Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/AfD at scale/Archive 1

"AfD" or "Article creation"?

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.

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The project page is at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/AfD at scale, but the text says "The initial community consultation will begin soon at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale." Which is it to be? Scolaire (talk) 16:11, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Both were described as issues in the case, so my guess is that one will redirect to the other. —VersaceSpace 🌃 16:19, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey, @Scolaire, there are more links in the status box now to help follow the process! Valereee (talk) 16:48, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

@VersaceSpace and Valereee: Redirects might solve the problem that users clicking the "Talk" tab on this project page will be brought to a different talk page, but it won't solve the problem that the designated talk page doesn't have an associated project page. Scolaire (talk) 17:01, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

This here is already a discussion that doesn't appear on the "talk page". You urgently need to move one or the other of the two pages. Scolaire (talk) 17:04, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Or at least create a separate Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale page. Scolaire (talk) 17:07, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

With the current set-up it's only a matter of time before we're going to have overlapping and duplicate discussions at the different talk pages. For example the question asked at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale could easily have been asked here and would have been equally on topic. This is not going to be conducive to a smooth process, you need to start actively managing things before this gets out of hand. Thryduulf (talk) 17:21, 21 August 2022 (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.

Article creations at scale

For the RfC on article creation at scale, please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale

Questions transferred from WP:ACAS

Question 7: Should we adopt a new speedy deletion criterion that relates to mass-created articles that lack any sourced claims of importance?

A12: No reliably sourced indication of importance (mass-created articles).

This criterion applies to any mass-created article that does not have a reliably sourced indication of importance. This would apply to any mass-created article that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is a lower standard than notability. If the sourced claim's importance or significance is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion.

Question 7A:Should we instead introduce the following speedy deletion criterion:

A12: Unsourced or obviously unreliably sourced mass-created articles.

This criterion applies if the mass-created article has been unsourced in all of its history, or is only sourced to obviously unreliable or deprecated sources in all of its history.

Question 10: add mass-creation as a reason to WP:BUNDLE

Should we add mass-creation of articles by the same editor using substantially the same sources and format as a reason for bundling multiple articles into a single AFD at WP:BUNDLE?

Paraphased deletion issues and possible solutions

This is a scratch pad. I've paraphrased the deletion-related issues and possible solutions from Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale/Archive 1.

• 3) mass nominations for deletion become train wrecks because editors drill down further by taking different positions on the individual articles nominated
  • possible solutions:
    • define threshold for bulk nomination (3.1)
    • bulk nominations should be based on a logical set of criteria, rather than a set of articles (3.2, 3.3)
      • a venue should be created to help come up with appropriate criteria before nominations (3.2)
    • don't allow piecemeal votes, all-or-nothiung (3.1)
    • keeping a bulk nomination will not prevent a re-nomination with a refined criteria (3.1)

• 5) simultaneously permitting creations based on SNG and deletions based on GNG will cause an endless stream of AfDs and conflict
  • possible solution: harmonize the criteria, SNGs not in accordance with GNG should not be used for mass creation

• 7) presumed notability and what that allows is not consistently interpreted, which causes disagreement
  • possible solution: clarify wp:notability to be more explicit when an SNG is supplements, supplants, or is prohibited

• 13) NSPORT actually requires the subjects of articles meet GNG as well as SSG
• 13a some participations are demanding onerous BEFORE searches despite missing SIGCOV
  • possible solution below 19
• 13b editors who disagree with the NSPORTS2022 consensus are taking anti-consensus positions and muddying the waters
• 13c editors are adding or quoting noncompliant sources in an attempt to keep articles that don't have SIRS sourcing
• 13d editors who disagree with the NSPORTS2022 consensus are taking the fight to DRV in numbers

• 14) absolutist approach to deletion is unhelpful, redirection, merging, and disambiguation are other options
  • possible solution: alternatives to deletion should be engaged first and those who refuse may be topic banned from nominations

• 16) forcing all articles through a strict interpretation of GNG rewrites the notability policy; not all SNGs require GNG to be met

• 19) article creators are not required to do an exhaustive search for sources during creation, which perversely puts the burden on nominators
  • possible solution (also to 13a): modify BEFORE to make it clearly a suggestion rather than a requirement and explain the BURDEN rests upon the person(s) wishing to retain the content

Next step to create a set of questions like this for consideration. –xeno^talk 17:52, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

My replies a bit late but another issue that comes out of 14) is the redirection of articles is reverted without first ensuring that the articles meet GNG/SNG, thereby forcing an AfD discussion. It would help the issues at AfD if there was some clarification about the interaction of WP:BURDEN and undoing redirection of articles not meeting a notability guideline. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 02:09, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Definitions, forums

The article creation discussion is deadlocked in large part due to opposition to literally any proposal to do anything due to disputes over definitions and forums, even when the definition/forum is basically tangential to the actual proposal. I really hope we are not going to see a repeat of that behaviour here. I hope closing admins will see the "Oppose Until we have a definition of/specific forum for XXXX" !votes for what they are and will weigh them accordingly. FOARP (talk) 08:19, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

FOARP, that would be something to note on that RfC as a 'Note to closers'. Valereee (talk) 19:57, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't know how this RfC can address "mass created articles" in any way if we have no working definition and no working process for mass creation. My hope, per what I wrote over here, is that the closers of that discussion can give us those things, even if only an experimental basis. At least then we'll be working from a shared vocabulary and shared premise here. There are other elements of bulk deletion nominations, of course, but it sure seemed like a lot of the impetus for this RfC was "how do we deal with articles created at scale". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:07, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites - If this discussion is just going to end up deadlocked in exactly the same way, what's the point? It looks to me like people are trying to force through their preferred definitions/forums, opposing even when the proposal works with an already-existing and operating policy. FOARP (talk) 07:30, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Part of the problem *might* be that people have experience of the ways in which other "consensus" decisions have been implemented in the past - perhaps in ways that they weren't expecting them to have been implemented. That might, quite reasonably, make people wary of agreeing something that isn't entirely clear and where the implementation hasn't been spelled out.

The sheer number of proposals is, also, dangerous in my opinion - once you get to proposal 10, that's too many to keep focus; we're at proposals 17 are we? That's at the stage where people lose interest and just say, "yeah, OK..." without a clear view of what's actually being agreed. Fewer, more focussed, easier to understand proposals would be more helpful. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:26, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

@Blue Square Thing - I agree that this discussion was not ready for prime time when it opened (and I did say so at the time). We needed longer in the workshop phase to actually come up with something worth discussing.

