Contributors frequently propose new (or expansions of existing) criteria for speedy deletion. Please bear in mind that CSD criteria require careful wording, and in particular, need to be
Objective: Most reasonable people should be able to agree whether a page meets the criterion. Often this requires making the criterion very specific.
Uncontestable: It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully.
Frequent: Speedy deletion is intended primarily as a means of reducing load on other deletion methods such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. These processes are more discriminating because they treat articles case-by-case, and involve many points of view; CSD sacrifices these advantages in favor of speed and efficiency. If a situation arises only rarely, it's probably easier, simpler, and fairer to delete it with one of the other methods instead. This also keeps CSD as simple and easy to remember as possible, and avoids instruction creep.
Nonredundant: If the deletion can be accomplished using a reasonable interpretation of an existing rule, just use that. If this application of that rule is contested, consider discussing and/or clarifying it. New rules should be proposed only to cover situations that cannot be speedily deleted otherwise.
If you do have a proposal that you believe passes these guidelines, please feel free to propose it on this discussion page. Be prepared to offer evidence of these points and to refine your criterion if necessary. Consider explaining how it meets these criteria when you propose it. Do not, on the other hand, add it unilaterally to the CSD page.
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Procedural close. Per WP:PGCHANGE, this discussion was required to be widely advertised; it was not. Editors are encouraged to participate on the follow-up RfC below. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:35, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
For a while now WP:RFD has been flooded with nominations for redirects that a missing a space between the term and the opening parenthesis of a disambiguator (e.g. Constantine(video game) and Scaramouche(1952 film)), see for example sections 17 to 35 at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 31, sections 17 to 57 at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 February 1, and similar in the days leading up to them. These discussions invariably end up being deleted uncontroversially, and the number of discussions is causing issues for RfD (see e.g. Wikipedia talk:Redirects for discussion#Can we reduce the number of RfDs transcluded on this page?). Accordingly I propose a new speedy deletion criterion R5: Redirects with no space before a parenthetical term, e.g. "Foo(bar)", "Joe Smith(disambiguation)". This does not apply to terms that will correctly or plausibly be searched for without spaces, e.g. 501(c)(3)
Before nominating a redirect under this criterion:
Create the correctly spaced version as a redirect to the same target if it would make a good redirect but does not exist
Adjust any incoming internal links to point to the correctly spaced version.
This criterion does not apply if the redirect is the result of page move made less than 30 days ago, but criteria R3 and/or G6 may apply.
The rationale for the last bullet is to allow time for mirrors, etc. to catch up. If the page was moved and then immediately moved again, or created at this title then quickly moved then this title was obviously created in error and G6 applies. Thryduulf (talk) 13:34, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I'd support this. As you said, it's been an ongoing issue and the discussions end the same way every time. It's adding unnecessary bureaucracy when the outcome is clear from the beginning. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Support – these are among the most straightforward closes I regularly encounter at RfD, and they aren't adequately covered by R3 and G6. Complex/Rational 13:54, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Support. I would also support coverage of other obvious typographical errors, such as disambiguators missing a closing paren. BD2412T 15:26, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
The most recent large discussion I found about missing closing parentheses was very controversial as they were working around an external link problem. I can't remember what the outcome was in the end but it was relisted a couple of times, so not at all suitable for speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 15:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I've started trying to track past nominations such as these and I have 3 bulk nomination links saved in my notes for these types of redirects. They're for February, 2019, April, 2019, and October, 2022, the most recent of which was contentious. I'm sure you already know Thryduulf, but I thought I'd share the links for reference. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:28, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Support but I would title it "Redirects with no space before a parenthetical disambiguator" to define the scope. If not then things like 501(c)(3) absolutely will be carelessly tagged and deleted. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Good suggestion. I think that's a good differentiation to make. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Why aren't these R3's? Is it just that we're only now working through a backlog of very old ones that nobody noticed before? What happens when those are gone? And would a database report to detect new ones help? —Cryptic 17:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Some of the ones that have been nominated recently have been around for over a decade. I guess a database report wouldn't harm. Thryduulf (talk) 17:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Very preliminary version at quarry:query/80153. Very many false positives still, chemical names in particular, and it's not immediately obvious how to filter them out without introducing false negatives. I'd hope that most wouldn't be interpreted as a disambiguator, but I'm sure someone would eventually carelessly speedy ones like Chromium(III), and I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find ones of the much-more-common sort like Dysprosium(III) nitride tagged db-r5 either.What I'm not seeing are recently-created ones. The current most recent is Deportivo Toluca F.C.(women) from January 13, and the next most recent is Fletcher Ladd(justice) from December 14. Unless RFD has been very diligent about deleting recently-created ones in particular recently - has it? - this suggests to me a backlog we can hope to eventually clear rather than an ongoing and permanent problem. —Cryptic 17:55, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I tweaked your query to just filter out the articles, which got the total down to 12.2k. If it helps, Dcirovic seems to have created 900+ of the redirects that appear in the query. I expect that they're legit ones which could be removed. I also noticed that your list is including redirects that contain "-(", which could be something to look at to trim it a bit. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:22, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Filtering out non-redirects is good if you're looking for more to bring to RFD, or potentially speedy. It's not so good in the context of this discussion (since it also filters out redirects currently at RFD, since they're not technically redirects while tagged) or in an ongoing database report (we'd want to see pages created at or moved to titles like these as soon as they happen, not just after someone else happens to notice them, moves them back, and doesn't deal with the redirect).You can reasonably go further than just eliminating -( by looking specifically for a letter- or digit-like character before the paren, as in quarry:query/80157. Again, if I were watching a date-ordered report, I'd rather see them show up than risk missing a false negative - it misses Deportivo Toluca F.C.(women) from above, for example. —Cryptic 20:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Even just removing '-(' is going to filter out redirects we should deal with, like Hurdling-(horse race). —Cryptic 21:28, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
I don't know the flavor of SQL being used here and I don't have Quarry access but could it stand to have something along the lines of AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT 'X' FROM page otherpage WHERE otherpage.page_title = REPLACE(page.page_title, '(', ' (')? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Largoplazo (talk • contribs) 20:56, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
WMF-run wikis are backed by MariaDB, a MySQL fork. You (and anyone else with a registered account) do have Quarry access, if you care; click "Login" from the upper right and it'll bounce you through meta. And, again, that sort of refinement is going to result in many false negatives - this time, it'll find pages that haven't been partially dealt with (by someone creating the properly-disambiguated title), but miss cases where someone saw a page at Acme(widget manufacturer) and moved it to Acme (widget manufacturer) without dealing with the leftover redirect. —Cryptic 20:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
That right there is one of the largest groups of false positives I've found: Valid chemistry-related titles with parentheses without spacing before/after parentheses. Thus .. my reservations about making this a CSD. Steel1943 (talk) 19:59, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
(For what it's worth, here's the regex query I've developed over time that reduces the amount of chemistry-related false positives: [^ 0-9:\-\)]\([^0-9\-\)][^\)]. (Search using this regex [takes a bit to load]) However, it also doesn't allow any numbers directly after a "(" which will make "bad" disambiguators that start with years not appear in the list either.) Steel1943 (talk) 20:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
(Well, I just tried my own regex a few times, and even that list on 20 titles has like 2–3 false positives. Over the years, trying to write the perfect regex to reduce false positives has been rather difficult.) Steel1943 (talk) 20:15, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
@Steel1943 What we could do is tag chemistry redirects with a proper redirect category and then exclude the redirect template or category from the query. This way future editors will also know that these aren't fit for speedy deletions. Gonnym (talk) 20:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Support it seems to pass most of the NEWCSD requirements, objective, as noted all discussions seem to today result in deletion with most people agreeing, uncontestable, there is a clear consensus today to delete these, frequent, although it may become less frequent if newer ones are caught and deleted under R3 other namespaces and if future ones get missed (and some in other namespaces not yet checked as all from what I can remember have been namespace redirects but there will probably be such redirects in other namespaces) will be needed, nonredundant, as noted while many newer ones can be deleted under R3 older ones can't and although it could already be argued these can be deleted under G6 it would probably be more sensible for the same reason G14 was split to have a separate criteria. In terms of consensus etc in previous years such redirects were kept often per WP:CHEAP, see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 December 26#Burn (Scotland but in more recent years such as Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 October 27#Redirects with disambiguators missing ")" the consensus has changed namely that such redirects are WP:COSTLY. I would put one condition here, that the redirect doesn't have any article content history currently at the title (as opposed to from a move) Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 30#Montblanc(ffta) for example was an article so as a sub topic the history should probably be moved to Montblanc (ffta) (and the resulting redirect could then be deleted under R5) and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 29#Musa(name) which has significant history. When it comes to such redirects they should in some cases be moved to the correct title, in some cases should be restored and sent to AFD and in some cases are simply duplicates which means that if they only contain nonsense etc or don't contain any significant content not in the target they don't need to be kept and could have been deleted as A10 if they hadn't been redirected.
Excluding redirects that have history as an article would seem best as there aren't so many of them that RfD would be overwhelmed and the best course of action is not always the same. As for "improperly" capitalised disambiguators, the consensus that these are bad is weak and (from my biased perspective) getting weaker so they definitely shouldn't be speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm surprised those capitalizations were deleted. I don't personally support that as alternative capitalizations are typically valid redirects. Hey man im josh (talk) 22:33, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I don't think capitalization redirects with incorrect qualifiers are useful as users are very unlikely to use incorrect Wikipedia qualifiers, see WP:UNNATURAL and for internal searchers they would get to the correct place anyway. These redirects do inconvenience editors though.
@Thryduulf: Would something like This criteria does not apply to any redirect that has non-redirect content (such as being a separate article or template etc) at the current title's history unless the page would qualify for speedy deletion (such as A10 or G1) if restored. If the page was redirected more than a month ago then the page can be moved to the correct title without redirect or the resulting redirect deleted immediately under this criteria. This would clarify that redirects like Montblanc(ffta) could not be deleted by this criteria but because it was redirected ages ago it could be moved to Montblanc (ffta) without redirect or the redirect speedily deleted. While I don't really agree with you that article content can't be deleted at RFD I don't think article content should be speedily deleted under R5. And cases like say Musa(name) that have history that can't easily be moved would still go to RFD but as you say there aren't many of these case so shouldn't be a problem. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
I think I agree with the concept in your second paragraph, but the wording isn't the clearest (I had to read it multiple times to be clear about what you mean). I've not got time right now to improve it though. Your first paragraph is almost completely backwards - they do help and don't hinder - (UNNATURAL is a mix of correct, debatable and incorrect) but as this is something good faith editors disagree about it fails the uncontroversial requirement for speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 22:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
I am wondering if this would make more sense as X3. Recently created redirects which match the description of the proposed R5 fall under R3; once the "backlog" has been cleared this would seem redundant (NEWCSD#4). I think RfD can handle the occasional term(dab) that makes it past NPR without getting nominated for R3. HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 08:14, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
I strongly support X3 and opposeweakly support R5. Once the backlog is cleared, it will be redundant (i.e. fail WP:NEWCSD4) to R3; RfD will be able to handle the occasional redirect that makes it through the R3 window. HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 03:03, 23 February 2024 (UTC) EDITED 00:20, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per my previous discussion with Thryduulf. As I noted there, RfD has continued to be inundated with RDAB redirects, so I do think a CSD criterion is warranted. I would also support expanding the scope to cover the other types of errors mentioned at RDAB (I can live with capitalization differences being exempted, if others agree with Thryduulf that they are not uncontroversial), including (disambiguation, ((disambiguation), (disambiguation) (disambiguation), etc. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:17, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Missing closing parentheses were controversial last time they were discussed en mass so are not suitable for speedy deletion. I don't recall seeing any of the others at RfD recently. Ø (Disambiguation) (disambiguation) is the only page I can find "(disambiguation) (disambiguation)", and that's a {{R from merge}} so likely needs to be kept. As of the 21 November dump of page titles (the most recent I have downloaded) there were no instances of "((disambiguation" or "disambiguation))". Thryduulf (talk) 10:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Oppose while I like the idea; I don't think this will reduce the load on RfD. Maybe what is needed is a proposed deletion process. I think we can expand WP:PROD to include redirects. AwesomeAasim 19:07, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
From memory, a PROD for redirects has been rejected previously and I oppose it now. PROD only works for pages that are reasonably well watched, but very few redirects are watched other than by their creators (and not even always then) so PRODed redirects are unlikely to be seen. Thryduulf (talk) 10:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Do you think extending the PROD duration and maybe having a bot update the list of PRODded redirects periodically would solve this problem? AwesomeAasim 17:53, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Also I disagree that PROD won't work for pages not well watched; we have maintenance categories where people can review PRODs and reject them if they disagree. AwesomeAasim 18:00, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
PROD only works for pages that are reasonably well watched: it was my impression that PROD is used largely by new page patrol, so that wouldn't be the case. No? Largoplazo (talk) 20:45, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
I personally think PROD should be available to all types of pages but that's a different discussion. In any case these redirects shouldn't be left to clutter the search etc for 7 days. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Support. These RfD end the same and are basically just a waste of editorial time and take time away from the other nominations. Gonnym (talk) 13:21, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
@Utopes just sent another batch of redirects to RfD today, so pinging them here. Also pinging @Steel1943, who previously nominated several RDAB redirects, and notifying 176.33.241.125 on their talk page. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:10, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip! I didn't even realize this was a discussion taking place when I sent those, will leave a comment now. 👍 Utopes(talk / cont) 20:31, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Neutral. I'm concerned drive-by admins will delete redirects that look like disambiguation issues when the title is actually valid (false positives). Examples: BSc(Hons) (currently nominated at RFD) and JANET(UK) (apparently, a valid alternative/former name for its target [see its edit history for my back-and-forth edits on this].) Yeah, given my level of participation in these redirects, one would think I would be supporting this ... but not so much since I'm concerned administrators may not get it right the first time when enforcing such a speedy deletion criterion, which has a potential to cause harm to the encyclopedia. Steel1943 (talk) 19:47, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Create a temporary criterion "X3" until the numbers get low enough to where it can be reasonably appealed. Thinking about this, turns out I'm okay if this is the chosen path, given that I think "X" criteria tend to make admins do a double take and research the redirect's history prior to deleting the redirect. Seems like such a situation could appease all parties. Steel1943 (talk) 23:28, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
