Also, there is a very blurry line between minor copyediting and major copyediting with regards to G5. wumbolo ^^^ 16:48, 1 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The difference in wording reflects that the purposes of those two speedy criteria are different. For an article created by a sock of a banned user, we don't want to encourage that behaviour by leaving their articles in the mainspace. But this is not a strict obligation, and editors are allowed to argue that leaving the article would benefit the encyclopedia. Making substantial changes to an article, such as removing paragraphs of fancruft or adding references, is one way of doing that.

As for the fuzzy line between minor and substantial copyediting, if you're in doubt consider PROD or AfD instead of speedy. Reyk _YO! 08:26, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

When it comes to speedy deletion (under whatever criterion), if you're not certain that something is deletable, then tagging something for speedy deletion is never appropriate. As Reyk says, if you're feeling that something is borderline, don't tag it. ‑ Iridescent 08:30, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Amen to that. Regards SoWhy 09:04, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why do we delete these, anyway? Take your typical abandoned draft that's in a userspace sandbox: we might be deleting older (unrelated) content in past revisions, and I don't quite get the point. Why don't we just blank these pages instead? It's one thing to find blank pages in draftspace, mainspace, etc., but in userspace a blank page is perfectly harmless. (We already have an exception for blanking userspace pages: G7 cannot be applied to a userspace page merely because the creator blanked it.) Of course, if there's any problem with the content or the history, the situation's totally different; I'm only talking about deleting a page that qualifies for deletion only under G13. Nyttend (talk) 23:33, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

