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.

*Summary:--There is consensus to Y accept a nuanced version of the proposed change.

• Accepted Wording:--G5, creation by banned or blocked users, subject to the strict condition that the AfD participants were unaware that the article would have met G5 and/or that the article creator's blocked or banned status was not known to the participants of the AfD discussion.
• Details--
  • By a count of heads, the proposal garnered 22 clear support !vote(s), 2 whose votes could not be definitely parsed into black and white and 12 oppose !votes .Given that all-most all the votes were more or less well grounded in different policies and appealing rationale(s), that seems to pass the threshold of enacting policy-changes.
  • WP:BMB has formed the central axis of most of the arguments in favor of supporting the policy.Coupled with that, the enormous benefits of the proposed change to tackle paid-editing-farms etc were also heavily mentioned.
  • Also, it may be noted that, while many mentioned a convinvcable modus operandi wherein paid editors can just AfD their own articles, use other socks to get it kept and use it as a line of protection against our current policies, no practical example(s) were put forward.
  • On the side of the opposer(s), the most significant argument has been that A CSD criteria should not overturn community consensus irrespective of any reason and that CSD is solely aimed at non-controversial deletions.
  • Whilst, the point of the opposers forms the very backbone of the CSD process and could not be over-emphasized enough , a majority of the discussants were of the opinion that BMB must be executed very fiercely, esp. against paid editors and the like even at the cost of ignoring the opinion/consensus of the !voters in a part. discussion and despite certainty of some slight(??) collateral damage.
• Reminder--
  • As always, the administrators are reminded to employ common sense in the entire process, to check the merits of keeping vs deleting the article (may-be upon the original cause of the ban) and use their discretionary authority judiciously.
• Signed by Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} at 14:54, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As there appears to be some debate on the point, I call the question: Does the change described in this revision accurately represent the currently established policy?

CC Interested editors (Doc James—Bilby—Tavix—Legacypac—Kudpung) as people who have inserted/reverted this diff and a user who seems interested. Hasteur (talk) 12:18, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support yes I believe this accurately reflects long standing actual practice as confirmed in the recent discussion linked in the first change. I do not see this as any kind of policy change although perhaps at some past time Admins were less aggressive at deleting the creations of socks and banned users. Legacypac (talk) 12:26, 7 September 2017 (UTC) (edit conflict)[reply]
• Support This seems like a silly question to not support as this is the text of G5 itself. If while the XFD is progressing we discover the page is substantially the work of an editor who was subject to the a block or ban during the time of the creation we don't throw all our policies out the door. I would hope that the nominating user presents clear evidence showing how the user was supposed to be restricted and therefore why G5 is a slam dunk. I'd also expect the admin reviewing the G5 nomination to review and confirm the facts of the case. Hasteur (talk) 12:24, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• (edit conflict × 2) @Hasteur: If you want this to be an actual RFC, please follow the steps at WP:RFC, i.e. add {{rfc|policy}} to advertise the RFC.

As for the question, I think the change is correct per WP:BMB because if you are banned, you are not allowed to edit, no matter how great your page is. However, this only applies in cases where the applicability of G5 was not known when the XFD was held. If people knew that the page was created by a banned user and they decided to keep it anyway, G5 does no longer apply. In practice, I can imagine few examples in which pages are still eligible for G5 after an XFD because usually in the course of such discussions substantial edits by others will have happened. Regards SoWhy 12:33, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per WP:BMB and the text of G5. -- Tavix ^(talk) 12:38, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - I haven't actually inserted/reverted the diff, but I must admit I was sorely tempted to revert this one. However, with one admin already merrily editwarring I thought it best to stay out of the fray. Yes, the cited diff not only reflects what I believe most admins have assumed anyway, including me, but it also appears to be a bit of text that was missing due to simply not having been timely updated. Anyone who claims it shouldn't be there is, IMO, simply Wikilawyering and possibly exploiting the lacuna to defend their own convictions vis-à-vis articles by blocked/banned editors. And that would be counterproductive to our hundreds of hours working at COIN, DRV, and SPI. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
• If the most recent XFD has explicitly decided to keep a G5 eligible page and the participants in that XFD discussions were aware that it was G5 eligible then it should not be deleted. In cases where the discussion was unrelated to the ban, G5 applies. (I just realised this is basically what SoWhy just said). —Kusma (t·c) 12:45, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• No - the edit summary for that revision links to this discussion which covers one particular case in which G5 was used in this way and then endorsed by discussion. One-off cases don't make good tests of policy. Generally speaking, if a page has survived a deletion discussion, it has the endorsement of the community and so G5 no longer applies. Perhaps there should be a new criterion for deleting the contributions of editors who are later demonstrated to be undisclosed paid editors, but as far as I know there is no consensus yet that we should indiscriminately mass-delete UPE contribs. