoWhy 18:31, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
And, to complete the reasoning: Works of fiction themselves are not included in A7 because it is not possible for an admin to tell if it is likely to be notable without really checking--there are many naive articles on notable or even very notable works that do not show the notability. Wider exposure is needed, but Prod is often sufficient. DGG ( talk ) 14:38, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Section in CSD template to explain reasoning

It would be helpful to have a spot in the CSD template to quickly explain the reasoning without having to create a talk page. What would it take to make this happen? Natureium (talk) 20:46, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

{{db|Your reason here}}. —Cryptic 21:06, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
That's how I got crazy things like Nāstika_philosophy. Natureium (talk) 21:11, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
If the {{db}} template is used directly, you should always specify which CSD criterion you are claiming; but since every accepted criterion has a matching template (e.g. for WP:CSD#G1, use {{db-g1}}), it should never be necessary to use {{db}}. Several of these templates provide a parameter by which you can amplify the request - for instance, {{db-a10}} (mentioned below) has the |article= parameter. In short: if there isn't a criterion-specific template for it, it's probably not speedy-deletable.
@Natureium: In the case of Nāstika philosophy, you didn't use {{db}} - you used {{speedy deletion-duplicate article|article=Āstika and nāstika, copy-pasted from this article without adding anything}} and that template is merely a redirect to {{db-a10}} so you could have saved some typing with {{db-a10|article=Āstika and nāstika, copy-pasted from this article without adding anything}} or even {{db-a10|article=Āstika and nāstika}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:07, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
You're both missing the point, albeit in different ways. The right thing to do here is {{db|A10 - copy-pasted from Āstika and nāstika without adding anything}}. The criterion-specific speedy deletion templates, with a few exceptions, don't allow adding explanatory text. Shoehorning that into an article= parameter makes things harder for the reviewing admin, since he can't just click on Āstika and nāstika, copy-pasted from this article without adding anything to verify, and it produces an incorrect default deletion summary if he doesn't bother to correct it - as actually happened here. (Though in this case I don't think the added explanation was strictly necessary.) —Cryptic 09:19, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
I didn't type it, I used either twinkle or the NPP curation tool (I don't remember which). I rarely add an explanation when CSD tagging, so that method is usually the quickest way. It seems that the only way to add an explanation this would be to use the non-specific db tag, which puts it in the Category:Candidates for speedy deletion for unspecified reason (I don't know if that even matters). Now that I know this, I can do that, but how difficult would it be to edit the template to be able to put {{db-a10|Āstika and nāstika|copy-pasted from this article without adding anything}} and give an explanation that shows up on the template but doesn't mess with the linking function or show up in the log? Natureium (talk) 14:29, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
Trivial code change, but it would require updating all of the various db templates. Of course, adding in a new parameter wouldn't affect TW or Page Curation Tool so you'd have to file a request to have them updated as well. Primefac (talk) 17:13, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
So to circle back to my original question, what do I need to do to make this happen? Natureium (talk) 19:50, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

"Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases". If you have to explain why something is eligible for speedy deletion, it probably shouldn't be speedy deleted. – Joe (talk) 20:03, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

There are many cases when it's pretty obvious, but requires looking at more than one page. I don't know if an admin is going to go looking around before declining a speedy. For a recent example, it's clear when the creator has created a series of articles by pulling one sentence out of a short article and turning it into a new article without attribution, expanding it, or anything else, that the new article should just be a paragraph in the original article, but if I turn it into a (not really necessary) redirect the creator reverts it. Technically, it's not a duplication of the old article because it's on a slightly different topic, but it fits neatly within the old short article. With no explanation, sometimes these articles are deleted and sometimes declined, but with a one-sentence explanation, I don't remember ever having a speedy declined. Natureium (talk) 20:19, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
More context: There are already 2 articles on a topic (Altogen Biosystems and Altogen Labs CRO, both happen to be at AfD right now (2 separate AfDs for some reason). Someone just created a third version at Altogen Labs. I can't put both of the original articles in the box for A10. This is probably because it's assumed that there will be only one article on a topic, but that's not always the case because people do dumb things. Natureium (talk) 00:00, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Speedy deletion clarifications

It has long been my understanding that pages should not be speedily deleted if any of the following apply, even if they otherwise meet the letter of a criterion:

  1. Currently being discussed at an XfD, and that discussion includes good-faith objections to (speedy) deletion
  2. The page was previously nominated for speedy deletion but not deleted due to good faith objection (and there has not been a very significant change in circumstances in between)

However, when I called an admin on this (after they speedy deleted a page where both applied) they shut down the discussion citing my "fundamental lack of understanding" about deletion policy, so I wish to clarify the matter. I will not tag the admin or the page in question as I do not want this discussion to be about the specifics of either, but about the general interpretation of policy (I will note though that there were no BLP or copyright issues involved). Thryduulf (talk) 08:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

