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Latest comment: 3 years ago by MO-Quotes in topic (Un)paid votes in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rt Rana
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Concerns about the usage of draftspace

Latest comment: 3 years ago30 comments15 people in discussion

I'd like to raise some policy concerns regarding the current usage of draftspace, specifically the practice of moving new or relatively new articles to draftspace (presumably as a part of WP:NPP). The WP:DRAFTIFY section of Wikipedia:Drafts policy explicitly says regarding this practice that "It is not intended as a backdoor route to deletion." Moreover, it also further says that any editor has the right to object to an article having been moved to draftspace, and that if such an objection is raised, the article must be moved back: "Other editors (including the author of the page) have a right to object to moving the page. If an editor raises an objection, move the page back to mainspace and if it is not notable list at AfD."

The problem is that, as a practical matter, few users, particularly among the new users, have any idea that this right to challenge a move to draftspace even exists. When a page is nominated for deletion, the page's creator is notified of that fact and is informed, via a template, how to participate in the deletion discussion. The same thing happens with a CSD tagging. However, something completely different occurs when an article gets moved to draftspace. The creator does get a notification message but this message says nothing about the right to contest the move or how to exercise that right. Instead the page usually gets tagged right away with one of the Draft/AfC templates, such as Template:Draft article or Template:AfC submission/draft. The notification message about the move to draft space only says that when the draft is sufficiently improved, it may be submitted for the AfC review. There is never any mention that the AfC process is optional for autoconfirmed users either.

These moves to draftspace are often performed by fairly inexperience users, with limited understanding of deletion and notability policies and with no discussion. In effect such moves do function as deletion from mainspace decisions, but they are subject to almost no oversight. Even in those cases where such moves are performed by experienced users, the current practices are highly problematic. They give a single user, performing the move, too much power that is not subject to meaningful challenge. The current practices for user talk page notifications about moves to draftspace are, IMO, actively misleading.

I feel that we need a stronger policy framework governing this process. Thus, IMO, whenever a page is moved to draftspace as a part of NPP, the notification message (either manual or via a template) to the creator's user talk page must explicitly mention that the creator has the right to contest the move and explain how to exercise that right. I think this requirement needs to be included in WP:Drafts. Nsk92 (talk) 18:27, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. This whole "moving to draft space is not a backdoor route to deletion" idea must be one of the biggest lies on Wikipedia. Many articles that are moved to draft space do not then get edited and are speedily deleted after 6 months with no further consideration of whether the subject is suitable for a Wikipedia article. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:40, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
I agree with both of you. I'm sure we had a discussion recently about moving to draftspace leading to deletion, but I can't remember where it was. My vague recollection is that it resulted in broad agreement that things needed to improve but the vocal objections from a few who see throwing babies out with bathwater when defending against spam resulted in nothing happening. Thryduulf (talk) 19:18, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
I've found a couple of discussions - Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 78#Roundabout G13 deletion of mainspace articles (July 2020) and Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 77#G13 and articles moved to draftspace (May 2020) but neither was the one I was thinking of! Thryduulf (talk) 19:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks. I haven't thought about it until now, but in effect the moves to draftspace do function as a kind of a soft form of speedy deletion. I see quite a few threads at Teahouse from new and not so new (but already autoconfirmed) editors whose articles have been moved to draft and who don't understand what hit them. Probably in a substantial majority of cases such moves are justified and the editors are also well advised to utilize the AfC. But I also feel that we need to be more honest with them and explain more clearly to such editors what's happening and what their options are. E.g. a user talk page notification message informing about a move to draft space and the right to contest it should probably also explicitly say that in that case an article may be listed for an AfD. With the current system I suspect that we are losing not only articles but editors too. Nsk92 (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
If an editor creates an article and has any thought about after it is published, then they will note the move to draft space and improve if the article can be improved. Moving to draft may well be a backdoor deletion method, but for content that merits deletion as presented. BD2412 T 20:11, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
If the content merits deletion then that's what PROD and AfD are for. Nsk92's comment shows that there are people who do have a care about what happens to the content after they've published it who are not being served by current practice - and chances are there are editors in a similar position who don't find their way to the Teahouse. Remember not to assume that everybody knows how Wikipedia works already. Thryduulf (talk) 20:28, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
If "moving to draft may well be a backdoor deletion method" then we should be honest about the process and not claim that it is not. The current process means that any editor, including ones that would never remotely be considered for adminship, can in effect delete articles. We need to remember that article creations are not the personal property of their creators but potentially valid encyclopedia articles that belong to everyone. Why shouldn't we use the procedures that we have, such as AfD, which, if successful, won't leave a page languishing for six months without a hope of ever becoming an enyclopedia article? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:39, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
I must add something that I heard a short time ago on the radio - I'm afraid that I was busy cooking dinner at the time so didn't catch the name of the speaker or the programme, but know that it was on BBC Radio 4 - on the lines of "procrastination doesn't lead to fewer decisions that must be made but more, one to put off the decision and one to make it". We are simply pushing decisions into the future, when they have to be made anyway, by the current use of draft space. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:52, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
In a substantial percentage of cases the moves to draftspace affects articles that do not merit removal from mainspace "as presented". These moves are often performed by relatively inexperienced users engaged in NPP. I am not even sure that having a 'New Page Reviewer' userright is actually needed to configure Twinkle to perform such moves (and they can always be performed manually). In any case, if this process really functions as "a backdoor deletion method" then, as Thryduulf and Phil Bridger noted, we should be honest and treat it as such. For deletion we have AfDs and DRV, plus the CSD tags are reviewed by an admin and the article's creator can contest them. With a move to draftspace, none of these safeguards currently exist. In fact the current process is quite obscure to the point of being misleading. The editors whose articles get moved to draftspace get a notification telling them that when a draft is sufficiently improved they can submit it for review to AfC. They'd have to click on WP:DRAFTS, read it most of the way through, find the passage that talks about the right to contest the move and figure out what to do with it. That reminds me of a passage from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with a quote by Vogons regarding the demolition of Earth: "All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint." I would, in fact, be much happier with a system where NPP moves to draftspace were officially treated as a special form of speedy deletion and required a special kind of a CSD tag. A tag could be placed by any user on a new unreviewed article, but would have to be reviewed by an admin, and the reviewing admin would have to perform the actual move to draftspace. This way the article's creator would have a chance to react before the article is yanked out, and perhaps even to improve it so that a move to draftspace becomes unnecessary. Nsk92 (talk) 21:57, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
As much as I believe that WP:AfC is a really useful process that all new editors should be encouraged to follow to learn about article creation, if users have a right to contest any draftification, they should be explicitly informed of this. It would help if there were an easier way of doing this too. I've seen many editors perform cut and paste moves when contesting a draftification, which creates problems itself. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 14:14, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
  • There is another option here... Userfication.... the original creator (or any other editor) can REQUEST that the material be copied over to their USER sandbox space (not DRAFTSPACE), where they can improve it at leasure. Blueboar (talk) 23:00, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
    Only if they know that is an option and know where and how to ask for it. This is unlikely the case for new users given the current information given to them. Thryduulf (talk) 02:53, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
I agree that this is a problem and something like the OP's suggestion is desirable. Ping me if it gets to RfC. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:08, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
This recently happened to an article that I translated, and I agree that it was a confusing process. It was completely unclear from the notice why the page was draftified instead of just tagged with refimprove. I only found the note about being able to contest after searching myself through policy pages. In the end, it was easier to just add some sources to fix the problem; it seemed like having to litigate would have been more complicated than it was worth. —Wingedserif (talk) 16:57, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I certainly agree that there is a problem with how draftification is often used. What needs to happen for this to move forward? Ingratis (talk) 18:20, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
  • So what’s the proposal here? Celestina007 (talk) 18:42, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
    The proposal made is, as clearly stated by the editor who proposed it, that editors creating articles that are moved to draft space should get a message that clarifies that, per WP:Drafts#Requirements for page movers, they have a right to get an article moved back to main space by the person who performed the move, where those articles may be subject to our normal deletion procedures. This is no change to any rights that anyone has, but merely a proposal to make sure that editors know about those rights. Personally I would go further and say that draft space should be done away with as a failed experiment, but that is not the proposal being made here. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:02, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
    Any views on obliging article creators to comply with the requirement to provide multiple RIS for their articles? Or is everyone fine with them sitting in mainspace with tags? Mccapra (talk) 20:33, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
    That's a completely different issue. Nothing proposed here would stop anyone nominating an article for deletion. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:41, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
    That’s exactly the issue. There are many new articles that may be notable (with so many being about topics in countries where I don’t speak the language it can be hard to determine). For one reason or another the creator provides no sources, or inadequate sources. Let’s say I can guess it’s likely to be notable. What I would do now is draftify it if there is no response to tagging for notability/more sources. If the creator can just oblige me to move it back to mainspace you’re saying that’s fine and it should just sit there with its tags till someone else comes along some time to put it right. If the consensus is that this is fine I kind of think everyone at NPP is wasting their time really and mainspace will rapidly fill with many more unsourced or poorly sourced articles. Mccapra (talk) 20:51, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
    What you describe is the current consensus per WP:Drafts#Requirements for page movers. If you want to change that then you should propose doing so, but his proposal is simply to tell article creators what the current consensus is rather than hide it from them. For most of the time that Wikipedia has existed we operated as a wiki and had articles edited in main space, with them being deleted if they met the criteria. Draft space is a recent innovation. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:13, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
    Yes and it’s a good innovation because 1. It supports our continuing drive to ensure that all mainspace articles are properly sourced and 2. There are many articles created that are possibly notable but where notability has not been demonstrated. I think the story that it is “backdoor deletion” is unproven at best and in fact pretty spurious. Mccapra (talk) 21:19, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
    Your opinion is noted, but whether draftification is or is not a backdoor route to deletion is irrelevant to this proposal. Currently, if an editor objects to their page being moved to draft space (for any reason or no reason, whether or not the move was correct according to policies, guidelines, custom or practice) they have the right to ask that the move be reverted and the page returned to mainspace. If a page is moved back to mainspace then anyone who thinks it should not be in mainspace is entitled to nominate it for deletion in the same way as if it had not been moved in the first place. Literally the only thing this proposal would change is that editors would be informed that they have the right that they currently have. Nothing else. Thryduulf (talk) 21:53, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
    they have a right to get an article moved back to main space by the person who performed the move this is problematic because editors take responsibility for content they add. So if I accept a pending changes edit, or an AfC draft, to some degree I'm taking responsibility for that edit. Requiring editors to move highly problematic drafts back into mainspace is problematic, thus. And it's also unenforceable. What, are we going to start blocking editors for refusing to move a problem draft into mainspace now? I'm okay with making it more clear of a user's ability to move their draft back into mainspace and their right to have it subject to a deletion discussion. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:17, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Note that WP:DRAFTIFY already requiries that an article, whose draftification has been challenged, be moved back to mainspace, even if the quality of the draft is obviously poor. If an editor raises an objection, move the page back to mainspace and if it is not notable list at AfD. The current wording is not explicit on who shoulfd perform the move back, but I think the wording suggests that it should be the editor who originally draftified the article (the bit "and if it is not notable list at AfD" doesn't make sense otherwise). IMO, it is reasonable to require the editor who performed the original draftification to perform the move, if the author of the article specifically requests it (and requests that it be the editor who draftified the article move it back). There are situations where the creator of the article can't perform the move, e.g. if that editor is not yet autoconfirmed and the article was created via AfC. There will be other situations where the creator of the article is a relatively new editor who is autoconfirmed but is unfamiliar with the pagemove process across namespaces and doesn't feel confident enough in doing it themselves. Draftification is performed by a single editor with no discussion and no prior notice . No, it is not too much of an imposition to require them to move the page pack if requested, even if the page is in very poor shape. They should be free (and sometimes encouraged) to immediately list the page for AfD after that. Moving a page back to mainspace should be viewed as similar to a WP:REFUND restoration of a previously deleted article that had been PRODded. The admin who REFUNDed the article performed a procedural due process action and does not assume responsibility for the restored content. Nsk92 (talk) 00:15, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
@Nsk92, it’s not a bad idea that the editor is aware of their rights, it’s only fair I guess, but one of the reasons for draftifying an article is for addressing undeclared COI, so wouldn’t this be encouraging COI editing, in the sense that they are able and feel empowered to disregard disclosing their COI & unilaterally move the articles back to mainspace without proffering an explanation as to what their COI is, or are we okay with articles on mainspace with tags on them that would most likely never be addressed? sometimes AFD'ing an article wouldn’t always be the viable nor plausible option such as, when the article created by the COI editor is actually on a notable subject. Celestina007 (talk) 07:52, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Certainly agreed that we lose a lot of worthwhile articles to G13 due to draftifications. Some time back I created User:SDZeroBot/Draftify Watch to keep a track of these pages but unfortunately I've had little time to actually look at them and revert the problematic ones. ALso it's worth noting that a couple of users doing draftifications are quick to revert back if you revert them. – SD0001 (talk) 11:51, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
I just want to be clear that while anyone can engage in looking at new articles, actual NPP, which is referred to multiple times in this discussion, comes with an associated user right, NPR. I agree that draftifications against the guideline prevent good information from being in mainspace. I do think the answer for this is to talk to people doing a poor job rather than adding an additional layer of bureaucracy into an already heavily regulated area (even if the actual deliver of this would be done by script for most). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:33, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Agree with Barkeep49, I also can't really see from the above discussion anyone actually providing any evidence that there is a genuine issue here with NPP draftification. Polyamorph (talk) 13:04, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

