MacphersonWiki:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/P1-A

This is part of Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Proposal.

P1 (deletion process for articles not asserting notability or being unreferenced)

The following process is to be added to CSD: "Where an article is to be deleted under these criteria because it does not assert notability, or is unreferenced, it should be added to the category "Articles about to be deleted because they do not assert notability'." If after forty-eight hours no assertion of notability is added, the article should be deleted. If a disputed or controversial assertion is added, the article should be listed on Votes for deletion..

• 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.
• Because this proposal was added at a later moment, it will close at 21 July 2005 14:06.

discuss

• To address concerns raised to this proposal, a new one was created: Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/P1-B.

Votes

Support

1. If this passes I will support 1 and 2. Tony Sidaway|Talk 7 July 2005 14:06 (UTC)
2. I think this is a very good idea. it deals with the arguemtns that articels about subjects that are in fact notable, but fail to clarly asssert notability, might be incorrectly deleted under several of the current proposals. I am not as worred about "instruction creep" as some people here, and i think this is a good addition to the process. DES 7 July 2005 14:49 (UTC)

Oppose

1. 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 - Wikipedia:Countdown deletion. And you know what? Something does not need to assert it's "notability" to be included on Wikipedia. It just needs to have a certain amount of desireable informative value. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 15:06 (UTC)
2. Strong oppose. It is a good idea, but suffers from poor wording. First, it would apply to all existing CSDs as well, as for instance patent nonsense rarely asserts notability. Second, it amends an existing proposal that is being voted on - thus people who voted on proposals 1 or 2 may get something else than what they voted for (or against). Third, it's not a speedy deletion criterion. Hence, after asking Tony, I've made a reworded proposal, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/P1-B. Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 18:38 (UTC)
3. Instances of instruction creep, of which this is one, should be resisted. Oppose unless proposals 1 and 2 would otherwise both fail. —Cryptic (talk) 7 July 2005 21:58 (UTC)
4. Not really speedy deletion, is it? JYolkowski // talk 8 July 2005 00:19 (UTC)
   • Well that's the problem with the current proposals. They suggest that otherwise good articles (not speediable under current rules) can be deleted unilaterally because, in effect, one person has looked at them and decided they are deletable. Giving a lag time allows other eyes to look at them. There is no downside--if nobody objects the article can be speedied after forty-eight hours. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 8 July 2005 00:26 (UTC)
5. Merovingian (t) (c) July 8, 2005 09:35 (UTC)
6. Oppose. This would create an unbelievably clunky process which would render 'speedy deletions' non-existent. David | Talk 23:31, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
7. Oppose. Great, more bureaucracy. And adding new proposals/changing existing proposals during voting is not a good way to achieve consensus. Aaron Brenneman 15:18, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
   • Aaron Brenneman's 250th contribution was at (or after) 05:20, 11 July 2005, so (s)he may not have suffrage. See caveats. —Cryptic (talk) 08:32, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
8. 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)
9. Oppose. - McCart42 (talk) 14:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
10. Oppose There already far too many administrative pages on Wikipedia. CalJW 17:19, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
11. Oppose - ral315 19:28, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
12. 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 09:26, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
13. Too complex. Noel (talk) 02:08, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
14. Oppose. Good articles don't assert notability. They show it. Imagine how crappy our George W. Bush article would be if it started out, "George W. Bush is the US President and a very important man." Superm401 | Talk 13:56, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
15. Oppose There should not be a burden of showing notablity in the speedy process. Leave it to VFD. -- BMIComp (talk) 23:15, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Comments

