This user is busy in real life and may not respond swiftly to queries.Ask someone else if you need a prompt reply. Since I'm mostly involved in deletions, WP:REFUND or WP:DRV is a good bet.
If I ask something of you on your talk page, I'll watch it so I see any replies there. If you want me to ping you with each reply, please say so.
(If you're another admin coming here to see if it's ok to undo something I did, I won't be offended if you don't ask me first. But I may be aware of some context that you aren't.)
Thanks!
I would like to second Daniel's closing statement at this DRV. I found your commentary very helpful and well-argued and I hope it will give guidance to many others as to how the G4 criterion should be interpreted. Sjakkalle(Check!)08:47, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
BTW - logs
Perhaps I've forgotten how to find prior deletions, but this article that you just moved to Draft, and it's prior deletion is not showing a reason in our Curation tools. That's why I created the TP - to allow some discussion about what is happening. Atsme💬📧14:51, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Closer of The Peel Club DRV declined to output atrribution history as text--said to talk to original deleter--and so did the original deleter--said that I should have done it while the page was still up and now they don't want to mess with it; said that I might find someone else to do it. It makes sense to say that I should have done it anticipating the page's re-deletion. But I first envisioned a redirect with history kept. User:SmokeyJoe also recommended that, noting that the page has been irreversibly merged. You noted that an alternative method is available (presumably a talk subpage with the history as text). Would you ehhm do the needful? —Alalch E.09:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Cryptic, as I've mentioned at the EFN discussion, I'm here to request 3 filtered queries to get me started. 1. Can you make one that lets me see redirects of a specific year? 2. Can you make one that lists redirects with a certain word in the title? (Example: Since I've got experience categorizing Journal redirects, I'd start with one having Journal or journal in the title.) 3. Can you make one that lets me see redirects that redirect to an article that is in a specific category or its subcategories? (Example: If I want to see redirects to articles in this cat or in its subcats.) Thanks for taking a look at this. Nobody (talk) 05:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes to all three. The second is easiest. The third is fastest and most natural, at least for a specific category; once you start asking for entire category trees, things can break very quickly - many categories eventually include nearly every other category as a descendant. The first is the slowest, and most awkward, and probably not terribly useful. It's not in general detectable when a page was made a redirect, at least not before the "new redirect" tag existed; the timestamps of the first and last edit can be found, but aren't necessarily relevant, and they're no help in narrowing down the query - every single uncategorized redirect in mainspace needs to be found first, and then filtered for its timestamps.If you've got lists of words or regexes to search for in the titles, or categories (and depths in their trees), I can take a look in maybe twelve hours; it's late here. Also WP:RAQ is better for this than my talk page, though it's still likely to be me answering. —Cryptic05:54, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe a bit short on sleep, but mostly irritated by OwenX's claim that talking to the deleting admin first is not just required, but policy, when it's deliberately not even process.And now irritated that WT:DRV's archives are screwy and mostly unlinked from WT:DRV itself and not linked from each other at all, and I can't find the last discussion about it. But the gist of the most recent consensus is, if I remember it correctly (and that's a big if) - that some editors would be intimidated into not asking for review at all if they had to go to the same person who deleted their page and who they see as an antagonist and let them gatekeep. —Cryptic21:52, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think I see it differently but agree that DRVs essence is providing a credible fair platform to reassess decisions. That said, you seem to have upset Frank Anchor further down the page and that’s not usually your style. SpartazHumbug!21:58, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh. I'd not commented there for a day and a half, so didn't think that's what you were talking about. Genuinely crotchety about the continued attempts to make unanimous three-week-long deletion discussions unable to delete pages, when the initial reason for WP:NOQUORUM was to stop people closing them as no consensus. (Archive I was looking for was at Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Archives/2020/September, fwiw. Whose bright idea was it to set it up so it's mostly one section per archive page? Sheesh.) —Cryptic22:13, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I say delete the NOQUORUM shortcut and eradicate any instance of the word "quorum" in PAGs (no significant instances that I'm aware of; it's in that section's header however, and headers should merely describe and not color the actual content too much even in policy pages). It's unhelpful figurative language. —Alalch E.00:34, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Declining a CSD nomination is exactly why I believe that CSD must be a dual key event. Each of us has a firm idea and I am content that the mop and bucket overrule the editor proposing CSD. