Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 March 3

Debra Arbec (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Her nomination for Local News Anchor at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards (which is national) is a nationalized claim of significance and so rises [her] to the level of notability and the only delete vote came for the same person whose AFD voting Smartyllama recently raised concerns about, so I suggest a relist or third AFD. ミラP 16:58, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• Overturn and relist While there are no keep !votes, there is only one delete !vote other than the nominator, and it is someone who is a notorious deletionist with serious credibility issues at AfD. I don't think it's appropriate to endorse JPL's views alone as consensus of the community. As the AfD had not yet been relisted, I think that is preferable rather than closing as no consensus. Smartyllama (talk) 18:13, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Smartyllama: Better the issues with JPL are raised at WP:AN not here. ミラP 18:49, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Miraclepine: I'm not trying to rehash everything with JPL here, but the article shouldn't have been deleted when he was the only delete !vote and DRV is the appropriate venue to discuss that deletion. Smartyllama (talk) 19:22, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Smartyllama: I meant in general. ミラP 20:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Miraclepine: So you're saying I should do exactly what I'm doing and limit this DRV discussion to the deletion of this particular article? I'm confused. Smartyllama (talk) 20:18, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Smartyllama: I meant we'd have to go to WP:AN to find every AFDs that had just one delete vote that was by JPL and was closed as delete (but not soft delete). ミラP 20:20, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Miraclepine: Let's focus on this one for now, I don't have time to research everything JPL-related and write something up at ANI. If you want to, go for it and I'll chime in. Smartyllama (talk) 20:28, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• Relist - a very quick Google news search says she was nominated for the 6th Canadian Screen Awards and 8th Canadian Screen Awards as well - which makes the claim of User:Johnpacklambert questionable. Someone should notify User:Bearcat as well. Nfitz (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
• Question - What is the filer requesting? Overturn the Delete to No Consensus? Overturn and Relist? Re-Create as Draft? The closer didn't make an error in closing as Delete. Relist would be a good idea anyway, and Re-Create as Draft should be permitted. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:25, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
• On the one hand it seems harsh to overturn a closer who implements a unanimous consensus, but on the other hand, JPL !voting "delete" is about as surprising as Dream Focus !voting "keep", and should carry about as much weight. Needs relisting to be examined by editors whose evaluation of the sources is less of a foregone conclusion.—S Marshall T/C 16:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
• I do believe the nominator is misunderstanding the process — and note that I'm explicitly saying this as the nominator of the prior discussion. If a person has a stronger and more sourceable notability claim than they had at the time of the original discussion, then DRV does not have to overturn the original discussion before a new article is ever allowed to be recreated — the new notability claim and new sourcing change the equation, so a new article can be created, and DRV does not have to overrule the prior discussion first. The only thing you can't do is recreate the same weak article without showing any stronger evidence of notability and sourceability than the first article did — if you can do better than the first version, then you do not need the first discussion to be overruled by DRV before you're allowed to do that.
  And furthermore, just because a concern has been raised about a commenter in the discussion does not mean everything that person has ever said in every AFD discussion has been permanently invalidated or overturned by consensus. I'll grant that JPL doesn't always add very much to AFD discussions, and tends to just put in a cursory vote without always explaining his reasoning very well, but there's been no consensus established that every AFD discussion he's ever participated in needs to be automatically flipped the other way just because he was there.
  So there's no need for this discussion: if she's got a stronger notability claim and better sourcing for it than she had in the past, then just write a new article. You don't need DRV's permission to do that, so there's no need to ask for it. Bearcat (talk) 17:20, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's any (or much) stronger now. She'd already been nominated for the 6th Canadian Screen Awards and 7th Canadian Screen Awards when this AFD ran late last year. Her recent nomination for the 8th Canadian Screen Awards isn't in itself a game changer - though perhaps her nomination for the 6th Canadian Screen Awards should have been. As such, I'd think a DRV discussion is necessary - with such low participation, and without any relists, I'd think that a relist was necessary. A bigger issue is that neither the nominator, sole delete vote, or closer appear to have done any due diligence. A simple news search for her name, quickly pops articles about her nominations. Also of concern is JLP's delete votes - casting 12 in a 15-minute period that day, most only 4 words long; it's hard to believe there was any time spent researching the issue. Note that JLP is already topic-banned from starting too many AFDs - perhaps he should also be also topic banned from voting without spending 10 minutes for each AFD doing some due diligence! Nfitz (talk) 17:46, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Award nominations are not a notability guarantee in and of themselves. A person has to win an award, not just be nominated for it, before the ability to source the fact magically secures her notability all by itself regardless whether any other sourcing is available or not — merely being nominated still secures her notability only if you can get her over WP:GNG on the quality and depth of her sourceability. It works kind of the same way as politicians: if a politician wins the election, then you're allowed to start the article as soon as one source can be shown to verify that they won it even if that source is just a list of the winners, but if they were merely a candidate, then you still have to source them over a significantly higher volume of reliable source coverage about them than the winner has to show, and cannot rest their notability solely on the presence of their name in a list of the candidates.
Thing is, even on a Google search, I'm still not finding strong evidence that she actually clears GNG; the only sources about her that are turning up at all come from her own employer, which means they aren't independent of her for the purposes of helping to establish her notability — and merely being a nominee for an award that she hasn't yet won as of today is not in and of itself enough to exempt her from having to have more coverage than that. If she wins the award this time around, then that will clinch it right then and there regardless of what other sources she can or can't show — but merely being a nominee does not mean she's already exempted from having to pass GNG on more coverage about her than I'm actually finding. Bearcat (talk) 18:01, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