On the other hand, there's a lot of catastrophising in the discussion that is very unhelpful. Yes, a consensus might come out later about what X should be that you disagree with - but that's Wikipedia? FOARP (talk) 08:36, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

And then that definition gets held up as a "global consensus"? Nah - we need to get things that people can agree on so that we don't end up with "but this obscure definitions proves that... and is better than your definition because I say so". Come up with some simple things that people can agree on:

• some editors have created many articles using very similar formats
• this isn't always very helpful
• they should be encouraged to do this...
• if they don't, we might do this other thing...
• and we might be able to show the need to delete lots of those articles if their notability is obviously questionable

People catastrophise for what seem to them like good reasons. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:43, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Deletion

Would anyone like to discuss deletion? I have multiple concerns relating to the way in which prods & AfDs work at present but was injured during the Arbcom case that led to all this and haven't the energy to read the walls of text, so not sure what's in scope. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:41, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I imagine it might be useful to understand the sorts of concerns you have and to figure out if they apply to this or not. Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:18, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Going back & looking at the ArbCom request, it states "comment on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion", so would proposed deletion be excluded? I recall a suggestion for a new speedy category was punted to this discussion but seems out of scope?

My fundamental concerns are pretty much the opposite of what a lot of editors have been expressing in my hearing. It's late here, so forgive me for lack of eloquence:

• it is a lot easier to propose an article for deletion than to create (a decent) one;
• it is also much easier to vote for deletion in AfD than to try to find sources or amend the article in response to the demands of those who call for deletion;
• AfD is becoming a very unfriendly place for people who don't like seeing articles deleted unnecessarily, leading to it being dominated by those who don't find this painful;
• proposed deletion in particular appears very underpatrolled; as far as I'm aware the admins who perform ~all of the deletions no longer seem to check out the articles for themselves (as used to be the case back in 2007 when I was working on processing prods).

And probably a lot more, but it's late. Espresso Addict (talk) 09:27, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with your first two points. I have no opinion regarding your third; I don't find AfD particularly unpleasant, but I think I interact with that area less than I used to, so my current feelings might not even be representative of how I would feel if I tried participating more. I have no useful input regarding your fourth point, either, but I would be unsurprised if that turned out to be true. XOR'easter (talk) 19:38, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

On the other hand, it's a lot easier to create an article of any quality or merit than it is to get that article deleted at AfD. All it takes is at most three regular editors (creator, AfC reviewer, NPPer), and more often just one, with no minimum time delay for creation. Whereas AfD always requires at least two editors, including an admin, for soft del and some higher number for full del, and must be discussed for at least 7 days. The per-editor effort load may be smaller for an AfD, but it still necessitates far greater overall time and effort and way more editors than creation. It's also not just keep !voters who are trying to find sources; in fact, before the WP:NSPORTS2022 RfC, delete !voters were pretty much the only editors looking for sources on sportspeople at AfD, since they had to prove a subject didn't have coverage while keep !voters only needed to state they met a sport-specific subguideline. I think one's experience at AfD is really dependent on which area the subject is in. JoelleJay (talk) 02:23, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

JoelleJay To prod an article takes writing "substprod" at the top and optionally notifying the creator, who has often retired. AfD is a little more time-consuming but with automated editing is just one or two clicks away. I've often spent literally weeks or longer writing a single article, sometimes with lots of trips to the library, trekking round with a camera, money spent on purchasing books, and the like, and bothering folk at the Resource Exchange board or wikiprojects for sources.

"I think one's experience at AfD is really dependent on which area the subject is in." This is becoming increasingly obvious, yes. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:10, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah I don't dispute that PRODs take less effort than most article creations. And by "automated editing" do you mean Twinkle et al? You still need to provide a DELREASON, and are "expected" to do a BEFORE, but sure, nominating can also be almost as trivial. My initial response to what you said about all the time spent writing a well-referenced article was going to be, "well, those aren't the articles that are getting AfD'd". But I'm guessing what you mean is that a stub at AfD could have just as much coverage in just as inaccessible sources as the topics you've worked hard to write good articles on, and that possibility is what is upsetting about AfDs being much less effort in comparison. My opinion is that there's a reason why BEFORE isn't more extreme, and it's tied to the balance between comprehensiveness and WP:NOT as well as to equitable distribution of burden and WP:NORUSH. I don't believe an un(der)-sourced stub on a topic that might be notable is any different from a couple mentions of the topic that might be DUE within another article; the only distinction is that one involved clicking "publish page" and the other "publish changes". Either way, deletion of that content doesn't affect whether the subject actually is notable, and with so little info in the original stub (even without the option of REFUND) it's not like recreating the article will take more than epsilon extra effort should someone have source access in the future. It just might take a little longer for someone to notice WP coverage of the subject is lacking if they don't come across the topic as a link. JoelleJay (talk) 04:42, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

• What's clear to me from those remarks is that EA hasn't recently tried to delete a poorly sourced BLP about a sportsperson. The amount of effort required to do that massively exceeds the effort put in by most sports BLP creators.—S Marshall T/C 08:23, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Mostly I delete speedies; pretty low effort! But indeed, I don't work much on sports bios. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:20, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

OK. Here is where JoelleJay and I agree. My last AfD nomination of a sports BLP was this one. I've now completely given up trying to delete them: it's impossible.—S Marshall T/C 12:34, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

That looks like an argument primarily based on participation only in a single event? I'm not sure it tracks with the run-of-the-mill sports bios; there's a 1200-word article with 41 references. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:24, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah that AfD is not the norm for sports bios, which nowadays are primarily the editors who relied on "meets NFOOTY" pre-RfC now attempting to claim GNG is met from routine sports recaps, transactional news, blogs, and press releases; or that we must keep every old or non-Western athlete based on IAR. This, this, this, and this are more representative of the headache we face whenever an athlete who would have met a pre-RfC guideline is taken to AfD. JoelleJay (talk) 22:47, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for these examples; looks like they all ended up with delete. I think the AfD discussions exemplify my problem with GNG in practice, which is that one person's significant coverage is another person's passing mention/routine coverage, together with all the arguments over reliability and independence of sources. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:07, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

There are also sports AfD like this, this, this or this where there appears to be a different approach being taken and where, arguably, the nominator is rather in error and might have been better asking someone about the article subject first. But we'll bundle all these and delete them, yes? Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:30, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

While they closed as delete, there are many others that weren't despite failing all notability guidelines (see BilledMammal's evidence in the ArbCom case; also this AfD that was kept on the basis of a deprecated argument and only deleted once editors pointed this and the poor sourcing out in the renomination). Lots of deleted articles also could very easily have been kept if no one had bothered to assess refbombed sources. With sportsperson bios we actually have pretty clear standards on what can't contribute to GNG: ROUTINE match reports, stats, transactional coverage. JoelleJay (talk) 04:51, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

It does strike me that in many cases there are ATD which can be used - perhaps not this one, but the close specifically mentions that there's no consensus to entirely delete. Given the difficulties that I had using REFUND earlier this year, I would suggest that much stronger use of ATD and ATC would probably be a helpful way forward. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Blue Square Thing: Alternatives to deletion would be one measure that we could debate; moving a mass-created set of stubs to draft and encouraging interested editors to improve them individually would be a useful possibility. Sorry, not familiar with the acryonym ATC? Espresso Addict (talk) 01:18, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

moving a mass-created set of stubs to draft and encouraging interested editors to improve them individually would be a useful possibility I would support that, with them being allowed to be individually returned to main space if improved, or returned as a group if there is a consensus approving their mass creation. I would suggest something like:

Articles that were mass-created without consensus are subject to mass-draftification. This is done through a discussion at WP:VPR, where any editor may propose either a list of articles to be draftified, or a quarry query that produces a list of articles. This proposal must meet the following criteria:

1. The articles are limited to a single creator
2. The articles are limited to a single topic area, broadly defined
3. The articles are limited to mass created articles with few (<5%) false positives. "False positives" are articles that were not mass created, or were mass created but later expanded.