I've stuffed the (full, unfiltered) results into subpages of User:Cryptic/Improper disambiguation redirects, and am going to spend a few hours classifying them - maybe all of them, but at least the first subpage which has the thousand most recent. Yes, even the relatively-easy-to-detect chemical ones. A problematic case with two examples has already jumped out at me (maybe the same sort as Steel1943's above, I haven't looked at them) - CPUSA(PW)/CPUSA(P) and PCd'I(ml). Would the advocates of this criterion speedy those? And if not, how are they excluded by this wording? —Cryptic 20:42, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
The first two should be excluded as they "will [be] correctly or plausibly be searched for without spaces" - determined by them being listed in bold in the target article without spaces. PCd'I(ml) does not appear to be correct - the article uses the acronym spaced and every unspaced google hit seems to relate to this redirect, so would be correctly speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 22:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
No confidence that some heathen who thinks there should be a space before the param list of function prototypes won't use this as an excuse to speedy int main(void). —Cryptic 21:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Support if I create the list, and improper disambiguation does not affect some titles like 501(c)(3) and chemical names like Cadmium(I). 176.33.241.125 (talk) 01:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Support: Such redirects are almost invariably getting deleted at RfD – I haven't found a single nomination in the last 30 days that closed as anything other than "delete", though BSc(Hons) seems headed to "keep". – This proposal will probably reduce the backlog and editor workload considerably. My only issues are the potential misuse/careless use of the criterion, hence why I would additionally support a listing of major exceptions (chemical names come to my mind but there are others). Dsuke1998AEOS (talk) 02:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Neutral, but would love to support a criteria that can be used to clean these. From what I've seen, while these titles might look the same, the backgrounds for all can be vastly different. As an example based on my personal experiences, I set out to find the total number of film redirects that were exactly: Foo(film). There were 172 of these, yet their histories were always varied. (I found it useful to display these titles in a Massviews chart). There are some pages that were recently created, and could qualify for R3 (although not usually). Sometimes, these were intentionally created with the lack-of-space, but most of the time these titles came about as left-behind from moves. Sometimes these were created at a bad title with extensive histories before being BLAR'd into the version that already exists, or may contain convoluted reversions between two titles that only differ in their spacing. In some of these cases though, G6 is likely to apply under the stipulation that they're "redirect(s) left over from moving a page that was obviously created at the wrong title." (which directly comes from Template:Db-error). The reason I'm neutral is because while I agree that these titles should be ridden of, I don't know if there is a clear-cut description would lead to deletion at this stage, more than what we already have described in G6 and R3. I agree something needs to be done, but investigating the histories seems to be an absolute requirement here, which cancels out a lot of these situations I'd think. Utopes(talk / cont) 20:47, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
As a question to this, would Shock(film) be eligible for CSD under this criteria, with its history? What about Rockers(film), which survived RfD? Brij Bhoomi(film) has 173 pageviews this month (due to its multiple incoming links), but would it also be CSD-able under this criteria despite it getting 17 views a day? At RfD I'd !vote to delete all of these for sure, but what I don't know is whether CSD makes the deletions too hasty, and whether there is value in investigating their histories and circumstances for existence. These are just the (film) redirects, and I don't know how complicated the other titles could be. Utopes(talk / cont) 20:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
@Utopes: "...there is value in investigating [the redirects'] histories and circumstances for existence..." There always is, which is one of the reasons I cannot sway my opinion one way or another to codify these redirects as eligible for CSD. Steel1943 (talk) 22:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
As more and more examples get brought up, I'm becoming less and less certain that speedy deletion beyond R3 and G6 is possible in a way that is not too narrow to be useful and not too broad so as to catch things that shouldn't be deleted. I need to think more. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I agree with that, yes. This is my concern as well. When looking through these titles, the backgrounds can be vastly different. When putting the Foo(film) RfD together, I was skipping over pages in history, because those would need to be checked on a case-by-case basis, presumably. It was unclear to me whether this new CSD criteria puts weight into histories, and if so, by how much? If we take away the pages with history, we're left with a decently smaller number of applicable pages, and the question becomes whether a whole criterion is necessary for the [X] number of cases that are safe to outright delete. I don't know how much that number is. Utopes(talk / cont) 22:32, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
I guess my follow-up would be to find a comparison. How are histories dealt with other R CSD criteria? I feel like I've seen situations where a page (and its history) are replaced with a redirect (I think it was to Draftspace, but I can't recall), which was then tagged as R2'd by someone who followed up with the page. How "valuable" is the page history there? I'd presume it's checked every time, so doing it here might not be that unconventional. The question becomes what constitutes a "valuable history" that makes CSD a safe action for redirects that meet R5. Utopes(talk / cont) 22:44, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
It should be checked every time, as with all other speedy criteria. I have no confidence that it is. —Cryptic 02:59, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
So, I've finished sorting the most recent 2000 and least-recent 1100ish page titles containing an open-paren not preceded by a space at User:Cryptic/Improper disambiguation redirects (I was never going to get through all of them, and had only been fooled into thinking I could because SDZeroBot initially only gave me about a third of the results). The conclusions I'm drawing from that are:
We should make it explicit that this only applies to disambiguators per se, not parenthesized text that's part of the redirect subject's proper name, even if it's misspaced or misspelled. (This sounds obvious to me when it's put like that, but nobody's brought it up as the general case, even though more specific subcases like chemicals and section names have been.) So It's On(Dr.Dre)187um Killa and INS Talwar(F40) and Cheeses...(of Nazereth) wouldn't be speedyable, but restatements of the proper name or redundant parenthesized names like in King Edward Medical university(KEMU) and SsangYong Rodius(Stavic) could be. "Plausibly be searched for without spaces" is too vague, fails NEWCSD#1, and will be abused.
Section names like 501(c)(3) aren't common. Chemical names and processes are very, very common, and I didn't notice any incorrectly-formed disambiguators in chemistry-related redirects. If we're mentioning broad classes of counterexamples, that should be the first. I further think we should specifically exclude the entire subject area even if the disambiguator of a chemistry-related redirect is ill-formed and it would otherwise qualify.
These aren't frequent. There are a lot of extant cases, but we only see a handful of new ones a month. This seems to be a recurring theme at RFD - someone finds some broad new class of malformed redirects that have been accumulating since 2001, starts nominating them at RFD - sometimes properly in batches, sometimes individually! - and then it finds its way here, even though new ones aren't being rapidly created, and those that are fall under existing criteria.
I've commented multiple times above, so I'll bold a position here: I oppose this as a permanent criterion, for being infrequent, redundant to R3, and error-prone; I'm neutral on a temporary X- series criterion until the old ones are dealt with. —Cryptic 03:26, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
We can't delete anything under R3 unless it was created recently. It would make more sense to expand the scope of WP:G14, which already includes (disambiguation) redirects. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:41, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Well, yes, R3 is recent only. Quite obviously. As I mentioned above. But there's a finite, relatively small, number of non-recent ones: roughly 5000, based on the sample I analyzed, and that's assuming a vanishingly-small number of redirects with non-redirect history (which I didn't check for). As soon as they're gone - and that'll happen quickly, the admins vying for topspot at the awful WP:ADMINSTATS scoreboard query for speedy candidates like these and feed them into Twinkle - it'll be entirely redundant. —Cryptic 03:02, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
admins vying for topspot at the awful WP:ADMINSTATS scoreboard - surely not: the top admin there is behind the second-top admin by 400,000 deletions and so 5000 entries would be trivial. * Pppery *it has begun... 03:09, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I hadn't realized about these all time lists. It's just as I've always suspected, there's just no keeping up with Explicit. Hey man im josh (talk) 04:05, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Support as a useful tool. Even if the current situation looks temporary, forcing repeated discussions isn't a good use of anyone's time. Also, there's no way of knowing it won't flare up again at some point, since redirects aren't necessarily closely watched and these sorts of mistakes can steadily build up unnoticed; hell, this discussion is going on now because it already happened once. I don't buy the arguments that admins should be assumed to be total rubes, it doesn't actually take a PhD to recognize scientific nomenclatures and other idiosyncratic spellings aren't the same as Wikipedia disambiguators. If there's that much concern, just create a Category:Redirects with unspaced parentheticals or something similar; don't force people to murder untold numbers of characters and minutes of their lives they're not getting back. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
@Thryduulf:, what I think could be helpful would be if we can identify which / how many of these qualify for G6 or R3 already, and use those existing criteria where appropriate. Once all of the G6/R3 candidates are addressed, maybe we can take a look at what remains, and the commonalities between them? If I had to guess, maybe 50% of these were unambiguously created in error and currently actionable?{{cn}} which might allow us to compartmentalize this block bit by bit. Utopes(talk / cont) 20:27, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
Strong Oppose these redirects are entirely harmless. We may as well have them since they likely bring a small net benefit to the encyclopedia. The do no damage. Readers don't know our guidelines on how to format the disambiguator, and readers are our priority, not top-down decisions based on overly-finicky guidelines.🌺 Cremastra (talk) 13:22, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
Would they qualify under WP:G6? —Qwerfjkltalk 21:17, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
The very fact that this is controversial indicates it isn't a G6. * Pppery *it has begun... 21:25, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
The ones that were very obviously created by or when fixing a mistake (most commonly this is evidenced by being moved to and from this title by the same person in quick succession) do qualify as G6, but this only applies to some of the redirects that would fall under this criterion (either because they were created deliberately or because it isn't obvious whether creation was intentional or not). Thryduulf (talk) 21:55, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
Support. Agree with editor Cremastra that these are harmless and possibly a bit helpful as {{R from typo}}s; however, the issue is that they are being deleted anyway and clogging RfD, which begs for a solution. And this solution does the trick as long as care is taken not to delete needed redirects that just look like the bad guys. P.I.Ellsworth,ed.put'erthere22:43, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
Comment: I'm worried that, as worded, the proposed criterion doesn't take into account page history that (a) may be required to be kept for attribution in the case of redirects from merges (which might lead to accidental breaches of licensing requirements), or (b) is otherwise useful; both of which are listed in the redirect guideline's reasons for keeping redirects. I'm also worried that it doesn't take into account the age of these redirects - some may have existed for a significant length of time and/or may be redirects with old history, which are listed in the guideline as redirects that should not normally be deleted without good reason & that should be left alone. I also share Cremastra's view about these redirects being harmless - in RfD discussions I've seen where such redirects have been nominated, I sometimes see WP:RDAB being cited; however, that shortcut links to an essay that doesn't explain why such redirects are costly enough as to warrant deletion (as opposed to being cheap). With the greatest respect to Paine Ellsworth,/gen I'm very hesitant to think we should be creating a new CSD criterion for redirects that may be being deleted at RfD when (arguably) they should be being kept, especially when they are possibly...helpful (which is another reason in the guideline for keeping them). Only a comment for now while things are still mulling around in my head, but I think I'll add a bolded !vote at some point relatively soon. All the best, —asmart kitten[meow] 01:59, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
Strong oppose per my comments above. I am heavily unconvinced that these redirects are costly enough to warrant deletion in the first place. To take a few recent RfD examples (, ), often in such discussions the only reason given for deleting them is per WP:RDAB - but, as I mentioned above, that essay section doesn't explain why these redirects are at all costly and/or problematic (and so, arguably, isn't a valid rationale for deletion - especially when considering that redirects are cheap is one of the guiding principles of RfD). I'm concerned that a local consensus may have formed at RfD to delete these redirects, and I wouldn't want to create a speedy deletion criterion that further embeds this. All the best, —asmart kitten[meow] 18:09, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
Comment Considering many RfD participants don't watch this page or subscribe to FRS, is it reasonable to advertise this RfC via an editnotice at RfD? InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:07, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
Create a temporary criterion per Steel and Cryptic. These redirects are a countable list and will go away in some time. Hence I would not prefer a "R5" as this becomes redundant once the backlog is gone. Also, we need the updated wordings incorporating Crouch Swale's suggestions about page history, which was also A Smart Kitten's concern. Jay 💬 06:32, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
The problem with making it temporary is that this backlog already built up once, so removing it once this current issue is resolved allows it to build up again. The other two temporary criteria were to deal with issues that definitively weren't going to recur, which is not the case with this; people will still inevitably create these bad redirects. Why take away a useful tool? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:47, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
My understanding behind the suggestions for a temporary criterion is that once the backlog is cleared, the combination of a report, R3 and G6 would mean there aren't enough redirects to meet NEWCSD criterion 3 (frequent). Of course there is nothing stopping us enacting a temporary criterion and then making it permanent later if the issue remains ongoing. Thryduulf (talk) 20:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
If there's a choice, I'd definitely take a temporary criterion over nothing at all. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:48, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
Support with caveat that it excludes redirects with a substantial non-redirect history. That situation is rare enough to be worth discussing; and there could easily be situations where eg. an article was turned into a redirect that fits this description, which nobody noticed, and is then listed under this CSD - it wouldn't even have to have been done maliciously (although ofc it could be.) And if there is a history, whether due to a merge or whatever, this CSD would usually be the wrong approach anyway - in that case you'd want to move the redirect to preserve history and attribution, rather than create a new one that lacks them. --Aquillion (talk) 19:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Discussion (Improper disambiguation redirects)
Skimming over some of the discussion at VPPOL regarding the recent G5 RFC, it appears there is a view that RFCs to establish a new speedy deletion criterion should be advertised on T:CENT; which I am personally amenable to. Looking in WP:CENT/A, I can't see that it's already been notified there. What are others' views on the idea of adding this to CENT? I would be in favour of it, but I wanted to hear from other editors first. All the best, —asmart kitten[meow] 03:57, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
While I have no objection to doing so, I don't think it's worth it as there isn't a clear consensus here and I don't think more input is going to significantly change that. More workshopping leading to a second proposal that was advertised on CENT would be a better use of time I think. Thryduulf (talk) 12:10, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
That's a fair point. —asmart kitten[meow] 23:55, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
After skimming through the discussion prior to closing, I got here. At this point, I can close this per WP:PGCHANGE since it wasn't properly advertised, or this RfC can be relisted and then advertised at T:CENT, VPPOL, and other appropriate places. I personally prefer the latter, since I see a consensus forming around creating X3 that excludes redirects with a substantive page history or redirects from merges. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:54, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Personally, I'd prefer a new proposal with a specific proposed wording to be the one advertised to make it clear what people are supporting/opposing. Thryduulf (talk) 04:26, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Does this work for people?