PS, if we just blanked these instead of deleting them, we could save a good deal of human labor. We currently have bots that tag G13 candidates; if we started blanking old userspace drafts, rather than deleting them, we could instruct the bots to do the blanking themselves, since (unlike deletion) anyone can reverse that kind of action, and a false positive won't have a significant effect as long as the bot's standard "you have an abandoned draft" message contains instructions on how to use the page history to perform a revert. Nyttend (talk) 23:36, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So if someone wants to start another draft on the same topic, they keep the history that's unrelated to the current draft? That seems unnecessary. Natureium (talk) 00:43, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not clear about your intention, so let me give an example. You create a page in your sandbox, you get tired of it, you blank it, you write a draft article in the sandbox, you submit it through the AFC process, and it gets rejected. You don't bother to do anything more with it, so after six months the bot tags it. Under the current system, the page gets deleted: not only the abandoned draft, but the other stuff too. If you'd just left it blank, you would have retained the old stuff, which is good if you ever want to go back and try again. Why delete it when blanking would work? Since I'm talking about content that doesn't warrant deletion under some other criterion, I can't see the benefit, especially as a bot could do the blanking without a problem because anyone (including the user who created it) can just put it back in the event of a mistake by the bot. Nyttend (talk) 02:23, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I like this quite a lot, and think something like a pure wiki deletion system should work well in user space. The only downside I can see is that if all is done by bots, we lose an opportunity to let humans check whether the page should be deleted for a reason other than G13. But on the whole, if we can avoid going through WP:REFUND, why not? —Kusma (t·c) 05:18, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Because Wikipedia is not a free web host. Guy (Help!) 08:54, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• We do only delete via G13 drafts in userspace created by AFC, which I imagine likes to keep its pool of drafts clear of the garbage. Other drafts in user space must be processed through MFD. --Izno (talk) 13:19, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, but I'm not clear why you're saying that. I'm talking about blanking, rather than deleting, AFC-created drafts in userspace. And JzG, doesn't blanking generally suffice for enforcing NOTWEBHOST? For example, if you find that someone created a wiki-game page in userspace and then blanked it (a long time ago), and the page hasn't been edited since, would you be inclined to take the page to MFD? Nyttend (talk) 21:32, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm making sure you're aware it's only AFC drafts in user space since we sometimes have a confused editor show up thinking it's any draft in user space. As for the why, here is the original RFC and here is the implementing RFC. Feel free to peruse. --Izno (talk) 21:53, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm well aware of the origins of the criterion; if you peruse, you'll see that I participated in (and supported) the discussion that resulted in the creation of G13. So once again, why do you mention MFD, since it's totally irrelevant to the issue of G13-deleting-versus-blanking of AFC-process userspace drafts? And how is blanking a problem from AFC's point of view? Like deleting, blanking helps to clear the garbage from the AFC pool. Nyttend (talk) 22:19, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I regularly blank useless AFC submissions in userspace. Most are so useless there is no point moving the page to Draft space. The current system of a bot listing the pages for action is better than the suggested blanking - which would result in most of this junk never beeing blanked. I am not sure what exactly is being proposed but it sounds like a move that would make cleanup less systematic. Legacypac (talk) 03:03, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why would systematically blanking pages lead to most of them never being blanked? —Kusma (t·c) 08:45, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is no system to bring them forward after some time stale to be blanked. You are free to blank them of course but how will you find them? Also without G13 the official sanction to remove them is gone so you will face criticism for mass blanking by the process for process crowd. Also there are tens of thousands of problematic non AfC userspace pages that should be removed but very few editors work on them. Legacypac (talk) 08:52, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if anything has changed or if I'm simply having more Drafts on my watchlist but I've been noticing a lot of Drafts deleted under G11. As a new page patroller I am no stranger to G11s and regularly use that tag myself. However I've now seen at least a couple occasions where there are good faith efforts at creating an article that are wiped away (or proposed to be wiped away) through G11. These articles certainly weren't ready for mainspace, but they weren't in mainspace they were in drafts and were going to have to go through AfC. Maybe they'd have been approved, maybe not, but I think something is off when these drafts are summarily deleted without any real chance to improve them. I am not in favor of saying no G11 for draft space at all but would love to see more editor caution in tagging drafts as such and admin in approving those tags. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:34, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen cases (rarely though) where a draft starts out as promotional PR speak because that's the only text the author has just starting out, and then the draft is improved to the point where it becomes acceptable. In general I don't like seeing a G11 tag on an draft unless the draft has been around for a while and isn't improving. But early on in the life of the draft? No, not really. ~Anachronist (talk) 03:09, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have processed a lot of AfC submissions. Many of them are so clearly G11 I tag them immediately for deletion. Why waste volunteer time rereviewing spam? Legacypac (talk) 03:48, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You're definitely an experienced AfC reviewer. But I think there's a big difference between a draft that has yet to be submitted or has been submitted once and one that has been declined a couple of times. Draft space should be, in my thinking, a place where articles can be incubated and improved; it's why we don't allow most speedy delete criteria and why we let drafts sit for six months before being deleted (maybe). Summary deletion feels different there than it does in mainspace where it harms the credibility of the encyclopedia. We invite editors of declined drafts to the Teahouse for a reason - the idea that a draft would need to be fundamentally rewritten to be accepted, which is the G11 standard, doesn't strike me as troublesome or a waste of volunteer time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:00, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am also for applying a higher G11 standard for drafts. I know some of our AfC reviewers are on an anti-spam jag and are using G11 as part of this. I fear admins are not giving due considerations to WP:ATD for these drafts. No way for me to know though because deleted stuff is in a black hole. ~Kvng (talk) 03:52, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of Draft SPAM is created for the SEO benefits created by the links and mirrors. A Wikipedia link from Draft space is almost as good as from mainspace, and well meaning editors who promote keeping SPAM around in Draft are only facilitating the abuse of the site by Spammers. I'm a big advocate of promoting the less than perfect but notable pages for the big world of editors to work on, but the chances of either a disinterested or connected editor rewriting a topic that meets G11 are slim to none. Legacypac (talk) 07:59, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

