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Potentially distressing images on the home page

Greetings. I noticed today (September 11th) on the anniversary section of the home page, a photo of United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the WTC South Tower, representing the anniversary of 9/11. Is there a policy preventing potentially distressing images (e.g. photos of graphic violence or serious injury, porn, etc.) from appearing on the home page? I understand that some articles, such as those on wars or atrocities, will warrant the use of potentially distressing images for illustration. But a visitor to an article like that will likely understand the risk of seeing those kinds of images if they know anything about the topic of that article. I don't think the same could be said for the home page.

Of course different people have different views on what amounts to a potentially distressing image. Nevertheless, I'd imagine that memories, reminders and depictions of 9/11 have traumatic impact on a wide swathe of people—people who were personally affected by the attacks (directly or indirectly), people who were distressed by watching them play out, people who have been affected by other aviation accidents, or even people who (like me) just have a low tolerance for these things. With all of these factors in mind, I was surprised to see that the photo of Flight 175 was deemed suitable to appear on the home page. Thecolonpagesaretoocomplicated (talk) 16:47, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

It's fairly uncomplicated: Wikipedia is not censored, unfortunately. If you've perused the Main Page for any length of time, you've likely seen dozens of images that were similarly distressful to individuals from different backgrounds than yours. Like with every other content issue, we reflect sources in what visibility we give these features, and there's just no getting around that this is one of the most famous images of the 21st century, ugly as it is. Remsense ‥ 论 16:49, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is not censored" doesn't mean run whatever on the main page. I read the front page every day, I do not see dozens of images that are similarly distressful, or distasteful (can anyone point to three from the past year?). Of course that image should be in the article(s) about the attack, but there's really no reason to have an image of thousands of people being murdered on the front page every damn year. So, it bothers me, too, OP, you're not alone. I think it's callous of Wikipedia to put "violence porn" on the front page. (I also don't love that it's the lead image of the 9/11 article instead of being further down in the article, but having it in WP:OTD is much more gratuitous.) (Another example like this: the Hiroshima/Nagasaki "mushroom cloud" atomic bomb images.) Levivich (talk) 19:44, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I'll put it like this: I personally loathe this about as much as you've expressed you do, but I am looking in my pockets for a way to make the argument you're making that's congruent with fundamental site policy and I am coming up with nothing. I am explicitly not making this about our ~~integrity as editors~~ because that would be inane and I respect my interlocutors a lot more than that, but sometimes we write and gleefully present violence porn because our reliable sources are violence porn, and there's no distinction I can honestly make there that makes any sense when taken to its logical conclusion.. Remsense ‥ 论 19:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I hear ya. I would say we can choose a different image for 9/11 OTD (even a different 9/11 image, like the famous one of the rubble). That doesn't conflict with any site policies. And we don't have to take it to its logical conclusion (whatever that may be). We can choose an image for the main page for a particular item, and in making that choice, we can be sensitive to various sensitivities. I think what you're saying about us being effectively bound by policy is very true when it comes to article content--no way we can exclude that image from the 9/11 article and be in line with policy--but on the main page, we have discretion what photos to show. Just as we pick POTD based on aesthetics, we can be selective about OTD, DYK, etc. NOTCENSORED doesn't mean we can't make a good choice when we have several options, and there are many iconic 9/11 photos to choose from (firefighters running up the stairs while everyone else is running down, Bush with the megaphone, twisted steel of the tower ruins, just to name a few). Levivich (talk) 22:18, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
There's also nothing in our policies that requires us to include an image of any specific event in the list every single year. We could and perhaps should rotate them: This year it was the twin towers, and next year it can be the 30th anniversary of the space station trip, and the year after, we maybe we would choose an image for the 250th anniversary of the Staten Island Peace Conference. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Totally not trying to undermine peoples' points, I think they're right and we don't disagree about anything really, but I got myself curious: 9/11 was not mentioned by OTD in 2008, 2010, 2014, 2015 (was TFA), 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2022. Remsense ‥ 论 22:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
(That sounded marginally more interesting while I was collating it.) Remsense ‥ 论 22:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
😂
I did the same thing and noticed that it ran in 2020, 2023, and now 2024. The OTD images do rotate (and thank you to the volunteers who rotate them). I think this is easily fixed; this image sits in the image bin for that date. Tomorrow I'll swap it for another one. That way when we rotate in a 9/11 image next time, it'll be a different image. Or I'll get reverted and reported at ANI. One of the two. Levivich (talk) 23:02, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I am looking in my pockets for a way to make the argument you're making that's congruent with fundamental site policy: The WP:OM guideline states that Images containing offensive material that is extraneous, unnecessary, irrelevant, or gratuitous are not preferred over non-offensive ones in the name of opposing censorship and that When multiple options are equally effective at portraying a concept, the most offensive options should not be used merely to "show off" possibly offensive materials. By citing this I don't mean to say that I think the image offends a person's sensibilities on like a propriety/decorum level but rather that, as OP says, the image can cause distress—'offend' in the sense of causing pain or hurt feelings. All that to say, it's entirely consistent with guidelines and policy to deliberately refrain from showing an image on the main page on the grounds that it's gratuitous and distress part of the readership when the relevant idea can be meaningfully conveyed with a different image. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:47, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
But it's still ultimately the prevalence that guides choices, not whether they're offensive. It just so happens that offensive material is generally less prominent in RS, so we follow. Remsense ‥ 论 02:56, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
As a New Yorker who was in downtown NYC and saw 9/11 with my own eyes… I think it is GOOD that the images of that day are distressing. They should be. They remind us that it was a horrific incident. Don’t EVER sugar coat it. Remember it. Blueboar (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Using violence (in imagery or graphic text or whatever) for the sake of remembering violence (as opposed to, in reading an article, the purpose of education) is generally not a good idea. The selection of an image for the front page to be something rather than something else is not necessarily a "sugar coat" unless you're using you're using an image that is pretty much burying the lead -- an opaque coating around the point of the article, say.