Arguments for or against approval of the mass-draftification on grounds other than whether they meet or do not meet this criteria must be ignored by the closer.

Articles may be restored to article space under one of two circumstances:

1. Individually, when they can no longer be considered mass created; this includes both false positives, and articles that were expanded after draftification.
2. As a group, if there is a consensus to retroactively approve the mass-creation of the articles.

few (<5%) false positives in criteria #3 is intended to balance the fact that for some editors who engaged in mass-creation (for example, Lugnuts) a manually curated list is not plausible, and so some articles will be incorrectly included (and less problematically, some articles will be incorrectly excluded). This is balanced by restoration circumstance #1, which allows those articles to be returned to article space without issue. BilledMammal (talk) 02:12, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I doubt I'd support "are subject", but "may be subject" might be acceptable. It's a pity that G13 means drafting is essentially a six-month-delayed prod but that's an argument for a different forum; perhaps they could be moved to the WP space of a relevant wikiproject instead? I dislike the idea of using the Village Pump, largely because content contributers rarely hang out there; you are far more likely to get content contributors by discussing in wikiprojects. It would also need a working definition of mass creation, of course. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:08, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

My experience is that articles will pretty much always need to be manually checked. In the area I'm most interested in, redirection to a list is a much better option than moving to draft - no one will find draft articles, whereas a redirection to a list is much easier to find and we don't lose the original work and attribution, which, frankly, is actually important. I"d suggest it will be almost impossible to show that articles created in the past didn't have consensus - any raw of AfD which saw numerous articles kept, for example, would suggest that there was consensus for their creation. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:15, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

There wouldn't be anything stopping you from manually reviewing the draftified articles and creating appropriate redirects, or moving the articles back and redirecting them; I would consider that to be appropriate under when they can no longer be considered mass created, as they are no longer articles.

mass-created without consensus, not created without consensus. If their mass creation was not approved in an appropriate forum (and some mass creations have been) then this process would provide a path to address that mass creation.

I would note the other reason for criteria #3 is to prevent these discussions from turning into trainwrecks; since any articles included in the list that shouldn't be included are easily restored, the discussion shouldn't be derailed because reasonable editors disagree with a few items on the list. BilledMammal (talk) 08:29, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Espresso Addict Alternatives to Creation - e.g. inclusion in a list. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:15, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I suggested something here specific to sports stubs that might be workable if we ironed it out a bit. JoelleJay (talk) 05:04, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

• I think that arguments about the reliability and independence of sources are inherent in writing an encyclopaedia. We've got to evaluate sources in context, case by case.

Obviously the problem is that I, personally, don't have the final say in these things, which means we get a lot of decisions wrong.—S Marshall T/C 12:35, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

• The kind of thing I'm talking about is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elizabeth Otto. Nominated 16 mins after creation without sufficient understanding of the relevant notability guidelines, nor of how to look for sources in this field. The at-scale problem here is that countless articles are nominated for AfD or, worse, prodded with this level of lack of understanding. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:56, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree that this particular AfD was ill-advised especially since the article had just been created. However, aside from the sources which were found, folks seem to be treating WP:NAUTHOR as sufficient to establish notability when in fact it is part of the "additional criteria" section which reads in part "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included." We really need to harmonize the various SNGs to clarify which ones are actually sufficient to keep an article and which are merely intended to tell us that the subject is likely to be notable. In this case it seems that GNG is met, and the process worked as intended since it appears that the article will be kept. –dlthewave ☎ 05:16, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

It was just one example that I had to hand, and perhaps singling out the nominator, who doesn't seem to make a habit of nominating academics/authors, was unkind. I could unearth a lot more examples if anyone's interested. As I intended to imply, the problem with prods is a great deal more pernicious as there's little/no co-ordinated patrolling. I've deprodded many articles that are more obvious WP:AUTHOR/PROF passes than this one. Articles on anglophone women that are listed at the appropriate delsort do tend to get a decent amount of attention from the Women in Red project.

My understanding of the usual WP:AUTHOR application in AfD is multiple books, each with multiple reviews (with some complicated caveats), which is just a restatement of GNG making it clear that authors are judged on coverage of their works, not their person. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:18, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

None of the notability guidelines guarantee that meeting the standard they express is sufficient to keep an article. Not even the GNG.

My big-picture hot take is that we have drifted away from the questions of "What topics belong in an encyclopedia?" and "How do we organize encyclopedia content into separate-but-interlinked pages?". Instead, we've gone out to the bikeshed and devoted all our energy to harmonizing the various abbreviations that we made up. XOR'easter (talk) 17:29, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

An issue I would like to mention is the trend of people using "success" in terms of number of nominations/!votes that ended up following consensus as an indicator of anything at all. There are just so many problems with this:

1. This is the definition of WP:BATTLEGROUND.

2. It incentivizes groupthink. The reasons for this should be obvious.

3. It erases the distinction between low-effort drive-by comments and ones that cite policy.

4. It ignores the fact that participation is self-selecting. Many people, myself included, are more likely to comment if they have something new to add to the discussion -- which often means a differing opinion -- and less likely to comment if their opinion is just "what that guy said."

Related to this is the skew with which these stats are interpreted. I read someone saying that someone who !votes 50% of the time to keep and 50% of the time to delete is "moderately inclusionist," which boggles the mind. (And also is self-selecting, for the same reason.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:41, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Noting two threads at ANI relevant to this discussion

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Concerns about articles nominated for deletion
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Undiscussed mass article merging and redirection by BilledMammal

Espresso Addict (talk) 04:08, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Format for workshopping RfC on article deletion at scale

There've been a lot of complaints about the formatting of the current RfC. I'm open to suggestions for formatting the workshopping for the AfD RfC and seeing how it goes. So if there are opinions, let's have them. Valereee (talk) 14:51, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

• I suspect I made your life harder at the current RfC by leaving too many comments, so let me stick to a simplifying one this time. I think it's in your interest to either have a workshopping session for the questions being presented, or to allow people to add their own proposals. As this stand, you spent a lot of effort trying to hammer out consensus proposals, but given how divergent the views are on this topic, many others are being added anyway, and the "synthesized" ones aren't doing particularly well. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

  You didn't make things harder! I do want comments, I just don't want long pages of back-and-forth bickering. :)