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:50, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I'm concerned about two issues. The first is that I haven't seen instances where this has been applied, so it isn't clear that there is a need for the change. Are there instances where pages would have met G5, were created by an editor banned at the time, but where there was a need to delete them in spite of an AfD? (I'm very aware of the current discussion - in that case, the pages did not meet G5 anyway, so it isn't a great example). For a page to qualify, it would have to have been created by a banned editor, gone to AfD, and have had no significant edits by other editors while at AfD. If this is meant to reflect practice, how often is this practice being performed? However, even if there is a need, CSD is meant to be a quick alternative to uncontroversial deletions where there is no risk that the community would disagree with the decision. If the article has survived AfD, then the community has already considered the article and deemed that it should be kept. Accordingly, the reasons we override the community's decisions on an AfD are limited to legal (copyright or office actions) and purely technical (such as dependent on deleted pages). This provision is neither. It seems better to respect the community's decision in these rare cases by sending it back to AfD, prodding the article, or using some other slightly longer but more transparent process than CSD. And if none of those are suitable, and it absolutely and uncontroversially should be deleted, rely on an one-off exception under IAR.- Bilby (talk) 13:57, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as the paid editing issue is a distraction here, as I mentioned at the DRV. It involves WP:BMB and the fact that as described at the deletion review, nominating your own articles for AfD could easily become a loophole to exploit here. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:06, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - the purpose of a ban is to state categorically that it is not worth the community's time to review that editor's work because it is very unlikely to be acceptable. However, once the community has (perhaps unwisely) spent the time to review the work and found it acceptable, it would be backwards to delete it unless there is an actual problem with it. Tazerdadog (talk) 15:41, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So if I circumvent my ban, create something good and the community (unwittingly!) keeps it at XFD, it should be kept even if it was in violation of the ban and the banning policy says "all edits by banned users are forbidden, no matter how good"? Regards SoWhy 15:53, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. That material improved Wikipedia, even if it was forbidden. The banning policy states that you shouldn't have made the edit in the first place, but deleting good material makes Wikipedia worse. However, if you want to quote fragments of that policy at each other, it also says that "obviously helpful changes ... can be allowed to stand". Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 17:55, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What I find troubling about the line of reasoning here, is that we have all seen AfDs happen where people show up, glance at the article, do a google search, say "lots of potential references" and !vote keep, saying that the topic is notable in theory. AfD is not cleanup.

This is about cleanup. This is about dealing with the page that actually exists, and is about carting away industrial waste that has been dumped into Wikipedia; it says nothing about whether the topic is notable or if a decent article could be generated.Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Believe it or not, I actually understand you position and at one time I actually supported it as well. And for non-banned users I still do because the goal should indeed be to create a better encyclopedia if possible. However, while keeping such material might be achieving this goal in the short run, the encouragement for such editors to ignore bans will hurt the project in the long run. Regards SoWhy 20:32, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ultimately it comes down to a balancing act between the damage done by deleting an acceptable article and the damage done by weakening our banning policy. I believe that the proper venue for weighing these factors is a XfD discussion, not CSD. On a different note, Cabayi's and Hut8.5's positions below seem to be a workable compromise for this issue, that I can support as a second choice. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:57, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

True and good point, however, won't any keeping of such an article not embolden other banned users? As for the last part, I think what Cabayi and Hut8.5 are saying (and what Kusma and I said above as well) is what most supporters of this proposal are agreeing with. Of course G5 - like any speedy criterion - does not apply if the possibility was discussed and explicitly rejected. This proposal is as far as I understand it only for cases where the eligibility for G5 was not known at the time of the XFD. Regards SoWhy 06:05, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As a matter of interest, could this situation actually arise? If it is discovered before AfD, the article will be killed under G5. If it is discovered after, the commentators in the AfD couldn't have known anyway. So the only possibility is that it is discovered during, but in those cases we normally just speedy close the AfD and delete under G5 anyway. I suppose a really, really intense discussion would possibly be kept open even if the banned editor was found during it, but they always result in substantial changes to the article if things are that intense. - Bilby (talk) 09:42, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support except where the block was known & mentioned prominently in the deletion discussion BEFORE the bulk of the keep !votes - as already specified by SoWhy & Kusma. Cabayi (talk) 15:59, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support if the article creator's status was not known to the participants of the AfD discussion, oppose otherwise. If the creator is revealed as a sockpuppet of a banned user after the AfD then we are in basically the same situation as with newly discovered copyright violations, as new information proves the page qualifies for speedy deletion. Edits by banned users can be kept if adopted by other people but the fact a page survived but an AfD doesn't mean that has happened. Hut 8.5 18:46, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment if I had a promotional