Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/P1-B

This is part of Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Proposal,

Proposed policy
'An article about a real person, band or website that does not assert'' importance or significance of its subject may be tagged for expeditious deletion with a template. If after forty-eight hours no such assertion is added, the article may be deleted. If a disputed or controversial assertion is added, the article should be listed on votes for deletion.'''


 * Asserting importance means just that. Any assertion that sounds unlikely, is unsourced or has a dubious level of fame is nevertheless an assertion. The present VFD mechanism will deal with those cases where an assertion is disputed or unverifiable.
 * The point of this proposal is to get rid of frequent low-quality articles about people's classmates, the average garage band, and someone's favorite discussion forum that has 25 members total. People are expected to use common sense here - and note that during the delay period, other people have the chance to reword or expand badly written articles on encyclopedic subjects.
 * It may be useful to keep track of precedents to see what may consitute importance or significance. A good rule of thumb, for the moment, is WP:BIO for people, WP:MUSIC for bands, and WP:WEB (under development) for websites. Note that asserted importance is sufficient to counter expeditious deletion; it need not be proven.


 * This is not a criterion for speedy deletion. It is, rather, something in between speedy and regular deletion. Hence the word 'expeditious', which by my thesaurus means roughly, 'reasonably fast but not careless'. Just like VFD, expeditious deletion may be trumped by the copyvio process, or speedy deletion criteria.
 * This is in several ways a weaker and broader version of proposals #1, #2, #3 and #4. That is not in and of itself a problem, as there is no inherent contradiction. It is, however, suggested that people who voted on those proposals consider if they feel this a suitable alternative.
 * This would satisfy objections that article deletion decisions would take place without scrutiny, and would go some way towards allaying fears that articles would be deleted arbitrarily.
 * It would be a streamlined process. Using a suitable template, the date of tagging would be recorded in the article (using subst) at the same time it was added to the category. Thus it would reduce VfD volume by removing the substantial number of vanity articles, and reduce bureaucratic load.