  • I agree, except that #2 doesn't apply to G13, and G12 will suddenly apply upon discovery. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:55, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Several criteria will suddenly apply upon discovery; the example I was about to use was G5. But what I think Thryduulf was getting at was "good-faith objections to that particular speedy deletion criterion". For my part, I'd also strengthen both from "good-faith objections" to "good-faith objections from users at least minimally familiar with Wikipedia" - that a typical high school student or local business owner thinks his unsourced autobiography/article-about-his-sole-proprietorship/etc shouldn't be speedy deleted doesn't mean he's acting in bad faith. Gripping hand, trying to make or clarify policy while you have a specific example in mind, without disclosing that example, rarely ends well. —Cryptic 09:04, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
    • I would say that G5 would not apply if there was a current XfD about the page with opinions other than delete or it had been declined on that ground previously; G12 shouldn't apply if the copyright status is being discussed somewhere currently or it had previously been determined not to be a copyvio (I recall one case where an apprent copyvio was speedy deleted only to be undeleted when it was pointed out that the source plagiarised Wikipedia not vice versa) and I can't imagine a case where G13 would be appropriate if the draft was currently at MFD or was currently referenced as a possible replacement for an existing article being discussed. But generally speaking, I did mean a good-faith opinion from someone not connected with the article.
      The instance that prompted this was a U2 case - a draft had been moved from a user subpage to a user: page of a non-existent article, 6 months later the page was tagged as U2 - that was declined and the page moved to mainspace (and then merged into an existing article by a third party). The redirect created by the latter move was brought to RfD. I expressed an opinion that it should not be speedily deleted so as to allow the author more time to become aware of the discussion. Despite the explicit objection, previously declined U2, and no other comments in the RfD, it was unilaterally speedily deleted who became aware of the page through the RfD listing. Thryduulf (talk) 16:27, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
  • For the record, the page in question is User:Camden Highline. It meets WP:U2, and I told Thryduulf as such. There is no user named "Camden Highline", there has never been a user with this name, nor was it redirected to a user with a similar name. I told Thyduulf that if he wished, he may bring the matter for review at WP:DRV, but it seems he would rather wiki-lawyer here. It appears he has an objection with the criterion itself, which he may wish to propose to change, but I maintain that my speedy deletion was unambiguously correct since U2 is not a subjective crtierion and does not contain any exceptions for incorrectly moved drafts. -- Tavix (talk) 16:55, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
    • My point here is not wikilawyering, but rather to confirm (or otherwise) my long-standing understanding that all speedy deletion criterion are applicable only when there are no good faith objections to them from those unconnected with the page. I've applied this in the decade and a bit I've been an admin, and this is the first time I can recall anyone having an alternative interpretation. Thryduulf (talk) 20:36, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
      • So if I don't like a certain criterion, I can simply object to a speedy deletion in good-faith every time it comes up for deletion, and de facto deprecate that criterion and/or add an exception to it, like what you're doing with U2 and incorrectly moved drafts? -- Tavix (talk) 21:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
        • No. If you are objecting because you don't like the criteria then that is not a good-faith objection to the speedy deletion of the given page. I am not disagreeing with U2 as a criterion, I am not disagreeing that redirects resulting from incorrectly moved drafts (as a class) should be deleted. I am objecting to the speedy deletion of this page on the grounds I explained in the RfD. However, I explicitly intended this discussion to be more general than that one page. Thryduulf (talk) 23:40, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
People may object in good faith to deletion of an article, but if it has a valid speedy deletion tag it may indeed be deleted. Admins are duty bound to check the talk pages for challenges and also check for any challenge templates, but are allowed to exercise judgment. The concern, while expressed in good faith, may be misplaced. Guy (Help!) 17:42, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I think it depends on the criterion used and the points made in the discussion. For example, WP:F5 is a very simple critrion: if the file is non-free and unused, then it should be deleted. However, if there's an FFD discussion where someone suggests that the file either isn't unfree or that the file should be used on some page, then I think that the F5 deletion should be declined. On the other hand, if no one proposes keeping the file, then I don't see anything wrong with an administrator deleting the file under F5 even if the discussion hasn't been going on for at least a week. If there already is an ongoing discussion and someone proposes doing something other than deleting the file, then there is rarely a problem with letting the discussion continue for a while. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:02, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
    • In this case there was an explicit objection to speedy deletion, a previously declined speedy deletion for the same criterion, and no urgent problem (such as a BLP issue or copyright violation). Thryduulf (talk) 20:31, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
      • In this case there was a redirect that unambiguously met a certain criterion, and was deleted using it. Another editor just so happens to not like that criterion for whatever reason, and because of that doesn't think it should have been deleted. -- Tavix (talk) 21:54, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

The point about G13 was confused. A draft that has been declined for say G11 or G12 in the past but is now abandoned absolutely can be G13 CSD'd. I've sent pages to MFD where the author pops in and agrees with the deletion so I G7 the page and the MfD closes early. If we find a page at XfD is a copyvio we can immediately delete it regardless of other votes. Various editors regularly G11 pages brought to MfD. A little common sense and some IAR is a good thing. Legacypac (talk) 21:45, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

  • Speedy deletions during MfDs are common but are cases where there is no previous or current !vote for keeping. Check the OP’s #1. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
    • @Legacypac and SmokeyJoe: Indeed, speedy deletion when there is no objection to that deletion and no previous speedy deletions have been declined is not relevant to this discussion. This is about speedy deletion pages contrary to explicit objections to (speedy) deletion. My point is that when there is a good-faith objection to (speedy) deletion (from someone who is not connected with the article), then speedy deletion is not appropriate and it should only be deleted following consensus at an XfD. Thryduulf (talk) 23:40, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
      reping @Legacypac and SmokeyJoe: due to my typo. Thryduulf (talk) 23:41, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