X3: Redirects with no space before a parenthetical disambiguation, e.g. "Foo(bar)", "Joe Smith(disambiguation)". This does not apply to terms that will correctly or plausibly be searched for without spaces, nor does it apply if the redirect contains substantive page history (e.g. from a merge). Before nominating a redirect under this criterion:
Create the correctly spaced version as a redirect to the same target if it would make a good redirect but does not exist
Adjust any incoming internal links to point to the correctly spaced version.
Yes I think that makes sense per my above comments. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:05, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
There is a typo ("not does it apply" should be "nor does it apply"), and I wouldn't object to giving an example of "correctly or plausibly" but other than those two minor points this looks good to me. Thryduulf (talk) 18:34, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
I have silently corrected the typo. As for examples, I did not include any because I honestly could not think of any (which certainly does not mean they don't exist, but does very much mean I am open to suggestions). In e.g. 501(c)(3), "(3)" is not a parenthetical disambiguation. Likewise for things like Dysprosium(III) nitride: the "(III)" is not a disambiguator.
If there are no other points, I will look to launch an RfC with a CENT listing ~tomorrow. HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 18:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
RfC: enacting X3
Should X3 (redirects with no space before a parenthetical disambiguation) be enacted as a temporary CSD? 17:34, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Proposed text:
X3: Redirects with no space before a parenthetical disambiguation, e.g. "Foo(bar)", "Joe Smith(disambiguation)". This does not apply to terms that will correctly or plausibly be searched for without spaces, nor does it apply if the redirect contains substantive page history (e.g. from a merge). Before nominating a redirect under this criterion:
Create the correctly spaced version as a redirect to the same target if it would make a good redirect but does not exist
Adjust any incoming internal links to point to the correctly spaced version
Support as proposer. These are all redirects which are errors in the act of disambiguation, and thus has no natural affinity with the article in question. I will also add that in the above discussion people have explained why this is A Good Thing; I will let them explain their own reasoning rather than attempt to filter it through my voice. I will note that this is supposed to be a temporary criterion per WP:NEWCSD criterion 4, as once the "backlog" has been cleared it will be redundant to WP:R3. (For transparency, this comment includes a hidden ping to everyone who commented above. I have opted for a hidden ping to avoid the distraction of a bunch of usernames.) HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 17:34, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per HouseBlaster and my comments in the preceding section (tldr; when nominated at RfD these redirects are inevitably deleted). Although it is very likely that once the backlog is cleared the combination of R3 and G6 will make the need for this redundant we can discuss making it permanent if that turns out not to be the case. Thryduulf (talk) 17:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Support it may be better to make it permanent because some redirects will likely later get missed and then becoming too old for R3 but its better than nothing. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:16, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Strong oppose, per my comments in the previous RfC. Although this proposed criterion takes into account page history, it doesn't factor in redirects' ages - which may lead to redirects that have existed for some time (including potentially redirects with old history) being deleted; despite the Redirect guideline stating that these should be left alone. Furthermore, and most importantly, the essay cited as the deletion rationale (WP:RDAB, part of WP:COSTLY) doesn't explain why these redirects are harmful enough to warrant deletion at all - simply stating that, in the opinion of the essayist, there is no need to redirect from them. As far as I can see, these redirects are entirely harmless. As I said in the previous discussion:
I am heavily unconvinced that these redirects are costly enough to warrant deletion in the first place. To take a few recent RfD examples (, ), often in such discussions the only reason given for deleting them is per WP:RDAB - but, as I mentioned above, that essay section doesn't explain why these redirects are at all costly and/or problematic (and so, arguably, isn't a valid rationale for deletion - especially when considering that redirects are cheap is one of the guiding principles of RfD). I'm concerned that a local consensus may have formed at RfD to delete these redirects, and I wouldn't want to create a speedy deletion criterion that further embeds this.
All the best, —asmart kitten[meow] 18:18, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Redirects with significant history, including old history, are excluded from this criterion. That doesn't invalidate the rest of your comment though. Thryduulf (talk) 18:36, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
For clarity, when I used the phrase redirects with old history, I was referring to redirects with entries in the page history from previous versions of Wikipedia - i.e., those that {{R with old history}} would be applied to. I read the phrase substantive page history in the proposed criterion as referring to an article (instead of just a redirect) being present in the history - therefore, my understanding was that redirects with old history are not necessarily excluded from this criterion. All the best, —asmart kitten[meow] 18:50, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
I meant substantive page history to mean something like page history with something more than adding/removing rcats/fixing double redirects/etc.HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 19:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Why not just add this to the "e.g." parenthetical above? I think that would avoid further confusion. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:36, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Neutral If there seriously is a problem with these kinds of redirects then sure, go ahead. But I am failing to see how these can just all be nominated in one big RfD with consensus to delete. Are there too many of them? I know the IP that was doing the nomination of them failed to group the redirects appropriately together in a single nomination. AwesomeAasim 18:20, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Grouping up nominations more often then not leads to a failed nomination as editors just can't handle a large amount. Gonnym (talk) 16:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose per WP:CHEAP. I fail to see what harm these redirects are causing and would recommend instead to just leave them alone. --Tavix(talk) 18:28, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Neutral What is the problem that needs to be solved? TheBannertalk 18:35, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Support, this is a convention that affects a quite-literally-"random" selection of pages that happened to have issues. While it is good to create redirects for reasonable typos based on different way that search terms can be spelled, errors in the act of disambiguation are not useful or plausible typos to keep. Out of the millions of pages that have parenthesis in their titles, there is not a single time when I, nor you, nor anyone would expect that the Foo(bar) version exists for the same title. Basically, if you were to purposely leave off this space when searching for a title, there is a 0.1% chance that the redirect would exist (as it's a group of thousands among a pool of millions). It's totally unreliable, will never be intentionally typed, and all-in-all exist as clutter among incoming links with the potential to drown out and dilute the actually likely typos. To quote WP:COSTLY, redirects also need looking after. While they may not take up a lot of bandwidth on their own, these faulty titles have been a WP:PANDORA's box cracked wide open, which has led to a surplus of unexpected corners where edits can go undetected. Out of the thousands of affected redirects, I'll estimate that 10%(?) have substantial history, as duplicate pages left unincorporated for anywhere up to a decade and beyond in some cases. That's still hundreds of titles with histories! Of course these such cases wouldn't apply under this new CSD criterion, but by removing the titles that have no reason to exist, a higher focus can be placed on the titles that ARE distinguished by their complicated histories, most of which haven't seen the light of day from their peculiar, isolated locations.
All in all, an uncontrolled surplus of these titles makes it difficult to monitor new content, harder for editors to track changes and split histories, adds unnecessary and unlikely filler to redirect lists, maintains a faulty narrative that it's okay to move a title to "Foo(bar)" if "Foo (bar)" is salted for whatever reason, or that it's okay to have these unlikely parenthetical errors in titles (which always get ejected to new titles per the MOS anyway), and just all-in-all makes navigation less consistent to randomly account for an implausible typo redirect that exists 0.1% of the time. Utopes(talk / cont) 20:02, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Based on my comment below, I am moving to oppose the current version. I would hypothetically support a permanent R5 that does not include the bullet points, which puts the onus unnecessarily on new page patrollers to continuously be jumping through hoops to follow these. As it stands there is a very high reliance on the idea that "once these are deleted then we will start catching everything with R3/G6/RfD" which is exactly what is going on right now, with very little success. This is plucking the flower without detaching the root of the issue. Utopes(talk / cont) 02:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Support since I suggested it above. Steel1943 (talk) 20:21, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Blarg, my own comment further down in the discussion concerns me. Steel1943 (talk) 22:45, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Strongly oppose per Tavix and my comments above. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per Hey man im josh below.Preferably without the two bullet points, and preferably permanently. In regards to deleting the two bullet points, CSDs should be simple. We should not be putting the burden of checking other pages, editing other pages, etc in order to place a CSD on patrollers and administrators. I'd prefer to keep CSDs simple, without a bunch of little gotchas and caveats. The complexity of NPP workflows is a big problem, slowing down review times and leading to NPP burnout. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:46, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
"...We should not be putting the burden of checking other pages, editing other pages, etc in order to place a CSD on patrollers and administrators." For what it's worth, such actions have to be taken in some cases, such as for WP:R4 and most of WP:G8, and for good reasons; thus, that quoted claim cannot be applied across the board. Steel1943 (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
G14, A2 and A10 all require checking the existence and/or content of other pages too. G12 requires checking for external sources. Thryduulf (talk) 23:33, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
It seems that this RFC's wording says that the CSD is temporary, but lists no expiration date. Is this really a temporary X criteria if this CSD has no expiration date? Perhaps it would make more sense to have this as a permanent R criteria, then use an RFC to repeal it later. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:12, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Changing to Oppose. This proposed criteria is too complicated because of the two bullets. I do not like the idea of a CSD where patrollers and admins are required to do a bunch of cleanup steps before placing or executing the CSD. The two bullet points put a lot of burden on the patroller and deleting admin. Are these bullets required when filing RFDs or closing RFDs? This is more cleanup burden than the status quo, if I'm understanding things correctly. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Replying to both your comments in order: neither X1 nor X2 had built-in expiration dates; they were just repealed when the cleanup was done. And this is complicated because it is temporary: there are people (e.g. me) who are volunteering to complete the steps required by the two bullet points to clean up the backlog of incorrectly spaced disambiguations. Put differently, this is not meant for e.g. NPPers (though they are welcome to use it), instead it is meant for people who volunteer to help with this backlog. If you (generic you) wish to use RFD, nobody will stop you; this is a shortcut for the people who feel like it is a shortcut. But a discussion takes volunteer time; I think it is easier to check Special:WhatLinksHere and potentially create a redirect (both of which could be linked from the CSD template for ease of use) than have a weeklong discussion. HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 17:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
Comment Support (summoned by bot). I’m supportive in principle, but the discussion above highlighted some instructive examples, such as the chemistry false positives, and the film examples where each case seemed to warrant individual investigation, so I’m a little hesitant on whether this change might reduce due diligence that would have caught false positives. Then again, if that happens, just recreate them? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:31, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
The Chemistry examples would not be in scope because the text in the parentheses is not a disambiguator, similarly anything that is correctly rendered without a space cannot be deleted by this. The concern with the film redirects was almost entirely that some have substantial history, such redirects are explicitly excluded from this this criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 23:37, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Fair enough, I have upgraded my comment to a Support. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:04, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Support the exceptions have been well thought out, the risk of unintended consequences seems low. – Teratix₵ 05:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per Utopes. While these redirects are cheap, the effort wasted on individually judging their deletion is not. Without this proposal, it is apparent that editors unfamiliar with this discussion will continue to flood RfD with uncontroversial deletion requests. BluePenguin18🐧(💬) 05:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per my comments in the previous discussion – individual nominations have invariably resulted in a clear consensus to delete. I trust that the reviewing admins would catch most false positives. Perhaps this could then be incorporated into R3 after the current round of cleanup is complete, if a standalone criterion would be redundant. Complex/Rational 15:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
The only reason these aren't included in R3 at the moment is the recency requirement of that criterion (which is there for good reason). Thryduulf (talk) 15:39, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Support: The outcome of these types of redirects being sent to RfD is extremely predictable and it would save everybody involved some time. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:42, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Weak support (Invited by the bot) "Weak" because I have less expertise on this than the other respondents above. Everything has a cost (including retained redirects) and IMO folks who calculate that based on what the hard drive cost are mistaken. Also, if these are already all getting uncontroversially deleted, then IMO that refutes the argument that some need to be kept. North8000 (talk) 19:17, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Support. As in the above closed discussion, my support for this action is resumed. P.I.Ellsworth,ed.put'erthere20:11, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Support well thought-through proposal and supported by an apparent consensus across multiple RfDs on the topic. I don't see a large benefit to delaying the cleanup by requiring all of these go through RfD; if it's obvious just let sysops delete it and avoid the busywork and bureaucracy, that's the whole point of CSDs. — Wug·a·po·des 20:57, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per my previous comment. My support is primarily because of the RfD nominations, which almost always result in deletion and are an unnecessary waste of time, but secondarily because of the unnatural aspect of the typos (as Utopes said above). Personally, I would be even more restrictive: for example, I'm never going to speedy a redirect that has had hundreds (or, heck, even just tens) of pageviews in the last month, but I understand that pageviews are rarely a consideration for redirects nominated at RfD, and this proposal is obviously better than nothing. Dsuke1998AEOS (talk) 02:41, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
I'd really be happier if this spelled out "non-redirect history" rather than the vague "substantial". (The only other thing it could mean - pages tagged {{R with old history}} - isn't a concern; no page with a matching title is tagged with the template, and the oldest, Road Warriors (Atlantic League)(version 2), postdates modern MediaWiki and has an article in the history besides.) —Cryptic 03:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Support from a maintenance perspective. Redirects need maintenance to ensure they're categorized appropriately, link to Wikidata items, etc. With the sheer amount of redirects on enwiki, it's not going to make a huge difference, but it's nice to do housekeeping. SWinxy (talk) 18:59, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per my previous comments. RfD has been constantly overwhelmed in recent days. InfiniteNexus (talk)
Support: uncontroversial maintenance work supported by previous consensus. — Bilorv (talk) 16:39, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Comment. Now that I've thought about what this would entail, I do want to add: while I support the addition of a CSD to cover these, there is nothing about the group of affected pages that signals it into the X category. Under the pretense that a CSD will be created for this, I oppose X3 and support R5. There are other supporters above who also prefer something permanent, which is my lean as well, and there has not been a spot to cover how this would be categorized. R5 was the original suggestion, but was changed to X3 by HouseBlaster when starting this RfC. As a refresher on the precedent for X criterion, which has only been enacted once ever (X1/X2 occurred simultaneously), both of these affected a limited number of titles which was impossible to grow in scope, due to the finite bounds, and will 100% never be a problem again when the target set of titles gets dealt with. This was due to the clearly defined and permanent bounds of the X1 and X2 sets.
X1 was created to deal with redirects meeting one criteria: "created by Neelix". After Neelix's ban, that group of 50,000 eventually would basically disappear, and cannot possibly grow in size due to the finite nature of a single banned user's page creations. X2 was a bit more nuanced, but was created to deal with faulty pages created by the content translator tool, specifically before the configuration error described at WP:CXT was fixed in 27 July 2016. This set too, would disappear in number, in part due to the full draftification of remaining pages.
