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Hello

Hello Administrator. Im User 애국심 존중. I Think Brawl stars Editers are violated Policy WP:NOTGUIDE. Please Protect or Delete Brawl Stars. Thank you. 💻HACKER (talk) 05:36, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I hate Article What violated Policy 💻HACKER (talk) 08:38, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @애국심 존중: The video game is notable, so we will not be deleting it on the grounds of WP:NOT. If you believe there is gamecruft in the article, you could either try to fix the problem yourself or begin a discussion on the article's talk page. Anarchyte (talk) 10:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@Anarchyte: ok 💻HACKER! 👻GHOST! (talk) 11:22, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with what Anarchyte said; I don't think WP:NOTGUIDE means what you think it does.When we say "we are not a game guide", it means we don't include insructions for specific aspects of gameplay (so we can say "the player must pass through a grue-infested maze", but not "north, north, east, south, east is the fastest way out of the maze without being eaten by a grue") and that we don't include list games indiscriminately regardless of notability. For a topic like this, which is demonstrably considered important by multiple significant reliable sources, it's entirely appropriate that Wikipedia covers it. ‑ Iridescent 10:50, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:13, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

A question: (I know I'm talking to a bot but I assume someone who knows the answer will see this and answer without the circumlocutions I'd get if I asked on Meta, or at least point me to where I can see the answer without having to wade through pages of Wikispeak.)

If this is being done for legal reasons (even though nobody seems able to point to the law in question), is there going to be some kind of easy-to-read and easy-to-share breakdown of which aspects will be legally enforceable, which will be policy but not legally binding, and which will just be recommended practice? There are massive gray areas here as far as I can see that would have the potential to get people working in complete good faith into serious trouble on-wiki, and even into serious trouble IRL if the legal concerns are actually justified. "This string of IP edits backing the position of User:Alice in her dispute with User:Bob all appear to come from the place Alice has already disclosed she works" and "most of the disruptive IP editing on this topic comes from a single country or region" are both fairly common statements, but without clarity it's not clear under what circumstances Legal will back admins and under what circumstances they'll throw them to the wolves.

I'm not trying to be negative—even though I'm not convinced by the legal argument I can see ethical reasons for masking IP addresses—but I get the feeling this is about to unintentionally ignite a firestorm of "admin abuse" claims and it would be better for all concerned if we knew where we stood beforehand rather than making up the policy as we go along in response to individual cases. (It would also help admins decide whether the potential liability is worth the risk. If WMF Legal honestly believe that in future I'm potentially putting myself at genuine legal risk just for doing routine admin activities, now is probably the time for me to step down.) ‑ Iridescent 12:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Rumor has it that I'm not a bot, but there are some things I've seen that I think are relevant. The Portuguese WP responded to this by simply banning IP editing, requiring registered accounts, full stop. In the various links in the bot post, I found an analysis of the results of that, by the WMF themselves (don't ask me where, but it's someplace in there). Surprisingly for the WMF, they concluded that it worked out well, and are actually recommending that other wikis try it. The numbers of active editors actually increased after the ban, as did the number some measures of non-bot content edits, as IPs apparently decided to register accounts. At the same time, the number of reverts and the amount of vandalism decreased. My guess is that a ban will happen here too, especially when more en-wiki people start realizing the kinds of problems you described – better to just side-step all the problems and not have to worry about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:51, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

The report is at meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Impact report for Login Required Experiment on Portuguese Wikipedia; most of the underlying statistics are at https://analytics.wikimedia.org/published/notebooks/AHT/ptwiki_dashboard.html Vahurzpu (talk) 17:54, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, the WMF is requesting several more projects sign up for IP-ban trials. Of course, you could easily construe that as still being opposition -- they're explicitly putting out feelers for "ptwiki might not be representative", which is to say "it might be detrimental to other projects". From the talk, eswiki, fawiki, and fiwiki are all interested in participating. eswiki would be particularly interesting -- while nothing else really quite compares to enwiki in scope and influence, it's one of quite few that comes close and could be a better model for us than ptwiki is. (Of course, the WMF rejected it for exactly this reason.) Vaticidalprophet 18:12, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Skimming that talk, it looks to me like they're intentionally trying to find projects where it will fail, so they can say "We're not going ahead with this", and seem a little put out that pt-wiki actually seem to like it. Surely the sensible way to test whether it would work on English Wikipedia would just be to switch it on for a month and see what happens? ‑ Iridescent 18:36, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I facepalmed at the thought that WMF would reject it (but it would of course be par for the course). But I see that they rejected it only for the purpose of doing a monitored trial. Eventually, projects will decide for themselves what to do, and it wouldn't be the first time if we (en-wiki) have to tell the WMF to butt out. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:40, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

That said, we don't have a great track record of telling them to butt out when they have their minds set on something. I note that MediaViewer and Vector are still the defaults, VisualEditor continues to be pushed, and it took about 10 years of arguing to get them to remove the Flow tanks from our border. "Anyone can edit" is such an article of faith at the WMF, that some of them will never be persuaded that "anyone can still edit, they just need to set up an account" is more use to everyone concerned (including the editors themselves) than IP masking. ‑ Iridescent 18:48, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I really can't argue with that. On the other hand, we are largely at their mercy when it comes to the software on the servers, but we can adopt the policies that we want. (Although I'm making assumptions about the eventual consensus of a discussion here, where the track record isn't good either, especially when it comes to change.) I see a situation where, if the community establishes something via a duly-conducted RfC and WMF tries to tell us no, it would look more like the response of the community and ArbCom to Framgate. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:55, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Just clarifying for myself, it's only articles that IPs are prevented from editing on ptwiki? I see one ptwiki editor's comment was translated as "IPs now do a bit of fun on the contact pages, but it's a side effect that I see no escape from." To me it seems like if IPs can still make edit requests and join discussions, that's pretty darn close to "anyone can edit". —valereee (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

It looks like they switched IP editing off completely except between April and July. By "contact pages", they probably mean their equivalent of the "I'm having difficulty creating an account" page, which would obviously need to either be editable by IPs or have a very clear mechanism for submitting requests via email with a reasonable expectation they'd be read. ‑ Iridescent 20:13, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

That would be my impression also. The reference to "contact pages" was in a comment by a single editor, and it's a translation from "páginas de contato". If anyone watching here reads Portuguese, it would be good to know what the phrase really refers to. (Google Translate, which of course is even more reliable than our articles (not!), treats "contato" and "discussão" as two different things, but...). --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Doing the unscientific experiment of looking at pt:Especial:Mudanças recentes, it looks like there's zero IP activity at all now and a greater proportion of edits by new, redlinked accounts than we get here, which is exactly what I'd expect. If there is any Portuguese-speaker happens to be watching this page, to save wading through Meta the phrase who's translation we're questioning is Certamente não foi uma decisão que tomamos com prazer, mas minha lista de páginas vigiadas nunca andou tão pacífica, e olha que ultimamente eu nem tenho conseguido olhá-la o tempo todo como uns meses atrás. Os IPs agora fazem certa farra nas páginas de contato, mas é um efeito colateral do qual não vejo escapatória., if anyone wants to have a stab at translation. ‑ Iridescent 21:39, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Wow...that looks so peaceful. :D —valereee (talk) 22:00, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

The open question is whether it's peaceful like a library, or peaceful like a cemetery, or, if you prefer, like the dying towns in rapidly depopulating rural areas.

Most of us made our first edits as IPs. Making those few encouraged us to create an account. If we couldn't make those first edits before creating an account, how many of us would be editing today? Nobody knows. I would not wish to bet Wikipedia's entire pipeline of future editors on a short-term experiment. I'd rather see a multi-year, multi-site crossover study, in which places prevent logged-out editing, see what happens, re-enable logged-out editing, see what happens, re-block it, and so forth. And when we get to this wiki, I think I'd like to see ways of decreasing IPs without shutting them off all at once. Maybe you can make your first edit without an account, and you need to register after that? Or only IPs from certain countries need to register initially?

Also, the rate of IP edits varies substantially between wikis. Being an IP at the English Wikipedia is not at all the same as being an IP editor at the Japanese Wikipedia. The social meaning is quite different. Being an IP at jawiki seems to produce more of a "comment on the content, not the contributor" or maybe "good deeds done in secret" feeling. There seem to be editors there who haven't registered an account because they are actively trying to avoid having a reputation/identity. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding I would not wish to bet Wikipedia's entire pipeline of future editors on a short-term experiment, can I point out that this is pretty much exactly my position regarding most WMF-imposed changes (you described it as you'd prefer the current verifiable problems over the predictions of doom a little way further up this page). I don't see that switching IP editing off on en-wiki for a month, with a clear "after three months the experiment will end, the status quo will be restored, and we'll look at the positives and negatives" sunset clause, falls into the same "this change is irreversible so if it does go wrong, we're gambling with the future of the entire site" area as something like UCoC. The absolute worst-case is that we lose three months' worth of new editors.

Without some kind of experiment on one of the big wikis, we'll never be able to make reasonable calls about whether the opportunity costs of losing potential new editors cancels out the editor time wasted from cleaning up after IP vandalism. (My personal guess is that it won't be an issue. You and I joined back in the day, but the generation joining up now are very, very used to being asked to create accounts on every website. I suspect we wouldn't even see a particularly drastic drop in traffic if we demanded people create accounts to read Wikipedia.) ‑ Iridescent 18:38, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I think that it's sensible to start with the mid-sized wikis, partly because pilot tests help you figure out what questions to ask. I also think we need each of the big wikis to run their own experiment, with start and stop dates. I also think that there might be good reasons to do this multiple times, to flush out the dedicated-long-time-IP editors and actually be able to see the new/future generation, rather than the ones who have been editing for years. Also, the effects aren't over when you flip the switch, because people will remember that you now have to create an account, and that will linger.

I have some concerns about it in practice. The power imbalance between old and new generations of editors is significant, humans are short-sighted, and we love personal convenience. This is IMO what we should do, but I am not sure that we will actually do it. (If anyone's the contest about when the "It's been so nice without so many newbies trying to edit, so don't switch back even though we all solemnly agreed that we would switch back" RFC will start, please put me down for 29 days before the planned end of the experiment.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I have concerns about it in practice. As I've said to you many times, we don't really understand the internal dynamics of Wikipedia or why the system hasn't fallen apart when every instinct says the model shouldn't be viable. The reputation of English Wikipedia is ultimately the primary asset of the entire WMF ecosystem, and IMO we should be very averse to any tinkering with it since we can't predict the consequences and if we damage our reputation it will be very hard to bring it back. (I know the WMF couldn't admit this, but the other reason it's sensible to start with the mid-size wikis is that if we screw up Ukrainian Wikipedia etc it won't have any significant knock-on effect, but if we screw up English Wikipedia then the whole 200+ wikis unravel.

That said, I still think it's worth a time-limited experiment. Even if it reduces the raw edits-and-editors numbers that's not automatically a bad thing—it's perfectly possible that 5000 editors free to do constructive work would be better than 6000 editors spending a significant chunk of their time patrolling, reverting, and checking watchlists. Without an experiment, we'll never know. ‑ Iridescent 07:36, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

We already know what will happen if we have a smaller number of editors doing more content creation instead of a larger number editors reverting, because that already happened. What will happen is that experienced editors will worry about the decline in the number of editors, the number of admin candidates, and among their personal vandal-fighting acquaintances. This is what happened when Cluebot took over most of the simple anti-vandal work in 2007. Even though the number of active editors leveled off about a decade ago, some editors are still repeating these stories from 2009 as if they were true today.

So we will (I predict) get fewer active editors, specifically among the dedicated anti-vandal types, because there will be (I predict) less actual work for them to do in their preferred areas. Some of them will quit/become inactive rather than become article writers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Meh. We're never going to run out of busy-work to do for people who like gnoming type things; I racked up 3200(!) edits yesterday standardizing the internal use of en-dashes and hyphens on date ranges within articles and barely scratched the surface, and anyone who thinks registering accounts will actually eliminate disruption—as opposed to just reduce it to a more manageable level—is welcome to head on over here and click links at random. It's not as if Commons—which has always been an IP-free zone—is one big happy family all working together for the greater good. I'm generally extremely conservative when it comes to making any kind of change to how Wikipedia operates, but I still think the experiment is worth trying. ‑ Iridescent 18:23, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

We had no shortage of gnoming needs in 2007 when Cluebot made anti-vandal patrolling less fun, and we still lost a huge number of editors who did anti-vandal patrolling. I don't think that humans are interchangeable here. If your idea of fun is to revert a bunch of poop vandalism, then when that doesn't need to be done, you find a different hobby. You don't start replacing hyphens with en dashes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Did we though? I was there at the beginning when high-speed vandal-fighting became a thing—indeed, I'm largely the reason the reversion tools require the rollback permission to use—and I don't remember mass resignations over ClueBot. The volume of manual reverts dropped since there was less to do, but I can't think of any regular editor who wept salt tears because there were no new vandals to revert.

Statement of the obvious perhaps, but if there is genuinely such a thing as an editor who is only able to contribute a single particular type of edit, and we no longer have a need for that particular type of edit, why should we be concerned if they leave? If a change genuinely does bring an end to 'poop' vandalism, then mourning the editors who do nothing but revert 'poop' vandalism seems like the Wikipedia equivalent to complaining that since the invention of the automobile there are fewer blacksmiths around. ‑ Iridescent 17:54, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Just because people don't write resignation manifestos doesn't mean that they didn't stop editing, or reduce their participation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:17, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing True, but neither is it always a great loss when someone reduces their editing, or even stop entirely. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:44, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

RadiX has helped me translate bus tickets from Portugal before. Tks4Fish is less useful at bus ticket translating, but probably knows a thing or two about pt.wiki. And both of them happen to be stewards so they're also fluent in meta-speak. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:20, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi TonyBallioni! Thanks for the ping.
@Valereee, Iridescent, and Tryptofish: IP editing is banned at ptwiki for all namespaces, with an exception for the Help namespace and all associated talks. So, you can't edit WP:AN as an IP, but you can edit WP Talk:AN and so on. The Help namespace is now the place where IPs can report problems, or ask questions, or whatever they need. The final vote to decide that was held here, from September 4, 2020 until October 4, 2020. As for that quote, its translation is very accurate, and represents well what is being said in Portuguese.
I'm happy to answer any more questions you may have, just ping me to ensure I'll see it. Best, —Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 17:27, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Hm. Well, I'd support not allowing IP edits to articles. I've been more and more concerned about mobile editors IP-hopping. I just can't see how we're going to keep up. But I'd support allowing IPs to still make edit requests and participate in discussions. Until the IP-hopping becomes too disruptive. Which I suspect it will. I had to semi the talk for a Hong Kong-related redirect a while back, it was unbelievable. —valereee (talk) 21:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

At this point, I may be investigating more than you really wanted, but I also see here that an AbuseFilter was used to "turn off editing for IP editors". I don't see anything to indicate that it was namespace-specific, but there's probably someone watching here who knows about abuse filters. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! I assume it's possible to turn off IP editing to articles but allow it in other namespaces? —valereee (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't know how filters work. In principle, one could semi-protect all articles and no talk pages, but it would obviously be near-impossible to do that manually. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Another idea: perhaps just have the userright to see IP addresses be automatically assigned to editors with extended confirm and de-assigned to fully blocked users? This can be done with an adminbot.

I anticipate there's going to be drawbacks to this I haven't thought of that will be inevitably bought up (because Wikipedia is like that), which is fine. However, this will solve some of the ethical issues with fully exposed IP addresses while limiting the ability to see full IP addresses to users that can (hopefully!) be trusted with that. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:57, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

If the WMF is correct in saying that this change is in response to a legal concern, extending the view_ip_address userright (or whatever they end up calling it) to everyone who's extendedconfirmed wouldn't meet their legal obligations. The reason so many apparently random permissions are restricted to admins isn't necessarily because admins are some kind of super-user; it's that the RFA process provides a legal figleaf under US law as they can say "see, we've made a bona fide effort to ensure that access to potentially sensitive material is restricted to people who've gone through an in-depth vetting process". ‑ Iridescent 09:56, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. Your reply has me thinking, because you are, or at least could be right. I have a few thoughts.

1. The phrasing "norms and regulations" is a bit odd. Perhaps it's easy to translate into other languages. However, it does lead to the question "Norms? Whose norms? Not ours." I realize this is a bit of a derail, but that's how my mind works.

2. An adminbot shouldn't assign the userright, in your opinion. All right, your reasoning makes sense.

Perhaps people should be given the IP sight userright if they seem to know better than to harass people.

Example: I think I have the autopatrolled right because an admin looked at my account and decided I could be trusted with it; I've only created articles if you think like a computer. Now, if I were to, for example, start uploading copyrighted spam, I'd (rightfully!) have that right taken away. However, I know better than to do that.

My thought is basically "Do we really need to only give out this right only to anti-vandals?"

3. I wonder which law is requiring the WMF to make this change. Is this communicated anywhere? If not, why not? Also, if it's not a US-based law, maybe they can only mask IPs coming from the country requiring it. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:24, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

From recent edits I can see WhatamIdoing is currently reading this page, who when she's at work is Community Relations, Wikimedia Foundation. You could always ask, although it looks like throughout this the WMF have been a bit cagey about exactly why this change suddenly needs to be made now after 21 years. ‑ Iridescent 19:54, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Done.

This isn't really directed at iridescent specifically, but towards everybody participating and following the discussion. Let's remember that people who work at the WMF are human. If whatamidoing doesn't reply at all, I'll assume she can't/isn't comfortable answering because of the dynamics at the workplace. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:02, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, WhatamIdoing did reply, if anyone cares to watch the ensuing discussion. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:04, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tryptofish and Valereee: AF is currently used as a "last measure" of sorts. The way the IP editing ban has been handled is through partial blocks for the most common ranges that edited ptwiki, and whatever is outside those ranges is then caught by the AF. You can see here the block log for the user that blocked most of the ranges. Anything that starts with {{Deslogado| means a block made to handle the ban. Best, —Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 17:36, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Tks4Fish, thanks from a fish! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:26, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Turning off IP editing via the AbuseFilter is a privacy violation for good-faith editors. (Because the filter trigger is logged, and the account creation is logged, and if you line up the two logs, you have a matching list of registered editor's IP addresses.) It should not be done. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

True, although that's also exactly what happens with CU logs. FWIW I think the privacy concern angle is hugely overblown; if you live in a dictatorship where the secret police stalk your history then you should probably work under the assumption that the security services know who you are anyway, and for 99% of editors the most your IP address will show is "subscriber to a big telecoms provider in whichever country everyone already knows you live". ‑ Iridescent 18:42, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Or, you know, if you're a new editor, and you're editing from work, and the IP address resolves to your workplace, and you don't really want someone to ring you up at work and ask you about your COI problems. Most people who are editing from home might fall into "subscriber to a big telecoms provider" category, but that's not true for everyone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Surely if someone is editing from a workplace and has a conflict of interest, we want to know? That Congressional filter exists for a reason. ‑ Iridescent 07:39, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing If someone really, really wants to find out where your COI lies, they just have to look for the tell-tale signs of COI editing, no IP address needed. What you described is stalking behavior, if done without consent. The risk of being victimized is predicted mostly by being around people who victimize other people. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 09:41, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

It's not necessarily stalking. When there's a particularly large volume of seriously inappropriate editing from a particular IP or range, there are circumstances in which it's appropriate to contact abuse@provider, and if the provider happens to be the person in question's employer then that unavoidable ends up with the link being made IRL. I would say that I think it's almost always a very very very very bad idea for anyone other than the WMF themselves to do this precisely because the editors on the receiving end of it do see it as stalking; at least one of our longest-term WP:LTA cases is a direct result of an editor taking exception to their employer being contacted. ‑ Iridescent 09:55, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom certainly seems to consider ringing someone up at work to talk about their COI editing to be a ban-worthy offense.

Also, I suspect that if some stranger who saw your posts on a website phoned you out of the blue, a normal person would probably consider phoning the police next. You don't have to live in a dictatorship with a secret police service to want a certain amount of privacy. Nobody should have to deal with people contacting them to say "I know where you live, I know where you work, I know where your kids go to school". This has happened to admins here, and we should not make it any easier for it to happen in the future. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

It's complicated. I'm aware of the case to which you're referring in which someone was banned for calling someone's place of work. I'm also aware of the case in which a then-member of Arbcom contacted a disruptive editor's employer to let them know he was disrupting Wikipedia from their systems. (I won't name names in public to avoid stirring up old hostilities, but it's not a great secret.) The area between "inappropriate contact" and "legitimate method of preventing abuse" isn't at all black and white. ‑ Iridescent 18:28, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing and Iridescent: I think I might've accidentally contributed to thread drift by bringing up stalking, but it seems part of the 'big picture' point was discussed. My concern is, with IP masking, it's still possible to know where you work, etc. through social engineering, which makes things even more complicated. What I'm trying to say is that IP masking can give a false sense of security. However, apparently this is ultimately being done to bring the WMF into compliance with some sort of law, not because of privacy concerns, so maybe that's a moot point. --I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:05, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I recognize that I'm known to by weird, but when I get a message that says "because X and Y have changed", I don't generally assume that it means "only Y" or "exactly one specific Y". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Legal was made aware of this and sent a message to ptwiki, see APalmer (WMF)'s contribs there, and was "fixed" by this edit. The situation was then considered resolved by the team. Best, —Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 14:45, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

For what's it worth, I read in the Signpost article that a lot of the internet in Portugal goes through only a few IP addresses, which doesn't necessarily apply to the English Wikipedia. Not that I disagree with the concerns about IP masking expressed, but if this is correctly interpreted and remembered, then perhaps we should acknowledge the difference in cirumcstances. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:46, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

That might be true of Portugal but it's certainly not true of Brazil which in pt-wiki terms is where the action is; Brazilian IPs tend to be ridiculously dynamic and someone can go through multiple IP addresses, in a few minutes. For Wikipedia's purposes "everything gets routed through a few IP addresses" isn't functionally particularly different to "every time you connect you get a different IP"—they both translate to "we can generally only identify a range rather than a specific address so any block inevitably has collateral damage". ‑ Iridescent 09:34, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Ah, perhaps I misremembered slightly. Like you said, it's functionally the same. Either way, if you have to risk collateral damage every single time you block an IP, blocking all IPs make sense. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:08, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Break: unbundling, long-term IP editors

• I said my piece some time ago, but feel bound to repeat that while I don't really understand why someone wouldn't want to register an account, it's none of my business. I asked one long-time and much trusted IP editor, and their response did indeed have to do with avoiding edits building a reputation. I've been told by another long-time IP editor that there are half a dozen such people on en.wikipedia. (Both of those formerly had accounts, which they abandoned.) But more basically, my own experience has been that IPs make many, many constructive edits every day, including vandalism reversion. And assuming otherwise is the worst kind of ABF, because we have no way of knowing how many individuals are involved. Suspending unregistered editing would be the worst thing we could do in response to this latest WMF interference; it would be deeply unfair, and would be cutting off our own noses to spite our faces. IANAL, but people who open the edit window without logging in already see a message that their IP will be visible (and those who choose to do so but have privacy concerns are surely aware that there are registers of IP ownership); they also have a CAPTCHA shoved at them, so are already inconvenienced; would it not be a better idea to beef up the warning about publicly revealing one's IP, perhaps copying one of those forms I frequently have to click concerning whether I will allow cookies, which I presume are in response to the same privacy laws? In any case, whatever the WMF goes and does, even temporarily disallowing IP editing would be a slap in the face to some of the most industrious maintainers of the encyclopeadia, distinguished precisely by not seeking praise for their help, and we wouldn't get some of them back.

Putting two things together that I think belong together; I don't think it's just because of Cluebot (because Cluebot can be fooled, like any AI, and tendentious editing, which bots can't really deal with, is at least as much of a problem as vandalism), but the project will always attract people with a gatekeeping/law-enforcement mindset, and I see no sign their numbers have diminished. Only now in addition to the vandal-patrol shooting gallery, they can go into policing whitespace using automated tools (recent thread about that just came to an end at AN), they can opine at ANI and other community processes, they can hunt for people seeking to make new pages about businesses or business people and denounce them and draftify their pages, after a while they can qualify for NPP or AfC and enforce personal standards there. The project is so large and discussion has become so important that there is an entire ecosystem of such opinion-based activities and approval of them. Quite apart from the minefield of which kinds of gnoming are beneficial and which are churn (like adding "located" to multiple articles or pre-emptively adding archive URLs for all the references, to give two examples of activities that some may regard as useful and others regard as annoying). I trust your judgement in your copyediting runs, but there are editors who mistrust mine, and some folks' "gnoming" is disimprovement. There's little glory in adopting a genuine misspelling and periodically cleaning it up, or in adding good sources to articles marked as needing them, or in responding to other tags in a thoughtful way, and we've all seen the results when someone instead makes wholesale changes to the English variety or date format or slots in user-generated content as references, or even starts churning out stubs based on some directory, all things that look flashier. A new right to see partial IPs for vandal-fighting purposes will attract busybodies just as all the other new hats like NPP and AfC reviewer have. That will happen, and choke off some good editing while further encouraging the patrol mindset, even if we don't respond by curtailing IP editing. Yours, Cassandra. (Yngvadottir (talk) 02:47, 9 January 2022 (UTC))

@Yngvadottir I agree wth you; IPs often make good-faith edits, and sometimes they're actually competent in doing so. On the other hand, this might be forced through by WMF Legal anyway. Perhaps if admins gave the IP sight right to everyone they trust with it, the problems with this situation will lessen somewhat. In fact, personally, I'd find it unacceptable if the WMF didn't allow the community to set its' own guidelines about who to give the right to. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:28, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Assuming that this is genuinely based on legal concerns, you'll probably be disappointed when it comes to I'd find it unacceptable if the WMF didn't allow the community to set its' own guidelines about who to give the right to. As regards the viewdeleted userright—which is probably roughly analogous in "access to potentially sensitive material"—WMF Legal has consistently been adamant that there needs to be a true vetting process in which potential candidates for the right come under genuine scrutiny. (This is why attempts to unbundle the admin toolset always fail; the level of scrutiny they insist on for a hypothetical WP:Requests for Viewdeleted process is just as intense as the existing RFA, so there would be no benefit to there being a separate process.) I'd be very surprised if the same wasn't the case here; the whole point is to allow the WMF to say "we've done our genuine best to restrict access to this information only to those who genuinely need it". ‑ Iridescent 06:17, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

If the WMF is going to let admins assign the userright, with literally little/nothing else, not letting the community decide on guidelines is going to be essentially unenforcable. I wonder if there's going to be an RfA-like process or something. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 06:38, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

The most recent precedent I'm aware of for a "limited access to sensitive information" userright was Wikipedia:Moderators/Proposal. On that occasion, the WMF's ruling was that it would only be permitted "on the condition that the selection processes for moderators remain exactly the same as that for administrators- using the same criteria, operating on the same page." (their emphasis throughout). Although that was a decade ago it's unlikely their position will have changed significantly. Assuming it hasn't, then it would be counterproductive to create a new userright—it would by design be just as hard to get as full admin rights, and would have the additional perverse outcome of making it harder for editors to become admins since some people would say "run for IPviewer first and see how that goes", meaning candidates would need to jump the RFA hurdle twice. (It could conceivably reinvigorate the RFA process both by drawing more people to the page and by demonstrating to potential candidates that the "bearpit" reputation is something of a myth and that scrutiny isn't something to be scared of provided you've nothing to hide, but I'm not sure it's a gamble I'd want to take.) ‑ Iridescent 07:08, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

It's certainly not a gamble I'd want to take!

I do recall a discussion on the unofficial discord server where people seemed amenable to not only having the userright unbundled, but having it given out almost to the extent that rollback is given out. One justification behind this is that people accidentally uncover vandalism on a frequent enough basis, even if they don't 'work' in anti-vandalism, that most people would actually need it if they can prove they can be trusted with it. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 11:40, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

To be frank, that says more about how detached the Discord clique are from reality than anything else. It's clear from the page linked in the OP that regardless of the specific law, this is in response to privacy concerns and potential security risks, and that what the WMF has in mind is something more akin to the existing processes for Checkuser; that is, that even most admins won't have access to this new userright. If anyone seriously think we're going to be handing it out like rollback, they're going to be sorely disappointed—reading between the lines, next time the situation arises when a Wikipedia user gets a knock on the door from the secret police,* or a stalker turns up at an editor's home or workplace threatening them,^† the WMF wants to be able to say "We did all we could to stop editors' identies being made identifiable". If we're handing out the userright to anyone who racks up a few hundred reverts on Huggle, we may as well just keep the IP addresses visible in the first place. ‑ Iridescent 13:06, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
*This does happen.
^†So does this.

(As I recall, only a couple people were envisioning it as a rollbacklike, one of who was a very new editor and the other of who isn't someone I put stock in the PERM views of.) From following the earlier convos on Meta, my thought is that the WMF came in with a "this is a functionary right and most admins won't have it" take, got massive pushback, and wound up with this weird compromise that different people are reading completely different things into. (Unsurprisingly -- it's trying to account for both wikis where "community process" is something like enwiki RfA and ones where it's something like, say, Wikivoyage RfA, and the WMF being the WMF is focusing way more on the latter than the proportion of actual editors account for.) In practice, I assume most big projects will end up banning IP editing rather than try finagle an RfIPV process if that's actually what the WMF is demanding, for exactly the sorts of reasons you note. (On the RfA gamble note, right this moment there's a persistent account-hopping AC-gaming vandal whose hobby is placing giant "This user was rejected by the community" notices on the userpage and talk of recently failed RfA candidates, so we're just leaning as far as possible into antipathy now, I guess.) Vaticidalprophet 13:20, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet, I guess I have a different recollection. I think I joined the conversation later on.