In this case I understand it was a userpage of a non-existent user created by a botched move. Such mistakes should be speedy deleted. Legacypac (talk) 21:19, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

  • CSD explicitly states that it is for uncontroversial deletions only. If a good faith editor raises objections, the deletion usually becomes controversial and further discussion is warranted. That does, imho, include U2 because speedy deletion is not a must. If someone makes an argument why a user page for a non-existent user should be kept, the issue should be discussed because that is the spirit of this project (AGF, CONS and whatnot). Pointing to DRV is the wrong answer because it shifts the actual discussion to a venue that is not for discussing the merit of the page but the deletion. As for the second question, see above. Once it's clear that deletion might be controversial, it should usually not happen without discussion (with the exception of clear policy violations, e.g. G12). Regards SoWhy 13:50, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
    • G6 is the only criterion that explicitly states that it is for uncontroversial deletions only. The only other times "uncontroversial" is mentioned at WP:CSD is when a page has survived its most recent deletion discussion and when mentioning WP:PROD. DRV is important because when there is disagreement over a certain deletion, that can be hashed out there. -- Tavix (talk) 14:35, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
      So your point is that the word "uncontroversial" is missing? The whole lede of the policy page is about how this type of deletion is only for the most obvious of cases and should only be used when deletion at XFD would be virtually certain. As soon as someone raises a good faith concern, both requirements no longer apply. I have been called a stickler to the written word in the past (more than once) and even I don't think the speedy deletion policy should apply to pages where deletion might be controversial, even if the word is not explicitly found in the policy. Regards SoWhy 09:37, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
      You had claimed that CSD explicitly states that it is for uncontroversial deletions only, which isn't true (you may argue that it implicitly states that, but I digress). The lede specifies that CSD are the cases that enjoy "broad consensus", but that's quite a bit different from "uncontroversial". For example, G13 has broad consensus from the community, but anybody who watches this page knows that G13 is not "uncontroversial". Since I know an editor who disagrees with G13 entirely, I should not make any further G13 deletions? That's the slippery slope I'm looking to avoid with that claim. -- Tavix (talk) 13:40, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
    You seem to be mixing up PROD and CSD. PROD is the one that's "uncontroversial" - which means that literally anyone can remove the tag for any reason. That's definitely not how we want CSD to work, right?. ansh666 09:03, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
    @Tavix: Apologies for the unclear language but my point is indeed the same. The question should instead be this: If someone objected to a specific G13 deletion for a good reason pertinent to the page in question, should you still do it?
    @Ansh666: No mixup here. CSD does state, as pointed out, that it's only for "the most obvious cases" and its intent is to avoid unnecessary discussions in cases where deletion is a foregone conclusion. If any good faith editor requests a discussion, this does no longer apply. Because if you delete a page only for the editor in question being forced to go to DRV to contest it, you failed to avoid a discussion and in fact managed to add more process than you would have had if you had just sent the page to XFD in the first place. Regards SoWhy 18:40, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Zooming out from the particular incident that brought about this discussion (which is neither typical enough nor interesting enough to warrant large-scale debating), I think we can safely say that there are two basic approaches to speedy deletion. One involves the acknowledgement that seemingly open-and-shut cases will often enough turn out to be more nuanced if looked at by more eyes, and hence there's a preference for involving the community (via XfD or PROD) whenever the very precisely specifed CSD criterion doesn't apply. The other approach sees speedy deletion as an efficient means of dealing with the open-and-shut cases, regardless of the applicability of the CSD criteria: this is essentially an invocation of IAR to save the community time and get rid of stuff that doesn't appear likely to benefit the encyclopedia. Given that admins don't normally go around deleting stuff on their own initiative, but mostly follow up on tags placed by others, the difference between the two approaches becomes visible only when editors use CSD criteria that don't apply. So in practice, it's probably less about what admins do with speedy deletion, and more about what regular editors choose to tag for speedy deletion. And, on a slightly cynical side note, I suspect that a significant factor contributing to the "correctness" of CSD deletions is the prevalence, among CSD taggers, of editors who want to be admins someday and so are striving for a "clean" CSD record. – Uanfala (talk) 23:20, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Pages are commonly speedily deleted while they are undergoing a discussion at miscellany for deletion. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 17:36, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Coming to this conversation a bit late, but here's my opinion on the matter. As mentioned, G5 and G12 can and generally should definitely happen regardless of any opposition to deletion, and I'd throw G4 (in the case of an exact repost in reader-facing space), G10, U1/G7, and, yes, U2 into the mix as well - basically the most critical and/or the most black-and-white criteria. Otherwise, it should generally be considered on a case-by-case basis, depending on the strength of the objection, but there's no obligation to not delete the page as long as the tag is reasonably valid. In the specific case that was the impetus for this thread, there's no point in maintaining a U2 pagemove redirect, since the red "A page with this title has previously been moved or deleted." box contains all the relevant information; and in any case, premise #2 doesn't even hold since the speedy was placed before the page was moved to mainspace and declined as a result of the move - which would presumably be a "very significant change in circumstances", no? ansh666 09:03, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I was going to type a long(er) response here, but Ansh666 summed up my views better than I could: there are reasons to delete in both of these circumstances. The only thing I would add is that admins should usually not use their tools to overrule the active choice of another administrator to not use theirs on the same speedy deletion criterion unless new information is available (G5/G12 this can be true). It is bad for the community to have admins actively fighting over whether policy allows them to use their tools, and while not quite wheel warring, it certainly has the same taste and creates the same type of distrust between users. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:58, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Films

