Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/G13 rescue

I'm starting a discussion page about what to save. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 14:25, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion - What to check for:


 * Rewrites of existing articles - if the submitters were going to move text they would have done it by now, so unless you can see that there is significant material to save, it may not be worth bothering


 * Cut and paste remnants of existing article - if they are significant, with a lot of history by more than on e editor, save them to be dealt with later. Just a few diffs by the same editor - let them go


 * Copyright violations - nominate them with G12 so that they can't ask for them back under G13


 * Notable topic such as towns or professors - save them; add one reference if there's nothing at all


 * Articles that are a few lines of text only and no references - don't save these even if the topic is notable, since it would be easier for an interested editor to just make a new article in their own words that to find and deal with one of these

Template:AfC postpone G13
To see all of the rescued articles-to-be, visit the above template page and then click on "What links here". A tidy list will appear. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 12:43, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

sorted by date?
I see people looking at these in order of their dates. I'm guessing there must be a list of drafts sorted by date, but I don't see it documented on this page. &mdash; rybec   15:13, 23 January 2014 (UTC)


 * If you go to Category:G13_eligible_AfC_submissions they are sorted by month (more or less). Currently the first submissions you come to are April 2013. So chose a letter on the main page, click on the big number and keep going until the first of that letter. Rankersbo (talk) 18:42, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

What should be done when an article is edited when the intent is to have it deleted?
At times I have postponed a submission that looked good on the surface, only to have it turn out on further examination to be not non-notable or otherwise unsuitable for improvement. has suggested that in a case like that the postponing edit be reverted, and then the page be nominated for deletion (placing  will do it.}

Now, what should be done in a case like this one Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Divided visual field paradigm, where a Wikiproject was notified about a submission, an expert user declared the topic non-notable, but then in an effort to be helpful edited the article to remove unreliable sources? Must we wait six months? Can it be moved to mainspace and PRODded? An Mfd? or is there an easier solution? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 15:02, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * What is the rush? If there were thousands of such articles it might be a problem, but for a few why not wait another 6 months, perhaps with a note advising peopel not to edit unless they seriously intend a rescue attempt? DES (talk) 16:09, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * as I think is generally known, I try to rescue everything possible, but I also do it buy judgment. I do not act as a bot, It is perhaps reasonable for the bot to do nominations, but  after that the question is whether there seems any intent or reasonable possibility to work on it further, not the technical feature of what edit happens to be recorded.  If I would delete the AfC  anyway in such a situation if it hadn't been edited, I might delete it.
 * However, DES is perfectly right that this is a first screen. if we remove 90% of the old clearly unusable material, we will have a much easier job next time around. for this sort of screen, it's much better to err on the side of not deleting. I don;t think it's practical to ask people not to edit unless they want to rescue, because not just  here but at New Pages and Prod and AfD I will very often edit an article, making sometimes several successive changes, and saving after each,  and then decide that it's hopeless. Actual editing can make it clearer than just thinking about it.  DGG ( talk ) 17:34, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I usually check out an article first, without editing it, before I decide to postpone, but when the bot is running sometimes I see one that has already been nominated, and I know there won't be time for checking- it could be gone in a minute. Because of this I have saved a few that really should be gone, but I agree there is no rush on this.  However, in the case where some work has gone into checking the article, such as getting opinions at Wikiprojects or comparing with other articles, it's tricky to keep track of what has been done.  I guess if the article has been edited anyway, leaving an Afc comment about the checking already done may save others from duplicating work and won't postpone deletion much longer.  I hate it when I ask about an article and someone replies "Didn't we already deal with that one?"  &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 21:55, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I would select the common sense solution and just delete it anyway. Especially if the new edit is clearly a non-issue, like reverting vandalism, there is no need to wait for six months before zapping it. Just WP:IAR away the silly and counter-productive micro-management rules invented by deletion theorists. (For the record, I have tried to avoid doing even slightly controversial speedy deletions in G13-space. I usually process in CAT:CSD just the ones tagged by AfC regulars or HasteurBot.) jni (delete)...just not interested 20:33, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, jni, but most of us don't have the choice of "delete it anyway". If you feel it would be appropriate to delete the one that started this discussion, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Divided visual field paradigm in which an editor at the appropriate Wikiproject said "delete it please" and then edited it, please by all means do. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 11:07, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know much about the topic, but a Google Books search for the phrase "divided visual field" turns up "about 12,500" results, including at least three books which have it in their titles (Divided Visual Field Studies of Cerebral Organisation, Offset Masking in a Divided Visual Field Study and Divided Visual Field Study of Depression, Cognition, and Mood). &mdash; rybec   23:48, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm afraid I wasted everyone's time with this and (Divided visual field paradigm).  Sorry - I usually remember to check for this sort of thing. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 00:57, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Well I can understand any deletion button envy as access to it is too limited these days. You definitely should have the ability to delete these drafts on your own since all your db-taggings have been correct. Now the situation changed as plausible notability claim was made so it is no longer a CSD save for technical housekeeping one (G6) for deleting a duplicate copy. I didn't check the histories, if anything should be merged from this draft to main space article. jni (delete)...just not interested 06:49, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Backlog almost gone - we'll have to change procedures
/ /  /  /  /  /  /  /  /  /