The 9/11 article encompassing a long series of events (the aftermath being arguably orders of magnitude more significant for the world than the events of the day itself), one has a choice of many such events from which to take a headline image. A plane crashing into something, while a dramatic image and certainly a trigger moment for the event cascade, does not necessarily have to be the only kind of image that's justified for a headline (although it is certainly necessary for the article). And that day had a number of critical images that replayed on TV for days, not just the airplanes smashing into buildings. (And also remember that certain images were self-censored by media very early on, such as video of people jumping from the towers, which thus while shocking on the day of, has perhaps a less persistent memory because it was not replayed endlessly -- but would that not perhaps be a more powerful representation of the human tragedy?)
I don't have an alternative image to suggestion, from the day of Sept 11 itself, that isn't by some extension comparably morbid: showing both towers before the plane hits, or showing one tower in smoke is showing people about to die, and showing rubble is showing dead bodies. But those are probably have less violence-in-motion, this-is-people-being-killed-in-front-of-you, than the plane in the process of crashing. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:23, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't know whether it's a good or a bad thing, but we have definitely become more squeamish about such things during my lifetime. As a child I watched TV programmes such as All Our Yesterdays which showed footage from World War Two, much of people being killed (usually off-screen, such as films of bombing raids taken from the bombers' point of view), but I don't remember any complaints, even about children watching. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:23, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I think like most comparisons of this ilk, a large part of it is "people previously had fewer opportunities to voice the nuances of their opinions about media for you to notice". Remsense ‥ 论 21:27, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I would assume that, in the footage, you/your parents were not the ones being bombed? SamuelRiv (talk) 21:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
We have had Wikipedia editors whose parents survived WWI or who lived through WWII themselves.
The television show mentioned above started airing in 1960, so it is reasonable to assume that every adult watching it had lived through the events, and that some fraction of them were watching events that had affected them very personally (e.g., the bombing raid that destroyed the family home). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Phil_Bridger gave an impression of their personal recollection of the show which seems like they were not watching their civilian peers in their country or hometowns getting bombed, which fundamentally contrasts to the TV experience that Blueboar describes. Therefore, the notion that "we have definitely become more squeamish about such things" seems to be unsupported by that anecdote, which is what my point is.
Furthermore, to give a contrasting anecdotal argument: my own experience is that older generations tend to be more reluctant to reflect on pain of their past in detail (whether theirs or of their peers) (which in my anecdotes would correlate at least somewhat to education, as those with more education seem more likely to value history for its own sake, as opposed to "letting the dead rest in peace" as one person told me; and education has improved dramatically across populations across the world.) SamuelRiv (talk) 00:58, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
To be clear… my experience was live rather than on TV. Not only did I witness it all with my own eyes, I personally knew two people who were in the Towers that morning and didn’t make it out.