When I nominated Alpha Class (2016 film) for speedy deletion (A7, G11), I was told that A7 does not apply to films. Is this correct? The article seems to me to be one of the most non-notable films ever, with all its red-linked actors and crew. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:36, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

A7 is very specific about applying to "real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content or organized event". A film is not any of these. -- Whpq (talk) 13:42, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Does that mean that there is no suitable speedy deletion category for a non-notable film? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:37, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
There are no criteria that have anything to do with notability. A7, A9 & A11 have to do with significance which is a lower bar than notability. A11 could apply if the original creator made up the film and it shows no indication of significance. G11 could also apply if the article is promoting the film. There is no criteria that relies on significance alone for films. ~ GB fan 17:45, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
@Cwmhiraeth: The WP:PROD process is still available to you. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:01, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you all for the clarification. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:21, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Unsuccessful tagging

Recently I have come across several examples of something really weird I hadn't seen before: users substing one of the speedy deletion templates (e.g. Template:db-u1), which of course you're not supposed to do, as this leads to the article not being places in the category Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. As a result, even though the users who do this (usually very new of course) think they're adding a speedy template to an article, they aren't really doing that and the page they attempted to tag for CSD can linger for over a month without being deleted or the "template" being removed. Here is one example I just noticed. Clearly a solution is needed so users who subst a speedy template will still be nominating something for deletion. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk 18:45, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Another example here. I've seen this a few times before, but not very often. Adam9007 (talk) 19:10, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Users adding {{subst:db-xx}} can probably easiest be caught be an edit filter, so I'd suggest you ask at WP:EFN. Regards SoWhy 20:03, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
I added Module:Unsubst to the CSD templates to take care of the issue. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:09, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks JJMC89. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk 03:29, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
@JJMC89: You missed {{db-web}}. Adam9007 (talk) 16:06, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
And {{db-u1}}. Adam9007 (talk) 16:37, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, Adam9007. I missed the second page in the category. Now done. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:36, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Hatnotes mention WP:CFDS twice

WP:CFDS is mentioned twice in the hatnotes.

For WP:SPEEDY: For the speedy renaming of categories, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy.

"WP:CFSD" redirects here. For the speedy renaming and merging of categories for discussion, see WP:CFDS.

What should I do? Porkchop Jr. 02:24, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

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Discussion of speedy deletion under WP:GS/Crypto at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2018 July 9#Universa Blockchain Protocol