New User

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi, I need a second user name for work related edits. I am aware that multiple user names are frowned upon, and in some othre wikis are banned altogether. In en wiki I read that the policy is to allow under certain circumstances, privacy being one of them. Could someone advice how does it work - is there someone that needs to be notified, or do I need to request permission? Wolfmartyn (talk) 23:36, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

@Wolfmartyn: Create an account named, say "Wolfmartyn @ Company/Work" or whatever (the link between the two usernames doesn't need to be obvious, so long it is disclosed appropriately); then follow the instructions at WP:ALTACCN. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:32, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Please check on Myanmar army article page

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

We have see very rude editions made by some hate groups on Myanmar army page written in English,,,, the word MA A Loe means motherf**ker in Burmese language and the word MA Thar Gyi also is very bad and rude meaning in Burmese ..... please do not let these rude and inappropriate words to appear on Wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.231.94.179 (talk) 10:04, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorization of People

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 March 6#Categorization of People

This is a centralized discussion about merging Wikipedia:Category names#Categorization of people into its main guideline, Wikipedia:Categorization of people.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 09:35, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorizing Birds as Dinosaurs

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Continuing discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 March 6#Birds needs more participation.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:16, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Are we really "Not Vote"ing, or is that just a nice fiction?

Latest comment: 3 years ago10 comments9 people in discussion

I'm not exactly an experienced editor, but I like to hang out on the website, read policy, and contribute to processes, because the hivemind of Wikipedia fascinates me. Most of my active participation has been in RfCs and XfD discussions.

Obviously, I know that the convention is that polling in processes is WP:NOTAVOTE, and that they should be regarded as a solicitation of views from editors which should be considered on merit. However, I find that, in practice, these discussions essentially do just function as straight majority polls. In fact, the entire concept of consensus as realized in Wikipedia seems to be rooted in taking the course of action that is supported by the majority of editors.

I realize that the idea here is that people should be expressing their views when they make their !vote, and that by stating these views, they influence the editors who !vote afterwards until an overall consensus has been formed. This is nice in theory, but it has a number of failure modes. Firstly, many people, especially in long RfCs, will not read all the discussion that has taken place beforehand, instead skipping the block of text and appending their opinion unchanged. Secondly, if the idea that a consensus is the result of people being persuaded by previous arguments, this ignores the fact that groups of editors might want the same outcome for different reasons. In situations where 40% of participants oppose an action, but the other 60% are split evenly in their rationale for wanting the action, then arguably there has been no "consensus" the rationale for the decision, and so the process defaults to simply being a blind vote.

The other option, of course, is that the closer could unilaterally decide to uphold a minority view because they are more persuaded by its argument or adherence to policy, but in practice I think this rarely happens and would be met with outrage and immediate challenge, because the expectation is still that these processes are conducted essentially as votes.

This isn't about any particular discussion or issue, nor could I suggest a better way of doing things particularly. I just wanted to ask for other opinions; is the convention of "Not a vote" essentially just a nice thought? Or its primary function not to be applied in a strictly literal sense, but to remind editors to always state their opinions such that discussions are generally more opinion-orientated rather than a series of contextless supports or opposes? Or do you think that Wikipedia generally does manage to hold itself to "not voting" in relevant discussions? BlackholeWA (talk) 12:01, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

  • WP:NOTVOTE is more than an aspiration, but the way it works is probably more obvious when you close discussions rather than when you participate in them. For one, what we aim for is a rough consensus, not a unanimous one; agreement amongst a majority of participants can carry the day even if a significant minority disagrees. That is why it's rare (but not at all unheard of) to see closes in favour of a minority position and why the outcome is often similar to that of a poll. But closers still do a lot more than count heads. Your hypothetical discussion in which a majority of participants agree on an outcome but for different reasons is an example of the process working as intended – consensus emerges from the common ground that most agree on. To make it concrete, let's say we have an AfD where 3 people !vote keep, 3 delete, 2 merge, and 2 redirect, all with equally valid rationales. Seen as a poll, no outcome "wins". But there is obviously a rough consensus (7–3) that the article shouldn't be kept in its current form even if there is no agreement on what to do with it. A good closer would recognise this and, guided by the general principle that we err on the side of keeping content, close it as merge.
Your second example sounds like a supervote. The "quality of arguments" part of WP:CONSENSUS means that in assessing it we discard opinions that are obviously baseless, refuted, or contradict established policy. It's not about what the closer personally finds persuasive. – Joe (talk) 12:49, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I've closed several RfCs/RMs/TfDs in favour of the minority view (example). Usually such closes require giving a longer explanation to make ones thinking clear. Some get appealed to DRV etc but none have been overturned yet. I think it's totally valid to close in favour of a minority in some cases, but it is still uncommon. In my view, most discussions are mostly a vote, and consensus is not about being 'right' but rather it's about stability. To the extent that WP:NOTAVOTE matters it's mostly a corrolary of WP:CONLEVEL (i.e. votes that go against a wider consensus are not weighted very highly, and also votes that are internally logically inconsistent or otherwise severely problematic get discarded). In some discussions, particularly ones where some special interests (ie a local consensus, WikiProjects claiming territory, etc) are at work, it's also worth being careful not to discount broader opinions of editors and recognise if stonewalling/bludgeoning is occurring. Also have to be wary of SPAs/socks/canvassing. After that, it's mostly looking for whether there are outcomes/points editors seem to generally agree on.
    If there's a clear consensus against a current title but no consensus on a better title, then it can be common to move to an interim stable solution which has the most support (example: 2021 storming of the United States Capitol). Some special cases also apply to different types of discussions. In current events RfCs, for example, seeing a wall of supports/opposes later on can be a strong indicator of consensus becoming apparent due to external changes (eg media coverage). Also if there's mixed discussion, and then a refutation of a major point happens, and that seems to result in a notable swing in the votes that's also a useful indicator. In such cases the overall number of votes on each side seems to matter less than the trend the RfC is going in (but in some cases it's not clear enough and a 'no consensus' outcome is the only valid result). One useful approach, which I took from Primefac, is to skim the discussion and get an idea of the various views/arguments, and then make a closer read to see which seem to have consensus. This tends to be a good approach for messier RfCs (so, actually, I guess many discussions aren't really a vote?). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • You do know that, sometimes, the side of a debate with a numerical advantage does actually have the better, more policy-based argument? I know, right? Weird. In my experience, cries of "WP:NOTAVOTE IS NOT BEING OBEYED" come from people who didn't have a sound policy-based argument in the first place. I have, on occasion, closed discussions which went against the majority, but it should be noted that a large proportion of discussions do see that the same side of the debate that has the most votes also has the best rationales. Which is not to say that the OP doesn't have a case to be made for whatever specific case caused them to make this long post. Without reference to a specific case, we can't tell what specific problem we need to assess, and yes, sometimes discussions are closed the wrong way. Whether or not any one of them the OP is thinking of needs to be reviewed I cannot possible know without looking at it. --Jayron32 17:31, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
    • I'm not talking about or having issue with a specific case. Believe me or not, I'm not trying to be tendentious wrt a particular discussion, but just wanted to get opinions on the policy in general, as it's been something I've been thinking about recently - there are some interesting perspectives here, which I appreciate. BlackholeWA (talk) 20:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Certain discussions are more likely to have "NOTAVOTE" utilised than others. For example, AfDs are very policy-based, and by far the type of discussion where you're most likely to see the minority side (by absolute numbers) "win", though obviously still uncommon! Naming discussions are also common cases for this. RfCs are all over the place - it can be a bit hard to judge here, since often they're creating policy because there isn't currently any. As such, making a policy-backed case is hard, so it's more on weight of reason, and weight of viewpoints. RfAs act like a vote unless they get to the CRATCHAT sphere, at which point, they default back to NOTAVOTE. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:36, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Basically what everyone else said, but especially Joe's point about it being more obvious when you're a closer than a participant. I'd encourage you to look through the discussions and archives at WP:Discussions for discussion if you want a more explicit idea of how contentious discussions get closed. the entire concept of consensus as realized in Wikipedia seems to be rooted in taking the course of action that is supported by the majority of editors while it may seem that way, it's not; as others have pointed out closing against a numerical majority is not uncommon. This is especially likely if the numerical majority looks like it won't be able to actually enforce its opinion. That is the root of consensus: unity of action. It's not that everyone (or X% of everyone) agrees "let's do X", but rather everyone agrees "we won't stop others from doing X if they keep Y and Z in mind". Our policies describe what people already do, not necessarily what must be done; we have no firm rules, so no matter the outcome of a "vote" it can only be implemented if the minority agrees to not stop its implementation (see meatball:CommunityDoesNotAgree). If 40% of editors vehemently oppose a change to the Manual of Style, they will revert any attempts to enforce it. The majority is then faced with a problem: either block 40% of our editor-base or compromise with the minority. That functional conflict is the basis of consensus: how do we avoid blocking 40% of editors every time we need to make a complex decision? We determine what the community agrees to allow rather than forcing one faction to do what another faction wants. Of course, that's not always ideal---sometimes we do want to force people to act in particular ways (e.g. WP:BLP, WP:NLT, WP:NPA, and WP:GS). In that situation voting is very effective because it demonstrates a mandate for forcing actions. But voting, like consensus, is a tool and not every tool is useful in all situations (for when it is useful, I largely agree with SunirShah's point of view at meatball:VotingIsEvil). For all the bytes people spend pointing out the problems in our consensus-based governance model, we rarely engage with the legitimate problems and failure modes of polling. Per Arrow's Theorem all non-binary voting systems will be sub-optimal along some metric of "fairness", so turning everything into a vote won't magically solve our problems. In fact, outside of binary choices, it is necessarily sub-optimal. We rarely have binary choices, and we rarely need to demonstrate a mandate to strictly enforce rules with blocks. That's the spirit behind NOTAVOTE: voting is a tool that is rarely useful for making decisions on Wikipedia. While many discussions look like votes (because straw polls are useful for organizing opinions by general sentiment), they don't function like them except in specific contexts or obvious cases. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:05, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
  • It is not a vote, but in situations where both sides present good arguments with backing in policy, it often does devolve to a vote. NOTAVOTE is more relevant when many of the voters are sock/meatpuppets or are making an argument that is contrary to policy. power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:55, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
  • To illustrate (allowing, of course, for variations):
This is a VOTE: "Support".
This is NOTAVOTE: "Support because ...[Policy] ... [Fact] ... [Argument] ... [Idea]. Therefore, . . . .". -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:15, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
  • We should attach this discussion as an explanatory supplement to NOTAVOTE Nosebagbear (talk)

Consider the following hypothetical scenario which will test your understanding of Wikipedia:CONSENSUS. Five editors take part in a discussion. Four of them argue in favor of outcome A, one of them argues in favor of outcome B. The arguments of the advocates of outcome A are weak and are easily refuted by the one editor who argues in favor of outcome B. The one editor who argues in favor of outcome B offers numerous policy-, guideline-, and common-sense-based arguments, none of which are refuted. You are the administrator whose role is to formally close the discussion. What is the outcome of the debate, A or B?