So yes, even after 23 years, seeing graphic images of 9/11 can bring back some very strong memories (sights, sounds and smells)… but, each time I see them, each time I mentally re-live that day, there is also some catharsis. The pain heals… the sadness-mixed-with-anger fades… That’s a good thing. Blueboar (talk) 12:58, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
IMO, any generalization to the tune of "we used to be more/less sensitive to this" that stretches back to cultural memory of WWII is going to be a major oversimplification. There's been many wars and generations since then, and attitudes toward cultural memory of each have shifted over time and place (not to mention that there is no unified historical "we" that we as Wikipedia editors can point to that covers this time period). signed, Rosguill talk 14:50, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
The entire premise of this discussion starts with the idea that the image in question is on the same level as graphic violence or serious injury or porn, which it... very much isn't. An atomic mushroom cloud, likewise, is not graphic violence even if it is connected to extreme losses of life that lots of people today still have strong feelings about. They aren't gratuitous, they are massively important images that are part of the cultural awareness of these events. You can take complaints about the lead image of September 11 attacks to the talk page of that article, where I imagine one will find much support for changing it. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:36, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
I think it's totally fine to cede all territory here, as people are fully expected to have a wide variety of emotional responses mediated by social association and context, even if the media isn't explicit. My first and imo strongest point was merely that—while avoiding being overly reductive or obtuse about it—Wikipedia has plenty to offer in terms of distress for different members of its readership. That's why I'm genuinely wary about going too far out of my way to advocate maximal tastefulness on the front page—one possible outcome are a general censorship if we try really hard to be fair to everyone while being maximally tasteful, or an ebb in the wrong direction towards presentation based on the type of people Wikipedia editors tend to be, rather than who readers are intended to be. Remsense ‥ 论 14:50, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Archived ANI CBAN/Indef proposal

I had an archived CBAN/Indef proposal that got archived without any action, but pretty much all users agreed there was a case for supporting one. What should I do? Allan Nonymous (talk) 14:03, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Request a close at WP:CR. (As an aside, questions like this should go to HELP:DESK, not VPP.) voorts (talk/contributions) 17:16, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

CSD X4 criterion proposal

Per WP:NSPORTS2022 Proposal 5 and the subsequent update to WP:SPORTSCRIT, there is consensus that sports biographies are not subject to WP:NEXIST and are automatically subject to deletion if they do not contain at least one source demonstrating significant coverage in the article. To this point, cleanup has been slow as a courtesy to AfD. I propose CSD X4 so the articles can be addressed without causing a significant backlog. X4 would only apply if there is unambiguously no source to demonstrate significant coverage in the article, meaning borderline sigcov would still need to go through AfD or PROD. Articles sourced entirely to databases or passing mentions would qualify for X4 deletion. X4 would be an alternative to mass AfD nominations, which will be the likely outcome if no action is taken. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:24, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't read the close of NSPORTS2022 as saying that such articles must be deleted, but rather that for an article to be created it must have at least one source with SIGCOV. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:32, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
A bit odd that this isn't at WT:CSD and that WT:CSD wasn't notified. I went ahead and notified them. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:49, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! I considered this the most "central" location and went to notify other places, but I got distracted after adding it to COIN. I have no objections if anyone thinks this should be moved to WT:CSD. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:51, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Firstly new CSD criteria should be proposed at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion (I'll notify them for you) and should demonstrate that they meet all four requirements listed at WP:NEWCSD. My first impression is that this would fail at least point 1 (objective) because what coverage counts as "significant" is subjective and whether coverage meets that standard is frequently a matter of disagreement at AfD. AIUI there is also frequent disagreement about what counts as a database and whether database entries are always non-trivial coverage. Thryduulf (talk) 21:52, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Edit: I won't notify WT:CSD as Novem Linguae did that while I was typing! Thryduulf (talk) 21:53, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Speedy deletions are for situations where the deletion criterion is clear and the deletion of articles meeting that criterion is uncontroversial. Past discussions of sports stubs have made it obvious that both of these conditions are not met here. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Given the above feedback, I suppose we can close this as WP:SNOW and I can just start submitting AfDs as needed? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:58, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
You can also use PROD. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:03, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
I regularly see athlete articles prodded, in the list at WP:PRODSUM, often in large batches. I haven't been keeping track of how successful the prods are but I think it's a good thing to try first before resorting to an AfD. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:08, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
All right, thank you. I do feel a little silly now that the points above have been raised. I'm just working through the NPP backlog right now and trying to find some sort of way to make it more efficient when sorting the good from the bad. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:10, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
If it's for NPP, the other possibility for handling undersourced articles is draftification. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:13, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes but hopefully not as a way for backdoor deletion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:18, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
If your goal is efficiency or a minimum of drama, I think that you should not try to delete any "borderline" cases. Using WP:PROD on egregious examples, with a good explanation and a link to the requirements, isn't likely to earn you many wiki-enemies. However, trying to remove (by any means: AFD, PROD, Draft:, etc.) any subject for which SIGCOV is perhaps a matter of judgement is not likely to win friends and influence people. In particular, I suggest turning a blind eye towards any subject that someone could claim as SIGCOV under WP:100WORDS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
There are 3 things I want to see in any X series new criterion proposals. Firstly, I want to see a list of the pages subject to the new x criterion. This is typically a page compiled in user or project space somewhere. This both defines the scope (how many pages are we talking about), and lets people take random dip samples. The second thing I'm looking for is a consensus that many or most, but not all or nearly all, of the pages subject to the criterion should be deleted if the appropriate consensus based process was run in full. If all or almost all of the articles should be deleted, make a single mass nomination at the appropriate XFD, or else have a RFC linked from that XfD. The third is a limit date, or some other way to demonstrate that the flow of new articles into the X series eligible pool has stopped. This is to ensure that an x series criterion doesn't grow in scope. No opinion on the merits of these articles, but I do need this info before I can weigh if X4 is an appropriate response. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:42, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
The problem is that, so very often, when these items are taken to AfD sources are found. There are a few folks at the NFL WikiProject who actually end up saving a lot of pages at AfD but will also vote to delete pages that they can't find sigcov on. I don't think it becomes uncontroversial to delete player pages unless we can find something less arbitrary than "does not currently contain sigcov". Hey man im josh (talk) 14:07, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Starting a compilation of Wikipedia policies

I took long hours to condense core content policies into one document. By my calculations, I can retain at least 95% of the meaning of the policies, including most of their intricacies and details, by using only about a third of space that the policies and guidelines, scattered among multiple pages, now take (I estimated from raw text that the policies and guidelines I summarised have about 530 KB of raw text but under the compilation have just 173 KB - still a lot but much better).