sockfarm I'd have one of my socks nominate my facorate page for deletion with a really poorly written nom, then vote with my other socks, along with unwitting editors fooled by my bad nomination, to keep it. Far fetched? I bet this happens every week. Legacypac (talk) 19:08, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is an impossible scenario. Most articles created by paid editors are borderline notable at best. Nominating them for AfD is a quick method of loosing your clients. It is far better for them to act as they do now and just stay under the radar. The vast majority of paid editing is never noticed. - Bilby (talk) 22:35, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not impossible at all. Most AfDs get very low participation. All you need is one sock to nominate and the creator and another one or two to vote keep. This would protect pretty well against future AfDs for once Kept at AfD the page is unlikely to be AfD'd again and many voters just say keep or make procedural objections that it was recent kept before. The paid editors are far more modivated than us and it took me seconds to come up with this scenario. Legacypac (talk) 06:24, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't viable. By nominated an article you were paid to create you have two outcomes - one is that it is kept, which would save it from G5 if you are identified as a banned editor. However, it would still risk being deleted via something other than G5 - such as being renominated for AfD, prodded, or killed under IAR. However, if you fail, not only do you see the article deleted, but you can't recreate it as it would fall under G4. In which case you need to explain to your client that not only did you fail to keep the article, but you made it that much harder for them to create a new one. Try and recreate it anyway, and you are at risk of salting for repeated recreation. Alternatively, just do what they always do - throw away the account, don't draw any attention to yourself, and hope the article survives for a couple of days so you get paid and get the positive review. After that, who cares? You've been paid, and if it is deleted you just blame it on those evil Wikipedia admins. - 07:36, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support. Banned or blocked users (or paid socks) will find ways to get their articles into Wikipedia after they are banned. We can close the loop hole rather than continue to argue about this. See WP:BMB. If banned editors create good material that is no excuse to get around a ban or keep the article. Others can also create good material without the radioactive waste being unloaded into Wikipedia. QuackGuru (talk) 20:04, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support It is a good thing to clean up industrial waste that has been dumped into Wikipedia. Jytdog (talk) 20:09, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong support Without it we leave a large loop hole. Paid editors can just AfD their own articles, use other socks to get it kept, and than if they are someday discovered the article is "protected". Agree with User:Cabayi Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:17, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Has this ever occurred? - Bilby (talk) 22:35, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Responding to both of your questions... according to one source in the Orangemoody article, on at least some occasions they would nominate the article for deletion themselves, then extort the article subject, and then come here argue to "save" it with other socks. And who ever would have thought anyone could be that devious on such a scale? The floor has fallen off what paid editors might do to make money off WP. Jytdog (talk) 01:21, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That wasn't nominating articles in order to protect them from deletion. The rather over the top claim being made here is that paid editors will nominate what in almost all cases is a borderline-notable article in order to protect it, with the additional claim that this is may well happen every week. I don't mind if people want to support the proposal, but I wish the scenarios remained realistic. Nominating an article for AfD is far too risky a move to be a viable means of protecting it. - Bilby (talk) 01:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tell that to orangemoody! They apparently found it a profitable enough strategy. I do agree with you, that the risk of this risk of this becoming a widespread way to game the system seems pretty low... but on the other hand who would have thought that black hat paid editing of Wikipedia would become such a viable marketplace that it gets written up in Time] and elsewhere? This is like taxes -- throw up a barrier and people are motivated to find a loophole. So it is worth closing it. Jytdog (talk) 05:41, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It needs to be a viable loophole before it is worth considering - Orangemoody was using AfDs as a threat, not as a means of protecting articles. I just get a tad frustrated when people throw up near-impossible scenarios without any evidence that they've ever occurred as justification for more restrictive rules. We need to avoid falling too far into a bureaucracy, and sometimes the best solution is just to keep things as they are with an IAR out if it is really needed. - Bilby (talk) 05:46, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am baffled by what you are writing. Orangemoody wanted to get paid for saving articles. Payday is saving articles from AfD - they actually nominated some. (Am I getting that wrong, or are you missing that?) Yes it is risky. Jytdog (talk) 08:38, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your description of Orangemoody's actions was that the articles were nominated for AfD in order to force subjects to pay so that he save it. However, the scenario being put forward here is banned editors nominating articles for deletion in order to protect the articles from being deleted under G5. They seem like two different situations. Either way, both would be incredibly rare, and I have never seen any evidence of a paid editor nominating an article they created for AfD in order to protect it, nor do I suspect has anyone else. The Orangemoody situation was a good case for using IAR, the lack of any other similar situations shows why we don't need to specifically allow for the faint possibility that they might one day occur.

