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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (idea lab). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Bring back WP for schools as a fork?

So, here's a crazy idea I've been kicking around for a while:

Some of you have been around long enough to remember the old Wikipedia:Wikipedia for Schools hard copies of selected WP articles with educational value. I have had this idea in the back of my mind that it could be reborn as a website that hosts static, read-only copies of Wikipedia articles of educational interest. Basically, no pop culture stuff, and you can't edit it at all. I feel like it could mostly be updated by bots and maybe a few admins, not many would be needed as there is no editing. The idea is that the kids get access to the content, but not the editing, the school can block the main website entirely if they wish while still providing access to the material, and everybody's happier, except shcoolkid vandals. .

Or is this an insanely terrible idea that I should just forget? Beeblebrox (talk) 07:35, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Selecting content "of educational interest" is going to be a lot of work and also very culture-dependent. Is The Chronicles of Narnia pop culture? The Lord of the Rings? What about Harry Potter? There are also various religious sensitivities. Will you include Piss Christ? Depictions of Muhammad? What about suicide? abortion? vulva? United States war crimes? Phan Thi Kim Phuc? Lynching? I would expect that many schools who don't want their students to access all of Wikipedia would want to ban access to some of this content. Maybe I am misunderstanding your proposal and its target audience, but I always thought if there truly was any interest in a censoredlimited version of Wikipedia, there would be a commercial version already. —Kusma (talk) 11:45, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this is a horrible idea, but it's been suggested before and didn't get any traction. There are some privately run projects along these lines (https://www.safesearchkids.com/, https://kids.kiddle.co/, https://wiki.kidzsearch.com/, and even https://kids.britannica.com/) RoySmith (talk) 14:37, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

As a former kid editor, I actually do like this idea. It would help create a funnel for kids out of the main Wikipedia to their own area, it would address some of the regulatory and legal issues around kids editing, and it might even educate some people (kids and adults) and provide a meaningful alternative to other free/low-cost "startup education" initiatives that are less humanistic and free (as in libre). But maybe a good place to start would be Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Libraries and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Art etc. Universities, and to a lesser extent K-12 schools at least in the US, are institutions with their own libraries, reference materials, etc., and could be an interesting place for outreach for editors to do research and educate teachers, parents, and students about how to responsibly use Wikipedia, and when not to use it. This might be a broader interpretation of the goal of such a program than "hard copies for kids that aren't editable" but I do think Wikipedia's educational institution outreach is a great area to organize in conjunction with the local wikichapters. The local NYC chapter has gone to various places from the World's Fair to the Botanical Garden to create new articles and do research, and local universities seem like a logical extension of that, though again maybe an orthogonal idea to the one being suggested. Andre🚐 23:29, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

The United States needs its own Wikipedia

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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There are a few reasons I have found supporting this claim.

American units of measurement have British English articles, because said units are also "British Imperial". (a nasty shock I got at Inch)

Articles related to school use the British system. (found at High school)

American English is arguably more popular than British English, yet the second one is used more by Wikipedia. (See {{Use American English}} vs. {{Use British English}}

To add insult to injury, Wikipedia itself is American, so it's become more readable for foreigners than on its home turf. So who really won the Revolutionary War?

IPs are people too 🇺🇸🦅 17:28, 21 September 2023 (UTC) And this timestamp uses the British DMY date format, with no way to switch to America's MDY.

@IPs are people too Are you trolling? For establishing a Wikipedia in another language, you'd better go to metawiki. I've checked through your edit history and I strongly recommend you refrain from doing so. Have a read on WP:NPOV and you will know why. -Lemonaka‎ 18:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd put the odds of an American English Wikimedia project being created at approximately zero. If you really want such a project you're welcome to create it, but I doubt it would ever gain significant traction. The Internet's history is littered with unsuccessful attempts to fork or supplant Wikipedia, and those attempts were all founded on deeper and more reasoned principles than "I don't like it when people write 'colour'". — SamX [talk · contribs] 19:10, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

IPs are people too, nationalism generally isn't received well on Wikipedia, especially when it comes to linguistic variants. I suggest that you remove the nationalist statements from your user page as well, since they could be read as an attack on other editors. Most of us have agreed that we're fine with whatever variation happens to be in a given article. I even have both a US English and UK English spell check installed so I can switch between the two as needed. Wikipedia happens to be hosted in the United States, but it is not "American". It's a global project, and that's one of its strengths. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

If we are to play a numbers game then there are far more people in India than in either the US or the UK, and quite a few know English. I (as a Brit) can understand nearly everything that is said or written in English by nearly all speakers of the language wherever they come from, so I don't see any benefit in splitting the English Wikipedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

@IPs are people too: As Thebiguglyalien said, we don't need a separate nationalist Wikipedia. As that he said, it is a global project, and splitting it up along national divides is, well, contrary to the entire idea. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:38, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The project you're looking for is Conservapedia. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:41, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

As someone who is generally liberal, I find that extremely offensive. IPs are people too 🇺🇸🦅 16:32, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

And this timestamp uses the British DMY date format, with no way to switch to America's MDY Not "British". See the map to the right. Pretty much the rest of the world uses DMY (cyan) or YMD (yellow). The United States' MDY (pink) is not nearly so widespread. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:42, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

To add on to the responses people have made above, I don't think templates are a reliable way to gauge WP:ENGVAR proportions. Anecdotally, I notice that a lot of articles aren't properly tagged and are just written in AmE since that is the default for many people (nor necessarily should we be rushing to tag them all if it isn't causing problems). And as someone who's lived in both the US and New Zealand, I agree with Phil Bridger. ― novov (t c) 08:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Erm… no? It just seems odd. Different Wikipedia branches are named based on language. Americans speak a slightly different form of English. There is no España Wikipedia, but there is an Español Wikipedia. This just seems unnecessary, and just gives me troll vibes (sorry). So, yeah, strong oppose for sure. Professor Penguino (talk) 09:53, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Whilst Engvar has historically got people wound up over misspelt words and ill-begot strains of linguistic impurity, I suppose that we needn't fret that some who hobby about at the weekends should fancy having separate projects for mutually intelligible dialects. That way, theirs just know they're there. -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 12:05, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Instead perhaps you should get a tab on top of the article to convert from and to American spelling, and Imperial units. For example sh.wikipedia.org has a tab to convert alphabets. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:54, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I was wrong, I get it. Let's do @Graeme Bartletts tab thing instead. IPs are people too 🇺🇸🦅 13:07, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Alright, sounds good. Professor Penguino (talk) 19:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Then we need some software backing that would automatically transform spelling from one to the other. It may still be controversial though as for example I like to spell "colour" but "fiber" not "fibre". And there also might be Indian English with "crore" or Nigerian English in addition to Australian English. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:42, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

That's not really my forte. I think this definitely requires some further discussion. Professor Penguino (talk) 23:38, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think such an undertaking is worth it; I would wager vast majority of English speakers have no issue with (or don't even notice) the minor variations in language most of the time. Wikipedia's policy of mixing English varieties is quite idiosyncratic yet it hasn't really received major attention outside of those who contribute. ― novov (t c) 00:45, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

True. I only started noticing the differences in spelling (color vs. colour) when I started editing a little less than a year ago. Professor Penguino (talk) 01:31, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I am honestly truly surprised that the occasional variations in the English language that occur on Wikipedia, which one would naturally expect for such a diverse body of information as we have, is apparently causing such conniptions that there is a demand to create a gadget specifically to convert everything into American spelling/units. I... what? _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:27, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not a big deal. :) Professor Penguino (talk) 23:22, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

This is almost a perennial, I remember proposing this on the 2009 strategy wiki. I still think it is a good idea, and yes we might need to cater for more spelling variants than Chinese does. Pretty much by definition those of us who are regulars are OK with the current way of running Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean that we should assume our readers and others are. The IT overhead is less of a consideration than it once was, and last I looked we still get slightly fewer views and editors per million in the USA than in the UK or Canada. So the argument that Americans are unfamiliar with non US spelling and thereby deterred from using Wikipedia still strikes me as a real phenomena that would be worth fixing by making spelling a user choice, with defaults that vary by IP location. ϢereSpielChequers 05:42, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I never suspected the beginning of the end for mutual intelligibility between US English and all the other topolects would arise from date formatting and the relative placement of quote marks, but I suppose it's disturbing for certain readers to see things incongruous with their expectations.

Some sort of gadget or user script to convert regional variations would certainly save on a lot of pointless bickering, but if WMF salary were ever spent on such an undertaking, how then could we ever again complain about their budgetary priorities? What would our sister projects say?

I low key regret not tagging the OP with {{spa}} based on their contribution history at the time, but Lemonaka had already replied to much the same effect. I don't plan to start typing {{",|quote-style=US}} or {{cvt|honour|honor}} should the unnecessary come to pass, but yall have fun. Folly Mox (talk) 10:29, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, the opposite is in the news lately that Wikipedia may have trouble complying with UK law. Andre🚐 23:32, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

What did Wikipedia do wrong? (As an American who knows nothing about British law, I would appreciate having the law Wikipedia is breaking/almost breaking explained.) IPs are people too 🇺🇸🦅 00:53, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

[1] Andre🚐 00:57, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I suppose nothing is safe from expurgation. IPs are people too 🇺🇸🦅 01:17, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

The problem is the internet itself. To an American, the internet (and Wikipedia!) is an American invention; they own it, and they should control it. But now it is being overrun by foreigners. This exposes Americans to other cultures. Imagine the irreparable harm that would be caused if everyone in America had access to the sum of human knowledge. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:59, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WP:NOTCENSORED needs a fix

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IDEA HAS BEEN FORMALLY WITHDRAWN BY THE AUTHOR AFTER FEEDBACK FROM THE COMMUNITY.

I know that there have been countless discussions on this in the past, but I want to put it out there: WP:NOTCENSORED needs to be changed. Now, I understand the part of the rule that states that simply stating that something is objectionable is not grounds to remove it from the encyclopedia. That makes perfect sense. But pictures of bloodshed and gore are not subjectively “objectionable”; they are, in some cases, potentially traumatizing. I know that there are many who will defend NOTCENSORED because Wikipedia is supposed to take an unbiased look on a subject. However, gory war images or gruesome photos are not necessary to achieve that goal. Such objectively disturbing content is not only not needed, but can even discourage readers from researching a topic. Worse, trigger warnings are not allowed, and so many will stumble upon it by accident. So I want to let others give their thoughts, and then I’ll give some ideas of mine. I just think there should be an open discussion on this. Thank you. Professor Penguino (talk) 10:07, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

@Professor Penguino there's nuance to what you're saying that is partly addressed in MOS:SHOCKVALUE. But if I am researching Auschwitz, I should not be shocked to find images documenting it. If I cannot handle images altogether, I am free to hide them per Help:Options to hide an image for whatever reasons. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:37, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with that, but readers unfamiliar with that policy won’t. Gory pictures are not necessary for the average reader — of course, if one were doing a deep dive on the Holocaust then you would expect content like that. Or if you were writing a paper on it, you might not want to censor the horrors that the Nazis committed. The point I’m making is that most readers don’t expect it from Wikipedia. The reason I brought this up on here was because I saw several editors using WP:NOTCENSORED to override MOS:SHOCKVALUE. Professor Penguino (talk) 19:31, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I largely agree with Shushugah; articles like Auschwitz and Bucha massacre need images to fully document the horrors perpetrated, and a reader should expect to find such images in those articles. Professor Penguino, do you have any examples where readers should not expect to find such images but would? If such examples exist and are supported by policy then perhaps there is where we can look to adjust our policy. BilledMammal (talk) 11:02, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

In my experience, most readers don’t expect it. Wikipedia is a trusted website, and the average reader doesn’t know that Wikipedia isn’t censored. I mean, lots of people think Wikipedia has an editorial board. I just think that there needs to be some sort of new provision added. My point is that readers should be able to research important topics of history without accidentally stumbling upon disturbing, gruesome imagery. Professor Penguino (talk) 19:18, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

In that case, can you give half a dozen examples of articles that contain gory, disturbing, or unsettling imagery that you believe should not contain such imagery, so that we can better understand the intended impact of your proposal? BilledMammal (talk) 04:12, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

For example, Russian invasion of Ukraine has a pretty bloody image of a railway bombing. I don't go out looking for that sort of thing. There's some really disturbing stuff on Wikimedia Commons that I don't want to expose others too, neither do I want to search. Professor Penguino (talk) 04:26, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Would you, by chance, be referencing my then-held opinion on the Bucha Massacre images? I think Penguino's argument is similar to the idea that I held then, that anyone can find this while going through the information that they expect to not be offensive. But, of course, there's no way to moderate this properly. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 04:58, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the guideline you're looking for is WP:GRATUITOUS, which reads in part, "[WP:NOTCENSORED] does not mean that Wikipedia should include material simply because it is offensive, nor does it mean that offensive content is exempted from regular inclusion guidelines." This is an encyclopedia and we write about topics which would be disturbing to any reasonable person and sometimes there are disturbing images to go along with those topics, but if content is unduly offensive (or offensive for no reason, or offensive just to be offensive) it should be removed. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! I was looking for that rule, but couldn’t find it. That’s a big help. Professor Penguino (talk) 19:22, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I think this would do more harm than good to be honest. Being really blunt about it, so much of human history is really ugly and people need to be reminded of that, whether it'd be in the form of images or text. The old saying of "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" applies here. We need to show why these events are black marks on human history, and if they need to be in the form of images, so be it imo. They say pictures say a thousand words, and the images of the horrors of human history are way more powerful than text. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 03:57, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I get it. But people don't need it specifically from Wikipedia. There are kids on Wikipedia, so I think it would be a good idea to try and limit the amount of extreme content on here. I'm all for showing the horrors of war so people understand why it needs to be prevented -- showing gory images of war on Wikipedia might deter people from trying to learn about that sort of thing. The majority of people don't want to see that stuff. People can see that sort off thing in other places. I give more details below. Regards, Professor Penguino (talk) 04:08, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd potentially be for an option to hide gory images, but I think it'd be really dishonest (and to be honest, revisionist) to try to hide how bad human history actually is. Other people already do that, we shouldn't follow their lead. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 04:17, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I think text is honestly enough. And my suggestion includes a provision that discussion before deletion is necessary, unless impossible. The point is to hide potentially traumatizing content, not to whitewash history. That can be done without making the viewer nauseous. But I understand your concerns. Professor Penguino (talk) 05:04, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

[tangent] Just to push gently back on creeping therapy-speak, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders specifically says that kids can't actually be traumatized by pictures they see, television shows they watch, or other intermediated/indirect information. I think the word you're looking for is distressing, rather than traumatized.

Also, if you would like a catalog of all the ways someone might misunderstand and/or object to this general idea, see m:Image filter referendum from 2011. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh, ok. That's good to know. No worries, of course, since I've already withdrawn my own idea after hearing feedback from others. Still, I did not know that! Have a good one. Professor Penguino (talk) 23:17, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Ideas for a potential change to WP:NOTCENSORED

Please note that this is not intended to be a request for consensus; this is simply an idea to be workshopped.

Right now, I believe that the rules presented under WP:NOTCENSORED are given too much weight, or are applied far too widely. What do I mean by this? Well, the policy itself states that "Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive‍—‌even exceedingly so. Attempting to ensure that articles and images will be acceptable to all readers, or will adhere to general social or religious norms, is incompatible with the purposes of an encyclopedia." I think it should be made clear that this rule is talking about certain images being subjectively objectionable by certain groups of people. But potentially disturbing, gory, or traumatizing imagery is not simply offensive or failing to adhere to social norms -- it is objectively unpleasant imagery, and, in most cases, unnecessary. I think it should really be by a case-by-case basis. I think something should be added to the effect of, Although not required, gory, disturbing, or unsettling imagery may be removed, and discussions of removal may be done on a case-by-case basis. Thoughts? Professor Penguino (talk) 23:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I think disturbing, or unsettling imagery goes beyond your intent here; for example, Muslims may argue that images of Muhammad are disturbing or unsettling. BilledMammal (talk) 03:36, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

That is a subjective opinion. Gory images of war are objectively disturbing and unsettling. What I wrote above was meant as an addition, not a replacement, for to the current rule. Eventually, I'll move it to the appropriate section so I can start an RfC, after getting feedback on here. Professor Penguino (talk) 04:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

My point is that to match your intent you could just say “gory”; adding “disturbing or unsettling” risks unintended consequences, and at the very least renewed debate on questions that are settled and should remain settled. BilledMammal (talk) 04:09, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Alright, I see what you're saying. I'll tweak my idea. Thank you for the feedback. Professor Penguino (talk) 04:11, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Revised idea

(This revision is based off of very productive feedback given by BilledMammal).

I think that the following should be added to WP:NOTCENSORED: "Although not required, gruesome or gory imagery may be removed after a community discussion. If there is little feedback from the community, an editor may be bold and remove the image, so long as the image explicitly features gore." Thoughts? Professor Penguino (talk) 04:18, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

That is always possible. A discussion can decide that an image should be removed or replaced without any need to change the wording of NOTCENSORED. It is true that some misguided passers-by will act as if a gory picture cannot be removed because "not censored". That claim is baseless. What they mean is that an image cannot be removed simply because it is porn or otherwise potentially shocking. However a discussion could decide that a particular image adds no value to an article and is gratuitous. That reasoning is applied frequently at sex articles where enthusiasts sometimes add educational content (aka porn). Johnuniq (talk) 05:41, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, my point is simply that it should be specified to prevent confusion. I have made the same argument you have, but people continue to cite WP:NOTCENSORED regardless. Professor Penguino (talk) 05:44, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

There is nothing special about gruesome or gory images. They are appropriate in articles about gruesome or gory topics, like war, specifically war crimes, and medical articles about various disgusting conditions. They are not appropriate in articles about fluffy bunnies, just as fluffy bunnies are usually not appropriate in an article about war. You have so far not demonstrated that our normal editing rules are failing. Apart from that, "gruesome or gory" is likely a culture dependent judgment, and not as objective as you claim. —Kusma (talk) 06:08, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

We already treat shock images in the exact same way as we treat vandalism. Specifically, Wikipedia:Offensive material and WP:PLA already specifically prohibit offensive material unless if they add encyclopedic value. WP:NPA and WP:ATTACK is also relevant and is why you don't see negative caricatures of religious figures on Wikipedia out of context. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 17:22, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I already withdrew my idea below, just fyi. But thank you for taking the time to comment in any case. Professor Penguino (talk) 19:18, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

OFFICIAL WITHDRAWL

@User:Shushugah, @User:BilledMammal, @User:Mebigrouxboy, @User:Ivanvector, @User:Kusma, @User:JCW555. After reviewing people's thoughts, I have decided that my idea would inadvertently enable white washing, as some of you have pointed out. And so I am withdrawing it. Thank you. Professor Penguino (talk) 06:08, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Although the objections people raised were on-point, I do think that WP:NOTCENSORED could stand to be clearer on the fact that it doesn't guarantee the inclusion of any material in particular. Often when I see people cite it it's to argue that we must include something even in the face of other (policy-based) arguments against inclusion, such as WP:DUE; to a certain extent this is probably an WP:AGF issue as well, in that citing NOTCENSORED in response to policy-based reasons not to include something is implicitly accusing the people arguing against inclusion of not stating their real reasons. --Aquillion (talk) 04:00, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Very well said. Professor Penguino (talk) 01:56, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

If NOTCENSORED is to be clarified, I think we should target anatomical articles, which are the biggest discrepancy between Wikipedia and professionally-edited encyclopedias. Britannica shows pics of corpses in the Holocaust article, like we do, and I doubt even strict parents have an issue with it. But in anatomical articles, they show anatomical diagrams, whereas we tend to show random nudes. This is already addressed in MOS:OMIMG but that's an obscure guideline.

I doubt even strict parents would take issue with Vagina (Britannica) (our article is fine too). Compare to Penis, or Foreskin. The issue goes beyond strict parents, because a bunch of people read Wikipedia on their phones, in public or at work/school/a library, and reading these articles would be very socially awkward in a way that reading the Holocaust article (or Britannica's anatomy articles) wouldn't be. DFlhb (talk) 00:04, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the rule should reiterate that whitewashing is forbidden. So you should not be able to remove images of the Holocaust because of an exception to WP:NOTCENSORED. But gory images that have no historical value can have discussions for removal, per WP:SHOCK. Professor Penguino (talk) 00:26, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion on changes to the header of WP:Reliable sources/noticeboard

I've started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Cutting most of the header, to discuss a proposed change to the head of the Reliable sources noticeboard. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:45, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Fascism and the extreme right

Recent years have seen the increased role of political movements to the right of established parties. While some derived from historical fascism, many do not.

