Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Proposal XI (Unimproved vanity articles)

See also Proposal III discussion.

---

Redundancy

How is proposal XI different from proposal III? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 22:49, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

diff:

listed on Category:Articles which may be unencyclopedic at least for 3 days without any improvement or dispute.

Because - the author should have some time to provide reference establishing the notability of the subject / request deletion himself. --Wikimol 23:43, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Notability

Btw, can anyone point me to the page where the Wikipedia definition of notability is explicitly defined? --Sketchee 02:06, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

The closest we have is Wikipedia:Importance, which refers back to some things that themselves aren't necessarily hard and fast policy. Some problem areas are that Wikipedia:Informative has not been nailed down enough to get past being proposed policy, and for many the "potential interest" threshold seems to be far higher than 100 people. iMeowbot~Mw 09:19, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

From vote page

So if the article creator improves or expands it, making a better article even though its still vanity inappropriate for Wikipedia, it can stay?

No. It would have to go through VfD, which is the current state.

In which case, the proposal isn't helping, is it? David Johnson [T|C] 15:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Right. My rough estimate is at least 1/2 of obvious vanities is "unattended" and would be deleted. --Wikimol 20:37, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The proposal also ignores the fact that the creator will almost always dispute deletion, meaning that under this proposal the article still couldn't be speedy'd.

No. I guess majority of vanities is created because lack of knowledge of What Wikipedia is Not. In many cases the creator can be convinced to agree with deletion, or even request the deletion himself, which should be the preffered way how to deal with vanities.

The problem arises when the vanity is authors (usually anons) only contribution and he isn't going to return to wikipedia.

If the author or any other user is willing to advocate the existence of the article, its definitely not the case for CDS. VfD are prefectly appropriate in that case.

You're right and I agree, but I do think that deletions opposed only by the creator should still be speedyable. If the creator has a valid reason, then other users will support them. I believe that its only a minority of articles which go unopposed by the creator, so this proposal would only apply in a limited number of cases. David Johnson [T|C] 15:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree it would be nice to exclude the author. But there is no easy way how to do that. Consider anons from dynamic IPs, users creating sockpuppets, etc. If the author wants to fight for his article, VfD is the right place. The disputes may sometimes even get interesting or amusing. --Wikimol 20:37, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This proposal is useless. David Johnson [T|C] 13:39, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anybody can follow VfD for a while a make an opinion himself. --Wikimol 14:24, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I really want to see vanity speedyable, but I don't think this proposal goes far enough or is clear enough about what constitutes obvious vanity. David Johnson [T|C] 15:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I hope it goes just enough to be generally acceptable. Because it is so extremely easy to stop such deletion, chances something valuable may be lost are negligible.

Definition - I don't think this is so important. VfD shows in practice it is clear what obvious vanity is. If precise definition is needed, it should go to Wikipedia:Vanity. Take vandalism as a precedence - CSD states vandalism should be deleted, but does not attempt to define vandalism. Btw, vandalism is much more "rubber" term than obvious vanity, beeing stretched from vanities to hoaxes, yet nobody complaining.

The proposal certainly isn't an attempt to create eternal sacred law. The aims are

• divert majority of vanities from VfD
• give rules for speedy vanity deletions allready done, justified by "interpretation" of existing rules (without rules, without safeguards, valuable contents is more likely to be deleted than if the proposal is accepted)

--Wikimol 20:37, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Too subjective, easy to abuse,..."

I'm not sure if everybody who is affraid of "abuse" of this is familiar with current situation. So - my experience:

Obvious vanities are only big vaste of time of those taking care of VfD. It takes time to insert the template, create the voting page, several people have to read the stupidity and do some research. Everybody agrees it should be deleted and after second or third day nobody cares and the vote is just watsing space on VfD page. This is the proper process, religiously following rules, and tiring for participants.

On the other hand, several admins delete various stupidities in good faith and with common sense. This saves time and generaly helps wikipedia, but propably is beyond the intention of existing policy. (Usualy it can be justified by some "interpretation" - for example existing "vandalism" rule can cover hoaxes, more stupid self-promo vanities and thinks, because they are inherently inserted with bad intetion). Because in specific cases everybody agrees with deletion, there are almost no complains.

The problem is such deletion don't have safeguards, except the possibility to undelete. Thi way, it's quite propable once an admin in good faith deletes some hoax which in fact isnt hoax at all.

IMO insisting on too many time-consuming checks, and detailed objective definitions, and other obstacles of deletion of obvious vanities will not protect border cases in practice. Exactly the oposite - reasonable deletions are pushed out of the law. Without rules, errors ae propably more likely. --Wikimol 20:58, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

3 days are pretty long

This is not standard situation, like voting vor deletion or other votings. Anyone can stop the deletion in case of any doubt.

Chances blatant vanity which nobody cares for 3 days will become useful article are to my knowledge only hypothetical. I've never seen on VfD an article, which would be nomitad as an obvious vanity, recieved no keep votes in first 3 days, and later turned to be valuable and survived. --Wikimol 21:20, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)