It was a hard task and appears about as hard as working in one person to recompile the Constitution of Alabama - a ridiculously long document running at 373K words - 420K words before 2022 (for comparison, War and Peace is 587K words, and there's a good reason they publish it in volumes), but I think it is more than worth it, as people will have a unified set of policies that will be easier to read for people because there's gonna be much less of that but reflecting the same meaning. The overabundance of policies is one reason we have few new editors - there are too many rules, and then folks just randomly throw WP or MOS shortcuts not immediately obvious to the bystander, and suddenly nobody wants to join a project with United States Code-long rules and obscure jargon.

I will appreciate all feedback from you - positive or negative - and preferably some help into condensing further policies and guidelines, such as those about conduct, legal, editing etc. into one page where everything belongs.

Szmenderowiecki (talk) 10:26, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I wish you well in your endeavour, but am worried that it will fail in the end because everyone thinks that "their" sub-sub-clause is vitally important. I admit that I rarely look at policies or guidelines now, but find a few basic ideas, along with common sense, to work. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:14, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
That works for me as well (I normally look into the rules on an ad hoc basis), but then you wouldn't need all those volumes of tiny rules covering, like, 99% of cases, and yet here we are. Also, admins themselves need a clear set of rules for proper enforcement (even if you catch the gist that the persob is just NOTHERE - an essay btw - you still kinda need a more concrete reason that just "that's my hunch")
It's like with RL: pretty common-sense that you shouldn't kill or rob anyone, or what appears common-sense like not using the army or the government to finance/securre your own reelection campaign, and yet these are codified lest anyone have an idea to bend the rules. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:29, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
This exists WP:Nutshell and I think your effort is noble but better focused on improving accessible language and navigation of existing guidelines for newcomers. Twinkle has feature to welcome new users for example. WP:Mentor finds ways to automate assisting newbies. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 12:47, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Just to pick one example. There's no policy that an article must have (any) sources, let alone one. Yet we consistently advise new users to create articles with multiple sources. Save the edge cases and careful readings of guidelines/policies for advanced users who want to push the margins or change consensus. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 12:49, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Actually there very much are two policies that prohibit articles without sources:
  • Verifiability says that you should only add content that you can check against a reliable source, and that you can remove any unsourced content
  • No original research says you just can't make stuff up. The only way you can have some sort of content is if it can be supported by a reliable source. Technically just have to demonstrate that the source for the passage is somewhere but if you don't provide it in the article, you can totally expect it to be removed and it's gonna be your problem.
So yeah, it isn't said directly, but policy actually prohibits unsourced articles (and I didn't even go to the guidelines) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
No, policy prohibits unverifiable articles, not unsourced articles. Sources are required for BLPs and anything that is likely to be challenged should include a source (but this doesn't have to be inline). An article List of uncontroversial statements of fact consisting of things like "The sky is blue", "Many people are Catholics", "The 1970s happened before the 1980s", etc could be completely fine (it would be deleted, but for reasons completely unrelated to not having sources). Thryduulf (talk) 17:28, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Look, I'm not making this up:
Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[b] the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source
Which de facto means that if you are adding unsourced content, you are wasting your time as any editor may come by and just remove what you wrote, tell you "lacks an inline citation, I don't care why, pics or it didn't happen" and you are gonna still default to having to add a source (and then again giving time to fix it is a courtesy you needn't, though probably should, extend; though if you have the means to fix it yourself, you should do it)
So there's no obligation to source an article only in the most literal reading of policies. Anyone can enforce this policy provision. WP:SKYISBLUE is just an essay, although one with a pretty large following (and which totally makes sense for me, which is why there is a footnote to that effect) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:47, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
... any editor may come by and just remove what you wrote ...: the operative word is may. The reality is there's loads of unsourced text on WP, much of which will take years for it to be challenged, if ever. —Bagumba (talk) 18:29, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
And from what I've seen, deleting uncited material without a good-faith attempt to find a source (similar to WP:BEFORE) is considered disruptive (at least at high volumes). jlwoodwa (talk) 03:35, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
This highlights one of the issues with a monolithic policy body, is that the social norms of Wikipedia are not given their own space for each topic. This would encourage further unconstructive legalistic interpretations of pages that are meant to facilitate us getting on with improving the encyclopedia instead of fighting all day or indulging our own personal compulsions with policy as a fig leaf. Monolithic codes of law can work when they are used and interpreted by legal professionals whose job is to use and interpret them, but not ordinary people trying to contribute to a community project.Remsense ‥ 论 03:46, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
So if this is the "informal norm", codify it. And Wikilawyering will not disappar overnight, that's for sure. TBH the "social norms" aren't really codified in one place, either - they are dozens of pages and that just makes the learning curve steeper than it already is. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 02:01, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
@Szmenderowiecki, I think you might be interested in reading Wikipedia:Glossary#uncited and related entries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:23, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
It has been tried before. Take a look at Wikipedia:Attribution, an attempt 18 years ago to consolidate some policies. Some very active and well regarded Wikipedians put a lot of time and effort into that proposal, but it was rejected by the community. Consensus can change, but I suspect the community remains just as resistant to change as it was then. Donald Albury 20:07, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
So I did read the poll, and a lot of stuff that was probably relevant here doesn't apply:
  • Users were complaining about lack of participation/that proposal being forced down their throats as policy - not an issue here (yet)
  • Merger of NOR, V, RS didn't appeal to people - not abolishing them, just giving sections to these concepts, not a problem.