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 18:45, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you're still up and about, I'm wondering whether you could also take a look at File:Dubai Towers Istanbul.gif and File:Houston Tower.gif. Neither file has any source information or a copyright license, but the uploader has already removed the speedy deletion template once. It's also unclear whether they're official images or just made up stuff; so, I'm not sure they could even be converted to PD or non-free. The uploader also keeps wanting them to be displayed at their full-size in Houston Tower and Dubai Towers Istanbul which seems way too big for Wikipedia's purposes. I tried to make the images display smaller once, but was reverted. I've made them smaller again, but am not sure whether there's another better way to do the same thing. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:33, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Neither have any encyclopedic value, and should just be removed from the articles regardless of size. The first one's going to eventually be speedied as an F4. Second might be pd-simple, but I wouldn't raise a ruckus over its eventual F4 meatbot deletion, and would take it to FFD if it were declined. —Cryptic01:41, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I promise, there will be a day when I link correctly and don't otherwise break syntax and you don't have to clean up behind me. In the interim, feel free and with my gratitude. Thanks for all you always do. StarMississippi23:42, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I just don't get how attempting to write a biography, using the template outline we provide for new users to attempt to write biographies, is unrelated to Wikipedia's purpose. Yeah, it's an autobiography and will probably turn into a resume once there's more than just a name and a birthdate filled in, but the one's not forbidden and the other hasn't happened yet. —Cryptic11:10, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion of Smarty LLC
You were a bit hasty in your deletion of the Smarty LLC page. I was working on further information and the page was deleted by the time I tried to publish the update. Jknacnud (talk) 23:51, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly those were a couple links, but there is far more content. Perhaps I will just complete the article in a separate document before posting it to Wikipedia, since editing in place apparently makes it ripe for gleaning by moderators that are hungry for speedy deletion fodder. ;) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jknacnud (talk • contribs) 01:58, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I want to thank you for the reminder that I need to be more diligent in my submissions. After considerable thought on the scenario, I rescind my statement that you were hasty. In fact it was I that was hasty in publishing a new, unfinished, and unvetted document instead of a draft. Thank you again for helping me remember propriety. Jknacnud (talk) 20:17, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mink (manga)
Thank you so much for your assistance. I did not realize the version in my drafts was the original article with the entire edit history from 2005 and remade the article on my own. My mistake! lullabying (talk) 05:14, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed your comment on AN that deletion/block logs only were started on December 22, 2004, at least on the log page you shared. Do you happen to know what was done to keep track of this information before December 22, 2004? I realize that this was before you started editing on Wikipedia but you seem to have a good institutional memory and thought you might know the answer. Thanks for any insight you can provide. LizRead!Talk!03:17, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's an index at Wikipedia:Historical archive/Logs/Deletion log, and of other logs and similar pages at Wikipedia:Historical archive. I actually was editing then as an IP, but wasn't paying any attention to the administrative side until shortly before I registered - I don't know if this information was only ever manually recorded (it seems unlikely) or was in some other sort of log that was later transcribed onto these pages. There's probably admins listed in those logs that are still active; maybe one of them remembers. —Cryptic03:30, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Cryptic, I am keen on working on Keshab Sigdel article. Can you restore it as a Draft so that I can work on it? The Wikimedian who had created it mainly contributes to his native language Wikipedia and reached out to me for help with this. - Satdeep Gill (talk • contribs11:44, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Cryptic, I am keen on working on Swami Swarupananda Paramhansa Dev article. Can you restore it as a Draft so that I can work on it? Could you kindly give me some feedback to work on. The Indian Hindu leader has over a million disciples throughout the world and would benefit from at least a wikipedia page summarizing who he is. Apologies for the inconvenience. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prrooo (talk • contribs) 02:58, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm willing to do that - reluctantly - if you'll agree to make no attempt to move it back into mainspace yourself. The page bore more resemblance to proselytizing than an encyclopedia article. —Cryptic08:01, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Cryptic. Thank you for your feedback on the Holiday Extras page. As this was the first page that I personally created, I would love the chance to update this to ensure it is in line with the guidelines. Therefore is it possible that we can get this page restored as a draft and I will ensure that it is reviewed in detail before I send back to you for review as Holiday Extras has contributed to the travel industry through it's technologies. Any feedback you can provide will be helpful. Can you please ping the response, thank you.