  Yes, I have to agree that the workshopping doesn't really seem to have helped. Maybe we should just skip it for the deletion-at-scale RfC? I don't want to limit proposals to what is workshopped. I feel like it leaves too many people out of the process, as many won't show up for the workshop but will for the RfC. Which maybe is why the distilled questions aren't being supported -- the workshop was likely full of experts who care deeply. The RfC of course attracts drive-by voters, but we can't do anything about that. Valereee (talk) 14:47, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  My thoughts exactly. If folks are looking for feedback on proposals before submitting them, you could possibly set up a sub-page for that, but one which isn't compulsory and isn't bound by the need to advertise everything and have a set timeline. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:36, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  With the added benefit of making things easier for moi. Valereee (talk) 22:19, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• I'd be inclined to allow polite threaded responses to comments (but not votes) and ditch the word count limit. This comment-only-in-your-own-section format is extremely hard to follow, pings keep failing because people are not signing to keep the word count down, and generally it's stifling positive debate (possibly as well as acrimonious fixed differences of opinion). It would probably mean stricter moderation would be necessary. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:23, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• I'd can see the point of some threading for comments only, but given experiences with other RfC which have effectively been bludgeoned by a small number of editors, some sort of word limit seems essential to me. Maybe 300 is too low. Signatures should be excluded from word limits if we think they're causing problems. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:28, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  Perhaps just moving any discussion that involves more than X exchanges to the talk page? There's really no reason the RfC itself needs long arguments which could be done at the talk. The closers don't need to see the long exchanges between people trying to convince other !voters or bludgeon a discussion. They only need to see the !votes and reasonings for those votes. If people want to have long convos on the talk, I have no opinion on it. Valereee (talk) 14:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• If you guys are really on top of things, that might work, but I'd be really concerned that the deletion RfD is going to be rather different to the creation one - more "at stake" (yes, I know...). The way the Sports RfC ended up earlier this year, as an impenetrable wall of text that a actively put users off even trying to contribute (and that's before you consider the page stats - 50% of edits after it was moved to it's own page from three users...). For that reason alone I'd like to see the word limits kept. Blue Square Thing (talk) 18:33, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  I'm happy to deputize mods to move back-and-forths to talk during the hours I typically am less likely to be editing (4pm-4am Eastern). :D Valereee (talk) 18:36, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• Just let us talk in the normal Wikipedian way. This isn't generating the level of acrimony that necessitates the "post only in your own section" approach.—S Marshall T/C 19:23, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  And if the reason it's not generating that level of acrimony is that we aren't talking in the normal Wikipedian way? Let me be clear: I have no issue with the "normal" Wikipedian way. I love discussion and participate often, sometimes at length and sometimes multiple times within a single discussion. But that normal way sometimes becomes hundreds of thousands of words with back-and-forth bickering that goes on for days, bludgeoning that discourages people from participating, and walls of text that no one wants to wade through. That's the point of unthreaded discussion and of word limits, and it would be the point of moving back-and-forth exchanges to the talk page after X exchanges. Valereee (talk) 20:12, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  Hmm. I can't tell if that's a decision from on high or point of view for discussion. Would further conversation about this be unwelcome?—S Marshall T/C 21:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  Not at all! All discussion is welcome. Not sure what you mean by a decision from on high? If you mean a moderator decision, any decision I've made is completely open for discussion. Any decision I'm discussing making is open for discussion. I prefer it not be snark directed at me, but even then I try to just ignore it. :D Although sometimes I write really cutting ripostes and leave them sitting unposted overnight so that with the new light of day and a cup of coffee, they make me laugh and appreciate my own brilliance all over again. Valereee (talk) 22:13, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  Okay, good. Text isn't a good medium for judging others' mood. I find myself very much in Espresso Addict's camp here, frustrated by the difficulty of holding conversations with WhatamIdoing and JoelleJay when the text isn't organized in its sequence. I agree that very long conversations if they occur would be best moved to a subpage or talk page, and then summarized back on the main page when and if they reach a conclusion. I also see why any acrimony would need intervention by a moderator. But, I feel that these are still theoretical or hypothetical concerns, while the communication difficulties that Espresso Addict sums up so well are happening right now.—S Marshall T/C 23:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  In general you'll probably find my mood "able to find humor in most situations, generally assuming good faith, willing to flex when appropriate."

  Are you proposing that we change the format for the current RfC? Valereee (talk) 23:27, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  Agree with S Marshall; perhaps run the 2nd a little like an RfA? Long back-and-forth discussions get moved to talk page, acrimonious comments get actively moderated. Honestly not sure if/how the 1st can be salvaged now. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:25, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  Once again I concur with Espresso Addict in every respect.—S Marshall T/C 12:35, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  So, w/re: running it like an RfA. So each proposal would have its own discussion section, with threaded discussion? Participants open a new subject section for each new conversation, which could be multiple discussions for a given proposal?

  I'm just sitting here thinking about logistics as a moderator, I guess...in an RfA, it's pretty easy to tell when discussion needs to move. It's almost always direct responses to an oppose, for one thing, that goes on after any needed clarification has been made. It's almost always a concern about piling onto opposers. Transferring that to an RfC that could have a couple dozen proposals with multiple concerns about each means...well, as someone mentioned, it's a lot to moderate. One of the upsides of unthreaded discussion is that the moderator doesn't have to moderate a 200,000 word discussion. The fact communication is more difficult is feature as well as bug: if you have something important enough to say, you'll say it even in an unthreaded convo. But if you're sitting there refreshing the convo so you can fire off another wall of text at the person who is pissing you off...ai yi yi. Maybe limit the number of responses and words any editor could add to any discussion? That's a moderation nightmare, that is, I am definitely not up for that kind of tedium. I'd literally end up mostly just responding to people ratting each other out.

  Honestly, I don't know what the answer is. I know everyone hates unthreaded discussion. But from the point of view of the person who is supposed to be keeping it from becoming an impenetrable wall of text, I'm just not sure they aren't the lesser of two evils. Valereee (talk) 13:20, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, that would be my suggestion. Each proposal has a section for threaded discussion, but it's not permitted to respond to supports or opposes directly. So say EA proposes all AfDs would go better with doughnuts, and XY opposes on grounds that sugar gets on the keys, EA/XY/anyone else may open a single discussion thread to discuss whether or not doughnut sugar is a real problem. Perhaps each thread should be given a descriptive subheading? All subsequent discussion on this topic gets moved to the thread. Discussion that goes round in circles, degenerates into "mmm doughnuts", or digresses into the spelling of doughnut or the character of doughnut-loving EA is either deleted or moved to the talk page. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:15, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

  @S Marshall, I'm thinking the discussion with JoelleJay and WhatamIdoing would have definitely been better here on this talk. JJ opened them for discussion there, possibly to make sure others did actually see them, and I decided to see how it went. Should they be moved here to allow for a long threaded discussion? Valereee (talk) 16:41, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  Sure we can move it here. JoelleJay (talk) 17:41, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you for your flexibility, JoelleJay. Valereee (talk) 19:58, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  Oh JFC. Just ridiculous...I forgot where we were. We're at the talk page for the AfD RfC. I need a drink. Valereee (talk) 19:59, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Valereee, I thought about switching to the talk page at one point, but then didn't. I think this is a good model, and that what's needed is a note (even though Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions) that points out that when you find yourself replying to someone who was replying to you, then it's probably time to copy that to the talk page.