  • Users complained about one massive page, or that they preferred separate policies rather than a massive policy code - well that is an issue to discuss but again it's not something that should extinguish all debate before it even starts.
  • Disgusted that truth is deprioritised - kinda not applicable here, because I'm not changing the framing of policy, just condensing it.
  • Change is unnecessary - again, debatable but let's have that debate in the first place
  • WP-links - well, you will have them all you like. Again, something to be discussed.
  • Assessment of any changes and their impact on disputes - to be discussed, again. This is how rulemaking process should work.
  • "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" - my whole point is that it is, in fact, broke, so needs fixing.
And again, you can say "meh, we tried eons ago and it didn't work, why bother anymore" but that's gonna be a catch-22, because nothing will change without discussion, which you don't want to hold anyway.
I believe the attitude should be "OK, let's see what you did there and if it makes any sense". It would be another thing if you told me why what I did was bullshit, which is fine. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:45, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
FYI in addition to WP:Nutshell and WP:Attribution mentioned above, there's also WP:SIMPLE, HELP:GUIDE, and other variations listed at WP:Principles. Levivich (talk) 04:42, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
I know, but that's not the point of the compilation. What you are pointing to has a different purpose.
Nutshell, WP:5P etc. is a post hoc summary of policies and guidelines that summarise the main goals in slogans. Just like a company saying "we want to increase the market share; we want good treatment of workers" but not saying how.
WP:SIMPLE is a very high-level summary of policies and guidelines. It's the company analogue of saying: Good treatment of workers means paying more than the minimum wage, giving them extra breaks, paid leave and some other perks, without telling much specifics.
The body of the policies and guidelines is like all internal company directives about pay grades, conditions of getting worker benefits, levels of compensation, powers of HR/executives etc. This page intends to clean up all this body of policies and codify them in a couple of places, grouped by category, so that we remove unnecessary bloat, as in too many redundancies and passages repeated across different policy pages, extraneous comments etc.
We should have all of these and I don't have an issue with the first two, they are mostly fine. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:01, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
@Szmenderowiecki, I don't feel like you're hearing what people are telling you, so l'm going to try a completely different, un-Wikipedian way of explaining this, because the previous efforts haven't worked, and maybe this will get your attention. Here's my new way:
Hi, Szmenderowiecki, and welcome to Wikipedia! I see you've been editing for just four and a half years, and that you've made a few hundred edits at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, which I really appreciate. I don't know if you knew this, but you're in the top half a percent of contributors for all time. I also notice that you've never edited a single policy, and you have only made one small, uncontroversial edit to a guideline.
Just so you know, most of the people who have responded to you in this discussion have been editing for 15 to 20 years, and have made between 50,000 and 170,000 edits. Also, relevantly, we've been much more active in developing Wikipedia's policy and guideline ecosystem. If you'd like to see an incomplete overview of my own policy-related work, then you can start at User:WhatamIdoing#Policies and guidelines you can ask me about.
Now that you understand who's at the table for this discussion, I want to point out that there is an English saying that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Every person in this discussion has more experience than you, and every single one of them thinks that, even though your goal is laudable and praiseworthy and at least partially shared by everyone here, your approach is not likely to be successful. It is, of course, possible that you know better than any of us and that rushing ahead is a great idea, but I suggest to you that it is unlikely that all of us are wrong in urging caution and small steps.