I think the answer to your question about NOTAVOTE comes to the proper answer to this question. After all, if that was truly the policy, shouldn't a discussion with five poorly-argued supports and one strongly-argued oppose be closed as oppose? The correct answer is that it should not be - and the person considering closing the discussion should instead !vote themselves.
Policy arguments do matter here, but a discussion closed in favor of a very clear minority viewpoint would be viewed as a WP:SUPERVOTE. Instead, editors who agree that the minority position has stronger rationale should themselves !vote as supporting that position, until it's clear that others agree - in which case the RfC could be closed.
Outside of rare cases, there is almost never the case of a clear-cut situation where a large majority of !voters are in the wrong. Numerical superiority doesn't count for nothing, but in my personal experience, I've never run into an issue on RfCs.
I think a good example you might want to look for considering the number of votes, but not being a vote, is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jake Angeli. Both sides had valid policy-based arguments that were convincing to many editors. Since there wasn't a clear policy-based consensus view, a "weak" close was proper, and since the editors !voting for keep significantly outnumbered the ones !voting for delete, not considering that either would be wrong. So, a weak consensus in favor of keeping the article was merited.
Just my thoughts on this. Elli (talk | contribs) 03:19, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

My propose revision for Philippine name template

Latest comment: 3 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Hello! I wrote a propose revision for Philippine name template. I propose to replace the current one because it is too long. My propose revision read as it follows:

In this Philippine name, the maiden name is ________ and the family name is ________.
In this Philippine name for married women, the maiden names is ______, the paternal family name is ______, and the marital name is ______.

I hope you accept my proposal. I understand you approve it or not. Thanks! --RenRen070193 (talk) 10:55, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

RenRen070193 I think the correct place for discussing this would be at Template talk:Philippine name. Elli (talk | contribs) 00:25, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
Also, you could make such a change yourself, though I would strongly suggest gaining consensus there first, of course. Elli (talk | contribs) 00:25, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

@Elli Good day! I tried to discussed my proposal on this discussion Template talk:Philippine name but unfornately there is no response regarding the consensus. But don't worry I'm already draw a draft of my latest revision. --RenRen070193 (talk) 04:06, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

RenRen070193 it looks like there are others there opposing your changes, so I'd advise you to not make them unless you can reach some consensus. Elli (talk | contribs) 11:00, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Latest comment: 3 years ago91 comments22 people in discussion

I was reminded in a discussion today that Help:Edit summary is neither a policy nor a guideline, but just an information page. I had been kind of aware of this fact, but did not think that it mattered until now. I had understood that the use of edit summaries was a widely accepted norm anyway and so it didn't matter that the page had no policy guideline/status. However, in a discussion with another user (in fact an admin) that user expressed the opinion that edit summaries are optional and that he views them as only helpful in some cases while in others they dusrupt his workflow. There may be a sizable what I presume to be minority of users who hold similar views. There are also quite a few users who do believe that edit summaries are useful and necessary but whose own usage of edit summaries is intermittent.

Therefore I believe it would be useful to upgrade the status of Help:Edit summary to that of an editing guideline, and perhaps insert some stronger language there. To be clear, I am not talking about any technical changes such as forcing the wiki software to always display a warning box if an edit summary is not provided. But I do think that the basic principle that every edit needs to be accompanied by a meaningful edit summary needs to be elevated to the status of an editing guideline. Nsk92 (talk) 15:37, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

As the correspondent in the discussion described above, I note that it is a fair and neutral description of the discussion, and look forward to rational and evidence based debate on the matter. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:07, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Primergrey, you are correct, but I am propositing a policy change: Upgrading the status of Help:Edit summary to that of a guideline. That's why I started this thread here rather than at WP:Village pump (proposals). Nsk92 (talk) 11:21, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm hesitant to provide ammunition to anyone who might be inclined to bite a newcomer or make an attack along the lines of "hey, you didn't use an edit summary, therefore you messed up and are in the *wrong*". On the other hand, there is a significant subset of experienced editors who habitually refuse to use edit summaries, and are not moved by regular complaints on their talk page that it wastes others' time by prompting unnecessary scrutiny; I wish that we could apply a bit more pressure to these editors beyond just {{Summary2}}, and guideline status might help with that. I haven't given the page a close read lately, but if promoted, I'd want to see its language refined carefully to strike a balance between these things. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 07:13, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
There is a relevant talk page thread at Peter Southwood's talk page that he mentions above, see User talk:Pbsouthwood#Edit summaries, where pros and cons of edit summaries are discussed. (I'll try to just continue most of that discussion here.) Regarding new editors, they routinely break all sorts of other policies and guidelines and we extend a greater degree of tolerance to them for a while because they are newbies. I think some specific language in an eventual guideline can be used to ameliorate this concern as well as others. E.g. I don't think that refusing to use edit summaries (as opposed to deliberately using them misleadingly) should ever be considered disruptive behavior and lead to a block. Regarding editors who don't use or don't consistently use edit summaries, it appears that they fall into a several categories. Some do it because they are careless/lazy although they do, in principle, recognize the importance of providing edit summaries. Some do it deliberatetely to avoid scruitiny for their edits. (I suspect that this group is rather small.) There are some editors who have principled objections to relying on edit summaries and think that they are needed only in some specific types of cases. Peter Southwood is one of such editors. I believe that this subset of editors is also relatively small, but it does exist. I don't think that simply inserting stronger language in Help:Edit summary will be sufficient here, without changing the status of the page. Again, see the discussion at Peter Southwood's talk page to see why. Nsk92 (talk) 11:46, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Many editors, even experienced ones, also do not use edit summaries, especially on talk pages. They're usually useless on talk pages anyway, and often cookie-cutter ones like "c". I think it makes sense to have them as a guideline in mainspaces, but probably not in talk ones. FWIW, here's what ArbCom has to say about edit summaries. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:53, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
I basically agree, on both points. I think that edit summaries in projectspace, particularly at user talk pages, are much less important. However, for mainspace edits I do consider edit summaries important. The guideline language can make that distinction explicit. Nsk92 (talk) 12:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
On implementation, I think Help:Edit summary is too much of a "help" (like a how-to) page to be promoted to a guideline, and aspects would need cleanup anyway. I would prefer to see some wordsmithing done to what ArbCom wrote, and then adding that sentence into an appropriate guideline page (I don't really know which one that would be? Wikipedia:Etiquette seems close in name, but not really in content). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:21, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
It's an interesting thought, athough as the destination, the behavioral guideline Wikipedia:Etiquette seems like the wrong place for this item. However, your suggestion made me realize something. There already is a mention of edit summaries in the main editing policy, Wikipedia:Editing policy, in section, WP:UNRESPONSIVE. It says there: "Be helpful: explain your changes. ... Try to use an appropriate edit summary. For larger or more significant changes, the edit summary may not give you enough space to fully explain the edit; in this case, you may leave a note on the article's talk page as well." (Pinging Pbsouthwood since this point is relevant to our discussion at his talk page.) Perhaps we should clarify the language in this section to make it a bit stronger and more explicit ('Try to' sounds too noncommital.) I think a link to WP:UNRESPONSIVE also needs to be added at Help:Edit summary. Nsk92 (talk) 12:53, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
I have added a hatnote pointing to Wikipedia:Editing policy#Be helpful: explain at Help:Edit summary. Nsk92 (talk) 13:03, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
As you happens you are incorrect on the not required part. The requirement is already a part of the Wikipedia:Editing policy#Be helpful: explain section although the language there can be improved. Nsk92 (talk) 13:49, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Try to is not equivalent to is required. It is, then, not a matter of "clarifying the language", it is a proposal to radically change the way many editors do their work here. Primergrey (talk) 20:47, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Perhaps 'required' was the wrong word to use here, I am not sure. But "Try to use an appropriate edit summary" is certainly much more than a suggestion, particularly since the language occurs in a policy. I'd actully want to drop "try to" in this sentence and replace it with "Use an appropriate edit summary." Nsk92 (talk) 21:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
I'm rather surprised about how weakly worded our current policies and guidelines are about edit summaries and I would support requiring one for every edit accompanied by something along the lines of (but not exactly) "try to make your edit summary clear enough so someone reading the page history can determine the nature of your edit, this is particularly important on reader-facing pages." Thryduulf (talk) 22:31, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
I would oppose making this a guideline in general, but it could possibly be one for article space, which, as many people seem to forget, is the whole reason for this site's existence. I always try to provide an edit summary when editing an article, but usually don't provide one when editing a discussion page, which includes article talk pages and most Wikipedia space pages, because my edit itself is its own summary. If I could capture the essense of a comment in any shorter form that the edit itself then I would truncate that edit. I have a particular dislike for edit summaries to deletion discussions that say "keep" or "delete". Any contribution worth its salt cannot be summarised in such a way. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
I'd like to see the language of Wikipedia:Editing policy#Be helpful: explain strengthened along the lines you suggest, and maybe somewhat stronger. E.g. have it say there that an edit summary is required for mainspace edits and is recommended for projectspace edits, but that editors should use their discretion and best judgement there. Personally, I actually appreciate "keep"/"delete" edit summaries for AfD edits. I must confess that for an AfD where I participated, if I see an edit with an edit summary indicating a !vote that agreed with mine, I usually don't look up the edit. But in the opposite case I do. Nsk92 (talk) 23:56, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
If edit summaries are to become compulsory for all mainspace (or other space) edits, then making it impossible to save without an edit summary would technically enforce the requirement, making it impossible to forget or accidentally publish without a required component of the edit. However, this does not enforce a useful or accurate edit summary, which is not a simple matter to define, and is probably largely a matter of opinion. For some edits, like content re-use, it is relatively straightforward to specify what is necessary to provide attribution, but in other cases where a number of changes with different purposes are done in the same edit, it can become difficult to keep track, and may require considerable effort and quite a lot of text to describe both correctly and usefully. The edit summary could become unwieldy or too large to fit, and in some cases be larger and require more work than the actual edit. I do not see this helping to recruit new editors or retain existing editors. Also, as edit summaries are effectively not changeable, there is the question of what to do if there is an error in the edit summary, or if one saves before finishing the summary. What will the appropriate response be to edit summaries that do not comply with the requirements, and who decides whether a summary meets the requirements? This could be seen as creeping bureaucracy, and a barrier to contribution. Will it lead to biting the newbies, harassment and hounding, be used as an excuse to revert edits people don't like? Other unforeseen consequences? Time is a zero sum commodity. When used for one thing it becomes unavailable for others. As volunteers we decide for ourselves what we want to do with our time. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 02:40, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
I don't really see how the community as individuals could ever enforce mandatory edit summaries. The drama boards would be filled with gotcha moments plus the oft-mentioned BITE. I could see supporting mandatory edit summaries as a community or admin sanction for a particularly troublesome editor, though that would create other risks like useless or disruptive edit summaries. Slywriter (talk) 03:13, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Edit summaries are not required, but are expected, particularly of experienced editors; I have and will oppose RFAs based on a lack of use of edit summaries. I don't see it beneficial to WP:BITE newbies for not using edit summaries in their first 1000 edits. I haven't investigated enough to determine whether this would support making Help:Edit summary policy or not. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:43, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

As I understand it, the purpose of this discussion is to consider whether edit summaries should be required, with the possibility of opening a RfC on a proposal to make then compulsory. The possible consequences should be considered. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 03:26, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

If you require edit summaries, you're just going to wind up with a bunch of edit summaries like this: hfgkyuopk[] --Khajidha (talk) 14:03, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