Since experts disagree with what they should be called, I do not think that we should have a rigid classification. However, I think we should have guidelines in the Manual of Style on sourcing for the descriptions used.

I recommend therefore that for each group we use the most commonly used description in expert sources or a simile. We should not use news reporters' descriptions or descriptions used in passing by non-experts. TFD (talk) 17:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I think this should be handled on a case-by-case contextual article basis, not across the board. I disagree we should disallow a common usage if experts do not agree with it. Language is a fungible thing. We should seek to be understood by a common audience and when we need to deal with expert jargon, do so for a general audience. Andre🚐 23:22, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Why would you say that? Isn't it better to quote scholarly sources that define their terms, rather than journalists who don't? And don't you think that people who have PhDs in politics and sociology, have taught at universities and had papers appear in academic publications are more reliable than people who have BAs in journalism? Do you think that natural science articles should also be based on journalism rather than textbooks and other academic writing?

To me, a journalist reports events as they occur and WP:RS says their analysis is unreliable. TFD (talk) 02:03, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

This seems like more of a broad-based attack on the value of journalism, than a proposal to strengthen sourcing requirements or a proposal to address style, e.g. contentious labels. There is a range of different content under the journalism umbrella. Some articles are indeed essentially primary sources or simple first-hand, breaking news reporting. As you know, there are also prize-winning, in-depth, multi-month or multi-year investigations. There's also a lot of overlap between the political science field and the journalism field. Anyway, RS does not say that journalists' analysis is unreliable, and it shouldn't. There is value and reliability, but it's proportionate to the gravity of the story. Obviously, I agree that if journalists and experts disagree, we should go with the experts, but I don't think there's a situation where the experts say a contentious label doesn't apply, and the journalists say it does. You said you wanted an expert to have to weigh in before the label can be applied. No, if journalists all use it, and nobody rebuts that, that's good enough. Also, expertise doesn't only come from academic degrees. Journalism, like business, is a field where you can practice and gain expertise by doing it. Andre🚐 02:22, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Policy says that analysis by journalists is unreliable. See News organizations: editorials and analysis in news media are "are rarely reliable for statements of fact." The exception would be articles by writers who are experts in their field.

Even if a BA in journalism meant one was more qualified than the leading experts, neutrality would require that we present all views, including those by experts.

I don't understand your arguement that journalists' opinions outweigh those of experts. Does that apply to all academic disciplines? Or do you just think that social sciences are invalid? TFD (talk) 03:52, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Incidentally, the Speaker of the House of Commons in Ottawa recently introduced a Waffen-SS veteran as a war hero. The Speaker has a BA in political science. It shows that having a BA does not necessarily make one an expert. TFD (talk) 03:56, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, please do not wrench brief quotations out of context. Your summary of the policy language is incorrect. A fuller quotation of the policy language is Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (invited op-eds and letters to the editor from notable figures) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact. When assesed in context, it is clear that the policy language is not in any way, shape or form referring to investigative journalists working for reliable sources doing long form analysis. It refers instead to pundits and opinion writers. The Canadian example is invalid, because that politician screwed up as a politician, not as an investigative journalist. A "Piled Higher and Deeper" degree does not guarantee that somebody's work is reliable, and a "Bull Shit" degree like I have does not indicate that the journalist's work is unreliable. There are cases, after all, when top tier peer reviewed academic journals have published work by researchers who do not even have a degree of any kind. Cullen328 (talk) 04:22, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

What do you think the policy means? Journalists are experts in what happened yesterday, not analyzing the news. A journalist might report for example on an earthquake but lacks the expertise to explain the geology behind it. TFD (talk) 04:38, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

The relevance of the Canadian speaker is that having a BA does not make someone superior to established experts even in the field one studied. TFD (talk) 04:41, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Cullen, that TFD is misunderstanding and misinterpreting the policy. TFD also misunderstands and misinterprets my own comments, I did not say that journalists' opinions outweigh experts, and I don't know where you got that from, I actually said the opposite. I simply said that that if all journalists described something in a certain way, and no academic expert said they were wrong, that is good enough, and we don't need to wait for experts to weigh in unless they are specifically contradicting something, in which case they would take precedence. How you interpreted that to mean the opposite, I do not understand. The point is that expertise never comes from a degree. It comes from deep experience and the reputation in reliable sources for expertise. There are PhDs with publications that can't be used due to being disqualified for being fringe or controversial. There are experts who are self-taught with no degrees. The bottom line is that assembling a pattern of facts based on sources has to use many different kinds of sources. Andre🚐 04:41, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I didn't say that a PhD qualified someone as an expert, just that a BA in an unrelated discipline did not. Obviously, per weight, we should use the consensus of expert opinion and sources such as textbooks rather than isolated papers.

We may however be making progress. Do you believe that the consensus of expert opinion is preferable over passing references in news reporting?

I think for example that the SPLC is a good source for describing far right groups in the U.S. while Routledge's Handbook of Fascism and the Far Right is good for international groups. I prefer their descriptions over those in news reporting or made in passing reference in academic papers.

In many discussions, some editors will decide on their preferred description then search for sources. I think the best approach is to identify the best sources and determine what descriptions enjoy consensus support. Or if the sources are conflicting, then we can say that.

That's the approach that policy supports. However, guidelines are useful because they help us apply policy in specific situations. That can help avoid lengthy discussions. TFD (talk) 13:19, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I think these decisions should be handled on a case-by-case basis and letting specific topics get into manual of style is a bad idea because decision making can become "out-of-date" and can be too swayed by the specific of the causes. Of course, one then asks how *any* change gets into policy - I suppose the answer is to see a number of disagreements play out across a number of areas and pulling out common features. I don't think "political terms that can somehow be associated to a group that we can associate to the far right" is a particular good category to have unique policy.

On "isolated papers", sure - but then suppose you have a review that is 3-years-old, and cited with approval by all other more recent sources; versus a 10 year old book aimed at undergraduates. I do tend to like routledge, though I think of them more as "academic topic reviews" than textbooks. An isolated paper, can be an invitation to search for the rest of literature, or unfortunately at times await publication of other sources. I am rather less keen on SPLC, many people would call them an ideological activist group engaging in guilt by association, either way its noticeable that they do not form part of a diverse discourse in the same way that routledge textbooks do.

You might be interested in WP:MEDRS for a similar topic in another wikipedia field, if you are not familiar with it. Here the concern about the difficult of correctly weighting literature led people to only allow secondary sources. However, there are a lot reviews in medicine than there are in humanity topics, so I don't think this approach works everywhere.

On "best sources and determine what descriptions enjoy consensus support". I don't think the world is so simple and errors of interpretation exist in all directions. A common error on medical topics for example is to consider patient focused or guideline literature as "expert consensus", when a cursory reading of literature specific to the question will give a different viewpoints. There are a variety of ways of limiting oneself to the false consensus of a visible but unrepresentative corner of the literature.

I think the best approach is to gain a detailed understanding of the literature by looking at it from a number of perspectives; for example by finding sources and placing them in the context of the works that references them. It is quite common for example, to find a primary source and then find that it is references in a high quality secondary source which you would not have found had you not explored the specific question.

Talpedia 13:52, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

On journalistic analysis. I don't know. Journalism can both form a large part discussion of current affairs, and also tends to be unreliable. What you do sometimes get is books written by individuals from a more journalistic angle. So perhaps these represent a middle ground. Particularly if you have a few notable books on the topic. Talpedia 13:59, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree with TFD. Except for the slam-dunk obvious cases, those terms are subjective and value laden and pejorative in many contexts. Now that the roles of political actors and "RS's" have often converged, an approach of a broader picture (as TFD suggests) vs. cherry picking in a term (when not an objective slam-dunk case) with those problems is a good idea. North8000 (talk) 15:04, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Maybe best not to pollute policy discussion with the particular case. But in one case I think this might refer to the "textbook" definition is narrower, more value-laden and more pejorative. It may however be true. Talpedia 15:30, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

There have been multiple discussions across a range of articles on UKIP, the BNP, EDL, Britain First, Sweden Democrats, True Finns, Front Nationale, Golden Dawn, Alternative for Deutschland, the Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, John Birch Society, Tea Party Movement, Boogaloo Boys, various organizations opposing Islamism, abortion, immigration and LGB, Azov, the alt-right, talk shows, a variety of conspiracy theories, such as QAnon and cultural Marxism, and numerous other articles, if memory serves me.

In each case, the same arguments are used. It would seem helpful to have some sort of guideline rather than to repeat the same arguments over and over again.

This is likely to increase in future as right-wing groups are set to join governments. Already, Bolsonaro, Trump, Modi, Victor Orban and Meloni have led governments and they are set to get the premiership in Slovakia. TFD (talk) 16:07, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Was the disagreement you wanted to use the SPLC to call them "far-right" and other people wanted to argue that they weren't based on journalistic press? Talpedia 16:19, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Actually no. It was where some editors wanted to call a group fascist or neo-fascist based on a description in a journal about communications. The SPLC did not use the description.

In fact news media frequently use the term far right even when expert sources do not. TFD (talk) 18:51, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

From a Wikipedia standpoint IMO it is the combination of subjective (for non slam-dunk cases) and pejorative which is bad. Because then it does not provide information about the topic to the reader, it only informs them about the bias of the the source. So IMO "pejorative" alone (e.g. for slam dunk objective cases) is not a problem and may be informative. North8000 (talk) 16:51, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

A lot of terms used to describe groups to the right of the established parties is pejorative. OTOH, the terms they use to describe themselves are contested. In each case we need to avoid being pejorative but at the same time be informative.

Sometimes the self-descriptions of right-wing groups become so well-known that we can use them, so we can be informative without being pejorative. TFD (talk) 19:08, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Au contraire, and this is a perennial proposal that has failed to pass on many occasions. We need to do what sources do in aggregate, regardless of whose sensibilities that may offend. If sources, in aggregate, in proportion to their prominence and weight and quality, refer to something in a certain way, we should do that as well. The only exceptions to this are when something is disputed and we need to consider that, or when something is a crime, or a complex statement of attribution that needs to be explained, etc., but in straightforward cases where a bunch of reliable outlets such as the Washington Post, NYT, Independent, Times of London, Guardian, etc. etc., which have oversight and editorial process per our policy, all refer to a politician or a political party or group as "far-right," "far-left," "radical," or any other value-laden term, provided that nobody in RS disputes such term (other than unreliable or non-independent sources), we should also take that as factual. It's not an opinion: it's a wikivoice fact. We do not and should not wait for the tenured professor of political science to decide whether he agrees with that label (tho, if he does opine, we can definitely then decide to include him or change it). As I believe someone said in the other discussion (was that you, North8000), Wikipedia is intersubjective in the sense that we must import that aggregation of viewpoints and describe them, sometimes in attributed voice, sometimes in wikivoice when it is an incontrovertible statement. Labels aren't exact, and we do not need to hew to exact definitions or observe the spectrum whenever statements are made. Our goal is to be backward-looking, conservative (in action, not politics), and synthesize (some kind of synthesis is indeed part of writing an article, it just shouldn't be a novel or improper combinatoric synthesis) a descriptive article without weighing in and determining whether we like, on a political basis, a particular label used by the reliable outlets. Andre🚐 19:24, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you are seeing a disagreement where this is none. I do not know of any cases where there was consensus for terminology in mainstream media but expert sources disagreed. Good reporters choose descriptions that experts would come up with given the time. What concerns we is when there is no consensus and editors argue over which one they prefer.

I believe that whatever the topic, editors should choose the Wikipedia:BESTSOURCES available, whether that is yesterday's newspaper or a polisci textbook. That should be explained in the guidelines.

So if we worded the guideline consistent with what you said, would you support it? TFD (talk) 20:10, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, feel free to propose some wording along such lines. Andre🚐 20:28, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I have made a first attempt, which is provided below and welcome your comments. TFD (talk) 11:49, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it looks good. The only thing I'd note is and undisputed in reliable sources, this looks like a wikilawyers paradise ("You may have a thousand reliable sources saying X, but I have one reliable sources that disputes it"). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:19, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I agree, I'd remove "undisputed," to something a little less strong. This is a guideline after all. I think "widely used" is sufficient. Andre🚐 18:58, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

My concern is that if a subject has received a lot of coverage, even if a term is rarely used, someone could be argued it was widely used because they got numerous hits on Google. Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush were called fascists in a lot of sources, although it would not be sufficient to call them that. I'll try and think of better phrasing. TFD (talk) 21:10, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree it would be inappropriate to call Nixon, Reagan, Bush, or even Clinton fascists even though they are called that inexactly by some people, and there are probably a handful of people that analyze the creeping fascism in the American body politic, e.g. demonizing minorities and racist drug wars or adventurism in Latin America, but we should be careful because that term is definitely disputed and probably only a small minority of experts actually want to use the term to describe it, as opposed to a better term. So maybe the language should qualify "widely used by ..." because it's not widely used by like Cheech & Chong, Willie Nelson and Woody Harrelson, but widely used by serious and sober reliable sources. Andre🚐 21:16, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Why limit it to the far-right? Other than that the far left is much less often in the news these days. Anomie⚔ 21:30, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

There isn't the same problem with other ideological parties and groups. The Liberal Party of Canada is a liberal party, the Social Democratic Party of Germany is Social Democratic Party, the Communist Party of Cuba is a communist party. Experts classify them that way based on party name, the circumstances in which they were founded, international affiliation, public perception and party symbols. Of course a few parties are misnamed or have names that do not reference their ideology, but usually consideration of the other factors will suffice. TFD (talk) 22:06, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Still doesn't seem like a reason to single out only one side of the political spectrum in the actual guideline. Anomie⚔ 13:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

It's because the terminology used to describe the Right is contentious, while the terminology used to describe the rest other ideologies isn't. TFD (talk) 14:27, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

It is now, sure. But not very long ago "communist" was extremely contentious to label someone with (at least in the US). Things could shift again. Why write a biased guideline when changing from "right" to "extremist" would remove the bias without changing anything else? Anomie⚔ 11:26, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

That's true, that is a good point. Andre🚐 18:09, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

The term communist was not contentious during the Red Scare or in the U.S. What was contentious was association with the Communist Party of the United States. And Syriza literally stands for "Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance." In any case, these don't seem to lead to disputes. If you want a guideline for describing the ideology of parties that describe themselves and are perceived as communist or radical left, then please provide one. TFD (talk) 18:55, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

This is an absurd statement to make. Being labeled a communist, not merely a party member, in that era could destroy someone's career; I knew people who, decades later, were still scarred by it. It was vastly more contentious and incendiary of a label then than "far-right" is today, by an order of magnitude. But the point isn't to settle that dispute; the point is that this shows why it is vitally important to avoid encoding people's political perspectives and how they feel about political terminology into policy. Because both terms are widely-used in academia as a neutral, uncontroversial descriptor of someone's political beliefs; the fact that some people also use them as an epithet no more sets our general policy on it than the fact that we would allow ourselves to be influenced by the fact that some people use "liberal" or "feminist" the same way. A neutrally-written policy that describes how to use the sources and which sources to focus on will allow us to figure out when and which terms we should use; if you have to specifically dictate additional weight for or against term X, that probably means that your personal position on how it should be used isn't reflected in the highest-quality sources. WP:NOTCENSORED applies here; you can say "use the best sources, don't go past them, maintain a neutral tone", but you can't say "avoid using term X, no matter what." Even with the best of intent, experience with the misuse of WP:LABEL suggests that naming specific terms is often interpreted as the latter. --Aquillion (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Right-wing political parties and groups

"The description of political parties and groups that are perceived to be to the right of long established parties is contentious. Generally these groups either do not self-describe their ideologies or else they claim to hold mainstream political views.

"When describing these groups, editors should identify and use the best sources available. Descriptions should only be used if they are widely used and undisputed in reliable sources. While some of these terms may appear value-laden, Contentious labels does not apply. Do not use groups' self-descriptions if they are misleading or self-serving, unless they are widely used in reliable secondary sources." — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Four Deuces (talk • contribs)

The sentence "Descriptions should only be used if they are widely used and undisputed in reliable sources. While some of these terms may appear value-laden, Contentious labels does not apply." could probably be replaced as something like "Descriptions without attribution in Wikivoice should only be used if they are widely used and undisputed in reliable sources; otherwise, these should be treated as value-laden Contentious labels and must include in-text attribution." --Masem (t) 21:40, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

And I would also like to see a comment that even when included without attribution, that editors must consider the tone of where the material is included per NPOV. It is one thing to call a group a fascist in wikivoice, but its also another thing when the lede sentence rushes to call this out when we do not use similar construction for more moderate groups or situations. Masem (t) 21:42, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't agree with Masem's change. Andre🚐 21:47, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

What's your objection? TFD (talk) 22:08, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

I do not think the MoS should be warning about NPOV or tone, and I do not think it should tighten attribution guideline for contentious labels. TFD's original text makes it clear that contentious labels doesn't apply, which I consider an improvement. I do not agree with the part that says political descriptions are value-laden contentious labels, since they aren't today, that would make the guideline worse in my view. Andre🚐 22:10, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, let's not try to shoe horn politics into the manual of style, eh? Talpedia 01:00, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

But looking through the descriptions. I think this problem applies to many populist parties as well, which may be left wing. Podemos_(Spanish_political_party) comes to mind, and indeed here is UK broadsheet, the times describing them as far left.

Best sources is always true. I think "undisputed" is going to be difficult to achieve, but it depends what you count as a reliable. I would have thought it would have been obvious that a party's own description should not be used unless attributed to the party. Misleading and self-serving and really hard to decide on. I feel like there might be some subtlety on what exactly we mean by primary and secondary (don't link me to WP:PRIMARY !). Talpedia 01:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

How to describe left parties presents a problem as well, but we should approach one problem at a time.

I appreciate Masem's comments. That's how I would approach a dispute. However, maybe we could mention Impartial tone, which is a policy rather than a guideline, instead.

As I understand it, guidelines explain how a reasonable editor should apply policy in specific situations, based on the experience of editors. They are not rules, but help editors to interpret the rules (policy). We're not telling editors what to do, but what to think about. If they think that a guideline should not apply, they can ignore it, but should explain why they have done so. TFD (talk) 03:43, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

You might want to read Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays. Fun fact: The page that uses must and must not the most is a style guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Talpedia (not try to shoe horn politics into the manual of style), and even if we were to do that, disagree with the one-sidedness of the proposal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:33, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm concerned about Descriptions should only be used if they are widely used because a plain reading of that text is "Do not write an encyclopedia article if sources don't agree with each other". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it just means that where sources don't agree with each other the article should say so, rather than taking one side or the other. Of course majority views should be given greater prominence and fringe views usually ignored. TFD (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Maybe it should say something like, "if the description is used more often than not, and any dispute is relegated to the fringe, it may be considered a mainstream view." Andre🚐 21:16, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

What about "widely used and not seriously disputed in reliable sources?" TFD (talk) 14:30, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

In hot-button articles, editors have more trouble than usual with separating their own opinion from what reliable sources say. There is a tendency to identify whether a source is reliable based not on the usual factual points (e.g., the list in WP:NOTGOODSOURCE) but instead on whether the source got the right answer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:44, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

That's partly why a guideline would be helpful. Do you have any recommendations? TFD (talk) 02:22, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

A decent educational system, focused on child development instead of economic outputs, implemented worldwide at least half a century ago?

Seriously, there's no amount of writing down rules that will give people the self-awareness necessary to be fair to the other side of a dispute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Something else to consider is that we want consensus of sources to be pulled from non-opinion sources, since language tends to be more freely used in op eds, compared to more careful language selection used in most news stories or in peer reviewed academic studies. We don't want solely opinion columns to be used to justify terms in Wikivoice. --Masem (t) 16:17, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

• I don't object to having a general guideline towards using higher-quality sources, as long as it's clear that eg. significant usage in academic sources trumps news sources, and higher-quality news sources trump lower-quality ones. IMHO the problem we often have is the reverse of what people are saying here, where outside of sources with overt axes to grind, news sources, with strict deadlines and concerns about liability, often shy away from descriptions that the subjects might object to even when they're factual, whereas the highest-quality academic sources are much more precise with their terminology and have more time to line their ducks up are therefore more willing to describe someone as eg. far-right when they fit the definition; in fact, I believe that sticking to the best sources would probably result in us using terms like that more frequently rather than less. However, I would strenuously oppose using any sort of examples or specific political designations anywhere in policy pages, which means definitely not calling out "far-right" specifically as something to avoid - never, not ever, this is a hard no. IMHO this has made WP:LABEL almost useless, twisting it from its original intent and leading to constant abuse of it because instead of considering whether a label is a value-laden judgment or a factual summary of high-quality non-opinion WP:RSes based on context and sources, editors try to use it to "win" disputes at a blanket level without regards for sourcing or context by identifying language in partisan disputes that they consider the language of the enemy and then barring it. What matters is the sourcing and context in a specific case, not how individual editors feel about the way these terms are used in the highest-quality sources. If anything we should be considering removing the list of examples from WP:LABEL and replacing it with a more neutral description of what to use to determine whether a source's usage is value-laden or not. Otherwise, we get editors pushing for blanket bans on language and terms they feel to be disfavored, without regard for sourcing and context; and we get discussions where endless amounts of in-depth analysis of high-quality sources are met with what amounts to "this word is banned, tho." --Aquillion (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

A project for combatting bias?