Support

 * 1) I can support this because it targets the process of deletion of articles that aren't pure gibberish but are thought by one person to be unencyclopedic, and makes them visible and thus subject to scrutiny. If we have a cat we can look into or pages linking to a template or something to mark that they're about to be deleted, then any editor can look and see if the article has been listed by mistake and correct the error.  I think forty-eight hours is ample for this. I think there is room for interpretation of bad-faith assertions; if some troll comes along and says "X is the king of Outer Mongolia" it's not enough to save it from deletion. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 7 July 2005 19:13 (UTC)
 * 2) Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; July 7, 2005 19:31 (UTC)
 * 3) Useful intermediate process that takes advantage of the community's wisdom without allowing for unnecessary delay. Xoloz 8 July 2005 04:24 (UTC)
 * 4) Support, so long as there is a user-friendly process for the community to review the list of tagged noms. -- BD2412 talk July 8, 2005 12:59 (UTC)
 * 5) Hermione1980 8 July 2005 17:21 (UTC)
 * 6) -Splash 8 July 2005 19:36 (UTC)
 * 7) Weak support I'm sensitive to the accusation that this proposal will increase someone else's workload, but I've found TonySideaway's arguments here and on the other proposals very convincing. Dave (talk) July 9, 2005 16:16 (UTC)
 * 8) Just another option for dealing with articles that fall between the clearly nonsensical and those which MUST go to vfd. I always prefer more options than fewer. Denni &#9775; 23:57, 2005 July 9 (UTC)
 * 9) Support--this will not be that hard to implement. Meelar (talk) 15:51, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * 10) Support Septentrionalis 21:37, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 11) Weak support. I support if the corresponding proposals on unremarkable [people|bands|websites] don't pass in their own right.-gadfium 00:20, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 12) Support. --Mysidia 13:22, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 13) * Mysidia's 250th contribution was at (or after) 18:25, 9 July 2005, so (s)he may not have suffrage. See caveats. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 13:26, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 14) Support Excellent idea. Dan100 (Talk) 09:28, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * 15) Support. Pavel Vozenilek 19:50, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 16) weak support; there has to be done something about reducing the vfd-load in general, and thats the most sensible proposition so far  Lectonar 09:12, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 17) Support I think it's a good idea. EvilPhoenix talk 08:58, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
 * 18) Support Vegaswikian 05:19, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 19) Support--Carl Hewitt 20:37, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 20) Support I have done many times this notability evidence chasse for a poor article. Often successfuly. :-) But it's boring job. I like this proposale for it puts the onnus on the creator. And to my mind there is indeed no need to have a vfd: eiher article is enhenced quick or it's deleted. Looks to me fairplay. I feel this process would stimulate a little more quality while reducing vfd load. Gtabary 23:27, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 21) Support - Far too many articles that end up in VFD are simply vanity articles. Just scan the VFD page and you will see many, many of these articles and they all end up deleted with little or no opposition.  Yet, I would oppose any proposal to add vanity articles to the speedy deletion category without any sort of 'check' because some turn out not to be vanity.  I think this proposal provides a reasonable balance between the two extremes.  If the person who creates the article does so without mentioning why the person/band/or whatever is important, its clear to me that they are not, or that the article should probably be completely re-written anyway.  Gblaz 15:46, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. Useful middle ground. Maurreen 16:29, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) I worry that this is much more blatant instruction creep than the other CSD proposals, and I wonder why it has been included under CSD proposals, since it is not about CSD criteria, and has been added after CSD voting had already been opened.  It should have been suggested while the draft was in place, or nominated seperately. --Scimitar 7 July 2005 18:48 (UTC)
 * 2) You know, I really hate people adding to proposals during voting.  Always worries me that chaff will slip through.  Not only am I opposing on principle, but this item is just a sneaky way of pushing through a previously failed proposal - Countdown deletion.  And you know what?  Something does not need to assert it's "importance or significance" (just a sneaky way to say "notability") to be included on Wikipedia.  It just needs to have a certain amount of desireable informative value.  -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 19:45 (UTC)