If you think you could slow down and get some more experience, and if you're willing to consider doing this over the space of years, then I think we could help set you up for success. For example, if we implemented this idea, that would get about 300 words out of a policy. The next step is to write a good RFC question. If you're interested in this, you could get some practical experience by helping out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:26, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't know if you realise it, and I guess you didn't mean it, but the comment has a very strong patronising "you are too young to understand" vibe which I have a hard time shaking off rn.
I asked you for specific input in opinion and help, and I just think the folks who suggested Nutshell etc. misunderstood my intentions. I apologise if I wasn't clear. My intent is to retain the same scope and level of detail but in fewer words.
If what you meant is to do it in increments, fine, that's an option, still I'd love some feedback if I fucked up with the text in the first place. That is valuable. I'm open to discuss it one-by-one. I will hear input from people who actually drafted policies. That was what I intended to do anyway. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
You've dropped things, rearranged things, and changed things, and I suspect you have done this without knowing what effects any of that will have.
For example, you've added the word secondary to the WP:GNG, and swapped in a description for the WP:SIGCOV language:
  • Original: "A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."
  • Yours: A topic generally may have a stand-alone article or list when several reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject address the topic directly and in detail, so that editors do not have to resort to original research.
I've been trying to get a definition of SIGCOV for years (and years), and failing repeatedly because nobody wants to admit how long (or, perhaps more precisely, how low) "in detail" actually is, for fear that some "unworthy" subject might deliberately seek a qualifying level of independent media coverage. The NOR line in the GNG is basically worthless, and AFAICT removing it would have no effect whatsoever on AFD outcomes, but the fear of making changes to such a high-visibility sentence will likely prevent us from fixing that. Your [e] footnote requires a huge amount of work (e.g., primary sources aren't always about events, sources don't have to adhere to the neutral point of view, a smaller number of high-quality sources is not automatically less indicative of notability than a large number of worse sources).
At the time we started leaning on secondary sources (about 15 years ago), we had a lot of editors who thought that secondary was a fancy way to spell independent. You have added a requirement for secondary sources that does not actually appear in the GNG statement (though it is in the explanations). The GNG offers a conditional rebuttable presumption, which you have turned into a statement of permission (may/are allowed to have...). The GNG says that multiple sources are only "generally expected", rather than required, and you have changed that. Oh, and "several" is often interpreted, at least in American English, as meaning "four" (a=one, a couple=two, a few=three, several=four), whereas the GNG is usually looking for "two".
Among the things you haven't resolved is whether the sources for an article must be considered in isolation. For example:
  • If I have ten brief independent secondary sources, is that multiple+independent+secondary+SIGCOV, or just multiple+independent+secondary and no SIGCOV?
  • If I have SIGCOV in a very lengthy, extremely detailed independent primary source, and I have a non-SIGCOV secondary source, does that add up to multiple+independent+SIGCOV+secondary and therefore notability overall, or do I have to get all three key qualities (independent+secondary+SIGCOV) in each source separately?
There are a few changes you've made that I like (e.g., putting WP:PSTS in WP:RS – I doubt the community will accept it, but it's not unreasonable), but overall I think you don't understand our ruleset well enough to know what changes you're making. Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm gonna try to address your points in a while. Thanks for the feedback, I'm a bit busy rn. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:12, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
@Szmenderowiecki, just so you know, I'm always going to be interested in this. If you want to talk about how to improve our written policies and guidelines, then feel free to drop by User talk:WhatamIdoing and tell me about your ideas. It doesn't matter to me if that's that's next month, or next year, or next decade – I'd be happy to hear your ideas whenever you want to share them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
OK, I'm finally back after fixing my phone with 2FA, I will respond to your suggestions above on the user talk page. It will be there in an hour or two. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:31, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
If anything, the project would benefit from more "fresh eyes"—editors with enough experience to speak somewhat intelligently about these issues, but without so much experience that they are heavily invested in the status quo. There is a strong, almost indisputable case that current PAGs are far too convoluted and complex for the project's good. As a practical matter, the core problem is that the self-selected self-governance model, which created the problem, is incapable of addressing it. Resistance is futile; hence my semi-retirement after about ten years of futile resistance. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
I would add that it's useful to hear from editors who still remember their first few edits, because a sentence that makes sense to the "old hands" isn't necessarily any good for the majority of editors. An actual majority of editors has made five or fewer edits, total, ever. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:02, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
It might be "useful" in supporting the position that current PAGs are far too convoluted and complex for the project's good (but I think that's self-evident). As for fixing the problem, not so much. Incremental change is never going to be enough; what's needed is massive overhaul, and that's just not going to happen under the current model. Meanwhile, the current model is sacrosanct. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:45, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Surprising but true: only 1/3 of all editors have made 5 or more edits. (Source: {{registered editors by edit count}}, table 2.) jlwoodwa (talk) 03:45, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