I know that there is already a WikiProject:Countering systematic bias, but what I was thinking of was just slightly different, so I wanted to go to here first. I think that the project could be a very open thing, where it becomes a hub for people to suggest reviews of articles they think have bias. Editors can then improve the article to remove the bias, or disagree that it has any bias at all and let it be. It wouldn’t just be for systematic bias, but would instead be for all sorts of bias — political bias and that sort of thing. What do you guys think? Is there already something similar that has been created? Professor Penguino (talk) 06:34, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that you could just expand the area of the CSB project rather than create something new. 331dot (talk) 06:41, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Ok, it’s just that it doesn’t cover political bias that much. Professor Penguino (talk) 07:43, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Are you looking for the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard? —Kusma (talk) 08:32, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

The first thing to do is to find and assemble your people, not to create another page. See WP:REVIVE for some suggestions if you want to do that. Don't make the mistake (made by about a thousand creators of WP:WikiProjects) and assume that If you build it, they will come. They won't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. And quantify what problem you are trying to solve. In my experience, Wikipedia is one of the least biased websites on the internet. When I go read an article about any topic to learn about it, I generally encounter a very fulsome view that gives me a lot of jumping-off points to educate myself. So if you want to solve a problem in political articles, of which there are several, I would argue the problem is not bias, but the perception of bias. Because a lot of people come to Wikipedia, read something they don't agree with, or find that certain information is included or omitted in a way they do not like or agree with based on their preconceived prior political views. Then, they go and remove/add that or complain about the bias or grouse when their suggestion fails to catch on in the body politic. So, how can we solve the problem of actually "showing our work" and providing more information so that people understand that Wikipedia really isn't biased - the biases are those who want to censor, or spin the material that Wikipedia presents. How can we inspire trust and confidence in the system and its process? Andre🚐 21:19, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. People will go on Wikipedia and say, "Hey, that fact doesn't align with my world view! It must be this website's fault. It should reinforce my beliefs instead!" I hope you don't think I'm one of those people. My aim would be to counter actual political bias and not inconvenient facts. On the topic of trying to inspire confidence in readers... that's the million dollar question. If people knew about how hard WP:RS is followed among the editing community, they would trust Wikipedia way more. Professor Penguino (talk) 23:18, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. and I know you're here at the idea lab ideating and not going to complain about bias. But it would be helpful maybe to have some examples that you think are illustrative. Andre🚐 23:45, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, what prompted me to think about this was probably more akin to biased whitewashing. For example, when I saw someone delete the part of the Yaroslav Hunka article where it says that the Waffen SS was called a "wholly criminal" organization back in the 1940's. [2] The edit was reverted by another editor, and since then I have started noticing it around more articles -- people changing info to make Ukraine or Russia look better or worse, or something similar with different conflicts. I can supply more examples in time. Professor Penguino (talk) 01:50, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

We already have WP:NPOVN, which is as good as we're likely to get. Beyond that there isn't really an "easy" answer to bias; if there were we'd already be using it. Several factors to consider:

• Editors with strong interest in a topic tend to also have perspectives on it. In a topic with any sort of serious controversies, it's hard to follow it in-depth without reaching decisions about those controversies.
• These aren't (just) biases. They're what people actually believe - what they think is true. And the sort of people who edit Wikipedia are the sorts of people who care about sourcing and academia and things like that, so often, that means they'll think that the sources also agree with them. And if there are any disputes over sources or how to read, interpret, and apply them, they will also have views on that in alignment with their beliefs - this isn't them being manipulative or trying to exploit the rules, it's the logical result of their beliefs being consistent.
• This can be solved by going back to the sources and trying to clear our minds of biases, but it isn't practical or possible for editors to do this at all times, for everything they do. In practice, most edits made to Wikipedia take a few forms - someone is reading the stuff they usually read and sees something they think ought to be in Wikipedia; or they're reading Wikipedia and they see something is missing or wrong and needs to be corrected. It's easy to see how all of these things, even when applied in a well-intended way by expert editors trying to be neutral, can result in biases - you could call this a "bias of ignition." Even if once you've started thinking about the edit you stop and do a rigorous self-examination and a thorough source search (which, let's be real, isn't possible for every single edit when there's no active dispute), it would still result in biases just based on the stuff we think to start the process of adding and the things that initially trigger our "that sounds wrong!" radar. Our beliefs affect our cognition from end-to-end; it's important to try and be neutral when we can but it's important to understand that biases will still work their way in.
• So why not just have a bias task force? Well, all of the above affects that too; even our mechanisms to prevent bias can become things that perpetuate it instead, since where we notice bias and how we react to it is affected by our baseline beliefs. I suspect that if you asked many of the most active editors in controversial topic areas why they edit the way they do, a number of them (if WP:BATTLEGROUND didn't discourage it) would say "I need to prevent those people from biasing our articles." And they're not always completely wrong, even - having experienced editors who know policy can at least help prevent people from wandering in and adding blatant bias to articles - but falling too far into this thinking, especially when applying it to other longstanding editors in good standing, leads to the sort of behavior that BATTLEGROUND is trying to prevent and can end up exacerbating biases. If you look at controversial topic areas, say, you will often see experienced editors stepping in to reinstate or defend a phrasing that they would almost certainly never have added themselves, because they see any attempt to remove or change it as an effort to bias the article by the "other side." A bias task force risks becoming overwhelmed by that and turning into a source of battleground conduct and thus more bias - the people who see bias everywhere are by definition likely to be the ones who have the strongest views on things.

The best we can do is to try and invite a wide variety of outside editors to weigh in; this waters down any one individual person's biases, and inviting in outside editors reduces the "bias of ignition." I don't think a dedicated bias task force is likely to do better than that. Rather, the best we can do is encourage individual editors who think they see some sort of bias to take it to WP:NPOVN or an WP:RFC quickly if there's a dispute rather than getting bogged down, and trust in the fact that Wikipedia has a diverse editing base to ensure that someone will see potential biases in any highly-trafficked article. --Aquillion (talk) 05:10, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Related: Wikipedia:All your bias are belong to us. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 04:29, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Name order change for Japanese (and other) names

I want to amend Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles#Name order to permit the use of Japanese name order in articles. Fundamentally, I think we should use a name order that is consistent with how the person wants to be referred to per WP:BLP. For example, we have some guidelines on how to handle name changes. While this may seem like a minor stylistic change, on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles#Why_doesn't_Wikipedia_respect_Japan? there is a concern that the use that we are having is falling out of favor.

I want to develop more clear and cut guidelines for when to use Western name order and when to use CJKV/Eastern name order. Especially since there can sometimes be no consistency when one or the other is used in reliable sources. This is a balancing act between how a person wants to be addressed vs what reliable sources say. Just as we should not always be using previous names as a privacy interest, we should respect how a person wants to be addressed. Awesome Aasim 18:20, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

What text would you like to see added / amended at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles#Personal names? And why was Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles not an adequate venue for this? Folly Mox (talk) 18:34, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Isn't the point of VPIL to brainstorm ideas and proposals? Even though they might be proposed elsewhere? Or is this just an idea brainstorm page for VPPR? Awesome Aasim 19:08, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

See the long history of Hikaru Utada page moving. Even determining what a living subject prefers in English/Western media can be challenging and a moving target (and may require rather extensive research).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:25, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

That is probably why it was added to the MoS to start :D

But yeah, I can see how this can be very confusing. Some sources will use Japanese name order, while others will use English name order. In this case it would be best to defer to what sources closest to the subject use. In the case you mentioned here, shortening the title to Utada (singer) would be a good compromise. Awesome Aasim 22:57, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Given that Japan is telling news sources to change their name order, why couldn't we just keep following what sources say, and switch as they do? Won't the problem solve itself? (in most cases anyway) DFlhb (talk) 09:44, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I am not seeing where Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles#Name order does not permit the use of Japanese name order. CMD (talk) 12:11, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

What I am seeing though is that in almost all cases, Western name order is de facto preferred over Eastern name order for Japanese names. Even as both are used interchangeably and without consistency in reliable sources. People want control in how they are addressed. If they don't mind either, then sure we can interchange: Pick one and be consistent. But if they do mind, and that is the whole point, then it crosses into BLP. Oftentimes their website is only in one language so we should look at what name order is used there. We can also use sources that are close to the subject to determine how they should be addressed. Awesome Aasim 14:03, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

How about:

−

In all cases, the spelling and name order used [...]

+

Unless the subject has stated a clear preference, the spelling and name order used [...]

"clear preference" may address SMcCandlish's point; I think BLP concerns are minimal when we're left to make educated guesses as to the subject's desire DFlhb (talk) 14:21, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I can imagine a new template as well: "This article uses Eastern name order to refer to East Asian individuals. In accordance with the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without consensus." Awesome Aasim 17:03, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

@DFlhb I think this is an acceptable WP:BOLD change. Awesome Aasim 13:53, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

There should not be an article-wide template, it should be name by name. Politics of Singapore for example, mentions Lee Li Lian and Sylvia Lim in the same paragraph. CMD (talk) 14:25, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree DFlhb (talk) 06:20, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Project Res-Up

Project Res-Up by Adobe uses generative AI to upscale video. However, according to The Verge, when a sample video was upscaled, "[t]he resulting footage was much sharper, with the AI removing most of the blurriness and even adding in new details like hair strands and highlights." Given the addition of new details to old film, would this be copyrightable when used on a PD film, and should we be banning it on WP because it adds new details to video? Just to be clear it's not out yet so I wanted to heads up users here. Therapyisgood (talk) 07:38, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Have you read m:Wikilegal/Copyright Analysis of ChatGPT?

As for replacing "blurry hair" with "hair that shows some individual strands", I suggest that this isn't really a case of creating content. The original people in the old films assuredly had individual strands of hairs on their heads. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:19, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

By extension, would you accept dialogues between historical persons invented by an author? After all, we can be fairly sure that historical persons who we know were in contact had conversations. When does the addition of invented details cross the line? (Edit) Perhaps more pertinent is the new function in Google's Pixel 8, which will switch images of faces from old photos on to new photos you take.Flawless or fake? Google's new AI now fixes smiles. Donald Albury 14:02, 15 October 2023 (UTC) Edited 14:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Since the exact words sometimes matters, I'd tend to reject a made-up conversation (although there are very few encyclopedia articles that should be quoting whole conversations). Since the exact hairs on someone's head never matter (in an encyclopedia article), I wouldn't worry about that. We need to focus on what actually matters (see, e.g., Materiality (law) or Materiality (auditing)).

What we don't need is another round of an editor saying that the Portraits of presidents of the United States are all false and should be deprecated because the artist might have put a few strands of hair in the wrong place. If you'd accept a reasonable level of artistic license in a hand-painted image, you should accept the same level of artistic license in a machine-generated image.

We shouldn't misrepresent the works. Any level of image manipulation that goes beyond the routine and ordinary (e.g., cropping) needs to be declared. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:22, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

The Pixel 8 feature has been wildly misunderstood by many. All the feature does is let you switch between faces taken of the same person in the same shot. As in, if you take a group selfie and hit the shutter button three times, you can switch Person A's face in Photo #1 with Person A's face in the Photo #2 or #3. It's not as wild as you might think — and the technology has been around for decades, just never to a wide audience. InfiniteNexus (talk) 02:43, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like a great solution to the group photo problem: She blinked in photo #1, he blinked in photo #2, and now you can make a sort of collage that gives you one picture containing nobody blinking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the pitch. (Meanwhile, the biggest piece of news from Apple's event was ... USB-C?) With that being said, other features do involve generative AI "content" creation, for instance artificially generated pixels to replace deleted ones. So perhaps that is a better example than Adobe's AI to ask whether partially AI-generated images are copyrightable. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:33, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

New Vector 2022 RfC

I have been talking with editors on Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022 about a new Vector 2022 RfC, and it seems as if there is support for a new RfC. Pinging most editors involved in that discussion: @InfiniteNexus, @Certes, @Tvx1, @Æo, @Hemiauchenia, @Nikkimaria, @Casualdejekyll, @Qwerfjkl, @Tenryuu, @Aaron Liu, @Toa Nidhiki05, @Yngvadottir, @TheMissingMuse, @Cessaune, @BilledMammal, @Radlrb, @Randy Kryn. Please @ anyone else that I might have missed.

Let's use this discussion to build the next Vector 2022 RfC. I know there will be pleasure and displeasure about the skin, but we should save those arguments for the RfC. Whatever that RfC might cover. We also shouldn't be beating a dead horse, rather we should think about questions we can ask. Personally, I am more inclined to ask open ended questions rather than simple yes or no questions, like Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 1, but I am fine with yes or no questions. BTW the reason I did not move that discussion is because WP:INVOLVED but I do think a higher traffic page meant for ideation is a better place to discuss this idea rather than an obscure talk page. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 20:14, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

BTW I started building something in User:Awesome Aasim/Vector 2022 Feedback Survey as this is the idea I have. Do you think my questions would get specifics? We can always alter the suggested survey questions. I also put a section for !voting on ideas. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 21:09, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Good initiative! The idea of a RfC with multiple questions is perfect, and the proposed questions are very intelligent. I would still like to see another yes/no question about reverting to V10 added to the list. Let's see what are the opinions of others. Æo (talk) 21:54, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I made that Idea 5, which was originally about changing the default skin to a community based one, but now it is about what should be the default skin. But now it can be a little more open and we can even have other ideas brought as well, including other mw:Skins. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 00:39, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

By my count, this would be the eleventh major RfC or request for community feedback on the new skin, after requests for feedback on the first (March 2020), second (July 2021), third (November 2021), fourth (March 2022), and fifth (June 2022) prototypes by the web team, the pre-deployment VPP discussion (July 2022), pre-deployment RfC (September 2022), post-deployment RfC (January 2023), close review of the post-deployment RfC (March 2023), and follow up discussion on the fixed width issue. This horse isn't just dead, it's been sent to the glue factory and turned into Ikea furniture. – Joe (talk) 07:38, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Let's say that the horse has been shotten dead multiple times instead of having died by natural causes. Æo (talk) 09:34, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Let's focus on the two main discussions where people actually discussed Vector 2022. There is the pre and post deployment RfCs, neither of which had any consensus to deploy or to rollback. That bridge was burned six months ago. We have extensively discussed whether we should revert the skin or not. What we can discuss is the next steps for the skin now that it is deployed. A quality review would be the best bet for what to do next. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 14:15, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

There was a consensus to deploy, as assessed by two experienced closers ProcrastinatingReader and ScottishFinnishRadish: if all the concerns outlined above are satisfactorily addressed then we see community support to roll out the change. There was then no consensus to un-deploy it, implying that the previous consensus still stands. – Joe (talk) 06:45, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how that can be read as consensus to deploy. "if all the concerns outlined above..." refers to "fixed-width...clearly visible and available to both logged-out and logged-in users", "non-intuitive icons in the sticky header", and "the behaviour of the language selector". The fixed-width toggle was only sorted out after deployment, while the sticky header icons and the language selector were (and remain) completely unchanged. CMD (talk) 07:01, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

They were addressed here. Changes were made to the fixed width behaviour and the language toggler; I'm not sure about the icons, but it's also not clear from the closing statement what exactly was wrong with them. On a consensus-based project, "address" does not mean "do exactly as we say", it means discuss further and reach a satisfactory compromise. If the community as a whole was unsatisfied with the compromise that was reached, it could have expressed that in the post-deployment RfC, but it didn't. – Joe (talk) 07:19, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not seeing how that discussion shows consensus the concerns were addressed. There was in fact much "expressed" in the discsussion you link. If the issues were addressed, then there would not have been what appeared to be a very rapid rush to address the issues with the fixed-width behaviour after Vector 2022 was already deployed. CMD (talk) 07:41, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it really matters when exactly they were addressed? The point is that the WMF made a good faith effort to address them by changing some things and justifying why they would not change other things, and the community, given the chance to reject that response as unsatisfactory, did not. – Joe (talk) 08:03, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I think one of these closers commented somewhere that, in their opinion, the concerns were not satisfactorily addressed. I'm sure someone can find the diff. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:41, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

That was a conversation on ProcrastinatingReader's talkpage where both closers noted that reading their close as consensus to deploy was inaccurate, and that the concerns raised were not satisfactorally addressed. CMD (talk) 07:54, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

• Specific questions or requests for improvement can be made without a broad RFC that will just rehash old arguments. Users who dislike the skin are free to use a different one, just as they were with the last change and will be with the next change. 331dot (talk) 09:55, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  This is not about the personal preference of single users, but for voicing concerns of the community as a whole (or at least that 65% majority of users who were against V22 in the January 2023 RfC), and for the good of the whole Wikipedia project. For example, I already use V10 as set in my personal options but I still think that V22 is detrimental for the project as a whole, and that even anonymous editors and readers should be given the possibility to switch back to V10. Æo (talk) 10:21, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  People who dislike change are always more vocal than those who like a change. This has been reviewed to death, the RFC was reviewed, there was a review of the RFC, a review of the review of the RFC, ad nauseum. There needs to be some finality over this general issue. Specific concerns should certainly be discussed, like availability for unregistered users(it's my understanding there are technical reasons for that, but I may be wrong), but in general, can we move past this? At this rate we will still be discussing it when Vector 2032 comes out and then the cycle will start overy. There is no way to satisfy everyone on this planet. 331dot (talk) 17:29, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  I personally like change but V22 was a change in a completely wrong direction. By "review" you probably mean that the first and second RfCs were "closed". Æo (talk) 18:04, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  You are certainly entitled to your opinion- and I truly hope that you expressed it in the numerous prior discussions. 331dot (talk) 19:02, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  I assume that you are aware nothing on Wikipedia is a straight vote. 331dot (talk) 17:31, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yet there was a clear majority against V22. Æo (talk) 18:05, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  A good amount of which was WP:IDONTLIKEIT and ignored the research and study groups previously performed. Arguments are weighed in a discussion. Hey, if you don't like it, fine with me- but the horse is dead, buried, encased in concrete, yada yada. At some point we need to move on(especially since there are alternatives like switching to the old one), before we know it, we will be doing this all over again with Vector 2032. 331dot (talk) 18:57, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yes I recognise that. That is why I structured the questions to be less focused on proposals and more on general questions. Sure I do have some ideas for next steps. Specifically phab:T106463. But I am also sure that some of the other ideas I put there would get moderate support. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 14:26, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

We also shouldn't be beating a dead horse - then might I suggest not doing this? firefly ( t · c ) 16:37, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

That is in reference to the deployment and rollback RfCs. Neither of those RfCs were able to get consensus for deployment or rollback. However, the closers believed that if the concerns about deployment were addressed then there might have been consensus for deployment. I do want to propose the enabling of Vector 2022's "responsive mode" which so far has not been done and is the reason I am using Timeless right now instead of that skin (so far checking "responsive mode" in Preferences has no effect on Vector 2022). When that comes I certainly will use Vector 2022. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 18:43, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

• I do not think having a 10 question RFC on this issue (or most issues) is a good idea. That seems to lack focus and may not be a great use of community time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:43, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Then... should I just focus on individual steps? So individual changes to the Vector 2022 skin? Because as I said above rolling back the skin is off the table. We have essentially talked that to death. The main thing I really think should happen right now is enabling Responsive Vector 2022 (see phab:T106463 and phab:T291656 and phab:T319305) (or at least the checkbox in preferences), but I did put some other questions up about the ToC, etc. There absolutely should be more civility and less hostility towards the WMF as an organisation as, even if they make a mistake, they are likely doing it out of negligence not out of actual malice. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 19:43, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Unlimited width as default achieved consensus during the rollback RFC but was never actioned, right? With that in mind I do not have high hopes that further RFCs would lead to software changes, and therefore I do not recommend them.