  • Some responses to the comments above: I don't propose making it impossible to save an edit without an edit summary. But if there is a broad community consensus that edit summaries in mainspace are helpful and that editors should provide them, our main editing policy, Wikipedia:Editing policy should explicitly say just that, in reasonably strong form. If it does, it will be easier to approach experienced editors who neglect to include edit summaries in their mainspace edits and remind them that they should do so. Newbies routinely break all sorts of rules and norms, and they are routinely extended an extra level of tolerance per WP:NEWBIES; it will be/is the same with edit summaries. Regarding people providing nonsensical edit summaries, like hfgkyuopk[], I really don't see that happening. Experienced editors certainly won't do that, even if they personally find the edit summary requirement annoying. Newcomers are much more likely to just leave the edit summary field blank. Nsk92 (talk) 14:27, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
For convenience and context, I include here the full current text of Wikipedia:Editing policy#Be helpful: explain. Nsk92 (talk) 14:37, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Be helpful: explain your changes. When you edit an article, the more radical or controversial the change, the greater the need to explain it. Be sure to leave a comment about why you made the change. Try to use an appropriate edit summary. For larger or more significant changes, the edit summary may not give you enough space to fully explain the edit; in this case, you may leave a note on the article's talk page as well. Remember too that notes on the talk page are more visible, make misunderstandings less likely and encourage discussion rather than edit warring.
  • I'm going to have to agree with Blueboar and Peter Southwood. I see no merit in requiring edit summaries for every article-space edit. It's certainly helpful in many cases, such as to note a significant development in the article, or particularly where the edit changes something for reasons that might be unclear or controversial. And I've called out people before for not using an edit summary when nominating a page for deletion because that seems contrary to giving good faith notice to interested editors. But many edits are perfectly self-explanatory, or truly minor as to not be worth elaborating on. Abandoning judgment calls in this area would just seem to create extra work for editors that will ultimately discourage many edits from being made. And it begs the question of what "requirement" means here, I can't see any way of "enforcing" this that would actually be desirable or constructive. postdlf (talk) 18:31, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
IMO, there is no such thing as a "self-explanatory" edit. An edit may only become self-explanatory, after someone have looked up the diff and analyzed the edit. By then it is too late. The time and effort of the editor looking up the diff has been expended. Let's say an edit shows up on my watchlist for an article that I am interested in, with no edit summary. The edit has added 751 bytes of data. That's all I know from seeing this edit in the watchlist. What happened there? Was somebody cleaning up some references? Or a table? Added a maintenence tag? Or perhaps added a few sentences regarding the subject's of the the article childhood? Or political career? The point is, without an edit summary, I and all the other editors who see this edit in their watchlists have absolutely no idea about the substance of the edit. Quite a number of them will feel that they have no choice but to look it up to see what the edit was about. If the edit summary just said "reformatting a table" or something similar, most people probably wouldn't feel the need to check it. Nsk92 (talk) 19:59, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Self-explanatory meaning it's obvious what was done and why when you see what was changed. Edit summaries are not a substitute for actually looking at the edit. If you don't know or trust the editor making the change enough to go without confirming its validity, I don't see how you're going to trust that their summary was accurate or complete either without confirming. I think the focus on disruption raised by Masem below is helpful. All else is precatory. postdlf (talk) 20:29, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
I think that edit summaries should be a substitute for actually looking at the edit. An edit summary of "fix typo" saves me the time of looking at the edit; that's one of the great benefits of edit summaries, IMO. One editor spends a little more time to save time for many other editors, now and in the future. Similarly, on talk pages, putting the comment (if it's short) into the edit summary saves page watchers the time of having to look at the page to read the comment (and, IMO, is more useful than "cmt" or "re"). Levivich harass/hound 01:23, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
They can be a substitute for looking at the diff if the editor is one you trust, but if you trust the editor then why would you want to read the edit summary? One reason would be that you may be interested in the actual edit, and in those cases a summary can help you decide whether it is likely to be worth the time. Other valid reasons may exist but I think they should be stated rather than assuming that they are obvious to everyone. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:00, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Let's also not forget summaries like "RV nonsense" and the many variations thereof. Not uncivil enough to warrant any action, but worse than no summary at all. Mandatory edit summaries will also surely increase the use of back and forth summaries (and reverts) in lieu of talk page discussions. Primergrey (talk) 18:35, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I would agree with Blueboar's statement and what Nsk92 puts above. Edit summaries should be seen as a means to minimize disruption; an editor that is known to work without creating disruption in the first place in their usual mainspace work shouldn't be expected to use edit summaries, but an editor that may have been established as a disruptive editor or a new editor should be strongly encouraged to use them to regain community trust - to what degree they need to, we shouldn't be sticklers for but if failure or misuse of edit summaries does create more disruption, that's a problem. --Masem (t) 18:48, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
    Totally agree. Our policy against disruption fairly eliminates the need for the multitude of specifics that would otherwise exist. The community sees a conspicuous lack of edit summaries accompanying substantial edits...it gets addressed, with no need for a violation of a bright-line rule. To whatever degree this is perceived to not already work is simply an indication of the priorities of the community, not the system in which it operates. Primergrey (talk) 19:07, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
I have never thought about edit summaries as being mainly a means for minimizing disruption but rather, as the quoted text of the editing policy above says, as the means of being helpful to other editors. That's what edit summaries do: they provide help to other editors by letting them know the substance of the edit. I believe that most editors, myself included, use edit summaries to decide whether to look up a diff for an edit they see on their watchlist (and, similarly, when they look up an article history log). I usually AGF the edit summaries and I find that on the whole they save me a great deal of time and work. That's why I believe that everyone should use them. Nsk92 (talk) 19:39, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
I don't mean that edit summaries are a means for minimizing disruption. Rather, I mean that if a lack of edit summaries from a particular user is seen as disruptive, there is already a well-established way to deal with that. As to your other point, I don't think I fully grasp how someone who assumes good faith about the content of an edit summary wouldn't also assume good faith regarding the content of an edit. In other words, if an article on my watchlist shows a significant change in size, I'm going to check it out regardless of what the summary says or doesn't say. That's not a lack of good faith. While, it seems to me, that automatically reverting any edit that does not have an edit summary is, to a large degree. (Not suggesting that that is your MO, but it's certainly an option availed by some.) Primergrey (talk) 20:32, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
When I decide to look up an edit it is primarily not with the reason to revert it but to understand it. That is, for an article that I am interested in, if a substantial edit adding/changing meaningful content comes from an experienced and totally reliable editor, I would likely still want to look it up, just because I am interested in the subject. Even for a shorter edit that adds a short piece of useful info, I may want to look it up because I am interested in that info. For an edit reformatting a table or adding a maintenence tag, I'll likely skip it. But when I see an edit without an edit summary in my watchlist, I can't tell the difference between these types of situations. Nsk92 (talk) 20:54, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Another thing to consider is that watchlists are not the only reason for edit summaries. Indeed for my work, their appearance in page histories is far more significant as I'm often looking at why a particular term was added or removed from an article, or why content was reorganised (not something that can be done any other way). They help understand how the article was developing across time, how active it is in terms of content development/vs maintenance. When disputes arise, edit summaries are an invaluable aid to determining what is happening and why, and for filtering out edits that are not part of the dispute but happen to be made at the same time. They also enable me to see whether a gnoming change made to the article was reverted because someone disagreed with it or because they didn't spot it when making content changes. On talk pages, summaries like "reply to Nsk92" are helpful because you can distinguish them from very different edits like "The early life section biased". For all these reasons and more, not leaving and edit summary makes things harder for other editors, sometimes years down the line, in exchange for a tiny investment of time for you. There is no reason for any experienced editor to be routinely not leaving edit summaries. Thryduulf (talk) 21:47, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Peter Southwood made several earlier. Primergrey (talk) 21:51, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
I should have said "no good reason" as those expressed by Peter Southwood are either fallacious, a failure to summarise or an example of where an edit summary pointing to a fuller explanation on the talk page should be used. Indeed in the 15 years I've been editing Wikipedia there have only been a small handful of occasions where I've not been able to adequately explain my edit in an edit summary and on each of those occasions I've posted on the talk page. I am aware of exactly zero occasions when leaving no edit summary would have been better than leaving one. Thryduulf (talk) 23:49, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Misleading or abusive edit summaries? However I assume you mean useful edit summaries,which makes it a bit of a tautology. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:19, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Thryduulf, What work do you do that relies so much on edit summaries? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:27, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
RfD and dispute resolution are the most frequent times I rely on edit summaries, but there are other times too. Misleading or abusive edit summaries are a red herring - any feature can be abused and yet the vast majority of people don't (it's how the entirety of Wikipedia works). If someone is misusing something intentionally that's a behavioural issue that needs addressing (and it normally happens alongside other behaviour issues as well), if they're doing it unintentionally that's an education issue. Thryduulf (talk) 13:11, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Exactly zero appears a bit hyperbolic, but not a big issue.
Thryduulf, I would like to understand just how the presence of edit summaries is so critically important to your work, so I can develop an informed opinion on how seriously I should take your claims. I can be persuaded by evidence and logical reasoning, not so much by rhetoric, and can generally tell the difference. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:46, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
It isn't critically important in the sense that I can't do it without it, but edit summaries make it so much easier to find the key edits in the page history and especially to understand why they were made. A large part of RfD is understanding why a term redirects where it does and why the term or related information was added to or removed from the article or moved elsewhere. Looking through a page history the edit summaries should tell the story of how the article changed, it means I don't have to read every edit to find what I'm looking for, I don't have to guess at the reason a change was made years after it was made. I'm frequently dealing with subject I know very little about, so things that are obvious to involved editors at the time can be opaque to others later. If a term is removed from an article without explanation it makes it much harder to know whether this was a good change or a bad change. Understanding why a term is or isn't in a particular article is often important to working out what should happen with a redirect so that we can best help readers.
For dispute resolution purposes, a good edit summary can make it immediately clear what someone's motivation for an edit is, they can make it clear which users are disputing what and why. They can make it clear that intervening edits are or are not part of the dispute, or whether someone is trying to diffuse it, e.g. by trying compromise wording. Again edit summaries should be telling the story of the article.
When I say "I am aware of exactly zero occasions when leaving no edit summary would have been better than leaving one." I mean exactly that, it's not hyperbole. There may be a few occasions where adding an edit summary adds nothing over no edit summary (I'm struggling to think of such situations, but I'm prepared to believe they might exist) but an edit summary is truly never worse than no edit summary. Thryduulf (talk) 13:55, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
Thryduulf, if I take your statement at face value, I find myself wanting to ask you to explain how an abusive or disruptive edit summary can be not worse than no edit summary.
I can see that for your work on redirects that some edit summaries can sometimes make the work easier. Do you have an estimate for what percentage of all edit summaries this might be valid?
I agree that edit summaries are desirable whenever it appears reasonably likely that the edit may be contended. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:43, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: Edits with misleading summaries are such a tiny percentage of all edits that they're essentially irrelevant to the discussion (and frequently subsequent edits correct them, explicitly or implicitly anyway). As for what percentage of edit summaries are potentially helpful? 100% - including misleading ones as a misleading edit summary is a good indicator that the edit was made in bad faith. They don't all help in the same way, but given there are so many different reasons people can be looking at the summaries every single edit summary has the potential to be helpful to someone at some point, even just "this is not the edit I'm looking for" is helpful - an edit without a summary gives you no clue as to it's purpose, relevance or indeed anything else. What percentage of edit summaries are actually helpful to me personally is irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 09:57, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Thryduulf, I take your point on the usefulness of inappropriate edit summaries as evidence of malicious intent. It is a usefulness I hope to avoid in my own summaries. The relevance of the percentage of summaries helpful to you personally is partly that it gives some perspective into the importance you allocate to your own convenience versus the convenience of other users, both those who also find edit summaries a useful tool, and those who may find themselves obliged to provide those edit summaries, without objective evidence that their time spent providing them is well spent with respect to their own needs and preferences as volunteers, and partly that in the absence of an objective study it may be a starting point for a first estimate of a cost benefit analysis. I was assuming that it would be easier to estimate your own experience than that of others.
Do you find the "Who wrote that?" gadget useful? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:10, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
The utility to other users outweighs the tiny cost (in both time and effort) of providing an edit summary by many orders of magnitude. I'd say that 100% of the edit summaries that I see in history pages and my watchlist are useful or potentially useful. Obviously some are more useful than others but which and why depends on why I'm reading them. Obviously I can't claim that edit summaries that I don't see are personally useful to me, but that does not mean they aren't useful to somebody else. I am hoping your objection to providing edit summaries is not selfishness, but it's the only motivation I can think of that would make sense. Thryduulf (talk) 12:29, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
I have explained my objections to compulsory edit notices at considerable length. I thought they would be clear enough by now. Labelling those reasons as selfishness seems to be missing the point. I am not the only editor who might be inconvenienced for the greater convenience of others. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:50, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
You have commented at length about your objections, but that does not mean I have been able to understand from them your motivation. I'm not saying that your motivation is selfishness, just that selfishness is one motivation that fits the comments, there may be other motivations that do too, but not being willing to do something you dislike and which causes you a tiny inconvenience for the greater convenience of others doesn't help me think of any alternatives. That more than one person feels similarly is irrelevant - it doesn't prove that it is or isn't selfish. Thryduulf (talk) 12:43, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
I do not see why my motivations should matter in the least. My arguments are based on the logic and evidence that I observe, and to a degree, on the absence of evidence to be observed, which leaves this debate largely a conflict between those who like edit summaries, and want everyone else to be compelled to use them, and those who consider that this would be an unjustified burden and a barrier to contribution, both sides being more based on opinion than reliable data. My preferences against yours, the difference being that I do not presume to try to coerce you to follow my preferences. Is this selfishness? I suppose it would depend on one's point of view: Am I to be considered selfish for putting my convenience ahead of yours, or are you to be considered selfish for putting your convenience ahead of mine? Bit of both? Is the convenience of some people more important than the convenience of others, or are neither of these factors actually relevant? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 15:57, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
Except the "preferences" are not equal. I and others have explained repeatedly and in detail why a lack of edit summaries is a significant issue that actively inconveniences others, the presence of edit summaries is, at absolute worst, neutral for those who dislike leaving them. Regarding the effort required (which seems to be the only argument against them other than dislike), firstly it's extraordinarily tiny vs the effort required to make the edit in the first place and secondly it should be regarded as an integral part of making that effort not a separate task. Thryduulf (talk) 13:32, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
I guess m ought to cover things like that? Typo is pretty well understood, too. And Sp. But maybe I assume too much.Selfstudier (talk) 19:26, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with Thryduulf on the potential value of edit summaries when reviewing an article's history, but I think that's more useful, and a more reasonable expectation, when the edits are substantial or substantive, such as "added section on personal life" or "complete rewrite of education". My disagreement is with the position that "every" edit should be "required" to have one. I think checking an edit as minor obviates the need in many or most circumstances, for example, and I personally don't want anyone to waste their time typing in "corrected typo" as an explanation for why they changed "Washingtno" to Washington" (nor do I want to read that summary). Nor should it ever be required for adding talk page comments. Adding to the transaction cost of every edit means fewer edits. No one has really addressed the "enforcement" question either, as far as what people think "required" would mean in practice, however narrow or broad the circumstances it might be "required". postdlf (talk) 18:16, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
    Thinking about the "transaction cost" aspect that you point out leads me to abandon my former position that this may possibly be a useful guideline for main space. We already have rules against disruptive editing, which can include not using edit summaries when they should be used, such as making a potentially controversial edit or nominating an article for deletion. There's no need to badger people for some percentage produced by a tool. If someone is making good edits then it's better that they make those edits rather do the ideal thing and provide an edit summary. Let's not let the best be the enemy of the good. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
I believe that the actual transaction cost in terms of decreasing the number of article edits would be either minimal or non-existent. When an editor wants to make an edit, they don't start with worrying about the edit summary. They prepare an edit and hit preview. Only then, when it comes to saving the edit, do they start thinking about the edit summary. Even for editors who may be somewhat annoyed by a requirement to provide an edit summary, they would be unlikely to scrap and abandon the edit. There may be some editors who may be so annoyed that they would just start editing less but I doubt that it'd be a large number. Providing an edit summary for every edit (or every article space edit) easily becomes a habit, like waring a face covering now when you go outside. After a while it just becomes automatic and you don't really think about it. I am sure it would be the same with edit summaries if we were serious about requiring them. Nsk92 (talk) 19:39, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Nsk92, Is there any reliable data available as evidence to support that belief? Minimal is theoretically possible as an average value, provided there is some agreement on what constitutes minimal. Non-existent is at face value improbable, as in my experience some edit summaries are non-trivial to compose, and those include the ones I consider critically important, like the ones required for attribution, and which I try to both do when necessary, and do adequately informatively. For those cases the transaction cost is not a problem, as it is clear that they are an essential part of the edit. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:46, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
I was speaking colloquially. Of course nobody, as far as I know, actually tried to conduct precise experiments on the topic or to assign a quantifyable measure to the transaction cost of making an edit summary. My point is that, IMO, making edit in article space summaries mandatory is unlikely to significantly reduce the number of edits because of how an editing process works. You prepare an edit first and only then think about an edit summary. Plus providing edit summaries becomes a habit fairly quickly. Nsk92 (talk) 07:47, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
Plus, of course, for those who are worried about the potential transaction cost of requiring edit sumaries being a significant impediment that would somehow significantly reduce the number of overall edits and ever drive some editors away, there is no reliable data as evidence to support that belief either. At this stage we are trying to make arguments at the level of common sense. Nsk92 (talk) 07:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
If it takes time to do, then it necessarily can't be a "nonexistent" cost. And if it takes more time to do something, all else being equal fewer people will do that thing. That honestly seems axiomatic. Particularly since everyone is a volunteer so there's no increased benefit presented to balance that cost out. I know I'd be less likely to correct the spelling of a word in an article I'm reading on my phone if I'm required to also type in "corrected spelling". And it may be just because my toddler is suddenly getting into the cupboards again before I can finish, the red light has changed to green, or I just decide the extra time this "requirement" takes is not worth my time. Again, whatever "required" means here, which is yet to be explained. Unless the "or else" is really laid out I don't know what we're talking about in practice. postdlf (talk) 18:59, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
I hope users choose not to edit while in a car waiting for a light to turn green. isaacl (talk) 21:14, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
There is some value in there being a transaction cost. Our aim should be to increase the quality of edits, not just the quantity. Writing the edit summary first can also be valuable — if you do not know why you are making the edit, then perhaps it is not a worthwhile edit? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 12:38, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
In some cases this is true, but at other times one may open the edit window with one intention, and end up making a series of mixed minor and more substantive edits, all improvements, but not necessarily logically connected, and by the time of saving, a correct (not misleading) description would require many words and some serious examination of the diff. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:23, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
I don't think edit summaries should be required, but they should be encouraged. They're not used enough. I've seen well timed edit summaries stop edit wars in their tracks. An explicit edit summary lets other editors know exactly what you added. That might not seem necessary when it's an editor that you trust, but when you're looking at an edit history page where some damage has occurred amongst a dozen or so edits, it's better to have explicit edit summaries from everyone. If I correct a typo, I'm likely to not just write "correcting typo" but also "Washingtno -> Washington". That informs people of what exactly went on, without having to open the page. I'm also apt to write the more generic "copy editing", which some might find completely useless, but getting in the habit of doing that prompts me to be more explicit when I think it's warranted, e.g. "copy editing, employing British spelling, esp. 'labor' to 'labour' ". But instead of trying to impose my fussiness on others, which would be impossible, my suggestion would be for the system to provide diffs as edit summaries, or to summarize those diffs where there's not enough space to include them all, as many bots are now doing. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:43, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure that promoting the help page to a guideline is the best way to skin this cat, but I agree with the general principle, and I think a better approach is perhaps to revise what it says in the editing policy. Though they shouldn't be required, I think editors should be encouraged to use edit summaries for most if not all mainspace edits. They can also be helpful in other namespaces. Most importantly, editors should be taught why to use edit summaries, and what to write in them: why "rv nonsense" is bad (it's not descriptive) and "fix typo" is good (saves having to look at the edit). This is what the help page already does, and it's already linked in the policy page. So I think the status and relationship of the two pages is fine, but perhaps the wording of the policy page could be revised. Levivich harass/hound 01:28, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Perhaps this is due to the fact that I watch several articles that are prone to vandalism, but... edit summaries are not always helpful. In fact, when editors are not acting in good faith, an edit summary can actually be harmful, intentionally used to deceive. I have often seen significant (POV vandalism) edits hidden behind innocuous summaries such as “fixed typo” or “correcting spelling”. Blueboar (talk) 13:26, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
    Editors abusing edit summaries is not evidence against the usefulness of edit summaries, it is evidence of a problem with the users doing the abusing in the same way that editors deliberately applying incorrect citations is not evidence that citations are a bad thing. Thryduulf (talk) 14:00, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
I don’t disagree... my point was simply that edit summaries are not always helpful. We still have to check the edit to see whether what is said in the summary matches the actual edit. Blueboar (talk) 14:23, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
When I made the original suggestion at the top of this thread regarding Help:Edit summary, I didn't realize that the section Wikipedia:Editing policy#Be helpful: explain dealing with edit summaries existed. At this point I agree that changing the status of Help:Edit summary is not the way to go. But I would like to strengthen the language of Wikipedia:Editing policy#Be helpful: explain, assuming consesus to do so can be achieved. Nsk92 (talk) 01:53, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Objectively speaking & semantics aside, I believe, using edit summaries be made the onus of every and all editors. I believe without an iota of doubt that it is only proper. I also do not have any reservations if it be made a policy, there’s also concern of editors using edit summaries in a disruptive manner in such scenarios I believe the editor(s) be warned for disruptive editing & sanctioned by the community if need be. Celestina007 (talk) 08:08, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
    Celestina007 Beliefs/opinions aside, what would you consider appropriate consequences for (a) not providing an edit summary, or (b) for providing an edit summary that any given reader does not find sufficiently useful? I am looking for reasonably practicable suggestions here. Disruptive edit summaries are already covered by general policy. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:10, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
    Occasional accidental omission of an edit summary deserves no consequences (especially if followed by a whitespace or similar edit to correct), perfection is not required. Repeated intentional omission of an edit summary should be treated as a form of disruptive editing. Intentionally leaving edit summaries that are actively unhelpful is no different to leaving a misleading edit summary. In other situations, discussion and advice is appropriate. If that advice is not heeded then progress as we would for people disregarding advice in other ways. More specific than that depends on circumstances. Thryduulf (talk) 10:03, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood, hello there, Sorry I didn’t catch the question in time(I’m currently still at the office), I think @Thryduulf, has already given the response I myself would have given but in a more articulated manner than I would have. Celestina007 (talk) 16:32, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
So considerable fair and reasonable judgement reqired in evaluating the usefulness of edit summaries. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:31, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Framing the use of edit summaries or lack thereof as an onus on editors is a good way to view it without making it required, similar to how we put the onus on those that engage in a mass series of edits without gaining consensus first. The editor is taking responsibility that their edits in this case conform to expectations of what editors should be doing. If the lack of edit summaries, at the end of the day, from a particular editor is causing a problem, then we have to strengthen that onus on that editor to make them use edit summaries. Similarly if they are deliberately misusing edit summaries (which would include marking edits as minor when they are not), that's also an onus to resolve. But similar to mass edits onus, that's not a guideline-level requirement, it is a behavioral aspect we consider case-by-case. --Masem (t) 14:30, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Personally I cannot think of any reason why edit summaries should not be mandatory for article space edits. I find it infuriating when people habitually do not leave them, especially the small band of editors who have never left one. The whole basis of Wikipedia is that collaboration can produce a quality encyclopaedia. Not summarising your edit is a rejection of collaboration, denying other editors the opportunity to quickly assess what has changed in an article. I have no time for the argument that someone might be less likely to make an edit if required to explain what they are doing. Writing an edit summary is just not an onerous enough task for anyone to refuse to provide one.