I'll confess that I rarely look at the written policies & guidelines, & mostly use them as a citation when I need to emphasize a point to another editor. I consider what they say is basic common sense, but I've been around so long that I've probably internalized all of the important points. (This is not to say that the original poster is wasting their time. The written policies & guidelines have been considered a mess for countless years.) -- llywrch (talk) 01:49, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
This is part of the reason why English Wikipedia's guidance is sprawling: a lot of additions get made because a situation arises, some people say "we should have a rule for that", it gets added with a shortcut used for jargon, and editors brandish it in future discussions. As I've written before, it would be better to address problems without creating new specialized rules. But in English Wikipedia's current decision-making environment, there is little appetite to delegate to a working group to more effectively rewrite any pages. Amongst those who like to discuss these matters, there are enough editors who want to be able to weigh in on each sentence that it's hard to modify existing guidance pages, and instead we accrete more. Writing well is hard; writing well in a group is even more so. The irony of a crowd-sourced web site is that crowd-sourcing works best for making incremental changes, but consumes a lot of editor time in discussion for larger-scale changes. Which is why the path of least resistance for modifying guidance pages (and articles too) is to add a few sentences, rather than rework the pages. isaacl (talk) 23:22, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
As a new editor, adopting this would help me contribute more effectively. I would cautiously suggest that it seems like people know too many abbreviations. Support ForksForks (talk) 22:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
And we use different WP:UPPERCASE for the same page/section, sometimes resulting in one editor claiming that "WP:PAGE" supports his view and the next saying that "WP:SAMEPAGE" requires the opposite, and neither of them realize that they're talking about the same page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:35, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't see any substantive argument that our current P&G structure / the ability for users to peruse it is actually problematic. It should be telling that those editors generally seeing potential in this are relatively new, and those who don't are relatively experienced. That's not (just) survivorship bias, that's experience indicating that what is perceived by some newer editors as a pedagogical issue is (as stated above) actually just the inherent difficulties in learning how to do something conceptually multifaceted and difficult.
Editing is just hard intellectually and socially, and there's no shortcut to becoming familiar with it to be found in compiling one huge document people will not be able to digest immediately versus having several documents. Remsense ‥ 论 22:18, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree with the inherent difficulties in learning how to do something conceptually multifaceted and difficult, but I believe there are more effective and efficient ways to communicate the PAGs than our current structure. I also believe it is pretty much impossible to replace the current structure with a more effective one, having seen what it takes to add a sentence to a policy. Schazjmd (talk) 23:32, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
I think there are substantial improvements that can be made throughout each policy, or even refactoring involving multiple policies, but I think on the broadest level the modular P&G structure has no actual downsides—this isn't Justinian's code. Remsense ‥ 论 23:36, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Remsense No, and neither was that my point. The whole structure remains modular, just the modules are larger. As in, when you open a typical English textbook for foreigners, you have six books (A1-C2), each having 8-12 units.
Right now you have a separate page for every unit. I propose a separate page for a whole book, and all units get codified in one book.
So no, it's not gonna be one mammoth document, but maybe 5-8 big ones. Again, not even touching the Manual of Style.
That is more or less the reason why civil law countries have law codes. Instead of the law being scattered around 20-30 acts, you have a big one, but it resolves like 90-95% of cases. Any additional laws just build up on the codes. And even for American folks, the United States Code is sorted into 53 titles, and that organisation is in some sense not unlike that of civil law codes.
The downside is that yes, you get a tl;dr document (if you need the short story, WP:SIMPLE is indeed what you are looking for). The upside though is that you actually don't have to repeat parts of other policies in other places. Note how WP:V repeats a lot of RS because without it, V would kinda fall apart. Or how WP:OR has to remind of "related policies". Look at any subject-specific reliability guideline - depending on the size, up to half of it is copypasta from WP:N, and the only reason, apart from making the PAGs internally structurally sound, is to try to show that the policies are interconnected. In that large document, the one thing that connects all these policies is at the very top: why we need them. Because right now it's scattered all over the place. Other than that, the idea is to avoid redundant repetition. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:49, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Do you mean something like the navigation template at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines? Donald Albury 19:57, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
No, because a navigation template, either the one at the top or at the bottom - not sure which you refer to - is not intended to answer what the policy says, only shows you the way to actual policies. It's just a signpost, and it should stay that way. Very useful, but are not the thing I propose.
That said, navigation templates will probably be somewhat simplified with the codifiction. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 20:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Why do we need to start a complimentary, high-complexity codification of documents which are already all in the exact same place? Again, this isn't Justinian's code, it's simply not the case that policies are "scattered all over the place".Remsense ‥ 论 20:45, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
It is not "complimentary", it is intended as a replacement. And I'd say the current system has way more complexity because you need a hundred pages or so, a couple of FAQs, explanatory essays that sometimes define scopes of guidelines (see WP:BIOMED) and a couple of essays that de facto have the force of a guideline.