 * 3) I've already seen plenty of confusion between vfd and speedy (articles marked for speedy with the reason "not-notable", vfds for pure gibberish). Creating a third kind of deletion would just make things worse. I could support this as a possible VfD resolution ("put article on probation, delete at end of probation period if there are no substantial edits"), but not as a third option for tagging.    &mdash; Gwalla | Talk 7 July 2005 21:14 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose - This adds a new layer that isn't necessary -  T&#949;x  &#964;  ur&#949;  7 July 2005 21:38 (UTC)
 * 5) Instances of instruction creep, of which this is one, should be resisted.  Oppose unless proposals 1 and 2 both fail. —Cryptic (talk) 7 July 2005 21:55 (UTC)
 * 6) Not really speedy deletion, is it?  JYolkowski // talk 8 July 2005 00:18 (UTC)
 * 7) Oppose, but "nonnotable" should be more explicitly a criterion for deletion under the regular pokey VfD. --Angr/undefined 8 July 2005 07:12 (UTC)
 * 8) Oppose and notability should rarly if ever be a criterion for deletion. Klonimus 8 July 2005 08:27 (UTC)
 * 9) Oppose. Too complicated.  Not necessary.  Whether or not these criteria are asserted should not be cause for deletion.  48 hours is not long enough. Kaibabsquirrel 8 July 2005 08:37 (UTC)
 * 10) M e r o v i n g i a n  (t) (c) July 8, 2005 09:36 (UTC)
 * 11) Oppose per resons listed above (esp. complicaing matters). Sasquatch&#08242;&#08596;Talk&#08596;Contributions July 9, 2005 09:51 (UTC)
 * 12) Oppose. If any assertion is valid, then this is pretty pointless. Peter Isotalo 17:45, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 13) Oppose. This proposal would require the creation of another deletion track beyond the existing VfD and speedy delete. Until such time that an automated process to support this exists, the extra overhead is not justified. --Allen3 talk 22:09, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * 14) No way. One person's insignificant is another's absolutely vital. Too much energy goes into trying to find new ways to delete articles quickly that it does no harm if they're around for a while. It would be no harm to have six billion stubs, so long as they were all well written. We should probably spend more time on working out good ways to check and update information rather than worrying ourselves over much about having too many articles about the little people (because it is a  real concern that you might have articles about people who say they are X, when they have ceased being X and become Y, or have died). Grace Note 03:14, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 15) Oppose - extra time will give the dubious vanity contributors more possibilities to create sockpuppets or recruit meatpuppets (it has already happened many times) and increases their changes to be included in Wikipedia mirrors - Skysmith 10:52, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 16) Oppose - McCart42 (talk) 14:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 17) Oppose - This just overcomplicates an already complicated matter. I think we should within the framework of speedy and vfd. -- BMIComp  (talk) 16:47, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 18) * Bmicomp's 250th contribution was at (or after) 06:21, 5 July 2005, so (s)he may not have suffrage. See caveats. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 21:09, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 19) Oppose - ral  315  19:28, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * 20) Oppose same reasons as P1. David | Talk 23:04, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 21) Oppose. IanManka 06:39, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 22) * IanManka's 250th contribution was at (or after) 06:55, 13 July 2005, so (s)he may not have suffrage. See caveats. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 09:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 23) Oppose. More reason to wait 48 hours to delete people's junk. CSD anything which is written like crap/is crap. CSD should be more broad, and VfD should take only the uncertain cases. Hedley 17:05, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 24) Oppose. There is already a significant amount of confusion about which articles should go to VfD and which ones are speediable. Adding a third category will make matters even more complicated. I also find it difficult to see how this will affect the deletion policy combined with the 20-or-so other proposals about changing the deletion policy that are currently being voted on. I think we should not try to change everything at once. It would be better to wait for the one-month evaluation of the new CSD policy before we decide on further changes, in my opinion. Sietse 09:16, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 25) Too complex. Noel (talk) 02:15, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 26) Oppose.  Same reason as P1-A. Superm401 | Talk 13:57, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * 27) Oppose- do admins really have the time to check whether the article has been listed for more than 48 hours? Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 21:16, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 28) --Sn0wflake 02:59, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 29) Oppose -- BMIComp (talk) 23:25, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Comments

