Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/2

Dead people
Dead people who, were they still alive, would be over 25 now are excluded from this criterion. Someone who died aged 5 months in 1602 would not be eligible for speedy deletion, for example, because were xe still alive xe would be over 25 now. Similarly for someone who died aged 21 in 1919. The only dead people that this criterion covers are dead people who, were they still alive, would be 25 or under now or whose ages are not given, and even then only if the article doesn't cite any sources. Uncle G 4 July 2005 15:56 (UTC)
 * Utterly baffling. If someone says "Jean Paul Sartre was an existentialist philosopher" and don't give his date of birth nor references, is that your idea of a speediable article?  Good grief! This is complete madness! --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 18:56 (UTC)
 * The "madness" is the made-up examples, contrasting as they do with what occurs in actual practice, where Jean-Paul Sartre has included his year of birth since its 6th edit. Uncle G 5 July 2005 19:35 (UTC)
 * Could we have speedied the first five then? :-). Pcb21| Pete 10:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Overlap with proposal 1
What will happen if both Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/1 and Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/2 pass? 1 seems to be a vague superset of this (2) proposal. Pburka 4 July 2005 15:31 (UTC)
 * If they both pass, then both apply. If an article is speedily deletable by more than one criterion, it is still deletable. It would, however, make sense for people to vote 'support proposal 1 iff proposal 2 fails' or the other way around, if they like both but prefer one of them. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; July 5, 2005 15:01 (UTC)
 * Of course, if too many people do something like that both ways you could end up with a difficult-to-resolve situation for those closing the votes. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:00, 2005 July 16 (UTC)

notable young actors and musicians
Newbies never include sources, there are any number of notable young actors and musicians would who be deleted under this criterion. Kappa 4 July 2005 16:15 (UTC)
 * No there aren't. Note that at User talk:Uncle G/Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Unsourced biographies there is a case study of potential stub articles on Avril Lavigne that demonstrates several of the many ways in which even a 1 or 2 sentence stub article on that 20-year-old "notable young musician" would not qualify for speedy deletion under this criterion. Uncle G 4 July 2005 16:31 (UTC)
 * Okay, so what about a stub article that says "Daniel Barenboim is a classical musician born in Argentina." Would that be speediable? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 19:00 (UTC)
 * Another made-up example that doesn't match the real world. Daniel Barenboim has given his year of birth as 1942, disqualifying the article on "over 25 now" grounds, from the very first version in the history. Uncle G 5 July 2005 19:38 (UTC)

Answer the question. If the article on Daniel Barenboim didn't mention that he's a world class conductor and didn't mention his name, would it have been speediable? This is an important question. He's a household name to you and me, perhaps, but not everybody knows the name. That's why we list these articles on VfD. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 6 July 2005 02:03 (UTC)

Valid stuff slipping through the cracks
Too much valid stuff could slip through the cracks. JYolkowski // talk 4 July 2005 20:44 (UTC)
 * Please provide concrete examples that confirm this assertion. There's a week's-worth of concrete examples that contradict it. Uncle G 5 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)
 * I took JYolkowski's remark to mean that your proposal has too many false negatives (personally I don't see that as a problem, but to me it is a reason for supporting other proposals in addition to this one). Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; July 5, 2005 15:05 (UTC)

A week's worth of concrete examples doesn't cut it. The wording of 2 at present is (see the project page - no need to duplicate the entire proposal here) Someone could write us a nice little article, perfectly encyclopedic, easily verifiable, telling us all we might want to know about some personage, and because the date of birth isn't given and no references are given it's speediable. That is not acceptable. References, including the age, can be added. If this proves impossible just list on VfD, no problem. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 19:05 (UTC)
 * Discussions of what could happen are trumped by discussions of what does happen. And what does happen is that people simply don't write very many false positives.  You've already shot your argument in the foot with Daniel Barenboim, for example.  Uncle G 5 July 2005 19:45 (UTC)
 * I think that what could happen is even more important than what does happen. Even if there are no false positives in your research, the possibility of a very occasional false positive is enough for me to object.  Furthermore, if this is a CSD, then articles that currently don't get VfD'd because someone cleans them up could get speedied instead, which isn't a good thing.  JYolkowski // talk 6 July 2005 01:44 (UTC)

Rigid wording
Wording is too rigid and confusing, in my opinion. BLANKFAZE | (&#1095;&#1090;&#1086;??) 5 July 2005 03:39 (UTC)
 * When the majority of editors at Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Proposal III (Vanity articles) complain that the wording there is "vague", "not clear", or "too loose", rigid wording seems to be what people would like to see. Learning from the failure of the prior proposal seems wise. Uncle G 5 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)