Within a short period of time all of the G13 eligible submissions in the queue will be less than 30 days old. It won't make sense to continue to use the alphabet to keep track of which ones have been checked, since each day new submissions will be added and they will all be within the same month or at most two months.

I want to thank all of you who have contributed to checking the submissions, both those above whose names appear on the rescue page and any others who have been involved in the rescue. I'd also like to thank Hasteur and Technical 13 for providing the technical tools to speed up the checking, tagging and deleting.

We also owe a lot to the various admins who have taken on the extra drudge work caused by the project (Kudpung and come to mind, but there were many others, as well as  who did hundreds of history merges).

Quite a few new articles have been created already, and more of the postponed ones are in the process of being improved.

The numbers of new eligible submissions in the future may be small enough that we won't have to worry about splitting up the work, but if it's still a problem something new can be devised. Technical 13 is in the process of creating an table-based display which will list the submissions and provide more information about each submission. I look forward to trying it out.

During the next six months, the majority of the postponed submissions (those that haven't already been improved or found non-notable and deleted) will be popping up again in the queue at a rate of about 30 per day. Because we had to check so fast, some of these will prove to be non-notable and can be let go, but the others will take longer to check out than usual because they will (hopefully) be of better quality than the average abandoned submission. I won't be postponing any submissions for a second time unless I'm sure that the topic is notable and I have already found references or received a positive opinion from a Wikiproject. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 20:28, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
 * If you want to know what the bot has in it's mind to nominate next http://tools.wmflabs.org/hasteurbot/upcomming_noms.html is the list that is generated at the 15/45 of the hour that shows the next 400 pages that the bot is considering nominating based on the order in which it notified the page creator that the submission was eligible for G13. The page does not take into consideration if the article has already been deleted and once we get to the point that the bot is not getting any for the next nomination batch because we haven't hit the 30 days since notified threshold yet the bot will still list these as the next on the radar once they do hit the 30 days since notified so as to give those here an opportunity to run ahead of the bot and yank hopefuls out of the way.  I will be working on an additional process to do a check on those same 400 and remove pages that have ceaced to meet the requirements (edited/deleted) since they were notified on so as to help focus the efforts as much as possible. Hasteur (talk) 20:42, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
 * (1), did you mean the word "deleted" in the 2nd sentence? Why would it even be seeing these?
 * (2) I am not clear where the ones that have been notified wlll be listed. The time I'd like to work on them is as soon as they have been notified, not just before they will been deleted
 * (3) We will still be getting 100 = 200 a day from the normal operation of the process. plus the postponed ones. The only way to substantially decrease that number is to get more of them improved & accepted, but it will help to use the G conditions of speedy more rigorously in the first place. Given a total number of about 150 a day, perhaps the bot harvesting them should run much less frequently, and when they are listed, they should be listed in smaller batches.
 * (4), I think I will be continuing to postpone any that are feasible and have not yet been worked on, tho I will be able to check a good deal more carefully which are actually feasible & do not duplicate a mainspace article. . (my guess is about 1/2 of the ones I have been marking I will want to re-rmark) We do not yet have a process for distributing articles to appropriate workgroups to see if someone qualified wants to work on them. (Anne, I know you have been asking for a few of these manually). Until we do, the principle should remain that There is no deadline. I do not think I will be much improving outside of my main areas. I already have an accumulated list of several hundred in my field from the first round of those I have marked, and a shorter list of others that interest me  DGG ( talk ) 00:54, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I have had a couple of cases in which there was no article about a topic when I postponed it, but someone had created one in the meantime. To this extent it is not beneficial to keep articles too long, especially ones that were made when something was newly notable, because we could end up wasting our time on them. On the other hand, I have a lot of music and sports articles on my list (likely because you don't), and I am finding a fair number of them that were not notable when created, but now are, just because the articles were made prematurely when an athlete joined a new team, or a musician put out a new album, etc., without waiting to see what would happen.  &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 03:19, 6 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I've made a list of the remaining drafts (as of about an hour ago) at User:Rybec/g13-2014-02-11 23:00. &mdash; rybec   23:55, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I presume that the Hasteurbot will continue to find and tag new G13-eligible drafts each day to add to these. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 05:43, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Pages nominated for deletion
Please remember, everyone, that our helpful admins can process only so many deletion nominations at a time. That's why the Hasteurbot stops nominating if there are more than 50 in the queue. Thanks! &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 05:56, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You seem to be saying that you'd prefer the bot do the nominations. Ouch! &mdash; rybec   08:31, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes the primary aim of G13 rescue is to find stuff that might be developed and tag it, not to help chuck it on the bonfire. I mean I have made your mistake in the past, as have others, but yes if there's a huge stack nominations waiting for admin attention it's postponing rather than nominating we need to be doing. Oh and if something warrants nominating for reasons other than G13, (say as a copyright vio or being an attack page) jump to that and make sure it doesn't qualify for G13 restoration. Rankersbo (talk) 11:09, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I do nominate some that are so obviously useless that no one else should have to bother looking at them ("My girlfriend is so pretty.. and she has a nice cat, too"), or one that I have spent time on, only to find out that they are non-viable for one reason or another (music groups with many reference that all turn out to be unreliable and I can't find any that are), to save others going through the same process. As long as the queue (Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned AfC submissions) doesn't have many more than 50 items in it, that's okay.  Nominating hundreds in a short time can result in testy admins.  Also, you may decide not to postpone a submission, but one of the other checkers may decide to improve it.  Thanks for all the checking you've been doing.  We really need the help. The reason that Rankersbo and I have been checking by letters of the alphabet is so that we can coordinate our work and not be checking the same ones while leaving others unchecked.  August is the last month for that, though, since from now on we will have only a one month queue, and (hopefully) a smaller number to check. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 20:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I had looked in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned AfC submissions not long before Anne Delong's comment, and it contained 147 drafts. Considering these were being deleted at a rate of more than 600 per day, it didn't seem excessive to me. The total number of G13 nominations I've ever made is around 1083; the bot was making around 500 per day. Also I wasn't purely requesting deletions: there were also articles I'd postponed, improved, or promoted. Nor did I always use G13 as the rationale, as can be seen in User:Rybec/CSD_log. &mdash; rybec   22:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Rybec, I am sorry if my post made it sound as though I were complaining. I was so glad to see you joining the hunt for salvageable material.  I only intended to send out a general caution to to everyone keep an eye on the size of the queue, because when we started reducing the huge backlog a few months ago, a number of admins expressed concern. They pointed out that they only had so much time per day to work on deletions (they are supposed to check each one before deleting, and there are a lot of deletion requests from other sources) and they asked that we not let the queue get too big.  Quite often the queue goes down quickly, and then some more can be nominated, but occasionally there is no admin available for hours.  &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 00:41, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