Universa Blockchain Protocol was deleted with the speedy deletion rationale "Covert advertising. Page-level sanction under WP:GS/Crypto." The speedy deletion is being reviewed at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2018 July 9#Universa Blockchain Protocol. Cunard (talk) 04:05, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Q1. Was that a consensus to authorise speedy deletions?
Q2. If yes to Q1, shouldn't that be documented here, at WT:CSD?
--SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:35, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
  • My take, the proposers "standard discretionary sanctions for all pages related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed?" (User:MER-C 20:18, 15 May 2018). does not include page deletion, because page deletion is not a standard discretionary sanction. In that discussion, the characters "delet" occur only once, "or just delete it", by User:Smallbones, 20:49, 20 May 2018 (UTC).
So, deletions were not explicitly authorised.
However, the deletion of new pages (articles and drafts) on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, by new users, would seem to be a pretty good idea.
I therefore propose, tentatively testing the water here, a new criterion, G14 "A new page on a blockchain and cryptocurrency, broadly construed, created by new user (less than six months or less than 500 mainspace edits). Every deletion under G14 shall be recorded at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Blockchain and cryptocurrencies#Log of notifications. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:35, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Let's assume for the moment that we want to speedy delete these pages (no comment on the merits of that). We should then at least word the criterion in a generalizable way, e.g. G14 "A new page in a topic that falls under General Sanctions, created by a new user (Less than 30 days tenure or less than 500 edits), and in the deleting admins opinion would not survive an WP:AFD listing under the snowball clause. Every deletion under G14 shall be recorded (by bot?) at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Deletions. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:49, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
I agree with the wording refinement, but disagree with generalising to any and all Wikipedia:General sanctions. Many of them are not subject to new topic spamming, unlike Wikipedia:General sanctions/Blockchain and cryptocurrencies. ANI general sanctions becoming an alternative route to endless new defacto CSDs is to be considered warily. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:54, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
“Blockchain and cryptocurrency” generalization seems rather vague and non-specific to me. Let me add my two cents here (disclaimer: I am the DRV nominator for Universa Blockchain Protocol; though I do not act as a “blockchain evangelist” and advocate here, just trying to clarify some things).
First, about “Blockchain” word. It is very specific and wrongly specific for this area, I think. The word “blockchain” has been a buzzword for long, but technically it just specifies a data structure and a method of its usage. And a rather specific data structure. Many modern “what-you-intuitively-consider-a-blockchain” techs do not use it, though definitely you’d want to cover them when creating any policy of treating the risky topics. Hashgraph or DAG most likely also fall under your intuitive understanding of what you’d want to cover, but they are just different underlying techs. I’d highly suggest that the DLT term is used instead of “blockchain” here: it covers them all in the least general way. If you really want to cover the tech, rather than the risky aspect.
Second, about the cryptocurrency. The whole concept of cryptocurrencies is as vague and badly-defined as it just can be, and many argue whether something is a cryptocurrency or not; whether the custom-made tokens (made on top of, say, some smart contract platform) are cryptocurrency or not; whether some cryptocurrency/token is a security or not. The risks usually associated with ICOs/Token Sales are usually because they get promoted as some “profitable investment” (and likely, fall under a “security” according to SEC/similar organizations in other countrries), and may bring unskilled investors into spending their money without receiving an adequate financial protection of their investment.
But the reality is that the blockchain (or DLT, as I told already) and the cryptocurrency (or maybe a crypto-security) are rather orthogonal concepts. Joining them under the same title is a bit similar to a sanction imposed over “Indians and red-haired people”. While actually, the blockchain (DLT) itself is a rather inherently-safe technology, rather than a risky investment. So see what I mean, I can point you about the government attitude to “blockchain and cryptocurrencies”: many of governments give out rather noticeable warnings about the cryptocurrencies, and many times tend to dislike and disprove any cryptocurrencies; while the very same governments are rather interested in utilization of blockchain/DLT techs for their safe-storage/unfalsifiable data. A good example of this is Hyperledger (supported by IBM and similar-scale): I am aware of government-level projects made using it, and they don’t even involve any cryptocurrency creation (and there is even no any cryptocurrency under Hyperledger brand!), just storing some data. In this aspect, the blockchain acts more like a special kind of DB, rather than a “payment method”, counterintuitively.
To wrap up my rumbling: I think that bringing the sanctions/criteria over “blockchain and cryptocurrency” is error-prone. “Blockchain” by itself (and even if properly named “DLT”) is just a tech that should be taken out of the equation; “cryptocurrency” is the risky part. The risks are when a company launches up some asset and sells it to users during some “ICO”, not when the developer decides to chain the data using the cryptographic hashes. But very possible, that even the “cryptocurrency” is not the word to be hunted; some projects say they do not deliver a “coin” or a “currency”, but some “tokens”; but, as long as it is possible they are actually the security instruments (according to SEC-alike definitions), they are still in the risk area. Trying to specify the risky area as precise as possible, I’d say something like “cryptography-based security instruments”, rather than “blockchain and cryptocurrencies”.
To give an example out how much the proper wording is important here, I could mention a rather amusing fact: the project/page that has started this discussion, Universa Blockchain Protocol, is technically neither a blockchain nor a cryptocurrency (so if I wanted to get into wikilawyering, I could have argued with the word rather than the spirit; but keeping the discussion over the overall idea is more important at the moment). It is a definite DLT though; and it is arguable if its premade tokens are securities (as they are sold and marketed as utility tokens). Honeyman (talk) 18:47, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Can we do this by adding a sentence to G11 instead? Something like "Because these areas have proven problematic, administrators may apply this criterion loosely on cryptocurrency and blockchain-related articles, broadly construed" Tazerdadog (talk) 07:20, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

I also prefer using G11 as opposed to creating G14, being that the reason for the deletion is that these are spammy. Natureium (talk) 14:18, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Not that I agree with the sentiment of allowing speedy deletion as a form of sanction, but I would prefer to see something along the lines of a G14 worded like "Where approved explicitly via a community decision, speedy deletion may be used as a discretionary or general sanction." or something to that effect. It removes the specificity from this page but also requires that consensus process to extend deletion to a sanction area. If we want to list the sets of pages here where that's allowed, it wouldn't bother me, but this way at least separates the criterion from the explicit decisions themselves. (And, I mean explicit, as in, an RFC authorizing sanction for any area would need a separate question for "should we allow speedy deletion as a sanction here?" if not an entirely separate RFC.) --Izno (talk) 13:52, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Comments:

  • I've been only deleting articles which were created directly in mainspace by users with a conflict of interest, and pages in any namespace with an undisclosed conflict of interest. Failing to disclose a financial conflict of interest on the article itself while promoting securities (i.e. touting) is potentially unlawful and a grave violation of the purpose of Wikipedia. It is much more serious than garden variety covert advertising and has potential to harm Wikipedia's reputation in the same way as BLP violations do.
  • All pages I deleted under sanctions were promotional in intent. Anything else I gave the benefit of the doubt and sent to AFD. I have telegraphed that I would delete tendentiously resubmitted drafts to AFC as well.
  • The current set of sanctions is not sufficient to stem the flood of SPAs.
  • The addition to the speedy deletion criteria should be for any set of sanctions authorized explicitly to counter promotional activity. Who knows what means unethical finance brokers will employ next to separate retail investors from their money? Long-time observers will recall our problems with binary options and retail foreign exchange trading.
  • One of the articles I deleted under sanctions had extensive involvement by a retail forex broker, was always promotional, had existed for years and was abused by said company in February to promote their initial coin offering. The abuse of Wikipedia to lend legitimacy to such an outfit is absolutely disgusting. MER-C 15:58, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
  • No consensus has been obtained that GS/Crypto should authorize speedy deletions, and especially not speedy deletions that are "sticky" and exempt from DRV. This is an end-run around process. Stifle (talk) 09:27, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
  • We should not invent new criteria when G11 will do the job fine. The sanctions do not mention speedy deletion, so there is no need to make a G14 to cover it. Also DRV should be the venue to argue if the speedy delete was wrong. There is no need to invoke other procedures to bamboozle those that want the page back. I would also say that arguing with the deleting admin is also possible if there is disagreement. WP:REFUND should not be used to restore cryptocurrency related speedy deletions due to controversy over unilateral reversal. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:12, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Clarify, Speedy deletion logs should include the speedy deletion criterion being applied

  • Apparently at least one, Cryptic 15:43, 12 July 2018 [12], and if one there are probably more, who believe “There is absolutely no requirement to link to WP:CSD or any of its anchors in a speedy deletion log comment. If you accept that this was a valid G11, then "advertising" was enough. —Cryptic 15:43, 12 July 2018 (UTC)”
In other words, the admin only needs to believe there is a valid reason for deletion, there is no requirement to provide a meaningful explanation, let alone a link to the authorising policy.
Can we please clarify this matter. Is it not expected, as per normal practice, to cite the speedy deletion criteria when performing a speedy deletion? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:02, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't think there should be any requirement to link WP:CSD, or any specific anchor tag, though doing so is best practice. But as long as it is clear why the deletion occurred, we shouldn't require specific language or markup. Though per WP:ADMINACCT admins should always be prepared to explain their tool use if there are any questions. Again, as a best practice, providing as much information upfront can save you from needing to explain later. Monty845 23:33, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
  • The deletion log shows pretty much universal linking to the deletion reason. I haven’t checked every entry. Why shouldn’t it be required? At least worded with “should”. Failures to do so flags a requirement to update CSD documentation, or to talk about excursions. Examples include “BLPdelete”, it is lagging documentation here, and “WP:GS”, which is not a speedy deletion rationale at all. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:42, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
  • It is expected, and should be done. I'll stop short of "must", in deference to IAR being a thing, but as an admin, if you are deleting a page, you need to tell the non-admins who can't just look at the page and see for themselves why you are doing it. I'd go further, and say that ALL deletion summaries should link to an XfD, PROD, a speedy criterion, or IAR. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:43, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
  • There is not an exclusive speedy delete log, rather there is a deletion log. The log should be able to be used to see if it is a speedy delete or some other kind. I will agree with the use of the word "should" for linking to the reason. There will also be accidents, where the delete reason fails to be filled in by the script, and also deliberate obfuscation of the reason, where it is better not to have the true reason revealed. Log redaction is also possible to avoid having a reason disclosed. If something is accidently deleted without a reason filled in, it is probably not worth restoring and re-deleting with the reason. But the deleter should be able to explain the reason for delete on request. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:02, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Recommended, not required. Stifle (talk) 14:23, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
  • An administrator intending to delete some page under a speedy deletion criterion should indicate what that criterion is in the deletion log. That doesn't necessarily mean the deletion invalid if the deleter doesn't link to the criterion (or links to the wrong criterion, etc) but people should be doing that. Hut 8.5 20:38, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
  • The best way to deal with this is to identify any admins who consistently fail to indicate the criterion, politely ask them to start doing so on their talk page, and taking it to AN if that doesn't work. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:17, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Recommend, as some others have said, but I agree that if an admin consistently fails to explain their actions (not necessarily up front but definitely when asked) then it's a competence issue. I try to always link to CSD or a deletion discussion mostly just because if someone were to ask me about it I have a bread crumb trail to remind myself. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Per WP:ADMINACCT, "Failure to communicate – this can be either to users (e.g., lack of suitable warnings or explanations of actions) [...]" (emphasis added) may lead to sanctions and thus removal of tools, so as Guy Macon and Ivanvector point out, if an admin consistently refuses to explain their actions (which imho includes mentioning a speedy criterion if one is invoked), it should be handled on a per-admin level. Regards SoWhy 07:25, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