How are SEO benefits achieved in these cases? I thought draft space is not indexed by Google and others, so links from there should not turn up? If there are really SEO benefits, maybe we can find a technical solution to prevent that, thus eliminating the incentive to create such drafts. Regards SoWhy 08:11, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No index links are an important part of sculpting inbound link profiles for SEO. Been that way for a few years now. Legacypac (talk) 09:59, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Quite a lot of G11 spam in draftspace is lightly edited press releases, i.e WP:COPYVIOs; many or I'd say most are on non-notable topics anyhow; and for things that meet G11 criteria it is better to start anew. The main thing with spam is that even removing the buzzwords and making it not obviously spammy doesn't really fix the issue; it just hides it. To write a neutral article one must start with the reasonable intention of doing so with multiple independent and indepth sources. Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:04, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly disagree. Many articles started and start out without sources and with POV language because they are oftentimes created by enthusiasts and fans that want to tell the world about how great this or that is. In many cases, we wouldn't have strong, well written articles if no one had started a bad article first that someone thought worth to improve or that the creator has later returned to fix when they gained more experience. Regards SoWhy 08:22, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is broadly true. I would normally only go for G11 in draft where there is either sockpuppetry or COI/UPE. Guy (Help!) 08:44, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

COI/UPE is the root of nearly all G11 drafts. Random 3rd parties don't tend to create SPAM. Legacypac (talk) 08:54, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly, articles without sources and issues of promotional or fan POV can become good, that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm more talking about articles like "Bizco provides the best furniture solutions..contact us at" sort of stuff, where it obvious the goal is to spam wikipedia, and not merely an enthusiast writing in a fan perspective; for those articles there is no value in their content because it is better to start afresh, and the editor is very unlikely to be able to rewrite that into something useful (if there is any utility there - the vast majority of companies spammed are not notable). I haven't really found in my experience, or at-least I can't recall any cases of merely an enthusiast or fan creating an article that meets the G11 bar and I'm not going to tag G11 things created by a fan, but most G11able stuff in draftspace is a obviously a COI or UPE editor spamming non-notable companies or similar Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:08, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Wasn’t there a consensus against COI/UPE being speediable demonstrated on this page earlier this year? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:27, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  G11 has and still does require the text to be promotional, not the intent. What Legacypac probably means is that in many cases of COI/UPE, the text screams spam as well, thus making them eligible for G11 in general. Regards SoWhy 09:57, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I think all speedy deletion criteria (other than copyvios and G7s) should be applied in draft space with a very light touch. Certainly nothing in draft space should be tagged for G11 speedy deletion until the author has been given a chance to improve it (i.e. it's had a {{advert}} or similar on it for a month and the concerns have been explained on the talk page) unless there is evidence of bad faith (not suspicion, not absence of evidence of good faith) and . It is far, far better that we have a little bit of spam in draft space for a short while than we throw away good faith articles that start out spammy. Thryduulf (talk) 12:08, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've tagged several Drafts G11 just today. There is no point trying to get a spammer to rewrite their spam especially when the topic is unlikely to be notable anyway. I don't think anyone is throwing out good faith articles that start out spammy. I see plenty of G11 material just rejected and not CSD'd (on resubmission) and I personally only