You can check my contributions and find some edits where I didn't leave a summary: no hypocrisy here, these were not intentional and I'd have preferred it if the edit could not be saved until I had summarised it. Andesitic (talk) 14:40, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

  • Took you up on your offer, quickly found these: "fixed atrocious writing", "removed really moronic bullshit", "improved horrendous writing". Where's the information? Anyone who saw these summaries on their watchlist would check the edit. These are no better than no summary. Primergrey (talk) 06:01, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
    While they are not ideal, they clearly explain what the motivation for the edit was and roughly what was done - the first and third were improving the wording of material already in the article while the second removed information that (they believe) was incorrect. If I saw them on my watchlist then I would probably (depending on what my interest in the article was) want to look at the edit to see what was changed, but then I would also do the same had they been "improved wording related to (foo)", "removed clearly incorrect material about (foo)" and "copyedit and reword sections about (foo) to improve wording.". Whether I would look at them when reading through the article history would depend on why I was reading and what the context of the surrounding edit summaries was. They are significantly better than leaving no edit summary, where I would be left with no clue what the change was or why it was made and would have to look in all circumstances. So, it's better in some cases and no worse in all the others, meaning that this does not give any evidence that requiring an edit summary is harmful in any way. Thryduulf (talk) 12:43, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
    There's no way these summaries would put anyone's concerns to rest regarding the quality of the edits (unless they knew the editor). The summaries I presented are exactly the type that a person lacking any self-awareness would use to describe how they were pulling the project, kicking and screaming, out of the mire of disrepute. In any case, I think that user is blocked. Primergrey (talk) 16:49, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
    You are making the mistake of assuming that the only use of edit summaries is for recent changes patrol/recent changes on watchlists. That is certainly one use but it is far from the only use. That someone has been blocked for edit warring does not mean that they are wrong about everything. Thryduulf (talk) 17:50, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
In the editing section of your preferences, you can set "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary)". It's not infallible (e.g. this edit of mine slipped through the net somehow) and there are occasions when you have to intentionally disregard it because adding an edit summary would break a script that automatically adds one for you (e.g. when submitting a new request at AE), but it is very useful. Thryduulf (talk) 15:26, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
The NoEditSummary user script can also help — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:14, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Aha, didn't know about that - thanks. Andesitic (talk) 17:47, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
GhostInTheMachine is there anything in that user script that works better than the setting in on the "Editing" tab at Special:Preferences? CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 01:50, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

The role of ArbCom relative to sourcing content in articles

Latest comment: 3 years ago22 comments13 people in discussion

In September 2019, the Arbitration Committee in good faith made the following decision:

5) The sourcing expectations applied to the article Collaboration in German-occupied Poland are expanded and adapted to cover all articles on the topic of Polish history during World War II (1933-45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals, academically focused books by reputable publishers, and/or articles published by reputable institutions. English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when available and of equal quality and relevance. Editors repeatedly failing to meet this standard may be topic-banned as an arbitration enforcement action.