The list of redirects applicable under X3: "Redirects with no space before a parenthetical disambiguation", is totally unlike X1 and X2, in the sense that Foo(bar) can be created by anyone, at any time, for all time. Based on the hundreds of recent RfDs, there is consensus that these titles can go. There's thousands of these pages at the moment, and this mistake was equally as common 12 years ago just as it was common 2 years ago. It's because of this that the temporary aspect I don't think holds up; there needs to be a long term solution that doesn't involve hawking NPP eternally for R3 candidates. In the opening, HouseBlaster states that: "this is supposed to be a temporary criterion per WP:NEWCSD criterion 4, as once the "backlog" has been cleared it will be redundant to WP:R3." This is only the case if every single Foo(bar) title is caught within a month of creation forever, i.e. within the window where R3 applies. While many of these titles are quite old, this quarry shows many (but not all) of the 100+ Foo(bar) redirects created within the last two years, the key takeaway being that "they exist" and haven't been RfD'd or R3'd yet. If we delete all the Foo(bar) titles and end up with another 100+ of these two years from now, now we're back where we started with the overflow. From my point of view, this should be a permanent CSD until the consensus is that this shouldn't be a permanent CSD any longer. These titles will always pop up and calling this X3 implies that there will never be a surplus of these ever again, which cannot be known. Utopes(talk / cont) 22:29, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
If these get created at such a rate that those which are not caught by the combination of R3 and G6 gets to a point that RfD gets overwhelmed again or it looks like it wouldn't if X3 didn't exist we can easily convert it to R5 at that time because we will have evidence that it is needed permanently. We don't have that evidence now. Although I suspect it wasn't your intent, the wording of your comment implies that the change from R5 to X3 was a unilateral decision by HouseBlaster, but it was a decision taken based on comments in the first discussion and discussion of the way forward following it. Thryduulf (talk) 00:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Apologies, it looks like I didn't see the other parts of the discussion where the temporary aspect was being talked about. HouseBlaster was the person saying X3 in the first RfC, whereas the other mentions were of whether or not to make a "temporary criteria" without necessarily saying "X3". It was then proposed as X3 a day before the new RfC began, with the sign-off being mainly for the proposed text and in my eyes wasn't necessarily about the X3 vs R5 decision.
Something that has been brought up previously is that this is redundant to R3 and G6, when this is not the case. (Side note: The last R3 deletion was 4 days ago, on Solar eclipse of 2024-04-28, not super important though, just a fun thing). R3 is its own entity entirely and is completely time-sensitive for recent redirect creations. This is impossible to be a failsafe alone. Redirects will be missed, or mistakenly patrolled, and based on the sheer number of recently-created Foo(bar) pages from the last year or so that still exist untouched, they definitely escape eyes. The criteria that has more pertinence is G6, which is reserved for errors, and most of these are errors! The (unanswered) question I asked in the first RfC was whether we should go through and delete the errors right now, and see how many intentional creations remain. Who knows! Maybe we won't need to make a temporary CSD in the first place if the CSD is just going to go away once we temporarily clear the backlog. Contrarily to what you say, this is fundamentally an ongoing issue if we have Burek(song), Poison ivy(plant), and KP Oli Cup(cricket) all created days ago in Feb/March 2024, and all marked as new-page-patrolled too, preventing anyone from possibly spotting these in time to R3. These aren't even necessarily G6-able either, and if we start picking up several a month to RfD (despite overwhelming consensus being to always delete regardless of time spent at title), this backlog will never be fully cleared. Because of the continuous nature that these redirects get created, this should be R5, in my eyes. There's no evidence to suggest this is temporary, as we have pages that meet this criteria from 2002 through 2024. Starting at X3 and moving to R5 is unprecedented to occupy a temporary X CSD first, and there is a need to get it right the first time to avoid occupying more CSD names than we have to. If there are titles here that are G6-able as unambiguous errors, I say let them be G6ed if they can. If it's a permanent thing, let it be permanent! I'm in support of the speedy deletion of all of these pages, but I think the idea that the Foo(bar) group is a temporary and countable problem is just not the case. Utopes(talk / cont) 02:20, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Everything is unprecedented until it's needed for the first time, that's not a reason to support or oppose anything. Everybody supporting a temporary criterion was supporting the creation of a criterion numbered X3 even if they didn't use that explicitly (temporary criteria are numbered in the X series, the next one available is 3) in the same way that everyone supporting a new permanent criterion for redirects only is supporting a criterion numbered R5 and everyone supporting a new permanent criterion for articles is supporting a criterion numbered A12, regardless of whether they use those names or not.
Some of the titles are G6-able, some aren't, but the point is that once the backlog has been cleared the combination of R3 and G6 means that the few not eligible under either criterion will not overload RfD to the point a new criterion is needed, as best we can predict based on the data we have now. If that changes then there is no harm at all (number exhaustion is not a thing) in changing X3 to R5. Thryduulf (talk) 16:47, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
That's a very useful query but let's not limit ourselves strictly to its output. Other redirects should also go, such as "Joe Smith(disambiguation)" mentioned in the proposal (excluded because of the space) and 10,000 Summers(No Devotion song), which also has a space in the qualifier. (The database Quarry uses represents spaces as underscores.) Certes (talk) 21:43, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose X3, although I could support a CSD for one-character typo disambiguation redirects. Temporary criteria are there to help fix issues created by specific users or specific software tools; this one has no business being temporary. —Kusma (talk) 07:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
@Kusma: The point is such typos are already covered by R3 if recently created. Once a cleanup is done under X3, the ability to speedily delete longstanding typo redirects is no longer needed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:26, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Why would plausible typos like omission of a single space be covered by R3? These are being generated quite frequently, which shows they are not freak occurrences, but plausible typos. I can't see R3 being applicable. —Kusma (talk) 16:38, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
R5 as first choice, X3 as second per my reasoning earlier in this discussion and Utopes above. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Support X3 first choice, R5 second choice - This is most cleanly X3. However, we should dump the quarry query onto a page somewhere, and state that X3 applies only to these redirects. This is appropriate as X3 because the backlog is disproportionate to the creation rate. Tazerdadog (talk) 21:17, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
Support. These redirects are not useful, given that we have the correct versions, and simply clutter search results and the database. {{Database report}} is good at dumping quarry queries onto a page. Certes (talk) 21:07, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose as there are so many correct redirects without a space before (. It would lead to too many erroneous deletions. More care and consideration is required than a speedy delete. R3 can be used if creation is recent. Suppress redirect on move policy would also need to match. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:32, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
Not specific to you, but I see a lot of discussions on this page (to borrow my earlier wording) act as if in this area admins are also total rubes. Admins are by definition experienced enough to distinguish obvious errors in Wikipedia disambiguators, even unfamiliar ones, from idiosyncratic spelling conventions such as chemical nomenclature or artwork titles. As an example, even someone unacquainted with chemistry can click the redirect Fe(III) oxide and, within two paragraphs, see ample evidence that it's part of a nomenclature. By contrast, if someone were to somehow create Isaac Brock(longevity claimant), no one experienced enough to be an admin would think that the disambiguator (longevity claimant) is unique among disambiguators in lacking spaces; even without its existence, if you get as far as typing in "Isaac Brock(" you'll see the result you're looking for in the dropdown search results. And on top of that, if there's a mistake it's also entirely reversible. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
This is all well and good so long as the admin bothers to read the page title and comprehend what they are doing before pressing delete. Doesn't sound especially difficult of course, but CSD definitely attracts the type who are intent on speed over anything else. J947 ‡ edits 07:05, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
R5 as first choice, X3 as second. There are ways to handle some of the false positives, including using {{R from chemical formula}} on chemistry redirects. The fact is that there are just a very large amount of these and this ongoing clean up has been going on for years. Even using twinkle to send to RfD is time consuming as some editors want these grouped up (which is understandable), but the template at RfD is expanded (for whatever reason) so it isn't a smooth and easy copy/paste. Then we also come into a problem of batch nominations where time and time again it has proven that editors just don't like these and these fail for no other reason other than that. So we end up with clean up editors needing to decide each time what amount is the correct amount to batch up... which is just a waste of time. To the above concern about admins not doing their job correctly. If the that happens, the problem isn't with this but with the admin themselves and the proper channels should handle that. --Gonnym (talk) 08:13, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Comment - I originated (and have expanded as necessary over time as more examples arise) the content contained at WP:RDAB. I did so because it is easier to reference the sentiment expressed there with a quick shortcut rather than repeating myself over and over again at redirects for discussion. However, on similar grounds, I oppose this as a temporary remedy because such redirect archetypes arise and populate the venue so often. I am also unsure if I would support such a criterion if it were proposed as permanent. I would have to put a lot more thought into the matter than I have at the moment. —Godsy(TALKCONT) 09:36, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
@Steel1943: A partial answer to your question posed much above (i.e "does anybody recall why the texts at WP:UNNATURAL and WP:RDAB were written?") is contained in my comment right above this. Let me know if elaborating further on any particular point would be of help. —Godsy(TALKCONT) 09:55, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Support There seems to be agreement that these should be deleted at RfD, and that is what ultimately controls. * Pppery *it has begun... 23:14, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per NOTBURO; this solely enforces a longstanding consensus, even if I disagree with the longstanding consensus. First hand experience, this is also putting a huge burden on RfD. Queen of Heartsshe/theytalk/stalk 20:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per WP:NOTBURO, I have no opinion on the underlying arguments, but if there is general consensus that a) these redirects are not needed and b) going through all of them at RfD manually will take a huge amount of time, there is no real reason to not do this. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:32, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Support without bullet points -- this is a good proposed CSD, but needs to be made as simple as possible, and there should be no requirement for a CSD editor to subsequently go through and do additional cleanup of links, or create new pages. The whole point of CSDs are that they should be *speedy*. ⇒SWATJesterShoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 17:13, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Support they always get deleted so let's speed it up. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:53, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Support R5, weak support X3. Fine, let's just get this done. (I've already commented a few times in this discussion, so I've already elaborated my stance.) Steel1943 (talk) 14:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
Support R5 There is no reason for this rule to be temporary, although we do need manual check for false-positive matches such as Iron(II) → Ferrous. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:32, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
Support don't care whether temp or perm. Yes, there could be false positives, but I assume editors are smart enough to make the right judgements. Toadspike (talk) 10:11, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
Support as such redirects are often implausible and unlikely a search term. R5 would be suitabile for this; it is unlikely for people to type titles without space between the ambiguous term and the disambiguator. Toadette(Let's talk together!) 10:21, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Time to get rid of A2?
Pretty much the title. For one, it is not used frequently (the last 100 entries take us back to November 2021). But more importantly, I don't think deletion is actually beneficial. The criterion itself calls for tagging with {{Not English}} (if it does not exist on a different language Wikipedia), and I would add that draftification is a good option as well. Given those two alternatives to deletion—WP:ATD-T and WP:ATD-I—exist, I am not sure we should have this CSD (c.f. WP:PRESERVE). Is there anything I am missing/other thoughts? HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 03:46, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
Nowadays most of these creations are in Draft space, so that is where they get knocked back. If there is a chance that the content is useful to another project or could be translated, then draftifying could be good. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:45, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
Presumably, the justification for draftifying new non-English articles is Wikipedia:Drafts#During new page review #2a-iii, that the article meets some speedy deletion criterion, namely A2? So in order to continue justifying these draftifications it would be appropriate to add non-English to the list of reasons why a page might be obviously unready for mainspace, releasing A2 from its role there. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:18, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
RfC: deprecating A2
NO CHANGE
There is consensus against deprecating A2 as a CSD. Alternate suggestions for various changes also failed to gain consensus. —Ganesha811 (talk) 01:23, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Should A2 (Foreign-language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project) be deprecated as a CSD? 01:18, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Support as proposer. A2 is rarely used, and thus fails NEWCSD3. The last 100 entries on that query take us back to November 2021, and when you ignore false positives my rough count takes us back to February 2021. Assuming all of the articles which qualify for A2 need to be deleted, AfD can handle an additional ~0.14 articles a day. But more importantly, I don't think deletion is needed in this case. Incubation and tagging for translation is a viable WP:ATD, and per ATD If editing can address all relevant reasons for deletion, this should be done rather than deleting the page. HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 01:18, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose. Foreign language articles pasted into English Wikipedia without any translation are low effort on the part of the article creator and not a good use of editor time. The status quo of deleting these seems fine here. Also, the idea of sending more articles to AFD is not exactly a selling point, as it is often mentioned that AFD is backlogged and does not have enough regular !voters. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:23, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
NEWCSD is not the threshold to repeal a criterion, unless you'd like to make a play at A7 and G11 - when we've removed criteria before, it was because essentially all uses of them were incorrect. And oppose on the merits too: these aren't enwiki articles, they're requests for enwiki articles, without even the possibility of moving them to the proper project (where, in my experience, they're either ignored forever or deleted outright anyway). —Cryptic 02:43, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose. It may not be used much directly, but my comment above that it is still needed to justify draftication appears to remain unaddressed by the nominator. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:50, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
I would be happy to note in the proposal that it would be deprecated in favor of draftifying. HouseBlaster(talk·he/him) 16:01, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
You miss the point. To draftify an article requires a rationale. The current rationale for draftifying non-English articles invokes A2. Removing A2 also removes this rationale from draftification, preventing in-process draftification of non-English articles. If you want to continue draftifying non-English articles, leave A2 in place and it will just work. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
“Wanted topic but not in English” sounds like a good draftification rationale. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:02, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Strong support per every point by the proposer. Eligible cases are required to have a corresponding article on another language Wikipedia. This is an implicit claim that the topic is missing from the English Wikipedia. Draftification for translation is an obvious better route. Far less WP:BITEY is one big reason. SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:16, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per proposer and especially SmokeyJoe. This criteria long predates draftspace, and the wiki has also changed in other ways in the past 15 or so years. Additionally, every criterion should be compatible with NEWCSD. Yes there are some that have been grandfathered in, but that doesn't mean they would be good criteria if proposed today or that we shouldn't periodically review existing criteria to see if they are still fit for purpose (this is why R4 and G14 exist as separate criteria). Thryduulf (talk) 09:48, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose at least for now. Largoplazo makes good points in the Discussion section below about needing to consider this in concert with pages needing translation, and others' comments about how this interacts with criteria for draftification are also valid. This isn't an endorsement of the status quo, rather I think we need to take a comprehensive look at how we want to handle non-English submissions in 2024 and then make necessary changes to all the affected policies and guidelines to match that. Thryduulf (talk) 11:44, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose per Cryptic. Just copying some content doesn't mean one would necessarily work on translating it. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:36, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Sounds like the purpose of draftspace! SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
That takes six more months of lying around, which irks me >:(. If someone wants to actually work on something, IMO they'd translate the text and put it there one by one instead of just copying something, or, even better, use the content translation tool. I don't see the value of keeping stuff that would be deleted under A2. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:27, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
You think six months is too long a deadline?