CSD the most clear cut cases, often after several rejections for being promotional. Legacypac (talk) 21:06, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I have tagged a number of drafts for G11 when they are very obviously never going to be accepted (eg: "Tyler-Courtney Jones is a 16-year old YouTube Instagrammer. He likes Ed Sheerhan and wants to grow up to be a singer like him. His songs are going to revolutionise the singer-songwriter industry, and he is absolutely and supremely confident he will be the next big thing. Tyler-Courtney's next shows are scheduled to be the Royston Vasey Youth Club and St Cuthbert's School for Boys Christmas fair") or a seriously bad idea to exist on Wikipedia full-stop (eg: "Crazy Maisie (b. Chardonnay Aimee Chavwick, 29 September 2001) is a political activist and adult actress who has defended the right of women in the porn industry. She has appeared in [big list of wholly inappropriate and NSFW titles]. She signed an exclusive deal with the Sunday Sport so she could pose nude on her 16th birthday" - with no sources outside two tabloid newspapers) ... anyway, you get the idea. These sort of instances are rare. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:24, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've also noticed on quite a few occasions that spammers/UPEs were using draft space to duck autoconfirmed. They would create the article in ten edits, wait four days, and then promptly either copy and paste or move it to mainspace. Draft space is not for the storage of inappropriate material, including blatant ads. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 13:35, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seraphimblade, Can they play the same game in User space? ~Kvng (talk) 19:47, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Legacypac (talk) 21:06, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Kvng, yes, and I've seen that done too. Fortunately, at least in the cases I saw, a patroller caught on when it got moved to mainspace and tagged it, but still better that it didn't happen at all. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:59, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of ways a spammer can go to get auto or extended confirmed. Having a non-deleted record of their edits does help provide context when investigating someone for the non-admin among us. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:58, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Incubation of spam does not seem to be a compelling reason to use G11 in Draft space. What Legacypac said earlier about the noindex SEO loophole is the only strong argument I've seen here. Is it possible to work with Google to close that loophole in Draft space? Arguments about keeping Draft space tidy don't hold water for me because of G13. AfC has recently implemented a reject process which can kill zombie drafts. ~Kvng (talk) 17:06, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm probably one of the more prolific wielders of the G11 stick at AFC, I've tagged thousands of blatant WP:Vanispamcruftisement drafts, very few were turned down by the second opinion admins. Quite frankly this idea can only come from someone who has absolutely no clue at all about the meaning of the "Great Firehose Of Ordure (GFOO)" appellation. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:31, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The last handful of drafts I tagged as G11 were Draft:Hannah Sneddon, Draft:Kimberly Minatti, Draft:Connor Murray and Draft:Maggie Claydon - all of which were deleted by other administrators. And as discussed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red, I'm currently doing a review of biographies of women to see if any declined drafts can be improved and expanded to the point of acceptance. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:38, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I do delete drafts under G11 but I try to apply a more lenient standard than I would in mainspace. I'd be happy with amending the policy to say something along those lines. Hut 8.5 21:10, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• I use this also, and in fact I urge that it be used a little more. But as I understand it , the standard for promotionalism in Draft this has always been more permissive. Permissive as it may be, still some drafts are going to be complete advertisements, & suitable for deletion as G11. DGG ( talk ) 05:16, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Test case