The rhetoric around paid editing has become bad enough that we need to stay at least a little grounded when we look at the issues. - Bilby (talk) 09:19, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your desire to keep the community grounded on this. I know you are view undisclosed paid editing as a serious thing; you were on of the first admins I saw indef somebody on their own authority for violating PAID and directly adding a lot of bad promotional content to WP. I went and looked at some point and you have done that three times.

We trust admins to prevent our community norms and processes from becoming a suicide pact. This gives discretion to admins to clean up these tires dumped in the forest. You may view the "industrial polluter" metaphor as overblown rhetoric but to me that is exactly what almost all UPE is - exploiting our openness to dump industrial waste here, that has nothing to do with the mission. (I write about that a bit on my userpage here if you have a minute). We do end up with these ugly piles of content created by serial SOCKers like the case that sparked this. We need admins to be able to use the mop to clean them up, lest the community spend yet more time in laborious processes when we could all be doing constructive stuff instead. Jytdog (talk) 17:03, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I clearly said that wrong. I have no problem with your view of paid editors and wasn't complaining about that. My problem is with people ascribing greater and more serious activities to paid editors, stretching the definition of paid editing, and overstating the extent of activities without evidence. How people feel about it is absolutely fine, and how they describe their feelings is absolutely fine, and not a concern at all - I have strong feelings about it as well, so why should I object to other people feeling similarly? This isn't the place for the wider discussion, but my concern is that I'm seeing people move further and further away from policy in how they act against paid editors, and as there are so few people working in the area, there is little effective oversight that can keep anti-paid editing activities within policy. - Bilby (talk) 23:01, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Mu This is a nonsensical change, because nothing that is ever AfD'ed will have had "... no substantial edits by others." If the author AfD'ed something itself, G6 would have applied. If another editor placed an AfD template, that by itself is a substantial edit, leaving alone that in the process of an article being kept, there are typically many other substantial edits to the page being AfD'ed. Jclemens (talk) 04:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is placing a maintenance template really a "substantial" edit? After all, once the AFD is closed, the template will be removed and nothing will have changed. And it's not unheard for an article to come through AFD the same way it went in with no changes made by others. Of course, if people edit the article during the AFD to keep it, then G5 no longer applies. Regards SoWhy 06:09, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose one could define 'substantial edit' as a term of art to exclude templates, but I would call nominating something for AfD pretty substantial. But so far, no one appears to be engaging with the restrictive nature of G5, in that if ONE good faith editor makes ONE substantial contribution, G5 is off the table anyways. Well, until the next time someone decides that eliminating a UPE product demands that Wikipedia's safeguards be eliminated for the sake of efficiency... Jclemens (talk) 06:17, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose This should be for non-controversial deletions. If an article has survived an AfD, then that cannot be the case. I realise that a deleted page can be re-created, but I am very reluctant to do so, as it goes against consensus. G5 is completely anomalous on this list. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:02, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment How bout we move them to a holding pen, perhaps in a distinct namespace? in order to allow them to be fundamentally rewritten, and remove the socking editor's name from the history. It gets rewritten on a new page, peer reviewed (perhaps, if that's necessary), moved to articlespace, and the original then G5'd. That would seem to square the circle- we get to keep any good works the sock might have done, whilst equally denying all recognition to the part they played in its creation. Slightly 1984 perhaps, but-. — fortunavelut luna 07:35, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately that is contrary to the CC BY-SA and GFDL licenses, which require every contribution to be attributed. Only if the article gets fully rewritten from scratch so that it is not derivative could you remove attribution, but then you don't need the original article for that. Diego (talk) 08:54, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But the original article might give sources and other meta information. On the legal side of things one might argue that they would need to sue first and uncover their identity. Agathoclea (talk) 09:34, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is already a great holding pen for all these articles and it is deletionpedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:09, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support with the proviso that there is an exemption if at the time of the AFD the fact of such article creation by a banned user was known Agathoclea (talk) 09:34, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support It's a very small procedural change and I regret that so much volunteer time has to be spent on it. I assume, though not explicitly covered by the change, that it would also help avoid situations where, when a large G5-eligible sockfarm is detected, the articles at AfD at the time of detection are somehow exempt and survive longer than the rest of the lot (examples [1], [2]), despite being probably the worst. Rentier (talk) 09:47, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support WP:BMB is at odds with G5 so there is a problem; if they are making good enough content, why not declare properly. jcc (tea and biscuits) 11:29, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per WP:BMB. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:54, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per WP:BMB Smallbones_(smalltalk)