There is no cost to putting the foreign language submission in draftspace. I think there is value in giving the author one week to follow up. And once it’s been one week, why not ignore it for six months. The cost of complicating G13 is more than the cost of leaving untouched in draftspace for six months.
Many editors are not very good with their first edit. Here, it is necessarily an autoconfirmed editor, but still, fresh autoconfirmed editors are not always very good. Do you think Wikipedia needs a higher barrier for competence before they are allowed to create a mainspace page?
The value of draftification is in pointing out to the newcomer where draftspace is, and allowing them to continue their intended contribution. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:59, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
I don't see how deleting a copied page produces a higher barrier to contribution. My interpretation of A2 is that it only applies if the article's entirely foreign language but nothing else. If there is something else to salvage, A2 wouldn't apply, and the article can still be draftified. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:07, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Support. In 2024, there are sufficient tools available to assess whether a foreign-language page is worthy of translation (then it can be draftified) or not (then the other criteria apply). A2 seems to do more harm than good if we delete articles solely based on whether they are not in English and not on their merits. For example, Karl Friedrich Wunder which was deleted as A2 in January was a copy of de:Karl Friedrich Wunder (a notable 19th century photographer) was eligible for deletion under G12 since copying another language Wikipedia article is also a violation of copyright. Saturnino de la Torre was a wrong A2 since it didn't exist on es-wiki at that time but was probably eligible for G11 like the es-wiki counterpart. Point is, I don't think there is really much need anymore for A2 because in most cases the material either already fails another criterion or it's translation-worthy. Regards SoWhy 18:26, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose when I first looked and read this discussion or at last the 1st points I was going to support. However having read the rest and thought a bit more about it I think this criteria is good. Objective, most people are likely to agree foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project should be deleted as no content is actually lost as the content and history will still be on the foreign language project. Uncontestable, again this is a bit like A10 and arguably for the same reason as splitting G14 from G6 it might not be a good idea to merge or if this criteria is removed I'd expect people to use G6 anyway. Unlike T2 its quite simple so which as noted in the discussion to repeal T2 that the criteria is not easy to understand unlike this one. Frequent, yes it doesn't appear to be extremely frequent but with around 1 use per week that seems frequent enough given as noted in the U3 discussion neither A9 nor A11 appeared in around 32 hours of deletion. So I think this passes the 1st and 2nd NEWCSD and given the reasons for splitting G14 I'd argue along that logic it passes the 4th item and in terms of the 3rd though not very frequent seems frequent enough. I'd agree the articles can be drafted upon request but it seems a bit pointless given the article will still exist on the other project so if the author wants to start translating they can still use that page to get the content from. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:42, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
“Uncontestable”, that the wanted topic but not written in English needs to be deleted? That sounds weak. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:07, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Its not the topic its the content, having a foreign language article with the same content as the native language on the English Wikipedia is completely pointless. Its quite likely that if the topic exists on a foreign language Wikipedia it will be notable here but as noted we don't need to duplicate foreign language content here just like we don't need 2 articles on the same topic on the English Wikipedia. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:13, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose still a completely valid deletion criteria. Not being used much doesn't mean it doesn't have its place in the toolbox, and each Wikipedia has different notability standards. SportingFlyerT·C 19:09, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Well. A2 exists to enforce WP:MACHINE so we shouldn't repeal A2 without modifying WP:MACHINE, but. I think the ideal process is, reviewing editor looks at article in %language on en.wiki and compares it to the same article on %language.wiki. Reviewing editor isn't necessarily expected to be able to read %language, but makes a quick eyeball assessment: does the version on en.wiki look reasonably developed and substantially different? If not, tag for A2. If so, reviewing editor tags the en.wiki version with {{Not English}} and then drops a note on %language.wikipedia.org/Talk:%Article to ask if they want it. (Reviewing editor is likely going to have to use google translate to make an intelligible note in %language, but that ought to be acceptable for talk pages). %language.wiki then has access to the old text which they can use to develop their article if appropriate, and en.wiki doesn't have foreign-language content in mainspace. Happy days. I do feel that this process is a useful way round a 7 day community timesink at AfD, but I also think it needs better documentation than currently exists.—SMarshallT/C 21:25, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
A2 predates MACHINE.
If A2 requires human review, it should be PROD not CSD. I think immediate draftification is much better than PROD for a new non-English article. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:11, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for sending me on that nostalgic trip into Wikipedia history. :) I don't think it's strictly accurate to say that A2 predates MACHINE. The text now at WP:MACHINE has moved around a lot, and was, originally, phrased as:
Translation is hard. Amateur translators tend to produce prose that is unnatural, and perhaps incorrect when it comes to specialized terminology....Machine translation is much much worse. Never use machine translation to create an article!
I've traced that text back to the first revision of Wikipedia:Translations, on 11 May 2003. According to the edit summary that text was moved from the Village Pump and considering the date, I expect that would have been a cut-and-paste move. The paste includes undated text by User:MyRedDice, who is now User:MartinHarper and was incidentally the inventor of the Three Revert Rule and the Barnstar, saying "We do indeed recommend against machine translation". In other words, the gist of WP:MACHINE has been custom and practice since at least May 2003.Well, at that point in time, what's now the Criteria for Speedy Deletion read like this and the criteria for speedy deletion were collectively called "exemptions from the five-day rule" (which I think at that time was the minimum possible time a page had to be listed on Votes for Deletion before anyone was allowed to delete it).I'm saying that both rules go back to Wikipedia's equivalent of time immemorial.All CSD "require human review" because it's a human that adds the tags. We expect those humans have read, understood what they were reading, reflected if necessary, and then taken a decision to use CSD. Something should be a PROD when it needs two humans to review it. Therefore A2 is appropriate for CSD, not PROD.Why would draftification be a helpful step? Content doesn't meet A2 unless it duplicates content on another WMF project, so I can't see any benefit to using draft space in that way.—SMarshallT/C 00:13, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
All CSD require human review? Great in theory. Tagging if often done in error. Any editor or IP can tag {{Db-a2}}. And then, there’s plenty of not so old evidence of some admins would delete tagged pages en-mass, at high speed. This is why there is supposed to be the rule, all eligible pages should be deleted.
Would draftification be helpful? Yes, it would be helpful to the editor who saved the article there. They should have saved it in draftspace. Moving it to draftspace necessarily means that the article log will point to the draftpage. Then, when that editor comes back, they can find the draft, both from the deletion log of the article title, and in their contribution history. This is more helpful to them than coming back to find a log entry mentions A2, and no record that they ever did anyhthing. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:53, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose, solution looking for a problem. Stifle (talk) 11:46, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
Change to speedy draftification: As stated by editors in this discussion and above, deletion might be a bit too harsh, and these are requests for articles to be created on English Wikipedia. Speedy draftification might be the best way to allow for these articles to be developed for enwiki. Failing that, repeal. AwesomeAasim 13:34, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose per David Epstein, Cryptic, and S Marshall. Translation tools are not yet 'sufficient'. Moreover, one should not potentially use the mainspace in an attempt to tip the scales towards the translation or scrutiny of viability of one topic over any other. Just because a criterion exists does not mean the deletion of such a page is a certain; incubation is still an option if a page is deemed worthy of retention by those reviewing it. At the end of the day, non-English content is likely of little use to most of our readers; eliminating a longstanding tool to easily and quickly remedy that is not a good idea. —Godsy(TALKCONT) 08:51, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose As long as it is being used to delete pages that are of no use to us, we should not be repealing criteria solely because they are not used very often. Having this criteria discourages users from other language Wikipedias from copying their articles onto here without properly translating, resulting in a page that needs a fundamental rewrite. funplussmart (talk) 20:46, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose; not broken, the last thing AfD needs is more burden. Queen of Heartsshe/theytalk/stalk 20:37, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Discussion of A2 RFC
CommentWP:Pages needing translation into English should be taken into account. Should this RFC be closed and redrafted to consider both together? Under the terms of WP:PNT, an article created in a language other than English that doesn't qualify for A2 (or any other reason for deletion) gets a grace period of two weeks. If translation isn't at least underway by then, the article gets put up for deletion under WP:PROD or WP:AFD. It doesn't make sense to give non-English articles treatment that's disparate in this manner, one month to live if they aren't on another language's Wikipedia and six months to live if they are.
Having said that, draftification really has changed the game, as most of the otherwise legitimate articles listed on WP:PNT, by the time I see them, are red links because someone's response was to draftify them. So if this RFC comes out in favor of draftification as a blanket treatment when a non-English article is on another Wikipedia, then it will make just as much sense to make draftification that standard treatment for all non-English articles, and eliminate WP:PNT's role in that situation. WP:PNT would still be of use for cases for which it's used today, where someone has added a chunk of potentially useful non-English material to an article already in English. And it would retain its role as the place to post requests for fixing articles that have been translated to English.
If this change in guidance were to be made, however, it would definitely be time to rename WP:PNT (which should long ago have been renamed WP:Articles needing translation to English, since non-articles, including drafts, aren't handled there) to something else, since coverage of "Pages needing translation" would no longer be its role at all.
Alternatively, we could simply allow the drafts to be listed at WP:PNT. And remove the two-week grace period. Let all entries remain posted until either translated or G13ed.
Due to all these considerations, I think A2 and WP:PNT should be considered holistically. Largoplazo (talk) 11:06, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
I may be wrong (I haven't done a lot of work at WP:PNT for at least a decade now) but I don't think any articles have actually been given the two weeks grace for a few years now. Most articles either get deleted as copyvios or A2 or moved to draft space well before the two weeks have expired. Ping @Lectonar who might be able to correct me. —Kusma (talk) 12:00, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
I can only speak for myself here, but I will respect the 2 weeks grace for prodded articles. As for the case of Saturnino de la Torre which I deleted as an A2 because it had once existed on Spanish Wikipedia: I actually interpret A2 a bit more widely here: for me it's enough that an article has once existed in another Wikipedia; requirements for an article here are more strict regarding sources and notability in compariosn to most other Wikipedias....so if something is deleted at, e.g., Spanish Wikipedia, rare would be the case that it would stand as an article here. And yes, probably it would have been eligible as a G11, but that would mean the article would have to be translated first, or the prospective deleting admin is able to read and understand enough Spanish to be able to process it without translation...this would rather cut down the number of admins who could delete. On another point, G speedy deletion criteria are "general" ones, while A deletions are restricted to article space. When I have a choice, I will use the specialized criterion over the general one. Lastly, allowing drafts at WP:PNT will inflate the workload over there even more. It's bloated enough as it is. But I would support a move to WP:Articles needing translation to English. Lectonar (talk) 12:19, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
It is not PNTers who do not respect the two weeks (I realise I have not been clear in what I wrote); what happens most of the time is that pages get listed at PNT and then are dealt with by other people using other mechanisms (draftified/speedied) so PNTers just have to remove the redlinked entries. —Kusma (talk) 13:53, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
That is correct. WP:PNT used to be fun, I actually got to do some translation, now it's just remove the red links and maybe the date header. On the other hand, if we were to start accepting drafts there, then I'd have my pointers to potential translation fodder back, in cases where the language is the only reason the article was draftified. Largoplazo (talk) 21:14, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
To look at some real cases, would someone please temp undelete and list the last twenty A2 deletions? -SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:35, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Undeleting into mainspace would be pretty bad. I'd say somebody just copy the contents and put them in userspace. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:13, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Should there be a new criterion for redirects that imply the target covers a topic it does not?
I recently approved Ghanaians in Sweden as a redirect to African immigrants to Sweden at WP:AFC/R. However, the latter page actually does not mention Ghana or Ghanaians, so I shouldn't have created that redirect. Self-trout
I went ahead and tagged the redirect as {{Db-g7}}; there's really no need for a discussion on that redirect, but G7 is the only criterion that would apply. To handle cases like this, I am proposing a new criterion:
R5. Redirects to pages without relevant content
This applies to redirects with target pages that do not have content relevant to the redirect's title. It does not apply to redirects that could be appropriately retargeted to another page; such redirects should be fixed, not deleted.
Would this, or something similar, be a useful criterion? Luke10.27 (talk) 02:18, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
How do you feel it meets the four listed criteria at the top of this page? -- Whpq (talk) 02:20, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
Objective: There is little room for debate as to whether or not a page covers a particular topic.
Uncontestable: I can't think of any case in which a redirect pointing to a page that does not cover the topic of the redirect's title would be useful.
Frequent: I'm not sure about this one.
Nonredundant: In this case, G7 applied. However, if I hadn't tagged it myself, none of the existing criteria would have applied.
Sometimes the target article used to cover the topic, and then the question is whether it should cover the topic or not, and whether a different article should cover the topic. Some page being BLARed does not automatically mean all of its previous redirects should be speedily deleted; it is better to examine them individually.