I just started reviewing draft articles as part of AfC, and here are a couple test cases:

• Draft:HOLLA Group
• Draft:Association of Imaging Producers & Equipment Suppliers

The first one is written by a SPA with two edits total; in the queue for 7 weeks; non-notable company & very promotional. Would you guys tag is for G11/A7? The advantage of tagging vs declining would be to take the draft out of the queue so that another AfC reviewer can move onto something else. The second draft is pretty much the same situation. None would survive AfD if moved to main space. I would appreciate feedback on these two items. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:42, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• HOLLA Group may well be notable. Look at the range of highly credible media coverage and the scale of the downloads they have had. I might approve it with a little more checking.
• AIPES is an industry association with close ties to the EU and some sort of oversight or advisory role in the EU. Not really a commercial promotion situation, though associations do need to promote themselves to some extent. I'd want to see some independant coverage on them and a trim on the organization details before approving the page. It has promise. I would not tag either G11 - there are tons of better candidates for G11 in Draft. Legacypac (talk) 02:37, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with K.e.coffman that HOLLA is not notable given lack of articles about it rather than product and my support of WP:INHERITORG as part of WP:NCORP. I would G11 in mainspace and decline in draft.
  I would not tag AIPES as G11 in either draft or mainspace and can find indicators of notability without too much trouble. If I found in mainsapce I would take a weed wacker to much of the article as not encyclopedic but depending on what a deeper investigation of notability uncovered either mark it as reviewed (or reviewed with a notability tag if I thought it a close call) or tag it with notability and leave it unreviewed. It's very unlikely I would nominate for AfD. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:49, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There are preferred WP:ATDs for both of these. The idea that not deleting these clogs the AfC pipeline assumes that when declined, these will be be promptly resubmitted without substantial improvement. Sometimes that happens. Mostly the author either abandons or makes some improvements and not usually immediately. If resubmitted, it is not too much work for subsequent reviewers to look at the diffs and determine whether to quickly reject again or have a deeper look. This is not clogging, this is what we do at AfC, help authors improve their drafts. ~Kvng (talk) 01:24, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Neither are hopeless. HOLLA offers the choice of writing the article about the company or the product. A more knowledgable promotional editor would in fact have done it on the product, because in article space software is not susceptible to A7. It would be fairly easy to turn the present article into an article on the product, and the worst promotionalism could be removed. whether it will ever end up an acceptable article depends upon someone who knows and cares working on it. For now, it should get declined. the article on the organization is like many other similar ones: they are very hard to find sources for that pass NCORP, and they are hard to write non-promotionally without being directory entries. Sometimes they are kept at AfD nonetheless if the organization is sufficiently important. It should be declined, with a request for references and to tone down some of the claims of importance. G11 is for worse than these two--there enough of them to make it worthwhile to look at the new submissions, now that it is so easy to do so, and get the very worst out of the pipeline as soon as possible. In terms of the spammers, it can have a good effect to reject them as early as possible. DGG ( talk ) 05:27, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't think either of those qualifies for speedy deletion in draft space. While both have promotional wording it's not bad enough to avoid giving the author the benefit of the doubt in draft space. The second one is getting very close to the point where I'd be prepared to delete it in mainspace under G11 though, there isn't much text in it which isn't promotionally worded. This doesn't mean they should be accepted or moved to mainspace though. Hut 8.5 10:14, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be consensus here that these are not great G11 candidates. I hear from other AfC reviewers that their G11 proposals rarely get kicked back by administrators. So, I'm interested to hear what our CSD administrators would have done if either of these had been tagged for G11. ~Kvng (talk) 14:52, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you all for the feedback; I will go ahead and decline the drafts on advertisement grounds. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:15, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Weird Question About Questioning G11 Tags on Drafts

While we are on the subject of tagging drafts as G11, which I in general support, I have a question. Occasionally, in reviewing AFC, I see a draft that has been tagged as G11, but is still pending AFC review, and, on my review, I disagree with the G11, but think that the draft is not suitable for article space and may or may not ever be ready for article space. I decline the draft, for notability reasons, and either as 'adv' or as 'npov'. So far, so good. But I disagree with the G11. Sometimes I have contested the G11, but have left the G11 tag on the draft, and it usually then goes away, and without a comment that the challenge was denied. Either the reviewing admin doesn't read the talk page, or the reviewing admin has lower standards of G11 than I do. So, in the future, should I continue to contest the speedy deletion using the button for the purpose (and wonder whether the statement is actually read), or should I actually pull the G11 tag? I am very reluctant to pull a CSD tag that was applied in good faith by another reviewer. I think that if a reviewer thinks that a page should be speedy-reviewed, I should let an admin speedy-review the page. But I now don't know if this means that the admin will actually read the talk page challenge, in which case I should challenge on the talk page, or if the admin only looks at the draft page and the tag itself.

So: Should I continue to question what I think are unduly harsh G11s, or should I pull them?