Preferring proposal 1
Prefer Proposal 1. BLANKFAZE | (&#1095;&#1090;&#1086;??) 5 July 2005 03:39 (UTC)
 * Proposal 1 would not include James Gallagher, given that the article explicitly "asserts that person's importance or significance" (It states in so many words that the subject is "inherently important and notable".), even though there is a unanimous consensus to delete already forming. In contrast, this proposal would allow the speedy deletion of that unsourced biography of a 17-year-old. Uncle G 5 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)
 * Proposal 1 is also too vague. See Josh Chalmers, for example.  Proposal 1 provides no list of the professions where individuals are "inherently important to society" and thus where articles should go to VFD.  Is "circus clown" one of them?  In contrast, this proposal would allow the speedy deletion of that unsourced biography of a 22-year-old. Uncle G 5 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)

Why 25 ?
And why age 25? PeregrineAY July 5, 2005 10:01 (UTC)
 * As already explained a quarter of a century is simpler for all editors to remember, and less systemically biased, than any one country's age of majority. Uncle G 5 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)

It seems to be somewhat biased against people under 25. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 19:06 (UTC)

Confusion with proposal 1

 * Oppose - speedy-delete if they're clearly *not* notable (for example: "John Doe is a student at XYZ high school"), but if it just can't be inferred from the article whether a person is important or not, then take to VfD so that there can be a longer discussion (if necessary). -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 5 July 2005 12:07 (UTC)
 * That is Proposal 1. This criterion deliberately avoids having decisions about "notability" or "importance" being made by just 2 editors as part of the speedy deletion process, by not involving those notions at all.  The whole idea is to have a criterion that does not involve those concepts, given that disagreements as to what actually constitutes "vanity", "notability", and "importance" has already prevented them from gaining consensus as speedy deletion criteria once.  Note that already there are editors who voted in opposition to Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Proposal III (Vanity articles), on the grounds that there are no clear-cut definitions of "notability" or of "vanity" that can be applied at speedy deletion, voting in support here.  Creating a different proposal that perhaps more editors can support, rather than simply re-trying the same proposal again, is the idea here. Uncle G 5 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)
 * If an article lacks references references should be provided. An article which asserts notability but doesn't provide a source for it would seemingly fall under this criteria. -- Joolz 5 July 2005 17:26 (UTC)
 * This appears to be more conflation of proposals 1 and 2. It's not providing a source for the assertion of notability that is the criterion.  It's providing any source for anything at all.  Notability, assertions of or otherwise, is not a part of this criterion.  And indeed there are articles which this criterion qualifies for speedy deletion that a "does not assert notability" criterion would not:
 * Clifton d'souza would be speedy deletable under this criterion. It would fail to qualify under a "does not assert notability" criterion, as it asserts that the subject is "THE GREATEST PHILANTHROPIST,LEADER,SOCIALIST AND NOBLE MEN OF THE NEW WORLD". (If the article had claimed him to be President of the United States, that would indicate that the subject is over 25, and the article would not have qualified.  So, before you ask, Harry S. Truman does not qualify for speedy deletion.)
 * Willy Charleton would be speedy deletable under this criterion. Depending from an editor's views on corporate heirs, it would fail to qualify under a "does not assert notability" criterion as it asserts the subject to be a corporate heir. (If the article had mentioned newspaper coverage of such a corporate heir, that would be citing a source, and the article would not have qualified.  So, before you ask, Paris Hilton does not qualify for speedy deletion.)
 * Uncle G 5 July 2005 18:29 (UTC)

Books are not the only sources
Weak support - not everyone gets a book written about them. Still a good idea though. Alphax τεχ 5 July 2005 02:17 (UTC)
 * Books are not the only things that can disqualify an article from speedy deletion here. See the first bullet point and the several examples of disqualification in the "friends of Avril Lavigne" discussion. (The first two bullet points were intended by me to be part of the proposed text itself, as explanatory items that guide editors, and are in my original proposal.  Unfortunately, the poll was opened, and the text was thus frozen, right after the proposal was transcribed differently here.) Uncle G 5 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)