On the one hand, the very worst of the page was added by another user after you moved it to mainspace. On the other, what you wrote was still unacceptable. What's your connection to this person? —Cryptic19:44, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, as your first and only edits, you created a promotionally-worded page about a businessman who has (by their admission) paid other single-purpose editors to "improve" it; moved it into the main namespace; moved it back into the main namespace after it was mercifully draftified rather than being nominated for speedy deletion; and claim to have altruistically chosen the subject totally at random? Yeah, no, that's not credible. —Cryptic22:38, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have a friend who gifted me a book titled Nightlife Lessons. I found it quite interesting and wanted to learn more about the author's biography. However, when I searched online, I encountered scattered information and couldn't find a well-organized biography like those on Wikipedia. Taking the initiative, I decided to compile what I found here in case it proves useful to someone else. As this is my very first article, I may have included some promotional language. Totochis (talk) 17:47, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm an adherent of this essay. Would you say that according to it, but you may disagree with the essay, an extensive list of selected works is certainly copyrightable? I think it is. —Alalch E.18:03, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can I take "extensive" back? Let's imagine I hadn't added that word. Arguably, the less extensive the more selecting is involved so the more creative it is... —Alalch E.19:37, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Draft:Plagiarismcheck.org
Hello, you deleted my page, I see it's not perfect, but I will adjust it to the comments. I hope it will be fine for publishing next time. It's my first page. please don't be harsh Robbydillallo (talk) 14:10, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think I didn't get how to submit it for review. I was remaking it in my Google Docs so yeah, it took 1 hour to transfer. It is complicated for me as of now what to move where, but the deletion advisor gave a good feedback :( Robbydillallo (talk) 10:21, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Former autopatrollers
Someone in the autopatrolled discussion suggested that there should be a database report for "returning users that used to be autopatrolled" if the proposal is successful. If you have a minute, would you mind putting together a query along those lines in case it comes up in the RfC? I suspect "former autopatrollers sorted by number of articles in the last 6 months" would be the easiest approach, though maybe there's a more sophisticated way to do it. (Asking you directly given your previous queries.) Thanks, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:40, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I can do that, but I don't know that it matches up all that closely with "returning users that used to be autopatrolled". Maybe something along the lines of used to be autopatrolled (and isn't now), has edits in the last X amount of time (a month?), no edits at all in the preceding Y amount of time (three years?). —Cryptic08:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Ideally we'd want people to show up when they actually start creating articles, but that's obviously trickier to do properly...maybe something like "formerly autopatrolled; created an article in the last month; no articles in the preceding three years"? That would be a little overbroad, but probably fine as long as admins checked the rights log before restoring. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 09:51, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No results at all for three years this time. quarry:query/93308 for at least one in the last month, none in the three months before that. Least-recent qualifying creation is from February 2024.This way of finding created articles really isn't that great. As I mention in the notes to all these queries, it only looks only at the log entry of creation to find out where it is and whether it's a redirect; and autopatrolled also kicks in for pages created in draft and then mainspaced, and for existing redirects expanded into articles. There's no good way to find those that I'm aware of. —Cryptic10:20, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's at least serviceable, then. For recent creations, maybe there's a way to use the pagetriage tables? I think pagetriage_tags lists the creator until it's been 30 days since the article was marked reviewed, which would be a decent substitute for "created an article in the last month". Don't waste any more of your time on this than you want, though. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:47, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
pagetriage_tags just has those 21 tag type definitions. pagetriage_page does show pages that needed to be reviewed, and even ones that were autoreviewed. But it doesn't show the creator, which is difficult to discover for pages that need reviewing because of moves or creations-from-redirects; doesn't show whether it needs reviewing because it's a new creation, a creation-from-redirect, or a move, so there's no way to know which method to use to find the creator; the data is removed after a year, so it can't be used to find the last pre-inactivity creation even in principle; and it always lists the page's initial creation timestamp, not when it became in need of a review, so it's not usable for finding recent creations either. —Cryptic21:04, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're right...the tag list got my hopes up unnecessarily. (I know enough SQL to be a nuisance but not enough to be useful: a little learning is a dangerous thing.) At least we have some half-decent approximations now. Thanks again for your help. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
not name - this implies that "Smith" in the given example could be an indicator, when only [Birth Date] would If the article is not about someone actually named Smith, then IMO use of a placeholder name like "Smith" would indeed be an indicator. Anomie⚔12:54, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm certain that that wasn't the intent, and reasonably confident it wasn't read that way by the participants in the RFC. The subcriterion follows directly from WP:Signs of AI writing#Phrasal templates, where it's made clear this is about unfilled templates, not nonsensically filled out ones. —Cryptic00:24, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd think if the intent were to include both phrasal templates and placeholder names, there's no way they would've been combined into the same example; and I'd be surprised if we were calling out this specific sort of hallucination without calling out hallucinations in general, or offering any more explicit guidance as to where the cutoff between speedyable and non-speedyable false information lies. Without this, it's pretty clear that we'll only immediately delete if it's in the citations.I guess the real question here is whether it occurs often enough and whether it'd be considered definitive enough to speedy a page on that basis. Bring it to WT:CSD if you're dead-set on this. —Cryptic02:21, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I were dead set on it, I would have already. I was just letting you know that I disagreed with you, and I still doubt your claim that "there's no way they would've been combined into the same example" when I thought it was doing exactly that. Anomie⚔12:34, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’d like to request that the title “Michael Gervais” be unprotected so I can work on a new, neutral biography draft. I understand the page was previously deleted multiple times, but I’ve prepared a version that is based only on reliable, independent sources and avoids any promotional language. My plan is to submit the draft through the Articles for Creation process so it can be reviewed before being published. This should address the earlier issues that led to protection. Inplay747 (talk) 02:02, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, and you wouldn't be able to create it even if it weren't protected. If you're submitting through AFC, the title to edit is Draft:Michael Gervais, which is not protected, and there's no legitimate reason to ask that the mainspace title be unprotected first. —Cryptic02:12, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are limits. Creating a draft like you have just done, and then claiming it is "based only on reliable, independent sources and avoids any promotional language", is so clearly untrue that you got what you deserve when you asked for review. As for 'newbie', I am having difficulty believing this is your first account. If it really is, I suggest you take the time to find out what Wikipedia means by 'promotional', and 'independent'. Not that Wikipedia really uses these terms in any unusual manner. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:14, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you!