• I'm curious. Tony Sidaway|Talk views attempts to expand CSD as instruction creep, yet evidently does not consider adding a third category of deletion as such. Yet, a third category of deletion makes the process much more complex. What is the reasoning behind this?--Scimitar 7 July 2005 14:40 (UTC)
• Well the CSD proposals would considerably reduce the bureaucratic load, but at the expense of making deletion much less visible. As I've documented elsewhere, just because someone is a good administrator doesn't mean he's a good researcher (we can't all be good at everything). Tagging something and waiting for forty-eight hours does add another class of deletion, but it provides a compromise that I hope will be supported (though I recommend people to vote for P1-B instead of this, since I think it's worded much better). It would still reduce the number of articles on VfD (which I accept a lot of people want) but it wouldn't do so at the expense of making deletion of autobiographical articles all-but-invisible. We could scan the deletion log for bad speedies and just restore and cleanup (and some of us already do this, I think I've cleaned up about a dozen wrongly speedied articles today) but this would be much better. The deletion log is full of deleted nonsense, which would not be subject to this form of deletion and thus would not be made visible by this process. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 7 July 2005 19:23 (UTC)
• Wording comments: I would suggest it must be added to the category in place of it should be added to the category. I would further suggest that If after forty-eight hours no assertion of notability be followed by or alleged facts which clearly imply such an assertion. I would also add If such an addition is made, the delete tag and the category should be removed from the article, and it should be deleted, if at all, only via the regular VfD process. DES 7 July 2005 20:16 (UTC)
• I would support this with or without the changes I suggest above. i think it improves several of the proposals in this package. I think it addresses the issues several people have raised nicely. Since the voting times are offset, because of the unfortunate late addition of this proposal, i would suggest that people consider conditional votes if thsi protection is important to their view. That is that people vote to support particualr other proposals ONLY IF this proposal also passes. This sort of conditional voting was suggested as a possibility earlier due to the complexity of this group of proposals. DES 7 July 2005 20:21 (UTC)

The following comments were made while I was editing this

• [1]. I've suggested a new wording to Tony and he thought it was an ok idea; please give me an hour or so to work out obvious problems with it, and do not vote until then. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm sure an hour or so won't be a problem in the wiki. Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 15:49 (UTC)
  • This is fine with me. I'd love to see a set of proposals that we could all agree to than many reasonable proposals failing simply because of concerns that could, I think, be greatly allayed by a mechanism of this kind. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 7 July 2005 15:53 (UTC)
• Do not re-open this for voting in this forum. Please continue your work on Wikipedia:Countdown deletion and open a new vote. What your proposing is a completely different process than CSD, plus, this proposal voting period is already open and should not have new proposals added to it. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 16:34 (UTC)
  • I have concerns about this repeated changing wording and new proposals behaviour. I'm sort of ok with it as long as each new proposal gets its 14 days but the existing ones do not get their voting extended too. They should also fall or come into effect irrespective fof whether voting has closed on other, newer proposals. Otherwise, this mechanism will just be used to endlessly delay the adoption of the proposals, even those that show strong support. -Splash 7 July 2005 17:50 (UTC)
    • Splash is absolutely correct. The other proposals will not have their deadline extended; this one will simply have a longer one. Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 18:35 (UTC)

How does one "assert notability"

Do I write "This person is notable because..." - obviously not - the article would then read poorly

But writing "XYZ is a ... " doesn't "assert" anything, notability is inherently in the eye of the reader. We have to base our deletion principles on verifiability not notability to have a hope of creating an encyclopedia with consistently broad coverage. Pcb21| Pete 9 July 2005 15:00 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. See my comments on Proposal 1 where I raise the ambiguity of the wording (which is a good thing in general) and its unwanted side effect (administrators will simply decide that most things they read in articles they consider to be non-notable are not assertions of notability. "X is a mass murderer" isn't an assertion of notability if you don't believe that mass murderers are notable. Since there's nobody there to argue with the article is probably going to be deleted before anybody else knows it ever existed. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 9 July 2005 15:24 (UTC)

• Asserting notability simply means that the article should state at least one thing that is remarkable about the person. For instance, "Jane Doe can play the guitar" is not remarkable. "Jane Doe has regular guitar performances in the Boston scene" is remarkable. So, as a matter of fact, is being a mass murderer. A reasonable rule of thumb might be, if you were a reporter for a local newspaper - would you write about that person? Whether you believe that Jane Doe is notable enough for an article is irrelevant (though you can try VFD if you want). The fact that the article asserts it saves it from being speedied.
• The only articles that fail to assert notability are those of the kind that get unanimous delete-votes on VFD. Articles about people's classmates, for instance. People who write about themselves when they're only a paper boy. Etc. We get at least a dozen of such each day.
• This is a matter of common sense. Now I cannot speak for every single user here, but the admins at least have common sense, or else they wouldn't be admins. In the unlikely case that an admin starts improperly speedying things, we have existing procedures to deal with his breach of procedure. Indeed, WP:AN/I is often full of complaints about admins. Radiant_>|< 20:59, July 9, 2005 (UTC)

• • That just passes the burden on to what "remarkable" means, and different notions of common sense. Deletionist admins can be full of "common sense" but still delete things that I would simply rewrite. Tony's proposal to give us content creators a 48 hour window (down from the previous 7 days and the current 5 days) should be supported if the alternative is a 0-hr window. Pcb21| Pete 07:17, 11 July 2005 (UTC)