  Speaking more generally, to craft a successful RFC of any kind, I would recommend a laser focus. Just one or two questions, separated into different sections, encouraging a binary answer to make things easier for the closer, and very specific ("Should we X?" or "Should we ask the WMF to X?") –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:02, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, I can see how that was completely pointless. WMF's solution was to have width be persistent. That is a good compromise.

  However, as seen on Phabricator, there is a bigger push to roll out responsive mode. The ticket with the highest number is the one created by User:AHollender (WMF) (before they no longer worked for WMF). Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 23:09, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

The way the WMF handled the Vector rollout was irresponsible and short-sighted. But I really doubt that there's any will at this point to undo it, which would likely be as painful of a process. Our focus is better spent on bringing WMF actions that affect the English Wikipedia under increased scrutiny, which is what's being done right now with WP:2023 WMF RfC Hub. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:33, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I am genuinely curious as to what they should have done instead. They spent years developing it, more time testing it, asked focus groups, and solicited community input. The WMF can't ask every Wikipedia user on this planet what they think, nor can they design a skin acceptable to every user. The grievance from opponents seems to be that the WMF didn't ask them personally. 331dot (talk) 19:49, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Ditto. The rollout of V22 was exemplary: as I've listed above, the web team organised seven rounds of community feedback over the course of nearly three years before deployment, made numerous changes in response to that feedback, did not launch until they'd addressed all the issues that the final pre-deployment RfC found to be community 'blockers'. If anything, I think they were too solicitous to the community, considering that frontend design is more within the WMF/MediaWiki developer remit than enwiki's. – Joe (talk) 06:51, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I strongly dislike Vector 2022. I dislike the way it is forced on readers – I think all readers should choose what skin they want to read Wikipedia in.

On the other hand... give that poor horse a break. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:48, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

They can choose, they can create accounts. There is no entitlement for IPs to use a particular skin any more than guests to my home can demand that I arrange my furniture to their preference. 331dot (talk) 19:51, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

So essentially we're saying register an account just so you can read Wikipedia in a usable (i.e., non-Vector2022) way? No thanks. Their own choice doesn't affect us; they're not demanding we re-arrange their furniture, they're choosing to sit in the chair they choose. We shouldn't grab them by the shoulders and force them to pick a chair they might not like. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:54, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

"Useable" is a matter of opinion, of course. No one's forcing anyone to do anything. "Welcome to my home. Please sit here for the moment. If this chair isn't to your liking, I have others available". They aren't entitled to pick the chair before they arrive. 331dot (talk) 20:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Except we don't have others available. At least, not to – *sniff* – non-editors. Edward-Woodrow • talk 20:09, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Non editors can create accounts to save their preferences. It's my understanding that there are technical issues with allowing IPs to choose a skin. It would involve cookies, for one(I think). 331dot (talk) 20:12, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

That's unnecessarily complicated. Not everyone wants to create an account just to read Wikipedia in a skin of their choice. Would you want to log in every time you just want to read an article? Edward-Woodrow • talk 20:14, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I accept that you and others may see it as complicated but it takes seconds and people can save their login information. I can't design Amazon as I like it, or my bank's website. We are fortunate to have choices at all. 331dot (talk) 20:21, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Technical issues right now, yes. But it doesn't have to be, but it would require a fundamental rethink of how MediaWiki handles caching. At least from what I heard in past discussions. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 21:51, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

If you're logged out but browsing on mobile, you still get Minerva. Most of our logged out readers connect via mobile. I won't dissuade anyone against talking something to death – our favoured community pastime – but I don't foresee another Vector 2022 conversation bearing fruit. Folly Mox (talk) 22:25, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that further Vector2022 discussion will probably be pointless. Edward-Woodrow • talk 22:26, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox: I have never edited via mobile apart from making tiny corrections. It is simply impossible to do serious editing by mobile. I don't get your point. Æo (talk) 23:46, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

You're not alone! My point was in reference to the argument that logged out readers don't get to choose their default skin: since most don't see Vector 2022, any argument that Vector 2022 should be improved for their convenience has to take into account the actual audience. But like, if yall want to hold a ten piece RfC about Vector 2022 again, have at! People love RfCs. Folly Mox (talk) 00:31, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I'll just raise the next logical step: enabling responsive Vector 2022 so that mobile users can, if not get the perfect editing experience, at least get one that is functionally identical to desktop while not having wonky problems with zoom and fat finger. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 03:14, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Could you give an example of another large website that gives non-logged in users the ability to choose a skin? – Joe (talk) 06:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Reddit has maintained access to its old skin. Can't find any overall numbers, but looking at a few thread discussions the old one is used by ~5% of traffic, with the new skin used by ~25% (much like Wikipedia both are dwarfed by mobile/mobile app, although unlike Wikipedia it's much easier to participate in reddit through mobile). CMD (talk) 07:11, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

That's a good example, thanks. As far as I know the only way to access Reddit with the old skin is with an altered URL: old.reddit.com. You can actually alter Wikipedia's skin by altering the URL too (e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=vector) but because it's a parameter not a different domain it doesn't persist between pages. I wonder if anyone has ever asked the WMF about the feasability of e.g. en-vector.wikipedia.org? – Joe (talk) 07:25, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

The option has been raised; iirc it was not looked on favourably as it would require caching multiple versions of each page. (There were more detailed explanations but unfortunately I don't remember from who or where.) CMD (talk) 08:05, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the specific issue raised is that it would require a rethink of the caching system. Currently only complete MediaWiki pages, skin and all, are cached. But to have IP skin preferences will require the skin preference being stored somewhere, probably in local storage, and will result in a flash of unstyled content on almost every page load. It is not like that is a bad thing; many web apps have this flash of unstyled content. But it is something to be aware of. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 13:16, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Apparently there was a MediaWiki extension to persist ?useskin= (though not maintained since 2008, mw:Extension:PersistUseskin), and of course it's possible to do via the browser as well. Same issues apply as well of course. Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:45, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

• Is there a list somewhere of changes that have been made to Vector 2022 since its launch? There were a number of sadly predictable issues at launch, but a few were dealt with then and it would be interesting to get a clear picture of what has happened since. I disagree firmly with a rollback RfC for reasons well-expressed by others. Specific feature request RfCs might be more beneficial in terms of gauging internal en.wiki input, so knowing what has happened so far would be helpful with this. CMD (talk) 04:00, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  There's Wikipedia:Vector 2022#A very brief timeline and mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Updates. – Joe (talk) 06:59, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

• @Awesome Aasim: I suggest adding a question about the failed deployment/successful rejection of V22 on some Wikipedia projects, including the German, Italian and Hungarian Wikipedias, and the possibility of involving the respective communities with their opinions.--Æo (talk) 12:00, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Æo Maybe it is because I am misreading this, but I don't know if other Wikimedia projects are going to be super helpful providing feedback on enwiki for Vector 2022. What we could do is maybe work with MediaWiki to have a proper feedback request survey. My subpage draft serves as a good template for maybe the future. Pinging @SGrabarczuk (WMF) as they have been extensively active on discussing Vector 2022. Awesome Aasim 03:27, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Awesome Aasim: It would be interesting to know how they succeeded in stopping the deployment of V22. Æo (talk) 12:07, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Æo - I am not finding evidence of that on Hungarian Wikipedia. As for German and Italian, I am not exactly sure. Awesome Aasim 00:22, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Awesome Aasim: Yes, I thought that the Hungarian Wikipedia had not switched to V22 because I was reading it while logged in with my account (which is set with V10). The German and Italian Wikipedias (and likely others), on the other hand, have not switched to the new interface. Æo (talk) 12:57, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The last question seems off topic to me, and more appropriate in the context of the WMF-enwiki RfC. Im my opinion, the other questions seem a bit biased.

Here are the questions I would ask.

• What do you like about Vector 2022?
• What do you dislike about Vector 2022?
• What features, if any, would you like to be added to/removed from Vector 2022?
• On the whole, how do you feel about Vector 2022? This could simply be a generic scale (love it, like it, neutral, dislike it, hate it) with an accompanying short paragraph. Cessaune [talk] 14:58, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion on changes to the edit notice of WP:Reliable sources/noticeboard

I've started a thread at WT:RSN#Suggested changes to the edit notice, to discuss a proposed change to the edit notice of the Reliable sources noticeboard. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:04, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Sports cleanup contest rather than mass removal of sports articles

tl;dr Should we have a contest to improve poor-quality sports articles?
I've recently been discouraged by seeing proposals such as WP:LUGSTUBS and WP:LUGSTUBS2 which are going to result in the ultimate deletion of many articles which are notable, and even more upsetting is seeing ideas to extend it to 40,000+ others and potentially even more after that, which would be mass destruction of so many notable articles, something I am deeply concerned at the thought of. As an attempt at compromise, I like the idea of having a backlog drive / contest (similar to the WikiCup or GA backlog drives, which each receive large participation) to improve the sports articles which are notable and nominate for deletion the non-notable ones - I've set out a rough draft of what this would look like at User:BeanieFan11/Global Sports Cleanup Contest format - there would be plenty of different awards (I've thought of many of the barnstars etc. that we have currently and am thinking about designing others for this contest) and, if widely advertised, I suspect this would receive a large participation and would have improved many more articles than the current mass draftification RFCs would (also see Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League/Football biography cleanup, which has improved several times the number as has the RFCs - even though it doesn't have awards or any of that). Is there support for such an idea? BeanieFan11 (talk) 12:47, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• Is there support for such an idea? I don't oppose it, and I'm willing to support it in whatever way is needed, but I'm not convinced it will work - the only realistic way, in my opinion, to address disruptive mass action is through mass action.

Regardless, to assist I have created the following lists, consisting of all Lugstubs potentially eligible for the LUGSTUBS process:

1. WikiProject Athletics/LUGSTUBS
2. WikiProject Australian Sports/LUGSTUBS
3. WikiProject Badminton/LUGSTUBS
4. WikiProject Basketball/LUGSTUBS
5. WikiProject Biathlon/LUGSTUBS
6. WikiProject Boxing/LUGSTUBS
7. WikiProject Canadian sport/LUGSTUBS
8. WikiProject Cricket/LUGSTUBS
9. WikiProject Cycling/LUGSTUBS
10. WikiProject Fencing/LUGSTUBS
11. WikiProject Figure skating/LUGSTUBS
12. WikiProject Football/LUGSTUBS
13. WikiProject Golf/LUGSTUBS
14. WikiProject Gymnastics/LUGSTUBS
15. WikiProject Handball/LUGSTUBS
16. WikiProject Ice Hockey/LUGSTUBS
17. WikiProject Martial arts/LUGSTUBS
18. WikiProject Olympics/LUGSTUBS
19. WikiProject Pakistan Super League/LUGSTUBS
20. WikiProject Professional wrestling/LUGSTUBS
21. WikiProject Referees/LUGSTUBS
22. WikiProject Rowing/LUGSTUBS
23. WikiProject Rugby union/LUGSTUBS
24. WikiProject Running/LUGSTUBS
25. WikiProject Sailing/LUGSTUBS
26. WikiProject Skiing and Snowboarding/LUGSTUBS
27. WikiProject Softball/LUGSTUBS
28. WikiProject Speed skating/LUGSTUBS
29. WikiProject Sport/LUGSTUBS
30. WikiProject Swimming/LUGSTUBS
31. WikiProject Tennis/LUGSTUBS
32. WikiProject Triathlon/LUGSTUBS
33. WikiProject Volleyball/LUGSTUBS
34. WikiProject Water sports/LUGSTUBS
35. WikiProject Women's sport/LUGSTUBS

I have also created Wikipedia:WikiProject Olympics/Biographical substubs; this isn't limited to Lugnuts creations but covers all Olympic biographies that are less than 2500 bytes, whose sources are believed to not contribute to WP:SPORTCRIT #5, and which have had no significant contributors other than the creator. Note that while most of these are mass created, many are not; the ones that are not mass created are more likely to be notable than those that are and while they will never be subject to the LUGSTUBS process they may be worth focusing on as the ones with the greatest potential. BilledMammal (talk) 14:18, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: Thank you for those lists - do you think you could also create lists / tables for non-Lugnuts created "substubs" in each sport (or just lists including all creations would work)? Thanks! BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:35, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

The unformatted data can be found here; I don't have time to compile it into tidy tables at the moment, but I'll try to do so in the next few days unless someone beats me to it. For those who are interested, a list without duplication and without the associated sports listed can be found here. There is a caveat with this list, and that is that my confidence in the list of non-contributory sources is low, as I didn't have much time to spend reviewing them. If another editor wants to go over my list and try to identify any sources that should not be there they are welcome to do so; a complete list of sources found in short sports biographies can be found here, and again any editor wishing to review the list further than I did - I only reviewed the first page - is welcome to do so.

I find it interesting to note that there are only 15,404 sports biographies created by editors other than Lugnuts that are under 2,500 bytes, have no significant edits by editors other than the creator, and are believed to have no sources suitable to meet WP:SPORTSCRIT #5. In contrast, there are 43,357 articles by Lugnuts that meet that criteria; I think this really emphasis just how low quality Lugnuts creations were, and why we have to do something about them.

lists / tables for non-Lugnuts created "substubs" in each sport (or just lists including all creations would work) If you want lists/tables that include both Lugnuts and non-Lugnuts creations, that is easy to do; let me know. BilledMammal (talk) 15:47, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: I think tables for just non-Lugnuts creations by sport would be best, but ones with both Lugnuts and non-Lugnuts creations would be fine as well if you want - I must say I am very surprised that there's only 15,000 that meet the Lugstubs criteria compared to 40,000 by him; that really doesn't sound right, considering there's alone 200,000 stub association football articles, 130,000 in the Olympics, 30,000 in cricket, close to 50,000 in college football (although a fair chunk of them are seasons) and 16,000 in the NFL (the latter two of which couldn't have been created by Lugnuts) - are you sure that quarry query is working properly? BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:09, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I think so; I just manually check a couple dozen cricketers, and all the ones who I expected to be on the list were. BilledMammal (talk) 12:04, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Though Lugnuts wasn't a troll per se, I think WP:DENY has some relevance here. If we're doing individual improvement rather than mass cleaning up of one editor's mess, then we shouldn't make it about that one editor. Just lump them in with the rest. I'll propose that instead, BLP articles should be separated as higher importance. I've tried to do un referenced BLP clean up this year, and sports stubs (Lugnuts and otherwise) have made it way more difficult than it should be. And I'll reiterate, I think a detailed "List of [athletes that meet X criteria]" is a far better solution than hundreds of individual one-sentence or one-paragraph articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:57, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Any possibility of adding some kind of nationality into the data? I have better-than-usual access to historical Finnish newspapers and (if the amount of Finns in the list is even vaguely reasonable) could take a stab at those. Ljleppan (talk) 11:47, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

@User:BilledMammal: Would it be possible to divide Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket/LUGSTUBS by nationality? In particular, would it be possible to have a list of the Australian cricketers? James500 (talk) 18:20, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Note the case of Viggo Jørgensen, which I found randomly clicking in one of BilledMammal's Olympians list; created by Lugnuts, but recently radically improved by Mdm.Bla. How do we encourage more of that kind of useful work?

And in a separate thought, it would be a good idea to highlight sportswomen. The Women in Red folk might be willing to have a specific drive to improve these, though generally they work on creation. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:33, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict: Working through the tens of thousands of articles just like Viggo Jørgensen's unedited state (and that of his teammate Aage Jørgensen [no relation], whose page I also improved to a lesser extent) is likely being seen as somewhere between impossible and possible, but a waste of time, hence the push for mass draftification. Maybe something like adding a link to these articles in WP:JOBS#Writing?

The good news is that non-database sources are findable. I relied heavily on WP:LOONA#Denmark for sourcing these two articles, and I suspect that there are hundreds of Lugstubs that could meet the WP:SPORTSBASIC criteria using LOONA/another newspaper archive. I am also a fan of Ljleppan's idea of adding nationality data, as I believe that organizing these articles as much as possible will make their improvement much more likely. mdm.bla 02:01, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

RFC Close Review

This is a follow-up to a topic that is being mentioned at WP:AN in the context of a close review of an RFC, and the topic is how the review of closes of Requests for Comments should be conducted. One editor said that maybe the discussion of procedures for close reviews should be done at Village pump Idea Lab, so here we are.

It had been mentioned that close reviews of RFCs are sometimes problematic because the editors either defend their original positions on the RFC, or each provide their own close of the RFC as what they think should have been done. Sometimes the first issue has been partly addressed by providing two sections in the close review, for Involved Editors, who participated in the RFC, and Uninvolved Editors. I will comment on the second issue that the most active close review forum is Deletion Review, and DRV has a rule that "DRV is not AFD round 2". The regular editors at DRV know that their role is to review whether the close was a reasonable judgment call by the closer, not whether it was the close that they would have provided. There should be a rule that "RFC Close Review is not RFC Round 2". Even after the discussion that a close review is not a new close, some of the editors at WP:AN are proposing their own closes.

It has also been proposed that a separate noticeboard may be in order for RFC close reviews. It might not be used any more often than AARV.

So I see two possible improvements to RFC close reviews. First, continue to review them at WP:AN, but with a set of procedures that include "Close Review is not RFC Round 2" and the partitioning of involved and uninvolved editors. Second, set up a separate noticeboard. My recommendation is the first, but this Idea Lab can hash out ideas for both concepts. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:32, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Much of which is already covered at Wikipedia:Closing discussions#Challenging other closures, creating WP:RFC review as a redirect to that section might be a start. Although I'd prefer it actually start as a guide of what is expected and how to setup the review. The current process is freeform, which often results in a maul, so some kind of structure to the discussion could help. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

A maul??? Is that like biting the newcomers? EEng 13:03, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Depends how much the newcomer likes to ruck. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:23, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

What kind of football is that? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:54, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

The one where you handle the balls, without protection. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:48, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay. The football game that is more or less the oldest, and is not familiar to North Americans. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:47, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Cuju? Or maybe Episkyros? Anomie⚔ 12:00, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with ActivelyDisinterested that some kind of structure will help. The idea that has been suggested more than once is that the close review be divided into sections for Involved editors, that is, those who participated in the RFC, and Uninvolved editors. I would also suggest that the close review begin by stating that the question is whether the conclusions of the closer are consistent with the results of the RFC, because a close review should not be RFC round 2. In my experience, if the close was anything other than Yes or No, each of the participants is likely to provide their own close that is a different compromise. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

What's the benefit to having separate ===Sections=== for un/involved editors, that we can't get merely by encouraging editors to self-label when they comment (as they often do already)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia:Discussions for discussion not the place for this? Nardog (talk) 21:08, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

That page is for potential evaluators of consensus to get opinions on a specific discussion regarding how to evaluate and close the discussion. isaacl (talk) 21:23, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Is there a reason that Discussions for discussion could not be expanded to be the place for RFC reviews? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:47, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I think expanding the page's scope to encompass reviewing the results of RfCs would attract a lot of participants with topic-specific interests in mind and thus diminish the focus in discussions regarding how consensus should be determined. I don't think it would be efficient to essentially re-use the page name for a new forum. isaacl (talk) 00:13, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Code of conduct for outreach projects

Do we have anything like a code of conduct for the organizers of outreach projects? For example, I suspect the following statement reflects our wishes but I don't know if we have it stated formally anywhere: "Organizers of outreach projects are expected to monitor the quality of participants' contributions. They should ensure any negative effects of the project such as copyright violations are promptly removed. It is not acceptable for a funded project to leave serious problems in Wikipedia for volunteers to find and clean up." Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:15, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the movement has any written rules to that effect. I'm not sure that it's entirely applicable everywhere, or that this would be entirely appropriate. Consider:

• The project has funding, but nobody's being paid for their time. Is it logical to say that the volunteers who organize an event be expected to deal with "any negative effects", so that volunteers (a group that includes the organizers themselves) don't have to do any work?
• The project affects a small wiki, but there's no material difference between "the organizers" and "the volunteers" at that wiki. Do we need a rule that says they have to do the work that they're going to do anyway?

More broadly: Is it actually a bad thing for us to "clean up" after newbies who are trying to contribute positively? I don't know about you, but my first edits were not all perfect. I calculated recently that for the movement to get one high-volume editor like me, we have to put up with thirty thousand (30,000!) first edits. To get someone like you, we have to suffer through three thousand first edits (and 2,000 second edits, and so forth). Many of those edits are going to be imperfect. Some of them will be outright vandalism. This means, in turn, that the editors who welcomed us back in the day put up with many thousands of first edits just to find the two of us. If we want Wikipedia to survive us, we will need to extend that grace to the next generation.