  Any/all of my comments can be moved to any place that makes you happy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  Nothing is making me happy with myself right this minutes lol...I am however warming some sake and intend to sit in front of the fire and watch Derry Girls with a cat in my lap. This will make me...well, a lot less unhappy with myself. Valereee (talk) 20:10, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  There's nothing quite like volunteering to shepherd a massive RFC to make you wonder about your life choices.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

• @Valereee: What about adding an "Evidence" section at the top, adjacent to the statistics, where short items of background information can be added by consensus on this talk page? Ovinus (talk) 06:36, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

  Hm. It sounds reasonable. I like the idea of requiring such a section to be vetted by others here first to make sure it doesn't get out of control. Valereee (talk) 11:08, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

  I've added that at the 2nd RfC. Valereee (talk) 11:11, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

For ease of navigation

I've posted a proposed format at WP:ADAS, feel free to comment here. Valereee (talk) 17:18, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Valereee. Not looked in detail yet, but quick query, do we have any stats on deletion? Espresso Addict (talk) 03:03, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Not as far as I'm aware. What kinds of statistics would be helpful? Pinging @BilledMammal as they did the last set. Valereee (talk) 10:59, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Got to go offline (busy day tomorrow) but off the top of my head,

• average number of AfDs per [time unit];
• average number of prods per [time unit];
• proportion of AfDs that result in delete/keep/no consensus/other outcomes;
• proportion of AfDs that are relisted (once, twice, thrice);
• average/range in number of distinct participants in AfDs (preferably excluding those who purely do indexing);
• total pool of editors who (frequently) participate in AfDs;
• number of editors who (frequently) challenge prods;
• number of admins who (frequently) close AfDs;
• number of editors who bring more than [threshold] AfDs in [time period];
• number of editors who bring more than [threshold] prods in [time period];
• number of editors with >[threshold] AfDs in the past year whose AfDs end in (say) >2/3 keep;
• number of editors with >[threshold] prods in the past year >50% of whose prods are contested.

That turned out to be a lot, and I've no idea how feasible any of these queries are, sorry. Any thoughts on how these figures have changed over time would also be welcome; I feel like we're talking in a bit of a vacuum here. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:42, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

No response to this.

If no data are available re deletion, then I think we should delete all the evidence relating to mass creation. It tends to bias the discussion towards repeating the other RfC, which we (desperately) want to avoid. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:31, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't know, EA. If mass creation really is the heart of the problem, then we'll have to discuss it. The fact we couldn't solve it as a contributing issue surely doesn't mean we wouldn't still need the evidence? Valereee (talk) 10:45, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

We certainly can't post a bunch of evidence wholly about creation and no evidence about deletion! We're just asking for a repeat of the other RfC, which -- not to prejudice the unfortunate closers -- seems to me personally to have been a colossal waste of time and effort. As the original quarry-querier seems interested largely in the creation side of things, could someone else be found? Espresso Addict (talk) 10:50, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Suggested evidence

Valereee has agreed with the idea of including an evidence section, so I propose below a (partial) skeleton of background info to add. I don't know any of the details here and I know I'm missing plenty of important cases. Ovinus (talk) 19:20, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I would suggest changing the Lugnuts section to a more general one on athlete bios, e.g.,

=== Sportsperson stubs ===

... statistics, database used ... These stubs were presumed to meet GNG through various WP:NSPORT sport-specific guidelines such as WP:NCRIC and WP:NFOOTY, but many (est. percentage) no longer qualify for that presumption following the 2022 RfC on sportsperson notability criteria. Most of these subjects cannot be quickly identified as notable or non-notable according to new criteria. Many "keep" advocates—who now have the burden to demonstrate sourcing—find the rate overwhelming. At current rates of nomination at AfD (...), the stubs will take ... years to sort out.

JoelleJay (talk) 21:07, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Adjust as you please. Ovinus (talk) 21:32, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

If they're cricket articles it would take me no more than two minutes to get an idea if there are or aren't likely to be suitable sources notable. Fwiw, if they were early 20th century British cricketers, at least 50% would be likely to have suitable sourcing. If they were Australians or New Zealanders from the same era, that figure's likely to be higher. Naturally the longer a person played for the more likely it is that sources already exist. I would also point out, yet again, that the sources already in an article about a cricketer will need to be checked individually. A number contain extensive prose - as well as links to prose - already and are not simple database entries.

It would take, of course, much longer to actually add the sources and write the articles, but that's different from saying that most of these subjects cannot be quickly identified as notable or non-notable according to new criteria. In other sports that might hold true; it doesn't for cricket. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:44, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

As a rough guide, we're looking at in excess of 10,000 cricketer biographies (see User:Lugnuts/Cricket#Cricketers), greatly in excess of that when we also include articles created by several other prolific database copiers in this area; most of these articles are sourced exclusively to a cricinfo/cricketarchive database entry with no prose. There are also vast numbers of Olympian biographies (see User:Lugnuts/Olympics) sourced exclusively to the OlyMadMen database (via Olympedia, Olympics.com, sports-reference.com, or elsewhere), and over 3,500 non-Olympic cyclist biographies sourced to Cycling Archives (see User:Lugnuts/Cycling); again, it hasn't just been one individual creating these non-cricket stubs. As such, while "2 mins per article" doesn't sound much, it is a colossal chunk of time. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:30, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Until you run across an in-depth prose section on the CricInfo or, even worse, the CricketArchive profile. And that's fairly random. In other words, in some cases there is much better sourcing. Every article's going to need checking anyway - there are stubs that have multiple reliable sources in and articles that haven't been re-categorised after their expansion from stub. Fortunately we have lists. From lists we can work through - with a handful of people who know what they're doing we could get the majority of the articles that are likely to be significant dealt with in six months, tops. We'd have to prioritise, but it's doable.

See below for more about subsets. Blue Square Thing (talk) 18:58, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I thought quick identification was only applicable to a subset of the articles. Removed. Also, I would appreciate more numbers like this, Wjemather. Maybe have a table or graph of stub type vs. creator, count, and totals? I dunno how to use the Quarry, so like, "Number of stubs in category Cricketers created by Lugnuts/BlackJack/etc." Also @Blue Square Thing: What do you think about other categories of cricketers? Ovinus (talk) 17:38, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

There would be different percentages for different groups - and although those with more appearances are more likely to have sources found on them, that's not entirely certain. As a rule of thumb, for example, British County Championship era cricketers with 20 appearances can almost always have sources found for them. Below 20 it starts to get less certain - but there are plenty of examples of single appearance players who are obviously notable for other stuff.

South Africans, and West Indians are much harder to find online sources for in my experience (but I may not know where to look), and Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi players harder again, mainly due to the lack of digitised sources and language barriers. Zimbabweans and Irish are more recent in general so likely to be living. They vary - much harder to be certain, but as a rule of thumb I'd want to check every international player in that group. Other countries (UAE, Canada, USA, PNG etc...): harder still.

