1

I do not think the speedy deletion template is super helpful to new editors in its current state.  It is currently locked and has not been edited since 2015.  The specific problem is:  new editors might be driven away if they do not understand what they did wrong.  For this reason, I am proposing two- to four-letter codes for the speedy deletion template (and a field for custom reasons):

tes (or test):  test page

pat (or pn):  patent nonsense

off:  offensive

pro:  profane

per (or pa):  personal attack

xpp:  cross-posted promotional content

cfs:  content-farm submission

spa:  obvious spam

use (or ur):  user request (also for user pages)

custom reason message:

Of course, the default reason is for everything else not covered above.  Hopefully, contributors learn how to become productive on wikiHow through these modifications.

2

I don’t think labeling speedies would be in our best interest. Speedy deletion on its own bypasses the typical NFD process - it’s reserved for the articles that are clear violations of policy, and the template currently says that articles are usually only speedy-deleted “if they appear unfixable and/or offensive”. Generally, the people who create genuinely offensive or unfixable articles know full well what they’re doing, and there’s already templates for spammers (like {{exlinks}}). If anything, I suspect that labeling the content as offensive, profane, or nonsensical could actually egg trolls on, because that kind of gives them an idea of what to work off of - “okay, they said it was profane, so if I make even more articles that just consist of profanity, that’ll bother them even more!” or similar logic.

3

I do not agree with egging trolls, but I believe that assuming good faith actually helps. If there is a different wording that may be better for offensive articles, please feel free to post it. It would be good to convert vandals and disruptive editors to productive editors. Also, there are tools that will wipe every single edit a troll makes, so they may become frustrated when their edits are gone, their comments ignored, and their accounts blocked. The goal with this rewording is to make good faith assumptions or no assumptions about the editor and hopefully guide them. So even if a troll were to continue creating more pages, their efforts to disrupt the project will be foiled.

4

It’s about striking the right balance between helping new editors and not feeding the trolls.:slight_smile:

5

The template in its current form already assumes good faith and encourages editors to contribute positively. Altering it to point out what specifically they did is more likely to backfire - if they’re spamming or deliberately creating trolly articles, they know what they’re doing isn’t beneficial to us, even if they don’t know our specific policies. Pointing out what they did implies that it bugs us, which encourages them to keep doing it. And even if it was just a test, jumping to call it nonsense or spammy might actually encourage them to start trolling.

Putting aside the impact on the creators, I fear that making the template this complex would confuse quite a few good-faith users. Unlike typical NFDs, we don’t have anything that distinguishes speedies from each other - there’s no {{speedy|abc}} on articles, and the definition of “offensive” or “nonsense” varies from editor to editor, so it’s hard to distinguish clear-cut cases of where to use those codes.

@JayneG , is there staff input on this that might help? I saw Chris H was the one to originally protect the template a few years ago, so I’m guessing you guys would probably have some idea of how helpful the template is in its current form since you guys can do monitoring that us volunteers can’t.

6

@Awesome-Aasim , it looks like you’ve put a lot of thought into this, however it’s unlikely that the speedy template will be changed. We can bring this back to the conversation we had about inuse and nfd templates, where the consensus is that it’s better to spend time working with those authors and editors who are trying to make positive contributions in the first place. 

Off the top of my head, I would say that in general an author who create an article that is marked as {{speedy}} does not have wikiHow’s best interests in mind and is not here to contribute in a neutral or positive way. Let’s focus on those who are :) 

7

Then I guess the consensus is… any good-faith effort to improve wikiHow does not get speedied, and any bad-faith effort to disrupt wikiHow does?

8

Yes and no. A better way to look at it is {{speedy}} is reserved for patent nonsense, personal attacks, profanity, highly offensive articles, or cross-posted promotional content and content farm submissions.

9

You know @JayneG I looked at  wikihow.com/wikiHow:Deletion-Policy  and  wikihow.com/MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown  while drafting this.  Anyway, unless if another admin has anything to say, case closed!  This could be one of the things revisited later down the road, although I spent some thought formulating the messages.  I guess I could just keep on leaving personal messages for users who make edit tests. :slight_smile:

10

Aasim: while I appreciate your show of good faith… and I appreciate your desire for precision… and I appreciate your kind heart… I really think you’re wasting your time on anyone who submits “speedy” articles.

I check the speedy delete list at least twice a day and have deleted a significant number of them over time.

In my observation, it is HIGHLY unusual for an article marked “speedy” to be done in good faith.  And for those few articles that may be mis tagged as “speedy”?  It’s easy enough for the reviewing admin to untag them and send them back thru the “normal” queue.

Frankly?  I don’t have any interest in spending an extra couple of minutes tagging speedies by category in order to give a troll or vandal an exact reason why we thought their trolling or vandalization was inappropriate.  

Any user who has posted content worthy of a “speedy” tag will ALREADY KNOW it was objectionable… And they will ALREADY KNOW they’re trying to get attention from us or waste our time.  

I’d rather not give them that satisfaction.  

11

I actually kinda agree. While @Awesome-Aasim has a good motive to do this, it doesn’t seem like it would help. I’ve had my fair share of suckiness when it comes to coaching, but I’ve been told many, many times that it’s best to just warn the trolls, not feed them. At first glance it seems like a decent idea, but it’s concerning. I don’t really want to copy points made by @Galactic-Radiance and @Loiswade42 , but I agree.