G1 and userspace drafts

I know that I'm "invading other people's userspace" with this proposal, but I propose anything tagged as a userspace draft be eligible for G1 deletion in the same way a draftspace draft is. The reason being to keep blatant trash out of that maintenance category and avoid the wasted effort paging through nonsense pages. Thoughts? Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 21:39, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Jjjjjjdddddd The G# Speedy criteria are applicable everywhere on Wikipedia, including userspace, so please feel free to tag such drafts if you believe they deserve it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:51, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
@Dodger67: I wish it did, but from the page: "Nor does it apply to user sandboxes or other pages in the user namespace. In short, if it is understandable, G1 does not apply".
Why bother? The most that should be done is to remove the draft tags, no need to delete the page. ansh666 22:00, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Deletion is cleaner. Page blanking is pointless. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 22:07, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
The less you mess with other people's userspace, the better. ansh666 22:30, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Ansh666 suggested removing the draft tag, not blanking. It's fine for people to experiment with sandboxes in userspace, that's what they are there for. This can include adding nonsense. If some new user doesn't understand what they are doing and tags an editing experiment as a draft then just remove the draft tag. There's no need to remove the rest of the content. Hut 8.5 06:20, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Are you talking about user's main sandboxes with a userspace tag? It is most unfortunate that this puts the sandbox into a category that others feel needs to be curated and acted on. User sandboxes should be left alone, unless there is an actual problem. A user merely testing in a sandbox is not a problem needing a solution. Deletion is counter to the notion that the sandbox is where they should test.
It would be nice, if possible, that the userspace draft templates would whether the title ends with "sandbox", and would prompt the user to choose a properly matching title if the content is a real draft of a new topic, and until that it done, the page should not be categorised as a draft.
WP:CSD#G1. Does not apply to userspace. Stop fussing with others' userspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:10, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Announce: proposed minor modification of WP:U2

See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#What to do about user pages for unroutable and public DNS IP addresses?. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:15, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

No indication of importance: Book

Can we please get the A section expanded to include books? This is the perfect example - Bear and Idiot Romance. Self-published book by random person (there are all of seven Google hits for this "book", all posted by author) that shouldn't have to go through the AfD process. We need {{Db-book}} or {{Db-writing}} to include self-published articles, essays, etc. without importance. I don't know what happened to A-8. —МандичкаYO 😜 20:05, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

This is a common proposal, see a discussion from earlier this year and a formal proposal from December 2016. The consensus seems to be that claims of significance for books are difficult to assess accurately, and the volume of deletions is not overburdening PROD/AfD. A2soup (talk) 20:21, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
This is a no-brainer - we live in a world where people self-publish millions of books, ridiculous fan fiction, and general nonsense. It's not difficult at all to assess significance for books, particularly e-books. It's no different than assessing anything else like a person or a song or a website. —МандичкаYO 😜 22:07, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
A lot of the fanfic and nonsense is probably already covered under A7's "web content" provision. To get a real discussion started, it's on you to show that the volume of deletions needed to deal with the rest is burdening PROD/AfD. Unless there's been a recent uptick that's changed the situation, it's gonna be hard to make a criterion out of something on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Common requests. A2soup (talk) 22:51, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
What if instead of being based on A7, it was based on A9? Like this (changes to the A9 wording in bold):

This applies to any article about a book, ebook, or other similar publication, where none of the contributing authors has an article and that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant (both conditions must be met). This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion does not apply to other forms of creative media, products, or any other types of articles.

Any self-published work by a non-notable author would fall under it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:18, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

We use A7 to save time with no-brainer discussions at AfD, so if you can supply me 10 AfDs on books that closed unanimously as delete without a relist in the last month, I'll think about it. Otherwise, this is a solution looking for a problem. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 23:35, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I do come across a lot of non notable books, especially print on demand and e-books and I've often wondered if these could be included in A9. It's very similar. I would support it and I'd even be prepared to start the RfC if there is sufficient pre-consensus. I think asking for '10 AfDs on books that closed unanimously as delete without a relist in the last month' is too strict. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:18, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
  • @Kudpung: Thank you. The fact of the matter is it's a waste of time even with just one AfD as ridiculous as this example. This is not the only person who has tried this to promote their personal projects (major X-wiki spam). It has nothing to do with meeting a criteria of burden for people at AfD, but of not allowing people to spam Wikipedia with clearly non-notable works, whether it is a book, song, website or high school essay. Why do you think this proposal has been brought up so many times? Again, no-brainer. Bear and Idiot Romance should have been speedily deleted. —МандичкаYO 😜 05:01, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
    Repeating that it is a "no-brainer" is not a substitute for making your case. The top of this very page says that proposed new criteria (and thus proposed expansions) must be for deletions that are "frequent" and "uncontestable". Please do provide us with examples why this is the case. On a side note, don't forget that in clear cases, WP:PROD usually can handle such articles or AFDs can be WP:SNOW-closed. Regards SoWhy 07:44, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Unless something has a serious problem even existing on Wikipedia (that's basically G3, G10 and G12), why are y'all in so much of a rush to delete stuff? Seven days is not a long time; have a bit of patience. Regarding "Why do you think this proposal has been brought up so many times?" - well probably because the proposal doesn't have any consensus and so gets squashed every time it's brought up - if it was a widely accepted proposal, it would be discussed once and then adapted. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:57, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Why do we even have the R series?

