Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (general)

Reasons for changing speedy-delete template wording: Implementation:
 * Correspond more closely with the criteria for speedy deletion (CSD)
 * Brevity/clarity
 * Avoid using italics in a way that might imply a direct quote of the CSD
 * Often saying "(See CSDXX)" rather than just "(CSDXX)" to avoid implying a direct quote
 * To delete "The reason given is:", for brevity, transclude new template Template:speedybase instead of Template:db-meta.

It's suggested that discussion take place at: (Moonriddengirl and Coppertwig.)
 * Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (general) (i.e. this page)
 * Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (articles)
 * Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (images)
 * Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (other) (redirects, categories, userpages, templates, portals)
 * General discussion: WT:CSD
 * Links to previous discussion can be found here.

People may edit the table and change the suggested wordings. Comments section is below the table.

Comments
I reversed the role of italics and non-italics so that it's still fairly easy to find the beginning of the part of the template that is unique, but without implying (as italics sometimes do) that it's an exact quote of the CSD. --Coppertwig (talk) 17:32, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

G6 maintenance
Firstly, I support removing "The reason is" in all of the templates. That phrase is superflous in the context of the wording.

Secondly, I would like to see some mention of duplication of articles in the examples listed in CSD G6.

Recently, I have found a couple of articles that had each been duplicated. When I looked into the criteria for speedy deletion, I was unable to find any reference to duplicate articles and couldn't be sure under which category duplication would fall, although I was fairly sure that they should be candidates for speedy deletion. (Of course it might appear somewhere but I missed it.) After the article was deleted, I learned it falls under "Housekeeping". If there was a mention of "duplicate/d articles" in the wording for CSD G6, it would make it easier for Wikipedians to be certain that these articles can be listed for speedy deletion. Thanks, Ozzieboy (talk) 17:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment. Sorry I didn't see it until now!!  That sounds very reasonable.  However, the actual CSD G6 doesn't mention duplicated articles.  May I suggest that you present a suggested new wording for the G6 criterion itself (i.e. a proposal to edit the policy Criteria for speedy deletion) on the talk page Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion, and if there's consensus for that and the CSD gets modified, then the wording of the template can probably be easily modified after that. Anyway, that's my suggestion, but I'm not insisting on any particular way of proceeding.
 * E.g. you might want to suggest changing the CSD to "Housekeeping. Non-controversial maintenance, such as temporarily deleting a page to merge page histories, performing uncontroversial page moves, deleting a page which is a precise duplicate of another page, or cleaning up redirects." --Coppertwig (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way: Thanks for expressing your support for the removal of "the reason is"!! It's nice to get some positive feedback. --Coppertwig (talk) 18:50, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Good question. :) We should probably bring that up at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. In most cases those will be history merges, which is a deletion under WP:CSD, but only partially as the content is restored at the destination article. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah. I thought there might be complexities.
 * Is it possible to take two completely different articles and merge their histories? Or do the articles have to be the same, and in what way -- an earlier version the same?  The last version the same? or what? How does that work?
 * In a way, it wouldn't be a deletion at all, because after merging the histories, you'd presumably leave one of them as a redirect rather than as nothing. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * In Criteria for speedy deletion/Explanations, we see that the bullets for "housekeeping" are 1) "Done anyway as part of numerous other processes; this codifies common practice", 2) Not controversial, 3) Little or no content is deleted. In cases of a sequence of deletions and undeletions for fixing page moves, any content which is deleted is later undeleted. I've seen history merges done with different articles when one is being merged into the other, but they're usually done to address copy & paste moves or to mingle content forks. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:59, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

G8 "as it is"
In the table above it said "It is a talk page...". In the draft template it said "as it is a talk page...". I just changed the draft template to say "as a talk page..." which I think eliminates unnecessary words. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

wpReason
Note that I've added another column at the righthand side of the table, for the wpReason parameter, which specifies what will appear in the edit summary of the deletion log. The one I just put there for g1 is just about precisely the length of what will fit in an ordinary edit summary. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

G12 blatant
I'm changing "blatant copyright infringement" in g12 to "apparent copyright infringement". More accurate and less bitey. --Coppertwig (talk) 19:38, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * If I had read this note, I wouldn't have changed it back. :) The CSD criterion says "blatant". I think if we want to change it to "apparent", we should start there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I disagree. I think this is one place where the CSD and the template should say two different things. (Gasp! Going against the whole spirit and purpose of this whole lengthy exercise!)  The CSD is talking in general and is read by people who are about to tag an article or by admins about to delete an article.  The template, on the other hand, is making an assertion about one specific page, and is read by the creator of the page as well as by the person tagging the page.  If it says "blatant," it's rather insulting.  Also, if it says "blatant copyright infringement" or even "copyright infringement", it's accusing the page creator of breaking the law.  That's almost, though not quite, a violation of the No legal threats policy;  also, in many cases it's just plain false. Wikipedia policy requires deleting things which are apparent copyright violations.  maybe it doesn't? They may actually not be copyright violations at all;  they may be being posted by the author and that just hasn't been proven yet.  It's OK for the CSD to say "blatant" because it's not saying it about any one particular page.  Saying it there discourages people from over-using the tag in unclear cases.  But once an article is tagged, it should have wording with a loophole to cover such cases where it isn't actually a copyright violation even if it does have to get deleted anyway.  OK, how about just "copyright violation infringement 11:53, 12 March 2008 (UTC) " without either "blatant" or "apparent"?  I guess the problem with "apparent" is that people will tag articles and delete them based on the template wording even though they ought to read the CSD &ndash same problem we've been working to avoid with all this work. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, as I interpret the word, apparent copyright infringements should be listed at Copyright problems for investigation. Only blatant copyright infringements are to be listed for deletion. But, then, there's some latitude in interpreting the word "apparent". What about if we just eliminate the words "apparent" or "blatant" from the speedy tag altogether and let it flatly announce its purpose as "This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion as a copyright infringement of"? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:52, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

etc.
I inserted "or other entity" in the draft template for G10 as suggested by Moonriddengirl. The extra curly brackets in G11 had already been deleted in the draft template. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

G4 previous deletion discussion
Currently, if the user supplies the name of a previous deletion discussion I think it's mentioned in regular-sized font near the top, and also other possible deletion discussions are mentioned in small print lower down. Possibly the behaviour should be different although I'm not sure exactly what. (Mention the user-supplied discussion again when listing possible discussions? Not list the other possible discussions if the user supplied one?) --Coppertwig (talk) 02:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

G3--Pure vandalism
Would it be possible for this tag to say "...this includes, but is not limited to..."?

I usually tag pages that consist of "poop" or "When can I leave school" and the like under G3, but I am not 100% sure if that is what I should be doing. If we added the caveat I suggested, I think that G3 would be much more useful, as we could use it as a catch-all for obvious crap that isn't directly attacking someone/something. J.d ela noy gabs adds 16:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)