And, realistically, outreach efforts might be better than the average newbie. Vandalism is much rarer with organized outreach events, and most of them provide some advice and check some of the contributions. They might not catch or fix everything, but they aren't worse than the completely unguided, unchecked contributions from equally new contributors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This discussion is at the English Wikipedia Village Pump as I have no ambitions to tell anyone how to conduct their work on other Wikimedia projects. After reading your response I'm thinking perhaps some context on where I'm coming from might be helpful. I am not anti-outreach. I've devoted many hours to outreach over the years. I share your belief that attracting and welcoming new editors is critical for the future of our project. I'm also aware that many outreach events go fine and that these are the ones that we tend to not remember.

A subset of outreach events don't go well. Some go badly enough to overwhelm our quality control processes and cause experienced volunteers to temporarily burn out or worse. The worst events produce large volumes of crap that is harder to get rid of than most vandalism is. When that happens, we yell at the organizers to clean up the mess and we are unhappy if they don't. But the organizers 1) don't know if the people asking them to clean up actually represent Wikipedia, and 2) haven't budgeted any hours for cleanup because they thought Wikipedia stays crap-free by some sort of magic. This process is the status quo. Perhaps we can improve on the status quo by giving organizers our expectations in advance.

Another reason to share our expectations is that some donors hate the idea of sponsoring a project that ends up harming Wikipedia. If the conversation around grant-making can involve assurances that the organizers will follow Wikipedia's code of conduct for organizers, that can provide donors with a level of comfort that the risk of harm will be well-managed. Without this kind of assurance, some donors don't want to sponsor Wikipedia projects at all. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:07, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Thinking about it from the good-faith organizer's side, imagine that you are organizing an online event. You've got some experience and you've done your homework, but something goes spectacularly wrong – say, you were expecting 20 people but you got 200, and half of them apparently subscribed to the theory that if it's not a copyright violation, then it's a violation of Wikipedia:No original research.

Now what?

Would you really want us to tell you that you have to personally clean up everything by yourself, while we all sit on the sidelines and complain about what a 'bad organizer' you are? Or would you like some help? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:13, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the best would be for organisers be aware that something has gone wrong and ask for help. Unfortunately it seems all to often organisers are unaware that anything is wrong. I would hope that the community would help anyone genuinely asking for help, I know I certainly would. I think of lot of poor sentiment comes from the community discovering this issue, and being unable to get an reply from the organiser. Maybe what is needed is better avenues of communications and some standards of expectations of communication. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:55, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, regarding the spectre of editors making uncivil comments such as 'bad organizer', the possibility of incivility by people who think they are upholding behavioural standards is always a possibility. This possibility doesn't usually inhibit us from trying to articulate what our behavioural standards are.

I think both of you have made very valid points around flexibility and collaboration. "Clean everything up by yourself" seems to be too much to ask of everyone. How about starting with something along the following lines:

1. Watch participants' user talk pages so you can be aware of issues raised by the community
2. Spot-check participants' edits for quality
3. Monitor your own user talk page and engage with questions and concerns that are brought to your attention there
4. If people are raising concerns that you do not understand or know how to fix, ask at the Teahouse
5. When planning a project, set aside some organizer time/budget to monitor and resolve issues with the quality of contributions

Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:32, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like a model that is common for in-person events (e.g., student group meets at the library). I'm not sure it would scale to, say, Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Monuments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:26, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Outreach projects vary considerably in their format. Organisers often don't establish a relationship with the attendees or even know their accounts. For example, I recently attended an event which was organised as a project of the Oxford Food Symposium. The format was an online presentation which lasted just an hour and so just covered the basics of creating an account. The main presenter mainly had to cope with delivering the presentation which wasn't simple as she was using an unfamiliar computer. I and other experienced attendees helped out in various ways. One did some screen sharing while I focussed on tracking down and welcoming the newbies. As an event coordinator, I also gave them confirmed editor status for ten days to minimise trouble like captcha.

Sometimes, the dashboard feature is used to help identify participation and follow-up but that usually has a limited timescale. For a longer-term relationship, there's the mentorship features but I've not used them much yet. See the FAQ for details.

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:13, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I've been scratching my head over this for the past few days. The frustrations I have - and that I think we as a community have - are with well-funded projects where the organizers' success metrics are number of edits, number of articles created, number of participants, etc., with no attempt to measure or mitigate negative effects. Some of these projects involve series of editathons. Another type of project that I have in mind is where professional Wikipedians are paid to improve articles on sustainability issues. Sometimes a group gets a second round of funding and uses it all to do more stuff rather clean up past mistakes. A behavioural guideline would need some kind of scope about whose behaviour it applies to but 'm not sure how to articulate it yet. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:03, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Idea for Entry on Banned Board Game

Hey all, hope this is the place to do this. Im not quite experienced enough with this site to do this myself, but I found a very interesting banned board game that doesn't have a Wikipedia entry. Here are a few links if anyone would like to get started on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUXkBsfSZ_Y

https://archive.org/details/Public_Assistance_Game/

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3393/public-assistance

https://www.nobleknight.com/Publisher/Hammerhead-Enterprises

Good luck, have fun, and good night! JikiScott (talk) 17:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. There are innumerable things that don't have Wikipedia articles, and almost all never will.AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:26, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

And who exactly banned this? I can see mentions of stores not stocking this, as is their right, but no evidence that this was banned, or that anyone had the power to ban it. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:27, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

WP: Village pump is not really the place for requesting new articles. You could try Wikipedia: Requested articles, but please bear in mind that many of the articles requested there never get Wikipedia entries. YTKJ (talk) 06:21, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Use of Wikidata values in infoboxes

Is there any possibility that infoboxes for US places could start using data from Wikidata? This could be used for population and area figures, for a start. This information generally comes from the US Census. If a bot could be developed on Wikidata to import population, land area, and water area figures from US Census sources to all states, county-equivalents, municipalities, and census-designated places, would this be a good idea? It could also be used to automatically update pages in other languages as well. Kk.urban (talk) 18:05, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

• We have had a LOT of issues with the Verifiability (and thus the reliability) of Wikidata. We have had numerous discussions on how and when to use it, almost always deciding to limit its use. So… if it isn’t allowed now, my call would be to continue to not allow it. Blueboar (talk) 19:55, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed, any such proposal would need to demonstrate that it would significantly improve data integrity and verifiability compared to what we have now. Failing that, it would be unlikely to overcome the fairly entrenched opposition to Wikidata use here on enwiki. —Kusma (talk) 20:07, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

  Of course, it could be vandalized, which is less likely to be caught than here. But this information could be imported by a bot, and an edit filter could be created to prevent editing of these fields except by admins or other approved users. If it was bot-generated, it would be correct and would not need to be modified. It's easier to control such things on Wikidata because of how Wikidata is structured (each piece of data is specifically attached to one property). Kk.urban (talk) 22:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Pulling in data from Wikidata is one of those perennial proposals that has always been rejected. Except for one, Template:Infobox software. It would be super nice to have that kind of structured data from Wikidata be pulled into all Wikipedias' infoboxes on a subject, so that one change can go to all languages. SWinxy (talk) 22:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that data gets pulled in whether it's referenced or not, a minor issue on somethings a potentially major issue for BLP details. Would be great if it was possible to edit here and have the changes backflushed to wikidata, but my understanding is that that project isn't going anywhere. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:31, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I was thinking of this use only where the information all comes from one source. That's why I suggested census data. Information such as a person's birthdate or spouse can come from many different sources, thus importing it from Wikidata would be less trustworthy. Kk.urban (talk) 22:47, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Would a bot be a better answer? A bot could be created to do the repetitive task of changes the data and refs, without any need to involve wikidata. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:57, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that would be good. It would make it much faster. (Of course, it can always be vandalized, and this would not translate to other Wikipedias, but this would solve the main issue.) Kk.urban (talk) 23:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Well there's Module:PopulationFromWikidata for Australian places. Despite being from Australia and its use on many articles I watch, I don't personally know much about it beyond what's on the module page though. Graham87 (talk) 08:16, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:PH wikidata is used to populate Philippines-related infoboxes. (There have been some on-wiki developed similar solutions to this question, like Template:UN population, but these lack significant benefits compared to wikidata templates while having the same issues as wikidata templates.) CMD (talk) 10:31, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I would agree on this wikidata. They are used to present information, also fill-in missing information that could not able to be inserted in descriptions, events, and photos. Therefore, there should be value in this data. 205.155.225.253 (talk) 15:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Technically straightforward, including only showing referenced information (and even showing those references here, e.g., see South Pole Telescope). Community consensus wise, not there yet (as indeed this conversation shows). I'd encourage you to have a look at Commons or other language Wikipedias to see what Wikidata-powered infoboxes can do nowadays. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:17, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I suggest looking at w:es:Jimmy Wales. That large infobox has only six parameters (one of which is his name) in the article. The rest comes from Wikidata. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I suggest looking at ones that get less scrutiny and more issues. Take e.g. Roger Vangheluwe, a Catholic bishop who had to resign after he admitted sexually abusing his 5-year old nephew. According to Wikidata, and thus also according to the infobox at w:ca:Roger_Vangheluwe, he was convicted, but this isn't true though, the crimes had happened too far in the past. And yes, even such filth comes under our BLP policies, and we shouldn't make claims which aren't true. Of course it is easier to fill an infobox from Wikidata and leave it in their hands. The claims were unsourced on Wikidata for years, and have been "sourced" since August 2022 to a newspaper article which makes no claim of a conviction[3]. Please leave Wikidata out of our infoboxes. Fram (talk) 08:58, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

But that kind of thing isn't what I was suggesting. The material I am suggesting would all come from one database/source. Kk.urban (talk) 09:01, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I think that if the Wikidata is actively curated, and sourced, then it could be used. It is used to a limited extent on the Chembox template. But there is enough incompatible data that not everything is just accepted from Wikidata. There are problems with scope, source and accuracy (which could be wikidata or wikipedia's problem). Even if everything comes from one database, that in turn may not be 100% accurate, and scope may vary, eg which area is included in a population count. So I think we could use Wikidata more, but on a case by case basis. By the way vandalism is not frequent on Wikidata. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:33, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Something I'd like to see us commit to as a prerequisite to any deeper Wikidata integration is significantly more useful error messaging from and documentation for the modules that pull from Wikidata. As it stands they're largely inscrutable black boxes that usually work, but always require expert assistance if they don't.

This broken map display from August, which I attempted to help out on, required updating something on OpenStreetMap (not documented, and the talkpage of the module responsible was a redlink). This referencing error from June, which I filed (improperly including a link in the header), required some troubleshooting due to inadequate documentation, although the fix was made on Wikidata rather than a third-party site.

I don't expect upstream errors to be as easy to address as in-house problems, but people shouldn't be expected to read and understand the codebase in order to fix them. Some sort of debugging checklist for error types, or even a "check value in property P at Wikidata item Q" should be the expectation. Folly Mox (talk) 23:24, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps surprisingly, there are not just accuracy/data integrity, but also technical problems with using Wikidata, especially for using more than one Wikidata item in an article. See e.g. the recent discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Lua_freaking_out_at_Comparison_of_web_browsers. —Kusma (talk) 11:13, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

In answer to the OP's question, Module:WikidataIB exists for this purpose. All data pulled into infoboxes must be sourced to a non-Wikipedia source, per this 2018 RFC. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata is not merely inadequately curated. On the occasions when it is curated, it is sometimes robotically curated to require inaccurate claims to remain as claims, in order to keep its data consistent with other databases that make the same claims. It's ok for claims like "X person has id Y in database Z" but inadequately reliable for anything beyond that. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:34, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you hit upon the best -- if not only -- way data in Wikidata will remain reliable: if the actual values are pulled from the reliable sources themselves. A fictional example of what I mean: embedding the parameter ID=1234567 from the US Census report for 2020 returns the number of adult men for South Podunk, Indiana. Doing this means that should this embedded link be altered, a bot will report it to the Admins there who can then vet the change. (Or the bot reverts it if the link points to a non-existent or blacklisted page.)

Of course, for that to happen, the universe of statistical databases will need to convert to a format that supports this use, which I doubt will happen soon, if ever. -- llywrch (talk) 00:21, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Adjusting the extended-confirmed criteria

At the moment, extended confirmed is a useful tool, but it suffers from a few deficiencies, most significantly that it is easy to game.

I would suggest we change the criteria to the following:

1. 500 significant edits overall
2. Including at least 250 in main space
3. Including at least 100 in talk space
4. Significant edits defined as "larger than 200 bytes" (the definition the community has been using at the various WP:LUGSTUBS requests)

From what I understand, this is not possible to implement on the MediaWiki side; instead we would need to create an adminbot that automatically grants the permission when the criteria is met.

This discussion is related to this ArbCom clarification request. BilledMammal (talk) 03:01, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

The criteria can be gamed, but in examples I recall seeing it was always quite obvious that it was gamed. Unless I'm mistaken, the user right can be removed in those cases. (Am I mistaken?) CMD (talk) 04:41, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

It can, but it isn't always, and that is even under circumstances where it is identified and reported. BilledMammal (talk) 04:48, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal, your account is 4.5 years old now. Have you calculated how long this would keep you locked out? I'm betting it's somewhere between 2 and 2.5 years, but I haven't bothered to see how many of your early edits were "insignificant". Do you have a rationale for us wanting to keep editors like you away from difficult subjects even longer?

It might also be interesting to see how much this would disfavor some of our patrollers. We have good editors whose net contribution is a negative number of bytes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:12, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Looking it up, it would have delayed me by just under six months; that might have been reasonable, but Redfiona's "still not extended confirmed" is definitely not. Clearly this proposal is faulty; I'll suggest a different one below. BilledMammal (talk) 09:35, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I have a distinct feeling that I'd still not be extended confirmed by these criteria, and I've had an account for 17 years. (Edited to add, I had a quick look on xtools, I became extended confirmed in 2016, I think these would likely have extended it to 2018 so WhatamIdoing's "an extra 2 years" maths works out for me.) Red Fiona (talk) 07:22, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Even without checking the "significant edits" criterion, my 500th edit (as caeciliusinhorto) was in October 2015, a little under a year after I joned; my hundredth talkpage edit was in April 2016, the same month I hit 1000 articlespace edits and got my second good article. The significant talkspace edits criterion would push me just over a month further, to 9 May 2016. In my first year and a half I didn't have any interest in ECP areas (and to be honest largely still don't) so it wouldn't have personally affected me, but tightening up the restrictions like this would certainly have a significant impact on honest editors. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:28, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Actually, you still wouldn't be; you've only made 49 edits considered "significant" under the above definition to the talk namespace. My thinking was that it might be beneficial for editors to demonstrate they can communicate and collaborate, but that isn't practical because clearly you and editors like you should be extended-confirmed.

Perhaps we just change it to:

1. 500 significant edits overall
2. Significant edits defined as "larger than 20 bytes"/"large than 10 bytes" ("Larger" includes both edits that add content and edits that remove content)

20 bytes would have delayed my ECP by two months and RedFiona's by three months; 10 bytes would have delayed mine by two weeks and RedFiona's by two months.

The most common form of gaming that I have seen is adding a single wiki-link to article, which is a four byte edit; even if we only count edits over 10 or 20 bytes we will still create a substantial barrier to that gaming while having a negligible effect on good faith editors. BilledMammal (talk) 09:35, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

That feels more reasonable to me. Even the ten byte threshold is enough to count out edits which only add or remove one or two wikilinks, change some punctuation, or fix a simple spelling error; I don't think it's unreasonable not to consider those edits as counting towards demonstrating the experience we would want to see from users in contentious ECP areas. Of course it's impossible to prevent gaming entirely without making life very difficult for good-faith editors, but if we think the current system is too easy to game this seems like a reasonable tweak to make things slightly more difficult. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:56, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if it'd be not too hard to use a definition of significant that would count changing the sky is pink and fully fluorine to the sky is blue and mostly nitrogen. That gets a +1 but is a significant edit. Bit of an edge case but just looking at the +/- can be misleading with how much it changes.

Another threshold, which I think is simpler but captures some of the earlier proposed talk page edit count could be something like "Made significant edits to at least 10 distinct pages, excluding their own user and user talk space." Skynxnex (talk) 17:09, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: I feel like this might just kick the can to other gaming strategies like adding shortdescs or expanding bare URLs (often +1kB). People who are really determined to game EC always will. If there's a group we can stop, it's the one's doing it on the spur of the moment—"Eh, I've got a few hours to kill, I can make 500 easy edits so I can tell the world how the real bad guy is $country". To that end, we could make it so you don't actually get EC for 4 days after qualifying. Even would leave room for admins to glance at who's on-deck to get EC, and whether any gamed it, and disable autopromotion if so. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 17:21, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

It already has a 30-day requirement, so I'm not sure what the extra half-week adds. If we wanted it to be longer, we could just make it longer. 30 days/500 edits could become 90 days/500 edits. If we haven't found a reason to block you in that amount of time, you're probably not a simple troll. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:19, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

If that doesn't tell me to use the talk pages more, nothing will :) Suggestion 2 works for me. I don't tend to edit pages that are covered by ECP, I was trying to think of a me who happened to be in a country whose articles are more frequently covered by that sort of thing. Red Fiona (talk) 18:54, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

An alternate suggestion: exclude reverted edits (and probably reverts also) instead of counting bytes. That both takes care of the add-link/remove-link 250 times strategy, and makes it more likely that, even if they do just do something like 500 shortdescs, we get some minimal benefit out of their gaming. (Under the original proposal here, I'd have been an admin well before being extended-confirmed. That 100 200-byte talk page edit requirement's a killer.) —Cryptic 03:38, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that would be more effective at filtering out poor-quality edits (as well as potentially deleted edits which are also not live) than edit size requirements, as it would not excessively lengthen the wait to become extended confirmed (in my case, I recently became EC and more than half of my edits are less than 20 bytes (according to XTools), although it took several years to obtain it because I did not edit very frequently). The main shortcoming I can think of with this is probably where a user surpasses the edit requirements, but then has an edit reverted to bring their unreverted edit count below 500 again, although the difference seems a bit miniscule for it to really affect a user's perception of constructiveness.

Also, I think excluding reverted and/or deleted edits would be more useful with the semi-confirmed status (which is much easier to game) to filter out vandals/obvious sockpuppets and inexperienced editors that make misguided edits to ensure enough trust and at least some experience to edit semi-protected articles. While it could also be useful for EC as well, they are much more likely to be trusted not to make poor edits so it might not be considered as essential there. Xeroctic (talk) 11:22, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

• How many editors gain this permission on average every day? I'm wondering whether it would be feasible to delay granting permission for a short window, and bot-add a permission request somewhere, so that admins/experienced editors could vet the contributions and filter out obvious bad-faith editors. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:01, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  About twelve and a third over the last year. —Cryptic 00:27, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't work in permission granting, but I'd guess that manually assessing each case at least for obvious gaming of the system, would result in time saving overall across the project. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:15, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

The next obvious question: How many editors gain this permission and then display some sort of behavioral problem? We don't have very many bad-faith editors reaching this point. The problem likely isn't bad-faith editors (=trying to hurt Wikipedia on purpose). It's probably good-faith editors (=trying to help) who are inept (e.g., haven't yet learned to differentiate between the politics popular in their little bubble vs what the sources say). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:22, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

That would certainly require more than a quick sanity check to detect. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:44, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

• I agree that we should ratchet up requirements in a way that forestalls gaming the system. There should be some number of clearly high-quality edits in the mix. Not necessarily all 500 of them, but some number. BD2412 T 02:40, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Drafting an RfC for whether news coverage counts toward GNG

WP:GNG and WP:NEVENTS say that for an event to be notable, it requires sustained significant coverage from secondary sources. As the guidelines stand, just being reported in the news does not establish notability, because that fails sustained and secondary. But for some reason, there are thousands of stub articles that just describe a news story without any meaningful encyclopedic coverage. They're sourced exclusively to news articles, and more are created just about every day. Traffic incidents, fires, mass murders, and explosions are common offenders, among others. These events simply don't have the coverage that warrant a separate article, but they get enough "it was in the news once so it's notable" that it brings an AfD to no consensus. That happened at this AfD, where the closer recommended an RfC. So here we are.