G13 category not being populated
I noticed that whatever process nudges things into time related categories has stopped working. Few November submissions are in G13 eligible, and the pending submissions at 0 days is filling up with few moving on to older days.

Anyone any idea who to talk to about this? Rankersbo (talk) 10:42, 15 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Good day, Rankersbo. might be able to fix this, since it's his bot that does the nominating and categorizing.  He's been pretty involved lately with getting the Draft space up and running, but he should see this thread, and maybe he'll have time to look into it. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 11:04, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hrm... There were some unicode titles that I needed to investigate and clear out of the way, but the underlying code started misbehaving, so I restructured the code a little bit and got some nominations in.  Let's keep an eye on this, though I'd be really happy if the drafts "RFC" above were closed... Hasteur (talk) 11:50, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Hasteur I don't know what we'd do with ourselves if we ran out of abandoned submissions to rescue (or as Sphilbrick put it, "a pile of crap [to] sift through").  And by the way, you have your wish...awaiting demonstration of real happiness... &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 17:04, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You asked, so I will comply... Hasteur (talk) 17:46, 15 May 2014 (UTC)VirgilGriffithFace.jpg

It's happening again
The nul-edit box isn't prodding articles into the G13 eligible category. There are eligible articles ready to be checked, but we don't know what they are because they aren't listed. Rankersbo (talk) 06:43, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Four day delay period for G13 deletions
It has been proposed that a dealy period of 4 days be introduced for G13 deletions. The discussion is taking place ar WT:CSD. Rankersbo (talk) 22:55, 20 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the nul-edit problem is causing confusion on this issue. Rankersbo (talk) 06:43, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Deceber 2014
There are G13 eligible articles that can't be seen in the category page.

I've made a list here. Rankersbo (talk) 13:16, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Category:AfC_G13_eligible_soon_submissions
Just a note that the eligibe soon cat has been created. Seems to have all the March artciles that haven't yet been bumped to G13 eligible. Rankersbo (talk) 09:14, 8 September 2015 (UTC)