But in each case a check for a Wisden obituary is the first thing that needs doing. If we find that, there's an argument for looking further. That's one reason why pre-war players are a specific subgroup. Blue Square Thing (talk) 18:58, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Btw, I should be specific about where I'm getting the 50% from. BilledMammal provided a list of more than 1000 stubs (1,168 by my reckoning) created by BlackJack - almost all of whom were British players for first-class counties. By randomly sampling some of the alphabetic groups that were provided I was able to determine that in every alphabetic group around half had a very good chance of being clearly notable - for example, of the 65 whose forenames began with an A, at least 38 are well worth checking on for more details and there are only 11 which I feel are absolutely unlikely to have any reasonable sources found without too much effort.

As an example, Leslie Wilson (cricketer), an article I've not got to yet, is one of those on the list. So obviously notable - the Carlaw source I've added to the article has significant prose and I've got three books within reaching distance of where I'm sat that will add more, plus his Wisden obit. And that's just the starters.

Of course, look at non-county sides, the minor counties list A chaps and so on and things will look different.

One final point (for now...) - it's easy to bulk out an article with "sources" to avoid it being a stub - but without almost any of those sources being actually about the person or being in any way in-depth. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:15, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with your assessment that 50% are notable, both due to the lack of provided sources for the ones you have reviewed, and due to the sources you have provided often not counting towards GNG due to either not containing significant coverage or due to not being independent. @Valereee: Related to this, I don't think it is appropriate to include editor assertions, made without evidence, such as Blue Square Thing estimates that at least 50% of early-20th-century cricketer stubs are notable in the evidence section. BilledMammal (talk) 08:58, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Noted. Valereee (talk) 11:55, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

How many would you like me to review and how long can I have to do it? If you want full sourcing adding to the article then I can do two a week. If you want a quick look with a gut feeling, it’s one every two minutes. How long do you want it to take? Or do you just want to delete articles because you can’t wait for someone to actually review the sourced already in the article? Blue Square Thing (talk) 12:48, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't have that particular piece, but it'd be very nice to know about how many of them are actually notable under current guidelines. Is there a quantitative way to do so? You could look at past AfDs, maybe. Ovinus (talk) 15:11, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

The problem with looking at AfD is that the articles that have been sent there are probably more likely to be sketchy in terms of notability. I can try to do that at some point, but I’m awfully busy just now. And I’m not sure, given some of the stuff that’s gone on at AfD that it’d be awfully helpful tbh. I’ll see what I can do, but can’t promise that it’s a quick job.

Can I check btw: are we focussing on stubs sourced only to simple, non-prose databases or on articles people don’t like and want to question the sourcing of? I’m getting lost already. Blue Square Thing (talk) 17:53, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

@Ovinus: @Valereee: So, I looked at AfD. I restricted it to AfD from 2022 - I wanted to ensure that the work was manageable and that the AfD had all happened after the implementation of the NSPORTS RfC - which involved a messy implementation that took some time to work through properly. I took the AfD from this list (note: I found 2 errors in the automated result). Once I'd taken out non-biographies I was left with 115 articles. 4 of these were nominated more than once during the period - I considered only the last nomination in those cases; 4 were only umpires which I ignored. I found:

• 19 bios without any senior appearances (i.e. would have failed all cricket notability guidelines) - all but one of which were deleted
• 3 Olympics only appearances which are "complex"
• This leaves 85 cricketers who there's a chance might meet guidelines

• 3 Australians - 2 keep, 1 redirect
• 1 Bangladeshi - 1 delete
• 16 English - 8 keep, 7 redirect, 1 delete (refunded to redirect)
• 31 India - 4 keep, 14 redirect, 11 delete, 1 no consensus, 1 draft (hasn't been worked on - I contend that draftifying doesn't work as it's impossible to find the articles)
• 2 Irish - 2 redirect
• 6 New Zealanders - 4 kept, 1 redirected, 1 deleted
• 1 Pakistani - 1 redirect
• 2 South Africans - 2 redirect
• 3 Sri Lankans - 1 keep, 2 delete
• 3 West Indians - 2 redirect, 1 delete
• 8 females - 3 keep, 2 redirect, 2 delete, 1 no consensus
• 9 non full-member countries - 1 keep, 8 redirect (these are all internationals)

In total: 22.4% are deleted, 27.1% kept and 45.8% redirected; when you limit it to just full-member countries, 39% are kept - when you exclude sub-continentals that rises to 43%

What does this show? Well, my 50% happens to have been on the money (and that's not deliberate), but more importantly, there are viable ATD in many cases. Why were so many South Asians deleted? We don't have the same number of redirect targets, they play for multiple sides more frequently due to the structure of cricket in that part of the world, it's much, much harder to find sources. I wonder to what extent there's also an element of institutional bias, but that's difficult to prove.

None of the 16 English county cricketer articles have been deleted (the one that was, you need to read the close rationale for frankly - it took bloody ages to get it refunded as well)

I could go back into 2021 but at some point I'd reach the NSPORTS stuff and it would skew more in favour of keeping - a quick glance through the list suggests that this is probably true - minor players get redirected, sub continentals get deleted, very few really significant players get nominated - and the stubs that people are considering bundling contain really significant players where there are clearly a range of sources.

Of course, smallish sample size, my biased nature etc... means that this almost certainly means nothing. But reading through the AfDs from 2022 was actually quite instructive - you can't quantify it, but there's so much value that I got from that which will almost certainly inform my views at this RfC when it gets going - most importantly, that in a number of cases when work was done, sources were found and nominators withdrew their AfD. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:49, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Further evidence. BlackJack created c. 104 British cricket biographies in November 2016. All, I think, are of historic cricketers from the 1860s to 1940s; I think all of them are dead. I've looked at each one:

• 16 had already been developed or had sources added. That leaves 88 as stubs;
• of those 88, I judge 36 as being extremely likely to prove notable - i.e. be kept at AfD (40.1%)
• 16 I judge as being worth further research - there's enough evidence to suggest that there may be more sources, but it would take some time to develop them (18.1%)
• 33 I judge as being unlikely to be able to be shown as notable quickly (37.5%)
• 3 I judge as being flat out redirects (3.4%)

This is based on the "quick look" premise - checking what I consider to be the obvious sources and taking no more than 2 minutes per biography. They include people such as Lionel Lister - so obviously notable when you actually look.