I don't know exactly what the wording for an RfC should be, which is why I'm posting it at the idea lab. But essentially the idea would be to determine whether being sourced exclusively to news sources is enough for an event article or if that's a valid reason for deleting/merging/BLARing. Other problems that might be addressed include: what WP:SUSTAINED means, whether local coverage is significant coverage, and how to respond to an article about an event that happened in the last few days.

Pinging everyone who participated in the last discussion on this: EvergreenFir, Silver seren, SMcCandlish, Orange Suede Sofa, Masem, BilledMammal, Moabdave, Newimpartial, Davidstewartharvey. Whatever result we come up with in this discussion, I'm expecting to post it as an RfC at WP:VPP before this goes stale like the last one did. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:13, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Notability, imo. Andre🚐 05:26, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

A key point that is regurgitated in both GNG and NEVENTS is that notability is a rebuttable presumption. An event article may be created the day it happens, with news coverage giving to the GNG in the short term, but well after the event has completed and there's no signs of any enduring coverage, then the notability can be fairly challenges, and the claim that "but there were newspapers article that meet the GNG!" should no longer hold true due to the lack of enduring coverage. We need to be clear that passing the GNG once doesn't mean it can be challenged later.

Also, what came up in that AFD is the aspect that much of coverage from news can be seen as routine, which is specifically called out in the GNG. While a crime like that shooting may not itself be routine, the coverage of it was routine (a burst of coverage at the start, but very little after the fact). Contrast to racially-motivated shootings or school shootings that have very long tails of coverage of how to stop those types of crimes. That should be a major consideration but requires editors to get their heads out of trying to capture every news detail and instead thing about topics that will be of interest 10-25 years from now. Masem (t) 12:36, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Contrast to racially-motivated shootings or school shootings that have very long tails of coverage of how to stop those types of crimes. Even for many of these (but not all, of course) the "long tail" referred to seems likely to be about the politics, with mention of the event itself just an excuse to bring the politics up. Anomie⚔ 21:53, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Certainly, if there's such an event that has a normal short tail of coverage, but some local politicians try to use the event to push their own works, that's not the same as a long tail of coverage. We're expecting, for example, secondary analysis on the event or further significant events that results from that one, not just name dropping particularly for political plays. Masem (t) 00:09, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

As you mention Alien, it's kind of already written into the relevant PAG that primary and routine coverage are not suitable for establishing notability. If this no longer reflects AFD practice, then either AFD or the PAG no longer reflect the community consensus. I'm not sure anyone would even read more detail guidance, so the most an RFC could do is to clarify which one is the case. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:02, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Coming back to this, I think we could use a better definition of ROUTINE though. Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:36, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Actually, yeah, I like that idea. Andre🚐 03:50, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

There a couple of distinct questions here. "what WP:SUSTAINED means" is a different question to "how to respond to an article about an event that happened in the last few days". An event that happens in the last few days is by definition going to lack sustained coverage, yet we create them anyway (with I suspect broad community acceptance). There is an intersection in that the question of SUSTAINED eventually comes up for news events, and if that is the target question it would be best addressed with a narrowly tailored RfC that doesn't go into related wider questions. CMD (talk) 10:31, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

RFCs about changing a (single) policy or guideline almost always happen at on the talk page of the page that will be changed.

Perhaps a sensible question to ask is how long "a sufficiently significant period of time" is. For example, if the event (e.g., sports game, natural disaster, election) happened at the start of April 2010, is it sufficient if news/other sources write about it:

• the month in which the event happened only?
• the year in which the event happened only?
• occasionally during the next (two? – five? – ten?) years?
• according to a scheme that is not primarily related to time (e.g., the next time either of those teams reach the championships, which could be next year, or it could be 20 years from now)?

Were editors to say, e.g., that sustained coverage requires five years, then we would presumably permit the article for (at least) five years, and then consider it at AFD during year #6. This is probably a point that you'd want to make clear from the start, because there is no appetite in the community (or from our readers) to exclude content about recent events, and if people think you are proposing that the 2024 United States presidential election or the 2024 Summer Olympics or the Death of Queen Elizabeth II can't be written about until five years after they happen, they'll stop reading and vote against your proposal without a second thought. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Yup. Andre🚐 20:47, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

This would affect both WP:N and WP:NEVENTS (and possibly WP:OR and WP:RS if the critical primary/secondary issue is addressed). I think "length of time" is a red herring. To me, a logical reading of WP:SUSTAINED/WP:PERSISTENCE is that the source needs to be retrospective in nature based on previous reporting (i.e. a secondary source). "Let's look back at the earthquake that happened three months ago" would be sustained coverage while "new development about building code violations in the earthquake six months ago" would not be sustained coverage because it's still reporting on the event. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:02, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Disagree. Firstly, the line between a primary source and a secondary source is blurry. A primary source is generally unambiguously primary if it's a direct source, but when it comes to at-the-time news reporting, then it starts taking on more secondariness as time goes on, and I would argue it's not wise or practicable to make that secondary source line a bright one. Nowadays, since reliable outlets are releasing new content every day, there is going to be primary and secondary material about recent and past events every day. E.g. 1 article that's mostly just breaking news facts and interviews about the earthquake, which is essentially a completely primary source. 1 article that is a retrospective aggregation analysis about earthquake coverage. That could definitely land on the same day, week, or month easily. Andre🚐 21:08, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

If you have a secondary source, then you have a secondary source. Get one or two more of those, and it meets GNG. Even if there are still primary sources being written. If I understand WP:OR and WP:RS correctly, the whole point of requiring secondary sources is because that's what's needed to write a proper article. All that should really matter with notability is the existence of sources which could reasonably be considered secondary. The problem I wish to solve is that this primary/secondary distinction has been lost in favor of an "any coverage at all" standard that results in newspaper-like articles for events that will never see serious retrospective coverage. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree it's a potential problem and there may be a potential solution to it. I'm not engaging to just poke holes in your idea. But I think the problem can be solved either through notability, which seems to be where the action is in wiki policy as WAID says, or thinking about reforming AFD. On the latter point. Isn't the real problem that Wikipedians came to a "wrong or bad non-consensus"? Andre🚐 21:29, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

AfD reform is another thing that I thought of, but I wasn't sure if that would be effective. The problem I found is that a lot of editors in AfD discussions about events like crimes or disasters will either say "X people died so it's notable" or "it was in the news so it meets GNG", and they won't hear any challenge as to whether these are relevant to notability. Closing admins then accept these !votes at face value, even though they probably shouldn't. It's often the same editors, so it seems that AfD has developed its own culture independent from the actual expectations of the community. My hope was that an RfC would affirm these expectations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:38, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

My suggestion as a first start would be to write a >=~3 paragraph essay articulating the above point. Why admins should discard bad rationales at AFD. Andre🚐 21:42, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

The problem of a general "rule" saying X and the specific consensus of editors saying not-X is not really one that we are likely to solve. According to WP:NOT and WP:PG (both policies), when the written rules diverge consistently from actual practice, it's the written rules that are wrong, not the actual practice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

The question is whether that consensus exists among the community or just among a small handful of AfD regulars. In theory, an RfC would answer that. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:17, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

It's axiomatic that any group disagreeing with "me" is only a tiny fraction of the community, and if that's hard to say with a straight face, then it's obvious that they were confused or did not fully understand the situation. Anyone who understands as much as "me" is always going to agree with "me", right?

So having said that, I think that you will find that it's difficult to claim that there are more people participating in discussions about any given policy or guideline than are participating at AFD. To put some numbers on that, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2023 October 2 got 240 comments on 2 October 2023 (NB: not the whole week; just the one day). Wikipedia talk:Notability had 19 comments that day (it usually averages around five). Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not had zero. WT:V, zero. WT:NPOV, zero. WT:CONSENSUS, three. This village pump, four.

When you look at those numbers, I think it is pretty clear where the community's attention is. The chattering classes might congregate on the policy/guideline/village pump pages, but we're a very small minority. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:14, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, you've !voted in just 10 AfDs since December 2020 and yet you participate in pretty much every single PAG discussion that comes up, so isn't that pretty strong evidence that there are editors who are heavily involved in community-wide PAG RfCs who nevertheless decline to help enforce the resulting consensuses? So, no, the editors who !vote regularly at AfD on any particular topic definitely comprise a very small sliver of the community broadly interested in that topic who would participate in PAG discussions if properly notified. We saw this with the 120+ !votes at the NSPORT RfC, despite NSPORT AfDs having maybe 20 regular !voters in a given month. Local PAG-contradicting consensuses in the form of AfD outcomes can accumulate rapidly if even a couple regulars from one "side" are absent for a bit. We saw this in a set of cricketer AfDs in the months after NSPORTS2022 was settled where a group of cricket project members continued !voting "per NCRIC" despite it having been resoundingly deprecated, and these closed as keep despite the topics objectively failing a criterion that had received global consensus as a requirement for retention.(See, e.g., [4]; @Dlthewave might have more background). Those editors then cited those closes as precedent at more AfDs. It was only when a handful more people from the larger community stepped in that these articles were deleted.[5] JoelleJay (talk) 01:32, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

That's right: I participate in relatively few AFDs, and when it comes to AFD, I advocate for paying more attention to the people who do the work than to people who talk about it. You could argue that I am advocating for less influence from me, and people like me, and you'd be right. My goal is to get the guidelines to accurately reflect what happens at AFD. My goal is not to change what happens at AFD; my goal is to give content creators a fair understanding of what reality looks like. One way to do this is to provide definitions of our jargon, so that they know, e.g., that SIGCOV is necessary, and that SIGCOV has a meaning that goes beyond whatever Humpty Dumpty wanted it to mean this time, all in the service of determining who is to be master.

If the community refuses to enforce the supposed consensus, then we don't actually have a consensus. It's against our core principles to elevate the words from those of us in the talking shops over the actions of people doing the work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:45, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, that is a good point. But it still wouldn't necessarily preclude an essay encouraging admins to discard bad rationales at AFD. Which then if admins were to follow, would become the practice. Making it a rule, as you say, is fraught since we tend to ignore all of those when needed. Andre🚐 23:57, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I believe that we already have an essay for that at Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:55, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I think WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS, which is incorporated as a section in the deletion guidelines for administrators, is technically more applicable as it actually says that those !votes are discounted. Alpha3031 (t • c) 01:51, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Both are good answers; yet we're still faced with the quandary. Is it education? Various areas of the project have a lot of structure now that they didn't have 10 years ago. Andre🚐 01:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, the admins are in a bind. If the tiny minority of editors in the talking shops say that generally speaking, ____ should be deleted, but the tiny minority of editors who actually evaluated the specific subject say that, in this particular case, this particular article should be kept, the admin has a choice between Wikipedia:Ignore all rules or a brisk trip to Wikipedia:Deletion review.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked another editor (sorry, I don't have the link handy, and I don't remember who it was) what they'd advise an admin in such a case, and if memory serves, I got no direct answer. Especially for some of our newer editors, whom we educated to believe in The One True™ Set of Rules, the idea that AFD might exist to make the right decision in individual cases rather than to implement The True™ Rules, seems to be a foreign concept. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I think a use of IAR should generally explain how the situation is different from the general case. Otherwise, either the policy should change or the discussion is defective. (or, for that matter, both)

I think, though , maybe those cases should be taken to DRV whichever way it's closed... or, perhaps there are ways we can make DRV less intimidating to admins. Of course, there might be a positive effect of promoting deeper consideration of the appropriate close, but I think it's less than ideal for the likelihood of DRV itself to influence which direction the discussion closes. Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:56, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, WP:IAR was misused so badly years ago by one Wikipedian (whom I will not name) that those Wikipedians who know about that escape clause are reluctant to use it. Which is a problem because invoking IAR is often a way to show that the current formulation of a given rule needs to be revisited & revised. -- llywrch (talk) 00:43, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

What should end up happening is these articles on sensational breaking news topics (if initially kept at AfD) are deleted after a year or so when no further coverage occurs. But then we have editors who insist any background (i.e. secondary) material in a news piece automatically constitutes sustained coverage, because it is coverage of a "sustained" period of the subject's existence... See this AfD and its related discussion at WT:N. So that would end up resulting in a keep even if 10 years from now there has not been a single additional piece of SIGCOV of the subject since the initial news burst. JoelleJay (talk) 23:30, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

• Just a passing note to say, be careful to indicate upfront that the scope of your proposal is exclusively events, or you will get a host of editors like me opposing on grounds that news coverage is useful to establishing notability of, say, people or places. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:15, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

  This is a really important point. Narrower scope is more practical and pragmatic. Andre🚐 22:28, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

So far based on this discussion, the wording for an RfC would be a simple one sentence question like Does news coverage satisfy WP:GNG for articles about events? or For articles about events, does news coverage about that event satisfy notability requirements?. Is this what would work? It still leaves unanswered what constitutes news coverage (such as whether coverage of a trial or other aftermath would still be news coverage of the same event). And what would be the appropriate place to hold it? WP:VPP, Wikipedia talk:Notability, and Wikipedia talk:Notability (events) all seem reasonable. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:37, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

There may be a difference between a news article published the day after an event and one published much later. I think the concern here is about recent events, so that difference won't arise, but I wouldn't want to see use of retrospective news coverage to help establish notability for historical events inadvertently being discouraged by the wording of this proposal. Perhaps adding "recent" would deal with that, although there is the potential for much squabbling over what "recent" means. Donald Albury 12:31, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Another problem… not all events are equal. there are some events that are obviously notable the instant they occur - the election of a new Pope comes to mind. We know that there will be significant (sustained) coverage of the new Pope… even if at the time of writing all we have are breaking news reports announcing the election. I see no reason why this initial news coverage should be deemed non GNG compliant. Blueboar (talk) 12:52, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Do we have articles about the elections of popes? I'm not sure if those would be notable, which sort of proves the point here. The election itself would need sustained coverage if it were to have its own article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:10, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course we do. See Category:Papal conclaves. These are major events with sustained coverage over centuries. —Kusma (talk) 15:26, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

All right, it seemed like something that would be covered in the given pope's article. In this case WP:EFFECT would apply. But even then, it would be difficult to write an article that wasn't just a bare sequence of events until it was analyzed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:32, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Are you referring to updates or retrospectives? Taking the 2020 Beirut explosion for example. You can have breaking news about an update, which is routine coverage, but you can also have a retrospective, which is a great source for an event article. Both of these are 2023 articles, but only one provides coverage that suggests this is an event that's being studied and is of encyclopedic interest. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:09, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I did write "retrospective". Donald Albury 15:30, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

As it happens, I cited a retrospective published in a newspaper just yesterday. The source was a "what happened in the last decade" kind of piece. Many US newspapers also do a similar thing at the end of December, to review the year's news.

Nobody would doubt the notability of the biggest public corruption scandal in the US, and it might be interesting to imagine Wikipedia in spring of 1981, with the FBI arresting dozens of elected officials on charges of bribery. It doesn't take a crystal ball to imagine that an event of this magnitude will produce sustained coverage. What would you recommend to editors who create the article right away? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien, I would only recommend that you ask an RFC question like "Does news coverage satisfy?" if your goal is to get a resounding "Yes, of course!" on record. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:03, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that's something I'm worried about. If that's how most of the community feels, then so be it, but obviously I don't want to influence such an answer with the wording of the question. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:15, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I wonder whether you might be able to get a more nuanced answer if you ask something more specific, like "If an event (e.g., a fire) happened more than a couple of years ago, but a good-faith search finds no sources beyond the year of the event, should those early sources be considered to constitute 'sustained coverage' of the event?"

In general, I'm not sure that this will produce the results that you seem to want, because the real policy is what experienced editors do, rather than exact words we put into a page with a fancy tag at the top (see the fifth of the Wikipedia:Five pillars), so they might still vote to keep them at AFD, and they wouldn't be wrong. But it's possible that this would give you a written ruling that would let you argue at AFD that The Community™, or at least the tiny fraction that responds to RFCs, says your way is better. Or, you know, you could just PROD or AFD a couple of those every day until someone complains. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I think maybe we should discuss it more, have more facilitated problem solving brainstorming. E.g. what is the problem, what are the possible opportunities, a strengths/weaknesses/actions/opportunities analysis for each, make a tree and start pruning the tree until you arrive at somewhat of a rigorous proposal. Currently, I agree with WAID that having an RFC for a result that would simply reaffirm the value of news coverage without any narrowing or clarification of the bright lines and tests we want to approximate, is not valuable for anyone and wouldn't have a meaningful change. I do think you've touched on a few troubling or interesting ends to tug on. 1) why, when closing discussions, don't admins or non-admin closers clarify the consensus by asking questions or by being more transparent about discarding invalid logic, according to a consensus and precedent based understanding of policy, leading to some outcomes that never get a DRV or a challenge, and then we are left holding a bag, this seems like a generalized weakness of how some closers close discussions (consensus is not a vote/not bean counting) 2) why do some commenters at AFD refuse to engage or change their mind and stick to an invalid view. without naming names, I have AFD'd or !voted to delete an article and found that some people left comments that I thought didn't make sense, then the article was kept for no consensus. is it education? is it the process? Andre🚐 17:24, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I have AFD'd or !voted to delete an article and found that some people left comments that I thought didn't make sense, then the article was kept for no consensus. is it education? is it the process? Yeah...I have a whole bookmarks folder of such AfDs. And another folder for the ones that were only closed correctly after lengthy needless debate over something that should be obvious. Like where editors insisted school newspaper coverage of a student was independent despite historical precedent, the PAGs themselves, and a concurrent question at RS that came to a unanimous consensus before the AfD ended resoundingly confirming they are not independent of the student for the purposes of notability. Or the one where editors insisted the results of an anonymous, one-off google docs poll hosted by a football fan club's Twitter account was of sufficient significance to pass ANYBIO, and the 40 non-quote words of coverage of this "honor" was SIGCOV even after it was shown to be a word-for-word copy of a press release on the football club's facebook...that one was originally closed as "no consensus" even with all that info available! JoelleJay (talk) 20:53, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

• I think it's going to be difficult to have a hard-and-fast rule for this. The main issue that immediately comes to mind is that some events obviously have long-term notability. If a US president is assassinated, you'd better believe we're making an article for that the instant the news breaks, and anyone complaining that we're WP:NOTNEWS or demanding we wait for WP:SUSTAINED coverage isn't going to be treated seriously. But according to policy, we're not really supposed to rely on our "gut feeling" about events like that (see WP:CRYSTALBALL), so... what do we use to determine that a breaking event is so significant that it definitely requires an article? I would say that the tone and level of coverage both matter as well; if an event gets only cursory coverage in the local news, whose tone is "here's a thing that happened today", it may not need an article until we have either non-news coverage or WP:SUSTAINED coverage; but if it gets wall-to-wall coverage in national / international news and the tone of that coverage is "oh my god, this changes everything forever / a day that will live in infamy" etc etc etc, then it probably can support its own article. Another thing that occurs to me that might support a hypothetical refined GNG for news is what you might call "secondary news" coverage, news coverage that isn't about the event itself but its long-term effects - if you look at the recent attacks in Israel, say, or think about a hypothetical presidential assassination, there will be massive amounts of articles that aren't just covering the event directly but which devote an entire article to eg. "here is what this means in a specific context; here is how it might affect the price of X, Y, and Z; here's the impact it will have on the stock market" etc etc etc. Basically I don't think that we can use WP:SUSTAINED as the sole criteria, we need criteria that helps us determine what news stories really do require their own articles immediately. (And while the examples I gave might seem obvious, I suspect that the main borderline articles are going to be political grist ones - lots of stories get a ton of coverage as "the most important thing EVER, politician XYZ is TOTALLY DESTROYED" in the partisan press but little sustained coverage elsewhere. OTOH sometimes they represent genuinely important scandals that do deserve an immediate article. So what to do with those articles and what sort of sources would demonstrate we can write a neutral article about them is probably the main thing to keep in mind when writing guidelines.) --Aquillion (talk) 17:51, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

  I'd like to point out that CRYSTAL only applies to article content. It does not apply to discussions on how much sourcing we might expect to find in the future, or in XYZ location that we haven't looked at yet. In fact, most of NOT applies primarily or exclusively to content in or intended for mainspace. Same with OR or V. Editors may or may not find such arguments less persuasive, but they are not proscribed by policy. Alpha3031 (t • c) 16:32, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

• General comment. I used to work a lot at ITN, and my impression was that lots of editors, often not well-known ones here on en-wiki, were extremely interested and active in starting and developing articles on "disasters" especially where people died. There are some topics (disasters, sports events, television/films...) where there is abundant online sourcing that is easy to understand and free to access, and so inexperienced or non-native English speaker editors feel comfortable working to build articles in those areas. There's also considerable reader interest in such topics, far more so than any of the kinds of more obviously encyclopedia topics I tend to edit. For example my article from last year George Checkley gets only a handful of daily views on a good day, whereas 2022 Taitung earthquakes, from a similar timeframe, gets around 14 daily views; also September 2022 Afghanistan earthquake got a recent spike of hits, after the recent earthquakes. So there is low-level sustained reader interest beyond the year mark. Not sure where I'm going with this exactly, but I think (1) starting to prune this content (which I don't disagree with personally) is likely to be very difficult and contentious; and (2) any guidelines developed will need to be very clear, because many of the editors working in these areas are not experienced, don't have fluent English, care passionately about the topic, and often don't work much in other areas of en-wiki. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:35, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  Current events are definitely popular with readers.

