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Obvious spam

I don't see any reason we shouldn't add a CSD for obvious spam. There are many instances of clear copy/paste or loosely paraphrased press releases that are clearly worthy of deletion that clog up AfD and take a week of time to delete, accomplishing what these people want to use en-wiki for, which is being mirrored across several different sites and increasing their Googlerank.  RasputinAXP  T C 17:29, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Policy proposal

I created a policy proposal for this. Here is my original proposal:

I, Grandmasterka, propose that a new speedy deletion category be added, {{db-advertising}}. The speedy tag's description would read "It is a page created primarily to promote its subject" (based on the already existing {{db-attack}} category) or something close to that.

I frequently see blatant advertising pages during newpage patrol (I always use a {{prod}} tag on them) and on AfD, and I feel that a speedy category for this is warranted and would be a success. Such a speedy deletion category would help Wikipedia deal with the spam it receives every day and would help free a little more time and effort towards building an encyclopedia.

Here is the discussion on it so far:

Good idea in principle, but...

...please remember that even a spam article can be used as a GFDL text source for a better article or partially merged into another article. The only really useless article is one that only or nearly only consists of an external link, and those are already speedyable as "no context". This proposal has to take that fact into account somehow. -- grm_wnr Esc 22:22, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators#On deleting pages (#4). The text is saved somewhere. And anyway, in that case, what's done for attack pages then? Or nn-clubs/bios that could possibly be referenced somewhere else? Grandmasterka 22:37, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
An attack or nn-bio page has, by definition, no salvagable content (if the nn-bio is mergeable in an useful way, it shouldn't be deleted because it isn't nn). I didn't say I'd like to see no advertisements speedied, I said that I'd like to see this policy adjusted to take the possibility of using the content elsewhere into account. For example, the content has to be an advertisement and the subject non-notable, though I'm wary of all notability-related CSD criteria, since no two users agree on what is and what is not notable and this may just be opening a new can of worms. -- grm_wnr Esc 22:58, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. On some occasions, a nn-bio is merged with another article, though (for example, a notable organization's founder can be merged into the organization's article if the founder isn't notable for anything else. But then again, that would make the bio not eligible for speedy deletion.) Since it seems like 99.9% of the ads we get here are for non-notable things, I don't think it would be too much of a leap to require the subject to be nn as well. I'd like to hear from others though. Grandmasterka 23:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I would echo the original comment that even a blatent advert article can often be the starting point for a good article, and I would also worry about the number of false positives, especially since I'd guess that most new articles are created by people passionate about the subject matter, and would likely have a positive slant to various extents, so having a speedy delete for "advert" would be too harsh.

A speedy delete is basically a "delete without discussion", and, as such, is quite an extreme measure, and should only be used in limited cases where it is really required, either because no further disussion is required (e.g. G4) or where harm will come if the article remains in place for the duration of the discussion (e.g. copyvios, attack pages). Advertorial type pages that aren't current WP:CSD canditates are in neither of those classes, and for the sake of a few days, it is better to use prod/improve the article/afd it rather than creating another speedy criteria. MartinRe 19:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

False positives

I applaud the intention, but I'm concerned that this would result in too many false positives. In my editing career at Wikipedia I have been able to "rescue" (or help rescue) a number articles that were tagged for AFD as "advertising" by simply stripping out the POV assertions; e.g. Al-Muhaidib was nominated here, TOS TrekMUSE was nominated here, and Reuters messaging which was was nominated here. And who can forget Sollog, which was initially pure advertising, but is now an excellent debunk article? GeorgeStepanek\talk 23:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

It's probably better to discuss policy first, templates second...

... because there is just no consensually accepted criterium for speedy deletion for adverts. What policy would the template link to? Compare {{db-web}}, which I believe is a valid attempt at interpreting CSD A7 (but see also its TfD discussion.) I also echo the above concerns about false positives. Sandstein 11:53, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Ha, whoops! I didn't know about that page... Should this discussion be merged into there? Grandmasterka 12:08, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I guess your proposal would belong on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. But note that, as per Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/New_criteria, this seems to have been discussed before (you'll probably be able to find it in the archives somewhere). Sandstein 12:16, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Please continue the discussion below. Thank you. Grandmasterka 14:03, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Support