While ArbCom's intentions are honorable regarding that particular topic, and it was clearly an effort to stop disruption in that topic area, I'm of the mind that the remedy is an overreach of ArbCom's scope, and is noncompliant with policy for the arbitration process, specifically that the Committee does not rule on content. With that in mind, see WP:CONTEXTMATTERS which states: The reliability of a source depends on context. Also keep in mind that AE/DS authorizes individual admins to take unilateral action at their sole discretion against an editor, and as some active editors who edit in controversial topic areas will attest, the complexity of DS can quickly turn into a nightmare. An AE/DS action by an admin cannot be overturned by another admin. That opens the door to WP:POV creep because a single admin is making the determination as to whether or not the context of cited sources are reliable for inclusion of content in an article, and no matter how we spin it, that is unequivocally a content issue, not a behavioral issue on behalf of the editor; therefore, the ArbCom ruling is noncompliant per the following:

The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated.

This decision directly effects content on so many levels that the remedy creates an even bigger problem then it resolves as it fails to take into account the critically important aspects of sourcing that unequivocally makes it a content issue, not a conduct issue. It also doesn't factor-in the associated problems resulting from political biases in RS, or the fact that a single admin who may be biased, unknowingly or otherwise, is making the decision as to what content can be included based on their sole discretion/interpretation of the cited source(s). Any editor who might be citing sources in proper context that disagree with a particular POV, may inadvertently become the target of a indef t-ban or block under this AE remedy. WP's ideological bias is no secret so in an effort to preserve WP's reputation as a neutral encyclopedia, we probably should at least try to keep ArbCom within its scope. As to my overall position and concerns, see this BLP comment and the quote directly below it.

In the survey below, either Agree that the above mentioned decision is out of ArbCom's scope and noncompliant with policy for the reasons stated above, or Disagree. Atsme 💬 📧 16:07, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Survey (Arbcom and sourcing)

  • There is no clear distinction between creating policy and interpreting policy. Sometimes it help to take uncodified and unwritten expectations and put them into formal writing, But for many of the perennial issues at WP, the unwritten guidelines are too flexible to be effectively reduced to simple sentences. So when we do, it still leaves the same problems, except that we now call them interpretations. The most obvious analogy to me is the American Constitution and especially its Bill of Rights, and how key phrases in it have never been changed, but have been reinterpreted repeatedly to fit the prevailing ideology. DGG ( talk ) 20:15, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
as I try to explain a little later, agree or disagree doess not do justice to the actual complexities. DGG ( talk ) 06:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Not a productive use of anyone's time See below for explanation. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:17, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Seems fine to me. There was a behavior that needed addressing, and the quoted ArbCom decision addresses that behavior and does not address content; they are not making any statements about what the articles should or should not say, merely addressing the problem of people misusing source material and devising a reasonable method of stopping that problem. --Jayron32 18:44, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm opposed to the camel's nose under the tent expansion of ArbCom remit into editorial issues until such time as the community assesses whether we have to drop our opposition to a centralized editorial board, and if so, think through whether a centralized editorial board ought to be a new group comprised of editorial experts or dumped into ArbCom's lap. (I elaborated on this in a post in the discussion section.)--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:31, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm with Jayron32 on this: this isn't a content decision. The policy on disruptive editing includes citing unencyclopedic sources as a form of disruptive editing, and warns that this may be enforced with blocks. ArbCom isn't dictating what an article can or can't say; they're delegating their banning authority to help better enforce the community's policies about content. Vahurzpu (talk) 05:12, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
    Sources can't be divided so easily into "encyclopedic" and "un-encyclopedic", there are some that are clearly unreliable but others it depends on what they are being used for. Peter James (talk) 19:52, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
  • While I don't think this specific restriction has worked as well as intended, it was within arbcom's remit to make it. Thryduulf (talk) 12:23, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
  • From Arbcom: "during World War II (1933-45)" with no source cited. From World War II: "World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939". I assumed the Arbcom page had been vandalised, but apparently not. It has been mentioned before but still not corrected. Peter James (talk) 19:52, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (Arbcom and sourcing)

See, I always thought that a lot of the Ideological bias on Wikipedia and complaints about it is actually the base rate fallacy - because of our sourcing requirements we are automatically biased in favour of topics with reliable sources as opposed to, say, hearsay and libel. And that's a desirable thing, really. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:20, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Jo-Jo, it would definitely be desirable if that were truly the case, but it isn't. Even Jimbo acknowledged that we have a problem. The sources at our disposal today are not quite like the neutral sources of yesteryear, as Ted Koppell explained in numerous interviews. It's clearly a POV issue but that aside, we don't have any type of qualifiers in place for admins who focus on AE and who will be judging the quality of sources. We already know that qualifiers will never happen because of anonymity, although something along the line of MEDRS would be nice, but again, topics involving POV politics are not easy to qualify. Atsme 💬 📧 16:36, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
"Even Jimbo acknowledged" doesn't mean that Jimbo is correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
  • The "ArbCom does not rule on content" meme is one that should be definitively retired as having outlived its purpose. To the extent that there ever was a clear line between content and behavior, an iffy division at its very best, that line has been thoroughly obliterated in the last 5-7 years. If an editor advocated for or uses a poor source to slant an article, is that a behavior issue within ArbCom's purview or a content issue outside the realm of cases ArbCom is authorized to handle? The plain truth is: it is both. This case offers an excellent demonstration of that evolution, in fact. At a time when Holocaust minimization and denialism has reached epidemic proportions that include governmentally-organized revisionism, it is ludicrous to contemplate any ruling on such a case that did not address sourcing concerns. ArbCom's ruling here does not require a 16-months-delayed attempted review. This thread appears to do little more than express, well, I'm not quite sure what it is supposed to express: Frustration? Disappointment? Disapproval? It is unclear what practical result this would accomplish. Does the OP wish to overturn ArbCom's decision? Get ArbCom to modify their decision? Wag their finger at ArbCom? If it is the former two possibilities then this is the wrong place for this thread and that goal needs to be much more clearly stated. If it is the latter possibility then there is no point to this. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:17, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
    Eggishorn, I see it differently. New editors are often surprised to learn that there is no central editorial board. This is deliberate. In fact, I think it's fair to say that in the early days of Wikipedia we eschewed having either a central editorial board or a central "behavioral" board. The hope and expectation was that all such issues could be addressed without the need for centralized authority. I think Jimbo reluctantly came to the conclusion that behavioral issues needed a centralized board and that's why he created Arbcom (while taking care to make sure the creation of it did not mean it reported to him, he started the ball rolling and let the community decide how to organize the group). While the community reluctantly accepted the need for a behavioral board, it still strongly opposed a centralized editorial board which is why ArbCom is supposed to be limited to behavioral issues not content issues.
    However, while some editors are making and can make strong arguments for the need for a centralized editorial board, it isn't at all obvious to me that we should simply broaden the remit of ArbCom. I think the community should revisit the decision to have no centralized editorial committee, but if the conclusion is that we should have an editorial committee, it is far from obvious that we should simply expand the role of ArbCom, if no other reasons than that the skill set to assess editorial issues and the skill set to assess behavioral issues are not identical. Someone will argue that it's overly bureaucratic to create yet another group, but if we decide to have centralized editorial control we've crossed that bridge and we ought to work out the details of whether the centralized editorial committee obviously ought to be ArbCom, or group of people selected for the editorial expertise. S Philbrick(Talk) 19:28, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick:, actually, I don't think we're saying things that are really all that different. I'm aware of the history of ArbCom's creation and I've always felt that the content/behavior dichotomy is a false one. The earliest ArbCom case i was able to find from the time period soon after Jimbo passed some of his authority to it was a clear case of interpersonal conflict and a whole heapin' helpin' of behavior issues but they all stemmed from content issues. From the very beginning the two areas have blended together in varying proportions depending on the particulars of each ArbCom case. I'm not arguing for an increase of ArbCom's remit; I'm saying that this discussion was premised on a clear discrimination between two realms that exist along a spectrum and the limitation that ArbCom supposedly stepped over never really existed. I hope that helps clarify. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:47, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
  • The simplest change in the general scope of arb com, which is closer to reality, is to say that arb com does not rule directly on content. That's what actually happens, and we might as well say so. What I think the op might realistically hope for is that the decision say High quality sources are strongly preferred, particularly peer-reviewed scholarly journals, academically focused books by reputable publishers, and/or articles published by reputable institutions I do not think it unrealistic for this to be suggested as an amendment. Any statement here about sourcing using absolute words like "only" is incompatible with the variety of the real world. DGG ( talk ) 00:06, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
    @DGG: that just reiterates WP:BESTSOURCES and is not a remedy (more like a principle). "Should", "strongly preferred" and similar wordings which are not "must", do not help the problem. The issue is people who are so compelled by their POV they bludgeon people and disrupt talk pages by pushing crappy sourcing. Your amendment does not fix that issue, but the current ArbCom decision does. As such, I'm in favour of sourcing restrictions, having seen the damage and sheer waste of productive editor time SPAs and POV pushers cause on some controversial articles. I agree that with Eggishorn and yourself that the line between conduct and content is blurry, but I think violations of our existing polices, or the intentions behind them, is a behavioural issue. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:49, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
one can equally disrupt talk pages -- and articles -- by contrived or biased objections to what is adequate sourcing. I think the history of AP this past year makes it evident that disputing sourcing has become the primary way of disputing content, and that this can be done in a helpful or in a unhelpful way. In another light, everything is a behavioral issue in a sense, because the act of making an edit is human behavior, so if one tries hard enough, one can get anything under that umbrella. Whether something is in fact a violation of our existing content guidelines is not necessarily a question for arb com. It can be a factual question of the verifiability of information. And, come to think of it, one can use aggressive and even NPA behavior to try to make what are in fact constructive edits. And this very situation is what causes dilemmas for arb com; my service there has shown be the great difficulty of deciding how to handle such issues, and has taught me that not everything I had thought obvious and clear about our practices really was all that simple. DGG ( talk ) 06:09, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I was the only arb who voted against that remedy, precisely because I thought it went too far towards ruling on content. And I still think that sourcing restrictions imposed by ArbCom, AE, ANI, or anything except a content guideline with broad consensus (e.g. WP:MEDRS) are a bad idea. That said, I don't agree that it was in breach of WP:ARBPOL. The committee has the latitude to propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated and ultimately, the interpretation of ARBPOL and whether a specific remedy is within its scope is up to ArbCom itself. That is an important principle without which the committee cannot fulfil its core purpose as a final binding decision-maker. No discussion here can tell ArbCom how to interpret ARBPOL or retrospectively overturn a remedy. If we want to clarify that sourcing restrictions are not within its scope going forward, there needs to be a formal amendment to ARBPOL. – Joe (talk) 13:48, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Anyone who has worked on content & came into conflict over reliable sources could have predicted that the ArbCom would find its way into content disputes. The short version of why is this: on Wikipedia almost any relevant source can be criticized for not be reliable, while almost any relevant source can be defended as reliable. Unless it is one of those apparently rare cases where everyone involved is willing to work together, this leads to deadlock. This deadlock can be resolved one of two ways: (1) finding an informed third party to make a decision that all parties will agree to; or (2) work the rules so that the other side either gives up or gets sanctioned. Either choice means ArbCom is likely to get involved. By this decision, ArbCom has just cut out a few of the steps for cases like this to be submitted to them. -- llywrch (talk) 00:17, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

image placement left/right and accessibility?