Obviously I may be wrong on all of this. It's subjective and based on a really quick look in obvious places and what that's likely to mean in wider terms - i.e. what other sources are likely to be available etc... Any that weren't to be kept at AfD could be redirected very easily. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:39, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Can we strike the language "keep" advocates from the sentence: Many "keep" advocates—who now have the burden to demonstrate sourcing—find the rate overwhelming? I don't consider myself a keep advocate (I've voted 9 to 1 to delete sportsperson biographies at AfD) but I always look for sourcing before voting, thus the rate of sportsperson AfDs is a burden for all editors who participate in those AfDs. Jogurney (talk) 18:34, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jogurney, I interpreted "keep advocates now have the burden..." as a reference to the pre-RfC times where the burden was pretty much entirely on delete !voters to prove sources didn't exist for an athlete who met a sport-specific subguideline. Of course, I also agree that all editors at AfD should be looking for or at least assessing provided sources; if anything, I'd say the effort I expend searching subscription-only, non-Google-indexed, and non-English media for each AfD has actually gone up since NSPORTS2022. This is especially true for AfDs with perfunctory nomination rationales that don't demonstrate BEFORE, but (as you know) even in those that are well-reasoned the threat of !voters influencing an outcome in a low-attendance discussion by misrepresenting coverage or refbombing is enough that I end up doing comprehensive source analyses anyway. I don't mind this as much; it's the endless attempts at relitigating global community consensus by the same IDHT users over and over that really wears me down, and I'm hoping this RfC will better define the community's expectations on AfD participation such that that doesn't happen. JoelleJay (talk) 01:20, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I wanted to add that the lack of participation at sportsperson AfDs (many of them result in soft deletion) is only partly due to the contentious nature of the discussion, and almost certainly driven down by the amount of effort required in reviewing/analyzing sources compared to when a SNG could be relied upon. The greater the volume of these AfD, the lower the participation has been. Jogurney (talk) 18:56, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I feel that the list of examples is skewed by the fact that it focuses on situations in which mass article creations resulted in catastrophe or ignominy. If these are to form our whole understanding of what mass article creation entails, it seems that quite draconian measures may appear reasonable. For this reason, I propose my own mass creations be admitted as evidence, none of which have been deleted, and a significant portion of which have passed peer review processes. jp×g 09:51, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Conduct at AfD

Acrimony at Articles for deletion led to an ArbCom case and the (topic-)banning of several editors. A substantial number of editors have stated the atmosphere of AfD has made them avoid the process.

Can confirm I for quite some while also tried to avoid it.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 14:29, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Can also confirm, I can only dip in so often before the cumulative unpleasantness and effort expended to find sources are too much to take. In my experience WP:CIVIL is selectively enforced. The meta-discussion is even worse. A lot of verbiage has been expended on Lugnuts' uncivil behavior, but comparatively little, at least in the discussions I've read (and I have read too many, truly), about comments comparing him to "animals that mark their territories with bodily fluids" (probably one of the most degrading things I've seen on here), being accused of "[obviously believing] Wikipedia is some geeky RPG where he's out to win Game High Score" (the "obviously" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here), and so on. Gnomingstuff (talk) 00:25, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Iranian village stubs

Carlossuarez46 created roughly 70,000 articles in the period from about 2008 to 2014—a rate of about 32 per day—from the 2006 Iranian census. Many of the purportedly populated places turned out to be local companies, wells, or other unpopulated places. Following an AN discussion followed by an an ArbCom case, consensus formed to delete 13,157 of their Iranian "village" stubs focusing on those that had zero population according to the articles as written by Carlossuarez46. This left those that were identifiable based simply on the name of the "village" as being likely not villages per se. 2000+ of them have so far been deleted, across numerous bundled AfDs, including those identifiable as pumps (1 2 3), farms (1), numbered subdivisions and counting-places for e.g., nomads (1), and businesses (1).FOARP (talk) 08:58, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

This is mass creation, not deletion. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:32, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Espresso Addict - This discusses the deletion of more than 15,000 articles and includes numerous links to deletion discussions. How is this not about deletion? FOARP (talk) 11:47, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

FOARP: Can you focus the evidence on the deletion problem, as reading this I am honestly not sure where it lies. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:11, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Espresso Addict - This is evidence, not argument. I'm not sure it would be helpful or suitable for me to literally spell out that these 70k articles are overwhelmingly garbage that does not survive AFD, but that deleting them has still been a gargantuan task under our present policies. FOARP (talk) 14:18, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

• I should point out for the record that I carried out the technical aspect of these deletions. –xeno^talk 15:17, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Sportsperson stubs

Lugnuts... created ... statistics, databases used .... These stubs were mostly presumed notable under WP:NCRIC, WP:NOLY and WP:NCYC, since tightened, mainly as a result of a 2022 RfC on sportsperson notability criteria, and sourced exclusively to all-inclusive databases which commonly contain only basic statistical information, meaning many of the article subjects (est. percentage ...) are no longer presumed notable. <Other examples> <Estimations on notability> Nonetheless, sportsperson AfD discussion take substantial editor time searching for sources, are occasionally contentious, and come in a volume that leads to low or low-quality participation. At current rates of nomination at AfD (...), the stubs will take ... years to sort out.

Again, this is creation focused, not deletion focused. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:34, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict: Identifying problematic creation is key to identifying the relevant deletion/other discussions for analysis. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 12:21, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

My point (to respond to the redacted version) is that you are a month too late with these concerns; identifying problematic creation has been ongoing for a month and is due to close ~today. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:18, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Espresso Addict - Doesn't it literally state that the problem here is the slow speed of deletion under our present processes? Since the creation argument has basically hit the buffers because a substantial portion of !voters are hung up on the issue of definition, is your proposal that we simply continue that impasse into this discussion? FOARP (talk) 14:22, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict: This RfC on mass-deletion is only necessary because of mass-creation. The other RfC should have sharply focused on preventing problematic mass creation (but sadly that focus was lacking); one of the things this RfC should deal with how to best clean up the mess left behind by mass creation, which cannot be done without acknowledging and identifying it. It would take decades and thousands of contributor hours to process these articles individually via AfD so, for example, one possible way forward is to treat problematic mass-creators articles as a whole or in large related batches (e.g. South African cricketer biographies created by x, pre-WWII Olympic modern pentathlete biographies created by x, Fooian village articles created by x, etc.). _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 15:15, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

"The Arbitration Committee requests comment on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion." -- Not how to delete mass creations! Espresso Addict (talk) 15:33, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Mass nominations are overwhelmingly the result of mass creation. This was inherent in the focus on Lugnuts and the people who had proposed some of their articles for deletion in the ArbCom case. FOARP (talk) 16:03, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

+1. The majority of mass nominations at AfD are unquestionably a direct result of effort to clean-up following misguided and problematic mass creation. They invariably get derailed quickly by 'procedural' objections. Establishing acceptable parameters based on creation is one way of preventing that. Ultimately, the creation aspect cannot simply be dismissed. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

But not necessarily, and this RfC is tasked with looking beyond that limiting factor, isn't it? We need to make sure that we don't get the "hey, Lugnuts was shit, lets delete all of their articles" movement (for want of a better word/description - we can dress it up differently if you want, but there's an element of that at play) lead us to a "solution" where we say "this is how we're going to change all deletion to allow massive nominations that we haven't bothered checking". That's not to say that I don't think the examples put forward by Wjemather don't have some merit to them - although, obviously, I'd try to fine tune them a little more. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:31, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Turkish village stubs

... statistics on rate of creation and of deletion ...