That sounds more like the discussion that should be had at AFD, than here ... not sure why it wasn't raised. I think that extending the AFD listing another week or two would have been a better way to establish consensus. Nfitz (talk) 21:50, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

• Overturn and Relist Under point 3 of the DRV criteria, with a thin consensus and new information, the AFD should be given time to breathe with more input. KaisaL (talk) 10:02, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
• Endorse It seems the only reason why this is being brought to DRV is because of JPL's AfD history. There was no error with the close, and the nominator has a good history at AfD. I have no problem if you want to recreate the article, but there was absolutely nothing defective at all about this AfD. SportingFlyer T·C 21:43, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Surely, if you endorse, then it's undelete the article not recreate. Because there was WP:NOQUORUM the article can be restored for any reason on request. So really the only outcomes here are undelete the article, or relist it. Nfitz (talk) 01:44, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Quorum or no quorum, there's simply no substantive reason, on either process or content grounds, why undeleting an old version would be somehow necessary or creating a new one would be somehow inadequate. Bearcat (talk) 13:43, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

It's easier to start from something than from nothing. That's a hell of a reason. Making someone do extra work for no reason doesn't seem reasonable. Is there a copyright problem or some other issue with starting from the old article? Hobit (talk) 04:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, I'm puzzled, especially given that it's easy to find GNG sources for this person. Most people have no access to the article, to restart it - why waste time? Why wouldn't it simply qualify for an automatic undeletion per WP:SOFTDELETE given the lack of quorum? Nfitz (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Agreed - no reason to make editors waste their time duplicating others' work rather just to get back where we were rather than using that time productively to improve the previous article, or others. Smartyllama (talk) 22:31, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

• I'm fine with a restore (per SOFTDELETE) or a relist (per common sense). Hobit (talk) 14:56, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Adsemar (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore)

This does not count as hoax since it clarified that the subject is fictional, and speedily deleting it under that incorrect criterion is excessively bitey considering that the author is a newbie. (This would admittedly meet A11 as an article, but it was a draft.) I tried contacting the deleting admin at User talk:Primefac#Draft:Adsemar, but he/she didn't bother responding. Glades12 (talk) 06:51, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, technically an invalid speedy deletion, but the deleted page said explicitly that it was about a fantasy world made up by the article author. That is absolutely not an appropriate use of Wikipedia so I don't think restoring it would be a good idea. Hut 8.5 07:53, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
• For the record, it's not that I "didn't bother" to respond, I just didn't find it as high a priority as other things in my life (both on and off-wiki). I will agree that it's a bit of an IAR deletion, but I have no intention of restoring a pointless draft. If it does get restored, it will simply be declined or rejected at AFC and then eventually deleted anyway. Pinging DGG who originally placed the tag. Primefac (talk) 11:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
• IAR Endorse. If this was in userspace, it would qualify for WP:U5. We are here to write an encyclopedia, and this has zero chance of developing into an encyclopedia article, so there's no reason to keep it. The entire text consisted of Adsemar is a fictional world created by Dillstan. In the world there are many races(Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, Kantchis, Scielanveres). Call it WP:G2 if you have to. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:30, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

A fictional world made up by the author of the article can not be distinguished from a hoax; I could write just the same without even making up a world. And what would be the proper treatment for "X is a fictional world made up by my friend John" ? or "I had a dream last night: " But usually I would in fact cal lit a test page for lack of anything closer. The alternative is to call it vandalism, because nobody however ignorant of WP could think this appropriate content ,but I don't like to use the V word for anything that is not actually malicious, but just a foolish joke. DGG ( talk ) 22:01, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I can't see the deleted article, but if "the deleted page said explicitly that it was about a fantasy world made up by the article author" as stated above, then it doesn't qualify for speedy deletion as a hoax since it's not trying to pass it off as true. Smartyllama (talk) 22:51, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@Smartyllama: yes you can see the deleted article. I quoted it, in its entirely, above. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• Neutral - This technically should not have been speedy-deleted from draft space, and technically should have been sent to MFD. It isn't worth wasting the time of either the MFD regulars or the DRV regulars, who are mostly the same editors anyway. It doesn't matter. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
• Every time someone ignores all rules to speedy delete something like this - and make no mistake, it should have been deleted on sight, and everything similar should be - it becomes that much less likely that we'll ever be able to speedy them legitimately. —Cryptic 05:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
• Wikipedia isn't Dillstan's blog.