Also, community process? Like, what sort of community process? A RfP/A one, where I have seen editors come in with concerns about the rahter or not someone should have the right, or an RfA one? I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:14, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

The unwillingness of WMF to provide more detail is going to make it very hard to figure out a process. Do they expect the community to decide by shooting in the dark, or is there going to be some initial form suggested? There is a huge gulf between the weird compromise Vaticidalprophet mentions where it is an edit right available to "Editors who partake in anti-vandalism activities" (ie. everyone?), and something which requires "anyone who has access to the right...to acknowledge in some way...the process to gain access is likely to be something less complex than signing the access to non-public personal data agreement." That CUs will have to "opt-in" also feels a bit bizarre. As this process has gone on, I've begun to lean more towards the feeling that as privacy laws and norms have apparently developed in a way that no longer accommodates IP editing, it may be better to accept that instead of creating a new fiddly process that will take up both community and WMF time and may end up with the same result. CMD (talk) 21:55, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't remember the last time I needed to know any editor's IP address. Obviously, people calculating range blocks have different needs, but I don't seem to need that information. I'm apparently in the top 0.002% of all editors ever by activity, so even highly active editors do not always need to know other editors' IP addresses. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:29, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

No-one always needs to know, always needing to know is an unreasonable bar. However, they can come in handy, for example in helping assess the possibility of proxy block evasion. We have useful tools that I assume will be made inoperative by the masking, making quality control more difficult while making disruptive vandalism easier. CMD (talk) 08:53, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that. It's rare to need to know, but on the rare occasions you need to know, you need to know. I don't see how IP masking could go ahead without a whole slew of unpredicted consequences—I'll throw you "what do we do when someone blocks a disruptive IP who turns out to be on one of the sensitive IP ranges because the admin just saw them as IPUser:Anon9383418, and the WMF is suddenly deluged with queries from journalists?" as a starter. ‑ Iridescent 20:00, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I know this is rhetorical, but to this specific use case, 958 will still tag them with a "Congressional edit" tag next to the edit. That's assuming edit filters will still be able to see underlying IPs (the issue was raised on talk, the WMF didn't officially reply but I find it hard to imagine them implementing IP masking in a way that causes all of our IP-related filters to break). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:03, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that I've ever personally needed to know an IP address. It's sometimes fun to find out what part of the world someone is editing from, but "it's sometimes fun" isn't really a need.

@Chipmunkdavis, can you name any tools that you think might break? (I'm looking for just a suspicion of problems. I'm not asking you to do any extra work.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Alongside the edit filters and rangeblocks, which I assume are being accounted for, we have bots than handle open proxies and the toolforge IP checker, which has apparently already seen its development ended because of the masking proposal.

It might not be possible for technical reasons, but I've just had a thought following Iridescent's ponderings of a limited-time experiment, as to whether the new system can be implemented parallel to the existing system for a period. That is what would really allow for a grasp of the new system. CMD (talk) 08:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@CMD, are you thinking that IPs in the logs would display both the IP address and the masked address for a while, to get people used to the new system? An immediate drawback that springs to mind would be that if they're using an algorithm to generate the pseudousername, it would create a big database for any wannabe hacker to try to crack how to calculate the IP, and even if they're using a true random number generator, all the usernames would need to be reset at the end of the side-by-side period to avoid creating a "poor man's checkuser" database of every IP that had edited during that period along with its corresponding mask. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it's yet another thing to be added to the "we need to plan for this before we start making changes" pile. ‑ Iridescent 07:34, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

If the masks are not by IP but by cookie, then my expectation is that the name is random and therefore not based on the IP. I also suspect that means that the username would not be linked to the IP but to the device (or specifically to the device browser session; I feel most people don't clear cookies that often unless it's a built-in feature). The issue of linking the anonymous mask to the IP would still be there, but that doesn't seem any more revealing than the current system, and in any case a cookie reset feels like something that should be relatively simple to accomplish. CMD (talk) 08:16, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

If that's the case, it opens even more of a can of worms. Wikipedia may be based in the US, but it operates in a lot of jurisdictions where putting a cookie on a user's computer without their explicit consent is a criminal offence (and we're not talking a few minor territories with outdated legal systems, but core markets like Germany and the UK). If we force cookies onto machines without consent we're going to alienate a lot of people once they figure out what's going on, and if we don't use cookies then we're back to square one.

See here for some of my previous thoughts about the WMF's lax attitude towards cookies. IANAL but I find it very hard to imagine that the claim that "The exemption that applies to authentication cookies […] can be extended to other cookies set for the specific task of increasing the security of the service that has been explicitly requested by the user. This is the case for example for cookies used to detect repeated failed login attempts on a website, or other similar mechanisms designed to protect the login system from abuses (though this may be a weak safeguard in practice). This exemption would not however cover the use of cookies that relate to the security of websites or third party services that have not been explicitly requested by the user." applies in these circumstances would fly, since someone making an edit to Wikipedia can't reasonably be construed as "explicitly requesting that cookies be placed on their device". Masking isn't as much of an issue as regards Wikipedia editors as cookie blocks, since they won't be applied by individual editor so there won't be the issue of (e.g.) a France-based admin blocking a France-based editor and thus breaching French law by putting a cookie onto their device without consent, but I certainly wouldn't want to be the person in the WMF office on the day the European Commission notices what's going on. ‑ Iridescent 11:51, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I am not personally advocating the system (such complications are why I lean towards feeling that if IP editing is going to be a huge headache, it may be time to move on rather than twisting into knots around it), but it seems like this is the system the WMF is moving forward with. Starting from the assumption that WMF will continue down this path, a test in parallel seems like a good idea. It may even help bring potential non-technical complications (such as legal issues) to light. CMD (talk) 13:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

If IP editing is going to be a huge headache, it may be time to move on rather than twisting into knots around it sums up in a sentence what I've just spent about 10,000 words trying to articulate. I don't want to disable IP editing and I think "IPs are all vandals and we should be glad to see them go!" is a profoundly wrong position, but if the only way to keep IP editing is by erecting a hugely complicated bureaucracy, one needs to ask if it's worth the hassle. ‑ Iridescent 16:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It would actually be a significantly easier and less bureaucratic hassle to just block IP editing by geographical IP range. The legal issues with IP's being classed as PII are not new ones after all and almost entirely apply to the EU/UK (and a few select other locations) that put someone's IP (regardless of it being dynamic or static) into that class of personal data. This smells like a wide-ranging tech project that has got out of hand in order to find a solution for something that is not that complicated, resting on a flimsy business case. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:23, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

If restricting IP editing only in those nations where the legal implications arise would actually solve the legal problems, that would be an excellent solution, and probably the best of our options. Disallow IP editing from those nations where IPs cannot legally be displayed, so that we don't have to deal with the resulting mess, but continue as usual everywhere else – that sounds perfect to me! (My only question would be whether those places that don't want their residents' IP addresses posted in public would also prohibit our posting other IP addresses in public. I can also think of a possible complication if someone in the prohibited countries tries to IP edit while masking their true IP with a foreign one; I don't know if our edit filters already preclude that, or whether the laws make an allowance for it.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Only in death and @Tryptofish We could, in theory, even let people use closed proxies to IP edit. The complication there might be that I'm not sure if the WMF is 100% on board with that. And, of course, if this is an American law (possible, though more probable that it's the EU/UK), any editing via proxy IPs would be a moot point, anyways.

If only we had more information. Both in terms of "how many IPs edit constructively nowadays" and "Which law is requiring this?". I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 02:18, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

We're only assuming this is in response to a law. It's not impossible that the WMF has been spooked by the idea of government goons tracking down people who've made edits that have fallen foul of governments. One would think that if that were the case they'd be heading towards prevention rather than masking—I'm sure any security agency worth its salt already has an admin account on their respective language wiki—but you never know. ‑ Iridescent 14:23, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I guess that particular question of mine is more "What happened?", because I don't want to speculate about that. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:29, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Assuming for the sake of discussion that there is some sort of law (or proposed law) behind this, although the US has a surfeit of goons (and morons), the legal concerns about online privacy are very much more likely to be EU/UK. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tryptofish Agreed. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:48, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

It may be pure coincidence, but my comments about "government goons" isn't plucked from thin air. If one looks at the timings of exactly when privacy jumped to the top of the WMF queue after 20 years on the back burner, it's suspiciously close to the long tale of woe documented here. ‑ Iridescent 17:29, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Yikes. As far at this discussion is concerned, it's probably best we acknowledge this could be all a coincidence, but it's still scary to think about the timing. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:11, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Long aside about registration and tracking

@Yngvadottir, I'm agreeing with you. I know there are certainly long-term editors who now mostly run dark as IPs, including some formerly very high profile accounts (I'll use Keeper76 as an example as he's previously outed himself as doing this so I'm not violating anyone's privacy, but I'm aware of others). There are also people who've never bothered to register an account at all (although that's a lot less common nowadays; there are more things one genuinely does need an account for than there used to be).

However, as I understand it the status quo is not an option, and the only two possibilities going forward will be (a) suspending IP editing and requiring registration, or (b) a masking system in which we continue to allow IP editing but every IP address to edit Wikipedia will be assigned a randomly-generated pseudo-username.

Registration isn't as complicated as it was when you and I joined; Special:CreateAccount nowadays literally takes ten seconds. To me there's a reasonable argument that (b) will be less useful and more confusing—both to the IP editors and to the rest of Wikipedia—than requiring registration. (Aside from anything else, there's an obvious issue that while the concept of "IP address" is fairly easy to explain, masking IPs under pseudo-usernames will lead to a situation where some usernames are automatically shared while other usernames are auto-blocked if we catch them being shared, and we'll forever be having to explain the situation to good-faith new patrollers.)

I'm not arguing that we should ban IP editing. What I am arguing for is that, since IP editing in its current form is going to be banned come-what-may, it would be a worthwhile experiment to test whether the impact of a total ban would actually be as bad as predicted, and to do so before we go to the effort of: setting up an elaborate structure of masked pseudousernames; a new userright and a corresponding WP:Requests for ViewIP rights process and noticeboard; figuring out how to handle the inevitably increased workload on the checkuser corps; a logging system that will grow like Topsy (since we'll presumably need to log who viewed which IP and when, for the purpose of the inevitable leak investigations); coordinating how the pseudo-usernames will interact with SUL and whether the identities will be preserved across the WMF ecosystem or freshly-generated on each site; working out how rangeblocks will work in a world when only a select few can see the ranges; figuring out how to handle sensitive IP situations (since unless an admin has the new viewIP userright they'll presumably no longer see the "warning, you are about to block the US Department of Homeland Security" warning); working out how unblock requests will work if most of the admins are unable to see why the IP in question was blocked in the first place… ‑ Iridescent 05:52, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't remember registering, or even how many times I edited as an IP before doing so; too much water under the bridge :-) But I'm aware of that "only if it's exactly like an RfA" statement, although I didn't realize it was so long ago. I don't think they've thought it through; I think it will be an absolute clusterfuck, hence my emphasis on our not reacting by disallowing IP editing; but I'm sure it will be like template editor used to be, automatically given to admins, since blocking and unblocking are core functions. If they do keep the option of vandal-fighters getting the right, the one good thing that would come of that is we might be able to broaden the Arbcom election pool on that analogy. But I don't think they know what they're doing and no, I don't trust their legal analysis either. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:03, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it will be an absolute clusterfuck, which is precisely why I think the experiment of requiring registration is worthwhile. If it doesn't cause significant damage, then it's a mechanism by which we can avoid the clusterfuck. (The stats from Portuguese Wikipedia are difficult to interpret, as the switch was flipped in October 2020 in the middle of the pandemic so it's impossible to separate out which changes were a result of shifting computer usage patterns. What we can see, though, is that the rate of registration went up implying that the previous IP editors were at least in part willing to make the switch, and most importantly the raw activity rate didn't drop substantially, implying the project didn't become a moribund backwater and there wasn't a mass resignation of previous vandal-fighters who now had less to do, but that the existing editors just shifted their activity elsewhere.)

I don't trust WMF legal analysis either, but I'm assuming in this case it's credible. You know how much they hate directly intervening on en- and de- after how badly they've had their fingers burned the last couple of times. Something has obviously seriously spooked them.  ‑ Iridescent 09:22, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

You might recall I asked WhatamIdoing about which specific law is requiring the WMF to do this; she delegated the task to someone else, and I haven't yet gotten a reply.

I assume they're busy enough that a lack of reply is understandable (and also, I'm curiously being just a bit nosey), so I'm being patient. In fact, this is the first time I checked for a reply since the question was delegated. However, I have to admit that witnessing previous WMF-caused drama contributes at least slightly as to it occured to me to ask the question. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 11:55, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

If you haven't already seen it, meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation#Legal risks won't answer your question but will at least make it clear they're not going to answer. ‑ Iridescent 14:24, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I think the problem here is that people see 'legal risks' and think the risk is for the user. Yes having your ip visible is a risk, but its not a legal risk. All of the legal issues around IP's are to do with recording, storing, and access to a piece of information that is classed as personal. The legal issues of which fall squarely on the WMF and people who they allow access to that information. Which is basically every volunteer who has a sufficiently advanced permission to view certain information. So understandably the WMF does not want to clearly explain what the legal issues actually are, because they would then have to get into specifics about things like checkusers/admins etc being data handlers under UK/EU law and thats a can of worms they dont want to open. There are two issues here: It is risky to expose your IP in the modern technological climate unless you are sufficiently aware, and there are (due to things like GDPR and other legislation) new legal issues for the WMF and volunteers. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:13, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

There's certainly theoretically always been a legal risk for the editors as well in the sense that if you make an edit that's actually illegal, having your IP address visible makes it relatively easy for the authorities to track you down (as your provider is almost certainly based in the same country as you, whereas the WMF can wave away non-US subpoenas). For most editors it's not an issue as it's an "if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to worry about" situation, but I imagine things might well look different to an editor in Minsk or Hong Kong. It's not impossible that the WMF have developed a sense of morals and are trying to protect users rather than cover their own asses, particularly after the recent shenanigans on Chinese Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent 15:17, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, any long-term IP editor is far more likely to quickly register an account than abandon editing Wikipedia altogether. I'm sceptical about the benefits of IP editing to be honest. We don't have good recent data on their net value. Data from the first few years of Wikipedia's existence, such as that c. 2005 study people quote (in 2022!) isn't convincing, as Wikipedia isn't in the same part of its lifecycle. While there is a lot of constructive stuff, there is also a lot of nonsense, and that's excluding all the nonsense from IP editors that gets blocked by filters. As for the patrol mindset, I think it's an illuminating experience to see junk edits roll in on Huggle, or to look at a niche edit filter's logs and see all the bad edits (including subtle vandalism, which IMO is more harmful than blatant vandalism) that gets by patrollers. The reverting of such edits is certainly an essential and valuable task. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:06, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. We're not going to run out of disruptive editors, for those who like reverting—and unless and until there's some kind of experiment on one of the big wikis, we'll never know whether or not there's a net benefit to allowing IP editing, since all the data is either hopelessly out of date or based on too partial a dataset to be meaningful. To be honest, I find it really hard to believe that a significant proportion of the "I've spotted an error and decided to fix it" section of unregistered editors will be deterred by the few seconds it takes to complete one of the simplest forms on the entire internet. ‑ Iridescent 18:37, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader "Data from the first few years of Wikipedia's existence, such as that c. 2005 study people quote (in 2022!) isn't convincing, as Wikipedia isn't in the same part of its lifecycle."

I'd like to see recent data myself. It's what would convince me that we need to require registration, if there is truly a CIR/vandalism issue among IP editors, because I have more doubt than Iridescent above that people would fil out any form at all, regardless of simplicity.

I frequently welcome people on huggle. I've went through a period where I kept getting had complaints from people who IP hop by accident that they keep getting welcome messages from me. If it bothered them that much, you'd think they'd register an account as directed by the welcome message...they didn't. I've more recently been thanked by an IP for the welcome message, because it has a line saying that it's okay to edit Wikipedia unregistered, before, of course, explaining that there are benefits to an account. The editor interpretated that as saying "Oh, it's okay to continue editing unregistered."

Basically, people aren't going to give themselves a username and password to do a drive-by edit, whether a drive-by copyedit/other minor edit or vandalism. Most IPs don't plan on returning, so of course they wouldn't. We should only turn off IP editing if there's data supporting it would reduce vandalism without having too much of an impact on good faith edits. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:05, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Re I'd like to see recent data myself, the only way we're going to get that is by the experiment of temporarily turning it off on one of the big wikis. We literally have no way to know what the effects would be; it's perfectly plausible (although I doubt it's likely) that it could even lead to an increase in editing, if a significant fraction of the former IP editors thought "well, I've gone to the trouble of creating an account, I may as well have a look round and consider getting more involved".

Thinking aloud, there are other things we could do to mitigate any negative impact of enforced registration. The Free Culture hardliners would scream blue murder, but it might be worth seriously looking at integrating invisible account creation with Big Tech. Most people regularly create accounts on other websites without even realizing it by using the "sign in using Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple" options (seriously, check the cookie and password files on your browser and see how many accounts you've created on various websites over the years without even noticing), and provided we kept a "no, I'm not happy connecting the identities, I want to create an account manually" option there's no reason other than ideological purity why we couldn't do the same. These companies all rely on us to power their fancy data-mining operations and smart devices; they'd likely bend over backwards to help if they thought it would potentially improve our accuracy. ‑ Iridescent 20:35, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, if people only had to push a button to create an account with their initials surrounded by a couple of random words and letters, it would probably remove nearly all obstacles to drive-by editing in away that IP editing currently provides. Of course, there's enough Free Culture hardliners (and more so, they're loud enough) that this might never happen, but one can dream.

I was talking more about data surrounding how many IPs vandalize vs. how many are constructive enough to not get reverted by the undo button, Cluebot NG, or an anti-vandalism program. Of ocurse, there might be issues with accuracy, since sometimes even blantant vandalism gets missed by everyone and everything. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:36, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

That reply wasn't to me, and I have no credentials as a Free Culture hardliner, but integrating invisible account creation with Big Tech is an appalling suggestion. I have no Facebook and no Twitter (to name only two) for several very good reasons. The WMF may receive massive amounts of lucre from Alphabet in exchange for unspecified services, but I hardly endorse that, and what most people regularly do is neither a justification for promoting self-identification (the same goes for the WMF's promotion of real names, unforgiveable since Gamergate even though some Internet sub-cultures have always preferred them, and then periodically wonder why they have so few women members, and there are of course many groups other than women who are at risk if they reveal their civil identity) nor respectful toward editors who have chosen not to log in. (And of course the cherry on the turd sundae would be that anyone who'd made that link between accounts would then have to rely on WMF security to protect their social media passwords. Poor schmucks.) Yngvadottir (talk) 22:08, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding relying on the WMF to protect social media passwords: authentication is still done entirely on the servers of the third-party site. The WMF servers would not store anything that could be used to log into other services. isaacl (talk) 00:13, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

All it would be is "this device is already logged in to service A as user:Foo, so we can take it for granted they're also user:Foo on service B". Unless you're living a hyper-paranoid existence with no Microsoft, Apple or Google operating systems or browsers installed and every privacy setting cranked up to max, your computer and even more so your phone are already quietly signing you in and out of websites and services multiple times a day without you noticing. (Install Tor browser on your computer, go about your life as normal, and see how many times you get asked to log in to websites that normally just let you straight in, and how many sites somehow no longer seem as personalized to you.) ‑ Iridescent 05:18, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't want to give unnecessary information, but recall that I have never had a smartphone :-) I'd better bow out before I get down in the weeds about "anyone can edit" and how the WMF have perverted it, but will throw in this caveat about editor numbers: I'm sure a significant number of "editors" are Smiley/Hillbillyholiday and a few others. Sorry to have interrupted. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:05, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

That's always been the case; back in the day a fair few editors were Poetlister and Shalom. I strongly suspect the "number of real people" figure as a proportion of "number of active accounts" has remained fairly steady since "the editor base" in its present form took shape circa 2006 in the wake of Siegenthaler. (Before that, "regular editor who's just never bothered to log in" was much more of a thing.) What's probably shifted is the number of active editors who are actively on the make—getting placement on Wikipedia is much more valuable now than it was back in the days of MyWikiBiz—but even then I doubt the fraction is particularly significant.

Even if you don't have a smartphone, then unless you have some kind of Linux/Tor configuration on your computer you almost certainly have far more accounts on assorted websites than you're aware of. It's just an artefact of the way the internet operates. (If you're using any website that's free or clearly charging below what it costs to operate—and you can't see an obvious "donate" link or a "funded by the Foo Foundation" banner—then you're the product.) As long as there's a clear and obvious alternative route available for people who aren't comfortable with it, I see no issue at all with this or any other site having a "sign in using Google" link. ‑ Iridescent 19:47, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

More likely you have tracking cookies than an account, though from a privacy perspective, it just means all the tracking of your page visits can happen without the benefits of your having an actual account. isaacl (talk) 21:25, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Yup, I have cookies up the wazoo, and lots of pesky boxes asking whether I'm ok with that because of where I'm located, and lots of experience clicking "Don't sell my information" and then being unable to read the content; something similar on the edit screen when one is not logged in is what I am suggesting, as a non-lawyer, as an alternative to what the WMF has decided to roll over us with. But one more comment in response to poor Iri, whose hospitality I am really abusing here; I'm told that row of icons, for Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al., all transmit users' data to the relevant corporations when they land on the page, whether or not they click; maybe that's only for the users who have accounts, but I suspect it's tracking that doesn't require an associated account. If that is so, I deeply resent the implication that I should let Alphabet, Meta, et al. associate my Wikipedia account with everything else they know about me. That is a flagrant privacy violation and people who don't mind logging in using such companies' services having the warm fuzzies of seeing a familiar icon in no way mitigates the damage of that connection being made. For me and for anyone else who may not want that. The WMF has a cozy financial relationship with Alphabet and who knows what else, but they can piss up a rope with their "just tell us your real name so you can get into a meeting with other editors off-wiki! It'll be fun and social!" and "just tell us your real name so we can send you a T-shirt!" and "If you don't tell us your real name we won't know you are one of the protected classes of people we say we care about, and not just one of those randos on the Internet", and if they endanger all of our privacy by installing cutesy buttons on the log-in page, they may not care that it might endanger someone or some people, but I do. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:18, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

If the image is being served from the third-party site, then your browser will send a request to it. If sending third-party cookies is enabled in your browser, then any cookies from that site will get sent, which would allow for tracking. If you have not disabled sending referrer information, then the URL of the page that has included the image will be sent. If the image isn't being served by the third party, they won't know anything about it. isaacl (talk) 04:44, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

From what I've heard, the common/default/recommended by the advertisers code to create that row of social media icons really does enable tracking, and that's why WMF Legal says that code must not be used on any WMF-hosted site. It is possible to link to such sites (and even to use their icons) without enabling tracking. Several smaller wikis have done that.

Of course, since we let any registered editor write whatever Javascript they want for their own accounts, or to use anyone else's code, then it's possible for anyone to post all sorts of privacy-violating code on wiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:11, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the third-party sites that want to track you will give you code snippets that load images from their sites. If the WMF doesn't allow any image loads from external servers, then Yngvadottir's concern won't come to pass just by the inclusion of links (as long as you don't click on them).

Regarding Javascript, it's user-beware: they're responsible for the code they add, as it will potentially affect their security and privacy (though not anyone else's). isaacl (talk) 16:47, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Unless you're an admin, and you decide to paste a cryptocurrency mining script into commons.js. Just hypothetically, I'm sure. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

If you're doing that, you're better off doing it on one of the smaller wikis. The userbase might be smaller, but you're likely to get away with it for much longer. On the WMF ecosystem you're unlikely to get away with it for long whichever site you target, but I suspect that on other MediaWiki sites that don't have the same setup of internal admins and external stewards watching for problems, often have an even less technically competent userbase than we do, and are run by companies who don't have any particular interest in what goes on provided nothing happens that will get their own management in trouble (naming no names) one could scam them pretty much indefinitely provided one didn't get too greedy and draw attention. ‑ Iridescent 06:31, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Sure; your original post just said "any registered editor", so I didn't get into all the potential security holes that admins or interface admins can exploit. isaacl (talk) 05:30, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Turning off IP editing isn't the only way to get recent data. We could just replicate the old experiment. With WP:ORES classification data, it should be even easier to do than it was back then. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I was thinking and talking about just that, and you just stated it more clearly. Thank you I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:47, 10 January 2022 (UTC) (typed more clearly at 04:24, 10 January 2022 (UTC))

As I've watched the progress of this discussion, it occurs to me clarify something. I'm not in favor of disallowing IP editing as a general position. But I'd support disallowing it in the specific new situation of the change being put forth by the WMF, because of all the (unnecessary, as I see it) complications that would arise in administering the new system. I'm happy to have IP editors, but I won't be happy with the problems that will arise with assigning masks to the IP addresses.

And that said, I'd like to broadly question the long-time assumption that having more editors is always good, and having fewer is always bad. That assumption underlies the idea of a wiki with crowdsourced editing, and it's become something of an unquestioned principle onsite. But there's nothing wrong with subjecting orthodoxies to critical thinking from time to time, and sez me this is one of those times. I recognize that there can be a big problem if there are too few people to accomplish needed tasks. But as long as tasks can be done, with some redundancy and with enough involved people to keep eyes on all sorts of things, it probably is not the case that we should set a goal of always increasing the editing population, and treating any decline as cause for concern, the way a for-profit corporation would always want profits to be increasing. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:32, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not in favor of disallowing IP editing as a general position. But I'd support disallowing it in the specific new situation of the change being put forth by the WMF, because of all the (unnecessary, as I see it) complications that would arise in administering the new system. I'm happy to have IP editors, but I won't be happy with the problems that will arise with assigning masks to the IP addresses. This, exactly. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't be supporting a ban on IP editing, but if the only alternatives are "ban on IP editing" or "create an elaborate bureaucracy of multiple access levels and new user rights, new processes for granting those new permissions, and new processes for how the data is handled", then banning IP editing seems the lesser of two evils.

The growth point is true to a point. It's true that a thousand good people is better than two thousand bad ones, and it's valid to say that a focus on raw numbers says very little about the health of the site. What's different is that unlike a for-profit company, we have constant expansion built into the model, so either the number of editors or the level of automation needs to rise steadily just to keep up with routine maintenance. (To go back to banging one of my regular drums, the constant expansion is not a good thing no matter how many press releases the WMF put out to the contrary. We have between 3000 and 10,000 active editors depending on how you measure it; at the time of writing we have 54,939,037 pages. This isn't sustainable.) ‑ Iridescent 05:27, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I tend to define the number of active editors the way that the software does, which is 120,097 at the moment.

When a community is very small, and the "bad" editor is merely semi-competent, then more is likely better than less. Ten teenagers will get more done than a lone expert. The teens might mostly write about pop culture or toss a few sentences together about whatever they're studying in school, but what they produce has a significant chance of helping people, either because people were looking for a list of all the songs on the latest album, or because they wanted a couple of sentences and the external link at the end of the page. But when the community is very large, IMO skills begin to matter more (both social skills and content skills). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:13, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

That figure is because the WMF redefined "active editor" to "at least one edit in the past month", which isn't particularly useful. On the WMF's old (and still very generous) definition of "active editor" as "any account that's made five edits in the past month", I make it 39,052 active non-bot accounts, while the old "very active editors" count of people making 100+ edits in the last month is at 5004, near the lower end of the range it's sat in for the last two years. ‑ Iridescent 05:30, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree that 10 is better than 1. However, it may not always be the case that 11,000 is better than 10,000. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:36, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

You've got mail

@AnkitS9212, I've replied on this one occasion. As per my comments in that email, I will not reply further to you off-wiki unless it's regarding something which genuinely needs to be discussed off-wiki; Wikipedia discussions take place on talk pages and are publicly visible for a reason, to allow other people to see why an action has (or hasn't) been taken. ‑ Iridescent 12:57, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Iridescent:, found your mail in the Spam folder. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you having explained the mistakes we have done due to our lack of knowledge. As mentioned, please recreate our page Intellipaat as a Draft so that we can work on the same based on your comments and suggestions. Assuring that we will use Articles for creating the page and add content that follow all the guidelines of the community. Thanks a lot.--AnkitS9212 (talk) 11:32, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Iridescent:, could you please create the page as Draft so that the content can be re-worked on and uploaded correctly? Waiting for your update.--AnkitS9212 (talk) 09:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Recreate deleted page in Draft for rework

Hi @Iridescent:, found your reply in the Spam folder. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you having explained the mistakes we have done due to our lack of knowledge. As mentioned, please recreate our page Intellipaat as a Draft so that we can work on the same based on your comments and suggestions. Assuring that we will use Articles for creating the page and add content that follow all the guidelines of the community. Thanks a lot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnkitS9212 (talk • contribs) 11:00, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I am not Iridescent, but AnkitsS9212, please note that we don't like accounts which are run by more than one person. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:03, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus:, the account is not run by multiple people. not sure what context you are referring this in.— Preceding unsigned comment added by AnkitS9212 (talk • contribs)

Sorry, I took the "we" and "our" as evidence that you are a group account. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:56, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

That was in context to the article. Accumulation of data and content for the article involved multiple people. Account is only managed by me.--AnkitS9212 (talk) 13:03, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

AnkitS9212, this is going to sound slightly cryptic but it's because I'm intentionally wording it thus so as not to breach WP:OUTING. There's something I told you to do in my reply to your email, and unless and until you do so I'm absolutely not restoring the article, either as a draft or otherwise. This isn't my personal preference or point of view, it's a Wikipedia rule.

