[WikiEN-l] New proposal for summary eletion of non-copyright infringing material, on suspicion

Sun Dec 4 07:35:17 UTC 2005

There is now a formal proposal for a criterion for speedy deletion,
worded as follows:

1. unwikified
2. cut-and-pasted verbatim from another website
3. less than 48 hours old (could be relaxed if the source is verified
not to be Wikipedia mirror?)
4. no assertion of permission
5. not from a known public domain or GFDL-compatible source

This appears to be an extension of the copyright infringement CSD,
which is as follows:

An article that is a blatant copyright infringement and meets these parameters:

* Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial
content provider (e.g. encyclopedia, news service) and;
* The article and its entire history contains only copyright violation
material, excluding tags, templates, and minor edits and;
* Uploader makes no assertion of permission or fair use, and none
seems likely and;
* The material is identified within 48 hours of upload and is almost
or totally un-wikified (to diminish mirror problem).

This ignores the statement of permission that is made during posting
of the material, and would not require the deleting administrator to
make a proper investigation--unless he knows the article to be from a
GFDL source or to be in the public domain, the article can be
summarily deleted.

In my opinion this is going far too far.  Until recently, copyright
infringements had been dealt with perfectly well by listing the
material of [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].  Under this new
proposal, articles that are not even copyright infringements would
stand to be deleted on mere suspicion, and without any proper
investigation.