Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Proposal III (Vanity articles)

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The talk page Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD was split into individual talk pages for each proposal, to limit the size of the talk page and facilitate individual discussions on each proposal. The history and attributions for the comments made before the split can be seen by following the history link on the /General talk page.

Google[edit]

Two Google hits? My almost-unique name (there is one other person sharing it) gets 1950 google hits and there's no way I'd be worthy material for an article. dramatic 23:08, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Yeah. I didn't actually write these, they were suggested by various users at WP:CSD. I agree that 2 hits is too low a threshold, but I don't know how else I would phrase it. Ideas? BLANKFAZE | (что??) 23:30, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • I strongly agree with these changes. When I originally advanced Proposition III at CSD I set the bar at "virtually no Google hits." I think there are advantages to a vaguer statement, "virtually no hits" is a different raw number for a 19th century African politician than for a blogger. - SimonP 01:44, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)
    • I agree. I've changed it. However, I was thinking — would "very few" hits be more appropriate? BLANKFAZE | (что??) 15:02, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
      • Tying any of our policies to the whims of an external commercial company should not be done. Remove the mention google altogether I say. Shane King 04:53, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)
        • I have to agree, number of google hits is more akin to a popularity contest than any gauge of notability or encyclopedia-worthiness. For example: slightly obscure people from the 17th century, e.g. Richard Hoare, tend to have very few google hits, whereas Star Wars minutae can have literally hundreds of thousands. Google is not always a useful barometer. Rje 02:54, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • I think notability of any given topic should be decided collectively, not individually. Maurreen 05:59, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Suggestion: "also, people where the article makes no claim of notability and the person gets virtually no Google hits, not including any of Wikimedia's websites or mirrors." -> "also, where the article makes no claim of notability, and no references to the person can be found in a reasonable search of resources available (excluding Wikimedia's websites or mirrors)." Christopher^ 05:48, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)
    What exactly is a "reasonable search"? Aren't these the criteria for speedy deletion?
  • I think that the policy used to guide the decision as to the appropriateness of an encyclopedia article should make no references to any organisations - not Google, not Wikimedia. Brianjd
  • The fact that an article makes no claim of notability is irrelevant. Whether the person is notable or not is relevant. However, I think that notability is a rather controversial thing - is it really appropriate for a criteria for speedy deletion to involve it?
    • Lack of notability is never a valid reason to delete an article. What this proposes is the speedy deletion of Vanity pages. - SimonP 17:00, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm amazed by 1950 hits for your name. There are only 65 Google hits for mine, and most of those aren't for me but some else with the same name. Like all websearches, Google is biased towards people who create websites, blogs etc. And it's not so useful for judging the notability of anything else. For example, I only discovered Wikipedia because it was just about the only website with a good list of mythical kings of pre-Roman Britain... and how many Google hits do they get!?! P Ingerson 11:10, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • This only seems to relate to Proposal III (Vanity articles). What's it doing here? Brianjd 04:35, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

Prop III[edit]

Proposition III seems to be the most controversial of these criteria, and it perhaps needs more explication. The goal of Prop III is to be able to delete those pages that everybody knows won't survive VfD, but which are currently impossible to speedy delete. Some examples from VfD are Shatter, Shumaker, ZTC, and Arthur Wyatt. No Wikipedian thinks articles like this should be kept, yet each article has to be listed on VfD, voted on, deleted, and its debate archived. Overall this process likely wastes at least twenty minutes of our editors' time, when a speedy deletion could resolve the issue in seconds. - SimonP 07:08, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

  • I agree. You're welcome to try your hand at explication. I might end up removing that proposal because even I am beginning to think it is too contentious. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 17:02, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Prop III is of no use, because that proposal is brimming with caveats, conditions and opinions that we're never going to reach consensus on in one broad sweeping policy. That's what we currently have VfD for, to judge on a case-by-case basis instead. This is not useless: if ten people agree that it's a delete, it does not follow that ten people would have agreed if one admin had single-handedly determined, based on "obvious" criteria, that it was a speedy.
    If any general policy is to be established, you're not going to get it squirreled away in an innocuously-numbered proposal that's part of a batch. Unless you want it to drown out everything else, I wouldn't put that up for voting—at least not yet. JRM 16:04, 2004 Dec 10 (UTC)
    • I seem to be out of step here, unless the wording has been changed since the above comments. I think III is quite reasonable, and will vote for it, given the opportunity. Deb 18:07, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • I believe that vanity articles (which I take to include both 'personal' and 'advertising') are generally easy to spot and take around 15-20 seconds to confirm that they are such. I'll also be supporting this. --Vamp:Willow 20:22, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Proposal III[edit]

The author should have some time to provide reference establishing the notability. Something like

  • anyone spots vanity
  • adds {{unencylopedic}} or something similar to the page and notice to the authors talk
  • the author responds
    • agrees with deletion (we need generally accepted way how to expres that - anons usualy blank the page, which is instatly reverted)
    • provides further reference / objects
    • does not respond
  • anyone can add reference
  • after (time period) page is reevaluated by an admin
    • author agrees with deletion => speedy deletion
    • "blatant vanity" AND no further reference by author or other users => speedy deletion
    • vanity OR "blatant vanity" but the author tried to improve the article OR any dispute => VfD
    • notability established => keep

It may sound like instruction creep, but the burden of bureaucratic tasks is on admins. Uninterested users simply add a template.