Tony Sidaway's generalization
Utterly baffling proposal. If an article lacks references, the solution is to ad references, not delete it. See also Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Z --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 14:58 (UTC)
 * Please demonstrate the solution that you are proposing in action for us by adding references to Clifton d'souza. Uncle G 5 July 2005 15:11 (UTC)
 * I'm not the only editor on Wikipedia. The article is on VfD and will be expanded if possible.  This would not happen if the article were speedied. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 16:22 (UTC)
 * That's backpedaling. Please demonstrate the solution that you are proposing in action for us.  You say that adding references to articles that lack references, not deleting them, is the solution.  Please demonstrate that to be true.  You've been given Clifton d'souza, which appears to be a counterexample showing it to be false, and have not so far demonstrated that it is not a counterexample.  Here are several more opportunities: Please add references to Harry Timmer, Kyle Chan, Eamon Duede, Brian Lim, or Richard Mu to demonstrate that, that rather than deleting them, is the solution, as you stated it to be.  I assert that the generalization that you made ("If an article lacks references, the solution is to ad references, not delete it.") is, quite simply, untrue, and that there are scads of counterexamples proving it to be false (roughly 10 per day, now) to be had.  Uncle G 5 July 2005 17:37 (UTC)
 * You seem to be claiming that cleanups in the form of adding references don't occur during VfD discussions or if they do they don't add to the value of the article and save it from deletion; obviously they do. To find examples of where this has been done, and to do so in a fair manner, I went at random to June 10 listings and looked for deletion listings involving persons, with a result of Keep. I found Tom Barnard, Jack Mumpower, Edward Yazbak, .  References were added to all of these articles during the course of VfD discussions and they were kept.
 * A straw man argument. I'm claiming what I actually wrote, which was, in exactly so many words, that your generalization is, quite simply, untrue. Looking at Edward Yazbak at the time of VFD nomination, it's clear that it wouldn't have qualified for speedy deletion under this criterion. I ask for the third time for you to demonstrate the truth of your statement that "If an article lacks references, the solution is to ad references, not delete it." by adding references to any of the articles that I have put forward as counterexamples of that generalization. Uncle G 5 July 2005 19:05 (UTC)
 * And I don't see how you can prove my argument false by counter-example. I've looked for  articles that survived deletion listings on a random day and all three that I found were edited during discussion, improving the articles. So you can find examples of articles that would not survive a deletion discussion?  This doesn't disprove my point.  Articles may be impossible to improve, but we don't know that until we've tried.  This proposal by making a class of articles speedyable says we shouldn't even be trying.  Now admit it, you don't know whether one of these students that you listed is notable and nor do I, though we're both fairly sure that they're not.  Our practise on Wikipedia is to try to improve such articles, and if we can't do that we may list them for deletion, where the community may find something that we have missed.  That's the way it should be done. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 18:16 (UTC)
 * And I don't see how you can prove my argument false by counter-example. &mdash; Do you truly not understand how counterexamples can be existence proofs of the falsity of statements? Your argument is, once again, that "If an article lacks references, the solution is to ad references, not delete it.".  I've given you several examples of articles where the solution is almost certainly not going to be to add references, and almost certainly is going to be to delete the article.  Unless you can show that they are not counterexamples (as I have repeatedly invited you to do), they demonstrate that the assertion that "the solution is to ad references, not delete it" is, quite simply, untrue &mdash; as I said. you don't know whether one of these students that you listed is notable and nor do I &mdash; This is not a notability criterion. That's the way it should be done. &mdash; You're vastly outnumbered on that argument by editors who believe that making classes of biographical articles speedily deletable is desirable.  If you believe otherwise, I suggest that you take your disagreement up directly with the editors who repeatedly ask "Why can we not speedily delete such articles?" in VFD, which I have not seen you do as yet. Uncle G 5 July 2005 19:05 (UTC)
 * As a final afterthought, I don't see how you can claim I'm backpedalling. Unless you thought that I meant that all articles can be saved from deletion by adding references.  Clearly most articles that makes it to VfD cannot be improved in this manner.  But some can, which is why we don't look only at the article text to see if it "asserts notability", but instead actually do some research.  --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 18:22 (UTC)
 * Unless you thought that I meant &mdash; That's backpedaling again. Your statement was "If an article lacks references, the solution is to ad references, not delete it.".  Qualifying it now saying that you were not in fact referring to "most articles" is backpedaling. we don't look only at the article text to see if it "asserts notability" &mdash; We are in the discussion of Proposition 2, which makes no mention of "notability", "importance", or "significance".  Have you have mis-read the text of this proposition, also? Uncle G 5 July 2005 19:05 (UTC)

Uncle G, I'm going to bow out of this because you keep falsely claiming that I have backpedalled and frankly you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about something. I don't like to argue with people when they get into a mood about something. I don't see how this thing will pass in its current form, so I'll just give up arguing. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 19:11 (UTC)