  Perhaps one of the points should be to merge such articles into a "List of earthquakes in..." rather than a full deletion. Even if you don't think that a given event is worth having a separate article on it, it might still be worth mentioning it somewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  Maybe we could just create a space somewhere on this project but somewhat separated from mainspace and just get rid of NOTNEWS and IINFO in that space. Somewhere adhering to WP:COPO but without necessarily being as attached to what an encyclopaedia is or is not, or what precisely counts as encyclopedic content. Alpha3031 (t • c) 16:42, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

  The first of the Wikipedia:Five pillars indicates that Wikipedia is not exclusively an encyclopedia, as it also includes the sort of information one would expect to find in almanacs and gazetteers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:16, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, but while IINFO and NEWS are both excluded (in 5P1 as well as NOT) there's no reason why we can't create a space for it. Alpha3031 (t • c) 08:10, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  WP:NEWS says nothing relevant; I think you've got the wrong WP:UPPERCASE.

  WP:NOTNEWS says that Wikipedia articles aren't supposed to be news articles, which is different from being about whatever is in the news. That policy says Editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events. Whatever subjects are in the news are not excluded from Wikipedia; indeed, there are officially encouraged according to long-standing policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:58, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I was referencing them as sections within NOT, which also says that most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion. Alpha3031 (t • c) 05:55, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  TL;DR: Most is measured against what's in the newspaper, not what editors start articles about.

  I agree that most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion, and most newsworthy events are not even attempted to be included in Wikipedia. Here's a list of the "bigger" articles in a daily newspaper for one day last week: Ten articles about sports. Three articles about crimes. One article each about a Nobel prize, city meetings, statewide demographic changes, travel, a celebrity–charity kerfuffle, a local business, a routine report about an airport, a local hospital, a car wreck, update on a previous wildfire, pollution worries, an invasive species, and a photo spread about seasonal events. Two articles each about new state laws, music, and the Israel–Hamas mess. There were also half a dozen nationally syndicated columns and another half-dozen pieces about homes that sold recently.

  The number of these articles that I expect to be cited on Wikipedia is: zero. However, a couple of them (e.g., 2023 Israel–Hamas war) are about notable subjects, and a couple might be usable to expand or update existing content (e.g., Demographics of California).

  For bigger newspapers, here are some 2016 numbers on content:

  • The Washington Post: 500 sources per day, plus 700 from wire services
  • The New York Times: 170 articles per day, plus 65 blog posts, 15 multimedia pieces, plus "hundreds" from wire services
  • The Wall Street Journal: 240 articles per day, plus about 10 from wire services

  That's a whole bunch of newsworthy events just on the one day. Most of them do not qualify for inclusion. But even if just 1% of the newsworthy events qualify for inclusion, that could be thousands of current events per year. We don't want articles about most newsworthy events, but we probably do want articles about most of the newsworthy events that editors actually start articles about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:23, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  Strong agree on this analysis. Andre🚐 21:30, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  I like WAID's idea to officially advise a merge. Current events articles already exist. It might be a way to deal with portals, too? Andre🚐 17:21, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

  As far as I'm concerned, merging all of the non-notable events into "list of" articles is the optimal solution. The trick is making it happen, because right now we basically have to RM or AfD each article one at a time and convince the "news coverage = new article" editors that merging is a better way to organize these things. I could easily come up with a list of hundreds of event articles that should almost certainly be merged, and that's to say nothing of the borderline cases. But just getting one of them addressed is a struggle. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:10, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  Maybe you could propose a speedy mergification similar to how some articles are draftified or prodded. Andre🚐 05:38, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  The discussion Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 49#Addressing non-notable event articles: Traffic incidents might be of interest. I raised the issue of addressing lots of articles at the same time, and it was completely unproductive. I expect any other idea that involves dealing with large amounts of articles would be met with similar nitpicking. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 13:59, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Thebiguglyalien, how many merges have you proposed, using the directions at Wikipedia:Merging#Proposing a merge? What were the outcomes? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:03, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  None. I don't want to start merging if it's not clear what type of merging we're talking about here. For example I can say that 2021 Cairo clothing factory fire probably doesn't need an article. But the most likely target, List of building or structure fires, already mentions it. It's not clear what these merges would look like. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:40, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  Looking at the English-language sources about that one fire, it appears that a List of fatal fires in Egypt would be a valid subject. Several of the longer sources included a list of fatal fires in Egypt during the previous months. The same (large) city had another fatal factory fire in 2015. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  An article on major fires in Egypt, and what factors contribute to them happening, would be much more interesting than just a list. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:43, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  I think a list along the lines of Floods in California would work. A plain bullet point list says only something like like:

  • Fire at Business in City on 32 Octember 2021

  would be boring. (The overall cause appears to be a systematic failure to enforce safety regulations, and once the fire has started, the fire departments do their best but don't have the amazing resources that some others do. It is not a wealthy country, after all.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:44, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  Lists like this would be a perfect solution. The easiest way to cover everything would be to split the current List of building or structure fires by decade. Then bullet points can be expanded into a paragraph or two by merging the relevant details from the main article where applicable. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:49, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  Late to the party , don't know how I missed the ping, but I agree that the example above, Floods in California is a good example of what should be recommended. Earlier this year I was involved in an AFD where a road accident had been nominated, but there was coverage years later as it was one of the worst UK road accidents so it was kept. But as I pointed out then, on the same day on the same road a former rugby player had died in a separate accident which didn't have an article. I did put forward that we could create page about the serious road accidents on that occured on that actual road. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 14:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  That one is quite nice. I think lists are a neat solution to this problem. DFlhb (talk) 15:31, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I've up-merged several stub articles into List of tanker explosions as a proof of concept, and it looks much cleaner and more useful than a bunch of disparate stubs. There are still a few blank sections where I want a second opinion about whether merging or WP:SUMMARY is appropriate. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:38, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• This entire discussion is crazy to me. I have written hundreds of articles on 19th-century state supreme court justices, relying almost entirely on news coverage of their careers and their deaths. Many of these are sourced to local newspapers of the time period. BD2412 T 21:37, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, absolutely. Historical news coverage is critical to write articles properly. Andre🚐 22:31, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  Are you writing "inauguration of [justice]" or "tenure of [justice]" articles? That's the only way I could see this being relevant to that. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:36, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  I believe I raised this topic earlier and it was clarified that the current proposal only relates to events, not people or places. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:40, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Thebiguglyalien: Obituaries often provide fairly comprehensive biographical coverage, although occasionally newspapers will provide biographical summaries for all current members of their state's high court. This was more common in the 1800s, of course, when there tended not to be other sources for this information. @Espresso Addict: I am concerned about creep. This sounds like the beginning of saying that news coverage is not appropriate as an encyclopedic source. BD2412 T 22:56, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  I too am worried about creep, both intentional and unintentional (eg discussion about a minor change to minor changes spiralling into a call to nuke 'em from orbit). Espresso Addict (talk) 23:03, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  BD2412, my problem is with articles about events that have no lasting effect and no retrospective coverage. When a deadly car crash happens and makes the news, can I say it meets GNG? To me the answer is obviously no for a number of reasons, but there are enough people at AfD who say yes that it needs to be settled one way or the other. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:18, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  I hope this won't be settled "one way or the other", but by intelligent merging of less notable event articles, something that doesn't require AfD or noticeboard discussions. —Kusma (talk) 15:00, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree. As tempting as it is to create the One True™ Rule for this, it's better just to do the work. There is enough information in the sources in 2021 Cairo clothing factory fire to create (e.g.,) a List of fatal fires in Egypt. Creating an official rule will have basically no effect, but merging up related articles solves the actual problem directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:21, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I'm optimistic that this can happen based on the thread of comments above this one. It's just a matter of figuring out what any potential target lists would look like and how they're organized. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:23, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  As others have pointed out, the existing policy on merging already is fine with what you're doing, so go ahead. Andre🚐 21:46, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

List of tanker explosions looks how I'd expect most lists of events would look after merging up. Shorter instances are collected on the same page, while more in-depth coverage is provided for a few with Template:Main. If there's general agreement that this works, then maybe it can be applied to some of the other events-related topics that have a lot of stubs. For larger topics, they can be divided into multiple lists divided by location ("List of X in country" or "List of X in continent") or by time ("List of X in year" or "List of X in decade"). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:01, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

So how do you decide which articles to retain? The answer seems in this case to be practically none. I remember the Bahawalpur, Pakistan (2017) incident distinctly, which received coverage in depth in the UK and had a well-developed article classed as C-class and mid-importance for some projects. I would not have thought that kind of article would be reduced to a redirect by such proposals without any individual discussion. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:44, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

There are a few relevant guidelines regarding merges of inadequate articles. The most immediate ones are WP:PAGEDECIDE and WP:AVOIDSPLIT. The former recommends keeping it within a larger topic if there isn't adequate sourcing, and the latter encourages such merges if sourcing can't be found to demonstrate notability. Regarding notability, relevant guidelines obviously include WP:N, which requires significant secondary coverage sustained over time, as well as WP:NEVENTS, which has similar requirements. Now if someone was willing to do the work to replace most of the primary sources with secondary ones and write up a few paragraphs about analysis that's taken place in the past few years, then I would encourage them to revert the merge and do so. If it's not possible to do that, then it was inappropriate to ever give it its own article in the first place. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

For the without any individual discussion worry, the Wikipedia:Merging process recommends discussions of at least a week, so I don't think we should assume that there would be no opportunity for discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing/Espresso Addict/anyone else interested: What do you suggest as far as getting consensus for merges if a bold merge is challenged? For List of tanker explosions, I merged the articles that were short enough to be stub or start class articles. Ideally any article that's all primary sources should be rewritten, merged, or deleted, but that's not going to stop some editors from bringing together some primary sources and asserting notability. Case in point, I've laid the groundwork for List of mass stabbing incidents (before 2010) which is still a work in progress, but one of the redirects was reverted, restoring an "article" that's just regurgitating primary sources and reads like a news story. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:05, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:PROPMERGE. Curbon7 (talk) 00:10, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I think another issue that needs to be borne in mind is the appearance of racism, when all non-recent articles on a topic are merged, except one lone American one. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:02, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I would appreciate if you discussed the merge with me beforehand and not just done it immediately without any consensus. Lettler^{hello • contribs} 13:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, I do agree that most of the articles on the List of mass stabbings are not really articles and do not follow the lasting coverage guidelines at all. E.g. Nanital wedding massacre, it might not even be a real story if I'm being honest. However, you did merge some articles that definitely cover notable topics and have lasting coverage through retrospectives, etc. like the Rackham's stabbings. Again, I would appreciate if you and other editors had a discussion prior to this instead of you going on a one-person crusade based on your own opinions. Lettler^{hello • contribs} 13:47, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Actually reading WP:NEVENT it says "Events are also very likely to be notable if they have widespread (national or international) impact and were very widely covered in diverse sources, especially if also re-analyzed afterwards" and also "Some editors consider narrative news reports to be primary sources rather than secondary sources." (emphasis added) Espresso Addict (talk) 05:12, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  That was added by User:Fences and windows back in October 2009. If you look at the state of PSTS at that time, and you remember discussions like this one from the previous year, it should be clear why the statement only says "some editors". There were a few influential editors at that point who were still convinced that if the TV journalist stood in front of the burning house and thrust her microphone at someone else, that was "second hand" and therefore "secondary". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• I will point out there is a closely-related discussion at WT:NOT#WP:NOTNEWS/unfolding news stories related to how to write/clean up event articles well after the event is over. That is tightly related to establishing that most news cover of an event in the short term is primary, and what we're looking for is more secondary (analysis or reflection, or describing what impacts an event had). --Masem (t) 17:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if the answer is a policy change, but I like the idea of a clean-up. It does seem people rush to crate articles that don't really hold-up over time. And I certainly agree with some of the commentary here about some of the fluff stuff added to articles to try and establish their notability. To me, the problem is the phrase "encyclopedic" and how its used here. It's really easy for people to justify any information they put in an article by saying that it is such, and really is quite difficult to refute. I think trying to define what content is relevant and not in articles is a good start in filing down the number of articles in general. DarkSide830 (talk) 16:58, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that merging some subjects that don't hold up over time into a single, bigger article has a lot of potential for improving their encyclopedic value.

I'm not sure that we need to reduce the number of articles in general. Some estimates suggest that we're still short by at least several million (e.g., politicians from previous centuries that were mostly covered in non-English sources – look at the red links in List of mayors of Berlin, all of which are merely waiting for an interested German-speaking editor to create the articles). Consequently, I don't see this as a way of having "less"; I see this approach as a way of having "better" (and possibly even "more"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. We used to say WP:NOT paper. Andre🚐 17:50, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm sure we're missing relevant older articles, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the breaking newsy stuff that get articles before we can establish their long-term significance, nor am I talking about people unless we're talking about 1E bios. DarkSide830 (talk) 19:23, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

• Here from a ping by WhatamIdoing, thank you. We tried to lance this boil with WP:NEVENT back in 2009, to reconcile WP:GNG, WP:NOTNEWS, and WP:NTEMP. It seems we failed. Please read the discussion starting at Wikipedia talk:Notability (events)/Archive 1 to see how the current guidance was arrived at and whether there were any useful ideas left on the cutting room floor. Fences&Windows 10:02, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  The thing is, NEVENT does cover nearly all cases here. The problem is that some editors just don't care, so they keep creating weak articles and then !voting keep as a group at AfD by saying that appearing in a newspaper is enough to meet GNG. Instead of proposing a change to NEVENT (which would almost certainly be shot down), they just blatantly ignore sitewide consensus, and no one does anything about it. The small handful of admins who close AfD discussions seem to be unwilling or unable to weigh arguments against notability guidelines like they're supposed to. So now we're stuck with thousands of articles that read like news and provide no meaningful analysis. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:10, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions. The written rules exist for our convenience, and as something we can wave at people when we're fixing things up, and not because we expect others to seek them out and carefully follow them. The expected path is:

  • Somebody does their best (Wikipedia:Editing policy#Adding information to Wikipedia) but screws up (Wikipedia:Editing policy#Wikipedia is a work in progress: perfection is not required).
  • A more skilled or better informed editor (maybe you?) salvages what they can (Wikipedia:Editing policy#Try to fix problems).

  If you are expecting this path:

  • A person interested enough to contribute information to Wikipedia is able to find all the directions.
  • That person puts their excitement on hold long enough to carefully read and understand all the directions.
  • The excited person then dispassionately and correctly evaluates the subject that they're excited about, and decides that Wikipedia isn't interested in hearing about a potentially big-deal event,

  then you have not been paying attention. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  My frustration stems from the fact that waving this tends not to do anything. I can list too many AfDs where I pointed to these things, was ignored or flat out told that our guidelines were wrong, and then it was closed as keep. This, this, and this are some examples. On the latter, I had to withdraw after an ANI discussion was opened. This is what we're dealing with at AfD. I'm tempted to start taking it to deletion review any time a keep is decided based on news coverage. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:48, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  Deletion review is definitely one option that we have under the present system. Andre🚐 19:56, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  The wider problem is that there is a disconnect between the editors who create much of the content, and the editors who frequent discussions that generate policy/guidelines. Content editors are more likely to comment in AfD than other backroom areas. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:21, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  That's a very good point. Maybe the problem we should focus on is how to open up policy backroom to more content editors who don't have experience in such discussion. Andre🚐 22:55, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  That's the whole point about setting up an RFC at a Village Pump and advertising it at CENT and other places. These are the equivalent to the town square, and there is no better way to mass advertise key PAG discussions. Editors that do not engage in these areas and then complain about PAG override what they think is consensus are not working within the proper context of what we expect. Masem (t) 22:59, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  I think we should put on our product thinking hat. If people don't do things you have to ask why they chose another path, and try to guide them better. With better tools, or better UI, or better design, or better ideas, or a new workflow, etc. It's problem solving. This is the idea lab. Andre🚐 23:23, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  Someday, we should probably pull the numbers for VP participation, so that we can get over this idea that the talking shops are where editors hang out. For this Village pump (alone), so far, less than 3,300 editors have ever posted here. About 13.9 million registered editors have made at least one edit to the English Wikipedia. That's about one in 4,000 (four thousand) editors, or one fiftieth of one percent of registered editors. The other 99.98% of editors have never posted here.

  If you think that it's "unfair" to include editors who haven't made many edits, then let's look at the numbers a different way:

  • 99% of editors who have made 100+ edits have never posted to this village pump.
  • 95% of editors who have made 1,000+ edits have never posted to this village pump.
  • 75% of editors who have made 10,000+ edits have never posted to this village pump.

  My conclusion: This village pump is not the way to reach the whole community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Andrevan, I think you will be interested in the work that the Editing team did on uploading images to Commons from inside the visual editor a few years ago. The goal is to get people to upload relevant images (e.g., they're writing about a type of food and upload a photo of their dinner) while they're editing.

  • What's wanted: Here's my own photo, taken by me personally, that I'm donating to Commons.
  • What happened: I copied this logo on the internet, but when I truthfully said that it wasn't my own work, it wouldn't let me upload it. So I lied, because the only way to make the stupid thing work was to say that it was my own work, promise to give my first-born son to Rumpelstiltskin, and click through all these pointless warnings about copyright law. What a lot of nonsense. Everyone knows that it's okay to have a corporate logo in a Wikipedia article!

  Education in the UI only goes so far. When people believe that they are doing the right thing, they will do or say whatever is necessary to convince the computer to let them do it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:12, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree, but that's why you need to do before-the-fact user testing and optimization. Andre🚐 02:27, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  I'm telling you the results of the user testing and optimization. There was no amount of education that actually stopped people from doing what they believed was the right thing to do. Eventually Commons put up an AbuseFilter to stop nearly all of the in-editor uploads (except from highly experienced Commons editors, who rarely use the feature anyway). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  Fair enough. I believe you. And that's an interesting result. And it's definitely one kind of result. But I wouldn't extrapolate that to mean no UI change could make people participate on the village pump more. I bet, if we did an AB test of a giant red callout to the village pump versus not, it would increase traffic. Andre🚐 02:54, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  It is unfortunately not a unique result. It's a truism in computer security that if you give people a choice between following the policies (e.g., "No uploading confidential documents to external websites like Dropbox") and getting their job done (e.g., "He needs this doc, and it's too big to send in e-mail!"), they will break the policy every time. The average person, if promised a video of dancing bears, will click on anything necessary to watch that video. A person might not click the buttons labeled "Download malware", but they will click buttons that say "Enter your password to download the dancing bear video. Note: You may have to override your antiviral software to see this".

  It is highly likely that we could to drive some traffic (=page views) here. It is possible that we could drive some participation here (=edits). It is much harder to retain people, and much harder to convince them that their preferred contribution (e.g., updating the stats from the big game) is more important or more fun than chatting with people about abstract ideas. (Also, since Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard, they might not be any good at it.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  Policy writing is hard, but people often don't even try to get good at it. And we don't offer them many venues to break into it or to polish their skills. Part of this is how bad threaded discussion is on Wikipedia. The reply tool is very helpful, but it's still a long way from solving the problem. I know they've been working on that for a while. Anyway, one thing I think is part of the issue is that people like to go straight to the hairiest, meatiest topic, like NPOV for controversial current events. There are not a lot of "training ground" low stakes policy/meta discussions. Andre🚐 18:44, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  I have a more detailed set of numbers about who posts at the Village pumps. See Wikipedia talk:Village pump#Who posts at the Village pumps? if you're interested in statistics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  If people want their voices to be heard on Wikipedia, then the onus is on them to speak up. We can and should make the venue as available as possible, but they ultimately have to come here on their own. If they fail to do that, then they're endorsing whatever conclusion we come to here by default, and that's their decision. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:17, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  Your opinion does not seem to be consistent with either the Wikipedia:Ignore all rules policy or the Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not compulsory policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  WP is not compulsory, but also we expect editors to be editing from the start within PAG (that's why the Welcome message standard for new editors goes to the top level set of these pages). We absolutely do expect editors to understand what PAG are and how they are developed, and that if they don't like how some things are handled on WP, they should be speaking up at the appropriate forums. Outside of rare cases, we take silence on such matters as implicit agreement with PAG. Which does lead to the difference between the small number of editors that spend a lot of time at PAG pages (and typically the same group with the largest contribution numbers on WP), and those editors that come by once a week or month to add something and get annoyed when they get reverted, but make no effort to engage beyond that level. Masem (t) 03:11, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think any of that's true.