What I will say, is that looking at the deleted page (admin-only link here; if any other admin wants to check and see if they disagree with me) there would be very little point in restoring it. We don't accept promotional content in Wikipedia articles, even in draft-space, so even if I restored it we'd just remove all the PR-speak, and as far as I can tell removing the promotional content would reduce it to Intellipaat is a Bangalore-based e-learning platform..

Writing a new article from scratch is probably the single most difficult thing to do on Wikipedia—even editors with years of experience often struggle with it—and companies, particularly new companies, are probably the single most difficult topic about which to write. Except for the most non-contentious facts such as addresses, the information in Wikipedia articles needs to come from source independent of the subject, and for new and emerging topics the books generally haven't been written yet so there aren't any appropriate sources to use. (Even when the sources do exist, it's unlikely the company will be grateful to have a Wikipedia page about themselves. Wikipedia pages need to give a balanced and neutral view of their topic, which means that if a Wikipedia article exists on a company one of the top search results on that company will be a page faithfully documenting every scandal, every faulty product, every significant criticism, and all with no ability to control it since people employed by or with a connection to the company are effectively prohibited from editing the page in question.) ‑ Iridescent 16:48, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

How people get to and leave pages

Whatamidoing has posted this tool on the Medicine Wikiproject talk page, which shows how people get to a page and where they go afterwards. Figured that people were interested here, since we discussed how people read pages before.

I find it interesting how many people are leaving to read Proxima Centauri b and TRAPPIST-1h even though it's not linked from the lead. JoJo Eumerus mobile (main talk) 20:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

IIRC (I remember seeing the research but I can't remember where it was), there's usually a near-perfect correlation between how far down the article the first link to a topic appears and how many readers follow the link. I suspect TRAPPIST-1 is giving distorted results because so many people are going to come to it while working their way through a list that the other entries on that list will rank highly even if they're not linked at all; it's hard to imagine someone interest in one without being interested in the other even if they're not explicitly linked.

(Pet peeve alert: as far as I'm concerned this is evidence that navboxes should go back to being where they used to be at the top of pages either in the spot now occupied by the infobox, rather than hidden away at the very end where readers never see them unless they're intimately familiar with Wikipedia's internal quirks and know to scroll to the end then uncollapse the references section to see them. If the bulk—or at least a significant proportion—of a given article's readers come from and are leaving to "other page on a closely related topic" rather than "pages linked in the lead", then to my mind it's an obvious service to the reader to make the links to closely related topics easier to find, regardless of how much it annoys the infobox obsessives.) ‑ Iridescent 11:12, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Iridescent, I agree with your mini-rant; unfortunately, the brains that maintain Wikipedia tend to have a genuine need for sameness and have things Just So, both for better and worse. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:44, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that non-editors use navboxes enough to justify the effort of creating, maintaining, and arguing over them. They're not visible on the mobile site (half the page views), but nobody complains about their absence. I do think that regular (i.e., frequent) readers know where to find them, just like some people scroll straight to the ==External links== section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

My own case of "this tool confirms my biases" is that see-also sections are underutilized. (See also: the amount of AFT responses that were "this should be in the see-also section" for which the writers complained that the links were already in the article -- where readers evidently weren't noticing them.) Vaticidalprophet 00:40, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

"See-also sections are underutilized" is almost certainly an artifact of the difference between the desktop editing and the mobile viewing experience. In desktop view, "See also" is very visible; it follows on immediately from the text, and the strip of white alongside it created by the way the software handles lists acts as a de facto pointer towards it. In mobile view, it's for all practical purposes invisible. (The same goes for references. I'm quite sure most of our mobile readers don't even aware that Wikipedia articles have bibliographies or reference sections.) ‑ Iridescent 05:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Other way around: they're underutilized by editors, who insist links can't be repeated there from the body and otherwise restrict them to being a dumping ground for marginal links, while that tool consistently shows them as one of the main ways people navigate to and from articles. Vaticidalprophet 06:51, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet I think Iridescent is talking about readers and you're talking about editors. If true, you guys might actually agree with each other. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 12:58, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I think we're on the same page; I agree that most topics should have a set of useful links. In my ideal world we'd combine "See also", navboxes and succession boxes, and have it much more prominent; as per JJE's initial comment, even without any research it's obvious that people reading one article on Wikipedia are highly likely to also be interested in articles on related topics, almost certainly more so than the kind of things we usually bluelink (e.g. someone reading Cheddar cheese would probably be better served by a link to Cheshire cheese than by Annato, Protected designation of origin or Brexit, all of which are among the most prominent current links in the lead). ‑ Iridescent 13:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I'll probably never understand why the mobile version removes all usergenerated navboxes other carefully chosen links and replaces them by three AI-generated "links to related articles". I mean, three prominent links instead of fifty navboxes is sane, but the results seem quite random: your example Cheddar cheese links to List of British cheeses (makes sense), Joseph Harding (makes some sense), and Little Derby (really?). Boris Johnson gives us Tim Montgomerie, Endorsements in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election, and Mayoralty of Boris Johnson.

Now I'm not sure letting humans edit these links would be a particularly good use of our time, but I think we'd probably do a better job. —Kusma (talk) 17:34, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

My opinion on that enforced "three semi-random links" feature is here (in which you get the added bonus of the Dear Leader admitting he wasn't even aware it happened). You'll be unsurprised, I imagine, to learn it was pushed through by the WMF (this was the RFC that led to "consensus").

If it's throwing up seriously goofy choices, you can manually override it by putting {{#related:Article1}} {{#related:Article2}} {{#related:Article3}} somewhere on the page to manually force the three articles it displays. (I imagine at some point an enterprising spammer or more-intelligent-than-usual vandal will spot the obvious problem here…) ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I basicly agree with WhatamIdoing. Imo navboxes are mostly a little niche some editors (very often efl ones not confident of their ability to write text) have adopted with rather too much enthusiasm (often after they ran out of infoboxes to do). Many articles had three or more long ones - they are generally much too long and indiscriminate. Obviously in art articles they are a special curse, as one needs images at the top, and if not maintained many articles have several desk-top screens worth of very general navboxes at the top. Template:History of Greek art is one of the most annoying - it isn't terribly likely that people reading an article on an ancient Greek vase will suddenly want to go off to Munich School, unless curious as to what the hell that is doing there. It is revealing that no one so far has as much as mentioned categories, which remain the best navigation tool, if readers but knew it. Johnbod (talk) 18:20, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I think for general readers categories are usually too indiscriminate. Because of the way they diffuse, unless you're familiar with the quirks of Wikipedia's classification system they'd probably be more likely to confuse than inform. You know and I know why Roald Dahl isn't in Category:20th-century British writers, but a reader looking for him in there would probably come away thinking they'd uncovered a glaring omission. (Even if the reader was semi-familiar with Wikipedia's quirks, thought "aha, Dahl was born in Cardiff so he'll actually be in the subcategory Category:20th-century Welsh writers", they'd still not find him.) ‑ Iridescent 18:28, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that, though biography categories are often the worst, if only because they're so big. Actually I don't know why Roald Dahl isn't in Category:20th-century British writers - oh, ok, I do now, because he's in 3 sub-cats like Category:20th-century British novelists. But equally he's not in any navbox templates except for his own two, like most non-politicians/nobles/office-holders, and Template:World Fantasy Award Life Achievement, which won't lead many to him, I think. Johnbod (talk) 04:08, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I begged someone to pull numbers on logged in vs logged out page views for me, because I also thought that cats were unlikely to be used. However, I was (somewhat) wrong; most of the page views were from logged-out people. Whether enough more were from logged-out/readers is not clear to me, but there were a lot more readers than editors looking at those pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Well that's good to know. Johnbod (talk) 04:08, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, do we have statistics on whether the logged-out readers are using the categories? Whether they're actually using them as a navigation tool, or just wondering "what is this thing at the end of the article?", clicking it, and then closing the browser tab or hitting the back button, would obviously have an impact. (TL;DR: what proportion of the logged-out readers opening a category, follow it by clicking on another entry in that category?) ‑ Iridescent 16:56, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

No. I only asked for page view information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Like this? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:46, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

That's not quite comparable; no sane reader is going to use Category:Holocene for navigational purposes, as it's so all-encompassing—e.g. Big Mutha Truckers 2: Truck Me Harder is directly in the Holocene category tree. (Holocene → 21st century → 21st-century fads and trends → 2000s fads and trends → 2000s toys → PlayStation 2 → PlayStation 2 games → Big Mutha Truckers 2: Truck Me Harder, if you're wondering.) For the more niche-y categories like Category:Discus throwers, "go to the category and look for the specific subcategory you want" is a more practical way for readers to resolve "I'm trying to figure out if Wikipedia has an article on a particular obscure topic, but I can't remember the name or I'm not sure exactly what name the article would be under" situations. (For this specific example, the answer is clearly "no"—the category rarely gets more than one pageview per day.) ‑ Iridescent 07:07, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Munich_School shows that most people who clicked on a link in Munich School (which is a small minority) during the last month are headed to biographies for two artists, whose names are in the middle of fairly long lists of names, with no discernable reason why those would be chosen instead of any of the others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:36, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

See also https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro/25_janvier_2022#De_l'influence_d'une_palette_sur_la_diffusion_de_la_connaissance

As I've just discovered this, I have not yet figured out whether putting a navbox in "A" causes people to click links in the navbox, or if it makes people more likely to visit "A" itself (e.g., perhaps its search ranking goes up because it has more links in it?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

That's easy enough to test—just find an uncontroversial and relatively obscure page that gets a steady but not exceptional stream of readers, remove the navbox, and see if there's a change in the traffic. You probably want to use an undisclosed sock to conduct the experiment, since if you or I—or any (WMF) account—do so then people will know that the page in question is the subject of discussion, and will go to see what the fuss is about. If I recall correctly—and I may not recall correctly as it was years ago—when Neelix went on his spree of creating navboxes it didn't have any obvious impact on either the pages he spammed the navboxes onto or the pages linked in the navboxes. ‑ Iridescent 19:31, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Addition of Wikidata infobox to [Etty painting with long title]

You know how Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed has that "bad even by Wikidata standards" item that's off by a decade for its creation, et al? Yeah, someone added a Wikidata infobox. On the bright side, he had the foresight not to compress the image. On the less bright side, it survived August to January, or about five thousand hits of saying it was painted in 1820. There's been a lot more infobox discussion lately than I'd firsthand seen before; as someone who wasn't there the first few rounds, I'm really hoping this isn't another. Vaticidalprophet 12:25, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I think Fram will like that the Wikidata image was retrieved at 25 July 2108. I didn't realize that Wikidata could time travel... Now corrected. That said, it still claims that the painting had its inception in 1820, sourcing it to the enWikipedia article which gives no such date - 1820 is only mentioned as a year where Etty exhibited paintings Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:01, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

It looks as if that was the standard version of the infobox (which for some unfathomable reason has a "Wikidata" parameter which doesn't get displayed and should be removed), not the "/Wikidata" version, and that someone populated it by hand but with the Wikidata stuff (or is this what happens when one substitutes the /Wikidata version?). Anyway, looking at major art works with the /Wikidata infobox, we have e.g. The Last Supper (Leonardo), which give different dimensions than the one in the article (or the one shown by the picture), as they have the measurements for the painting + the upper lobes, not the main painting; and the year "1490s (Julian)", which is in the article 1495-1498 (no need for the Julian of course). Could be worse, Bull Palette has the "year" "4th millennium BCE (Julian)", which widely differs from "4th millennium BCE (Gregorian)" presumably. Portrait of a Knight (Maíno) is dated 1613-1619 in the article, precisely 1613 in the infobox, and 1618-1623 at the Prado site[1]. Lucretia (Artemisia Gentileschi, Los Angeles) is in the collection "Unknown, J. Paul Getty Museum". Oh well, could be worse; L'Après-midi à Naples has the beautiful location "National Gallery of Australia, France". Don't get me started on silly precision of dimensions (Bathsheba (Gentileschi)) or why we would want accession numbers in the infobox (crucial information at a glance!). Fram (talk) 14:00, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Infoboxes and Wikidata. What could possibly go wrong? We really need a "Wikidata should be presumed to be always unreliable, and no information may be imported from it without being independently verified by a reliable source and cited to that source, and anyone not doing so should be treated no differently than we'd treat anyone else repeatedly adding uncited content" policy—if Wikidata is actually as great as they claim then they should already have the sources, so it should be no issue. The chances of that happening are, appropriately enough, about as likely as seeing pigs on the wing. ‑ Iridescent 16:49, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd be interested to see whether it is even technically possible to get the Wikidata item for B. Traven right. The first choice to make is whether to treat B. Traven as a person or as a pseudonym of various other people (with various degrees of certainty for the identification). Wikidata just lumps everything together (including two "sourced" dates of birth). —Kusma (talk) 17:35, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd have thought the way to go would be to treat him as a de facto fictional character rather than try to shoehorn him in to 'biographies'. Looking at the state of the article, I'd say how Wikidata treats it is the least of its problems. ‑ Iridescent 18:21, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

The German Wikipedia accepts Hauschild's version as gospel, so for them B. Traven is a real person. —Kusma (talk) 20:57, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not going to try to second-gues who's right. I have no knowledge of the topic, but it sounds like "he was probably a real person but possibly didn't exist" and "he probably didn't exist but was possibly a real person" are both defensible. We have a surprising amount of experience with this situation when writing about figures from antiquity or religious texts; the only thing that's atypical here is that he was active within living memory. ‑ Iridescent 23:04, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Cubiculosporum koronicarpis Kraft 1973

Cubiculosporum koronicarpis Kraft 1973 has been recreated. I can't see if it is different from the copyvio version you just deleted. In any case, it should be deleted or draftified. Abductive (reasoning) 03:56, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

It is slightly different, but not substantially so. I personally think it's a copyright violation, but it's borderline enough that I'd like to get a second opinion rather than re-delete it—these "material from multiple sources" pages are never entirely straightforward. This talkpage has hundreds of watchers; can someone not previously involved take a look at this and see what you think? (Previously deleted version here, admin-only obviously.) ‑ Iridescent 18:20, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Not a watcher, but someone who skims and reads the archives once and a while- Abductive, I've deleted the page again, looking at the deleted version and the current version the changes are very minimal. Some passages were directly copied from the source, while others were closely phrased. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 23:02, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Deletion of Zaeem ahmed page that I created

Hello admin, I have created Zaeem Ahmed biography page, which has been deleted after my contest. But, I have created the page with no promotional intention or I don't have a relation with the person. I take a mission to create missing profiles of famous persons from Bangladesh. that was my first step to do. But now that page has been deleted. Please retrieve the page. I tried my best to follow the specific guideline by Wikipedia, but I don't know why you deleted the page. Please retrieve the page otherwise I will be very sad and that might be my last editing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 08:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Foyjul90, Wikipedia doesn't publish original research; we only host neutral articles that are sourced entirely to independent reliable sources. (That is to say, the only thing we do is summarize what other people, who aren't connected with the subject, have published about that subject.) This is particularly true with biographies of living people, as there are both legal considerations regarding potentially defamatory content, and considerations about giving undue weight (positive or negative) to particular aspects of somebody's life. The article I deleted at Draft:Zaeem Ahmed was very obviously not neutral—it contained lines like From this vision he is continuously developing innovative ideas and making the work easier for every level of employment. Plus, almost all of it was entirely unsourced; although it had three references, one of them was his own company's website and thus unusable on Wikipedia, and the other two were both only used to cite the statement In, 2020, he was elected as Chairman of EC of Prime Bank Bangladesh Ltd.

If you genuinely feel you can write a neutral and sourced biography of him, I can temporarily restore your draft page so you can work on it further, but as it stands it's not an appropriate page for us to be hosting on Wikipedia, even as a draft. We take our policy on biographies of living persons very seriously, and we can't host unreferenced material on living people, even as a draft, for anything more than a very brief time while someone is working on it. ‑ Iridescent 09:03, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the explaination. Please restore the page temporarliy, so that I can make the changes. It will be very helpful for me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 09:10, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I've temporarily restored it at Draft:Zaeem Ahmed to allow you to continue to work on it. As per my previous comments, you'll need to provide citations for every claim made about him (and the citations need to be to independent sources) for Wikipedia to host it.

If you haven't already, I very strongly recommend reading Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Writing a new article from scratch is probably the single most difficult thing to do on Wikipedia if you're not already familiar with our rules, and biographies are the most difficult type of new article to write. ‑ Iridescent 09:16, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

One more thing, I have seen Mr Fazle Kabir's page, which has reference link from his own organization (Bangladesh Bank) and other newspaper site links, which are like same to my page. So, how that wokred? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 09:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Usually it means English Wikipedia has 62,120,624 pages and only a few hundred editors active at any given time, and thus things slip through. That said, in the case of Fazle Kabir it looks like the only citations to his own organization's website are for non-contentious statements. (Citations to newspapers—provided they're genuine independent coverage rather than reprinted press releases—are acceptable, although be wary of using them as newspapers aren't always great at fact-checking.) Basically, anything you say you need to be able to show where you got it from, and if any statement is potentially contentious you need to show that the source it came from is reliable. ‑ Iridescent 09:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Technically, non-independent sources are acceptable, but only if they are used in very limited ways. Most of the article must come from independent sources. A non-independent source could be used to fill in some common detail that you can't source any other way (e.g., how old he is, or whether he is married).

@Foyjul90, if you are looking for good examples to follow, then you might want to look at the handful of articles listed at Wikipedia:Featured articles#Business, economics, and finance biographies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I have found that my Draft page has been published here : https://en.everybodywiki.com/Zaeem_Ahmed . Is it from Wikipedia? and they are mentioning that they took the article from Wikipedia, but this page has not been published yet. And, for the page, I tried my best to find some newspaper sources but did not find them. Can you publish the page with the mentioned source and I can edit that in the future when I get any updated news source about him. Foyjul90 (talk) 03:18, 8 January 2022 (UTC)Foyul90 Thanks for the clarifications. I am working on the draft page to make the page eligible to approve. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 09:55, 2 January 2022 (UTC) WhatamIdoing I have not get any reply from you. Please let me know. If the above mentioned website is associated with Wikipedia, then please publish my page. If not, then please publish my page in wikipedia, so that if any source I found, I can add. Please help me.Foyjul90 (talk) 10:04, 11 January 2022 (UTC)Foyjul90

@Foyjul90, I'm not WhatamIdoing, but I can confirm that site is nothing to do with Wikipedia. Because the moment you press the "Publish changes" button on Wikipedia—whether it's on an article, a draft, a user page or a talk page—you consent to the By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL agreement that appears between the editing window and the "Publish changes" button. That means, once something has appeared on Wikipedia—even if it's deleted from Wikipedia almost immediately—any other website can use that material for whatever purposes they choose; there's a huge industry dedicated to copying material from Wikipedia. Unfortunately, in most cases we have absolutely no control over what other websites (or paper books) do with our material; the only time we can really do anything is if they're not complying with our licensing terms by making it possible to find out who the authors who wrote the originals on Wikipedia were.

As per my comments further up this thread, your page is already published on Wikipedia at Draft:Zaeem Ahmed. "Draft" doesn't mean it's not published; it just means it's not indexed by search engines, to reduce the risk of readers searching for information coming across a page that isn't yet compliant with our rules. (This is particularly important for articles about living people, owing to the legal implications if we get something wrong or give an incomplete picture.) We won't hold on to the draft forever—we usually delete them if nobody's worked on improving them for six months—but you're free to work on it at your own pace to bring it up to our standards regarding independent reliable sourcing ‑ Iridescent 19:52, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I will keep updating this page — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foyjul90 (talk • contribs) 04:37, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Foyjul90, I see that you haven't edited Draft:Zaeem Ahmed in the month since I restored it. Are you still planning to work on it, or do you want me to re-delete it? If you're still planning to work on it, that's fine; our usual practice is to keep draft articles for six months. However, when we know a page about a living person is potentially problematic I don't really like keeping it unless there's a reason to do so. ‑ Iridescent 06:52, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Draft:Process-based therapy

Hi Iridescent. Re Draft:Process-based therapy, I haven't properly looked at the draft author's rewrite after I tagged for CSD because of copyvio, but I'll trust your decision. However, I wonder if you noticed that it was changed after the CSD tagging, and whether CRD#1 revdel on the pre-rewrite versions is appropriate. — Bilorv (talk) 16:33, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, agreed, and thanks for pointing it out. I think it very unlikely that draft will ever be salvageable—even if there's a legitimate article to be written, it would almost certainly be easier to write it from scratch—so in six months I imagine the draft will be auto-deleted regardless. ‑ Iridescent 07:18, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

A three month ban is fine with me

If you want to give me a three month ban fine, I feel really bad about all this. I honestly thought that I was valuable to Wikipedia as people have of often commended me for my work. Davidgoodheart (talk) 17:08, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

For the second time, read the proposal in which nobody except you is talking about banning you. As I said there, the fact that you're either too lazy or too incompetent to even read the proposal when you're the topic of discussion, makes me think that maybe we should be talking about banning you. ‑ Iridescent 17:14, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Hollmania

Did you ever kill anybody Father?, Frank Holl, 1883

What do you think? Johnbod (talk) 05:01, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that it's massively undue weight. Holl is about as forgotten as it gets (and was a generic Victorian hack, not someone like Walter Scott or Frederic Leighton who's out of fashion now but is still a major topic of study because of their influence). I'm reluctant to start reverting myself as I consciously try to avoid giving the impression that I'm the owner of the topic, but I have a feeling someone's going to need to quietly undo the whole thing. For Art of the United Kingdom, Victorian painting or Social realism to have dedicated sections on Frank Holl is roughly equivalent to Culture of the United States having a dedicated section on Mork & Mindy. ‑ Iridescent 06:40, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

My thoughts too - I'll reduce rather than remove.. Presumably he's big in Canada, or something... Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

At a guess, someone's been to the Van Gogh Museum, seen that VVG collected him (which is true), and drawn the mistaken conclusion that Holl was a much bigger deal than he actually was. (Because of his day job in a saleroom, VVG accumulated all kinds of prints and etchings which happened to evoke a passing interest. He also had fairly dubious taste—if "being admired by Van Gogh" was some kind of mark of greatness, the works of Adolphe Monticelli wouldn't all be hidden away in storerooms.) ‑ Iridescent 18:04, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

No doubt - I've warmed to him somewhat after seeing this one! Johnbod (talk) 18:33, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

As you presumably know, I do have a soft spot for that kind of late 19th century sentimentalist tosh. Yes, they're irredeemably kitsch and usually hideous to modern eyes, but there's a genuinely interesting story in how artists (both visual and written) made that sudden leap, over such a short period, from "our job is either to document the world as it is, or to show examples for audiences to aspire to", to "the world is a horrible place, here's something completely contrived and unrealistic to take your mind off it". There's a direct line of succession between "The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint. Their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality of the soul" and Mamma Mia!.

The Pet Rabbit, Frank Holl, 1882

Personally, I'd say this one approaches Peak Victoriana. I imagine even Lady Lever would have dismissed it as overblown tat. ‑ Iridescent 06:20, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

In the bars of Dundalk

...they talk of little else  :) ^{w/ acknowledgments, Marshall Hall}  :) SN54129 17:08, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm sure this is what the WMF had in mind when they imposed extended-length edit summaries on en-wiki. (Yes, before a (WMF) account delivers me a lecture, I'm aware there was a genuine technical reason to do with non-Latin characters being double-counted.) ‑ Iridescent 17:44, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

It was the blast of culture—even if only of kitschy Victoriana—into the desert of ANI that caught my attention :) SN54129 11:43, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

As someone who thinks in run-on sentences, I appreciate this accessibility feature feature imposed by technological limitations. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:41, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

2018 Thai panther poaching case

Hi. I remember having re-written the few opening sentences of the article, so at least those should be free of copyvio issues and work as a possible starting point for a stub. Could you please check for salvageable content, trim down to that, and restore what's left? Thanks. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:08, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can tell looking at the history, your only contribution (other than a couple of technical edits regarding categorization, naming, and standardizing curly/straight quotes) was A high-profile case involving the [[poaching]] of a [[black panther]] and other protected wildlife took place in [[Thailand]] in 2018. It involved a group led by '''Premchai Karnasuta''', a Thai business tycoon, in the [[Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary]] in February 2018. There isn't really much to build on there; it would probably be easier to start from scratch. (It's not possible to selectively restore the history; the very first edit was a cut-and-paste copyright violation, so the copyvio is present in every version of the history.) The four sources used, if you want to use them for rewriting the article, were [2], [3], [4] and [5]. ‑ Iridescent 17:29, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. That's pretty much what I needed. --Paul_012 (talk) 02:03, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

New article up. Could you please check for categories I missed and restore the talk page? Thanks. --Paul_012 (talk) 10:12, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

 Done ‑ Iridescent 17:00, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

MEDRS being re-interpreted in cite journal documentation

Iri, you and I have discussions about how the citation templates are managed going back about a decade. Now this has impacted MEDRS, and if the recommendations on a backwater page of the project are enacted, we'll be citing medical content to the laypress. I am wondering if your thinking on how things happen at those pages has changed.

Following on the latest update to the citation journals, WP:MEDRS is being re-interpreted by a number of editors on the talk page of a help page of a citation template. Background and discussion starts at:

• User talk:SandyGeorgia#Apparently someone's been dicking around with the citation templates again

I recommend reading that long discussion on my talk, as the RFC that led to this was problematic, although there was sensible input from User:Thryduulf, User:Nikkimaria, User:Fram, and others.

Now, more concerning problems are unfolding at:

• Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 82#Lay-url

where the discussion is heading towards a re-interpretation of MEDRS to provide for citing medical content to the lay press-- a discussion that belongs at WT:MEDRS. The "RFC" did not endorse this change that affects MEDRS.

On my talk page, disgruntled editors are suggesting we need a noticeboard where others can be made aware of citation template issues before they are rolled out and generate thousands of error messages. I don't think a noticeboard will be effective, because one of the problems in interacting with the citation template editors is getting through the technical lingo to understand what they're saying or proposing. I think we need instead some restriction placed on their ability to make broad changes without a WP:CENT or talk-page notified discussion, where the proposals are hopefully written in plain speak before they go up. But we need some way to address these problems, as they've been happening for as long as I can remember. I was about to help a friend start converting their FA to sfns, and after they saw the latest mess created by the citation template editors, they said, "thanks but no thanks, I'm sticking with manual citations". I had manual citations at Tourette syndrome for over a decade, to avoid precisely these problems. I converted last year, and now here I am. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:03, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

You know my thoughts. As far as I'm concerned we should have a unified citation format to which we can add specialst fields to deal with edge cases like MEDRS and legal citations, rather than the upwards of 3000 different citation templates we actually have coupled with countless personal-preference hand-formatted citation formats. Unless and until we rationalize the system, discussions like this about individual cases are just a deckchairs-on-the-Titanic exercise. Even the infobox people are making serious steps to clean up the zillion different variants of {{infobox person}}, and if even they can appreciate that template proliferation is a genuine problem rather than an academic exercise to discuss, surely on something as fundamental as "how do we make sure readers know where our information comes from?" the rest of us should be able to come up with something. ‑ Iridescent 16:49, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Iri, I raised this more about the interpersonal dynamics that affect that area of editing-- something you and I used to discuss eons ago. Things like this. My stance on the interpersonal issues has softened, yet the issues continue. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:26, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

This obviously comes with the usual "just my personal opinion, not policy" qualifiers. It looks to me like the dispute here is a reflection of the ongoing split between "content editors" and "technical editors". Because you have two competing viewpoints, both of whom can legitimately say they have policy on their side, there is no right answer here. I may be wrong but I've had the feeling recently that the line between "reader-facing editors" focusing on readability and accuracy and "editor-facing editors" focusing on internal functionality has got a lot sharper in recent years than it ever used to be. There used to be a lot of people like RexxS, Anomie and Gimmetrow—even Merridew—about, who had their feet in both camps and could act as intermediaries between two groups of people acting in good faith who had completely different visions, but most of them have left or drastically reduced their participation—the only person in this position who still comes to mind is Enterprisey, and because he's currently on Arbcom it's not reasonable to ask him to take an active position on a dispute that has such high potential to turn into a wheel-war should people get fed up with discussion and start unilaterally locking or deleting the templates.

Let me take the opportunity to once more bang the drum I've been banging for more than a decade. Although nobody likes "add another layer of bureaucracy" as a solution, Wikipedia needs and always has needed an elected committee, separate from Arbcom, with the authority to issue binding and enforceable closures to Requests for Comment. In situations like this—where there are two possible solutions, both of which have reasonable arguments to be made in their favor, both of which have a degree of support, and where compromise isn't possible because we genuinely need to go one-way-or-the-other—the consensus model doesn't work. As it stands, the only ways this kind of situation get resolved are "whoever shouts the loudest wins", "the WMF imposes something" or "it degenerates into a full-scale conflict and eventually enough people either get blocked or resign in disgust that the 'winner' is whoever's left standing", and none of those are exactly ideal. ‑ Iridescent 06:52, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

A Wikipedia that ends like Reservoir Dogs? Cool. "You block me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize"... and the last guy standing can pump out 100 stubs on English cricketers a day in peace :) SN54129 08:38, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

This is exactly the way this kind of thing usually plays out. If you ever want a really dispiriting experience, dig through the history of infoboxes, the chain of events leading to and following Raul654's resignation at Featured Articles, or if you really want to go back in time the Userbox Wars. ‑ Iridescent 17:23, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Iri, it's unclear to me why you mention "Raul654's resignation at Featured Articles"; Raul654 did not resign (although I did)--he was forced out.