Sounds eminently sensible. There is definitely a lot of this sort of thing on Wikipedia. Benefit cosmetics is possibly a recent example, though I have removed half the article to minimise the advertising. - Runcorn 10:05, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Support - I, also a regular new page patroller, see a lot of new pages just for advertising. Most of the time, I throw {{advertisement}} on it and leave something on the creator's talk page. I wish I could speedily delete those, but there's never a real appropriate {{db-reason}} to put there. Great idea! Later, zappa.jake (talk) 05:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Support - We already have {{db-band}} for the specific case of band self-promotion, and it's both needed and used. It makes sense to generalize this. I would suggest, as recommendation, not policy, that before using {{db-advertising}}, the editor should check the contributions of the article creator. If this is their first posting, a message should be placed on their talk page along the lines of "Welcome to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that does not accept advertising. Please read... You are welcome to add non-advertising articles to Wikipedia." This won't bite the newbies as hard. Advertising, though, is generally a newbie problem. It's relatively rare that a user with a few good articles then adds an advertisment, so in such cases {{prod}} would be appropriate. They'll probably reword and fix it. --John Nagle 17:45, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Support As per reasons stated above, I can't add much. porges 11:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Support. We may want to qualify it with a 48-hour time limit or by excluding articles which have multiple editors, but blatant spam is easy to spot and should be killed on sight without prejudice against later creation oif a proper article. Just zis Guy you know? 09:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Support, advertisements don't belong here. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Redundant?

Aren't advertising articles really a subset of copyedit-for-tone and NPOV-needed categories? If they aren't crap and have possibility, then AFD and cleanup crews and etc will work fine, but if they are crap, then they can be deleted the usual way. This strikes as not really needed.

Re-open discussion

I'm seeing a LOT of admins speedily deleting pages as adverts. Usually the subjects of these articles are not notable, and we already have a speedy category for attacks (regardless of whether the subject is notable.) This needs further discussion. Grandmasterka 19:59, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Succeeded

Hah! It's officially a speedy deletion category!! Nyah-nyah. Grandmasterka 22:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Expand A7

Why not expand A7 to say:

An article about a real person, band, website, group or organisation that does not assert that its importance or significance. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AFD instead.

  • I think that would be a neat solution, not adding any intruction creep, and hopefully not to controversial. Maybe we could add a phrase like "and is clearly unencyclopedic" or something as well. Martin 19:05, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I would change this too:

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

    I understand A7 to be about various groups of persons, so I removed websites. (I would give websites and other links their own seperate speedy deletion criteria.) And I added clubs and companies. In particular, if A7 specifically mentioned companies, more kinds of obvious advertising could be uncontroversially deleted. Zarquon 12:27, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Permission to change

Is it permittable to change Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/New criteria? It would make more sense to say "An article about a website that does not meet WP:WEB" or "An article about a band which does not meet WP:MUSIC" in the cases where these sort of guidelines already exist. With regard to bands and musicians, the verbiage "assert the importance or significance" seems somewhat vague in comparison. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 11:05, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes, but in these particular cases please read up on WP:CSD/P first. In particular, the proposal on a CSD for bands that explicitly referred to WP:MUSIC was voted down. Radiant_>|< 12:02, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
    • To be precise, it was supported by 69%, missing the required quota by 1%. I have a strong suspicion that a revote would pass the 70% required. Stifle 10:52, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
      • I think it is important to draw a distinction between not meeting WP:WEB or any other notability guidelien, which may or may not be grounds for deletion, and failing to provide any evidence or assertion of meeting such guidelines. A credible claim means no speedy del;etion, even if the claim is found to be spurious on investigation. Just zis Guy you know? 09:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I would wholeheartedly support a general "importance" SD criterion for anything man-made, but of course this may be hard to swallow. However, since non-notable bands and other groups were already generalized from non-notable real people, I don't see why websites should not follow. Unencyclopedicness is another issue, though if something is not important/notable, it immediately follows this it is not worthy of an encyclopedia article.

Some other WP:NOT items should be discussed as speediable. What I'm seeing in particular is neologisms and slang terms which at most should go to Wiktionary, and usually not even that. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 13:30, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Misspelled title

I recently stumbled upon an article that was incorrectly titled (misspelled) but contained information on a notable topic (CVTT). Upon further research, I found the page where this information should have been (and is) (CVVT). The mistitled page, however, serves no further purpose, and should be deleted. Beyond this, I beleive that pages like this should be subject to speedy deletion and that this criterion should be listed in Criteria for speedy deletion. I am looking for other people's opinions on whether it should be a criterion or not. MadScientistVX 01:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

That can just be merged/redirected into the correct article, I believe -- Avi 21:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Neologisms as A speedy Deletion Category

Taken from here

After searching through the new pages, one of the biggest pain in the neck are neologisms. Simply enough, if a neologism is hardly used, then why keep it?