Latest comment: 3 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Is there any policy about whether images should be on the right rather than left that is related to accessibility? (I usually prefer images to right unless there is already something to the right because it seems to flow the text layout better.) Someone told me that avoiding left images helped reading programs for the visually impaired but I hadn't heard of anything like this. RJFJR (talk) 23:04, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images#Location is the guideline about image placement, which begins "Most images should be on the right side of the page, which is the default placement." but allows for exceptions to this general rule. It is silent on accessibility issues. The only comments at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Floating elements regarding image placement relate to vertical placement relative to sections. This suggests that there are no significant issues with left-aligned images related to accessibility, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If there are any issues then the folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility are probably the most likely to know. Thryduulf (talk) 01:49, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
RJFJR, I've seen a study that showed that alternating left/right image placement makes it harder to read the text. [1] Vexations (talk) 13:17, 11 March 2021 (UTC)


Thank you for the feedback. RJFJR (talk) 19:06, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Update to Universal Code of Conduct Timeline

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please note that in recognition of community requests to provide adequate time for other important movement-wide conversations currently ongoing, the Board of Trustees has published Foundation:Resolution:Update to Universal Code of Conduct Timeline, extending the timeline for the current phase of the UCoC project ("outlining clear enforcement pathways") to December 2021.

A description of the project and updated timeline is available at Meta:Universal Code of Conduct. In a nutshell, the Wikimedia Foundation is consulting communities on the application of the Universal Code of Conduct.

The project is meant to be collaborative and involve community members at many levels including volunteers serving on the drafting committee. A call for applications will be posted soon. The Foundation is seeking input from as many communities as possible about how such a global policy might interface with their project. Later this month, specific details will be posted about the individual on-wiki consultations, which will start in April and run into May 2021.

For ease of reference to local policies, guidelines, and past practice, the project team would like to conduct a consultation locally on EnWiki (similar to a process used in 2019 by the Talk pages project). Parallel discussions will be occurring on other projects, including Meta.

As a facilitator for this process, please feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 19:10, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Active and inactive projects and lack of support for collaborative environment for content addition

Latest comment: 3 years ago8 comments6 people in discussion

Greetings,

  • Quick Summary points:
  • Discussion is only expected from those who added sizable content in last 3 months.
    • Lack of support for collaborative environment for content addition and content adding editors (in spite of 20 years of existence of Wikipedia)
    • Lack of scope to reach out to readers of even popular articles for further expansion of the article and related articles and topics.
    • Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Nominations is one centralized project, it clearly doesn't claim to focus on article expansion but talks of vague word 'improvement' and unsuccessfully competes Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests
    • Since hits/visits to talk pages (other than conflict resolution) are too less in general, so most article expansion purpose of most corresponding projects is in perennial inactive status
    • In most cases, only interested individuals has to share whole responsibility of development (expansion) alone even of articles having notability, scope for reaching out and finding expansionist collaborators gets systemically limited
    • Last but not least behavior and treatment with even genuine research based article expansion making editors is generally rude and systemically biased favoring curators more that the editors who add content.
  • Detail statement

While in principle I do respect Wiki policy for everyone to comment, frankly enough, pl don't feel bad, practically,on this particular village pump,I would not be too happy to read from those who have not done any reasonable content addition in last three months. (I do value importance of curation tasks but their always nay saying to need of any introspection what so ever and unapologetic hegemonic policy controlling, without regular experiencing pain of researching encyclopedist's difficulties while adding content and seeking collaboration, an environment detrimental to Wikipedia's content growth goes into my head. Hence I do prefer opinions of those who did sizable content addition in previous 3 months, even if some of their opinions might not agree with me still I would respect them more)

There is nothing new that makes me upset on certain things rather I am used to repetition of old things here again and again still when one is pained it is said that one notes it down is better. Just a while ago I was visiting Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Nominations. While visiting first time I had very high hopes so I had added the page to watch list so I browsed. A user Thomas Meng seem to have nominated an article of his creation and interest Yu Wensheng probably that does not pass criteria of Wikipedian Bibliolatry so some one opposes proposition not great but okay. Actually most times I see only one user supporting and opposing proposals that is user User:Sdkb, (the rest of the project almost seems to be bot operated). So in any case getting required three Yes votes to pass the project criteria is difficult for most proposals, irrespective of article popularity on count of hit ratio for example I nominated Valentine Day even User:Sdkb did not come even to oppose and for another article Superstition where he supported I am unlikely to get even 3 opposing votes either. The reason hit ratio of Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Nominations page itself is too low. Information for page Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests Page views in the past 30 days 2,601; Number of page watchers 378; Number of page watchers who visited recent edits 83; Recent number of edits (within past 30 days) 287; Recent number of distinct authors 61; There when I post articles for copyedit experience is no doubt really good; besides huge number of copy editors out side of that project to provide lot of help no doubt I thank all copy editing Wikipedia:WikiFairy curators for their time to time wonderful support.

But now we will come at page information of Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Nominations Page views in the past 30 days 338 (i.e. daily aprox 10 IMHO most of them will be couple of first time article nominators coming back to see if they would get any lottery of any vote un til they realize practically it is an least active project for most purposes find project page boring and and stop coming again.) What are the other stats? Number of page watchers 87; Number of page watchers who visited recent edits 19; Recent number of edits (within past 30 days) 58 (i.e. daily 2 !) Recent number of distinct authors 12 (i.e. 1 in 3 days rest of many edits likely to be of User:Sdkb and the bot).

It's not that User:Sdkb theirself would be unaware of difficult status of many of Wikipedia projects. In fact one of his recent edit dif summary to Help:Introduction to Wikipedia speaks for itself, their says removing WikiProject directory, since I don't think it's essential, and so many projects are inactive that they aren't a great entry point.... The fact I have experienced is other than literally handful of exceptions visitors hits to even most popular article talk pages is too minimal from where project pages are supposed to catch collaborative users and then how would one find enough active projects working on content expansion collaborations? Most people visit talk pages for unavoidable conflict resolution compulsions. There too many conflict ridden minds doubt even very sincere article expansion request for collaboration even though we know hardly any article content contributors visit talk pages or project talk pages. Again more over any one discusses about collaboration many Wikisplain and ask to go to talk pages and project pages where hardly any article expansion collaborations help comes up on it's own! (Most collaboration I have received is by requesting on individual user's talk pages, after deeply researching changes after investing huge time to see if at all any user with user account adding any content in area of interest. 99 % times what one comes across is small curation edits less than 100 bytes doing copy edit. (And still I am told Wikipedia does not have enough curators and controllers!) I never came across any one saying Wikipedia does not have enough researching content adding encyclopedist editors. There are whole range of rules to show contempt for them at every step. Yes I was speaking of Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Nominations a reasonably experienced curator uses what language with Thomas Meng who seem to be looking for some article expansion help? 1011005992 "...It seems a little silly for you to create an article, as you created this one—an article with almost no edits in its history other than your own!... some curators use such language directly and many don't but retain same attitude of contempt towards who add content (most times even for quality content too experience can be same!) And what does experienced users at this forum do, if some one writes without citing examples they are pressured to cite example. Provide the example and case is closed ! There is no openness what so ever for any introspection towards systemic problems, and I can't see any thing of that sort in near future!'

So most times whole burden of the research and development of any article is on individual trying to develop the article. Then there is project called draft, but any reader visiting any related Wikipedia article has no way to understand some one might have opened a draft in areas of their interest! So while concept of draft offers great promise of collaboration there is no way a natural process can take place. Even notable topic drafts can get deleted by curators after six months, most drafts are placed with huge negative notices so if any content adding editor is invited there at even notable topic would feel discouraged to add any content fearing is it really worth investing there time?

Even though this is twentieth or so year of Wikipedia, unfortunately on count of introspection my experience from this so called policy forum has not been great, this time to I am not expecting any thing great. Most times I Write here for benefit of future academic researchers if any stumbles by mistake over to my messages here. This time I am trying a little more explicit experiment of only calling on users who have made some reasonable content addition to Wikipedia in past three months. I don't know how many commentators to this forum would qualify my criteria and how many will dare to face hegemony of those who are reluctant to any introspection what so ever.

And when people fail to reason but still want to contest many become grammar Nazi, So to them too pl I am not open to grammar Nazi comments either pl. Thanks.

Bookku (talk) 12:19, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Reading over this, what I see are two main perceived problems:
  1. There aren't enough content creation editors
  2. People are only using talk pages for conflict resolution
Now, do you have any specific proposals for either of these? Without having some sort of mandate of content creation (word of advice: I doubt that pursuing that approach would get you very far), I doubt that there would be an effective way to increase the number of content creation editors. As for talk pages, you could attempt to encourage people to use them more; however, the reason that you find that they are mostly being used for dispute resolution is because editors are just adding the content themselves. 68.193.40.8 (talk) 13:25, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Bookku, would you mind adding a TL;DR summary, as your post is quite long? Regarding WP:Articles for Improvement, we could very much benefit from additional participants voting on nominations and working on the weekly selected article. The project specifically focuses on high-importance but low-quality articles, which is an effective combination for producing the greatest benefit to readers with the least amount of work. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:20, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Sdkb, First no one seems to have bothered un til 2012 to have a project for article eapansion i.e. WP:Articles for Improvement, there after almost 9 years more than enough to introspect it's successes and failures, despite couple users include yourself and a bot, bot can not vote, assume you are not around and you have to count project effectively inactive.
What is the main function of an encyclopedia? content expansion or just focus on curation? Other than relative success of feature and good article collaborations so as to keep main page rolling helps retain some prestige of Wikipedia project, but if one sees on content addition on most fronts most articles nothing happens Why?
We could very much benefit from additional participants voting on nominations and working on the weekly selected article. I showed comparison with relatively active copy/edit project; Your good selves know project and it's limitations better than me; We haven't been successful in main space article expansion collaborations ? The editors who participate in articles might have some difficulties, may be you are aware of any of line research particularly among Wikipedia content adding users and may be solutions have been discussed or no one ever discussed these issues before me in past 20 years? Personally I feel environment and facilities for content adding users are not good enough; and other than one library project no one wants to focus on helping in finding out article expansion collaborators in notable articles, You accepted most projects are inactive and search members list their most are retired users, find users from the history their too most are either dynamic ips with whom one can't communicate with exception 1 or 2 rest are usually retired or blocked. Curator focused Wikipedia policy making doesn't understand practical difficulties of content adding users so a status quo culture favoring curators only sans reasonable considerations to Content adding editors persists here for ever. Bookku (talk) 17:37, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm also having trouble following this very long post, but if I understand correctly your central point is that article writing is often a lonely experience. This is true and I understand that it can be dispiriting. There are two things to remember though. First, when we say Wikipedia is a collaborative project, it doesn't mean you should expect a close cooperation with other editors on a single article. Collaboration here takes many forms, some unique to a wiki environment. It could be that you write an article and some months or years later somebody else expands it; that's collaboration. A "curator" could copyedit or add links or categories to it; that's collaboration. And because we follow WP:BRD, most collaboration, by design, happens without explicit communication between editors – unless there's a dispute. Second, everyone here edits what they want to, when they want to. This is why centralised initiatives like Wikipedia:Articles for improvement or WP:RA, though well-intentioned, often suffer from lack of interest. If you are editing a niche topic, it may be you're the only one. But we do have many highly active, collaborative content projects: WikiProject Military history, WikiProject Medicine, Women in Red, and WP:FAR to name a few. And there are dozens more smaller projects that tick along with a small core group of participation – in my area of interest things like WikiProject Archaeology and the Women's Classical Committee. Many WikiProjects are inactive because interests, and contributors, come and go, but that doesn't mean they all are, by any means.
On a side note, I would really encourage you to shake off this us vs. them, "content creator" vs. "curator" mindset. It's not accurate and it's not helpful. The vast majority of people active in behind-the-scenes areas like this also have substantial experience with article writing. Even if they don't, it's inappropriate (and futile) to try to restrict a discussion to a certain group of editors. – Joe (talk) 17:58, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
  • What I'm hearing in the opening remarks is something I have periodically felt: a volunteer spends time, effort (& sometimes money) in writing a series of articles, yet no one appears to notice. In this pandemic age with ubiquitous quarantines, one tends to feel lonely offline. Having a larger number of active WikiProjects would help by providing peer feedback & mutual support, yet most WikiProjects are moribund, & apparently destined to remain that way. A dispirited content editor might look at WP:PUMP (here), or WP:AN/I, or the Tea House, & decide the only people who get attention are those who set/enforce policy. (And I can attest hanging out at the first two does not lead to a healthy attitude towards Wikipedia: that's where you can see the worst side of this enterprise.)
    So what to do? Having 18 years of experience here, I'll say this--I don't know the answer. More in-person meetups might help, but those won't happen until the pandemic is over. Reviving some of the WikiProjects, or encouraging the ones still thriving might also help, but I suspect that won't happen since most Wikipedians are introverts (like me), & are uncomfortable or unskilled in promoting a cause. And no one should expect the Foundation to try to rescue us: that's something too few employees there have an interest in, & based on previous experience if they tried to help they'd make matters worse. In any case, it's far easier to point out what's broken than offer a way to fix it. -- llywrch (talk) 22:17, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
    Llywrch, I wasn't around during the era of active WikiProjects, but I suspect the core issue is just the number of active contributors. If we want projects to be revived, we need to do a better job recruiting and welcoming newcomers to build the size of the editor base. Slightly less important is policing the creation of overly narrow projects which draw away posts from the broader projects that might have a shot at actually building a community. We don't need WP:BIDEN when we already have an American politics task force at WP:WikiProject Politics. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Bookku What does this have to do with Wikipedia policy? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 20:30, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
Latest comment: 3 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Is there a guideline regarding use of the magic word __NONEWSECTIONLINK__ on a talk page? I believe there is advice somewhere that prohibits interfering with the user interface, but what about a user talk page which includes this magic word? It seems obvious that removing the "newsection" link from a user talk page is not desirable, but searching the user talk namespace with insource:"NONEWSECTIONLINK" shows it is used (old example here). Johnuniq (talk) 06:38, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: Sounds acceptable at least in the User Talk namespace to me. WP:SMI talks about particularly disruptive or deceiving elements like fake notification banners. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:24, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing out WP:SMI is what I was partially remembering. So you think that it's ok for a user talk page such as this to be different from all other talk pages? After we tell newbies to click "new section" or "+", they then find a page where that is not possible? Johnuniq (talk) 23:28, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: yes, I think that's acceptable. There is plenty of stuff you can customize on your User (Talk) page that's not found on all other pages: the way the TOC is rendered, the particularities of archiving, some people even have stuff floating over the sidebar (such as over the Wikipedia logo). Newbies will also be invariably confused about signing their own posts, others signing for them, or a bot taking care of it, as it varies by situation. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:41, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