Hello, Cryptic,
I appreciate you and BD2412 catching those maintenance categories that were mistakenly deleted when the {{emptycategory}} tag was removed. I've been doing this long enough that I should have double-checked the page history of these pages when these empty categories started popping up on lists like Wikipedia:Database reports/Empty categories a week or so ago. To be honest, I doubt these categories will ever be filled up again in the future but the way these categories were handled was inappropriate. I found a couple more that I mistakenly deleted and have restored them as well. As you may or may not know, Explicit and I regularly handle empty categories on the project so a note to us is sufficient to ensure this doesn't happen again in the future, at least not by the editor who untagged these categories.
I only saw it because of BD2412's note on Explicit's talk page; if there's thanks to be given, they should all go to him.It probably should've been clear what happened with these from looking at the history before deletion. The edits adding the speedy tag all removed bytes, so there was clearly something going on other than adding a speedy tag that warranted investigation.But I agree that these are a really screwy way of tracking this data. They're populated, if you weren't aware, by manually adding a parameter to the wikiproject tags on the articles' talk pages (like the one removed here), rather than detecting articles that are in Category:All articles lacking sources and whose talk pages are in Category:San Francisco Bay Area task force articles (for example). It's not really feasible for the wikiproject tag to automatically detect the article's category - if nothing else, it would only get updated if the talk page were edited, not whenever the article entered or leaved the lacking-sources cat - but if anyone actually uses these instead of just thinking it would be good idea if someone else did, I can't help wonder if a database report would work better for them instead. —Cryptic01:28, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Primarily? The three hallucinated sources. But there's numerous other signs that are less definitive on their own: the bolded headings (the ones that appear to start each paragraph, but were meant to be at lines of their own when you view source); the partially-corrected markdown (initial dashes for unordered list items, asterisks for italics); the spaced em-dashes; the redundant summary paragraph. —Cryptic11:57, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I did notice the bold face headings, and was wondering about them. I didn't notice the hallucinated sources. I had been wondering about the headings. I don't think that I notice the differences between dashes. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:20, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It seems like you fully-protected the page because the target had that protection level. But the target's protection has since been reduced to semi-protection. I hereby ask you to remove or reduce the protection of gullible. Thanks! 82.83.93.49 (talk) 17:05, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Seems reasonable - gullibility looked like this when I protected it - but you caught me literally on the way out the door. Will give it some thought and investigate further when I get back. —Cryptic17:08, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the JETDS naming system, having a (V) after the sequence number is very common, as is having a letter or numeric character after that. As a result, I am left wondering about the purpose of the query that provided you the list. Is there something wrong with redirects using other names that reflect modified versionds of a base-article? I don't want to be doing something wrong if I stumble into a need to create one similar... Looking to understand. Can you help? — TadgStirkland401(TadgTalk-Email) 22:00, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly deleted by the two administrators I expected would query for a missing space and not care that it wasn't a disambiguator. —Cryptic13:05, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I was planning on looking at them in detail tomorrow, when I'll have more time stuck together in a row, so I could be sure - those lists were very much initial triage, with nothing more than single glances and snap decisions. (Cheeses...(of Nazareth) did strike me as particularly egregious, given that I'd mentioned it as a specific counterexample in the R5 discussion.) —Cryptic15:52, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]