As for your introductory example, Ghanaians are Africans, so the redirect you mention seems a perfectly acceptable {{R with possibilities}}. —Kusma (talk) 09:03, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
My understanding is that {{R with possibilities}} applies to redirects that are covered in the target article, but could be expanded to separate articles? Luke10.27 (talk) 01:23, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
In this specific case there might not be any doubt about whether the topic is covered, but that is not always true. Additionally there is often coverage elsewhere (redirects not getting updated when content is moved), sometimes the lack of coverage is due to vandalism, sometimes the redirect was an article that should be restored and discussed as an article (and there is frequently disagreement about doing that). This is not suitable for speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 11:36, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
That's a good point. I hadn't thought about the possibility of this seeming to apply when it doesn't due to temporary removal of content. Luke10.27 (talk) 01:25, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
Weak oppose largely for the same reason as Thryduulf. While I think this would be useful I think the problems with cases where content in the target was removed and if it should be restored or not mean this is not suitable for speedy deletion. Otherwise I would have supported. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:45, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
What about redirects from alternative spellings or common misspellings? The former may not be present in the target and the latter should not be. I think there are enough cases that breach point 2 above that this would not be a good speedy deletion criterion. Another one that I've just thought of while writing this is where an AfD discussion closes as "merge". Often a well-meaning but rather lazy editor comes along and redirects the title without merging the content, potentially leaving the situation described here. The solution is to merge the relevant content, not to delete the redirect. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:13, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
That seems more of a RfD issue than a speedy. Speedy is more for obvious issues, and it is possible to have a redirect that at one time had the relevant information that explains the redirect, but it no longer does. So it is a matter of either reinserting the info to make the redirect valid again, or concluding it never should have been created, which isn't a speedy decision, it is a discussion, hence RfD. The "damage" of keeping an irrelevant redirect for a week while it is discussed is minimal. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:21, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
"Without relevant content" is not objective enough to be a CSD. Stifle (talk) 09:02, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose as subjective – what something does or does not imply is inherently uncertain and open to discussion. Unless there are objective subcategories of such redirects, I believe they ought to be discussed at RfD. Complex/Rational 14:27, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
Weak oppose: Maybe if the wording was better, we could enact it. TheTechie (formerly Mseingth2133444) (t/c) 14:22, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose as subjective, as others have said. One of the most common types of RFD nomination is exactly this, and only through discussion do we determine what to do with the redirect. Sometimes we learn that the target does contain relevant info that's not immediately obvious, somewhat more rarely we determine that relevant content was removed and should be restored, other times we determine a more suitable target, and actually it's quite rare that such a discussion results in deletion. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:32, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose – Such redirects are often brought to RfD. But in a scenario where a reliable source mentions the title in the topic on the target page, but not in the article on the target. IMO, CSDs doesn't respect mercy, especially to new users requesting redirects at WP:AfC/R who, after adding that information to the target, realises that the redirect was speedy deleted and thus, creating another request. RfDs are less bitey than CSDs. Toadette(Let's talk together!) 10:37, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Adding a new criteria for unused MediaWiki messages
Not sure if this should be an expansion of G6 or if this should be a completely separate criteria MW1 but I think there should be a criterion for system messages unused in the MediaWiki software (i.e. not listed on Special:AllMessages) or in other system messages, modules, or templates. The wording could be as such:
MW1: Interface messages not used in the MediaWiki software.
This criterion applies to system messages and sandboxes of system messages that are not actively being used in the MediaWiki software, as shown with Special:AllMessages. This does not apply to interface messages used in templates, modules, or other MediaWiki pages. If a message is listed at Special:AllMessages, this criterion does not apply.
If there is a way to get a database report on all the MediaWiki messages that are not being used by either? I think being an extension of G6 would be better than its own stnadalone criteria but I put wording here just in case. We can workshop more before we come to consensus on it. AwesomeAasim 00:50, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Could generate the report first, then do mass MFD(s) of the appropriate ones. May not need a CSD criteria for this. Also, can you give an example of one that is currently needing deletion? Maybe these pages are created for a reason and some further research and discussion will reveal the reason. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:07, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
My opinion from Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 78#Add criteria for MediaWiki namespaces is unchanged - there've now been 1745 total deletions of any sort in the namespace ever other than early script runs (like the one in January 2007 that deleted 1308 messages), so there's no way this is frequent enough. It might be the case that we're due for another script run, but A) I'd want to see data for it and B) we don't need a speedy criterion for it. —Cryptic 01:55, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I kind of agree if this is something that the community decides is uncontroversial maintenance then it is included in G6. I only put this here because not everyone agrees exactly. AwesomeAasim 05:43, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Also with regards to frequency, what counts as "frequent" is difficult to say for different mainspaces. Maybe "frequent" ideally should be defined in terms of the number of pages in that namespace that get nominated for that specific reason to those that are kept. AwesomeAasim 05:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
More information Year, Discussions ...
Year
Discussions
2024
2
2023
5
2022
2
2021
4
2020
4
2019
6
2018
3
2017
4
2016
2
2015
6
2013
1
2012
1
2011
4
2010
2
2009
0
2008
1
2007
4
2006
4
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1
2004
1
Close
Oppose as not even remotely frequent enough. Frequent means "happens often enough that it is causing a significant workload for the relevant deletion process". Based on searching MfD Archives for "MediaWiki" there appear to have been a total of 56 discussions of pages in the MediaWiki and MediaWiki talk namepsaces in the last 20 years. The greatest number of nominations in a calendar year was 6 in 2015 and 2019, the second highest was 5 in 2023. These figures are for all nominations, not just ones that would be relevant to this proposal. Some of them were speedily deleted under existing criteria and some of them were kept (at least one speedily), two of the 2021 nominations were April Fools jokes. This means the number of relevant discussions is even lower. Thryduulf (talk) 12:39, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose, solution searching for a problem. There may also be unused pages that have nontrivial or even interesting history and would benefit from MfD. —Kusma (talk) 14:54, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
Proposal for new category criteria
Hello all, I would like to propose a new criteria for Speedy Deletion:
This criteria would likely be C3, and it would cover categories that contain only one webpage, that is also the title of or the same topic of the title of the redirect. (Sorry if that's redundant, one could clean it up.)
An example of this would be: Special:PermaLink/1208530790.
Would this be deleted through CfD, or could we make a new criterion just for categories like these? Please feel free to comment, and for any substantial comments, please ping me. Thanks, TheTechie (formerly Mseingth2133444) (t/c) 14:51, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
Objective. Y "Contains only one page, whose title matches that of the category" is objective.
Uncontestable. N Deletion isn't always the right course of action. My first thought is that in some cases there are other pages that could or should be in the category but aren't. Adding "with no prospect of expansion" or similar to the criterion would fix that, but it's subjective and it reminds me of WP:SMALLCAT, which has been very controversial and so is not suitable for speedy deletion. The example category has been nominated at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 2#Category:Vandalism on Wikipedia where it has attracted three !votes, one "merge" and two "speedy merge", again showing that this requirement is not met.
Frequent. ? I don't frequent CfD but Category:Vandalism on Wikipedia is the only current nomination that this would obviously apply to, suggesting it isn't particularly frequent.
Non-redundant. Y this is not redundant to any other speedy deletion criterion.
Based on the above analysis, I have to oppose. Thryduulf (talk) 15:17, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.
Should there be a new R5 criteria for incorrectly formatted redirects to DAB pages? Redirects to disambiguation pages with malformities qualifiers such as Foo (desambiguation), Foo (DISAMBIGUATION) and Foo (Disambiguation), this excludes redirect using the correct WP:INTDAB title namely Foo (disambiguation) or any title that has useful history. Redirects with incorrect qualifiers that don't target disambiguation pages can be deleted under G14.Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:50, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Support as proposer and the discussions at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 March 26#London (Disambiguation) and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 August 24#"Title (Disambiguation)" redirects to disambiguation pages these redirects are a nuisance to editors trying to fix disambiguation errors and search takes readers to the correct title if deleted anyway. I would be open to moving the redirects to pages ending in the (correctly formatted) "(disambiguation)" that point to pages that aren't DAB pages here if people think that's a good idea. 1 objective, most agree they should be deleted though a significant minority disagree as is sometimes the case with other criteria, 2, uncontestable, per the 2 linked discussions there is a consensus that they should be deleted, 3, frequent, although not extremely frequent they are frequent enough IMO, 4, nonredundant, these may be able to be deleted under R3 or G6 as it was argued in the 2022 discussion but given the discussion it would be clearer to have a separate criteria. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:07, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Support. These shoot basically be deleted on sight. BD2412T 19:11, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose alternative capitalization of first letter being included – These are not harmful and Wikipedia is not improved with their deletion. It's entirely predictable that someone would miscapitalize a disambiguator. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:42, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Support. As the only non-article pages in mainspace, disambiguation pages and redirects are each special and somewhat obscure from a reader viewpoint, and redirects to disambiguation pages are doubly so. The correct versions of these redirects are a technical measure to assist editors and the automated tools they use. The incorrect versions, including capitalised variants, serve no purpose and help no one. Shoot on sight. Certes (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Support. Entirely unhelpful to keep these around. Might as well keep any and every misspelling as entirely predictable that someone at some point will make such an error. Better to make it clear that it is an error than to let an editor think they have created a correct wiki link. older ≠ wiser 20:06, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose deleting "(Disambiguation)" redirects if they redirect to a disambiguation page-someone might miscapitalize the D (like in the case of holding the ⇧ Shift key for too long), and while it may not necessarily be helpful, it's not harmful either. Support deleting those with misspelled "disambiguations" and those that have "disambiguation" yet don't have appropriate disambiguation pages that exist-those ones are search bar clutter and might annoy or mislead people respectively. Neutral (tilting support) on deleting the "(DISAMBIGUATION)" ones though-this error (e.g., holding the ⇪ Caps Lock key) does happen, but not very often. Those may help some people, but they're mostly an annoyance, so Wikipedia may be safe without the fully capitalized disambiguators. Regards, SONIC678 20:19, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
those that have "disambiguation" yet don't have appropriate disambiguation pages that exist Redirects ending in "(disambiguation)" (with any capitalisation) that don't point to a disambiguation page and cannot be retargetted to an appropriate disambiguation page are already covered by R4. Those that don't end that way need discussion to determine what, if anything, the best target is. Thryduulf (talk) 07:43, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Support. These are harmful because linking to them from anywhere except their RfD nomination is always a mistake per WP:INTDAB. They should all be red links so its immediately obvious to the editor that tries to add them. In fact, this is precisely why we should delete "(Disambiguation)" redirects since those are the most likely ones to make editors trip up. The very few editors that hold down Shift for too long while searching for disambiguation pages (I'm guessing people don't search for dab pages too often in general so imagine how rare those mistakes are) will be taken care of by search anyway. Nickps (talk) 20:31, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
By that logic we shoudn't have any redirects pointed to dab pages. Hey man im josh (talk) 03:45, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
No, that doesn't follow from my comment. What I said only applies to the redirects included in the CSD proposal. Linking to e.g. doing instead of [[do (disambiguation)|doing]] is wrong but the redirect should still be kept since it's useful for searching. Do (Disambiguation) is not useful because it's an implausible search term and anyone who nevertheless searches it today ends up in the correct page yet it looks close enough to the correct version that an unsuspecting editor might think it's fine per WP:INTDAB even though it's not. Keeping it would provide no benefit to the readers but would cause problems to the editors and the problem it would cause to the editors outweighs any potential benefits. Nickps (talk) 12:39, 7 April 2024 (UTC);edited: 12:43, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
I guess I just really disagree that it's an implausible search term to have the alternative capitalization. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:22, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Well, who types "(disambiguation)" in the first place? Almost all (if not all) our readers would type the name of the thing they are looking for and click the hatnote. I'm guessing (but I admittedly don't know for sure) that a lot of editors do the same. So, when even the correct capitalization is implausible, imagine what the incorrect one is. And again, for the very few people who do type the whole thing instead of clicking on the correct suggestion, and the very few times they get it wrong, search will find the right page anyway. Nickps (talk) 14:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Some people do search directly for disambiguation pages, e.g. when they are looking for a list of things called X, or when they know or suspect that the X they are looking for is not the primary topic but don't know what the article is called. As far as I am aware, it is not possible to know how many people "some" is, other than it's greater than zero.
Regarding the capitalisation, everywhere outside of disambiguators there is a very strong consensus that redirects from plausible alternative capitalisations (such as Title Case) are a Good Thing. I've never seen any remotely convincing evidence for why disamiguators are different. Thryduulf (talk) 18:54, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Support Nothing has changed since the RFCs. Paradoctor (talk) 21:26, 6 April 2024 (UTC) ; added image 21:54, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
As pointed out every time search suggestions (the image) are brought up at RFD, this is only true for a subset of ways people navigate Wikipedia. Users, including but not limited to those following links, entering the URI directly, or using some third-party search methods will not end up at a page that doesn't match the capitalisation of their search directly. What happens then depends on a combination of multiple factors, but some will be one click/tap away from the page they want others will be up to at least three clicks/taps away. Thryduulf (talk) 22:21, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Maybe you find it so frustrating because others don't find your argument convincing? This may be a case of touring the sticks.
third-party search Just for kicks, I tried a few external search engines with the query "London (Disambiguation)". Unsurprisingly, all of them returned London (disambiguation) as their first hit. If you go through the search API, you go directly there. Paradoctor (talk) 00:20, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
You not being convinced doesn't mean others weren't, so please don't act like they're silly for saying their peace. Thryduulf's argument in a previous RfD actually made me reconsider my view and realize how silly I was for supporting the deletion of alternative capitalizations of disambiguators. As if editors would never accidentally or mistakenly capitalize one, eh? As if these capitalizations are somehow detrimental and damaging, or unhelpful. I think what's silly is to act like they're saying something ludicrous. Hey man im josh (talk) 03:53, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
like they're silly for saying their piece Please don't put words in my mouth. Thryduulf complained in their edit summary about not getting through to others with their argument. I suggested that they might not have given enough consideration to changing their approach, which hasn't worked. It's one of my more hard-earned lessons from contributing in this place that being Right™ and being agreed to are different things. As Lonestone put it, doing the same thing again and again and expecting to get a different result is not zielführend. Paradoctor (talk) 04:20, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
There is a difference between not being convinced by an argument and pretending that argument does not exist. It's fine to think that disadvantaging a proportion of readers is OK, what is not fine is claiming that nobody will be disadvantaged. Thryduulf (talk) 07:40, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Again, words are being put in my mouth. Where did I say that "nobody will be disadvantaged"? Maybe you were thinking of somebody else? Maybe I should now complain about not being understood? Paradoctor (talk) 07:59, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Saying "nobody will be disadvantaged" is implicit in your posting of the image directly above when it has been explained, multiple times, why arguments relating to search suggestions are incorrect and/or misleading (depending how they're phrased). Thryduulf (talk) 19:12, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
No, that is you reading stuff into my words. All I did was let some air out of your argument. You don't have to like it, but don't misrepresent my words. Paradoctor (talk) 19:24, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
You let no air out of my argument, because my argument has always explicitly acknowledged that search suggestions exist and help some people but because they do not help everybody they are not evidence the redirect is unnecessary. Pointing out that search suggestions exist adds nothing to that at all. Pointing out search suggestions exist in combination with an argument that says such redirects are unnecessary is misleading. Thryduulf (talk) 19:51, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
It is not my job to convince you. It is not necessary or desirable to reply to every comment in a discussion.