Here is the 2012 RFC that ratified Raul as director (one of many), and here is the RFC launched a little over a year later by Tony1, without prior discussion, that removed Mark/Raul (apparently because of a period of absence, when he had delegated authority to others).

Along with the other fallings out of this decision (namely that FAC has never regained the stature it had when it the overall process had a leader and the pages worked together and were recognized as the best functioning process on Wikipedia), there are multiple ironies in the situation:

1. Tony1 later became the victim of a leaderless FAC, in ways that Raul never would have countenanced or tolerated, and so today, FAC does not have the benefit of Tony1's prose reviews. I long warned what would happen if mob rule was allowed at FAC, and the irony was Tony1 himself becoming a victim of that (valid reviewers can be chased off by those who don't want their work critiqued, and we've seen that in both prose and sourcing reviews). In fact, what I warned Tony1 about for years came to pass ... to him.
2. For all the times Raul was accused of being a "dictator", there was no back-channel direction while he was director, and his apparent "crime" was being a strong delegator. He turned over the reins and never told a delegate how to do their job. He was a strong believer in the Wikipedia way.
3. And for all the "dictatorial" charges, FAC has now a Coord who has served longer than Raul did.
4. The arb who undermined Raul and me as we tried to expose the socking at FAC later left not under the best of circumstances (while history showed us right about the socks); how unfortunate that her trends were not exposed soon enough to help the socking situation that affected FAC.

Since you aren't prone to mistakes with choice of words, why do you say Raul resigned?

Related to our other discussions, I would never presume that Merridew isn't still affecting the citation templates; it would be folly to think they would walk away from that cash cow (perhaps you know something I don't know), having done away with Gimmetrow. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:59, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Raul made precisely one edit between Feb 2013 and Jan 2015. They had either retired or quit as far as anyone knew, not least in part to increasingly more common issues escalating to the drama boards like their blatant abuse of page protection to enforce their own arbitrary view on pages they were in conflict on with other editors. The characterization of looking to resolve the issue of an absent editor in a (perceived) position of absolute power because of someone who doesnt edit for 5 months as 'forcing them out' is as misleading as your use of 'a little over a year later'. No it was 17 months. A similar misleading statement made by Hawkeye at the second RFC btw where they described the interval as 'a few months'. Raul's position was abolished because people like you were holding the position and Raul's 'rules' as not subject to community consensus. In short, you got exactly what every editor gets when they think a single person is above the rest. Had you and some of the other hardliners not been so draconian in propping Raul up as a dictatorial figurehead, you would likely have had a different response when he disappeared. Also its 2022. Get over it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:06, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, look, a(nother) Merridew ANI. The RFC that "fired" Raul was July 2013; no wonder he stopped editing. Re "hardliners propping up Raul", see the 2012 RFC for all those "hardliners". The issue in 2022 is whether the process is working; if competing with DYK is the goal, then the answer is yes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:21, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Raul stopped editing in February 2013. The director position was abolished in July 2013, 5 months later. The RFC was a result of him stopping editing. He didnt stop editing as a result of the RFC. So again, you are being deliberately misleading when you make comments like 'no wonder he stopped editing'. Whatever his reasons for stopping editing, the RFC to remove/reform the position he held took place after a significant period of inactivity by his choice. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:31, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

"He didnt stop editing as a result of the RFC" ... and, you know this, how? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:37, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

You are right of course, the RFC echoed backwards in time and caused them to stop editing 5 months before the RFC started. Or he was on an extended months long break with no indication when he would return. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:51, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

It goes back much further than that. This TLDR discussion on FAC talk began on 12 November 2012 with "Surprisingly, the Wikipediocracy people have raised a good point. Raul hasn't edited Wikipedia since August 25th. Isn't it about time to consider the position of FA Director to have been left derelict and a new one should be appointed? ...." It isn't true that the Tony1 Rfc was launched without prior discussion - there'd been lots, and the natives were revolting. Johnbod (talk) 17:42, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I think we're talking about opposite sides of the same coin here (re my remark about the "ironies"). On the one hand, Raul was/is frequently referred to as a "dictator", but when he delegated and went away for a few months, he is then brought up as derelict. Apparently, no way to win? Have a look at that full discussion, remembering that Raul was an arb and had enemies, who were happy to take pot shots when/if the opportunity presented itself. Also notice on point responses from Truthkeeper at 03:54, 13 November 2012 and Coordinator Ian Rose at 10:04, 13 November 2012, along with Raul654's own response at 22:30, 13 November 2012. With the exception of a few editors with a bone to pick, there was no problem identified. That is, (non-dictatorial) delegation was working as intended. The troops were not restless; one or two agitators raised an issue, and it was answered.

And, yes, the 2013 RFC was launched unannounced. By the time of the 2012 RFC, FAC had well learned its lesson about how to craft a useful RFC, based on considerable prior discussion, so that the outcome would yield useful results. (Something it seems to have forgotten since.) The 2012 RFC was well discussed and wording planned; the 2013 RFC was launched unilaterally, unplanned a little over a year later.^a No surprise that the result of six proposals at once was a disputed RFC and GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). We all know what you get on Wikipedia when you launch an RFC of that type: pitchforks. So, because the RFC wasn't well thought out, the result was that the things that made the FA process work were dismantled, and yet, nothing to replace them was envisioned or enacted. And that is the status quo today. OID has referred to me as one of the "hardliners"; whatever that means, if it means I think that FAC worked then and doesn't now, guilty as charged. And by "worked then", I mean that Raul's position as director was constantly, multiple times, ratified by community-wide consensus and enjoyed consensus beyond the FA process.

I'm still curious to know, though, why Iri mentions Raul "resigning", as he may recall something I don't. I was hoping OID had a reason for their statements or some inside knowledge about events in Raul's life between February and July, but it appears they have no first-hand information to offer.

How did we get from citation template issues and MEDRS to Raul and FAC? Through the common denominator of losing good technical editors like Gimmetrow through the efforts of socks. We allowed the same to happen to FAC. Perhaps my timing on resigning was unwise, as it left Raul to fend for FAC alone, because it's easy to see how fickle Wikipedia is when it comes to turning on its own: dictator one day, derelict the next because you delegated, but no one helped him deal with the socks, as far as I can tell. I wouldn't expect anyone not to be discouraged under those circumstances. If FAC had first discussed whether an FA director was needed, and then launched an RFC only on that topic, rather than rolling six proposals into one, would FAC have been taken apart with no plan for how to put it back together? We'll never know.

^a Yes, 17 months in the 20-year span of FAC history is a little more than a year; context, and a sense of history, pls. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:19, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I'll reply to all this properly when I have time, but regarding my use of the term 'resignation', a reminder that on this particular issue I'm not someone who's just fallen off the turnip truck but am literally the person who set the original precedent for Wikipedia's collectively considering 'inactivity without prior explanation' as constituting resignation. It's not something I've just plucked out of the air. ‑ Iridescent 07:28, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I imagined you had a reason, as you don't use words casually. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:55, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Iridecent: Just so I'm clear...when you say "technical editors," you mean/are including WikiGnomes, not (or at least, not exclusively) people who code templates, maintain bots and stuff, right? If so, it's the first time I've heard of "technical editors" used in that context, so I just wanted to double-check what you meant. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 08:51, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

No, I mean by "technical editors" what is normally understood (on Wikipedia) by the term: the people who primarily work on bot design, template markup, Lua modules etc. To oversimplify slightly, the dispute SandyGeorgia is talking about is an argument between a "people who focus on Wikipedia technically functioning smoothly and consistently" who want a particular set of templates always to behave in a consistent manner, and "people who focus on Wikipedia articles being as informative as possible" who want to ensure the output of the templates is as accurate as possible, even if it means them being formatted idiosyncratically on some articles.

As I say, both groups are in the right; the problem is that years ago when standardizing Wikipedia's citation formats wouldn't have meant manually re-formatting c. 5 million articles (at a conservative estimate), we couldn't agree on a standard and collectively kicked the can down the road, so we now have around 3000 different citation templates—all of which are equally 'correct' as far as policy is concerned. Changing the design of any one of these templates cascades down to affect the output of thousands and in some cases millions of articles, but because there are so many of them it's impossible for anyone to monitor them all. ‑ Iridescent 17:23, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

One would hope that we'd be as reader-centric as possible; alas, the difficulty of change along with the difficulties you've already mentioned could very well result in no change happening. I hope I'm proven wrong. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:37, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but there's no clear definition of what "reader-centric" means in the context of the display of information, and we've spent the past 20 years fudging and dodging the issue of whether Wikipedia is ultimately a giant dataset formatted as 6,453,617 pages, or a collection of 6,453,617 individual articles from which information is extracted individually either by humans or by scripts. Is it better for the reader:

1. to have information formatted as consistently as possible so they know exactly where to look for it, even though it means that potentially readers will see misleading statements without their accompanying explanations, and that having a totally standardized approach to what is included/excluded potentially gives undue weight on individual articles, since "what's normally important" and "what's important in this specific case" don't always overlap; or
2. to have information written as accurately as possible so readers aren't misled, even though it means that potentially readers will be confused as a piece of information isn't in the place they normally expect to see it so they assume it isn't included, and readers who are just looking for a particular piece of information will have to spend more time looking for it since there isn't a single standard way in which the information is formatted (and the side issue that not being consistently formatted makes it harder for algorithms to extract information from Wikipedia pages, meaning such things as Google Knowledge panels and Wikidata are more likely to show incorrect data)?

As I was alluding to in my reply to SN54129 above, this argument is a very very very well-plowed furrow on Wikipedia. As you may know, the Infobox Wars began with a thread on this talkpage so although I wasn't involved with them myself I was very aware of all their twists and turns. As far as I can see, this is exactly the same "is it more important to be consistent or to be accurate?" question, just transposed from the top of the article to the bottom. ‑ Iridescent 05:46, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

How are the non-technical editors supposed to deal with a small group pf technical editors being able to effect such broad changes, and not have to un-do them when consensus is against them? Where do I go to revert the removal of a useful parameter from a citation template where it was in use for over a decade and where there is no consensus for its removal? How does one restore that in the "encyclopedia anyone can edit"? Some of the dynamic there has improved over the years (there is at least some communication now), but the overall dynamic hasn't changed, which is that once the fait accompli is installed, it can't be removed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:46, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

There's no right answer—as per my previous comments, both the "technical" and "non-technical" editors can reasonably claim to have policy on their side. I know it's an unsatisfactory answer, but sometimes "a well-publicised RFC" (with the emphasis on "well-publicised") is the only practical way to go, even though it invariably leads to people ranting at each other. Cases like this are where RFCs as a process are A Good Thing; you actually want the opinions of people who aren't involved and don't particularly care, as they're the people who are best-placed to dispassionately judge who is making the better case and whether any middle road is possible. ‑ Iridescent 05:38, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

This obviously comes with the usual "just my personal opinion, not policy" qualifiers. It looks to me like the dispute here is a reflection of the ongoing split between "content editors" and "technical editors". Because you have two competing viewpoints, both of whom can legitimately say they have policy on their side, there is no right answer here. Thanks for spelling out the reasons why I have conflicted feelings on this particular issue. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

This is something that I think gets overlooked by a lot of Wikipedia editors: consensus decision-making is only effective when the participants have strong alignment in goals, but as a group grows in size, its members rapidly have diverging aims. One is not more right than the other; they just prioritize different things and thus weigh choices differently. That's why organizations generally use either straight voting or some kind of hierarchical structure to make decisions. isaacl (talk) 15:24, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. Since there are a lot of legitimate reasons not to use straight voting—it would both cement Wikipedia's reputation as Californiapedia into immutable reality, and lead to open season for sockpuppetry, for starters—some kind of Govcom is the only way to cope over the long term, even though everyone instinctively grates at a hierarchical structure. The thinking behind WP:ACPD was in some ways both valid and ahead of its time; the issue there wasn't that such a committee wasn't needed, but that the existing Arbcom so blatantly tried to stack it with their friends that it ended up tainting the entire concept of "governance committee" for a decade. ‑ Iridescent 17:23, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I admit I've never quite understood the "3000 citation templates" argument—my impression is that the vast majority of them are wrappers that fill in a few parameters on some other template, usually from the CS1 family. There are a few other established styles (Category:Citation templates not conforming to an established style suggests about 5), of which I think I've seen CS2 and Vancouver in the wild, and of course hand-formatted by citations of no particularly consistent style. So the changes being debated here to the CS1 Lua module in practice bubble up to most of those 3000 templates. Choess (talk) 21:47, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

A lot of them are but a lot of them aren't. There are plenty of frequently-used templates like {{cite court}} which are either completely independent of Citation/core, or have so many addenda tacked on that they may as well be. Even with the ones that purely are wrappers, a well-intentioned change to one of them can still have very confusing effects on the reader experience; since it's unlikely any given article is only going to use a single citation template throughout, changing the way one of the wrapper templates outputs will have the knock-on effect of making the reference formatting inconsistent on every article on which that template is used. ‑ Iridescent 06:00, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

16 years of iridescence

Thanks! ‑ Iridescent 08:05, 18 February 2022 (UTC) (Side note, but once you get back before 2007 "first edit day" isn't much of a metric. That spike of account registrations in 2006 wasn't (or at least wasn't wholly) owing to Wikipedia becoming more popular, but that a wave of reforms post-Siegenthaler made it harder to perform some routine functions like page creation without creating an account. Many of the people who registered accounts in 2006–07 had already been editing for some time; prior to that, there wasn't much benefit either to creating an account or to logging in to it if you had one unless you were engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions where it was necessary to keep track of who was saying what. ‑ Iridescent 08:05, 18 February 2022 (UTC))

I was more enthusiastic about first day milestones when I was younger, tbh.

(Also, for some reason, the "reply" link didn't work for this particular comment.) I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:37, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps we were all more excited about birthdays when we were young. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:12, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I think that's what happened. We've all become old. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 05:29, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

It beats the alternative. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

frozen

celebrating the magic of the word iridescence --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:12, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I took a pic in 2009 that was on the German MP yesterday, with the song from 1885, in English Prayer for Ukraine. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:18, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

STICKTOSOURCE

I am seeking the wisdom of the collective. The context is a discussion mostly about sex/gender in one of my sandboxes. I don't think you will want to read it; at the moment, it is approximately the length of As I Lay Dying but even less intelligible.

Here is the story:

Imagine that you are reading a scholarly source, which you want to use to source for a substantial part of an article. The scholarly source gives a technical term for a group of people (e.g., "46 X,Y males"). After that, it uses a common word (e.g., "men") to describe this group of people.

• Should editors be allowed to pick which term they want to use? If so, are there any unacceptable reasons for choosing one vs the other? (For example, "Sure, you can pick any term used in the source, but not if your choice goes against the community's value of _____"). A sub-question here is whether choosing a less-common term is a violation of UNDUE.
• Should editors be allowed to use a third word (e.g., "genetic male") that isn't in the cited source, but that any person with basic familiarity with the subject matter would agree is a synonym/matches the intention of the cited source? Is it a violation of NOR to use a synonym? (Assume that this synonym wouldn't be disputed, except that an editor feels that it's on the wrong side of including/excluding trans people.)

I would particularly be interested in what you all think should happen vs what you think would happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

OK, I'll go first:

In general I'd always stick to the term general readers are most likely to understand ("men"), but include an explanatory footnote the first time it's used ("In this article the term 'men' is used to mean…"). WP:UNDUE is a distraction; the issue is that Wikipedia articles should be as comprehensible as possible. Editors should be allowed to choose which term they want to use within reason. If they insist on using a term which it's not reasonable to assume readers will understand (if you have a long memory, you may recall the editor who insisted we use 'decollation' in place of 'decapitation' or 'beheading' because it was 'technically more accurate'; as far as I'm concerned this is no different), or where there's a reasonable potential that the use of the term will lead to confusion, then no; likewise, we shouldn't be using neologysms like womyn-born womyn if we can avoid it unless it's unavoidable.

LG AR2-02 in Vilnius

Analogy is sometimes risky but in this case I think it's valid; to take a less hot-potato topic, would you insist on our not using the word "train" to describe the image to the right because technically it only constitutes a "train" if at least two separate vehicles are coupled together and this particular model was built as a single long unit? Unless there's a very good reason not to, we should always be using the terminology readers will understand, not the terminology the subject specialists use.

I would have no issue with synonyms that aren't in the cited source provided any reader would understand what you meant by it (or you explained how you were using it if there was any potential for confusion); it's no different to the way music articles will mix up "song", "composition", "piece" and "work" to reduce the repetition. Even on a hot-button topic like trans issues, I don't think there's an issue provided you acknowledge that you're aware of the issue ("In this article the term 'men' does not include trans males because…").

All things being equal, what should happen is probably no different to what would happen. You and I have been jaundiced by long exposure to problematic areas, but in general the vast majority of Wikipedia editors understand that we're writing for readers and not for ourselves. Trans and gender identity issues on Wikipedia were poisoned for a long time by one particular crazy who would try to turn everything into a fight, but that editor (and their socks) was kicked out some time ago now and touch wood the out-kicking appears to have stuck. I suspect that as long as you're willing to explain what you've done and why you're doing it in a particular way, most people whatever their personal preferences are going to be reasonable. ‑ Iridescent 05:21, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

In my opinion, this partly goes to editorial judgment about whether or not the choice of language is contentious. If the choice of words is just a matter of professional technical language in the source, versus readability for our readers, it's fine to focus on what is most helpful to readers, and not sweat the OR details. But if it's something like whether to call something "terrorism" or "a riot" or some technical term used by the source, it's probably best to use the exact term used by the source, with attribution. So if it's "XY males" versus "men", it's fine to go with "men", but if the context is something specific about trans people, then editors might need to be more precise. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:01, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Plus there's our old friend ENGVAR to consider. It isn't such an issue on sex/gender as that's an area where words have pretty much the same meaning everywhere, but in some areas like ethnicity and nationality what seems like the most straightforward terminology can be very confusing. ("Less than 1% of the Chinese population is of Asian descent" and "3⁄5 of the population of Europe live in Europe" both make sense in BrEng, albeit anyone actually using either in print would likely be fired for inexcusably sloppy writing.) Even on sex/gender, I'll be willing to bet that at least some of the terminology which appears perfectly acceptable and non-contentious is considered grossly offensive by someone, somewhere. ‑ Iridescent 15:22, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

That's a good example. One of the complaints about the choice of sex/gender words is that there is more than one meaning for the words. We could adopt a rule that says "Strictly observe the sex and gender distinction" (I wouldn't recommend such a rule myself), but even if we adopted such a rule, that wouldn't make the sources strictly observe the distinction.

The community has a lot of experience with how to describe people who are nationals of one country but not ethnically/racially associated with that country's history. In some respects, this should be no different: just as Chinese person could indicate that the person is a "citizen of China" or a "person of Chinese descent" (and often means both), then woman could indicate that the person is a "adult female human" or an "adult human with a feminine gender identity" (and often means both).

A couple of years ago, I attempted to convince editors that Woman should say that different definitions existed (e.g., psychology, biology, sports, law, feminist scholars). The idea was rejected. I have wondered since then whether some opposing editors thought that admitting to the existence of different definitions would undermine gender identity as the One True™ Definition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I doubt anyone would argue against the words "XY human" unless they were in the fishbowl of sausage makingWikipedia editing. Only the unreasonable would argue the fact that genetic humans were being talked about if the article is written clearly. I suspect only Wikipedia editors and a few others care about policies like WP:STICKTOSOURCE. The people reading our articles would be grateful if we were more accurate than tabloid media, and wouldn't be as detail orientated as we are. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:37, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@I dream of horses, I can imagine a lot of people arguing against "XY human". Can you imagine anyone saying "I went to the store yesterday, and this XY human was complaining that the lines were too long"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I thought we were talking about scientific (or "scholarly") articles where primarily the genetic configuration matters. Did I misunderstand? I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:51, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

That's actually a good example of another way that context is important. An article about genetics might well be a place where the "XY" terminology would be preferable, but it would be undesirable in a page about sex differences in the prevalence of a non-genetic medical condition. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tryptofish Exactly. In the context that WhatamIdoing was talking about, I might use they/them pronouns and "person" if I was remembering to not assume gender. But we're talking about genetics, and so it makes sense to be clinical. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:47, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Oddly, I didn't make the same assumption. WAID's OP says it's a scholarly source that says "XY" the first time and then says "men" after that. There's obviously something genetic about the source, but I don't know how focused on genetics it might be. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

5α-Reductase 2 deficiency

@Tryptofish: Perhaps it'd help to have access to the source (which, granted, may or may not be possible, a lot of medical sources are woefully paywalled). Not all XY people have, for example, penises or two testicles, and gender affirming surgery isn't the only reason why that would be. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:58, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

(No need to ping me, I watch here.) Yes, it would depend on the source, and the context. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:00, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

That particular example was inspired by 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency, about which scholarly sources refer to the affected people as:

• 46X,Y males
• 46,XY individuals
• genetic males
• karyotypic males
• males
• men
• females (usually in the context of women's sports; cf. Caster Semenya)
• women (ditto)
• girls (usually in reference to gender of rearing)
• male pseudohermaphrodites

This is an intersex condition. Affected individuals are believed to be female at birth, but most develop male external anatomy during puberty. Many of them transition their social gender during puberty as well. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing In that circumstance, "intersex" makes the most since. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:33, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I can see problems with "intersex"; it's such a vague term that we'd need to keep a constant "on this occasion, by 'intersex' we mean…" running commentary.

As a more general point, remember that although we tend to give more leeway on highly technical topics we're writing for people with wildly different levels of background knowledge. (Although it's fair to say nobody without a fair amount of background knowledge is likely to search for "5α-Reductase 2 deficiency", it's perfectly possible that someone could land on the page via Special:Random or via an internal link.) To the hypothetical "bright 14 year old with no prior knowledge" or "girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her but only if she’s empowered with the knowledge to do so", a term like "46,XY individuals" may as well be written in Japanese. It's no good holding endless RFCs to determine the perfect terminology to use on each and every occasion in the article, if it ends up making the article so incomprehensible that we end up having to do what we did at Introduction to gauge theory / Gauge theory and write an entirely separate version of the article for the benefit of people who don't understand all the jargon. ‑ Iridescent 18:31, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

For me, it helps to know that the example page is specifically 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency. This is a page that I would regard as both (1) highly focused on genetics, and (2) dealing with contentious issues of sexual and gender identity. I'm not bothered by the 46,XY terminology, because it's explained via a blue link at the beginning of the first (Presentation) section of the main text. I think it's necessary to use technical, genetic language for most of the page, because "men" or "women" are oversimplifications and misleading. But there is an interesting exception to that: in the Society and culture section later on the page, it talks about "four elite women athletes", and that's the correct way to say it. "Women athletes" are a thing in the same way as "college athletes" or "professional athletes".

As for gauge theory and related physics pages, that's a pet peeve of mine. I've complained repeatedly that they are written for physics grad students, and not general readers. The response I get is that mathematics is the only way to describe it precisely enough (not really true, if one has sufficient writing proficiency), but I just don't have the motivation to argue with that. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:04, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

5α-Reductase 2 deficiency is the source of my example. However, the primary reason I'm asking is because of the number of new editors who are editing traditional topics in women's health, such as Pregnancy,[6][7] Breastfeeding,[8] and Premenstrual syndrome[9][10], in ways that are usually accurate and verifiable (though not always).

If this turned into a big dispute, the main options (that I can see) are either an IDONTLIKEIT argument or an ostensibly policy-based argument. I am not sure how, exactly, we would make policy-based arguments. Would editors accept that NOR's "Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research" includes using words that have multiple meanings (e.g., "women") when one of those meanings matches the substance? Is there a valid DUE argument against a choice of synonyms?

We don't seem to have a policy that requires editors to write brilliant prose with a minimum of technical jargon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing It's probably impractical to poll people who have 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency themselves, but has that been done by any other organization? I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 04:23, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

So far as I know, the answer is generally "men". I don't see an issue with using "men" in the article.

This is generally a topic that frustrates me; much of my medical writing brushes right up against both it and the absurdly wide definitions some advocates use of 'intersex'. (I got consensus to remove the "notable people" list from Klinefelter syndrome composed of serial killers and transgender porn stars, but I have not yet successfully removed things like trisomy X or XYY syndrome from our various decentralized lists of intersex conditions, because no matter how many people agree you only need one dissenter to edit-war.) Fundamentally, it is neither an accurate description of most people in a cluster nor even particularly friendly to the cluster's exceptions to fold and spindle language here. (Diffs like that PMS one always amaze me -- someone who carries around the belief that every person with XX chromosomes menstruates clearly isn't being trans-inclusive, because one of the whole points of medical transition in that direction is it stops someone from menstruating!) The intersex disputes I sometimes get wrapped up in are genuinely confusing to me, as sex chromosome aneuploidies have no meaningful association with either physically ambiguous genitals or cross-sex gender identity, but they rage on while I just try to improve the damn articles. I dread the day I go mad enough to try fix the KS article and spend the rest of my life reverting people trying to add that it makes you gay. Vaticidalprophet 05:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

IMO a key audience for the 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency article is parents of affected children, so "men" is probably the wrong age group. A majority, but with a sizeable minority, socially transition and identify as men after puberty.

I assume that the PMS editor, whom I suspect of repeating these same edits for more than five years now, is trying to include non-binary, female-bodied people who are not doing any sort of hormonal transition.

It sounds like KS needs a well-sourced statement along the lines of "There used to be a myth about KS making people gay, but it's not true". Addressing the subject directly tends to discourage people from putting falsehoods in an article. Otherwise, the article has a lacuna, and nature abhors a vacuum. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

This is totally outside my area so I don't know if the sources have been subsequently debunked, but here's a paper in Nature reporting Regarding sexual function, significantly more men with KS than controls reported being homosexual or bisexual, for what it's worth (albeit it looks like a relatively small sample). ‑ Iridescent 18:28, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Taking a look, yeah, that's four gay XXY men and one gay XY man, and eight bi XXY men with three bi XY men -- not really the sort of thing people are thinking of when they try to posit Klinefelter's as some sort of Intersex Condition that makes men More Womanly. In fact, both are much lower than the current estimates of bisexual orientation amongst young adults.

This shades into OR, which is one reason that article will probably suck forever (because the sources to make it not suck don't exist), but there are two big confounders here. The first is that sex chromosome aneuploidies have basically negligible diagnosis rates compared to their prevalence -- KS is much higher than most, which is to say about a quarter of men with it are ever diagnosed in their lifetimes. Because the presentations of them are so mild, people only tend to get diagnosed if they have unusually good reasons to suspect they might be, and historically having any sort of sexual habits that diverge from sociocultural norms (including but not limited to homosexuality) has been a major driver for that.

The other is that they're all fairly strongly associated with various common forms of neurodivergence, and those absolutely do have associations with non-heterosexuality, completely independent of anything to do with chromosomes. Autistic adults are very strongly less-likely-to-be-straight as a group, for instance, and autism rates are elevated for all of the major sex chromosome aneuploidies. "KS makes you autistic, and autism makes you gay" might actually be an accurate statement, but it's definitely not the one people are picturing when they have the original thought. Vaticidalprophet 02:35, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Is there a policy about "We should respect the identity of most people with a diagnosis, with a footnote that there's inevitably going to be exceptions?" Probably not, but I'm starting to realize that's my opinion in this specific situation. It seems like most people with this particular hard to spell diagnosis start out in life identifying as girls, and then identify as boys/men after puberty, so maybe the article we write should reflect that. Not startling parents would be a secondary priority.

Then again, perhaps there's a bias that's preventing me from being reader-centered; if most of the people reading the article are parents, perhaps we should think about their feelings more. I acquired multiple diagnoses in childhood and adolescence (not anything that would bring up a debate like this, but still). I was also a pre-teen/teen with a very narrow interest in disability and medical information. I spent a lot of time looking up medical information and about disability rights activism online. I'm imagining about how I would want my disabilities written about if a similar debate came up for anything I'm diagnosed with, but a difference audience would feel respected with a different terminology. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:45, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

We have a rule that says we prefer individuals' self-identification over society's gender assumptions. If you don't contradict society's assumptions, then (due to an absence of higher priority information) we go with society's assumptions (meaning: editors don't need a tweet from Queen Elizabeth about her gender identity to refer to her as "she" in an article).

We also tend to prioritize gender over sex. We tend to write that heart disease is the leading cause of death in "women", not in "biological female adults". However, I'm not sure that the reason for this stylistic preference has anything to do with the sex/gender distinction. It could be entirely about a desire for non-technical language.

In the case of 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency, IMO the solution is simple: we refer to "genetic males"

The wording of your first sentence ("respect the identity of most people") could be read two ways. Should we:

• respect the identity of the majority ("breastfeeding women"), or
• respect the identity of as many people as possible ("nursing parents")?