I'm going to explain a prime example I have seen again and again which annoys me. This example was from earlier on this year and can be found here and I will be referencing to it during the next paragraph.

This sorry excuse for a word was a word which had less than 20 related google hits and easily got deleted in Afd. But the problem is during the time it stayed on as an article, people may of seen it, giving this pathetic word publicity. But most annoyingly, it now gets a free billboard to post this useless advertisement to the world using a dead AFD when it doesn't even deserve anything.

Now you may think that was just one example, a rare occurence perhaps. But when I can find that example and these two within two days, isn't it obvious people are using Wikipedia for billboard space.

My solution is to either make a category for speedy deletion called {{db-neo}} or {{db-neologism}} to quickly and promptly delete neologisms. A Half way agreement is to change Template:Db-nonsense so that neologisms can be added to that category for speedy deletion.

J.J.Sagnella 15:45, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

A newb's-eye view

I'm still fairly new at this, and as such I'm hesitant to weigh in on policy matters that have undoubtedly been discussed extensively by much more experienced editors, but what the heck, I'll be bold and give my opinion anyway.

I've been paying dues by spending a fair amount of time browsing Special:Newpages and flagging likely candidates for deletion, and my first impression is that it's downright depressing how many garbage articles are created every single hour. I think the speedy deletion process is a good thing: administrators are supposed to be trusted users, elevated to their positions by clear consensus of the community, and as far as I can tell, admin abuse is exceedingly rare and easily dealt with when it does occur. I have no objection to administrator power being expanded to give them greater flexibility to axe clearly inappropriate articles.

The way it is now, if an article obviously does not belong here but does not fit into any speedy deletion category, an editor's only option is to flag it for proposed deletion and/or start the weeklong AfD process. In the former case, the article's creator (who is often acting in bad faith, WP:AGF notwithstanding) is within his rights to delete the prod and force the latter option. Either way, the offending article will stick around for awhile, and since (in my experience, anyway) the largest category of such articles that are not candidates for speedy deletion are advertising spam, the offender meets his goal... for a little while, anyway.

Therefore, I think a very, very modest step in the right direction would be to expand CSD A7 to include articles on people, groups, or companies that do not assert the notability of their subjects. Even this I think would not go far enough, and I favor earlier proposals to craft an anti-advertising CSD on the same lines as CSD A6 (replacing "disparage" with "promote"), but it would certainly help.

Thanks for your time. VoiceOfReason 11:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Agreed. I've many times been doing new page or RC patrol and come across a company page that's obviously marketing gone bad, has no chance ever of meeting WP:CORP and should simply go away - and not been sure of what to do with it. Most of the time, I just go on to the next iteration of "omg i can edit look heres a page about me me MEEE" that pops up, leaving the corporation pages for someone more experienced to deal with. If there were a speedy category that could be used, it would at least get some extra eyes - administrator eyes, especially - on these pages to give a bit more of an opportunity to evaluate them for relevance and notability. A7 is the closest current category, but we could perhaps consider a new category for companies to break them out. Tony Fox (arf!) 20:53, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
    • As an admin who occasionally speedies stuff, I would love if we had that option. It would also clear up a lot of stuff on AfD. JoshuaZ 16:05, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
    • The whole point of speedy deletion is that it is not a way to get extra eyes on something. That is what Cleanup and AFD are for. Indeed, speedy deletion is quite the converse. It is for those articles for which we trust that the judgment of a single pair of eyes is enough. Uncle G 17:17, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
  • The way to deal with advertisements is Copyright Judo. Copyrighted non-GFDL-licenced advertisements that are spotted immediately can already be speedily deleted. There is no need for a new criterion. Uncle G 17:17, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
    • That's gaming the system. That's using {{copyvio}} as a pretext rather than for its intended use. This is made even worse by the fact that much of the advertising spam is obviously added to the encyclopedia by its author... so we're adding {{copyvio}} tags to an article we know full well is no violation. It's dishonest.