2 vs. 1
I find it bizarre that Proposal 1 is getting a lot of support, while this one seems to be losing. Proposal 1 is ambiguous, depends on a subjective interpretation of notability, and does not (in fact, can not) demonstrate that it avoids false positives. This proposal, on the other hand, is specific, based on objective criteria, and is backed by a thorough study of its effects. Several opposing voters seem to be ignoring the study, citing unsupported "thought experiments". At least one voter even opposed because the criteria are strict, apparently believing that speedy deletion&mdash;which is done by one admin, without debate&mdash;should be based on one admin's subjective impression without restrictions. &mdash; Gwalla | Talk 5 July 2005 21:20 (UTC)

Existing articles which would have been deleted per this CSD
Instead of a week-long test on newly created articles (which I agree was very well done), I think it would be more informative to see which articles would have been deleted by this critereon were it in place when the articles would have been created.

Frankly, there are hundreds of articles on people under the age of 25 which started out (and often remained) without any citations at all. I think it would have been a great shame if they had been deleted.

From a brief 20 minutes of searching, all of the following articles could have been deleted per the CSD:     
 * Britney Spears (had to start with this, since this was one of the examples of an article where the critereon supposedly did not apply)
 * Most of the babies listed in List of young people in history:
 * Many of the children listed in the same list:
 * Most of the teenagers on the same list:

... and then I got bored about half way down the list of teenagers (though, since I was batting at about 3 for 4 in that section, I immagine most of the rest would have qualified). I couldn't face getting into the Lists of people.

A good two-thirds of those listed on the List of young people in history would have been eligible for having quite extensive articles about them deleted under this critereon, including extensive articles on Tutankhamun, Joan_of_Arc, Johnny_and_Luther_Htoo, Eli%C3%A1n_Gonz%C3%A1lez, and so on. Note that a large number of these articles still do not have any citations, and would thus be candidates for speedy deletion under this policy.

&mdash; Asbestos | Talk  6 July 2005 00:25 (UTC)
 * Many of those people you just mentioned are royalty or otherwise obviously notable people. You're forgetting something: no one is required to delete anything, this CSD is to permit it. Therefore, if you think any of those articles would be deleted, you have serious lack-of-faith issues. We pick admins for a reason, they have good common sense and reasoning abilities, and, um, (do I have to say it?) support the encyclopedia. None of them would take such an egregious action of deleting encyclopedic articles, thereby violating the spirit of Wikipedia, if not the law. --Dmcdevit July 6, 2005 00:37 (UTC)
 * I realize that, but now you're introducing the volatile concept of "notability" into this proposal, which is precisely what this extremely precisely-worded ammendment was supposed to prevent. And, to be honest, do you think most American contributors (of which I am one) would know whether there was an Edward_VI_of_England as compared to, say, an Edward_VIII_of_England? Anyway, more importantly, most of these aren't about royalty (and the high royalty percentage may be an artifact of the people who populated the list I cited), so obvious notability is not guaranteed. &mdash; Asbestos | Talk  6 July 2005 01:05 (UTC)
 * Very interesting list. Most of those people were born more than 25 years ago, though, so would be ineligible for this criteria. Pburka 6 July 2005 04:13 (UTC)

Changing my vote
After viewing the first three edits of the Wayne Rooney page, I wish to change my vote from Oppose to Support. How do I do that without messing up the hashes/numbers voted in the oppose section? Hiding 08:01, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Put a : between the # and your struck-out vote. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 09:07, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Ta. Hiding 10:22, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Wayne Rooney
I thought I had this straight, but now I'm not so sure. Where does this edit of Wayne Rooney stand? In fact, by the wording of the proposal, is the revision as of 00:09, 30 September 2004 the first to pass, given it finally contains an external link to another site which contains info about the player? Hiding 12:43, 11 July 2005 (UTC)


 * The first link you show contains no references or external links, so would certainly fall under the scope of the proposal. Have you seen my very long list of other pages which would have been in the same situation, two sections up?
 * The reply that people have been making is "Oh, well, no-one would have deleted Wayne Rooney/Elián González/etc etc", but if judgement calls about notability are therefore necessary, what's the point of this proposal? &mdash; Asbestos | Talk  13:51, 11 July 2005 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that this could cause more systemic bias because the response to questions about certain articles such as Wayne Rooney's, or royalty, being eligable for deletion under this criteria has been that admins will be able to tell who's notable, but this mainly on the admin having heard of them - meaning that articles on western people are more likely to surive, whilst anyone from other parts of the world is more likely to have their article deleted. -- Joolz 02:14, 13 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, I'm inclined to agree. I'm going to switch back to oppose. Hiding 22:56, July 17, 2005 (UTC)