I am curious what you think of these choices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

In this specific example, I'd always avoid "nursing", as it has far too much potential to be misunderstood. Particularly in a medical context, I'm certain a significant proportion of readers would interpret it as "parents caring for a child who's ill or disabled". In the more general case, I'd tend to go with "respect the identity of the majority" provided it's made clear why we're doing so—in an area with so much nuance it's never going to be possible to come up with a wording that pleases everyone, so we sometimes need to accept that whatever we say is going to annoy someone so our goal should be to cause the least offense. ‑ Iridescent 16:48, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

MOS:JARGON thoughts

We might not explicitly have a policy that requires editors to write brilliant prose with a minimum of technical jargon, but we do have a widely-publicised and well-followed guideline of

Some topics are intrinsically technical, but editors should try to make them understandable to as many readers as possible. Minimize jargon, or at least explain it or tag it using {{Technical}} or {{Technical-statement}} for other editors to fix. For unavoidably technical articles, a separate introductory article (like Introduction to general relativity) may be the best solution. Avoid excessive wikilinking (linking within Wikipedia) as a substitute for parenthetic explanations such as the one in this sentence. Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do. When the notions named by jargon are too complex to explain concisely in a few parenthetical words, write one level down. For example, consider adding a brief background section with {{main}} tags pointing to the full treatment article(s) of the prerequisite notions; this approach is practical only when the prerequisite concepts are central to the exposition of the article's main topic and when such prerequisites are not too numerous. Short articles, such as stubs, generally do not have such sections.

which is essentially the same thing in slightly fancier language. (We also have Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable even though that's so well-hidden nobody knows it's there or pays much attention to it.) ‑ Iridescent 05:22, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the usual disputed words (men/males/people/individuals) are considered "technical". The biggest problem isn't people trying to repeat "46X,Y make" throughout an article; the biggest problem is people wanting to use common words that have multiple meanings. Is this men like gender identity, or men like biological sex? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

They're flip sides of the same coin. Either we use a term which is understandable by readers but open to misinterpretation, or we use a term knowing that at least some readers aren't going to understand it at all. Personally I'd go with "genetically male" and "externally male", with an explanatory footnote the first time each is used to explain precisely what we mean by the term on this particular article. As long as we explain why we're using a term which may not be some people's preferred term, there shouldn't be too much of an issue. (Yes, the Faes of the world are going to argue, but to be frank they're going to argue whatever you use.) ‑ Iridescent 18:12, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

So if we phrased it as a principle, it might sound something like this?

"Sometimes editors will have to choose between a word (e.g., men) that is understandable by readers but which might be open to misinterpretation due to multiple meanings (e.g., people with masculine gender identities vs biological adult males) and a word (e.g., non-intersexed 46X,Y adults) that is not understandable by most readers. In such cases, it may be helpful to primarily use the simpler word and to explain in the article which meaning is intended."

Does that sound about right?

In terms of practical implementation, editors might add a footnote that says "In this article, men means..." or a parenthetical note that says something like "seen in men (i.e., in non-intersexed 46X,Y adult males)" or "seen in premenopausal women (i.e., biologically mature female humans, regardless of gender identity)", probably at the first reasonable opportunity in the article.

If I gave that advice to an editor, and it resulted in the "wrong" terms being used, what would you expect the wikilawyers to say about it, other than my "practical" examples sounding remarkably extreme? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Both the wikilawyers and the identity-politics-warriors (on both sides) are going to complain whatever you do, so put them out of your mind. What to consider is which position best serves readers. My personal feeling in this particular case is that "46 X,Y" is going to confuse too many people, "intersex" is too ambiguous and "men" would need too much explanation, so the least worst solution is "physically male"/"genetically male" (with an appropriate explanation at the first available opportunity), even if they're not the preferred terms in academia. ‑ Iridescent 19:44, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd be careful of WP:CREEP. But then again, I stay away from MOS. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:51, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm no fan of the micromanagementy In the case of coursed instruments such as the twelve-string guitar, courses should be separated by dashes, and string notes adjacent, so the twelve-string guitar tuned to octave G tuning is eE–aA–d′d–g′g–bb–e′e′ in Helmholtz notation parts of the MOS. That said, just because it's absurdly overspecific and some people have a tendency to give it way more significance than it deserves, doesn't mean the whole thing is invalid. Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Technical language may be a highfalutin' name, but the whole section could be summarized as "be comprehensible", which as far as I'm concerned is far more important than any one of the alleged "five pillars". ‑ Iridescent 22:15, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Sure. I didn't mean it very strongly, just sort of had a reaction that it was trying to spell out stuff that's just, well, come to think of it, not comprehensible. But don't mind me, if I don't like MOS, I probably don't like lichen either. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Manuals of style in the real world exist to stop arguing about stylistic choices that are often arbitrary. The problem on English Wikipedia is that its consensus-based decision-making process is a poor fit for making arbitrary choices. isaacl (talk) 22:30, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

But if we can agree on something to write down, that actually addresses the problem, it does tend to reduce the size and intensity of subsequent disputes. "Hey, I can see where you're coming from, but Wikipedia decided to do it the other way" can stop problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:59, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, not reality. In my experience, it just shifts the debate to a different venue, where instead of engaging in endless pointless disputes about what to do in a particular situation, the style warriors and POV-pushers just engage in endless pointless disputes about why the policy ABSOLUTELY MUST be changed, or why it shouldn't apply to a given page. You presumably don't think the 2000 pages (at the time of writing) of archives of arguments over the precise wording of the Manual of Style (and those are only the ones with a Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/ prefix, not the discussions that took place on wikiprojects, article talk pages, Village Pumps, Wikipedia noticeboards, off-wiki mailing lists, etc) represent a project working well? ‑ Iridescent 16:48, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Close reading of LABEL, which is your bog-standard WP:PGCONFLICT problem. Policy A and Guideline B say to do this; Guideline C says to do something different. But we must make Guideline C continue to say the wrong thing, because when it says the wrong thing, I can use it to force editors to do the right thing. When I want them to include in-text attribution, I tell them to follow C; when I don't, I tell them to follow A and B. Very simple, and the whole thing will fall apart if you make all the rules say the same thing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

As with so much else that's wrong with Wikipedia, it ultimately comes down to:

1. We're operating under an underlying set of rules that were drawn up for a niche hobbyist website inhabited by a small group of bros who all knew each other and all had similar values;
2. The rules that are appropriate for a small group of people with a shared background, shared social circle and shared values,—and where even the most serious mistake has almost minimal real-world impact—aren't appropriate for a major institution where mistakes can have immediate and serious real-world consequences;
3. Because "we've always done it this way" is so entrenched and because there are vocal groups who have something to lose as a consequence of any change, it's virtually impossible to fix the problem even when everyone knows it's there.

I wouldn't hold my breath. At some point we should really be having serious discussions about whether "Assume good faith" and "Ignore all rules" are still appropriate 20 years later and on whether we should start considering a formal written constitutional mechanism for how and when to impose bright-line hard limits on editorial discretion even though it will mean imposing apparently harsh sanctions for breaches of trivial rules as the only way to force people to follow them. ("If you don't agree to use unspaced en-dashes to hyphenate page ranges within citations, you will be blocked".) Unfortunately that would likely be the most heated and foul-tempered debate in Wikipedia's entire history, so few sane people would want to take part and we'd end up with a written constitution drafted by the sort of crazy people who hang round WP:ANI, Meta, WT:MOS et al, and which the broad editor base would (rightly) ignore. ‑ Iridescent 07:35, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Thoughts on "Assume Good Faith"

Amusingly your rotating picture at the top is "Arbcom assuming good faith" for me at the moment... AGF is one of the most abused guidelines there is, and routinely abused by long-term established editors as they wikilawyer. Its an excuse for bad behaviour. The reality is that if your contribution and noticeboard history shows a habit of being misleading, expecting people to give you the benefit of the doubt in similar situations is just idiotic. Likewise when you have a topic ban from say, religion broadly construed, and get caught repeatedly, expecting people to AGF whatever bullshit is the latest excuse... frankly ABF would be far more productive in the process of resolving problematic behaviour. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:49, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I personally think that AGF is inappropriate for modern-day Wikipedia—the idea is nice, but what was suitable for a website with a dozen editors and a few hundred readers doesn't scale. We know that we're under constant attack from spammers, vandals and POV-pushers; when I see User:Widgetomatic adding reams of cut-and-pasted press releases to [[Widgetomatic]], I'm not going to operate on the assumption that this is all some fantastic coincidence and I should consider whether a dispute stems from different perspectives, and look for ways to reach consensus, whatever policy says.

With regards to your specific example, it's not so cut-and-dried, and I personally hate the "broadly construed" wording even more than I hate "admonished". To stick with your example of "religion, broadly construed", if either Arbcom or the community imposed such a sanction it would be because the editor in question was disruptively editing articles on theology, or changing people's religion in biographies without appropriate sourcing. Under the "broadly construed" wording, it would technically be a breach of the sanctions if the editor in question subsequently corrected a "cathlic" mis-spelling, or if a place formally changed its name, they (correctly) renamed the category to reflect the new name, and in the subsequent bulk search-and-replace of [[Category:Buildings in Bombay]] → [[Category:Buildings in Mumbai]] (or whatever) they happened in passing to make utterly non-controversial and unquestionably appropriate edits to the local church/mosque/temple. (It would even technically be a breach of "broadly construed" if they were consciously trying to avoid breaching their sanctions and went to someone else saying "I'm unable to directly edit pages on churches (or whatever), I've done everything else but can you do those particular pages", because in mentioning those pages they'd still be talking about "religion, broadly construed".) You can guarantee that in these circumstances there will be some wikilawyer type who will be scrutinizing their edits, eagerly waiting to point out "See! They edited an article on religion, broadly construed! BAN THEM NOW!!!". Sanctions on Wikipedia—be they anything from ultra-niche topic bans to full-scale global locks—should always be about preventing disruption, not about point-scoring. ‑ Iridescent 16:27, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I think that when you see someone adding cut-and-paste information from what's apparently their own press releases, you really should assume good faith – namely, you should assume the person genuinely believed that these self-promotion efforts would help Wikipedia, and then you should prevent them from providing any more such assistance. I don't see the point of thinking that such efforts are meant to harm Wikipedia. They did harm Wikipedia, but it's more like a clueless but friendly neighbor who "helped" mow your lawn and accidentally killed several plants in the process. He meant well, and now we have to clean up the mess. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:39, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Nah. Some, certainly, but head on over to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as spam at any time when it hasn't been emptied for a while, and it's obvious that a significant proportion are outright spammers.

For over 30 years, [company] have been providing exceptional bareboat yacht charters in the tropical paradise of the Whitsundays. There is plenty of activities to be enjoyed, both offshore and onshore this includes swimming, fishing, snorkeling, bushwalking, exploring the islands, and kayaking. No license is required for a Yacht Charter in the Whitsundays. You will just need to have sailing experience and be competent in handling a sailing vessel. You can be a captain of your own adventure.

and

[Videogame includes] Over TEN types of enemies and hard-fought bosses Find your strategies to fight each of them off. Prepare yourself for the fight of your life.

and

At [company], we aim to disrupt the local market with cutting-edge technologies and solutions. Innovation is not a lavish term that can be used to describe businesses, but it’s the action or process of innovating and that’s what we do at [company]. Our approach is unique. We enable our customers to take control of their data across the broad, leveraging existing investments to increase visibility and provide actionable insights. [Company] provides an operational optimization that utilizes the previously under-utilized data. Thus, we offer a range of products and services to accelerate our partners journey from data to well informed actionable insights. Our team members are passionate about being part of a company that can solve actual tough problems and create innovative solutions to help our partners. We believe in taking the best idea regardless of the owner of the idea as we have a flat architecture, where our people can be fearless and feel empowered to always do the right thing.

are all among pages I've deleted just in the last few days (and those are just the first three I looked at, I could give you a dozen more in less than a minute), and I'm most definitely not among Wikipedia's most active admins.

I know you're wearing your Wikipedia hat rather than your WMF hat currently, but the consistent apparent inability of the WMF to appreciate just how high the volume of spam that the Wikipedia community has to deal with has become—in particular the strain the ever-rising volume of spam puts on the ever-shrinking groups of new page patrollers to do the tagging and admins to do the deleting and blocking—is to my mind an entirely valid criticism of the WMF. Regardless of what the intentions of the WMF actually are, it often gives the impression that it doesn't care how much of a problem paid editors cause, provided they keep on creating new accounts and thus keep the sacred {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} figure artifically inflated so the engagement figures continue to look good on the glossy reports. ‑ Iridescent 22:57, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

The thing about AGF...the first word is "assume," meaning when there's evidence either for or against good faith, it no longer applies and you should be able to be able to act according to the evidence. At least, that's my approach to it. Unfortunately, I'm aware other people are more rigid. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 00:38, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

"You need to assume good faith about me!"

Dunning–Kruger effect is linked on almost 600 talk pages, so apparently we are reaching good-faith explanations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:56, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Don't be a dick (the OG wording, not the bowdlerized "don't be a jerk") is linked on 1191 talk tages. People's reserves of good faith aren't infinite. Yes, fans of a product or person can in good faith think they're being helpful by copy-pasting press releases or the subject's own website, but that doesn't extend to people writing obvious ad blurb like The company is known for its quality service and excellence in customer service. The company provides excellent services in Website Designing, Mobile App Development (Both Android and iOS), Search Engine Optimization, Branding Services, UI/UX Design, Package Design and Label design. The company reached its zenith by its dedication and superiority in services. who are clearly just trying to use Wikipedia as a SEO tool. (Seriously, don't underestimate how many spammers are out there. And those are just the freelance sock-farmers, not the in-house PR people.) ‑ Iridescent 06:02, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

WMF vs Wikipedia

Since there's (hopefully?) no Wikipedia:Template limits on this page, I just want to highlight an Iri keeper here, that pretty much sums up why and how the WMF has made editing so unpleasant for the relatively few editors who actually write content (something they don't seem to acknowledge or value):

• I know you're wearing your Wikipedia hat rather than your WMF hat currently, but the consistent apparent inability of the WMF to appreciate just how high the volume of spam that the Wikipedia community has to deal with has become—in particular the strain the ever-rising volume of spam puts on the ever-shrinking groups of new page patrollers to do the tagging and admins to do the deleting and blocking—is to my mind an entirely valid criticism of the WMF. Regardless of what the intentions of the WMF actually are, it often gives the impression that it doesn't care how much of a problem paid editors cause, provided they keep on creating new accounts and thus keep the sacred 120,097 figure artifically inflated so the engagement figures continue to look good on the glossy reports.

Where the "rest of us" stand in relation to the phenom Iri explains has become more and more clear over the decades. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

The WMF ... is a gravy-train for folks. It no longer is meaningfully in touch with the main source of its gravy either - lets face it, en-Wiki is the engine that keeps that gravy-train moving, not all the feel-good crap the WMF keeps slinging money into. When I get discouraged, though, I do something like look at the page views for ... The Holocaust, and realize that getting things right MATTERS. Since I cleaned that article up in August 2017, there have been 17.4 million views, and at least they are getting a reasonably accurate article. So, I keep plugging away here ... not because of, but in spite of the WMF. I'd be a lot less cranky about the WMF if they actually supported their editors (and I don't consider the insanity that is the UCoC to be the support that is most needed for editors). If various WMF folks who are reading this REALLY want to support the editors - here's some things they could be doing - (1) spend a bit more supporting the projects on the community wishlist (2) get some folks who actually resolve bug issues with the software (3) get competent developers to do the mobile side stuff so we don't have the issues with it (4) cough up some more money for grants to editors for sources (5) expand the wikipedia library - I'd kill for access to Routledge, Boydell, etc. More academic press access would be a gift from the gods. (6) Get wikiEd to stop being stupid. Of course, none of these things will ever happen - we'll just keep stumbling along... Ealdgyth (talk) 15:37, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to endorse this. And add Elsevier and GeoScienceWorld to the pile, too. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:51, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

A me-too in the endorse department. (Not that the WMF cares in the least what I think.) There's a saying that "you treasure what you can measure", that is usually applied to dysfunctional organizations that measure something that seems good but misses the real point. Here, the WMF is measuring those sacred engagement numbers. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:01, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Ealdgyth and Jo-Jo Eumerus, the "better TWL" of those is actually doable. TWL is going through an expansion driven by an actual human being you can have a genuine conversation with about the process (rather than some faceless bit of the WMF). You can tell Samwalton9 (WMF) that you want X added to TWL, get a human response and an email from a human to the relevant wing of the thing you want added, and you can ask him what the process of adding something to TWL is like (and why it's sometimes quick and sometimes drags out forever) and he'll tell you. There have been new TWL additions in the past couple days. Vaticidalprophet 01:33, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Vaticidalprophet - it's true, we're continuously trying to expand The Wikipedia Library. We just added Wiley and re-enabled Cochrane. We're also now in the process of reprioritising all our outstanding requests so that we can continue pitching the program to more publishers. We just had a new team member join who is taking the lead on this. Let me know if you have any questions :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 15:03, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Ealdgyth, just gonna put meta:Wikimedia Foundation salaries here. As of 2019 when the figures stop being made public, the ED of the WMF paid herself roughly twice what the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom earns (US$218,410 at todays rates), but at least had the decency to only value her own job at 97% of that of the President of the United States. (I'd also draw readers' attention to the "cost per employee" figure, and ask if these figures bear the least resemblance to any real-world employer you've ever seen.) ‑ Iridescent 16:10, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Um, the entire tech industry? Glassdoor announced this week that the median base salary for tech workers in the US was $145,000, not including "other compensation" or "employee benefits" (which average 30% of total compensation in the western US). If the median base salary is $145K, then total compensation would be expected to run around $207K. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't think you're making the point you think you're making. Since—as the WMF never tires of telling us—Wikimedia is a global movement, there's absolutely no reason for all those jobs to be in the most over-heated market in the world. Even in Central London, the second most over-heated market in the world, the equivalent figures are roughly half what they are in the US (which is why Google and Apple are both currently engaged in building London offices the size of small cities), and if the WMF were willing to move some functions to India, Africa or even Eastern Europe they could literally reduce costs by orders of magnitude. (Just to put this in perspective, in 2019—the last year before the pandemic drove salaries down—the median compensation for chief executives at the UK's hundred largest charities was £155,000, and these are billion-dollar operations like Save the Children and Oxfam, not relatively minor players like the WMF.) ‑ Iridescent 07:53, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

But only US staff are "employees", and therefore only US compensation appears in that column. The non-US staff (a little less than half the total staff?) get reported on a different line.

Because of differences in tax and healthcare systems, it's really difficult to compare employee compensation across countries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:32, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Soon we'll have the WMF once again asking 150,000 people in India to donate $2 each, so some manager in SF can earn $300,000. And if the Italian emails are anything to go by, people will once again be given the impression this money is needed to "keep Wikipedia online", rather than to finance 1,000% growth. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising Are you fine with that? --Andreas JN466 20:26, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

As for the apparent $191,000 cost per employee, note Maryana Iskander's comments here on Meta: meta:Talk:IRS_tax_related_information/2019_Wikimedia_Foundation_Form_990_Frequently_Asked_Questions#WMF_salary_costs and related mailing list threads, e.g. [11]. Thanks for the island of sanity on this page ... it reminds me of why I got involved in Wikipedia in the first place. Andreas JN466 18:35, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Huh, she does not want to answer that question, does she? The irony of course is that the evasion just makes the WMF look incompetent and shifty—that question could literally have been batted away in a single sentence with "yes, we pay a lot because we want to recruit and retain the best". (I still wouldn't agree with the reply—there's little to no benefit to the WMF being physically located in the most expensive job market in the world and massive downsides—but it would satisfy most questioners, particularly if anyone ever managed to come up with a convincing answer as to why the WMF needs to be in San Francisco.) ‑ Iridescent 20:12, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I got a t-shirt (which I gave away), while acknowledgement of the value of the few contributors who keep highly viewed articles accurate and representative of "Wikipedia's best work" remains abundantly absent, to the point of mockery of our efforts. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:26, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia, the few contributors who keep highly viewed articles accurate and representative of "Wikipedia's best work" is something to which the WMF is never going to admit. People like you keep Wikipedia accurate. Readers verify the facts. is official Wikimedia Foundation dogma, to the extent that it's almost the first statement on the WMF's public-facing website. There are some honorable exceptions at the WMF who have actual experience on the wikis, I think that in general most of the people there collectively genuinely believe that it's The Wisdom Of Crowds that writes and maintains everything as opposed to individual people, and that consequently losing ten experienced subject-matter experts is more than mitigated by recruiting eleven new editors, even if those new editors are vandals, spammers, or just good-faith new editors who don't do anything more than make three edits before they get bored. ‑ Iridescent 07:53, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

And we know that all too well. Why we leave is not a mystery; why we stay is. I have largely reduced my editing to two areas: those that make a difference in the real world (faulty medical information and POV warriors), and those that are fun (right now, that is FAR saves). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:24, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• The example I always use when talking about the sock policy is that if there's one user that creates 10 serial accounts within the span of 90 days, makes a few hundred edits a piece, and then abandons them to "clean start" or whatever you call it, its inherently disruptive and more likely than not is an LTA who changed ISPs or moved. At some point, the creation of a new account every 10 days becomes disruptive in itself if you get involved in the social aspects of either the community or content creation, and I also don't have enough good faith left in me to believe that someone with a legion of serial accounts isn't under an indefinite block on 1 or more stale accounts. (Also, I'm sure you know this but noting it for the record so no one digs this diff up out of context, the policy specifically says the list at ILLEGIT is non-exhaustive and I'm not advocating anyone be blocked outside of policy.) TonyBallioni (talk) 03:21, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with you, although there are exceptions to I also don't have enough good faith left in me to believe that someone with a legion of serial accounts isn't under an indefinite block on 1 or more stale accounts. I know of at least one very high profile editor who would deliberately switch between accounts every few days "because it's technically not sockpuppetry if I'm only using one account at a time", and who appeared to genuinely believe he wasn't violating even the spirit of policy let alone the better and seemed genuinely hurt and confused when he was called out for it. That particular case dragged on for literally years. ‑ Iridescent 06:40, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

"After a while, it gets wearisome and demotivating"

Regarding you should prevent them from providing any more such assistance, the problem is it can be hard to get to that point, as some editors invariably turn up saying they did similar things at first, and now they're super klewful editors, so you should spend a lot of your effort to help the editors in question. There are many who seem to expect conciliatory editors to invest significant time to work with unaccommodating editors. After a while, it gets wearisome and demotivating. isaacl (talk) 08:15, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl: After a while, it gets wearisome and demotivating.

That above quote is probably how every retired editor, whether or not they leave a paragraphs-long retirement essay, feels when they finally decide to leave for good. Concerning. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 08:31, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I very much disagree. In most cases, the reason is just "it got boring". The big divaquits are more noticeable, but the overwhelming majority of former editors are people who just gradually drifted away, and most of the rest are people who left owing to lifestyle changes (ranging from "I got a new job which doesn't give me time", to "I got a new hobby", to "I have medical issues which leave me unable to concentrate", to "I've moved to China", to "I'm dead"). Because none of these people leave big notifications on their userpages or rambling manifestoes on the admin noticeboards as they leave, one doesn't notice their disappearance until one goes to ask them a question and notices they haven't edited for six months, or (if they're admins) the bot flags them for inactivity and desysops them. ‑ Iridescent 14:58, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Life changes seem to make a big difference. High-volume editing requires lots of time, and when you go from "bored student" to spending 50+ hours a week at work, married, with a baby, that really cuts into time for editing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I am not so sure on that, Iri. Every time I have quit editing, it has been because I found something better to do because of my disgust at onsite issues, and those almost always point to the WMF or site administration. That's similar to what I most often hear from people.

One thing I am really curious about is the group-think that resides in WMF circles. I don't know if it's worse than in other similar endeavours, but it seems so, and it seems to matter not where an editor started-- everyone who comes under the WMF umbrella seems to succumb. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:22, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't think you or I are particularly typical. For most editors, even fairly active ones, both the WMF and the on-site administration are largely a vague presence in the background of which one is vaguely aware, rather than something that has a significant impact on day-to-day activity. Because you and I regularly run up against areas of active dispute, it's easy to forget that most editors are just working away largely undisturbed on whatever their preferred topic happens to be and don't keep getting dragged into arguments. When people in that position leave, it's generally either suddenly leaving as the result of a change in circumstances, or gradually drifting away either because they're getting bored, they feel they've said all they have to say about their preferred topic, they're beginning to feel unappreciated, or some combination of the three. (To put it a bit more bitchily, the first hundred or so entries at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits#1–1000 reads like Who's Who of Wikipedia's Ongoing Disputes, but then you get into a long tail of people you probably never heard of because they never get into arguments.)

On the group think at the WMF, I don't know, but I would have thought it's fairly self-reinforcing. The WMF has two fundamentally incompatiable roles: their official job to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally", and their self-appointed job as a political lobby group. I'd assume that anyone applying for any kind of job there who didn't agree with the political advocacy side would be unlikely to make it onto the shortlist (and even if they got the job, wouldn't last long); when you rinse-and-repeat the same cycle of reinforcement over 20 years, you end up with a group all of whom share that particular niche world view, even though it's completely unrepresentative of either the participants on the wikis or the world in general. ‑ Iridescent 06:50, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

"broadly" vs "reasonably"

Regarding one aspect of the above discussion, I once tried to change the wording to "interpreted broadly but reasonably." I was voted down because "reasonably" was "too vague." Newyorkbrad (talk) 08:31, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

You of all people should know that Wikipedia institutionally doesn't do "reasonably". Unless a rule is spelled out in minute detail, people will find "technically this doesn't apply in these circumstances" loopholes and brandish them triumphantly. (See also "technically that's a guideline not a policy", "it's not explicitly mentioned" and "I've seen someone else do it and not be sanctioned so applying the rules in my case would be unfair".) If Wikipedia does have a collective consciousness, it's the consciousness of a tax avoidance accountant. ‑ Iridescent 14:50, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad: the problem with "broadly construed" is that there is no limit to "broadly". I could find a link between polar opposites for no other reason that they are polar opposites. I applaud your efforts and bemoan that your common sense has fallen on deaf ears. Iridescent is absolutely correct: "institutionally" doesn't do "reasonably" and WMF is clueless on that front. Buffs (talk) 21:59, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

To be fair, it cuts both ways. Without the 'broadly' it provides too much scope for "technically that isn't covered by the ban" wriggling. To stick with the original example of a ban from "religion, broadly construed" it could potentially lead to endless "technically Buddhism isn't a religion because it doesn't require the belief in a particular god or set of gods" style arguments. By the time someone gets to the stage where we're enacting topic bans, AGF no longer applies and it's reasonable for us to assume that they're at least potentially going to try to push the envelope. ‑ Iridescent 08:07, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Then "reasonably construed" should be the standard. If in doubt, they should ask for clarification. From the religion example, "broadly construed" could be used to attempt to ban a user who edits Vince Lombardi's page just because he went to a parochial school before coaching. I was personally blocked via discretionary sanctions based on "broadly construed" when neither the edits in question nor the subject even pertained to the ArbCom-approved discretionary sanction allowances (later overturned for that very reason). Buffs (talk) 22:33, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

@Buffs Alas, as iridescent says above:

[...]Wikipedia institutionally doesn't do "reasonably". Also, I have a rant inside me that our entire society doesn't do reasonable, but that might derail the conversation. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 22:50, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

My Wikipedia institutionally doesn't do "reasonably" isn't just (or at least, isn't entirely) my being bitchy. On a site with a userbase as diverse as Wikipedia's, there will always be disagreement over what constitutes "reasonable". Treating Vince Lombardi as 'religion, broadly construed' because he went to a parochial school sounds ridiculous, yes—but if an editor who's banned from 'religion' is making huge numbers of minor edits to the members of Category:Alumni of religious educational institutions, does that fall under "reasonably" if the edits in question don't themselves pertain to religion and are undoubtedly legitimate and non-disruptive, but it's obvious that the editor has only chosen to target this particular topic as a way to push at the limits of their topic ban? I won't name names—there's no point dredging up past unpleasantness—but I can think of quite a few cases of editors deliberately nibbling at the edges of topic bans when the wording of the ban is ambiguous (it's why we have the "broadly construed" wording in the first place).

(One could even argue that since we know Wikipedia has a significant number of editors on the autistic spectrum some of whom may genuinely need rules spelled out explicitly, that wording like "reasonably" breaches California's discrimination laws. Such a case would IMO go precisely nowhere—the concept of Reasonable person is well-established in US law—but I can easily imagine the WMF getting tied up in knots over the potential bad publicity.) ‑ Iridescent 06:25, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Given the attitude prevalent among US football fans, Vince Lombardi may, in fact, be a religion. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: isn't wrong, but they keep saying "cult" like it's a bad thing... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Buffs (talk • contribs) 18:16, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

We in the Cabal have determined that cults are indeed bad. Respect my authority. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:06, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

There Is No Cabal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:08, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoingThat's what "they" want you to think. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 06:26, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Long aside about high-functioning autism

There's a recognizable cycle of "problematic editor who happens to be autistic kicks at the edge of a sanction constantly; sanction is extended to a point that makes this impossible; editor declares that because they're autistic they didn't understand this was unacceptable; the very large population of autistic editors who are not kicking at the edge of sanctions death-glare through the computer screen". Looping back to where we started, it's a real messy situation for AGF. (The really tricky part is that because high-functioning autism diagnosis more or less did not exist before the past twenty years or so, most people the term could be applied to don't apply it to themselves, so sorting by who actively discloses gets all of demographic biases/"people pulling out all the stops before a sanction" biases/"people willing to disclose stigmatized personal details to a community that smells weakness like blood" biases.) Vaticidalprophet 06:41, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

To be cynical, a self-diagnosis of "high-functioning autism" is rapidly becoming the new ANI flu. I've lost count of the number of times someone who's never previously either mentioned autism or displayed the slightest sign of it, suddenly announces "I'm autistic!" when facing sanctions like it's Wikipedia's equivalent of a Get Out Of Jail card. As you say, it doesn't fool the admins and all it does is antagonize the genuinely autistic editors who manage to get on perfectly well without playing the "how far can I push the envelope?" game. ‑ Iridescent 06:51, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

The thing I find weird about it isn't spuriousness; to put it one way, in no case where I've been familiar with an editor's pre-existing behaviour has it come as a surprise. (I'd expect most non-problematic autistic editors not to display the slightest sign of it onwiki. An environment where "intense interest in and knowledge of niche subjects, preference for written communication and information-gathering rather than face-to-face, video, or spoken/auditory, and the willingness to go catch up on a lot of background on your new favourite topic" are basic survival minimums is going to have a lot of built-in accommodations for things that correlate with those even if it was never consciously intended to have them.)