      Yes, the purpose of a speedy is to avoid having too many eyeballs on the offending article. Is this such a bad thing? I don't think anyone would dispute that there are a number of articles whose deletion would be totally uncontroversial but which do not meet any of the CSD criteria. Would this be so bad?

      6. 9. Attack Advertising pages. Articles that serve no purpose but to disparage promote or praise their subject or some other entity (e.g., "John Citizen is a moronAcme Widgets makes teh best widgets in the world").
    • I emphasize: admins are trusted users. Let's trust them. Let's agree that they won't judge a page to be an uncontroversial deletion candidate unless it is one. If there are rare instances of abuse, they can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. VoiceOfReason 17:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
      • Wrong. It is not a pretext at all. Deleting an article that has copied non-GFDL-licensed copyrighted text using the procedure for doing that is not "gaming the system". It is using the system to delete stuff that per our Wikipedia:Copyright policy we cannot accept here, using the method intended for doing that. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that advertisements are licenced under the GFDL. No such advertisements exist, to my knowledge. Nor are they likely to exist, for the reasons explained on the page that I linked to.

        The argument that administrators are trusted users is an argument for having no speedy deletion criteria, and just letting speedy deletion be a free-for-all. It is not an argument for doing what you want to do.

        This has all been discussed at length. Please read Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal, and Wikipedia:Advertising (and their various talk pages) rather than covering the same ground all over again. Furthermore, please read the second paragraph of Wikipedia:Notability (companies and corporations). Deletion is not the sole way to fix an advertisement. Uncle G 18:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

        • Thank you for your comments. I will go and read the previous discussions, but for now I'd prefer to post my own thoughts untainted by the views of others. I apologize if you consider a rehash; please feel free not to respond until after I've read the links you cite.
I am under the impression (not mistaken, I hope) that when an author submits content to Wikipedia, he is agreeing to license it under the GFDL. This is a problem (and a copyright violation) if the editor is not the legal owner of the rights to the work, but it's perfectly permissible if he is. So if we see an advertisement for Bob's Discount Widgets containing text lifted from bobswidgets.com by User:Bobswidgets, it's a pretty safe bet that there's no violation of copyright, that the user submitting the text owns all legal rights to it and is legally capable of licensing it under the GFDL by submitting it to Wikipedia. A copyvio flag in this case is in bad faith; there is no desire to have the author remove the offending material and replace it with original GFDL-licensed text, and even were he to do so the article would still be strongly considered a deletion candidate. It's using the copyvio flag as an end-run around the fact that there is no appropriate speedy deletion tag.
The argument that administrators are trusted is not an argument for having no criteria. "Trusted" is a relative term; we do not trust an administrator to, for example, make other administrators. An administrator has the raw power to delete whatever he wants, but any who abused that power would surely be stopped and stripped of his rank. Expanding the criteria would give administrators additional power; eliminating the criteria would give them carte blanche.
I love the speedy deletion process, but it's broken... mainly because the criteria are far too narrow, which in turn encourages them to be abused. Consider a hypothetical new article on Joe Smith that consisted solely of the line, "Joe Smith is a 14-year-old kid, he likes pizza, and he's the most awesome dude in the universe." This is not a terribly contrived example; I've seen dozens of articles that are very similar and so, I'm sure, have you. Technically this is not a candidate for speedy deletion, because surely the most awesome dude in the universe is notable. But it's a sure bet that this article would be tagged {{db-bio}} in a heartbeat and deleted by an admin in two heartbeats more. That's a good thing. It deserves speedy deletion. But it's against the rules. Why not fix the rules so we don't have to turn a blind eye to technical violations of which we all approve? VoiceOfReason 19:24, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
mondomedeusah creative is an online media company that officially launched in January of 2001. mondomedeusah started as an internet consulting and marketing group and now has grown into various divisions in web, software and arts marketing. The Canadian-based company currently has two offices in Canada and the U.S.
This isn't a copyvio. It is spam. And it'll hang around for seven days, unless an admin decides to ignore the rules and delete it contrary to policy. VoiceOfReason 22:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia used as file hosting

(As posted on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

I've come across material which was uploaded to Wikipedia just to (usually temporarily) store it there. I propose modification to the speedy deletion policy to allow speedy deletion of material uploaded to Wikipedia just to store it there. [[User:Nwwaew|Nwwaew]] 22:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

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