Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at Criteria for speedy deletion/Decltype

Articles by decltype
First of all, I've been watching this page since its inception, and I have to say this is a great experiment. Here are the results from the article I created.

Note: I published the results before seven days because after the initial interactions I have complete confidence that the articles will not be deleted under any circumstance. Call it a "snow disclosure". decltype (talk) 12:41, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, I don't think one of the articles should remain in its current state for a longer period of time. decltype (talk) 12:43, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Thomas Boberg
At first, no one seemed to mind this little "gem" of an article. After a few edits, I made a "mistake", and blanked the article to correct it. This earned me a warning for blanking the page, immediately followed by a G7 tag. I continued to edit, and shortly thereafter received the dreaded A7 (but no talk page warning). After desperately trying to appeal this decision, a good samaritan removed the speedy tag and cleaned up the article. He also left a personalized welcome message with a short explanation about notability on my talk.

Conclusion: While I would probably have been very discouraged by the initial interaction, I felt welcomed in the end. However, if the A7 had been honored by an admin, I would likely have been driven away, never to return again. For me, this was a really enlightening exercise, and I want to commend User:John Z (not an admin as far as I can tell) for the way he handled this. decltype (talk) 08:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting...it's not surprising that the blanking attracted the attention of Hugglers, but I would say it's probably not A7 since there was an assertion that his works were nominated for a prize that looks legit. The lack of notice is probably a Huggle problem - I never used Huggle to do non-G7 tags, so I can't tell. Tim Song (talk) 08:57, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've never used HG for speedy, so I can't tell either. Yes, the award nomination was supposed to be a clear and direct assertion of significance, making the article immune to A7. Despite the lack of a link, googling "nordic literary prize" reveals that the award is notable (the most significant literary award in the Nordic countries). During his cleanup, John Z did locate the award's article and linked it. decltype (talk) 09:56, 19 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the A7, but it was on the heels of the two justified warnings I had already given. Yes, Huggle sometimes says it can't find a page's creator to notify. By the time I recognized that issue in this case, three minutes later, you had already edited the article twice more, so I didn't see a need to notify you manually.  — Jeff G. (talk&#124;contribs) 14:34, 19 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I’m beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t offer to userfy an article for an editor when a deletionist comes along and adds a WP:CSD speedy delete tag? It’s just that I cannot imagine anything more disheartening to a new user than starting a new wikiarticle only to have it deleted before s/he had reached the point of establishing its subject’s notability/importance, only because s/he could not input data as quickly as a deletion-oriented new pages patroller could tag it for speedy deletion. I never place WP:CSD speedy delete tags, if I can avoid doing so, in order to give the wikieditor a chance to finish. I do, however, place them on pages that are obviously non-encyclopedic and/or qualify under other criteria (e.g., WP:CSD, WP:CSD, WP:CSD, WP:CSD, etc.). However, and in the interest of full disclosure, I also would have applied a WP:CSD speedy delete tag after this edit since the edit summary did not provide any explanation whatsoever, let alone one indicating that the material was going to be re-inserted by the author. Thus, Jeff G.’s assumption was a reasonable one under the circumstances. —  Spike Toronto  21:55, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It does no good to move patently impossible articles into user space; it is more helpful to suggest to the user what sort of articles would be more appropriate. The sort of spammy mypage type of article or the promotional article for a non-notable organization or business that is often written is better removed from Wikipedia entirely.   Checking NP is not just  to weed    out bad articles, nor just to rescue articles, but to divide the hopeless from the possibly acceptable.    DGG ( talk ) 16:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Lennart Hellsing
Article on an "award-winning writer of nonsense". In itself a rather weak claim of significance. However, the article provides (very badly formatted) references, from the Swedish Nationalencyklopedin, and more notably from its English counterpart Encyclopædia Britannica. That didn't save it from being A7'ed less than one minute after its creation. However, the tagger reconsidered after a few minutes, and reverted his own tagging. When I inquired, he suggested that a lot of google hits may be an indicator of notability. He went on to do some work on the article, and placed a tag, but it's still left in a somewhat rather decrepit state. I was welcomed with an A7 notification, but it was adjusted to only include the welcoming part. decltype (talk) 12:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * (from talk page). Ah I have heard of WP:NEWT several times, and even was going to try it myself. When I first searched google for Paul Hellsing, I didn't get many results, so I thought it falls clearly to WP:A7. After that I noticed Hellsing has another name, and searched for Lennart Hellsing. That search gave me several thousand results, and I noticed that also swedish wikipedia has an article about the guy. After that I decided to revert my own tagging, as I think that the article should be here and can be improved. As for the lost time - when I edit Wikipedia, I edit it for fun and to help other people. There is no a such thing as lost time for me :)  Ilyushka88   talk  13:14, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Johan H. Andresen jr.
Article on a dime-a-dozen businessman and investor (who happens to be the richest man in Norway). The claim to importance is there if you look for it (Ferd is a bluelink), and there's also a somewhat controversial claim, backed up by sources. I was imagining a variety of tags being placed on this article, but I did not expect to see a db-test. Though he did not remove the tag, started working on the article. When I asked, he explained that he disagreed with the speedy, and admonished me for adding controversial information without an inline citation. He also explained how to use ref tags. He went on to further research the subject, added some English-language references, and did a great job overall. Thus, my experience was once again split.

It is interesting to note that, despite all three articles being speedied, I never interacted with an administrator under my newbie persona. decltype (talk) 12:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This project looks like an interesting experiment. @decltype: Actually, I did remove the tag, after little cleanup was made. I noted several expamples of incorrect speedies (from last two weeks):


 * Rob Lilwall (tagged as A7, despite reliable sources having been cited.)
 * Gary Burden (deleted as A7 during my work on it, later recreated.)
 * Beatrix JAR (deleted as A7 during my work on it (sources have been added), later recreated. User:PMDrive1061 called me a winner, though I'm not a participant of any competition here :))
 * Miguel Altieri (today's example (5 November) - another incorrect speedy nomination), article contained claim of importance from the very beginning.


 * I'm not absolutely sure if these articles meet our criteria, they aren't perfect. However, the speedy deletion nomination was a bit harsh treatment in my opinion. I prefer discussion and more thorough research. --Vejvančický (talk) 14:07, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you removed after a while. I had actually written that, but due to a network failure, I had to write everything all over again, and forgot that part. My personal advise would be to boldly remove tags you perceive as incorrect immediately, and start working on the article afterwards. decltype (talk) 16:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It's been a while since I've done any speedy patrols (as an admin, deleting speedy-tagged articles) but I have noticed quite a few incorrect tags during the patrols - while many are simply mis-tagged (they should be speedy deleted, but the wrong tag was used), there are quite a few that get tagged that don't meet the criteria at all, either because of a hurried or careless tagger. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 05:43, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I'd add overenthusiastic to hurried and careless as I've met several taggers who are confident that an article wouldn't survive AFD and therefore put it into the most appropriate speedy category. It sometimes takes a bit of chiding before they realise that nominating stuff for deletion here is a very complex process, and speed deletion is only for certain types of uncontentious deletions.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:18, 6 November 2009 (UTC)