Kinda the opposite of what some people have complained about here relatively recently, but why do we even have the R-criteria of CSD? Most admins would (validly) G6 any redirect with a G6 tag and a reasonable explanation and I’m pretty confident outside of the RfD crowd, the only reason you find it in the deletion logs is because the scripts autofill the criteria. It’d be much simpler for everyone if we just got rid of them and made it covered by G6 in the policy, which is what the practice is in most case anyway. Phrased another way: the R-criteria already are covered by G6, and I think it’s fair to say that most people couldn’t tell you the redirect-specific criteria to save their lives. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:20, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

  • Most G6 Redirect Speedy deletions are an abuse of CSD policy. The use of G6 as a catch all for anything imaginably uncontroversial is procedurally controversial. Controversial things are lost, buried, in the sheer quantity. Use R* criteria where they fit, in preference to G6. I think there should be a hard rule written in: G6 must not be used for any page with a non-trivial history. Usually this is the case, but always? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:51, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
    • The community strongly rejected this view the last time it was brought up on the talk page. G6 deletion in the way that you describe as an abuse has been endorsed by the community as a whole and is specifically an application of s much more important policy. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:56, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
      • Can you link to that strong rejection of this view? That G6 is being used overly broadly? That one big catch-all criterion decreases accountability? That G6 should never be used for a page with a significant history?
G6 was meant to be “maintenance”. Not it says “uncontroversial” deletion. Who did that? All CSD use is supposed to be uncontroversial. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:34, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Here. G6 is a catch all for technical maintenance, which anything covered by R2 or R3 is. An admin could use G6 to cover either R2 or R3 and it be 100% within policy and have it upheld on review if it ever got there (which it wouldn't, because no one will challenge a technical deletion.) TonyBallioni (talk) 02:19, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
That is a far cry from a consensus that G6 should be a very broad catch all. It was a rejection of a proposal aiming for the opposite horizon. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:31, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree with SmokeyJoe. G6 is explicitly a maintenance criterion. Its purpose is to allow deletions for tasks that occur during normal editing. It does not have a content-related side to it. The R-criteria on the other hand are more content-related because the deleting admin has to decide whether the redirect might be useful, widely used or for some other reason should be kept despite meeting the criteria. Those deletions might also be controversial, so it makes sense to log them separately for easier review. For people to trust admins will not to misuse G6 for anything that might be controversial, its use has to be restricted to the most uncontroversial cases. R2 and R3 are not such cases. Regards SoWhyMobile 07:09, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
    • Agreed, and this is maintenance. No one seriously remembers what R3 or R2 are. These aren't content decisions. When they become content decisions, RfD is the way to go. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:57, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
      Where do you get the knowledge from that no one remembers them? I for one do remember them. And I disagree. Whether a redirect is "implausible" is not a maintenance question for example, it requires judgment. G6 explicitly lists examples and none of them are comparable to R2 or R3. I don't know if you remember R1 but when that was removed, it was not merged to G6 but rather G8 as well (which made sense because there was wording available that allowed the merger). Regards SoWhy 19:48, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
      My habit for hyperbole . As I noted below, the language of G6 already explicitly includes both R2 and R3. In terms of the ease of remembrance: I think it's fair to say that they are difficult for people who do not regularly patrol the CSD categories or RfD to remember. Most of the G6s I've come across that are tags are on redirects, and typically when redirect issues are raised on the admin talks I watch, G6 is used as the reason (and this is just a general impression rather than diffable.) TonyBallioni (talk) 02:12, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
  • R3 is anything but technical: the first line leaves open for interpretation both recently created and implausible, while the second line suggests plenty of subjectivity for both common misspellings or misnomers and sometimes redirects in other languages. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:08, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
    • Every G6 requires judgement. This is technical and housekeeping. The key line of G6 is uncontroversial. If something has been around forever, it isn't uncontroversial. My point here is that if given a choice between R-whatever and G6, most people will (correctly) go with G6 because it encompasses anything that would be done here and the R-criteria are bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy since they can't really even be remember. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:56, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Tony, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of G6. G6 is for technical maintenance and the deletion of most redirects outside of G8 and moves over redirects would not be for technical reasons. G6 is not and should not be a catch-all for anything "uncontroversial". -- Tavix (talk) 23:36, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
    • Deleting pages unambiguously created in error or in the incorrect namespace covers both RD2 and RD3. They are both explicitly already in G6. G6 is not for anything uncontroversial, you are correct, but any deletion authorized under R2 or R3 is a technical deletion, nothing more. Anyway, I don't particularly expect change here, but I thought I would raise that getting rid of them makes sense. I expect that G6 will continue to be used correctly to cover R2 and R3 by many admins, and that we'll still have R2 and R3 listed as options going forward that admins can use if they want. I just think it makes sense to consolidate when possible: it makes it easier for people to do needed work and reduces the bureacracy. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:12, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
      • I completely disagree with everything you just said. No, that part of G6 does not cover R2/R3; neither of those criteria cover unambiguous error, and R3 is much more specific than that, covering rightful exceptions for certain classes of redirects. No, R2/R3 are not "technical" deletions, unless your definition of technical is so broad that most other criteria are also "technical" (then why have any other criteria except G6?!) You continue to claim without evidence that it's a routine occurrence that R2/R3 deletions happen under G6, except that would not be correct (going back to what I said earlier) and should not be happening if it is. I also want to add that I don't think you have a good grasp on the nuances of redirects. I'd like to invite you to hang out at WP:RFD for a bit, and I'd be interested to see how your thoughts would change after, say, a month or so of dealing with redirects on a daily basis. -- Tavix (talk) 05:17, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
  • I'ver come to this discussion rather late. I think it adds clarity to use the most specific deletion reason possible. DGG ( talk ) 16:02, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
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