• This is complicated. It has a history and a context, and I suggest that participants here should read Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 September 3. The community needs a more effective means of dealing with prolific promotional sockfarms but I'm not sure expanding G5 is the best way to do it because that could have unintended side effects. I'd prefer to leave G5 as it is and enact X3: Cleanup of articles started by checkuser-confirmed prolific sockfarms. But what isn't an option is to do nothing. If surviving AfD makes a sockfarm-created article immune to G5, then what we're actually doing is creating an incentive for sockfarms to AfD their own articles with one hand and then !vote keep with their others.—S Marshall T/C 18:08, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes it accurately represents the currently established policy that "an editor who is site-banned is forbidden from making any edit, anywhere on Wikipedia, via any account or as an unregistered user, under any and all circumstances." Negating a ban by allowing contributions of banned editors to remain on the ground that they improve an article short-term encourages further abuse. Such abuse causes substantial long-term damage to the project and wastes resources that are better allocated elsewhere. Mduvekot (talk) 19:10, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose. I completely understand the frustration over sockpuppets and paid editing farms, but (assuming the XFD process was not affected by any socking), G5 is no reason to override the decision to keep an AFD. If the community says the subject should stay, then it shouldn't matter who wrote it. Sro23 (talk) 13:05, 12 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the cases that triggered this the socks in question were involved in the XFD process. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:07, 12 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • And socks are often involved in XfD, sometimes very obviously and sometimes harder to spot. Legacypac (talk) 17:14, 12 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as this would bypass the community consensus that was established at the given AfD in a way that doesn't happen with the other exemptions (except for G12, but then complying with copyright legislation is much more important as a countering factor than is the merit of enforcing the letter of one particular aspect of the ban policy). In practical terms, there are a variety of reasons that users get banned for, and the best course of action would be different in each case and most of the time deletion isn't needed anyway - for example, if the user was banned for behavioural reasons then this has no bearing on their content creation (and deleting the content just to enforce BMB is tantamount to cutting off the nose to spite the face), and if the user was known for contributing unreliable content, then that content can simply be edited away. However, I acknowledge that there is the problem of banned users creating articles on non-notable topics and then socking the AfD, and there has to be some solution in this case: I would support allowing the use of G5 on the condition that all the keep !votes in the AfD were made by socks of the banned user. – Uanfala 12:13, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  We do not have a good ability to detect socks. CU is not pixie dust unfortunately. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:02, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  There's no silver bullet for detecting socks (and CU is, and should be, used only in a minority of SPIs), but in practice most of the time it's pretty clear if the participants in a given discussions are socks. And in the borderline cases, a second AfD is always an option. To restate my previous point more succinctly, if established editors have reached consensus that an article should be kept, then we shouldn't create loopholes to bypass it. Respecting community consensus is more fundamentally important to the project than the literal enforcement of an aspect of the ban policy. – Uanfala 11:05, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support -- with the exception that if the AfD specifically considered whether the ed. was banned and decided not to delete it , then a speedy on the same grounds would be against the prior consensus. My support is rather reluctant, because this is a problem for which there is no good solution--any way of handling it has its disadvantages. At this point we are under so much pressure from undeclared paid editing that we need to try this. It might work better. DGG ( talk ) 03:12, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support We need to be clearer about deleting paid edits — implementing this proposal would be of major help. Carl Fredrik ^talk 14:33, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Strongest possible oppose. G5 is only for pages with no significant involvement by other editors; barring an AFD that gets closed as "no consensus" because nobody showed up, there's always significant involvement by one or more editors in keeping the article. Aside