  Is anyone here actually surprised if a newbie screws up their first edits? I'm not. You're not. We don't actually expect them to know what the rules are, or to follow them even if they do know the rules. We actually expect them to get it wrong, and we're pleasantly surprised when a newbie's edit summary says "typo" and the diff shows them actually fixing a typo. We enforce the rules – Ignorantia juris non excusat – but we don't expect them to know or follow our rules.

  Even most experienced editors, who generally know some distorted telephone game version of some of the rules, have no idea how policies and guidelines are developed. I'd bet that if you asked the next three RFA candidates to tell you how they're developed, you'd get three different answers – and that I wouldn't agree with any of them, as the candidates would be too focused on writing a diplomatic reply to tell the truth, which is that if you want a change (e.g.,) to the FAC rules, it matters more to get a short list of specific individuals on board than to get any other random editors to vote your way.

  Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions. This is true on Wikipedia, and it is true everywhere on the internet. And in the real world, too. Think about how few people actually read the directions before trying to use the device (or build the flat pack furniture) they just bought. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with this. Wikipolitics is the thing. Andre🚐 18:27, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  New editors, we do not expect them to know off the bat, which is why we welcome them with PAG links.

  And I agree that no experienced editor knows the PAG word for word, and likely have their own internal concept of them that differs from the actual language. However, the point is that we do expect editors to be aware PAG exists, that they are derived from consensus, and that their are ways to request changes to that. An editor that consistently edits against a PAG even after being told of the correct PAG, and that complains bitterly about the PAG, but never participates in discussions about changing PAG is likely going to be seen as disruptive.

  So knowing in general the PAG framework and editing within it aren't compulsory. You aren't required to participate in discussions on changing PAG, but you have little recourse if you constantly complain the PAG are bad and hampers your editing. Which goes back to making sure that if we want to change any OAG related to news coverage, it needs to be advertised as widely as possible, as I suspect many editors that do work on current event articles have never really participated in PAG discussions. Masem (t) 23:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  What's that bumper sticker? "If you didn't vote, you don't have the right to complain", or something like that? And yet people complain anyway.

  I agree with you that many editors that do work on current event articles have never really participated in discussions about policies and guidelines, or even AFDs. We would all benefit from having more of our discussions include people who are writing the articles, instead of just those of us who like to hang out in the talking shops. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:07, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Thebiguglyalien, "delete the whole thing" is not the same as "salvage what you can". The Wikipedia:Editing policy says Wikipedia summarizes accepted knowledge. As a rule, the more accepted knowledge it can encapsulate, the better it is. Outright deleting information is not a path towards having "more accepted knowledge". It is a path towards making Wikipedia useless to readers, because the thing they want to read about isn't here.

  Looking at the first one, let's leave aside the absurdity of an editor looking into his WP:CRYSTALBALL just 11 hours after the article was created, and barely a day after the event, and declaring that he already knows that this event has no lasting significance. There might be a policy basis for not having a separate article for any given mass shooting, but there's no policy basis for not having this information somewhere in the English Wikipedia. The goal at AFD is to make sure that information is excluded completely – that it does not survive as even a brief little paragraph in a larger subject (e.g., the city, the police department), or as a redirect to the item in the List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, May 2023. If this wasn't the goal, then the editor wouldn't have taken the subject to AFD. I ask: Why would an editor who agrees with our policy ("the more accepted knowledge, the better") want to do have less knowledge? If more = better, then less = worse. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:54, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  If your interpretation of the editing policy is correct, then the logical conclusion as I see it is covering everything ever mentioned in any source. I believe that there should be a limit on what knowledge we cover, and that limit should be what's analyzed in secondary sources. I disagree with the premise that events should be assumed notable simply because they happened recently. If lasting coverage doesn't exist yet, then it doesn't exist. We don't get to say that it will some day exist. That's what would constitute a crystal ball. I'm happy with the metric set by WP:EVENTCRIT for when a recent event should be assumed notable. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

  There are certainly editors who support a "everything in any [reliable] source" standard, but most of us want something a little stronger – most usually a filter for what's encyclopedic (e.g., yes to mass shootings, no to what color suit Queen Elizabeth wore to an event). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:18, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I've set up a slightly larger test case with mass stabbing incidents:

• List of mass stabbing incidents (before 2010)
• List of mass stabbing incidents (2010–2019)
• List of mass stabbing incidents (2020–present)

I merged many of the articles where there was clearly no case for a WP:SIZESPLIT. More could reasonably be merged, if anyone wishes to do so, and many of the remaining articles are likely non-notable as well. The problem of bad sourcing also still exists and needs to be addressed among this category of events. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:04, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

The RFC in the OP would create a mess in many ways. Rather than getting into that I'll just note that the discussion has evolved since then. I think that the gist of the OP is that in principle the SNG/GNG look OK but that they really arent getting followed. When it's suits them, people generally ignore the vaguer generally ignore general guidance in policies and guidlines and only feel obliged to follow the more explicit stuff. For some articles (for example, those on the "In the news" on the main page), the events are or very high prominence /impact/importance, have lots of sourcing and lots of content I think that people generally say "wp:notable enough". IMO giving (only) some consideration to degree of prominence /impact/importance is how the fuzzy notability ecosystem actuall works, even though it's not explicitly in any guideline. I think that the sooner that we acknowlesdge that the sooner we can solve these otherwise unsolvable quandaries. North8000 (talk) 20:18, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

One of our oldest policies says that when it suits the situation, you're supposed to ignore all rules, vague and explicit alike. It's really hard to say that it's bad when people don't follow the rules when one of the rules is that you shouldn't follow rules that (initially just in your own opinion; later, iff your opinion is challenged, in the group's view) make Wikipedia worse.

One way to see this issue is:

• The written rules neither encourage nor forbid a certain action (e.g., creating separate articles for subjects whose lasting significance is possible but unclear).
• An editor believes that taking this action will improve Wikipedia, and so takes this action.
• A second editor worries that doing what improves Wikipedia, instead of following The Rules™ is bad, because everything which is not explicitly allowed is probably forbidden.

I wonder whether we are best served by promoting rule-following as a primary value. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Conversely, the action, under eventualism and mergism, did improve the encyclopedia. We just need to reduce friction to that state. Andre🚐 02:54, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Many good points there. My belief is that, even though seldom invoked explicitly, WP:IAR is immensely used as an influence on other decisions. For example, giving some consideration to prominence/importance/impact to let it tip a wp:notability decision towards inclusion. North8000 (talk) 12:27, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Or to tip it towards exclusion (e.g., towards merging). I'd still rather that we consider putting WP:N's note about editorial discretion into the GNG itself, since that would deal with the "prominence/importance/impact" issue directly, and maybe then we'd quit seeing people claim that Wikipedia:Significant coverage means "[media] coverage claiming WP:ITSIMPORTANT". I think a lot of discussions would be smoother if we all agreed that SIGCOV means "an amount of attention that is significant" (the dominant view, as you know, but when an editor understanding it as "an amount" and an editor understanding it as "evidence that it's an important subject" are in a dispute, they can't understand each other). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:17, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Alternatively, we could add some tests for "importance"/"significance" to the guideline. I've always considered GNG to be a proxy metric. Which is why there's so much wiggle room around quantifying GNG. "Notability" in wiki-jargon means significant coverage which means the amount of coverage. But notability the term is a proxy metric for the abstract quantity of being notable, which we judge based on significant coverage. Going back to the idea that the rules are principles, the point of IAR is that you're not supposed to rules-lawyer the letter of the law. You are supposed to internalize the deep values and principles, from which the practices emerge. That is why people often conflate notability, the measured quantity, with notability, the common sense common language idea that the wiki-jargon metric is attempting to capture a proxy for. Andre🚐 15:20, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of what quick fixes we come up with, I still believe that some form of RfC is necessary. We still have our best and brightest at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Events automatically !voting keep if something appeared in newspapers for a few days. Or even worse, "there was an incident and a trial, therefore it's sustained". Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:01, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

If the RFC goes the other way, are you going to stop !voting delete if something appears in the newspapers for a few days? If your own personal judgment of individual cases wouldn't really change as a result of the RFC, then I wouldn't expect anyone else's to change, either.

I looked at some of the AFDs listed there today. These three caught my eye:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Westminster Declaration
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Al-Ansar Mosque airstrike
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2023 Bowdoin–Yarmouth shootings (2nd nomination)

Specifically, after three days, one week, and six months, respectively, each of the nominating editors felt like they already had enough information to determine whether the subject would have an enduring effect on the world. In all three of these cases, the event (a political statement, an airstrike, a mass shooting) is ongoing in some respect (e.g., the perpetrator of the mass shooting has not yet been tried). I'm not sure that I would feel so confident about determining the ultimate effect (or lack thereof) of these events before they are fully resolved. However, there were some other recent events in the list that I thought editors were rightly concerned about, e.g., an event in the Hamas–Israeli mess that was reported by one side and not (as of the time of nomination) confirmed to have happened by any independent party. I'm not sure that a single "wait until it's over before you declare that your WP:CRYSTAL ball says it has no enduring historical impact" rule would be a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Centralized source assessment project

Would it be a good idea to create a source assessment project for subjects that are not (yet) notable or where it's unclear if they are notable or not?
Recently I created Wikipedia:SSSniperWolf sources overview and I think it's working pretty well. I moved that to project space on purpose because I didn't want to do everything by myself. All the potential sources are in one place instead of being scattered over various deletion discussions and deleted articles only admins can see. This makes it much easier to track the notability of a subject which often progresses over time. Questions like "doesn't (insert link to article) make this subject notable?" can be answered with a link to the centralized source assessment for that subject.
I'd imagine creating a project page named Wikipedia:Source assessment and creating subpages for subjects. An obvious concern would be for such assessments to turn into quasi-articles, but with some clear rules I think that's avoidable.
Thoughts? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:39, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

A very nice idea. AfD, but at the beginning of an article's lifecycle. I think this would benefit new and more experienced editors. Waste of editor time and effort creating articles on non-notable figures would perhaps reduce, given that an opportunity prior discussion of notability is possible. I've seen a similar idea at point 4 User:Sdkb/Vision for a better Article Wizard, which makes me too think that this could be implemented to Article Wizard, and that a system like this would also reduce the workload of AFC and NPP. NotAGenious (talk) 18:37, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Something like this could be useful for assessing drafts. A template or wizard to generate the table would help. There's a similar table in Wikipedia:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)#How_to_apply_the_criteria. Here's some existing notability essays that may help you frame the guidance for this tool: Wikipedia:Extracting the meaning of significant coverage, Wikipedia:Independent sources, WP:109PAPERS, WP:TRIVIALCOVERAGE, Wikipedia:Bare notability, Wikipedia:Multiple sources. Fences&Windows 23:33, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Slavery Icon - near title for articles relating to the exploitation via slavery

My suggestion is for an icon (Chain or Fetters) on these types of articles:

• modern biographies: slavers, slave owners, slave traders.

• modern Monuments (statues) that are of one of the above

• modern Monuments (buildings) whose construction was financed in part or wholly by slavery

• modern Institutions who were funded in part of wholly by money originating from slavery, slavers, slave owners, slave traders

That the icon be placed at the top of the article.

That the icon can easily be placed/removed by any editor.

That the article must have an an explanation in the body of the article relating to the links on slavery.

I think there is a need for this as:

• it reflects a modern political consensus

• it reminds the reader that everything about the person/building/institution is tainted (a sort of shadow)

• it is an ironic branding for those who branded.

This is very much a draft type of suggestion, feel free to suggest alternatives, adjustments, or even rejection.

Yours ever, ~~~~ Czar Brodie (talk) 15:33, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Why slavery specifically? There are hundreds (probably more, probably infinite) topics that articles could be icon-tagged against, and this seems a particularly controversial one. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 15:45, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Slavery is something that I noticed is becoming very topical in labelling (people, buildings, institutions) outside Wikipedia, and its organisational Wikipedia absence caught my eye in articles I was editing. (I was looking for a way to label articles I noticed had slavers/slave exploitation/slave profit.)

Yes I agree that this concept could be expanded , but I do not think something should not be done because it has potential to be expanded. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 16:02, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

The usual Wikipedia way of approaching this is categories, e.g. Category:Slave owners. There are mature guidelines to pay attention to that may temper the instinct to tag/categorize everything that looks a little bit slavery-adjacent. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:29, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, very good point, but my suggestion is for something bold and visible other that an academic grouping tucked at the bottom of the page with a bunch of other categories. i.e. John Threlkeld. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 16:48, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

apologies I forgot to address your good point : "a particularly controversial one". Yes, agreed, but I do not think that is reason to shy away from the issue. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 16:16, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

• No. This is political activism, and an inherently-contentious form of that. Should University of Virginia be tagged with your scarlet letter? Virginia? Genghis Khan? There are no answers, and that is why this is an idea that shouldn't be pursued. Walt Yoder (talk) 16:10, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  University of Virginia, probably yes, with explanation in body of the article as to why; Virginia, no, states, countries in my view are outside my suggestion (needs to be focused). Genghis Khan, probably, the idea would not be limited to European/American slavery. Is it really that contentious? Those who think slavery is a good idea are now very much a minuscule minority. The contention would probably people who do not want to be reminded of this historical event. But is it Wikipedia's place to not upset them for consensus? Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 16:26, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  • It has nothing to do with anyone believing slavery is a good idea. It has to do with WP:NPOV and with the proliferation of such icons one could add (religious oppression? Gains from violence, e.g. the art in the Louvre acquired by the Napoleonic Wars? Women's oppression? Child abuse? Child labour? LGBTQ+ discrimination? ...) All it would do is clutter our pages, create countless heated discussions and edit wars, for very little actual benefit (more moral posturing than anything else). Fram (talk) 16:42, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

    I disagree that something should not be done because it has the potential to proliferate. In a sense, for me, this this goes against the philosophy of Wikipedia. I see proliferation as beneficial, so it is difficult for me to argue. My idea of an icon is kind of designed to avoid clutter. I think only certain pages would have heated discussions. i.e. the example I used above, John Threlkeld, is not controversial so I doubt there would be edit wars, but George Washington on the other hand....I agree, but there will always be edit wars on these subjects with very notable people. I get your point, but I personally do not think this is reason to not proceed. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 17:07, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

    We have a whole article (quite good, too!) George Washington and slavery so I don't think it would be *that* controversial. Mostly I think we just need to edit all the relevant articles to include the relevant material on slavery, with words, rather than with a digital stamp.

    Also, there is already a blurry old image of slave fetters that shows up as a thumbnail on all slavery related articles with their own thumbnail bc it's attached to the slavery navbox templates. jengod (talk) 02:20, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

• I think this idea would bring more heat than light to Wikipedia. Yes, I agree that those who think slavery is a good idea are now very much a minuscule minority, but in the ancient world it was very much accepted. Would this icon be applied to nearly everyone from Ancient Greece or Rome that we have articles about? If we were to apply it consistently then it would. We should just describe people or institutions that were supported by slavery as reliable sources do, and in many cases that would mean inclusion of such content, but not a yes/no icon. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:48, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  Very strong point @Phil Bridger that forces me to reconsider and adjust my proposal. According do you think it would be viable to limit the icons for those people/buildings/institutions in the modern era? Or still problematic? Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 20:01, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  I imagine there would also be difficulty and contention in labelling, for example, the Kafala system, which some have called "modern slavery" and others have rejected this description. Curbon7 (talk) 20:12, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for that @Curbon7, yes Kafala system is a good example. As with all articles it is best to go with the sources. From what I understood from reading the article it is not slavery but creates a situation where slavery becomes possible, so no, probably no icon for Kafala but rather icons for those who use it for slavery. My suggestion is for an icon to be be used on people, structures, and institutions, and I think Kafala system is more a law. But I did wonder if the football stadiums mentioned in the article could come under what I am suggesting. My conclusion is that if a stadium in mentioned by reliable sources as being constructed with slave labour (not just the Kafala system) then, yes, I would not have a problem with an icon identifying such, and think it would be helpful and informative to have this highlighted at the top of the article. Czar Brodie (talk) 20:48, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't think this is needed. If reliable sources document a person/institution's relation to slavery, then it can be put in the article anyway. This is simply redundant to the category system and may also be a violate of the No Disclaimers policy. I'm also a bit troubled by your want to "[brand] those who branded": in no way whatsoever do I condone slavery, but as editors we must write article neutrally, which this is not. Schminnte ^{[talk to me]} 23:52, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

I feel the category system is the way to go. Is there a category for 'institutions which profitted from slavery'? – Reidgreg (talk) 05:32, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

This is not the way to go. Adding this would be WP:UNDUE. And the second and third reasons are against the philosophy of Wikipedia (taint and branding) to not be a point of view pusher. For the first reason about political consensus, where is the proof for that? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:45, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Unnecessary and likely to be divisive, edit-war inducing, heat-generating, etc. Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:09, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

And we certainly don't need to bow to "modern political consensus". Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:09, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Czar Brodie: you write above Slavery is something that I noticed is becoming very topical in labelling (people, buildings, institutions) outside Wikipedia—can you give any examples of what this actually looks like? On first brush with your idea, I find myself agreeing with a lot of the comments above that "we add little icons for this one specific topic that people are going to fight about" is not a productive use of time, especially since we a) already have categories, and b) already have arguments about where those categories properly apply. Beyond that, I would think you'd be very hard-pressed to find an article where slavery or slaveholding is a significant part of the topic and it doesn't mention it in the body; beyond that, the idea that content follows from an icon someone unilaterally added doesn't actually match how our editorial practices work. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 13:24, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

We don't need a "badge of shame" to suggest that "everything about the person/building/institution is tainted", as amusing as it might be to see how the kind of people who might support this idea would react to finding that Democratic Party (United States) would get said badge while Republican Party (United States) wouldn't. A topic's relation to slavery should be discussed in the article to the extent that such discussion is in accordance with WP:DUE. Anomie⚔ 18:23, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, we have article categories and WikiProject banners already. Maybe start a slavery taskforce under Wikipedia:WikiProject Human rights?

This "awareness icon" idea sounds like something a browser add-on or userscript could do. Fences&Windows 23:41, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

• As others have already said, this is extremely problematic, and an aspect of WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Apply it to slavery, and now you'll have people asking for something similar to anti-abortion topics, white supremacy, anti-sematism, etc. WP is supposed to be amoral (we don't take any side on any argument), and even though we probably write from the position that slavery is bad, we don't give such topics any special marks against that point. --Masem (t) 00:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Display of references for section edits

I'd like to revive the idea from archive 11 (2013) to display references in the preview window during section edits. I have been thinking about this for some time, and I agree that it's tricky to realize for articles where the inline citations are placed directly in the prose part of the markup code.

However, there is a growing number of articles where the citations are placed in the reference section. How about marking articles of this type with a special template at the top like {{Article using bundled ref section}} or smth like that and display both the edited section and "References" section in the preview? I think, for this article type it should be possible to realize? That would definitely help a lot during editing. Henni147 (talk) 15:43, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

References have been included in section edit previews since 2016. The task about being able to preview the content of named references defined outside of the section being edited is T124840, and isn't something we can do much about here on the English Wikipedia. Anomie⚔ 18:33, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Anomie: Thank you very much for the quick reply and the link to the related task! Henni147 (talk) 09:06, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Make the mobile "Add categories" editing mode available as a general option

Greetings and felicitations. I've just discovered that the mobile "Add categories" option allows access to an editing mode that encompasses an entire article, not just a single section, and does it in an actually readable font size. (This happens after you add a category, and are in the "save" phase. The current show full page mode is clumsy (I'm using iOS 16), but the "Add categories" mode is less so. —DocWatson42 (talk) 10:44, 3 November 2023 (UTC)