 * (to Scimitar) To answer your questions why - this was created in reaction to the CSD proposals, as a compromise that is hoped to be acceptable to both the people who think VFD is too long, and the people who think speedy deletion criteria may be used too often. It stands entirely on its own, and has a separate deadline from the CSD proposals. It is listed here because people interested in either are expected to be interested in the other. Instruction creep? Maybe. But consider the fact that twenty such articles are nominated on VFD daily, and get near-unanimous votes to delete. The intent is to speed up the process. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; July 7, 2005 19:14 (UTC)
 * I can view this thing with equanimity now. Whatever the outcome of this vote, it looks as if proposition 1 will pass, and I think I'll have to spend a substantial if not overwhelming proportion of my future time on Wikipedia searching for and fixing articles wrongly identified as speedies.  But if this proposal passes it will be a much easier task because, in that small but significant trickle of good articles among the dross, the nominator won't actually have to delete and I won't actually have to undelete.  And I will happily perform deletion duty on articles that cannot be made into keepers after forty-eight hours.
 * I would also look more kindly on the other propositions if they were subject to this deletion mechanism. Only complete gibberish, attacks and the like should be deletable on sight. I'm already seeing quite a lot of stuff being deleted as "not notable", even articles whose speedying would be a no-no even under proposal 1. That some of our trusted administrators are wrongly deleting good stub articles should be a cause for universal concern. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 7 July 2005 20:20 (UTC)
 * To some extent i agree with this. I think the idea that it is ok to "bend" the rules on speedy deletion is nonsense. Tjose rules, in whatever their current form are, should IMO be interpreted quite strictly. People who opposed various of the current CSD proposals on the ground that it is redundant with existing practicve, i.e. with teh practice of those admins who now bend the rules, are IMO doign the project a dis-service, as this will only encourage such bending to continue. DES 7 July 2005 20:56 (UTC)
 * I actualy prefer the other version of this proposal, tying it specifically to the CSD critera. I think it should also apply to any CSD criteriaon what requires an assertion of notability or of particualr facts, and not be limited to the specific cases above. If it is to be limited, it should include clubs and websites and fan fiction, at least if those proposals pass. i thinkg this belogs grouped with the other CSD propasls it is NOT a form of countdown deletion.DES 7 July 2005 20:33 (UTC)
 * I agree. The current wording seems to say that an admin may use speedy deletion, but the other proposals say he may instead just summarily delete the article.  I don't think this would work unless speedying was not permitted.  The whole point is to stop lazy or ignorant administrators deleting an article they cannot be bothered to research and clean up. Dunno where to take it from here, really.  Actually I've discovered so many bad speedies in the past couple of days that I regard this as a bit of a lost cause.  Basically I'm reduced to  post-mortem fix-em-ups at the moment and I don't think the load will get any easier if Proposal 1 passes. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 7 July 2005 20:58 (UTC)
 * (to Radiant)Yes, but the CSD expansion will help remove those twenty articles per day. Furthermore, the problems with speedy deletion lie not in the rules, but in the administrators who delete too quickly. The solution lies in some form of a) multiple verification of speedy deletion or b) a reliable way to remove sysops.  It does not lie in adding a third tier to the deletion process, an unneccesary complication easily described as instruction creep.  Also, (to Tony Sidaway), this is quite a departure from your earlier stance that there is nothing wrong with the deletion process, and all these efforts to tamper with it are instruction creep.  I'd like to hear the reasons behind your belief that this proposal is not instruction creep while the other ones are. --Scimitar 7 July 2005 20:48 (UTC)
 * Sorry, Tony Sidaway|Talk, I see you've already answered my instruction creep question on one of the earlier versions of this proposal. However, I still view this as an example of needless complication. --Scimitar 7 July 2005 20:52 (UTC)
 * Well the need that I perceive here is that we administrators are the last people in the world to decide whether to delete an article. That delete finger gets very itchy. We make mistakes and delete good stuff.  When we have pretty clear rules saying we only delete very short articles and gibberish, that's not so important.  When the rules say we can, in effect, delete an article about someone if we haven't heard of him or think his job is too lowly, then it gets more serious.  --Tony Sidaway|Talk 7 July 2005 21:12 (UTC)
 * Question: Will articles tagged with this template be listed somewhere (a la vfd) for the community? -- BD2412 talk July 8, 2005 04:37 (UTC)
 * Yes, the idea is that there should be a category or something (links to the template probably not suitable because we'd probably use subst in order to freeze the timestamp) so that any editor could see all outstanding articles tagged for deletion. The bureacratic load is kept to a minimum, all the admin (or anyone else) does is tag the article with the template and the subst and cat mechanisms do the rest.  A bit of ingenious parameter work might even persuade the category to order articles by date and time of tagging, making it easier to identify expired tagged articles. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 8 July 2005 04:59 (UTC)
 * No, a process page should be established. Category/template insertion is only logged on the article to be deleted... we have no record of it afterward.  Instead, if this idea gains ground, the only way this will work is a WP:IFD-style page where the article is linked, with a date and time stamp so we can easily see when 48 hours is up.  Of course, this doesn't prevent using a template/category scheme also, but those don't allow us to keep records.  Firm rules need to be established that if anyone removes the template or the listing on the page, it shall not be re-nominated for countdown deletion.  The next step is VfD, if the nominator still feels strongly. -- Netoholic @ 8 July 2005 05:11 (UTC)
 * That's way too complex. If an article is tagged, the tagging shows up in the history, and the timestamp is embedded in the article while it's tagged.  If the article survives that all remains in the history.  If it's deleted, good riddance.  I don't think there will be a problem with removal of the template--any more than there already is with removal of VfDs tempates and the like.  It isn't like a speedy, you don't want this tag to be removable like the delete tag because if it was speediable the admin would just have deleted it.  It's up to the tagging admin to ensure the tag isn't removed prematurely, through his watchlist.  We don't need a process page, this is VfD-lite. There could be over twenty of these a day. In time, possibly a hundred a day, so you want to keep the process as light as possible. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 8 July 2005 05:28 (UTC)
 * I'm very confused by this process. You refer to the "tagging admin". Are you implying that only admins are permitted to add this template? If an editor feels that an article does, indeed, assert importance or significance, what, then, should he do if not remove the tag? Pburka 15:24, 16 July 2005 (UTC)