from copyright infringements and office actions (required for legal reasons), it's never for overturning the result of an AFD; the "normal" exceptions are all for things that are housekeeping to some extent. Moreover, if you read down a couple of lines, you'll see the following: These criteria may only be used in such cases when no controversy exists; in the event of a dispute, start a new deletion discussion. Hint: if the article's been kept at AFD, controversy is going to exist. If this gets enacted, this section is going to contradict itself — you couldn't ask for a more fruitful place for breeding disputes. Nyttend (talk) 00:38, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, with note - A CSD criteria should not overturn community consensus (like that which happens in an AfD). I do think, although, that when the banned/blocked status of the creator is discovered, that there should be another AfD, with a note that the creator is banned/blocked, so that a new consensus can be established. Also, closers of AfDs should take notice of the age of the accounts; if all of the accounts are below autoconfirmed status, then the AfD should probably not be closed. This would help prevent most socks from taking advantage of this "loophole". RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 00:45, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. If a page has survived an AfD then there is consensus that it should exist, and almost certainly has non-trivial contributions by editors other than the original creator and their work should not be deleted without further discussion. Per RileyBugz, the newly discovered status of the creator would be grounds for another AfD if anyone desired it though. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Depends what they were banned or blocked for. If it was for repeated underhand behaviour in articles, like sneaky vandalism and hoaxes, or referring to fictitious sources or misrepresenting sources, then any further articles by them would be under great suspicion despite having survived AFD and should be eligible for G5. If it was because they couldn't control their argumentative tendencies in discussions, then that doesn't necessarily reflect on their articles, which should be considered on their merits: Noyster (talk), 08:38, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Admins have to use judgment when deleting a page so there should be no concern that a great article with significant contributions from other editors will be deleted. Deletion review is always available. WP:DENY is the only tool available to deal with persistent problematic editors and this change would assist that. Johnuniq (talk) 03:03, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. It sounds a lot like a reaffirmation of G5, but it has too much appearance of allowing admins to ignore community consensus at AfD. Appearance, not necessarily reality, but appearance matters. A better solution, where an AfD was closed as keep/no concensus, and subsequently it is discovered that the creator and all major authors were banned, there being no mention of it at AfD, then the thing to do is to ask the closing admin to re-open the AfD. If it was a NAC, any admin may re-open. If the admin is now inactive, any admin may re-open. The participants of that AfD must be notified. I fear that this is leading to broad discretion to G5 pages retrospectively, delete articles written by later banned editors, especially by editors later banned due to TermsOfUse violations (undisclosed paid editing), and while these deletions are generally a good thing, it is not a good thing for it to be done not-openly. AfD should be used. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:48, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per RileyBugz, Noyster, SmokeyJoe for overbreadth. CSD shouldn't trump a community discussion where there was consensus to keep and where there was a presumably reasonable level of due diligence in examining the article. The appropriate role would be to start a new XFD and note the situation, especially if the issues with the ban/block were about their article content. This would help ensure that the article gets proper scrutiny in light of the new information. An exception would be say the user was blocked for making hard to detect hoaxes, and a diligent search by the admin found that it was a hoax (in which case a dual G5, G3 rationale could work), or other edge cases. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 15:18, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the "per" but I'm not sure it was merited here. My view is that we shouldn't be tasked to do "diligent searches" on the further productions of editors who have already demonstrated their ill-intent, and are presumably now socking into the bargain. And AfD isn't a grand jury and can be determined by just a couple of "keep" votes from unknown sources: Noyster (talk), 08:31, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • My per was to acknowledge your correct statement that G5 deletions, especially for pages that have survived and XfD, are very context dependent, which isn't the case for the other provisions in that section. Someone could have been topic banned from X and blocked at the same time because they created sub-par, non-notable X articles (or as you say, were angry in discussions about X articles). If they then create an acceptable, article on a notable X subject kept in good faith at AfD, by a strict application of G5, it could be speedied once the socking was discovered. This RFC was opened to !vote on whether the change in the linked edit at the top of the RFC, and without any additional context, I have to !vote to oppose it. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 05:34, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]