It's the very weird auras that surround everything. More-than-occasionally people running cover for a problematic editor have tried to use it as a mitigating factor without that editor necessarily wanting it; in one case, I remember someone diffing an incredibly backwater discussion months before to ANI and horrifying the editor who hadn't intended his disclosure of it there to end up elsewhere, eventually trainwrecking the thread.

The eventual consequence is most discussions of neurodivergence on Wikipedia end up in the context of sanction discussions, which to me seems to be of a kind with how most discussions of women or ethnic minorities et al on Wikipedia are in "the community is broken because Demography" discussions; the intersection of "this is an environment where other people only know what you tell them, and not only do you not have to tell them anything, but it's near-impossible for them to find out things that are integral parts of your IRL daily life if you don't tell them because the structure hides it" with "it's very important to create detailed demographic profiles so we understand our systemic biases" fundamentally doesn't work, with this issue as with any other, and people have very good reasons to want to preserve the "I don't have to tell you I'm X" part and damn the latter. I need to use fewer semicolons. That's a 153-word sentence. Vaticidalprophet 12:55, 10 February 2022 (UTC) Addendum a few hours later, because I assumed it was assumed here of all places but a reread is ambiguous: this is a criticism of the demography obsession, not a support of it. Vaticidalprophet 15:57, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

"[Whichever group I'm a member of] deserves special treatment!" discussions have been a part of Wikipedia since the very beginning. It's a probably-inevitable result of the combination of a culture of anonymity in which people can claim to be whatever they want, and a well-intentioned managerial class who collectively feel diversity can excuse even obvious obnoxiousness or incompetence. (Most of our regular sockmasters and spammers have long-since noticed this and play to it.) ‑ Iridescent 18:35, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Here's a thought: Maybe the "self-diagnosis" isn't a genuine self-diagnosis. Maybe it's from someone who can pass as the majority (that is, pass as a white, cis-heterosexual, abled man), or at most, passes as the majority-except-autistic. They also tend to be professionally diagnosed as children. It would seem that the form of discrimination these men face come in the form of low expectations from literally everyone, including their parents and the school system, causing them to be irritating at best and harassers (often sexual harassers) at worst when they grow up to be adults. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

London Wikipedia meetup

Maybe in the case of younger editors, but—despite the "group of children" stereotypes—the active hardcore of the Wikipedia editor base splits disproportionately towards the over-40s. (In my experience, the image to the right is fairly representative.) As Vaticidalprophet says a little way further up, the concept of "high-functioning autism" is a relatively new concept (it was popularized circa 2001) and is also not recognized as a legitimate diagnosis by either the World Health Organization nor the American Psychological Association. A typical active Wikipedia editor couldn't have been diagnosed as a child, since when they were children the diagnosis just didn't happen. Yes, there will be some cases in which a medical professional has used HFA as verbal shorthand to explain things to a patient (or parents), but in most cases—both on Wikipedia and IRL—when someone describes themselves as HFA it's because they've self-diagnosed on the basis either of a self-adminstered AQ test, or because they've read a list of symptoms and thought "hey, that sounds like me". ‑ Iridescent 08:10, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps my use of Discord has skewed my perception of the demographics somewhat. However:

1. Professionals using HFA as shorthand is common enough that I personally don't see it as a 'red flag' for self-diagnosis, though perhaps I might think that the diagnosis pre-current edition DSM.
2. Some people with autism like myself would be disinclined to attend Wikipedia meetups. I feel the need to overemphasize that this, of course, doesn't apply to everyone with autism, but perhaps I don't have to in this particular conversation.
3. Can you imagine, as a kid or teen, trying to convince your hypothetical parents, who hypothetically don't edit Wikipedia, to a Wikipedia meetup? Some parents would probably do it, especially if their kid has trouble socializing but my parents would've, at most, done it once, looked around the over-40 men-dominated crowd, and never done it again; more likely, they wouldn't have done it to begin with, not understanding why I'd be interested.
4. I was once informed by a couple of oversighters that children sometimes edit in a surprisingly grown-up fashion; they'd know better than us, since they have to oversight disclosures of childrens' ages.
5. I was using a broad defination of "adult". There are 20 year olds who would've been diagnosed as having ASD level 1 during childhood who might describe themselves "high-functioning", then there are 80 year old who are forced to self-diagnosis due to autism clinics not accepting new patients over 21, and then there are people around my age who might've been diagnosed as having "HFA" at the age of ten-or-so.

Believe or not, though, I do partially agree with you, that's there's at least a possibility that there's an over-enerepresentation of a crowd older than I in the "active Wikipedian" scene. I just think there' more age diversity than what I think you think there is. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 08:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

That picture above is from a London meetup in 2016, I don't think I look particularly old in it compared to some of the others, and I'm sure I'm not one of the two eldest in the shot. My first meetup was in the same pub eight years earlier, I was clearly one of the two eldest attendees on that occasion. I.E. my experience is that the average age of the London Meetup attendees has been rising by much more than a year per year.. No comment as to how many autistic Wikipedians who I've met at a London meetup, but I concede the probability that as we've accumulated a regular cadre of greybeards so we've have become a less attractive option for those under forty. Question is, is it the whole community that is greying, or just the part of it that likes to meet in pubs? ϢereSpielChequers 10:29, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Not all Wikipedians are too old for an ASD diagnosis, just for the record. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:07, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus In fact, if there's evidence that symptoms started before the age of two, there's no age limit to diagnosis. This evidence might simply be a parent or older sibling corroborating the fact that the symptoms are, for all intents and purposes, lifelong.

Of course, school or medical records from childhood are more ideal, but they're both are likely to be thrown out at some point. Sometimes, memories are all you have.se, good luck getting that evidence gathered when you've outlived your family, or if your family has a poor memory for things that have happened decades ago. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 11:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC) (typo fixed on 11:29, 11 February 2022 (UTC))

Just ignoring the "autistic people who fit X demographic characteristics grow up to be either annoying or rapists"... HFA in and of itself certainly didn't pop into existence in the 2000s -- the "undiagnosed autistic dad" is an entire meme, and certainly many middle-aged people without autistic children of their own to spot the characteristics have them too -- but diagnosis is biased; becoming significantly less so, but adult diagnosis itself tends to depend on having children or grandchildren who are identified as such. WRT meetups, I've seen prior discussions of that here that lean towards the "older people and men are more comfortable at them for time/money/context/etc reasons, which in turn creates a cycle where younger people and women don't attend because they're the odd ones out" that sounds plausible enough to me. What stands out to me in the editor base as a whole, when I know ages, isn't that it represents particular age groups unduly but that it doesn't -- that it's an unusually flat curve. There are heuristics for individual subsets of editors, but they don't necessarily work either; I can think of at least one case where I assumed based on all the demographic correlations that a given editor was probably old enough to be my (23) parent or grandparent and found out they were younger than me. Vaticidalprophet 12:38, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

It didn't pop into existence in the 2000s, but the cultural change in thinking around it very much did. That particular change, in which it suddenly became something which people would boast of with pride, we can date precisely—it comes from an article Wired published in 2001 called The Geek Syndrome which made a garbled argument that there was a genetic link between autism and ability (as opposed to the far more likely "people who have difficulty in social sitations are statistically more likely to have time to spend studying"), and tied in almost perfectly with the Randroid "some people are just born better" crankery of the clique who were building what would become Big Tech. ‑ Iridescent 06:50, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet Maybe I wasn't communicating the nuance clearly enough, perhaps I'm a bit hypersensitive after a particularly weird and rude interaction with a new editor who was pulling WP:OSE about a bizarre fringe theory, but I wasn't attempting to do a #YesAllWhiteAutisticMen, but was talking about a subset of them. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 13:14, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Some people are autistic; some people are jerks; some people are both; some people are neither.

I think if someone said "I'm bipolar, and it makes me screw up on wiki", we'd point to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not therapy and send them on their way. We should probably be a little more willing to do the same for people who say "I'm autistic, and it makes me screw up on wiki". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I've come to hate NOTTHERAPY, not so much for what it actually says, but for how it's typically invoked, which is as a facile thought-terminating cliché in response to anyone acknowledging that their mental health affects their editing. Which, if nothing else, is just a great recipe to punish people who are honest, since I think we could all armchair-diagnose certain users who choose not to disclose anything about their health. I wrote User:Tamzin/Guidance for editors with mental illnesses a while ago in an attempt to present a healthier way to look at mental health, focusing more on what the exact circumstances are in which an editor's mental illness becomes a liability to the project. If someone's misbehavior is the result of mental illness, in many cases that's better than the alternative, because it means they have a realistic chance of working through it... whereas if someone has reached adulthood and is just a complete jerk, and there's no condition influencing that, then most of the time they're gonna stay a complete jerk for life. Personally, I did make mistakes as a newer user that had to do with being bipolar and otherwise neurodivergent. Then I got on meds and worked through some stuff, and while I'm far from perfect, I can't think of any mistakes I've made since my return to editing that have been because of mental illness.

The main problem with people trying to blame their mistakes on autism, bipolar disorder, or anything else, is that if your condition really is that serious, the rest of us have certainly noticed, and so if there was any extra AGF to give you, it's already been spent. It's one thing if someone's explaining a miscommunication by saying "Oh, I'm sorry I misunderstood. I'm autistic and sometimes don't catch subtleties." But when it's "I'm sorry for blowing through every second, third, and n-plus-oneth chance I was given and never listening to a word of advice. I'm autistic"... well, it may be the case that autism is to blame, or it may not be, but either way competence is required, and I don't think one needs to bring out the specter of NOTTHERAPY to say that. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:03, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it's cruel and inappropriate to cite NOTTHERAPY in that context. On the other hand, it can be useful when someone (for reasons unrelated to personal diagnosis) acts out in a way that is disruptive. It's sort of like, just as one should not disrupt Wikipedia to make a WP:POINT, one should not disrupt Wikipedia to get something out of one's system. In other words, don't make your off-site problems become other editors' problems. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I think it can be appropriate to cite NOTTHERAPY in the very specific situation of someone saying "Please let me keep doing this disruptive thing. It's like therapy for me!" Which does happen from time to time. That's why I made my third guiding principle in that essay "Don't let your mental illness hurt Wikipedia", which I feel is a more constructive way to frame things than "Wikipedia is not therapy". Because, like, do we actually care if people are editing for their own therapeutic benefit, if they're doing a good job? Or do we really mean "Don't editing Wikipedia badly for your own therapeutic benefit"? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I suspect that NOTTHERAPY was created specifically because of people editing Wikipedia, doing a poor job, and begging for extra chances to continue doing a poor job (although hopefully a slightly less-bad job).

I have wondered occasionally whether it ought to be renamed "Wikipedia is not occupational therapy". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:32, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Actually, occupational therapy isn't therapy about workplace mental health or how one occupies oneself. It's about dealing with daily tasks after a disability. For example, how to put on one's socks when one is no longer able to bend over far enough to reach one's feet. (No reference to WP:SOCK intended.) It differs from physical therapy in that it focuses on how to master new ways of doing things, as opposed to regaining the physical ability to do so. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:23, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Also: practice using a computer, practice following directions, practice interacting with people, practice setting schedules and goals, practice coping with anxiety, etc. OT services aren't just about the obvious ADLs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@Tryptofish, having gone through occupational therapy myself in childhood plus a short stent when I was 19, WhatamIdoing is correct. A lot of the occupational therapy I did as a kid dealt with typing, handwriting, and sensory intregration. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Both of you are, of course, correct. My use of the phrase "daily tasks" was poorly chosen, although daily tasks are certainly part of it. What I intended to convey is that it is not about how one occupies one's mind, and that it differs from (while being closely related to) physical therapy. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:51, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Right, I don't disagree. How you experience systemic discrimination can affect how you're a jerk. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:49, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Tamzin for the link to thought-terminating cliché. I had been looking for a name for that sort of thing. Can I reword your opening sentence more generally to "I've come to hate WP:UPPERCASE, not so much for what it actually says, but for how it's typically invoked". A line in that article -- "Person 1 makes claim Y. Claim Y sounds catchy. Therefore, claim Y is true." -- also seems relevant. These shortcuts get used to make some point, which may deviate somewhat or entirely from the what the guideline text actually says, but they are catchy and have authority merely for being WP:UPPERCASE, so end-of. There's an awful lot of pressure on the shortcut label or guideline/essay title. -- Colin°^Talk 13:12, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

WP:UPPERCASE shortcuts have legitimate uses, the trouble is when they're used wrongly. For internal communication between people who already know what they mean they're perfectly sensible—it's a waste of my time and yours if I type out "this has been referred to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment" rather than "WP:ARCA". The problems come when we use them to people who aren't familiar with the system—to new or newer editors, it just looks like we're talking a weird private language as a means of confusing them. ‑ Iridescent 06:50, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Or if the shortcut's name doesn't communicate the contents. Wikipedia:What editors mean when they say you have to follow BRD is almost never that they actually want you to follow WP:BRD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

We're all on the spectrum, that's why they call it a spectrum. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:09, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@MZMcBride We're all socially awkward sometimes, but that doesn't mean everyone is on the spectrum. It's kind of like how we'll all experience back pain, but that doesn't mean everyone with a little back pain is "a little pregnant." I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:40, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I think that depends on how you define "the spectrum". If you're talking about the whole spectrum of human experience, then we're all on it. When you're talking about only the spectrum of autistic people, then we're not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I mean, you're technically correct, but I've encountered that saying enough times to understand what was being said by @MZMcBride; they most likely meant the autism spectrum, not the human one. It's often feel-good puffery along the lines of "God won't put you through what you can't handle,"; well-meaning but ultimately useless. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:48, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

FA Mentoring request

Do you have time to Mentor on an FA? Buffs (talk) 03:40, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

My editing is probably too intermittent at the moment to do 'true' step-by-step mentoring—at the moment, due to real life I tend to operate in bursts of frenetic activity lasting a few days, punctuated by disappearances with little or no warning. If you let me know the article in question (I'm assuming Texas A&M University), I'm more than happy to engage in an informal (or formal, if you prefer) peer review, and I assume assorted talkpage watchers would be happy to do likewise. Assuming the page in question is Texas A&M, you really want to prod User:Karanacs to see if you can coax her out of semi-retirement if you've not done so already. Someone like the Rambling Man might be a good bet as well, as you really want at least one person involved to be someone with a lot of experience writing FAs but with absolutely no interest in or knowledge of the topic, to see it it actually makes sense to people without prior knowledge.

(Higher education is a subject area where Wikipedia has something of a problem, as there's not only an endless flow of well-intentioned current and former students and faculty members trying to 'improve' the pages, there's also usually a steady drip of Wikipedians In Residence encouraging all kinds of inappropriate conduct. Of the six people I'd really trust to write—or help in writing—a high-quality neutral article two are indefblocked, two are retired, and two are dead.) ‑ Iridescent 16:47, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

A nod to Lord Palmerston there perhaps...? "Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business – the Prince Consort, who is dead – a German professor, who has gone mad – and I, who have forgotten all about it."  ;) SN54129 17:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoDKh1EAZjI Buffs (talk) 05:36, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Buffs: Fantastic stuff :D SN54129 08:06, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd be happy with a formal peer review as-able. I'm well-aware of the problems with Higher education articles, but the A&M page is in way better shape than most. It was an FA until VERY recently and I've been maintaining the page for over a decade. While I'm irked at the ill-defined process and lack of actionable feedback, failing to at least attempt the process as requested would simply be unnecessarily obstinate.

I've worked with Karanacs before (we're both A&M grads) and, until just a few days ago, she'd been offline since 2020. I'd prefer not to bug her at this point, but I may ping her later. Let me know when you want to begin. Buffs (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Easier if you just let me know when you're ready, and I'll go through it top to bottom. Given the circumstances, my inclination would be to review it with nitpicking turned up to max—essentially as if it were already at FAC. ‑ Iridescent 07:11, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm ready whenever you are. On a scale of 1-10, if you could turn up the nitpicking to a 17 it would be appreciated. Feel free to make said notes in whatever forum you deem fit and just let me know. Buffs (talk) 22:26, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Speaking of maximum nitpicking, can I ask for one of TRAPPIST-1 too? <puppy eyes> Among other things, I am looking to write something that is at least understandable to laypeople. JoJo Eumerus mobile (main talk) 17:52, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

I'll do it as soon as I get the chance. Because I'd prefer to review it in one sitting—it makes it easier to spot inconsistencies that have crept in if one reads it top-to-bottom in a single sitting—it may not be for a few days. ‑ Iridescent 23:00, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm sure it's probably not high on your priorities...any ETA? Buffs (talk) 17:22, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Real world permitting, hopefully Friday, otherwise next week. Will try to do it by the 25th (i.e. next Friday) at the latest. ‑ Iridescent 18:07, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Buffs (talk) 05:34, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Reviews

I'll put the reviews here to avoid cluttering up article talk pages/peer reviews/FACs etcetera (collapsed for the benefit of the scrolling finger of all other talk page watchers). Feel free to copy-paste my comments anywhere else if you think they'd be useful elsewhere. Per the above, I'm intentionally being as obnoxiously nitpicky as possible so some of this may not be actual "issues", and I'm trying to approach as best I can from an "absolutely no prior knowledge of the topic" position.

Texas A&M University
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Special:PermanentLink/1071355284 is the version on which I'm commenting. I'm only reviewing for sense, and have done no checking either of sourcing nor of MOS compliance. Lead "Public flagship land-grant research senior military college" in the infobox and "a public land-grant research university in College Station, Texas" are both somewhat WP:SEAOFBLUE. (I personally don't have any particular issue with having links next to each other, but some people—and in particular, some FA reviewers—really hate it.) Gonna stick with it for now, but will address it if it becomes an issue in FAR. Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) This is purely a personal preference thing, but I'd personally drop It has projects funded by organizations such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. from the lead. Hosting government-funded projects isn't particularly interesting—governments have their fingers in so many pies and try to spread their funding geographically to avoid accusations of pork-barrelling, that pretty much any research university in the world with a reasonably large science, medical or engineering department is hosting multiple government-funded projects. As such, to me giving this such prominence in the first paragraph of the lead makes it look like the article is trying to artificially puff up the institution's reputation. Done. Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) Originally, the college taught no classes in agriculture, instead concentrating on classical studies, languages, literature, and applied mathematics. After four years, students could attain degrees in scientific agriculture doesn't make sense to me. If the college didn't teach agriculture, how and why were the students granted degrees in agriculture after four years? It doesn't appear to be explained in the body of the article either, as far as I can tell, and the citation is to a print book so there isn't an easy way for a reader thinking "that doesn't make sense" to clarify the situation. Fixed. Short version, the initial profs all came from classical institutions and wanted to pursue a "classical" education. They didn't want to do what the school had been established to do. 3 years later, farmers raised hell at the state government and the focus on Ag & engineering was firmly re-established. Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) There's a sudden jump to Under the leadership of President James Earl Rudder in the 1960s, A.M.C. desegregated, became coeducational, and dropped the requirement for participation in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets. without prior background. That these would have been unremarkable in an institution in the South is something that's self-evident to US readers, but to most readers elsewhere it will immediately bring up a "huh?" reaction. Fixed Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) Beginning years "Public" has a specific meaning in the US of "funded by the federal or state government", which doesn't translate to other countries where it can mean "open to all groups rather than restricted to members of a particular profession or instutution". For the state's first public institution of higher education it should probably be spelled out in full or at least have an explanatory footnote. (I've lived long enough in the UK—where public school very definitely does not mean "state-run"!—that my initial reaction on seeing this sentence was "what about Baylor?".) Put in a note. Baylor is a private school and the state has no say in it whatsoever. Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) Other than the fact that Brazos County donated land, have we any idea why they chose the location? Even today Bryan is still the middle of nowhere; back in horse-and-buggy days it must have been very hard to get to from Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio, which are presumably where the potential students were mostly coming from. I've not found much that says why. It WAS along main rail lines...in fact that's where the name "College Station" comes from. The US Mail designated a stop "College Station" mail could be properly delivered...and so cadets would get off where they were supposed to... Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) Although originally envisioned and annotated in the Texas Constitution as a branch of the University of Texas seems confusing to me, since UT didn't exist when A&M opened. This probably needs clarifying. I suppose that's a matter of debate as the "established" date of the school has a bit of play (when was it established in law vs when it opened its doors). rephrased anyway. Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) A.M.C. also expanded its academic pursuits with the establishment of the School of Veterinary Medicine in 1915; up to this point, you haven't said what any of the existing departments or subjects taught were. Expanded that Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) World Wars era In 1948, the state legislature established the Texas A&M College Station campus as the flagship of the Texas A&M University system is going to be quite confusing to readers, unless they're already aware of the existing setup. No site other than those at College Station has been mentioned up to this point, so to a reader unfamiliar with the current setup this reads akin to "Germany is home to many Germans". rephrased. Buffs (talk) 21:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC) University era The various mentions of George Bush should probably specify which one. I suspect to most people, GWB is much more closely associated with Texas than GHWB, so they'll make the wrong assumption. (Yes, "click the link if you're not sure" is Wikipedia dogma, but it doesn't hold in this case since someone assuming you mean George W. Bush already knows perfectly well who he is so isn't going to feel the need to click.) addressed Buffs (talk) 14:42, 22 February 2022 (UTC) The Association of American Universities inducted Texas A&M in May 2001 is another that probably needs clarification. Any reader who's not already familiar with the AAU is going to reasonably assume from the name that it's an umbrella group for all universities in the US, and will just be confused as to why TAMU wasn't a member from the beginning. added a descriptor for clarification. Buffs (talk) 15:01, 22 February 2022 (UTC) For anyone not familiar with US sports—which is, everyone in the world not in the US—Texas A&M left the Big 12 Conference for the Southeastern Conference on July 1, 2012 literally reads like a bunch of random words thrown together. There isn't even an indication in the text that this is something to do with sport, and that's not something a non-US reader would guess. (The concept of organized college sports doesn't really exist anywhere else.) Well, while the SEC is known for athletics, it is more than just that and includes academics. That said, point taken. I don't think this article needs to go over such intricacies in any sort of depth and conference alignment is later discussed in the athletics section. Removed. I'm not convinced the paragraph about the protests about the statue warrant inclusion. I'm sure that over a 150-year history there have been numerous protests and disputes; it appears to me to be hugely undue weight to devote an entire paragraph to one relatively minor dispute over a single statue. (University of Oxford doesn't mention the protests about the statue of Cecil Rhodes, for instance.) This is a dispute that's well above my pay grade—I've no doubt if you remove the paragraph you'll immediately be besieged by an angry mob screaming about "censorship" and "revisionism"—but I'm fairly certain it's something that will be raised at any future FAC, since the appearance of undue weight is something people there are rightly always on the lookout for. (Ditto for the even longer section further down beginning In 2016, the university was targeted by animal rights group PETA, who alleged abusive experiments on dogs.) I too am not convinced these sections warrant inclusion either. They are relatively minor annoyances in the grand scheme of things (several prominent University events are boiled down to a single sentence). However, I am also not interested in the inclusion of only positive attributes of the school and ignoring criticism. History is history. Good, bad, ugly, disliked...it's all part of the history. So, while WP:RECENTISM is certainly a concern as-is WP:DUE weight, I'm willing to take those to FAC and let the chips fall where they may. It is much easier to simply delete them by WP:CONSENSUS than it is to re-add them; I'd rather have too much info than be accused of whitewashing. Buffs (talk) 15:01, 22 February 2022 (UTC) Administration and organization a ten-member Board of Regents, nine appointed by the governor—is this the Governor of Texas, or a senior member of the faculty with the title "governor"? It should be clarified either way. Gov of Texas; fixed. Buffs (talk) 14:51, 22 February 2022 (UTC) Rankings I can understand why Times Higher Education the QS World University Rankings The Wall Street Journal etc are relevant, but why should readers care what Shanghai Jiao Tong University has to say about TAMU, and particularly why are they so important their opinion gets given first? Because the Academic Ranking of World Universities is published by the Center for World-Class Universities at that school. Rephrased for more clarity. Buffs (talk) 15:10, 22 February 2022 (UTC) Research I already raised this when talking about the lead, but Texas A&M works with state and university agencies on various local and international research projects to develop innovations in science and technology that can have commercial applications could equally be said about pretty much any research university. I would highly disagree on that subject. There are many schools that spend billions on research that is strictly for scientific gain/knowledge or governmental applications. Such a focus on commercial applications is definitely unusual. Buffs (talk) 15:10, 22 February 2022 (UTC) Campus Texas A&M maintains the RELLIS campus formerly, Texas A&M Riverside Campus or Bryan Air Force Base seems to have gotten garbled along the way. Normally I'd just fix something like this myself, but I'm not 100% sure what the exact meaning should be and I don't want to introduce potentially wrong information. fixed Buffs (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC) Student life Northside consists of seventeen student residence halls, including the three university honors halls—I honestly have no idea what a "university honor hall" is, and if I don't know readers who aren't familiar with its educational system certainly won't. fixed Buffs (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC) The school also has four major Apartment Building complexes—does "Apartment Building" form part of a proper name, or is the capitalization in error? Caps in error; fixed. Buffs (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC) The Corps Arches, a series of twelve arches that "[symbolize] the spirit of the 12th Man of Texas A&M" appears to have lost something along the way. Although what's meant by "the 12th Man" is explained much further down the article, readers can't reasonably be expected to know to look for it, and without context it makes no sense. It's wikilinked for that very reason. I'm a little confused. Buffs (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC) The Corps welcomed female members in the fall of 1974 seems a bit press-releasey to me, since the military most definitely did not universally welcome the admission of women. "Began admitting" would probably be more neutral. The Corps is not part of the military, so that's not exactly the same issue. However, I concur that "welcomed" is probably too strong. This was brought up in the FARC and changed then. This part of the FA process is infuriating. We're literally talking about a single word and I cannot satisfy both you and the person who objected to the previous phrasing and suggested this. However, I will defer to the most recent criticism and have made the requested changes. Buffs (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC) Some band drills are so complicated that they require band members to step between each other's feet to complete the maneuvers. These drills must be drawn by hand as computer marching programs return errors without disabling safety features; their calculations require two people to be in the same spot at the same time. Yes, I get that the university is proud of its marching band, but literally nobody reading this article cares about the technicalities of band drill. The Corps of Cadets was, at one point, the entire student body. While it no longer is, it is a sizable and prominent portion of the student body. A section dedicated to it is not out of line. Likewise, a few sentences (4) dedicated to a quarter of said organization is appropriate. #biased. However, criticism noted and will pare it down should there be any other suggestions. Buffs (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC) My usual long-standing complaint about the use of "Greek" on articles about American academia. The concept doesn't exist anywhere else in the world; to 95% of the world, readers will just be confused at why you're mentioning the clubs for people from Greece when you're not mentioning clubs for people of any other nationality/ethnicity. (The same refutation of "but people can just click the wikilink!" applies as for my earlier comments about "George Bush"; since readers will think they already know perfectly well what "Greek" means, they're not going to click through to see that it's actually a reference to Greek Letter Organizations.) Point taken; rephrased. Buffs (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC) Traditions the school's history has instilled in students "the idealized elements of a small-town life: community, tradition, loyalty, optimism, and unabashed sentimentality" reads like a press release. Is there any evidence that these attributes actually apply to every student, or is this just a claim by someone and if so who claimed it, when, and why? It was stated in Texas Monthly as noted by the citation. Moreover, of course it doesn't apply to every student, by definition. That's an absurd standard to attempt to attain. However, as a general statement, yes, it is part of the culture at A&M. Buffs (talk) 17:20, 22 February 2022 (UTC) The event received worldwide attention during World War II, when 25 Aggies "mustered" during the battle for the island of Corregidor sounds questionable to me. I've no doubt that it was reported in the Texas press, but is there any evidence that the rest of the world paid any attention? Well, it was sent out over the United Press wire during WWII...and its commemoration in 1946 was on the cover of LIFE magazine... Buffs (talk) 17:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC) Notable alumni and faculty Notable faculty include nine Nobel Prize laureates, among them [eight Nobel Laureates]. You should either list all of them, or explain why the ninth isn't included, as to me the fact that there's a single one not mentioned makes it look like there's something being hidden here (e.g. he turned out to be a prominent Nazi or something). There was one included inadvertently on one list. There are actually 8...fixed. Buffs (talk) 17:28, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Buffs, I did warn you it would be nitpicky! @JoJo Eumerus, I'll do yours when I get the chance but may not be for a few days; this kind of sentence-by-sentence nitpick needs a solid block of time as it works best to do it in a single sitting. ‑ Iridescent 11:39, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely LOVE it. If anything, you could have been more nitpicky! (I love humble, actionable criticism! Gives the best chance for improvement) Lol! Thanks for the feedback! I'll be addressing those points as soon as I can dedicate some time to it (hopefully this evening) or tomorrow. Buffs (talk) 17:59, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Iridescent: I think this addresses everything. Your replies would be helpful. Buffs (talk) 17:28, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) @Buffs: It is good to show eagerness  :) but there is no need to ping someone on their own page! (Although, incidentally, they won't get the ping as it has to be added at the same time as your signature, not subsequently as happened here. A right old PITA I know!) SN54129 18:18, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I was mostly just specifying whom I was addressing since there were multiple people in this thread and wanted to be clear. Clarification appreciated though! Buffs (talk) 05:08, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Iri, you noticed early on in this thread the absence of Karanacs, whose steady and knowledgeable hand contributed to the FA status of the Aggie suite of articles, and it would be wonderful to preserve the status of these articles in her honor, but it doesn't seem like she's coming back, and Buffs does need a mentor (they expressed early on not knowing how to establish reliability of a source).