That I have not rebutted your every point is because I don't deem it necessary. I've argued to the point where I let the process do the rest. It may not satisfy you, but it does not give you licence to impugn my words as misleading. That is inappropriate. You believe you're right? Fine. Then wait for the close. Or talk to someone else. The only thing you can achieve here is badgering me. Paradoctor (talk) 21:09, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
I'm not asking you to convince me, or to agree with me. I'm asking you to acknowledge the existence of arguments that refute yours rather than pretend they don't exist. Thryduulf (talk) 21:18, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Again for the hard of hearing: WP:BADGERThe fact that you have a question, concern, or objection does not [...] mean that others are obligated to answer (added emphasis) Paradoctor (talk) 21:33, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Depending on the search method of I use, you're 100% correct. The lack of the alternative capitalization has been a hindrance at times. Hey man im josh (talk) 03:54, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Strong oppose "Disambiguation" redirects per my arguments at the linked RfDs. These are useful redirects and deletion harms the encyclopaedia, speedy deletion would be even more harmful. Almost all implausible misspellings of "disambiguation" can be speedy deleted under G6 and/or R3 already, I've not seen any evidence there are enough that can't to justify speedy deletion. Plausible misspellings should be kept like any other plausible misspelling redirect. Thryduulf (talk) 21:26, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose As far as I know, obvious and unlikely names can already be speedy deleted. TheBannertalk 22:36, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
When a case which R5 would cover goes to RfD, some editors say that it should have been deleted speedily but others oppose the deletion. I'm not sure whether those who oppose disagree that the case is obvious and unlikely, or that CSD includes obvious and unlikely redirects. Either way, it seems that we need to clarify the consensus on this matter. However, if another CSD criterion already covers this case, please suggest a clarification to it rather than creating R5. Certes (talk) 22:57, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
CSD is explicitly only for the most obvious cases. If there is disagreement about whether it should be deleted at all then it's not suitable for speedy deletion. The cases where there is agreement are already unambiguously covered by existing, uncontroversial criteria (G6*, R3 and R4). *G6 isn't completely uncontroversial, but the "unambiguously created in error" part that is relevant here is not controversial) Thryduulf (talk) 23:09, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
There is clearly disagreement about whether R5 should become a CSD. Does that make it not a CSD? Is unanimity required for this sort of change, or just consensus? Certes (talk) 08:03, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
It needs to be uncontroversial that every page which could be deleted according to criterion should be deleted. When the discussions show substantial disagreement then it is clearly controversial. Thryduulf (talk) 18:57, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
If an editor states that alternative capitalizations should have been speedy deleted then they're wrong. They do not qualify under the existing R3 and G6 rationale, as I've explained to Crouch when they've CSD tagged alternative capitalizations in the past. They're possible search terms, which makes them ineligible for R3, and frankly I'd love to see AnomieBot or something regularly create the alternative capitalizations, similar to how it does with hyphens and en dashes. Hey man im josh (talk) 03:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
I hope there is no way that systematically cluttering the namespace with more erroneous redirects would gain consensus. Where do we stop? Do we also create 356,000 redirects for each plausible misspelling of "disambiguation"? How about duplicating every qualified article title by creating redirects from miscapitalisation Foo (Film), Foo (Footballer), etc.? Certes (talk) 08:01, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Sure, why not? It doesn't make Wikipedia worse. They're possibly search terms. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:24, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Comment: I don't want to bludgeon the discussion, so I'll back off after this. But can anybody give me one example of how pages with an alternative capitalization on the disambiguator are a net negative and worth spending our time on fighting against? Those are typically piped anyways, so people wouldn't typically notice anyways. I'm always open to changing my mind and view, but over the last year where I've been following that disagreement, I just don't get it, and I really want to. The justification I end up being led to is a a user essay, not a guideline, and WP:IDONTLIKEIT. If someone convinces me I'll happily change my view and help clean up. But I just genuinely don't get it and feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people are steadfast against alternative capitalizations. Hey man im josh (talk) 04:05, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Suppose we have a page that intentionally links to more than 7 dab pages like Joey (name). That page was tagged with {{dablinks}} by User:DPL bothere because the links didn't end with "(disambiguation)" like WP:INTDAB says they should. Once that was fixed, the bot removed the tag. However, had a well meaning editor used "(Disambiguation)" instead in an attempt to fix the problem, the tag would have stayed and the bot would readd it if someone tried to remove it. In that case, the editor trying to fix the problem would be at a loss since all the dab links are correctly marked as such from their perspective. User:JaGa (who should have been notified of this discussion from the beginning) can correct me if I'm wrong.
Now, considering the hypothetical I described above as well as the fact that the number of people who will be inconvenienced by the absence of such redirects is vanishingly small, is it worth it to keep them? Nickps (talk) 13:57, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
@Nickps: Would we not have the page link to the proper dab location instead? People linking a redirect by mistake (of say a plausible misspelling) would not be reason enough for redirect variations not to exist. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
If a tool used to maintain the encyclopaedia encounters something that makes it behave in an undesirable manner then it needs to be either fixed or replaced with a tool that works properly. We should never degrade the reader experience (such as by breaking links) just to make life easier for editorial tools. Thryduulf (talk) 19:02, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
The tool does not behave in an undesirable manner. This is what is supposed to happen. WP:INTDAB says the community has adopted the standard of routing all intentional disambiguation links in mainspace through "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects (emphasis in the original). This isn't just a faulty assumption by a bot author, there is consensus behind it. Even if we decide that we should keep redirects of the form "... (Disambiguation)", "... (DISAMBIGUATION)" etc., there is no reason to change INTDAB or User:DPL bot's behavior. We will just have to replace every mainspace link that points to such a page with the correctly capitalized version. The reason I still want to delete those pages is because I don't think such a process is worth it. Nickps (talk) 19:30, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
If the bot is failing to recognise intentional redirects to disambiguation pages as intentional redirects to disambiguation pages that is undesirable. Even if we decide that we should keep redirects of the form [...] We will just have to replace every mainspace link that points to such a page with the correctly capitalized version.[citation needed].
The purpose of routing intentional links to disamiguation pages via redirects is so that they can be distinguished from unintentional links to disambiguation pages. The capitalisation (or indeed spelling) of the redirect is completely irrelevant to that. Thryduulf (talk) 19:55, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
I think INTDAB should stay exactly as is since if we changed it to allow alternative capitalizations, that'd cause intended dab links to be inconsistent with each other, which would look unprofessional. All lowercase "disambiguation" should absolutely be a house style for dab links, even if we allow alternate capitalizations to exist. At best, we could have a bot recognize that those links are intentional and change them to the correct version, but we should not let them stand. Nickps (talk) 20:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
After carefully re-reading that comment three times, I can't believe that I understood it correctly. Is it seriously suggesting that any old qualifier that looks a bit like "(disambiguation)" will do and, rather than correcting such errors, we should leave them in place and rewrite our processes and software to allow anyone to misspell the word however they like? Certes (talk) 20:40, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
You have not understood the comment correctly. I'm saying that we could choose to allow any string that resembled "disambiguation" and still achieve the goal of distinguishing intentional and unintentional links to disambiguation pages. This means that if we want to restrict it to a subset of that then it has to be for other reasons than simply achieving the goal. Personally I think "disambiguation", "Disambiguation" and "DISAMBIGUATION" should all be identified as correct; other capitalisations and any commonly-encountered misspellings (if there are any) should be changed to one of those three by a bot, and misspellings should be flagged for human attention.
What I didn't say, but should have done, is that regardless of what we choose to accept for internal links that is completely independent of which redirects should be kept for the benefit of people searching or following links from external websites (in the same we keep almost all other redirects from plausible but incorrect capitalisations despite not linking to them internally) Thryduulf (talk) 21:07, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Thanks; that's clearer. I think that any hypothetical bot should correct other capitalisations in links along with known misspellings, as we currently do manually. That is a discussion for another place but, if we find consensus that INTDAB links to Foo (DISAMBIGUATION) are a good thing, then we should retain redirects of that name rather than deleting them speedily (or slowly), and possibly create the 99.999% of them which are currently missing. That is indeed a different question from whether we should retain such redirects for searching or external links. Certes (talk) 21:24, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Its quite simple, if you think "Foo (Disambiguation)" or even "Foo (DISAMBIGUATION)" redirects are useful then get consensus to have a bot create all of them. Either readers and editors find them useful, in which case they should all be created or they don't, in which case they should all be deleted unless an exception applies. And if we think things out well as you said in the London discussion (its not clear if you're referring to the individual or mass creation as "well thought out") then we would realize that it is not good use of editor time to create and patrol random DAB redirects rather than create them when a bot. Again this is different to other types of redirects like where one redirect for an alternative name is used while the other isn't. All DAB pages have the same function and the (im)plausibility applies to all such titles regardless of if someone arbitrarily creates some. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:38, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
@Crouch, Swale: What makes alternative capitalizations on disambiguators any different from alternative capitalization redirects? I don't see people up in arms about alternative caps used for a wide variety of redirects. I'm not arguing for the full caps by any stretch, but I'm not sure consensus is even required for alternative capitalizations. As for, "..then we would realize that it is not good use of editor time to create and patrol random DAB redirects", the bot which automatically patrols a number of redirects typically automatically marks a wide variety of alternative capitalizations as patrolled as well. I don't believe this would add much, if any, burden to the NPP team. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
RDAB gives the reasons for DAB pages with incorrect qualifiers and if we wanted them they would be created with the correct templates etc. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:04, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
RDAB is an essay that expresses opinions. Some of those reflect widespread consensus, some of those opinions do not, and it makes no effort to distinguish them. It also makes no attempt to justify most of those opinions - e.g. it doesn't give any reasoning why "(Disambiguation)" should be regarded as less correct than "(disambiguation)". Thryduulf (talk) 14:59, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
@Crouch, Swale: I've read the WP:RDAB essay, but I fail to see how disambiguators using a different capitalization are harmful to the encyclopedia but redirects using alternative capitalization without a disambiguation are not (not that I want other alternative capitalizations deleted, just wanted to ask this again since it wasn't addressed). In short, I'm looking for an explanation and justification other than because a user essay says. I'm trying very hard to understand how the disambiguations in brackets, such as "(Actor)", "(Politician)", or "(Singer)", make the site worse, but no one has offered up a good explanation. Capitalization after the opening bracket certainly isn't unlikely, someone may have just held the shift button a slight bit too long. Newer users also usually aren't familiar with our naming conventions, so it doesn't seem implausible that someone may capitalize what's in brackets not knowing that we don't do so. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:11, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Bots which mark redirects as patrolled just look at who created them rather than attempting to triage their title, target, rcats, etc. Being patrolled in this way simply means that a trusted editor thought it should be created (or made a mistake). Certes (talk) 17:23, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
@Certes: That's actually not true, the bot will mark certain kinds of redirects as patrolled, even if you aren't on the redirect autopatrol list. See some of the rules for the bot listed at User:DannyS712 bot III/rules. You'll note under bot task #38, point B, focuses on the target and the redirect, comparing the two for differences in capitalization and marking them as patrolled. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for the correction. I remember making suggestions when Danny was writing the bot about what sort of redirects could safely be passed, then I ended up with mine being passed based on author, but I didn't realise both measures were in place. Certes (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
If you have any more suggestions about redirects you think that should be autopatrolled I'd love to hear it @Certes. We recently reached consensus to autopatrol the redirects left behind by page movers when a page is moved (based on the threshold to receive the page mover permission, we should be able to trust the moves made by these users). Hey man im josh (talk) 18:52, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll have a think and reply somewhere more relevant. Certes (talk) 18:56, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
A bot would still make fewer mistakes than a human if programmed correctly and would manage to create consistency. @Hey man im josh and Thryduulf:WP:AFFINITY says or a disambiguated title with one parenthesis missing (the last is an example of an unnatural error; i.e. an error specific to Wikipedia titling conventions that would likely not be arrived at naturally by readers, thereby adding to the implausibility). A title when the error is in brackets (or commas) is generally implausible as its very unlikely anyone will make use of it and as BD2412 said in the 2022 RFD as it stands these excess incoming links are a nuisance to editors trying to fix disambiguation errors. Deleting these will only enable access to the links with the proper capitalization. So with almost no likelihood of use by readers (and if it is likely we should create all) but an inconvenience to editors who's efforts would be better spent of improving other things for our readers I think this along with the 2022 and 26 March RFD that there is a consensus (though weak) that these should not exist. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:16, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Note that WP:AFFINITY is just a different section of the same essay so you haven't actually answered the question asked. No evidence is presented for the assertion that A title when the error is in brackets (or commas) is generally implausible as its very unlikely anyone will make use of it - indeed in multiple AfDs evidence that people do use some redirects that have "errors" within the parentheses. Deleting these will only enable access to the links with the proper capitalization. As repeatedly explained, this is false - some readers will access the content they are looking for via other links, other readers will not.
As also mentioned multiple times, the inconvenience to editors can be solved at a stroke by changing the programming of the bot to stop flagging the redirects as errors (and/or by changing them itself). Thryduulf (talk) 23:15, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
No evidence has been presented to support the claim that readers will benefit from a few random qualified redirects to DAB pages while multiple editors who fix DAB linked have expressed the point that they inconvenience editors. In a few cases evidence has been presented that they get a few views and have a few links but that doesn't show the viewers would actually have been inconvenienced as its likely the readers would have landed on the correctly capitalized version first time and the links would be corrected/wouldn't have been made to the incorrect title "A redirect that has other wikipages linked to it is not necessarily a good reason for keeping it. Current internal wikilinks can be updated to point to the current title.". Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:29, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
"No evidence presented" – Seriously? There absolutely has been evidence that these can be useful. It's funny considering the crux of your argument is a user essay and WP:IDONTLIKEIT. As mentioned, the bots can be tweaked. Please ping me when you propose another rationale to delete all alternative capitalizations on Wiki because of people mistakenly linking to a redirect. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:48, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
@Hey man im josh: From what I can see leaving aside the linkrot arguments that were presented in the 2022 discussion (but obviously not in the 2024 discussion) the main reason for keeping them was that some people navigate using direct URLs rather than the search box but there wasn't any reason to believe that its likely many will do that for the very small number of them that exist. And I didn't write the essay which is in the project space not userspace though I did add a "See also" to an essay I write years ago and have commented on the talk page, see WP:PERESSAY. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:46, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
When asked for a reason other than "this user essay, that presents no evidence to back up its assertions, says so" you point to... a user essay that doesn't even discuss the topic, let alone present relevant evidence? Why do you think that is relevant?