Only deletion is relevant. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

That isn't so. Mass deletion is almost invariably a response to mass creation. The biggest issue in mass deletion is what to do with the articles that have already been mass-created. Mangoe (talk) 04:38, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Mass creation from US Census data

... statistics on rate of creation and of deletion ...

Only deletion is relevant. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

That isn't so. Mass deletion is almost invariably a response to mass creation. The biggest issue in mass deletion is what to do with the articles that have already been mass-created. Mangoe (talk) 04:38, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Mass creation of island articles from GNIS

In 2020, JPxG created a large number of extremely short articles about islands in California and Michigan, written formulaically based almost entirely off of information from GNIS. After months (and sometimes years) of not being edited, they were expanded considerably when JPxG returned with additional sources (including many obtained through TWL). Subsequently, 24 of them were featured at WP:DYK and successfully taken through the Good Article nomination process. Furthermore, one (Powder House Island) was nominated at FAC and became a Featured Article in 2022. While they were created with minimal referencing, none of JPxG's island articles have been nominated for deletion, and all of them now feature multiple independent sources apart from database entries. jp×g 09:51, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

This is mass creation, not deletion. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Mass creation is what leads to mass deletion attempts. Mangoe (talk) 04:39, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Bundling and trainwrecks

Bundling of large numbers of articles can often lead to so-called trainwrecks, in which editors advocate keeping only some of the articles. Even slightly differing votes of this type can preclude consensus, or at least make it inefficient.

This is not neutrally worded. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:43, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Articles left as sub-stubs are not developed

The second paragraph of Wikipedia:Abandoned stubs is relevant to this; it is also relevant that mass created articles are typically on more obscure topics than articles that are not mass created. BilledMammal (talk) 04:19, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't think this is true in general. I'd be interested in actual (ie database query) evidence that related to this. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:29, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Also as I've written above, this is mass creation, not deletion. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:36, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

It's true in 2018; why wouldn't it be true in general?

This is the underlying query. However, to derive the statistics require API calls for the pageviews as well as further analysis.

It relates to both; it is evidence of whether mass created articles are a positive for the encyclopedia. BilledMammal (talk) 10:53, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

But *is* it true in general? Is this a query which can be run and can do the maths for you, or does it need a lot of extra hand-done work? I'd be interested to know if it's true for 2020, 2016, 2012 and 2008, for example. It would be interesting as well to understand if there's a critical time after creation when articles are more likely to be expanded? I'm not sure that anecdotally I could say that there was, but it's possible. The statistics are interesting though, although I don't know if an article not being looked at very much makes it any less notable. Just because something is obscure it doesn't necessarily make it unimportant.

Fwiw, I'm also not sure that I would define "obscure topic" as being in the bottom 50% of page views. That seems a high value to me - it might not be, but I don't know what the distribution is like. If the bottom 50% of page views meant 3 a year, for example, then I'd be happy, but I honestly don't know what it means. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:37, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Fwiw, I hit random article (discarding disambiguations) twenty times, and got average daily hits of 0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,2,3,3,5,5,13,19,21,24,72,99 ([1] & [2]). Espresso Addict (talk) 17:20, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Was thinking about this. Any way to know how many times Special:Random gets used? Maybe they can be represented as a Zipf's law–looking distribution (organic views) plus a tiny distribution from random views. That said, page views only correlates with reader value; some views (like random ones) are trivial, while others will involve staying on the page for a long time. Ovinus (talk) 17:30, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I would have though web-crawler hits were more common than random; I use random a fair bit to find articles to copy edit, but I don't imagine it's of much value to readers. Espresso Addict (talk) 17:39, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

This is dubious extrapolation, but probably within a factor of two: Wikipedia:Popular pages gives the ratio of random/main page views as 17% since 2007. Scaling that across all articles gives an average of 4 Special:Random views per month. Ovinus (talk) 17:44, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

A lot of extra work needs to be done, particularly to get page views where API access rate is limited.

Just because something is obscure it doesn't necessarily make it unimportant It doesn't, but it does mean it has less opportunity to be expanded by someone other than the creator as it is less likely to be seen.

Bottom 50% of pageviews means ~1300 views over four years, or 0.9 views per day. BilledMammal (talk) 21:05, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I have a page view analysis program which uses the dumps, so if you have any particular queries I can run them. (I will need to adapt the program a bit to detect categories.) Ovinus (talk) 21:09, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

@Ovinus: If it's not too much work, I would be interested in statistics for the number of views per article for every article over a one year period; perhaps displayed as a line graph and as a table showing the minimum number of views for each percentage point?

Related to that, where do you get the dumps from? I was under the impression the API was the only way. BilledMammal (talk) 02:39, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

[3], which includes all pages on all Wikimedia sites. When I have time I'll decruft my program and get the data you request, probably at month granularity. (Perhaps we could move technical discussion to my talk or elsewhere.) Ovinus (talk) 03:32, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

If it's not too much work, I'd be interested to know the bottom 75% and 25% of page views for comparison. I'm not totally sold on this quantitative measure of obscure yet - and it feels like Wikipedia should be for the obscure - the whole not paper thing etc... Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:40, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia should include obscure topics, but for obscure topics the facts suggest that it is particularly important for article creators to develop the articles as no one else will.

25% of articles have more than 5074 views, 75% of articles have more than 543 views. BilledMammal (talk) 09:02, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Focus on deletion

@Valereee and Xeno: To the moderators, the thing we most need to do with this RfC moving forwards is to avoid re-doing the not-very-conclusive RfC just coming to an end. Therefore I would very strongly suggest limiting/slanting all evidence provided in this RfC to deletion, not creation. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:42, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't actually agree. We did the first RfC to see if we could as a community find some consensus somewhere about mass creations before we started in here. Not being able to doesn't mean it's not still a major factor, maybe the major factor. We can't simply ignore it or the evidence, IMO. Valereee (talk) 10:53, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, Valereee. I think in retrospect splitting the RfC seems not to have been the correct way of proceeding. As I've written before, I did not participate in the ArbCom case because I was unable to type at the time, and I might well be misunderstanding or misremembering, but my recollection from the time was that TenPoundHammer & Johnpacklambert were brought to ArbCom because of problematic patterns of deletion, which to my recollection were not directly related to efforts to remove mass creations? Espresso Addict (talk) 14:27, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

While I think this RfC will and should lean heavily towards discussing the deletion aspect, it's almost impossible to completely divorce deletion from the original act of creation, so while we could certainly steer things more towards discussion the act and process of deletion, I agree with Valereee that ignoring or prohibiting evidence about creation will not be possible. –xeno^talk 15:20, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Agree. Espresso: One oft-cited problem at AfD is large numbers of very-similar nominations. My (unoriginal) point, in proposing this evidence, is that if the nominating editors keep it up, it would take at least a decade until they are "done". As to whether that is a problem, that is for you to decide. But it does imply that "just wait, it'll be over in a few years" is incorrect thinking. Ovinus (talk) 17:25, 2 November 2022 (UTC)