What you supplied was a prose review, although both the FAC and the FAR ran into trouble over sourcing: specifically, source-to-text integrity, old sources trying to cite current text, and failure to use reliable sources. I haven't looked to see if those considerable issues were corrected (and don't plan to), but I'm concerned that it Buffs only smoothes out the prose per your suggestions, without taking on board the more significant sourcing issues, they will be sorely disappointed at FAC. FAC reviewers are slowly rebounding from the years of absence of Karanacs, Laser brain, and Ealdgyth (where the trend was for endless nitpicking of prose without consideration of sources), and realizing again that sourcing has to be considered. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:31, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

At this point, your input is neither welcome nor desired. I take extreme exception in your mischaracterization of me and request that you strike your disparaging remarks. I never expressed early on not knowing how to establish reliability of a source. Likewise, I addressed each and every point your brought up and/or asked for clarification. You never replied and instead applied your own standards of a "reliable source" without demonstrating that anything in the cited sources was incorrect...you assumed unreliability without any evidence to back it up. Moreover, literally every sourcing issue you brought up was addressed over a month ago. Rehashing that criticism here seems pointless to me unless you are doing so to disparage me personally.

You asked for me to seek out reviews. After 2 months, this is the only person who's said "yes". Telling the sole respondent "not what I want" is not helpful. If you aren't willing to do such a review yourself or help me find someone else willing to do so, kindly step aside. Buffs (talk) 21:10, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

As I said, I'm only reviewing for sense, and have done no checking either of sourcing nor of MOS compliance.; that is, this is explicitly a prose review. Obviously if I were to notice something cited to a supermarket tabloid or to an obvious personal blog I'd raise a concern, but the nearest copy of A Pictorial History of Texas A&M University, 1876–1976 (is the 1975 publication date for that correct?) to me is probably a six-hour flight away.

While we obviously want to be accurate, speaking in terms on personal opinion rather than in terms of WP:WIAFA compliance I don't consider absolute source-to-text integrity, ensuring every source is the most current, et al to be essential provided there's a high degree of confidence that all reasonable steps have been taken to ensure that nothing untrue has been included and that anthing potentially contentious has a source. This isn't a biography of a living person, a medical guide, a sensitive political topic, or anything else where it's important ethically and in terms of legal liability to prove that all possible steps have been made to reflect current thinking—it doesn't matter that there's a statement cited to a press release.

Still in Personal Opinion Mode, this is something I've always thought was a problem with the FAC process. Because it (rightly) has a collective "nobody and nothing deserves special treatment" mentality, it means there's little scope for "this is technically against usual practice but it's not causing any issues" application of common sense. That in turn means the process self-selects for policy-and-process obsessives who think a Manual of Style so bloated it has to be split into 150 separate subpages is perfectly normal, since regular editors see the walls of text at WP:FAC* and quite reasonably think "no, this isn't a sensible use of my time".
*At the time of writing WP:FAC clocks in at 101,870 words, or to put it another way the first page people taking a tentative step into the FA process see is slightly longer than To Kill a Mockingbird.

(This is not some revelation to which I've belatedly come; this is the same argument I was making 15 years ago. Re-reading that discussion, I think The FAC process – like all our other allegedly broken processes—was designed by and for people with an expectation that they'd have an in-depth knowledge of the policies involved. However, there are some people at FAC who couple a strict "rules are there to be enforced" mentality with a lack of understanding of exactly what those rules say and what the legitimate reasons for disregarding them are … at FA level, so many people are involved that it's very likely that at least one "despite having a 25-1 aspect ratio there's no justification for forcing this image width" or "this book is not in my local library, therefore it is not a reliable source" opposer will latch onto any given candidate … it's an unpleasant experience for anyone having their work ripped to shreds for no good reason, and to a newcomer who's not familiar with the personalities involved they have no way of knowing which of the opposes are valid concerns and which are petty nitpicking is just as true now as it was then. All Wikipedia's assessment processes have spent so many years accruing pre-emptive measures against potential failure points, that they're losing sight of their original purpose. This isn't unique to article assessment processes—the same "we need to look out for any potential problem even if there's no indication that in this case it's actually a problem" issue affects our processes for assessing other editors such as RFA, and our processes for assessing other processes such as RFC, in just the same way.) ‑ Iridescent 05:32, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Last request to strike your misquote/disparaging remark. Buffs (talk) 18:15, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Which remark is that ? If you are referring to "they expressed early on not knowing how to establish reliability of a source", here are some diffs. But this does not belong on Iri's talk, so if you want to further pursue it, please do so at my talk. (It might be a good strategy to avail yourself of the help of those who offer it to you.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:17, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

• 22:17 24 July equates reliability with accuracy while not addressing reliability (eg, "brazosgenealogy.org Do you consider this unreliable? All the facts I see are accurate.")
• 09:22 4 Jan, equates reliability with accuracy, and states that the source "is not listed as an unreliable website anywhere in Wikipedia". Neither of these are final determining factors in establishing reliability.
• 01:55 5 Jan Still equating accuracy of text with reliability, not demonstrating knowledge of how to establish reliability beyond that separate fact ("The reliability of largest.org wasn't challenged in any way until November and only then it only vaguely said there were 'issues with reliability'...I can't possibly address that sort of vague 'issue'; the information seems to be accurate as well.")
• 04:24 9 Jan After multiple requests over many months to establish reliability of largest.org, someone who has previously written FAs brings the article to FAC with ... still ... largest.org as a source, still not evidencing knowledge of how reliable sources are determined, how to establish a source as reliable, and still equating reliability with accuracy. Same for "GenomeWeb appears to be a viable independent news agency with no specific reason to distrust it (though I may indeed be wrong). What's wrong with this source? How is it used inappropriately in this article?" And, wants to use a dubious source in an FA: "biography.com is listed as a source of frequent debate, but there is nothing concrete that states it is not a reliable source. What facts does it cite in this article that even the least bit contentious or inaccurate?"
• 01:28 11 Jan In response to all of the above, "It would be helpful if you point out what makes a source a "high-quality reliable source" in your eyes. I see no such definition."
• 00:40 13 Jan Still asking same questions.
• 20:34 13 Jan Six months after reliability concerns were first raised, asks at WT:FAC how to determine reliability, and still failing to establish reliability of sources used: "How would it be best to demonstrate that a source has such a reputation for accuracy?" "How can I possibly prove it's an accurate and a reliable source."

Summary: not knowing how to establish reliability of sources, in spite of having several FAs, and which continues for months at both FAC and FAR, and FAC and FAR talk, and in response to at least four different reviewers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:22, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

"this does not belong on Iri's talk...[here's 6 examples encompassing half a page, but don't respond]"

Asking you for clarification as to what you personally deem to be a reliable/unreliable source is not synonymous with "Duuuuuuhhh, I dunno what a ree-lie-uble sorce is". Usually, if something is unreliable, you can usually point to what makes it unreliable, nominally, what is inaccurate about their statements/claims or that they have a history of unverifiable claims. If a source's claims are accurate, they are at least reliable for those claims (by definition). Example: Facebook/Twitter are not generally reliable, but they are reliable for statements made by individuals/entities "On [date], XYZ stated on Twitter/Facebook '[quote]'". I contend that largest.org (a publication with an editorial board and published journalistic standards that are followed), GenomeWeb (another publication with an editorial board and published journalistic standards that are followed), and brazosgenealogy.org (a recommended resource by the National Genealogical Society, Family History Daily, The Frugal Genealogist's Guide, Ancestral Findings, Education World and other genealogical channels) are certainly reliable enough for the facts stated in the article. Biography.com is on the list of perennial sources (sources that are routinely debated for reliability) as "there isn't consensus". Arguing that it shouldn't be used as a matter of fact is simply substituting your personal preferences of what sources are reliable with what the WP community as a whole has discussed (in effect, you're saying that your opinion trumps everyone else's); as such, it's inappropriate. Reasonable people can disagree with what sources are reliable. That doesn't mean I've stated "I'm incapable of figuring out what a reliable source is"

It might be a good strategy to avail yourself of the help of those who offer it to you. I've literally begged you for help and you've adamantly refused. I've asked at least a dozen people for help. Iridescent was the only one kind enough to reply...and your response was effectively "that's not enough". Why the hell would anyone help if FAC are just going to poo-poo every attempt? Why would anyone bother to seek help or give help if you are only going to hound them with every request for assistance.

[we get] very little readership in return. Perhaps it's because you're being way too bureaucratic and unreasonable in your standards to the point that people don't believe the effort for FA is warranted. One reviewer of the Texas A&M article stated FA was synonymous with perfection and anything short of that shouldn't be FA. You want pages that are more-viewed? A&M was at nearly a million views last year...but you junked it rather than review it.

BUT EVEN AFTER ALL OF THAT you've decided to come back and disparage me personally over your issues with multiple sources that are no longer in the article! Of course, you wouldn't know that because you've stated I haven't looked to see if those...issues were corrected (and don't plan to). If you aren't going to bother to look at the article and you won't review it and you're going to refrain from further reviews, I see little to conclude other than that your entire intent is to inject disparaging remarks about me personally and/or discourage reviews. Again, I ask you to retract/strike your baseless remarks; I never made such a claim (specifically 1d and 2e). Buffs (talk) 02:16, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Iri, shall I respond to this here, or would you prefer that I copy it to my own talk to continue? Not wanting to abuse of your hospitality here ... pls let me know. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:45, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

It probably makes more sense to keep it here unless there's a reason not to. If it's on your own talkpage Buffs (or any potential TPW who wants to disagree with you) may feel uncomfortable doing so on your own talkpage, and if it's on some Wikipedia:space noticeboard it will potentially attract the attention of some of the more self-important Defender Of The Wiki types who can't distinguish between disagreement and genuine incivility. ‑ Iridescent 11:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

With your permission then, will do (when not iPad typing). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:33, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Abusing of Iri's talk page (with his permission), there are three aspects of your (Buffs') response to be addressed: 1) your claim that I refuse to review the article; 2) your interpretation of what I wrote about establishing reliability of sources; and 3) why I posted in response to Iri on this page to begin with.

FAR reviews of TAMU

Buffs wrote: I've literally begged you for help and you've adamantly refused ... That's not how I see it. There are a lot of people in the FA process who hold Karanacs in high regard and are willing to go the extra mile to make sure articles that she valued are kept as FAs, and I'm one of those. But there is a limit to how many times one can revisit an article when the nominator becomes combative, REPEATEDLY HOLLERS AT REVIEWERS, and when issues that are raised are not being addressed. One of the points at which the TAMU FAR became difficult was when you entered two sections that included declarations for another editor copying in their signature. Those were removed by FAR Coord Nikkimaria with a followup reminder from FAR Coord DrKay. There are other examples where your behavior was difficult, but I'm not going to further that on Iri's talk.

I (again) acknowledge that the FAR close was very upsetting to you, which you seem to attribute at least partly to me, as you claim that I "adamantly refuse" to review. The history of reviewers revisiting the TAMU FAR is:

• Sdkb reviewed and revisited in July, August, November and December.
• Z1720 reviewed and revisited in August, September, October, November and December.
• Hog Farm reviewed and revisited in November and December.
• Other than bookkeeping edits, I reviewed and revisited on November 1, November 4, November 10, November 14, December 3, and December 20. On December 23 I stated that I would revisit after Christmas guests left. (Aside: relatives all got COVID, cancelled at last minute, so I was left with no Christmas on 25 Dec, and was able to review sooner than expected.) On 25 December, Hog Farm did a lengthy review on FAR talk followed by a declaration to Delist. When I revisited for the seventh time, I resumed from the sections where Hog Farm left off. It is true that I did not re-review what Hog Farm had already reviewed; I instead reviewed several other sections, and found more of same.
  On a seventh revisit, five months in to the FAR, it's time to call it. I don't find that your statement about literally begging me to review reflects the reality of the amount of review this article got at FAR.

Establishing reliability of sources

Please take a look at this section of Ealdgyth's suggestions about how to respond (and how not to respond) to the "what makes this reliable" query. Being asked "what makes this source reliable" is a commonplace query at FAC, FAR and content review processes; the question invites the nominator to establish the reliability of a source. If you want to use a questionable source in a Featured article, it's up to you to put forward your best argument about why the source is reliable. You never did that; you instead stated repeatedly that sources were "accurate", and gave little else to establish reliability. From your subsequent responses here, I am sensing for the fist time that there is a disconnect between what I am writing and what you are interpreting, I wrote: they expressed early on not knowing how to establish reliability of a source. You respond with" ... not synonymous with "Duuuuuuhhh, I dunno what a ree-lie-uble sorce is" and doesn't mean I've stated "I'm incapable of figuring out what a reliable source is" I never said you don't know what a reliable source is; what I am saying is that you failed to answer the queries on FAC or FAR in a way that established that the sources were reliable. Oddly ... for the first time since October ... you have done some of that (only partial, but a start at least) here on Iri's talk, in the second paragraph of your post of 02:16, 10 March 2022. That's the first time I have seen you address the question of how to go about establishing the reliability of a source. I stand by what I wrote; I feel badly that you interpreted it differently, and I hope that reading Ealdgyth's essay will help you understand what one assumes that repeat FA nominators already know, and how you should address such queries in the future.

Why I responded to Iri

Now speaking of disparaging remarks (along with a busted AGF-ometer), you wrote above: ... I see little to conclude other than that your entire intent is to inject disparaging remarks about me personally .... I responded to Iri here not only because we have illuminating discussions on his page, but more to point out that since his intent was to help you, if he was not aware of the broader problems, and if you did only what he said but had not corrected the other issues, then you would have another rough go at a new FAC. That was an attempt to help Iri help you. And to discuss with Iri that a growing problem at FAC is its failure to examine source-to-text integrity, as reviewers increasingly look only at prose.

Since you now have two of the four FAC Coords recused from the nomination, it might be wise to start seeing some good faith in attempts to help you achieve a Featured article. A little less combativeness would not be remiss. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:38, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

At this point, it very much does not feel like you are trying to help. It feels like you are re-hashing old arguments with your own personal spin to make your actions look better while taking jabs at me personally. AGF has long since passed with you (not everyone else, just you). None of these remarks pertain to Iri's review but are disparaging comments implying I'm not intelligent enough to understand:

• One of the points at which the TAMU FAR became difficult was when you... This has nothing to do with Iri's review whatsoever, but you sure as hell seem to want to rehash it for no good reason. How exactly am I supposed to AGF in conversations with you when you keep bringing up past disagreements slanting them to make me look bad? Read the link. I clearly marked where such notes came from and noted they were a summary of what was above. There was no attempt at deception.
• I hope that reading Ealdgyth's essay will help you understand what one assumes that repeat FA nominators already know... reads as "You should already know this" while looking down your nose at me.
• I never said you don't know what a reliable source is You're splitting hairs. You stated "Buffs does need a mentor (they expressed early on not knowing how to establish reliability of a source)....
• There are other examples where your behavior was difficult, but I'm not going to further that on Iri's talk. Hasn't stopped you thus far. To state that there are "lots of other problems" (paraphrasing) without citing them is a baseless claim and a purely disparaging remark designed to denigrate me/my credibility.
• I don't find that your statement about literally begging me to review reflects the reality of the amount of review this article got at FAR. When I claim you didn't review, I'm referring to you specifically, not everyone else. When I say "you didn't do the work you said you would" and get a reply of "lots of people did lots of work", it demonstrates clear obfuscation on your part.
• That was an attempt to help Iri help you. I don't want/need your help. Iri is perfectly capable of handling himself. I have repeatedly asked you to stop butting in and you've said you'd leave me alone. Yet here you are...again...

To claim that you reviewed it several times is more than a little misleading. Your own cited examples show no actual full review (as promised multiple times)...

• 1 Nov: Some bits of OldAg's concerns will be an "FA hangup" for me when I do my read-through (which I won't start until others like Z1720 indicate they are ready)...Let me know when some of OldAg's commentary has been completed, along with Z1720's work, and I will read through.
• 4 Nov: I will revisit the article thoroughly once all issues raised have been addressed (Note that the issues he refers to here that were allegedly unaddressed from 24 July were addressed less than 4 hours later). If she'd stated what issues she had with them or perhaps clarified that they weren't addressed to her satisfaction, perhaps we could have avoided weeks of back & forth...
• 10 Nov: Still not a review just complaining that I haven't done anything for a week (I was out of town from 6-12 Nov on a business trip).
• 14 Nov: not a review
• 3 Dec: a limited review of a few things
• 20 Dec you finally clarified that you had no intention of doing your review until everything was done so I addressed the sourcing.

When you allegedly got around to a review after 5 months, you reviewed two things, exaggerated issues ("By the way, some numbers have commas, others don’t, eg 1000 compared to 1,000"...there was ONE comma missing, not "commas". You made it sound like it was a widespread issue), stopped immediately, and swiftly declared it unfit (hardly the promised "thorough" review/read-through). Then you fast-tracked it to delist when you knew a lot of people wouldn't be around. Like a fool, I believed you when you reassured me at each step of the way that this was procedural and you wouldn't nominate it for deletion while changes were still being made. You blew any good faith remaining right there.

Continuing to claim "issues that are raised are not being addressed" is absurd and grossly misleading. I addressed them rapidly, in most cases within 24 hours. You keep using that word as if it isn't ambiguous. "Addressed" can mean "gave a response" and/or "changed/fixed". In most cases, it was both, but I adjusted or gave my rationale for keeping them as-is for every instance. You did not reply to those remarks or explain how I was in error until December. If you're going to be hyper nitpicky about sources & text (to the point of absurdity), you need to be far more precise in your language. You are expecting a level of perfection/precision even you can't obtain.

From this point on, reply to your heart's content. I have no intention of listening to any more of your condescending "advice". Iri, I apologize for taking up your talk page. If you have any further input or could spare time to review the aforementioned alleged sourcing concerns that somehow still exist even though they've been removed, it would be appreciated. Buffs (talk) 00:06, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

No interest in continuing to reply; you asked me to strike a "disparaging" remark, and this is what it took to sort out what you meant, what you wanted struck, or what/why you interpret as "disparaging". I responded here at your insistence that I had made a "disparaging" remark. And when I offer an explanation (that I may have missed an opportunity earlier to explain what was expected in terms of establishing the reliability of a source, as I didn't think you needed for someone to explain what Ealdgyth's essay says, as I assumed you were already familiar), then I'm "looking down my nose". And so it goes. Good luck with your FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:40, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

No interest in continuing to reply...[replies anyway] No explanation was necessary. Just strike your unnecessary remark, say "sorry", and move on. Instead, you took your time to lecture/belittle me when I asked for help as you requested. This isn't helpful. Buffs (talk) 15:46, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you SO much for your feedback and you're SO right.

Indeed, it was published in 1975...probably an issue with Aggie math... Buffs (talk) 16:27, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

It sounds like the FAC process has room for yet another layer of bureaucracy: a policy obsessive whose role is to correct the reviewers' incorrect or exaggerated claims of policy/guideline violations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, yes. I've increasingly taken on that role (as have others), but I'm not nearly obsessive enough. Johnbod (talk) 19:44, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Back in the old days, the FA delegates used to perform the task of slapping down inappropriate opposition. This is another "no right answer" area—one could certainly make the case that the present-day practice of the delegates trying to stay out of the reviews is the lesser of two evils. (To someone not intimately familiar with the background to a given case, it can easily be mistaken for favoritism when one sees an article by an established editor waved through despite apparently ignoring the MOS, while an article by a new editor gets nitpicked to shreds.) ‑ Iridescent 20:08, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Problems at FAC

Iri, glad you're back. There's a rather big flaw in your logic. The bloat at FAC (which has been going on since about 2017) is not at all related to MOS or policy-obsessiveness. (In fact, MOS is rarely even reviewed for these days.) It is almost all prose nitpicking (at a level that should not be present at FAC), and the page size is almost all a direct consequence of four things: a) the absence of Opposes, as making friends seems to be a priority, b) the absence of User:Tony1 and other strict prose reviewers, who quickly shut down deficient prose, combined with c) the absence of User:Ealdgyth's strict source reviewing, and d) the decline of WP:PR, and the acceptance of FAC as a replacement for peer review. It is the nitpicking of prose only that has bloated the page, while reviewers fail to look at sources and fail to oppose early on the truly deficient. Take a look at the amount of work it took to bring Socrates Nelson to standard when all it got at FAC was prose nitpicks, and in fact it contained numerous false statements, along with marginal prose when it was promoted. Now, you may argue that Nelson is long dead and the numerous and blatant inaccuracies weren't harming anyone, but what happens when the same blatant inaccuracies slip through in an article where it matters, eg a BLP? If no one is checking sourcing, that's where we end up, and big red flags at Nelson were not even checked. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:11, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

The bloat goes back to the earliest days (have a look at FAC circa 2005!)—it's more that there was a relatively brief hiatus between 2009-2013 when the delegates were more willing to quickfail so the list got culled faster. The lack of people able and willing to do in depth source reviews is probably inevitable—the articles are longer and better sourced than they used to be, so what used to be a case of checking 20-ish sources most of which were online is now a case of checking 100+ sources most of which are paywalled or in obscure books (the articles sourced to easy-to-find books have already been written).

As I've said previously, I think FA/GA (and the stub–start–C–B–GA–A–FA scale more generally) are no longer fit for purpose in Wikipedia, and we should seriously consider replacing GA and FA with a more general "well-written and tells you everything a reasonable reader would want to know" and "no obvious way this could be improved". The days when we were selecting material worthy of being included in the eventual Print Wikipedia are well and truly behind us; as long as we're taking all reasonable efforts (as opposed to every conceivable effort) not to be misleading and to make it verifiable where information has come from, I don't think perfection is something for which we should still be aiming when it comes to either prose or sourcing. We have 6,464,308 articles; we should start accepting that on even the best-researched article problems are going to occasionally sneak in, and the focus should be on correcting them rather than trying to prevent them. ‑ Iridescent 20:22, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

It's no secret I've cut back my time at FAC - partly it was moving but partly it's that I think my time is better spent at GA... at least trying to get things to a "decent enough" level rather than the increasingly nit-picky-prose-but-no-worries-about-sourcing attitude at FAC. GA doesn't eat my time to the extent that a contentious FAC on a pop culture figure/band/etc will. I just don't review GANs on things I don't want to deal with, but there is plenty to look at and help newcomers improve ... Ealdgyth (talk) 21:19, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

I can't exactly disagree with either of you that FAs and GAs seem to be converging to the same place. Which is not a high place. But I can still regret that happening. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:22, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not saying I particularly like the way things are going, but equally I don't think the existing FA and GA processes have scaled very well, so the sensible thing to do is to look at how best to decide what we mean by 'quality' and how we assess it. There's no point having a process that enforces the highest standards if it becomes so cumbersome nobody bothers participating in it and/or nominating to it any more, and present-day FAC is a hot mess of bureaucracy and jargon.

The article assessment processes haven't really changed in the past ten years, and it's the fact that they haven't changed that's unusual; to re-bang a drum I've banged before, our standards were never intended to be set in stone. At one point this was a Featured Article, while back in 2006 the FAC process looked like this and was an RFA-style mess of "support, looks OK to me" mutual back-scratching. Since Wikipedia 2022 has a much broader scope and wider reach than Wikipedia 2012 let alone Wikipedia 2002, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask whether FAC and GAN are still serving their intended purpose.

As an obvious example that springs to mind, at all levels of the stub–start–C–B–GA–A–FA scale we review articles against the same set of standards (with the partial exception of the extra safeguards for medical articles and BLPs) even though as Wikipedia grows the notion of what's appropriate for a standalone article has hugely widened (and as more sources become digitized, it becomes easier to write longer articles on ultra-niche topics). At the lower levels that's not such an issue—a one-line stub is a one-line stub whatever the subject matter—but it means that at FA level we're treating pages like Paper Mario: Color Splash and 1994–95 Gillingham F.C. season as if we were reviewing submissions to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. I couldn't really blame any potential reviewer for thinking "checking the sources, prose, consistency of internal formatting, and compliance with whatever the arbitrary style guidelines happen to say this week, for an article that gets 500 readers per year, isn't a sensible use of my time". (I'm not singling that article out, it was just chosen at random from the current FAC page to show that my comments about low pageviews aren't hyperbole. I've certainly written my share of low-traffic pages as well.) ‑ Iridescent 14:14, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Each time you bring up this issue, I scratch my head over how to craft a new proposal or scheme that would address this. I have long defended short and niche articles at FAC, and maybe that is part of the problem. Perhaps they shouldn't be FAs at all, and I've been making the wrong arguments all these years. We are increasingly seeing 1,500-word FACs, by nominators in the pursuit of Wikicup points, and each one of those is taking a disproportionate share of reviewer resources, and for very little readership in return.

This data about readership at FAC v FAR may interest you (a response to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-01-30/WikiProject report).

Just as Ealdgyth has found her reviewing time is not best used at FAC, I am finding I can work on more higher-impact articles at FAR than those that appear at FAC, which is a better use of my time than correcting factual inaccuracies that cleared FAC at Socrates Nelson or reviewing tiny articles at FAC with prose and sourcing problems, that should be escorted quickly to Peer Review. I try to review FACs for those editors who have selflessly helped save old stars at FAR, or for articles requiring Spanish or that are within my topic area, but other than that, I have well and given up, as there seem to be no limit to how long and hopeless a FAC will get before it is shut down. Without Ealdgyth's enforcement of sourcing standards at FAC, the star has lost meaning (FAR at least is restoring some, and the FAR Coords don't let one through until it's done). And it now appears that the quality of the star was dependent on a limited number of key editors, so today, what is the difference between an FA and GA?

But absent Mally and Gguy, I don't see how a GA-type process is the solution either. Remember their sweeps? What does GA mean? Unless it has a top-notch reviewer like Ealdgyth, it's just reward culture points. I have always recognized your concern, but have never seen a clear path for addressing it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:52, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I can think of a few ways it could be done if there were a will. An obvious one that springs to mind is using a beefed-up version of the WP:Cite Unseen script, possibly in conjunction with some variant of {{ref supports2}}, to highlight potentially problematically-sourced statements in the article itself so readers are immediately aware of which parts of an article to treat with caution. (We've used {{citation needed}} for years; readers and editors are already familiar with the concept of flagging unsourced material, this would just roll it out to cover poorly-sourced material as well and partially automate the process.) It would need some kind of manual override—even the most dubious sources are sometimes legitimately used, and even normally-watertight sources can be problematic when used to cite some things—but it wouldn't be insurmountable.

It would be a monumental effort to retroactively apply this, or any other process that involves changing the wikicode, to Wikipedia's existing articles, but if someone were to write the script we could test it on a limited subset (new FA candidates on medical topics flagged as high-importance, say) and see if it works. If it does work we could then gradually work backwards, and make it a condition for new nominations at GA and FA, in the same way we gradually replaced inline parenthetical referencing with the separate reference section. The normal (and entirely valid) argument against code based on the {{ref supports}} structure is that it makes the Wikitext a mess, but as we approach the point where VisualEditor is actually usable that will become less of an issue.

(I'm at least in part serious here: if you want ideas on how to improve assessment processes you could do worse than ask for suggestions at Wikipediocracy et al. Given the number of people who dedicate hours of their time year-after-year to bitching about how unreliable Wikipedia's existing processes for maintaining accuracy and prose quality are—and given that even the most vitriolic hater presumably concedes that we've passed the point where "just close it down and start again" is a viable option—one would like to think that they've had at least some thoughts on how those processes could be improved.) ‑ Iridescent 07:39, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Interesting discussion here!

At the time of writing WP:FAC clocks in at 101,870 words, or to put it another way the first page people taking a tentative step into the FA process see is slightly longer than To Kill a Mockingbird. This made me lol. An obvious step it points to is to not list out every single FAC on the main page. We would never do that for e.g. AfD, so we need to recognize the scale at FAC, too.

On arduousness of process/use of time, I think that FA is necessarily an arduous process—there's no easy shortcut to affirming that a page comprehensively covers a topic at a professional level. That said, I absolutely agree it's a poor use of our time to be focusing on niche topics. A possible remedy could be to incentivize bigger FAs by listing them first at FAC or making it easier to get them to the Main Page.

I think you make a great point about the notion of what's appropriate for a standalone article has hugely widened. This is a less-discussed manifestation of the ever-present deletionism/inclusionism debate: even as our sourcing standards get tighter, if there are more easily accessible sources online, our topic standards may be lowering. When I look at the average length of an Encyclopedia Britannica article vs. one of ours, it's clear just how much more detail we expect. For some major topics, that's a good thing, but when the topic is The Bus Uncle or Amastra subsoror, I think an ideal encyclopedia would have an entry a paragraph long. SandyGeorgia mentions above 1500-word FACs, but that only goes so far: there's no way to get a paragraph-long entry past FAC, so what do we do for topics like that? FA sets the standard for what Wikipedia should be, so it's a problem when there's a giant group of articles that could never pass FA (because sourcing is too weak) or could only pass by going into excessive detail.