Your other argument is "evidence was presented in discussions that people use these redirects" as evidence for your assertion that people don't use these redirects. That's not convincing me you are listening to what people are saying to you. Thryduulf (talk) 20:55, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
@Thryduulf:WP:RDAB is not a WP:User essay (yes it was a user essay in the past but its been in the project space for nearly 8 years) its a project essay that as noted I haven't really contributed to and most people support even though a significant minority oppose it. I'm just going by the consensus of which COSTLY has been cited in hundreds of RFDs over many years so its not my personal preference I'm going by what the consensus is which appears to be that they should be deleted. RDAB specifically discusses redirects with incorrect qualifiers. That's not a case of IDONTLIKEIT. If you want a reason other than based on the project space essay then I'd argue that those created accidentally (and were moved to the correct case) are borderline G6. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:53, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Those which are G6 can and should be deleted under that criterion so a new one isn't needed. Of the rest, firstly there aren't that many (so a new criterion isn't needed) and secondly not all of them should be deleted reducing the number even further. Thryduulf (talk) 19:12, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
WP:RDAB states: This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.
WP:RDAB is not a WP:User essay – The point is it's an essay created by a few people, not policy, so the semantics of it don't really matter. These things have a habit of not changing beyond the original's writers intentions, otherwise people encourage someone to write another essay.
I haven't really contributed to and most people support even though a significant minority oppose it – You may not have contributed to it, but you're using it as the primary rationale when arguing for additional CSD criteria to be added. As you mention though, a significant minority oppose it, meaning this suggestion does not fit the criteria of being uncontroversial.
RDAB specifically discusses redirects with incorrect qualifiers. – Template:R from incorrect disambiguation and Template:R from miscapitalisation both exist as relevant categories and are accepted types of redirects, by and large. It's unclear how a mis/alternative capitalization in brackets makes the search time suddenly in valid.
If you want a reason other than based on the project space essay then I'd argue that those created accidentally (and were moved to the correct case) are borderline G6. – I've been begging for a reason other than the essay. As mentioned though, I fail to see what makes an alternative/miscapitalization of the first letter of a disambiguator an unlikely search term and an unhelpful redirect.
Thryduulf and I have presented numerous examples of how these redirects are possibly useful, but throughout the discussion you keep coming back to RDAB. Whether you want to use the words or not, this absolutely boils down to a case of IDONTLIKEIT. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:40, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
@Hey man im josh: An essay that has been endorsed by the majority of people does appear to have consensus. Yes PANDORA is clearly controversial but RDAB appears to be less so even though it is still controversial. CHEAP is also an essay which has existed longer which has also been used by numerous people and IDONTLIKEIT which I don't think apples here is also one.
Yes that is a reason against it but many CSD criteria are also somewhat controversial. If there is a weak consensus it may be useful to have it.
Such templates are used on redirects but redirects with implausible or malformatted qualifiers are also commonly deleted at RFD.
Though policies and guidelines are stronger arguments as noted essays can still be used to argue things on Wikipedia. In any case as noted both the 2022 and 2024 RFDs neither of which were started by me resulted in a consensus to delete. You don't have to agree with that consensus and are free to argue against it but to claim IDONTLIKEIT in face of those RFDs seems a bit odd.
The main arguments you and Thryduulf have presented are direct URL entering and the fact people have thought it necessary to create them but as noted it doesn't appear readers are likely to find them useful due to the qualifiers being WP specific and the way the search box goes. Though I would say its hard to provide evidence either way though I accept incoming links is evidence of this. I'd also give more weight to what users who use/participate in the DAB fixing tools than what I think and as noted multiple such people have complained about them. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:30, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
@Crouch, Swale: An essay that has been endorsed by the majority of people – Citation needed.
I actually didn't mention the URL stuff. I said that it's easily possible, and likely that it happens all the time, where one user is typing and holds the shift button a little too long when adding a bracket, only to accidentally capitalize the first letter of the disambiguator. I have also said that I fail to see how these are harmful redirects. As we've also repeatedly mentioned when you bring up the search, the auto fill and drop down of options when you've partially typed in the search box doesn't work in every scenario, as you're suggesting. As such, it's then easy to see how a redirect from a typo / miscapitalization could be useful.
I keep going back to IDONTLIKEIT because the focus of this discussion has been largely on the content of an essay that doesn't make any argument for why the redirects are harmful or detrimental. If there isn't an argument besides an essay and "they were deleted before", then that's IDONTLIKEIT.
I'd also give more weight to what users who use/participate in the DAB fixing tools than what I think and as noted multiple such people have complained about them. – Do you give weight to the people who review the redirects? I see alternative capitalization all the time, and when it's just on the first letter of a word I always mark it as reviewed for the reason that it could be helpful to someone.
Franky I don't care at all about PANDORA in this situation. As an NPP coordinator / the leading redirect reviewer since over the past year and a half, I can attest that it's no extra work for reviewers (alt capitalizations are already auto reviewed) and we could ask Anome to have their bot auto create these like they do for titles with an en dash in the (the redirects they create use hyphens).
In short, the alternative capitalization of the first letter is harmless, it's possibly useful, and it's not an improvement to the Wiki to delete these. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:58, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
Directet URL entry is simply one example of a case-sensitive method of navigating Wikipedia, it is not the only one. Many of these redirects have non-trivial numbers of page views, which is objectively evidence of them being used and, given they lead unambiguously to the only correct target, evidence of utility.
If there is a weak consensus it may be useful to have [a CSD criterion]. is absolutely incorrect. CSD is explicitly only for the most obvious cases where everything that could be deleted by a criterion should be deleted, according to consensus. Situations where the is only a weak consensus at best cannot meet those requirements. Thryduulf (talk) 23:26, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
Support all except capitalisation of first letter, so I think this should be reworded to exclude that if it passes. As countless RfDs leading to WP:SNOW-level deletions (and amusing the daily logs to become massive) have shown, these redirects are completely unnecessary, unhelpful to the point that they are WP:COSTLY and should not exist, and they have clogged up the RfD log from discussions many times in the past. Therefore, this speedy deletion category is needed so that these can be deleted efficiently without wasting time or space at RfD. However, unlike the redirect types outlined at WP:RDAB and the other categories, there is a small chance that redirects with the alternate capitalisation can be useful. Even though this chance is small, I still think it is enough to justify a full discussion at RfD rather than speedy deletion. Leaving only this type of redirect for RfD is not enough to clog the daily log up with discussions, so I see this arrangement as a win-win where the unhelpful, unnecessary WP:RDAB-type redirects are speedily deleted as they should while redirects with a small chance of usefulness get a full RfD discussion without filling the log up with discussions. InterstellarGamer12321 (talk|contribs) 11:47, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Also, I think at least some (if not all) of the text currently at WP:RDAB should be added to the speedy deletion criterion definition to specify which types of redirects fall under this criterion to avoid confusion. InterstellarGamer12321 (talk|contribs) 11:52, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
If first-letter capitalization (Foo (Disambiguation)) is excluded, then no evidence has been presented that this happens at all, let alone frequently enough. And Foo (desambiguation) is either an R3 or needs more than one pair of eyes anyway. No argument to answer. —Cryptic 12:39, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
And the case for first-letter capitalization can't be made; there's been 763 such deletions ever, with more than half on two days in late 2022. It's not because they're not being deleted, either, since only four such pages currently exist. (Ø (Disambiguation) isn't a disambig.) This isn't remotely frequent enough to need a speedy deletion criterion. It's frequent enough for another batch rfd in another twenty years. —Cryptic 13:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Yes, Ø (Disambiguation) is a IAR exception, notorious amongst dab maintainers for coming up as a false positive whenever we check for dodgy titles. Unsurprisingly, there are no pages with a qualifier of (DISAMBIGUATION) in all capitals. Certes (talk) 21:40, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Support because it is rare for people to capitalise "Disambiguation" or said word in all caps. "desambiguation" is a typo that would obviously be qualified for R3 anyways. Toadette(Let's talk together!) 10:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Things that are rare fail WP:NEWCSD requirement 3. Also "rare" is not the same thing as "harmful". Thryduulf (talk) 11:10, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose We already have criteria for the most obvious misspelling issues, redirects are cheap, deleting a redirect using other than CSD isn't exactly a burden on the system. I don't see this as solving a real issue, but it could cause some. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 06:30, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose per Thryduulf and Dennis Brown. R3 suffices for most cases, and the rest can go to RfD. This is simply not a significant problem. – bradv 15:15, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
Support these routinely get deleted at RfD; there is no reason to have the same debate 1000 times when the merits remain the same every single time. Elli (talk|contribs) 19:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Please leave your thoughts there. AwesomeAasim 04:15, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Proposal: add a "recency" clause to G4
I propose to add a clause to WP:G4 (recreations of deleted articles) to restrict the criterion to recreations of recently deleted pages. Proposed changes:
This applies to sufficiently identical copies, having any title, of a page recently deleted via its most recentas the result of adeletion discussion. [...]
(There is a footnote following "deletion discussion" explaining that the most recent deletion discussion determines the validity of this criterion, so I don't think that needs to be awkwardly shoehorned into the criterion itself.)
I have noticed a trend lately of editors tagging articles with this criterion and linking to a "most recent" discussion that is many years old, both for pages recently created, and for pages which were recreated shortly after their deletion discussion but have hung around for many years without issue. A problem with G4 is that non-admins can't see the deleted version to compare to, but I don't think it's reasonable to presume that no new information is available many years later, nor is it reasonable to assume that an editor creating an article on a topic which was deleted many years ago is recreating an identical article, and so these tags don't meet the "objective" nor the "uncontestable" provisions of speedy deletion. This criterion is meant to capture obvious attempts to evade deletion, but the current scope is too broad. I don't have a suggestion for defining "recently" but we have similar clauses in other criteria.
Comment I'm not sure whether this is necessary because a substantially identical version can appear the same after 3 months or 3 years. An objective reference point could be that if the new version cites at least one reliable source more recent than the last deletion discussion, G4 is unlikely to apply. However, I'm unsure if the frequency of "gaming" such a criterion (i.e., shoehorning a recent source into an article otherwise identical to the one deleted) would be high enough to merely discourage such tagging, or low enough that such pages can safely be automatically disqualified from G4. Complex/Rational 14:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose. The question is not whether the deletion was recent, the question is whether the reasons for deletion still apply. —Kusma (talk) 15:23, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose Pretty much per Kusma - this IMO defeats the point. * Pppery *it has begun... 15:49, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
How long generally would have to go by to prevent G4? I don't think anything less than 10 or 5 years would be a good idea especially since our inclusion criteria often get stricter. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:08, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose per Kusma. In some cases previous discussions stay relevant for over a decade, in others they're obsolete within weeks. I am open to clarification regarding when it applies, but a nebulous "recent" is not it. Thryduulf (talk) 20:15, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Proposed new or modified criterion: clear SALT evasion
This proposal is for a criterion for deletion of articles which are obvious recreations of any article that is create protected. This is possibly already partly covered by WP:G4 (though only for "substantially identical" recreations) or WP:G5 (though that is based on the editor, not the topic) but I would like to create an explicit, articles-only criterion for this (so as to except legitimate drafts). Proposed wording:
Axx: Unambiguous creations of a topic protected against creation. This applies to any article, having any title, that is an unambiguous creation of any topic that has been protected from creation under any title, or is an unambiguous attempt to evade the title blacklist. This criterion does not apply to drafts approved by articles for creation nor content recreated by a request for undeletion or deletion review. It also does not apply if the page creator holds the userrights to override the creation protection, though it is expected that users creating a protected page will have consulted with the protecting administrator first.
Support as proposer. Open to suggestions for wording, of course. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:52, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Not sure that this is needed, and if it is, it should be via clarification of G4 instead of a new A criterion. Why should it not apply in Wikipedia space? —Kusma (talk) 14:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
On second thought, oppose, this seems backwards. SALT is there to help enforce G4, we shouldn't add secondary criteria to deal with people going around the tool that helps us deal with G4. —Kusma (talk) 15:21, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose. An admin can salt a title for any reason whatsoever. This criterion would give any admin unilateral power to declare any topic speedy-deletable. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:16, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
If whatever's created in defiance of a salting isn't already speedyable, then the salting isn't valid. Evasion of salting is an indicator that we need to escalate to other tools - typically some combination of blacklisting, blocking, and edit filters - not just to deescalate to simple deletion, which has already shown itself to be inadequate by the very fact that it's salted to begin with. —Cryptic 16:19, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose G4 seems sufficient, as noted an admin can protect a page sometimes if its only re created a few times and then sometimes 10\20 years down the line someone completely different wants to create a page sometimes on a completely different topic. Personally I'd rethink if we should even be salting many pages anyway. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:15, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose, mostly per Cryptic. G4 already applies to pages with any title, so for pages that are substantially identical this is redundant. For pages that are not substantially identical, then if they are not already speediable under a different criterion then we should not be speedy deleting them - not least because some of them will have addressed the reason for the first deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 20:19, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose G4 already covers this, and is intentionally broad in that you can delete virtually any title if it is substantially similar. Adding a new cat would likely muddy the waters. I don't see the need to even tweak G4, but if it needed it, that would be better than a new cat of CSD. Additionally, if a user is creating multiple articles to bypass SALT, they typically get blocked for WP:DE, and any SALT bypassing article they create using a sock can be deleted under G5 or G4. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:40, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Oppose per King of Hearts. Galobtter (talk) 02:23, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
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Self-trout
Thank you
Y "Contains only one page, whose title matches that of the category" is objective.
N Deletion isn't always the right course of action. My first thought is that in some cases there are other pages that could or should be in the category but aren't. Adding "with no prospect of expansion" or similar to the criterion would fix that, but it's subjective and it reminds me of WP:SMALLCAT, which has been very controversial and so is not suitable for speedy deletion. The example category has been nominated at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 2#Category:Vandalism on Wikipedia where it has attracted three !votes, one "merge" and two "speedy merge", again showing that this requirement is not met.