Thus - proposed change

Extremely blatant vanity articles listed on Category:Articles which may be unencyclopedic at least for 3 days without any improvement. (Examples of blatant vanites are bands that have never released an album, contain no members that are famous for reasons other than being in the band, and have no press coverage—also, people where the article makes no claim of notability and the person gets virtually no Google hits, not including any of Wikimedia's websites or mirrors.)

--Wikimol 09:28, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Perhaps simply all there needs to be is a time period after the addition of {{delete}} before it can actually be speedied. This would give anyone watching it (like the author) a little time to contest the speedy.

Furthermore (ugh - feature request!) when the article is speedied, anyone watching it receives a notice on their watchlist. Currently, when an article is deleted, it disappears entirely from the watchlist.

Crazy talk, I know, but still. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 22:26, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

IMO so general solution would have many problems.
Candidates for speedy deletion are often created by novices who dont know whats wrong with the article, how the watchlist works, etc. When simple {{delete}} appears at "theirs" page they usually dont get what's going on.
On the other hand the delay is not nocessary in case of current rules - for example pages re-created after deletion by policy should diasappear immediately.
--Wikimol 22:48, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Many of the votes against say they agree with 'speedy'ing vanity articles but question how they can be recognised as such. One thing that is always a give-away (often in addition to superlative language about the person or group concerned) is the use of "I" and "We" in the text. Sometimes - but *extremely rarely* this can be because someone is not writing in their main language, usually it screams 'vanity!' --Vamp:Willow 17:41, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Proposal XI[edit]

We needn't consider proposal XI if it will make no difference to the success of III. The statement "Because proposal XI is a weaker alternative of proposal III, if both pass, Proposal III should be implemented" is no different from saying "If proposal III passes, proposal III should be implemented". ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 23:49, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Blatant"[edit]

This word is my main objection to prop III and the reason I hope it will not pass. A new CSD rule should cover only the clearest cases that end up in VfD. For vanities, I would rather add

  1. Self-admitted vanity
  2. Child vanity (no evidence of notability, or fabricated evidence e.g. "emperor of the universe")
  3. Band vanity that doesn't mention an album or indicates that the band is notable only known in its local area
How's this: We send "vanity" articles to VfD just as we always have? You cannot have something this ambiguous in a speedy deletion policy. Brianjd 07:53, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)
  1. Who's going to admit their article is vanity? Brianjd 07:53, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)
    From time to time a new user posts a vanity with first-person references. Or the author of an article confirms in discussion that it is a vanity.
  2. What is "child vanity"? What is "evidence of notability"? What is "fabricated evidence"? Brianjd 07:53, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)
    "Child vanity" for this purpose is limited to the cases I described. "evidence" and "fabricated" have their usual meanings. Surely you've seen these in VfD. It doesn't take five days and multiple opinions to figure out articles that fall under this case or case 1.
  3. So what if it doesn't mention an album? Important information is often missing from new articles. Who decides whether the article indicates that the band is notable only in its local area or not? Brianjd 07:53, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)
    So, it can't be that widely known. If the article initially says that the band has not made any albums, or is only known locally, I think those assertions can be taken at face value. Gazpacho

Mozilla seaMonkey[edit]

Take a look at the edit history. Why did I put in that warning that seems so ridiculous? Because just previous, an admin had mistakenly deleted it. A quick check of the page it redirects to (just reading the first sentence, I think) clearly shows that it was notable. Admins are well-meaning, but they make mistakes, like the rest of us. Brianjd 08:01, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

FTR, I undeleted the page history for that page. I have to point out that a goofy sounding redirect would have been much less likely to be deleted had you made it while logged in. It's user class discrimination, but it's the truth. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 02:04, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Organizations[edit]

I've said it before (before the rearrangment happened; currently at Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/General talk#Google I think) but I'll say it again here: We are trying to determine whether an article is appropriate for an encyclopedia or not - we should not reference any organizations to do that. I'm talking about both Google and the Wikimedia Foundation here. Brianjd 08:22, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

The text is now here. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 02:04, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)
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