On {{ref supports2}}, that's one of those things where, if we'd thought of it in 2001 and built it into the software early, we'd be so much better off. I agree it'd be a huge lift to implement it now, but also that the advancement of VisualEditor is gradually opening up possibilities for it. Do we have any FAs that use it throughout to showcase as a test? That'd be very worthwhile, since we can't discover the kinks with that system until we experiment with it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:45, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Somewhere in ancient history I seem to remember a proposal that would create a separate process for short FAs; I could be misremembering. At this point, anyway, such a thing would never gain consensus as there are too many FA Frequent Flyers who are in it for WP:WIKICUP, and demand their niche short FAs so they can earn as many imaginary internet points for a 1,500-word article as if they had written the History of the British Empire.

If problems aren't correctly diagnosed, effective solutions are not likely. Iri mentions somewhere above that people aren't nominating. No, the nominations keep coming; it's the reviewers that, for various reasons, stopped coming or were chased off. And when those reviewers are as varied as from Ealdgyth, to Fowler&fowler, to SlimVirgin and SandyGeorgia, to Tony1, that says something. As good prose and sourcing reviews dropped, and reviewers became scarce, more and more FAs were promoted on a slim three Supports, so both prose and quality are affected. The volume at FAC is not (as is often portrayed) MOS-obsessive nit-picking; it's ridiculous line-by-line looking at prose that belongs at peer review because ill-prepared FACs are allowed to languish. Everybody wants everybody to like them, so they will support each other FACs, as the FA process goes into the dustbin with increasingly lower pageviews at TFA. When FAC was processing triple the number of FACs it now pushes, the page was not stalled because ill-prepared FACs were shut down right away, or once a FAC became a peer review, it was shut down. (You can also see in that data the peak at 2017, when the Oppose button was lost and anything that came to FAC got a few prose nitpicks and up the line it went, often buddies supporting buddies.) And FAC delegates considered it "their job" to know what an independent review was so we didn't end up with buddies pushing their buddies FACs up the line in a quid-pro-quo. These days, a Support is a support, even if it is not an independent, third-party review. FAC is not stalled today by volume; it's stalled by apathy and affected by quid-pro-quo.

If I am understanding the ref supports proposal, it won't solve most problems. First, we've got just this month two FACs that I know of that were sailing (or did sail) through with blatant false statements that had refs attached to them, but the refs said no such thing. How will ref supports stop that from happening? That is, if reviewers aren't checking source-to-text integrity, how will ref supports address that? And the main problem one sees at FAR is that article simply become inaccurate over time if they aren't constantly maintained; how will ref supports address that? I don't think it solves either of these problems, which are substantial.

I started a proposal a few years ago to convert FAC to a two-stage process like FAR (which works quite well), with the idea that you didn't get to the second stage without a source review. That, of course, failed because there are only so many Ealdgyths and Nikkimarias, and no one wants to do the real work.

And in another absurdity clogging the page, have a look at this. For some reason, the current crop of FAC regulars, don't seem to understand what talk pages are or how to use them; that's why FAC is clogged. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:50, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Replies, and an ease-of-scrolling break

@Sdkb: Giving some kind of priority to "bigger topics" wouldn't be workable in any way that I can think of. What makes an article "important" is whether it contains the information you were looking for in that particular case, not whether it gets a particular average number of daily pageviews, is of a minimum length, and especially not is someone has arbitrarily decided that it's "high importance" and slapped a tag on it to indicate as such. As I've said many times, I think the whole concept of "core topic" is fundamentally misguided when it comes to Wikipedia—to me, our most important task is to provide information that readers can't easily find elsewhere. As such the purported "vital articles"—almost all of which are topics which readers would have no trouble finding quality coverage of if Wikipedia disappeared tomorrow—are to me our lowest priority.

Likewise, I don't feel any special treatment should be given to longer articles. I've argued in the past that we should have a ruthlessly-enforced minimum length requirement for a stand-alone article and if a topic fails the "is it possible to write 500 or 1000 words specifically about this topic, not including background and fluff?" test it should only be covered as an entry in a longer list, and I stand by that. What I don't believe is that such a process should be attached to quality assessment; if an article is a valid topic to be covered then it's a valid topic.

I also disagree with you that there's a particularly strong relationship between "article length" and "nicheness of topic". The summary style model means that articles on big topics are quite often shorter than the corresponding articles on niche topics, since when it comes to big-sweep articles we actively encourage authors to split off material into separate subpages. 2018 World Snooker Championship, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London—all topics about as niche as one can get—are all longer than Monarchy of the United Kingdom, History of biology or Association football, and that isn't a problem.

There have been a couple of experiments with the {{ref supports}} template, but not on anything substantive; to the best of my knowledge the only article that uses it throughout is the very short Psychical school. As the template stands, it wouldn't be a sensible use of anyone's time adding it in to existing articles. It works by "hover your mouse pointer over the reference to see what it supports"; not only does no reader know to do this on the handful of articles on which it's in use, but the recent uptick in mobile readership means that more than half our readers can't see the output even if they knew it was there. What I'm talking about is actively highlighting "this particular statement is sourced to a potentially unreliable source" in the article text to allow readers to approach it with caution. (It's not an alien concept—the {{cspan}} template for actively highlighting unsourced statements is in use on around 3000 pages.)

@SandyGeorgia, I'm not convinced that more and more FAs were promoted on a slim three Supports or articles being waved through without source reviews are necessarily an indication of a problem. In a lot of these cases, the articles in question form part of a series of articles on related topics, all by the same author or group of authors and all using the same set of sources. When you see (e.g.) an article by Casliber on a banksia species, or an article by Wehwalt on a coin, being apparently waved through without a full source review, it's not shoddy standards or an old-boys club in action; it's simply recognition that it's not a sensible use of time re-checking sources that have already been repeatedly checked.

Increasingly lower pageviews at TFA is an artefact of the changing nature of the internet, not of declining standards at FAC. As more and more readers navigate direct to articles from search results or from direct links on other websites or in social media posts, fewer people see the main page so fewer people see the TFA. (Think about it; article quality can't have any significant impact on the TFA's readership, since by the time readers see the article's poor quality they've already clicked on it and thus counted as a pageview.) What's more of an issue is that the art of writing an engaging blurb is dying out so readers don't consider it a good use of their time to click the link—if you write an interesting blurb that makes the reader want to know more, you still see a spike in pageviews as large as any we saw in the 'golden age' on even the most niche of topics.

I'm also singularly unconvinced that there's any significant negative correlation between "niche topic" and "number of views it gets at TFA". If one looks at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/Most viewed and disregard the 'current events' and 'major anniversaries' ones that would have had a viewspike whether they'd been TFA or not, there are some impressively niche topics there. (I hold the all-time record for "author of the most articles to appear on the WP:TFAMOSTVIEWED list"; I'm not some rando offering opinions on a topic about which I know nothing.)

I don't see the refsupports proposal as a universal panacea, and I agree it wouldn't address those instances when a legitimate reference is used but it doesn't say what it's claimed to say. I see it as a stepping stone on the route to our recognizing that at our current size we're not maintainable, and that absent a major reduction in the number of articles (my prefered option but one for which there's no will), Wikipedia is eventually going to need to move to the Facebook model of reactively patrolling problems as they're flagged rather than actively trying to search for all the problems, and on increasingly relying on scripts and algorithms to flag potential issues even though that will mean some false positives and some issues slipping through un-noticed. At the time of writing English Wikipedia has:

• 55,396,306 pages in total
• 6,466,815 mainspace articles
• 39,854 active editors by the loosest "five edits in the past month" definition
• 5262 active editors by the "100 edits in the past month" definition
• 3818 active editors by the probably most relevant "non-bots with 100 edits in the past month to content-related pages" definition
• 458 active administrators (by the very loose "30 edits in the past 60 days" definition; the number who are genuinely active is even lower).

These numbers aren't sustainable as the total size of the wiki continues to grow, particularly since we're likely to see a small but measurable drop in the number of active editors and a larger drop in the number of admins once UCoC is imposed. If we don't start addressing the fact that the processes of the 2000s aren't viable in the 2020s, we're just going to head into a spiral of a limited number of people being expected to do ever more work, burning out and resigning, thus leaving even fewer people to do even more work. ‑ Iridescent 06:12, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Re the Facebook model, that would effectively be the death of Wikipedia as we know it—by the time a reader puts in the effort to flag a problem and wait for it to be addressed, it's already been seen by enough others to do damage to our reputation. That would be an unfortunate outcome. I'm curious, if you didn't have to worry about consensus, how would you have us go about trying to implement a major reduction in the number of articles? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:57, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I alluded to it already; a minimum length and a mass merging of articles that don't meet that length requirement into long list-type articles (so 18th century English cricketers instead of Gilbert East, William Palmer, Jack Small et al). Nothing of value would be lost since the information would all still be there, but it would drastically reduce the number of obscure unmaintained articles and would arguably be of more value to readers than separate pages since it would put the subjects into a broader context. There's a proof-of-concept page of mine at Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway if you want a concrete example of the kind of thing I have in mind. ‑ Iridescent 07:06, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that approach could work in many situations, e.g. upmerge Amastra subsoror to Amastra. But how would you upmerge The Bus Uncle? Or something like Mikko (restaurant)? Readers of those articles aren't particularly likely to be interested in other parts of Hong Kong internet culture or other D.C. restaurants, and not having a dedicated page would likely be quite bad for Google rankings. Another question: Would it actually meaningfully reduce the maintenance burden to have fewer longer articles rather than more shorter articles? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:24, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't upmerge The Bus Uncle, as that's long enough to justify a stand-alone article, but hypothetically I'd probably have Notable 2006 YouTube videos as the parent article with a very brief synopsis of TBU and a {{main}} link, but fully merging in (e.g.) Kiwi!, Little Superstar, Lo que tú Quieras Oír etc unless and until standalone viable articles are written on them. Mikko (restaurant) I'm singularly unconvinced is actually a legitimate topic given that as far as I can see it's 'sourced' solely to five press releases, but if forced to keep it I'd probably merge—along with a bunch of others—to a single Restaurants in Washington, D.C. article. (I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if the only restaurant in DC which actually warrants its own stand-alone article is Comet Ping Pong, and that genuinely is a sui generis topic.)

Sticking with Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway just because it's one I know, compare the differing treatment given to Quainton Road, which is a genuinely complicated topic in its own right and thus gets a brief synopsis and a link to a full-length article; Church Siding which was literally just a heap of mud at which trains would stop and about which it's impossible to say more than a hundred words, and as such doesn't get a stand-alone article as it would serve no useful purpose; and Westcott which currently has a standalone article owing to the "these all need their own page!" hardliners but where there's nothing of any great interest to say and as such the reader would actually be better served by being redirected to the appropriate part of this list, where they can read about it in context and thus see how it fits in to a broader picture.

I frankly couldn't give a damn about Google rankings; our job is to cover these things, not to help marketing departments wih their SEO techniques. Google probably monitor what we do more closely than the WMF do themselves, and their business model relies on users consistently finding what they want since it costs nothing more than a couple of mouse clicks to change default search engine. If any change we made were actually adversely affecting their user experience, PageRank would be amended to take account of that change in about twelve minutes.

Yes, it would definitely meaningfully reduce the maintenance burden. If twenty people each write about a DC restaurant, that's twenty articles each on one person's watchlist, and if that person happens to leave, to lose interest in that particular topic, or just not check their watchlist on a particular day, then vandalism or spam doesn't get reverted and the page gradually gets more and more out-of-date. Under my proposed model, the same twenty people each writing about a DC restaurant will result in one page which is on twenty watchlists; mistakes, vandalism and spam are much more likely to be spotted and reverted, entries going out-of-date likewise, and readers are more likely to find related topics about which they might be interested. (Unrelated to maintenance, but one long article rather than 20 short ones also means the potential for Featured Article, Featured List or DYK, meaning hyperniche topics that would never ordinarily make it to the main page get their moment in the sun.) ‑ Iridescent 14:57, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure the "twenty articles on one person's watchlist -> one article on twenty people's watchlist" effect is quite that dramatic, actually. When creating an article, you automatically get the article on your watchlist unless you explicitly choose not to, whereas when adding a section to an existing article you have to explicitly opt in. And if you are only interested in a small section of a much longer article, you very well might decide not to bother. (Additionally, IPs can add sections to existing articles but do not have watchlists). On the other hand, if you are interested enough in a particular topic to create an article on one aspect of it, and are an active enough wikipedian that you actually use your watchlist, you probably add a bunch of relevant articles which you didn't create, and aren't even necessarily a substantial editor of.
On the other hand, there's an additional maintenance benefit from not having to include all of the background and explanatory material multiple times – if we have (to take an example from my own pet topic) a stub on every single fragment of a poem by Sappho included in the standard edition, for instance, we have to explain what a Sapphic stanza is fifty times over, and there are fifty opportunities to get that definition wrong, or for someone to come by later and introduce errors either deliberately or through well-meaning incompetence. If we just have Poetry of Sappho plus articles on the few unquestionably notable poems which have been the subject of multiple scholarly papers and can have 1,000 word articles written on them without significant difficulty, we only have to write that same explanation half a dozen times. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 15:39, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto, for your Sapphic stanza example, one possible solution is {{Excerpt}}s, which I think should be a lot more widely used than they are. Their biggest benefit is that allow reused information to be stored centrally, reducing the maintenance burden. The main drawback is that it's currently fairly difficult to make slight tweaks to them between articles (e.g. when excerpting a lead, include references in the destination but not the original), and because editors aren't familiar with them yet they often destroy things like inclusion control. I'm curious what you, Iri, or others here think about their viability. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:18, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I hate {{Excerpt}} and think it should be made to not work in mainspace. I think anyone who uses it deserves that their articles get messed up when someone improves the article they are excerpting from (and then it is difficult to figure out what went wrong). In article space, you should be able to edit a page without having to worry about messing up others. (Anything difficult to edit or with the option to mess up other pages should be in template space; there are some recent trends to use {{excerpt}} to re-use tables between articles instead of just using templates). —Kusma (talk) 18:10, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I am aware of the existence of {{Excerpt}}, but I've never used it. I suspect the requirement to excerpt whole sections significantly limits its utility; the bits which are duplicated between articles in my experience often do not neatly fit into a single easily excerptable section. I'd also worry about having to remember to make sure that when changing an excerpted section, it still makes sense everywhere the relevant {{excerpt}} can be found. And it's another extra complication in the wikitext, which as someone from the write-all-the-markup-by-hand school doesn't feel super appealing. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:12, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm probably in the same camp as the two above me; {{excerpt}} is nice in theory, but in practice it causes more issues than it solves. Even for something like an untranslated quotation where the text itself has no potential to change, there's still the possibility that someone will change the font, highlight a key phrase etc in the 'original' which will subsequently have a knock-on effect on anything that excerpts that text. Even if every editor were aware of {{excerpt}} and the fact that when editing an article using it they need to check the knock-on effect on every other article excerpting it, we have to work on the assumption that it won't always happen. Wikipedia has three major editing interfaces (Wikitext, VisualEditor, AWB) plus numerous more specialist scripts, and it's nigh-on impossible to create "this section needs special treatment!!!" flags that will be visible to editors using all of them. (Just look at how many good-faith editors try to 'improve' wording that's the result of painstaking negotiation, or 'fix typos' where it's actually the correct spelling.) ‑ Iridescent 05:26, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Let's see where the handy-dandy "reply tool" parks this comment. Iri, on your paragraph above directed at me, I don't disagree with you on those cases (eg Casliber). They aren't examples of what I'm talking about. (And no, I'm not going to give specific examples of where the waving through has been problematic, but one thing those examples have in common is a long series of prose nitpicks by a prose-nitpicking group of reviewers who reviewed nothing else, that resulted in FAs with still deficient prose, combined with other problems beyond prose. When I returned to FAC in about 2018 ... I think ... from a long hiatus, I saw some shocking FAs on TFA, and when I went to WP:WBFAN, I found that the same editors had accumulated up to a dozen FAs with similar deficiences! Best I could tell it was more or less a 2016 to 2019 thing going on. What is going on now is different; what gets reviewed and how it is reviewed is tied to quid-pro-quo ... something we fought to keep out of FAC for many years.) On the rest of the issues about length et al, we've been around on all of that so many times, and I still don't see how to solve it. I do know that the strength of an FA, just like the strength of GA, is dependent on the quality of the review, and it is the lack of reviewers at FAC that is the bigger problem these days, and that is impacting quality, whether of short, medium, long, niche, core or broad articles. One can waste crazy amounts of time on tiny articles, while long articles on significant topics sit there without review. Relatively easier work is rewarded, while much harder work is neglected. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:20, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I think we're on the same page talking past each other, rather than disagreeing. I agree that the issue at FAC—as with so much on Wikipedia—is the unsustainable article/editor ratio leading to corners being cut. (I disagree that the problems started in 2016, or that a particularly problematic group is responsible, though. The most notorious shoddy review of them all took place in 2013 and was largely conducted by reviewers whom I assume you'd agree are correctly highly regarded; everybody can have a bad day and sometimes the bad days of multiple people unfortunately align and things slip through.)

Where I think we disagree is how to address the issue. My feeling is that as long as the number of articles keeps rising and the number of editors doesn't, no Wikipedia process is ever going to be able to go back to the days when participants had the luxury of time. Since there's no indication that we're going to see a sudden boom in recruitment and retention, if we want to maintain and improve quality we need to think about how to either drastically streamline processes to make them less time-consuming for participants, how to prioritize processes so editors don't waste their time on processes that have minimal impact, or how to bring the article-to-editor ratio (which is currently 1200-to-1 and steadily rising) down to a manageable level. ‑ Iridescent 05:26, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I wonder whether the key metric is the article-to-editor ratio or the edits-to-editor ratio. mw:Neil's spreadsheet has the relevant numbers over the last several years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Useful link, thanks. My instinct is that edits-to-editor ratio isn't going to mean much, as it will be so skewed by the impact of scripts and by people running unauthorised bots on their editor accounts. ‑ Iridescent 04:27, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Intended purpose

Starting another section to pick out part of a comment above: "I don't think it's unreasonable to ask whether FAC and GAN are still serving their intended purpose". I don't think you could get consensus at WT:FAC on what the intended purpose of FAC is, or even whether it matters. There are regulars who have no interest in supplying the main page with high-quality articles, which was perhaps the clearest original "intended purpose"; and I doubt many regulars believe that any form of FAC, or of any quality process, could ever raise more than a small fraction of Wikipedia's articles to a high standard. I think the different visions of what FAC is for stem from different beliefs about how FAC can work. I believe the effort available from editors interested in quality articles is the primary fact about FAC. If that's right, we ought to figure out how to get the best results with the existing pool of editors, and their existing motivations.

That doesn't mean turning a blind eye to problems, but to pick another quote from the discussion above: "I don't think perfection is something for which we should still be aiming when it comes to either prose or sourcing. We have 6,464,308 articles; we should start accepting that on even the best-researched article problems are going to occasionally sneak in, and the focus should be on correcting them rather than trying to prevent them." I largely agree with this. Sandy and I agree on a lot re FAC, but this is where I think we differ: Sandy was most active at FAC when there was more editor effort available to do reviews, and the standards were (initially) lower. With fewer reviewers, and higher standards, the old process is impossible to replicate. Something has to give -- length of time at FAC, quality of reviews, number of supports needed to pass. I think FAC is coping pretty well with the lower resources. No doubt it can be improved, but any realistic suggestion can't rely on reviewers putting in much more work than they are now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:16, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

As usual, I can find little in Mike's writing with which to disagree; except one little thing, where I suspect I disagree with both Iri and Mike. I believe the reviewers would come back if a number of the conditions were different (that is, returned to what they once were). And I believe that would solve a lot of what ails FAC today. FAC has never been without problems; no Wikipedia process is, and bad FAs will always get through and always have, because FAs are only as good as their reviews. I think the things that have to give to get better reviewers are a) quicker archiving of the ill-prepared, b) no more peer review at FAC, c) call out the faulty reviews as we did in the past, d) empower the Coords to again disregard supports from reviewers with a proven poor track record, and e) encourage them to stop promoting FACs with those kinds of issues at three supports. (There is nothing that says a Coord has to promote an article at the magical three.) I believe if we did those things, FAC would begin to thrive because editors who did/do take FAs seriously would come back. But when the process is chasing off the best prose reviewers, the best source reviewers, the best all-round reviewers, why would anyone want to go there. Why would anyone work so hard on a quality article to have to sit there and watch it languish because there are no reviewers (or maybe just none that will review an article that is longer than 2,000 words)? What's the value for the writer? Clear message there when you scan down the page and see what's getting reviews and what's not, and there's no reason for that one to be sitting there, getting ignored, when it's not a specialist or technical or difficult topic. People who have limited time are not going to spend it at FAC, if that means being drawn into endless back-and-forth with nominators of ill-prepared articles, so the standards go lower and lower. This is not just a few mistakes slipping through; it is very poor prose, and rife with plainly false unverified statements. And it's not alone in that regard. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:37, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

As you suspect, speaking as one of those former regulars who's no longer active I disagree with I believe the reviewers would come back if a number of the conditions were different (that is, returned to what they once were). "What they once were" wasn't a golden age, and I don't think recreating it would be particularly desirable even if we could—you may remember FAC as it was in 2008 as better times, but I remember it as being dominated by a small clique of schoolyard bully types who would randomly descend on nominations by people who weren't members of their gang and try to bludgeon the nominator not just out of FAC but off Wikipedia altogether. Don't forget that for every Geometry Guy or Moni3 back then, there was a Mattisse or a Tony1.

I know I've said it about four times in this thread but I'll keep repeating it as it's the fundamental issue—Wikipedia has fewer editors than it did in 2007 and that number is going to drop even lower as the artificial lockdown-induced bounce of the last two years wanes. Unless there's a commensurate drop in the number of nominations, Wikipedia can't go back to the processes of 2007 even if we wanted to. ‑ Iridescent 05:50, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Sandy, of your list of five points I'd say (d) and (e) are already in place -- I'm quite sure the coords know they can disregard supports, and they often wait to promote until there are more than three supports. Of the oldest ten FACs still open right now, seven have four or more supports. Your (c), calling out faulty reviews, was always a rare event, and I think had little effect. For what it's worth it does still happen; a regular recently told a reviewer on the FAC page that they were going to ignore the review as it was faulty. And (a) and (b) are largely the same thing, and that's where the point that Iridescent and I are making applies -- we have less reviewer time available to go through PR and FAC, which leads to longer FAC durations, which makes it less productive to kick out a FAC which can be resolved and promoted in a single pass. I think prose nitpicks are a red herring -- "move this comma from here to there" is not that common and in any case doesn't indicate a fundamental problem with the article. I don't want to digress into a discussion of types of prose review, but it's possible to have a long list of detailed comments that are not nitpicks without implying the article is a mess. More to the point, that long list isn't going to be generated anywhere but FAC, for most articles.

One thing that actually does help throughput at FAC is when pre-FAC reviews have been done by experienced reviewers -- e.g. Dudley has reviewed a couple of articles on Neolithic sites that I've worked on, and so at FAC he has supported fairly quickly, after an additional read-through. The problem with that is if it becomes too frequent it will look like quid pro quo -- regulars showing up at FAC and getting four quick supports would look clubby, even with links to the article talk page reviews. The coords would want to leave the FAC up for a while anyway, to get more input from a wider group. And it wouldn't actually generate more BTUs of effort from the reviewers, it would just move that effort pre-FAC, in a way that is not very accessible to newcomers. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:14, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I've very occasionally made "move this comma from here to there" type comments, but it's invariably in the specific case of "it's not totally clear to me where this should go so I'm not going to fix it myself". In my experience, if a minor fix is obvious the reviewer will invariably fix it themselves unless it's in the context of "this article contains too many formatting errors, oppose until you fix them". ‑ Iridescent 05:49, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know how common that is at FA, but in the GA process, there are reviewers who seem to consider it unethical for them to edit the article at all, even to fix trivial typos.

@Ealdgyth, hearing that you're spending time at GA is one of the most hopeful things I've heard this month. Last I checked in, they were having pretty significant problems with made-up rules (e.g., ordering noms to have all references consistently formatted, even though citation formatting is given in the Wikipedia:Good article criteria as an example of something that is not required). Is that still a challenge? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I haven't run into it with my noms. I'm (obviously) not doing my reviews at GA to the rigour that I would at FAC - I do check sources but I don't require the quality of FAC nor do I get into the minutae of formatting unless I can't figure out what the source IS from the given citation. For a few editors, I'll go ahead and treat the GA as a "pre-FAC" and make suggestions for stuff they'd want to fix for FAC, but I really try to keep the fact that GA isn't FA in mind most of the time. It's been mostly good - but I'm also not one of the reviewers that won't fix typos in a GAN. I did run into one nominator who seemed a bit upset that I did a copyedit on the GAN but that's been it. Most folks haven't been upset or cranky about my reviews. (Of course, I'm not reviewing sports or pop culture noms either... heh.) Ealdgyth (talk) 19:52, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I will make straightforward copyedits, but if I know the nominator is an excellent writer it makes me more cautious about anything that is not an obvious error -- their phrasing or punctuation may be intended to convey or manage something I'm not seeing. It also takes a fair amount of confidence in one's own writing ability to edit someone else's prose in a high-profile context such as FAC, and I'm sure for some reviewers it can feel less aggressive to suggest the change in the FAC. It bloats the FAC, but it's not actively harmful, just inefficient. Every now and then a poor editor will be bold and make good prose worse; I recall that happening at Shakespeare authorship question, where Qp10qp had to revert the changes and tell the reviewer why. Some editors won't want to risk being reverted.

What can look like a long list of nitpicks, but isn't, is what happens when you read an article and try to genuinely understand it, and the context. A reviewer can find plenty of places to ask why things are phrased a certain way or why something is missing or in a certain order, when they are struggling to understand material that is not presented in the clearest way. I recall Maury Markowitz's articles as places where the FACs could get like this: see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/AI Mk. IV radar/archive2 for an example. A long list of comments, few of which could be described as nitpicks, but I wouldn't say the article was unprepared. It was just a complicated topic with a lot of work needed to clarify it as much as possible. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:25, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Alice Ayres

Hi, I've just come across your 2009 article on Alice Ayres and wanted to thank you for it. Fascinating and inspirational in use of sources. Best wishes, Tacyarg (talk) 18:28, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, I'm pleased with how that one turned out. She's surprisingly difficult to write about because so little of her life is documented other than the manner of her death and so much of the contemporary coverage was by people wanting to co-opt her as a symbol for some cause or another; it's closer to writing about a medieval saint than to writing a more traditional Wikipedia biography. ‑ Iridescent 02:59, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Southeast Toyota

I tried to view the page for Southeast Toyota Distributors and found it had been deleted. I looked up Gulf States Toyota Distributors and it is still active. These two entites are the only private Toyota Distributors in the United States and are extremely similar. Why is SET deleted? Mgrē@sŏn (Talk) 22:43, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mgreason, the log entry says "Unambiguous advertising or promotion". Presumably it was filled with stuff closer to "Buy from us now!" instead of the expected encyclopedic content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mgreason, It had "Backed by high-quality dealer services from Southeast Toyota and other JM Family companies, Southeast Toyota dealers continue to establish new sales records for Toyota. Southeast Toyota dealers are No. 1 in total dealer profits and represent the No. 1 region in the country in Toyota Certified used vehicle sales." in the lead, and then continued for over 1000 words that had clearly been cut-and-pasted, or at best paraphrased, from the corporate website, to give a glowing summary of each part of the company's operations ("The Southeast Toyota Accessory Center reproduces the expertise and quality of the existing Southeast Toyota Port facilities, on a smaller scale, to offer nearly 30 area dealers greater flexibility in satisfying customer personalization requests closer to the point of sale"). I've no doubt the topic meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines, but Wikipedia articles also need to be both written from a neutral point of view and fully cited to reliable sources, and that was as true in 2016 when I deleted it as it is now.

If you want, I can undelete the page and submit it to AfD for a full consensus "do we collectively think this is salvageable?" discussion. (I'd recommend against that, as if if the page does get a consensus to delete at AfD it becomes more difficuly to recreate it subsequently; New Page Patrollers reflexively assume there's something questionable when they see the "A page of this title was previously deleted at AfD" warning.) Or, I can restore it as a {{noindex}}ed draft article if you think you can turn it into something sourced and neutral over a reasonable timescale. Let me know if you want me to do either, or if I'm not active post a request at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion including a link to this discussion to confirm that I'm happy for any other admin to restore this without consulting me. ‑ Iridescent 08:05, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Iridescent, thanks for looking into this issue. I originally created the article many years ago when I was active. I wasn't aware that it was turned into a promo piece. I recently retired and have time for interests like Wikipedia again. I would appreciate it if you could restore it as a draft; I'm certain I could clean it up in a couple of days. Thanks again. Mgrē@sŏn (Talk) 22:19, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• A good start to said cleanup would be to revert back to the version before Sheba.munn (talk · contribs) rewrote several parts of it in 2013. Still not the most rigorously verifiable article, but it was that account that introduced the text that is quoted above. Uncle G (talk) 15:40, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Mgreason, I've reverted it to the last version before it was tagged for deletion, and restored the full history to allow you to go through in your own time to see which elements are worth keeping and what if anything should be deleted. As I say, the company itself is unquestionably notable in Wikipedia terms so you don't need to worry about notability issues, but the version I deleted was the very embodiment of "unsourced advertorial". ‑ Iridescent 05:44, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

  (Adding) If the link stops working, that's because someone else—not me—has moved it out of the article space to Draft:Southeast Toyota Distributors. At the moment they've left a redirect from Southeast Toyota Distributors → Draft:Southeast Toyota Distributors, but that's technically a cross-namespace redirect and as such will be procedurally deleted under WP:R2 when the systems notice it. ‑ Iridescent 13:27, 9 March 2022 (UTC)