  Strictly speaking it's our role here at DRV to see that the deletion processes are correctly followed, so I suppose we could restore the draft and then MFD it immediately, but that's one of the most fatuous wastes of editor time that I've ever contemplated. For me the big lesson from this DRV is that we need to start a discussion on whether to expand A11 into the other namespaces: maybe it should be converted to G15?—S Marshall T/C 16:21, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

• Endorse IAR deletion- and I also endorse the suggestion to expand A11 from article-only to cover all namespaces. Although in practice this will still mostly apply to articles and to a lesser extent drafts and the user space, in principle you could also have redirects, pictures, and other kinds of pages containing nothing but made-up gibberish. Reyk _YO! 08:08, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• Ooh, maybe not userspace. There's a longstanding consensus that good faith editors are allowed to keep personal, unencyclopaedic stuff in their userspace. Remember Mzmcbride's first desysopping? But drafts, redirects and filespace, definitely.—S Marshall T/C 17:41, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• User space does contain a lot of bizarre content but I'm reasonably sure things like fantasy sports leagues, fake reality shows, and such get deleted regularly at MfD. But I think you're probably right that NOTWEBHOST would apply more frequently than a userspace equivalent of A11. Reyk _YO! 12:04, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

• Endorse per IAR, but we are not a web host. SportingFlyer T·C 21:40, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
• Userfy - This episode is a bit WP:BITEY (not a new user, but one who is still learning the ropes) and we should not be endorsing use of admin powers to deal with something that could be handled by regular means, e.g., move to user space or a comment on the Draft talk page saying the page had no chance; if you have to invoke IAR, why not PROD first? Using IAR to justify abuse of admin powers is inappropriate here: the page was causing no actual problem (I think we should only be concerned with abuse of WP:NOTWEBHOST when an editor creates more than one two-line page), would normally disappear in accordance with policy after 6 months, and irregular deletions are less justifiable in draftspace than article space. — Charles Stewart (talk) 08:57, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

  So just to clarify, you want to restore and shift to the userspace, while simultaneously telling the creator that it's never going to be an article and will eventually be deleted? The other option being to restore it and then delete it six or twelve months down the line when it meets G13? I understand that it's "causing no actual problem" but this sounds like kicking the can down the road; if the end result is eventual deletion then (while most parties here agree that it probably shouldn't have been deleted) it's pointless to restore. Primefac (talk) 13:25, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

  If we restore this then the likely result will be an MfD with a very obvious conclusion. The material would also not be acceptable in userspace so userfying it is not a solution. PROD doesn't apply outside article space so that's not an option here either. Hut 8.5 14:58, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

• WP:BLOCK User:Glades12 for trolling. It was disruption coming to DRV to complain about their fictional world draft being deleted, was blatant intensification of the abuse of Wikipedia through creating a draft on about a fictional world. The draft was abuse of Wikipedia, coming to DRV was trolling. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:36, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

  @SmokeyJoe: The draft's creator is Dillstan, not me. And no, neither account is a sockpuppet. I am obviously losing the debate here, but "he's trolling" is a wild assumption. Glades12 (talk) 07:04, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

  To add, I do not know who Dillstan is outside of WP, and I only know that they are the page creator from memory. Glades12 (talk) 07:13, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

  I thought you wrote it. How did you come to know anything about the page? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:47, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

  I found it while browsing Category:Candidates for speedy deletion for any obviously incorrect nominations. I even removed the {{db-hoax}} tag, but Primefac deleted the page a few seconds later, so here we are. Glades12 (talk) 10:05, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

  Ok, fair enough. I thought you were the author. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Do nothing. Primefac has the reputation of being attentive to the letter of CSD rules. Let’s consider this feedback on the meaning of “blatant hoax”, but this case on its own doesn’t say much to me. I think a draft on a fictional world fits “blatant hoax”, noting WP:WAF. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

• Do not Endorse but keep deleted Although technically this should not have been speedied, it has no shot of surviving MfD, so per WP:SNOW and WP:NOTBURO, there's no point in putting it through this process. This is not an endorse !vote since the speedy was improper, but at the same time now that it has been speedied, there's little point in restoring it just to delete it again seven days later. Smartyllama (talk) 12:31, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
• Userfy no harm in seeing if an article can be made. If it is a Hoax or cannot be improved it will be deleted. WP:NORUSH Lightburst (talk) 18:08, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Under what scenario do you envision this might turn into an article? I can see an argument that this didn't strictly meet any WP:CSD and should thus be reversed for being out of process. I don't agree with that, but I could at least understand why somebody would make that argument. But, thinking this might actually turn into an article? Sorry, that's just nonsense. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:23, 10 March 2020 (UTC)