Robert McClenon (talk) 02:07, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I just reviewed language around this today as I had not contested a speedy deletion claim in draft space before. The clearest statement of policy I found came from this very page: "The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag from it. Only an editor who is not the creator of a page may do so." (formating in the original). As I was not the creator of the page I felt I was in the clear to remove the tag and so I did. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:16, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Admin will need to also delete the talkpage, so hopefully they read it. I'm in the habit of G11ing spam without declining the page first. It seems more direct/less encouraging. Legacypac (talk) 02:53, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Robert, if you believe the draft does not rise to the level of G11 then you should remove the speedy deletion tag from it. ~ GB fan 10:32, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you believe that any page tagged for any speedy deletion criteria does noes not meet the requirements of that criteria then you should always (unless you are the author of the page) remove the tag. This applies regardless of namespace or criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 10:50, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you do remove a speedy tag but any other speedy tag applies you should retag it. Legacypac (talk) 06:01, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Should this kind or redirect be given its own criteria (example)? A user created some of them only to make the link blue on 2014 Asian Para Games, main article. Hddty. (talk) 07:54, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No. These are not speedy-worthy redirects. The links can be removed from the main article but these kinds of articles ("SPORT at EVENT") follow an established pattern and the creating editor probably just wanted to emulate this. Plus, those are redirects with potential, i.e. someone might want to create those sub-articles later. Regards SoWhy 08:11, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I believe these should be deleted in order to make the link red (to encourage article creation), but that is a matter for WP:RFD, not for speedy criteria. —Kusma (t·c) 12:46, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ttgg66 (talk) 20:27, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Not done This isn't an edit request, it's a text dump from WP:COMMON. Hut 8.5 20:33, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Under the fourth paragraph in the "Introduction to criteria" section, change "You can copy and paste such warnings to the talk pages of the creators and major contributors, choose from others listed at Category:CSD warning templates, or place the unified warning template, {{subst:CSD-warn|csd|Page name}}, which allows you to tailor your warning under any particular criterion by replacing csd with the associated criterion abbreviation (e.g. g4, a7)." to "You can copy and paste such warnings to the talk pages of the creators and major contributors or choose from others listed at Category:CSD warning templates."

I think this change is a good idea because I noticed the CSD-warn template has been deleted as an "unused template." Therefore, it should not be mentioned here anymore. 24.5.8.227 (talk) 00:43, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This request seems in good faith, but I'm bothered that a substable template was speedy-deleted because it is not in-use. Does anyone watching this page wish to dispute that deletion either with RHaworth or at WP:DRV? --Izno (talk) 00:57, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy Ping: @RHaworth:. Tazerdadog (talk) 05:30, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: the template has been restored. feminist (talk) 18:27, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Now that pretty much all drafts are under the purview of AfC, it seems unnecessary to have {{db-blankdraft}} separated out into its own category with different deletion criteria from what we're using on draftspace drafts. I think it would be better if we eliminated {{db-blankdraft}} and then add a new criteria under G13 allowing any draft, userspace or draftspace, containing only default placeholder text to be deleted after six months of no edits. That would bring it in line with how AfC drafts are currently being handled. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 07:21, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• What would be the benefit? When blank or near blank Draft space pages come up unedited 6 months we G13 them anyway. In userspace we use "blank draft" and in Draft space G2 test edit to delete blank submissions. Perhaps we should extend Blank Draft over Draft space in Twinkle so we can more accurately tag the blank pages. Legacypac (talk) 08:00, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  @Legacypac: Right now, db-blankdraft requires a full year without any edits from the page creator, while G13 only requires six months without edits to the page. The only policy difference I'm proposing is changing the db-blankdraft requirements to the same "six months without page edits" we're using with G13 and extending it over draftspace as well. Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 08:05, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For reference, here's what I'm proposing as a rewritten G13:

This applies to any pages in the draft namespace, any pages in userspace with the {{AFC submission}} template that are not currently pending review, and any drafts in either namespace with no content except the placeholder text generated by the article wizard that have not been edited (excluding bot edits) in over six months. Redirects are excluded from G13 deletion. Drafts deleted in this manner may be restored upon request by following the procedure at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13.

