Anthony wrote: Generally, it would be an assertion that indicates sourcing is likely available. For example: "The Flailing Hairnets had six number one hits in Great Britain during the 1960s." Or "John Doe was the CEO of Mega Corporation from 1991 through 2003." Even if unsourced, these give a clear indication of what the article's about, and where one might look for verification and additional material-in the first case one would look in music magazines and British hit databases from the 60s, in the second, one might look at Fortune, Forbes, or Business Week from that time period. They also provide a clear indication that it's likely someone would indeed have written about the subject. On the other hand, "The Flailing Hairnets are planning to release their demo really really soon" or "John Doe is a 10th-grade student at Somewhere High School" gives no indication of where one would look for sources, and indicates that they probably don't even exist. (Of course, even with the first two examples, if sources can't -actually- be found to confirm it, the articles should still be prodded or sent to AfD since they're unverifiable.)

On Mon, June 11, 2007 7:39 am, Anthony wrote: If you have to do any interpreting, why are you speedying it in the first place? -Jeff -- If you can read this, I'm not at home.

On 6/11/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: Except that "lack of content" isn't a CSD criterion. "no meaningful content" is, but this has meaningful content. "Very short articles providing little or no context" is, but that criterion is very explicit that "context" is not the same thing as "content". This was deleted. Speedily. As an A7. Again I disagree that there is a lack of context. A full name and the fact that they were killed in Iraq is enough to make it clear exactly who is being talked about. The question of whether or not it falls under A7 is completely dependent on whether or not you think a soldier who died in Iraq is important enough for an encyclopedia. IOW, CSD A7 means whatever the deleting admin wants it to mean.

On 6/11/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: Exactly; speedy deletion criteria are supposed to be cut and dried. If there is an assertion of notability, it can't be speedied. Anthony, where did you get the text above? I certainly was not from [[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion]], which states: 7. Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If controversial, or if there has been a previous AfD that resulted in the article being kept, the article should be nominated for AfD instead. It's quite common, although not actually supported by the criteria, to speedy delete articles where the claim to importance/significance is not credible. I think that's a bit questionable at times, since we're introducing subjectiveness to the procedure. I'm pretty sure some people are speedying articles because they don't think references in the national press are enough. -Matt

On 6/11/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: Ah. however, the standard at CSD is not proof of notability but an assertion of it. Admins are not supposed to evaluate the article against [[Wikipedia:Notability]] and unilaterally decide if it meets it. I suspect this is the result of someone disliking the word 'notability' and substituting 'importance or significance', and not actually a substantive difference. I think we'd generally speedy that, but send to AFD 'Joe Bob is an important person because of x, y and z'. -Matt

On 6/11/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: Is an "assertion of notability" supposed to be harder or easier to obtain compared to outright "notability". Because it seems to me that in order for an article to assert the notability of its subject, if has to either: 1) be about a notable subject, or 2) contain falsehoods.

Agreed. With borderline A7s AfD should really be used instead, and the article given more time to develop. Even with routine A7s I usually run a quick Google search to see if there's something there other than the usual Myspace crap. I hope admins don't delete routinely based purely on the article actually being tagged (besides, didn't we have a vandal a while back who was tagging perfectly good, if obscure articles for CSD? I seem to remember something like that). The obvious exception are the A7s consisting of "Andrew Bloggins is in 6th grade in Ohio who likes homework". But for borderline ones, I should hope admins don't routinely trust the tagger. Bad idea. Moreschi _________________________________________________________________ Play your part in making history - Email Britain! http://www.emailbritain.co.uk/

Christiano Moreschi wrote: If anyone is blindly trusting the tagger, they are, to put it bluntly, an idiot. I've seen a -lot- of bad CSD taggings.

On Tue, June 12, 2007 6:22 am, Todd Allen wrote: I don't disagree. Expecting everyone who comes on board to know that immediately isn't realistic, however, and it still doesn't solve the laziness factor. In your scenario, for instance, the Billboard site gives you that answer in three clicks if it's US-based notability. -Jeff -- If you can read this, I'm not at home.

Anthony wrote: That presumably applies to the Iraqis themselves. Failing that would show a systemic bias. Ec

Matthew Brown wrote: Maybe. I've speedied many articles that contain phrases like "John Doe is the strongest/greatest/amazingest person in the world" -- clearly written by a self-glorifying student who's bored during a lecture. It passes CSD A7, but I mean, come on. G1 and A1 could be said to apply, but it'd still be debatable. But really, there is no way in hell it would pass an AfD. So I guess what I'm saying is that where CSD falls short of obvious BS, we can at least invoke WP:SNOW and save everyone the hassle of AfD. I agree with your statement in general, but there are plenty of situations where I disagree. -- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS/IT d-(--) s:- a-->? C++(+++)$> UL++++ P++++$ L+++>++++ E--- W++ N o++ K? w--$ O M- V- PS--(---) PE++ Y+ PGP++ t+ 5? X- R(+)>- tv-(--) b- DI+> D++ G>+++ e>++ h(--)>--- !r>+++ y->+++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Mark Gallagher wrote: Indeed. I tend to call it the cottage-on-Mars test (was it Colbert who came up with that one?): if the claim is less credible than owning a cottage on Mars, it doesn't count. (This also applies to unsubstantiated claims that, while technically possible, would be a priori extremely improbable, such as being "the smartest guy on Earth".) Evaluating the credibility of claims isn't, in my experience, the hard part in applying A7, though. What takes effort is judging whether a given absolute claim actually implies notability. Sure, we all know that being a high school student isn't an assertion of notability, while being an Olympic medalist is. But, for example, take a high school athlete whose personal long jump record was so-and-so many meters. Would that put him among the top 5 in his age group in the world, or 37th out of 40 in his school? Frankly, I'd have no idea, having never been even remotely interested in the subject. So, even assuming there in fact was no other evidence or suggestion of notability, I'd still have to send it to AfD -- unless I wanted to start looking for sources for typical high school long jump scores to compare the claim against. Of course, when going through CAT:CSD, I can just leave the high school athletes for others to deal with. It's trickier at the other end of the line (i.e. newpages), since articles that no-one wants to deal with will just slip through. Of course, one can slap a {{notability}} notice on the page, in the hope that it might invite someone to take a second look at it, but the "backlog", if it can even be called that, on those is so ridiculously long that I don't think anyone is even thinking about clearing it within the next few years. (PROD would of course be an option, but in my admittedly limited experience, PRODding a recently created vanity page will, more often than not, just lead to the creator coming back a few minutes later and removing the tag. Which accomplishes absolutely nothing.) -- Ilmari Karonen