And what's the "exact same place" anyway? I can think of no one such place other than a navigation template, and it's simply not good enough, because duplicating the same thing has numerous downsides. a) slightly different text will be interpreted slightly differently, and it's not like wikilawyering will disappear anytime soon, b) maintaining two instances of same text is harder than maintaining one, c) after a change on page A there may appear a contradiction either with same copy of policy on page B or with a different rule on page C, which the community may simply not notice at first.
And if you think there are substantial improvements that can be made throughout each policy, or even refactoring involving multiple policies, why haven't you proposed that yet? Like a rewrite of V or N or whatever? Szmenderowiecki (talk) 21:39, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Because it was an offhand remark. Remsense ‥ 论 21:41, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
About WP:OR has to remind of "related policies": I wonder if we should pull that. It makes the pages longer and introduces some confusion (e.g., if someone cites WP:THISPAGE for a rule that actually belongs to WP:THATPAGE, but happens to get mentioned in WP:THISPAGE). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
I'm all for condensing our guidance down where possible, but I have to agree with Remsense – I'm not sure the goal should be putting absolutely everything on a single page.
  1. There are quite a few policies and guidelines which the average editor doesn't really need to understand in detail unless they're editing in the particular area where it applies. For example, you've included our guideline on reliable sources for medical topics in your compilation, but I'd say that's not a guideline every editor needs to know in detail. For the average editor, it's probably enough to know "medical topics have stricter standards on sourcing, and if medical topics ever come up in my editing there's a page out there I can consult for more information". I don't see the benefit in trying to squeeze the details of that guidance onto a single page together with every other policy.
  2. Sometimes there's a good reason for guidance to be extremely detailed or unusually attentive to particular wording. Our notability guideline for companies comes to mind – it goes over what sourcing does and doesn't demonstrate notability in pretty exhaustive detail. But the details are there for good reason – there's a lot of bad actors out there who manipulate the system for commercial interests, so we need to be unusually strict and explicit about exactly how to determine notability.
Of course, there's still a lot of cases where these caveats don't apply and we really could condense things down without losing much. My advice would be a more targeted approach: rather than condensing everything at once, work out where the low-hanging fruit is and push for changes there. – Teratix ₵ 13:11, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
This proposal reminds me of Borges. signed, Rosguill talk 13:52, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Or rather, do you mean, the response to the proposal has reminded you of "On Exactitude in Science"?
The notion that one condenses a vast network policies to a simplified reference document, a map if you will, is well-founded (and as others have pointed out, a similar concept exists already in explanatory essays WP:Nutshell and WP:SIMPLE). Many objections posted here seem to be that currently the simplified essay does not accurately represent every single paragraph of every single policy accurately.
Fwiw, I think a complete from-scratch attempt at simplified reference document every few years, to be measured against whatever already exists, is a good thing. As people choose to direct new editors to one version or another, or as new editors opine on one or another, maybe something appears completely superior. Or not -- we have a bunch of independent ways of presenting the basic P&G. Currently you can choose to link from between 5 or more independent general editing tutorial portals for newbies (WP:NEWBIE, Help:Introduction, Wikipedia:GLAM/Beginner's_guide_to_Wikipedia, WP:MAN, etc.).
An explanatory essay is not new policy, and as long as it is in userspace it does not require consensus. I frankly think some of the behavior so far has been disappointing to the spirit of VP: when someone asks for feedback on a work in progress here, then we should at minimum be constructive. (And to be sure: any feedback with a tldr of "don't do this" or "nobody wants it" or "put your effort somewhere else" is the opposite of constructive.) SamuelRiv (talk) 20:59, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Just for clarity, what I would mean by "simplified" in this case is not "this is the TLDR version" - you have pointed to enough of that but "this is the new comprehensive version, essentially same content, but we completely reviewed the text and made it clearer, shorter, neater, better organised etc.", with a dollop of advice from WP:POSA and a sprinkle of other advice about concise writing. Other than that, I agree. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 20:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
I guess I'd suggest to just keep your presentation delicate for a while. Presenting as an alternative/better tldr version might be received more openly, since you've seen the reaction here when talking about a total conceptual rules overhaul.
In evaluating the quality, since many P&G are separated into pages with separate Talk sections, you might take one section of your draft you think is pretty refined and present it to one of those pages to get feedback on whether it makes sense as a concise version, then make adjustments from there. Everyone here is aware of WP:Bloat, so after doing the refinement, go back to the section Talk page and say at some point, "what if this entire page were replaced with just this, would it break anything?", you might get a better feel for what's possible. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:58, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
The problem is, tl;drs are already there, and xkcd covers creating "this one tl;dr that solves everything" well. So I don't want to go that way.
As for your suggestions, I may be subjective in what I believe is refined, but let's try that. Just choose what you believe is the best summary out there. Just not the one that has cross-references to other policies in the text, because folks will cry wolf and claim that it's absolutely essential to understand the policy. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 22:25, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
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