All it really is is consolidating and slightly generalizing existing deletion policies to make it easier to eliminate pure, unnecessary trash. Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 08:14, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Support totally logical. So we would depreciate the G6 blank draft criteria then. Legacypac (talk) 08:27, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Whatever "db-blankdraft" is, it's not G6. (Except for the folks who consider G6 to be "anything I can delete without anyone except maybe some random influenceless newbie raising a fuss" or "any new speedy deletion criterion I can sneak in without gaining consensus for a new speedy deletion criterion".) I also agree that this is better than mistagging such pages as test edits. —Cryptic 12:05, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • On a bit more reflection, I'm more in favor of generalizing A3 to apply to most non-talk namespaces. We'd have to identify a few classes of pages to exclude - categories, sandboxes, and galleries of (free) images in userspace spring to mind. I still support this proposal, as written, as a second choice. —Cryptic 13:08, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Also needing to be excluded would be redirects and soft redirects, files and file description pages (especially for files hosted at Commons), templates (especially ones that don't display anything much/are just a framework + a transcluded documentation page), user and user talk pages. I don't think this would be an improvement. Thryduulf (talk) 15:31, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. G6 is by far the worst CSD criterion we have for misuse per Cryptic and anything that moves us a step closer to actually make it meet the standards required of new criteria is a good thing. Moving one aspect of it to a different criteria where it fits better is an example of such a step. Thryduulf (talk) 12:39, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - This is a clear improvement over the status quo. Tazerdadog (talk) 17:07, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per Thryduulf. Word for word. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:52, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Makes sense, less confusing funplussmart (talk) 15:58, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support logical. Cabayi (talk) 16:02, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Q Would this mean blank drafts would wait 6 months before being deleted? I assume I'm missing something... ——SerialNumber54129 16:03, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. In draftspace and for userspace drafts with AFC templates, that's no different from the status quo. For userspace drafts without AFC templates, this proposal shortens it from sitting for a year (or longer, if the author edits other pages; or shorter, if you can con an admin into deleting it immediately). —Cryptic 16:14, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(Ec) :I am in favor of reducing the wait from one year after the editor has been active" (a silly long time) to "6 months after the userspace blank draft was created." For Draft space blank submissions to AfC I see no reason to retain these test edits for more than a few minutes. The deleted page can always be easily recreated but almost never are. I CSD hundreds of blank pages submitted to AfC every few months to reduce the G13 burden and they never come back. Legacypac (talk) 16:20, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Criterion G6 is overloaded with many different things all lumped together as "uncontroversial maintenance" and is the most frequently abused of all criteria. It would never be approved if proposed as is today. The best way to solve this, in my opinion, is to unbundle the various different reasons into separate criteria that are individually objective. I'm not proposing to do this all at once, but to work on it step-by-step so that objections to one aspect don't derail the whole thing.

One aspect of G6 stands out as being a particularly poor fit with the rest: "Deleting redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Commons, provided the redirect on Wikipedia has no file links (unless the links are obviously intended for the file or redirect at Commons)." Accordingly I propose to move this criterion, without any changes, from G6 to a new R4 for these reasons:

• It deals only with redirects, and is thus where someone will look for it
• The general footer to the R criteria (don't speedy delete redirects with significant history, use RfD for redirects that don't meet the criteria) apply to these redirects equally with others
• It contains requirements that are significantly different to other things deleted using G6
• This isn't really "maintenance" in the same sense as other aspects of G6 (e.g. pages created in error/in the wrong place, etc)
• Deletion summaries will become more useful.

This does not change what can be speedy deleted, just under which criterion is gets speedy deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 12:43, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support - This appears to be a clean improvement. How often are redirects deleted under this particular provision of G6? Tazerdadog (talk) 15:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, but we see several that possibly could be come through RfD. Thryduulf (talk) 17:16, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support not an area I work but this appears more logical Legacypac (talk) 20:30, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. I knew there was a CSD for this, but I was looking in the wrong areas and couldn't find it until it was pointed out that this falls under G6. Hopefully moving it over will be more intuitive to hopefully prevent this in the future. -- Tavix ^(talk) 15:14, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]