"This section is long. You can click here to skip it."

Latest comment: 3 years ago7 comments7 people in discussion

In article List of Georgetown University alumni (and another one I was looking at recently, and possibly others), immediately after the header ==References== there is some hatnote-style text: ''This section is long. You can click [[#External links|here]] to skip it.''. I can't see any guidance that permits such use (or indeed any that specifically prohibits it, if it were properly formatted) and it doesn't violate MOS:COLLAPSE, and it might actually be useful. However, templates like {{Skip to top and bottom}} and {{collapse}} aren't suitable, so do I just delete this instance and others like it? And if it's a useful feature, would anyone write a template? Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 10:26, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

It is a hatnote, but of a somewhat nonstandard kind. Wikipedia:Hatnote talks about a hatnote (from a section or the top of a page) as pointing to a different page but here a hatnote from one section of an article points to another section of the same article. That puts this usage somewhere in the grey area. Personally I would not delete the hatnote, or at least I would not delete it on the general grounds of MOS non-compliance. If there is a specific objection, it can be discussed locally at the article's talk page and local consensus can be established there. Skipping the References section generally seems like a harmless and occasionally useful option if the References section is too long. The References section is generated automatically and (almost) nobody really comes to the article with the goal of reading the References section as such. But readers may want to look up external links, especially since they are not directly cited in the article. Nsk92 (talk) 11:17, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2021_March_19#COI_article-space_templates

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This discussion about COI-related article-space templates may warrant more attention than a typical TfD. XOR'easter (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style about the capitalisation of internet

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  There is currently a discussion on the Manual of Style talk page about whether or not to capitalise internet when referring to the Internet; if you wish to participate, please see Wikipedia_talk:Manual of style#The capitalisation of "Internet" (referring to the global interconnected network generally used today). Thank you. (This message was also posted to the miscellaneous page of the village pump, but as the MoS is a guideline, I should probably have just posted it here in the first place.) DesertPipeline (talk) 08:15, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Ongoing RfC

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

There's an ongoing RfC at WT:NAZI#Proposal. Feel free to participate. Firestar464 (talk) 01:48, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Require registration for IPs

Latest comment: 3 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion

Hello, I am aware that this is not the first time this is brought up. Currently, about a third to half of my edits consist of undoing ill-advised, confused, well-meant but flawed, or purely vandalistic IP edits. A very large proportion of these problematic edits stem from users that have been blocked over and over again such as this one and this one. At the pages I edit, I would say that the vast majority of IP edits are pointless, incorrect, confused, or ill-intended. I know I am not alone in beginning to feel rather despondent at a process that requires an hour's worth of editing to block an IP that then pops up again elsewhere moments later. I am aware that the WP dream is to keep a steady flow of new editors by allowing IPs unfettered access, which I recognize as a worthwhile goal.

However, I do not feel that it is worth the trouble any longer. A large number of IP errors and vandalism sneak by and stick to pages for years and even decades. Most problematic, as far as I am concerned, is that it is largely impossible to communicate with dynamic IPs. Even if they check their talk page once, they will never check it again.

The benefits for new users include more anonymity (IP addresses give away a lot of information) and also lower the risk of being swept up in IP range blocks, themselves the result of letting editors hiding behind IPs blatantly ignore all WP policies. I believe that allowing any IP address five fresh edits per year (for example) should provide ample freedom to begin editing so that we can ensnare them with our charm and keep them around.

Key point: The role of Wikipedia has changed since the early days. It used to be about building an encyclopaedia; nowadays the balance has shifted to maintaining an encyclopaedia. Many articles that are "finished" no longer have as many editors watching them, allowing vandalism and misguided edits to occur with no oversight.

Anyhow, I do not have the time or energy to try to discover the actual proportion of useless or useful IP edits. I am also aware that WP is reluctant to reconsider this policy and I am not expecting this to be fixed today. But in the interest of perhaps finding out just how much of our work consists of undoing garbage, would it be possible to have some element of text one could add to edit summaries to keep track? IF this becomes widespread, Wikipedia could make an informed decision on this problem down the road.  Mr.choppers | ✎  21:46, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

To your question: There's a reverted edit tag now. Presumably someone with the inclination could figure out what proportion of IP edits are reverted in entirety (either using undo/rollback, or manually). Possibly with the WMF's IP masking community sentiment on IPs will change. I have encountered lots of helpful IP editors, though. I think it's just that we tend to remember the bad ones, and I'm still not entirely sure those make up the majority. Possibly they would create an account if it were required, but who knows. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:15, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Personally, I very much agree with Mr.choppers. Allowing IPs to edit is a romantic idea that is about 15 years out of date. In reality, IPs are way more trouble than they are worth. Moreover, letting people edit as IPs discourages them from sticking around and becoming regular editors. Almost every website now requires registration in order to edit/comment, and people are completely used to it. Unlike other places, we don't require an e-mail address or the user's g-mail or facebook password. So I simply don't believe that a simple step such as requiring an account registration will really discourage well-meaning new users from editing. But it will cut down on vandalism. However, soon the issue will likely become a moot point. WMF is planning to introduce IP masking, globally, across all projects, see Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 2#IP Address Masking Confirmed As Mandatory. Not even admins will be able to see the full IP address. Range blocking will become impossible. There is little doubt that once IP masking is implemented, a proposal for some form of mandatory account registration (or something like semi-protection of the entire mainspace) will be made here on en-wiki, and I am sure it'll pass by a wide margin then. Nsk92 (talk) 23:01, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Also, with IP masking, blocking of open proxies will become impossible here on en-wiki, unless WMF will be willing to implement some kind of a centralized technical solution for globally blocking them somehow. Nsk92 (talk) 00:27, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
Some of that is more technical than I care to figure out, but it sounds good to me. Thanks.  Mr.choppers | ✎  02:23, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
I totally agree with Choppers' Key point:. It is becoming harder and harder to maintain quality as watchers fall away with time and rogue IPs become less scrutinized. IPs should be restricted to a few edits as suggested above. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:37, 22 March 2021 (UTC).
  • We know that most vandalism is from IP editors, however, the flipside of you saying that registration is so easy is that a huge amount would just move to single use accounts (a large chunk already is), so I'm a bit reticent to agree that there is a level of access effort that dissuades almost no GF edits at all, but does remove a significant chunk of vandalism. The IP masking project, depending on how onerous the poorly managed, in no-way a consultation, despite their initial comments, may well sound the death knell for IP-editing, but until it gets clarified, I am against moving further down the path just yet. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:49, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear: Agreed; it's just not cricket. Actually, I don't know what it is at all, because they keep it very very vague and secretive indeed.  Mr.choppers | ✎  02:04, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Requesting feedback on user essay

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi! I created this essay to address a problem I perceived while participating in an ANI thread. User:Vincentvikram/Always keep context in mind when arguing claims I have made the essay as abstract as possible with a few examples. Would love to have any feedback on it. Thanks. Vikram Vincent 10:51, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Is there a policy on noncommunicative editors?

Latest comment: 3 years ago15 comments9 people in discussion

Specifically, what is the policy if an editor does not to respond to talk page notices at all, or engage in discussions when their edits are challenged? BD2412 T 01:10, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

I am not aware of a specific policy, but I believe it is generally deemed acceptable to block editors to get them to respond if they repeatedly ignore requests to engage in discussion and continue editing in a way that is lacking consensus. Number 57 01:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Looks like it is part of WP:CIR, which includes "the ability to communicate with other editors and abide by consensus". RudolfRed (talk) 01:48, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
CIR, which is not policy. Primergrey (talk) 01:59, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Policy? Don't think so. There are essays/info pages - namely WP:COMMUNICATE and WP:RADAR - and editors are routinely blocked under their auspices. Don't think that's any more unusual than WP:NOTHERE blocks (which is also not a PAG). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:59, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
I will add though, I think admins should consider the device an editor is editing from when making such judgements (amongst other factors). iOS and Android apps do not facilitate communication. Indeed, it's impossible to make an iOS app user aware of your communication. See: User:Suffusion of Yellow/Mobile communication bugs ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:02, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
That is a fairly serious concern. There really should be some way to send a message that an editor will see no matter what kind of device they are using. BD2412 T 02:23, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Convince the WMF. I've filed phab tasks and discussed onwiki to little avail. Some were even on community wishlist. Overall issues are summarised in: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#What_we've_got_here_is_failure_to_communicate_(some_mobile_editors_you_just_can't_reach) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:47, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
That's usually a reason for blocking noncommunicative editors/IPs. Even if they don't get the talk page messages, they'll get the block notice and be forced to explain themselves. In the meantime, it stops disruption. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:34, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
That’s the issue. They don’t get the block notice. Well, they don’t get the block message (they just see “You are unable to edit”). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:40, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
ProcrastinatingReader, and the response to that may well be, "Hmmm, I don't understand why I'm unable to edit, but let's see what happens if I just make a new account...Hey, great, that fixed it". It's a perfectly reasonable strategy, and one which I routinely employ on legions of crappy web sites.
And thus, a perfectly innocent user ends up getting blocked not just for whatever the first issue was, but also for socking. Dear WMF, mobile is a thing now. In big chunks of the world, it's the only thing. We really need to support mobile users as first-class wiki citizens.
Those of you who follow my ramblings know that I chafe badly when people dump on WMF. So you can take the aura of snark in my message above as an indication of how strongly I feel about this. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:59, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
I'd never thought of it that way, so thank you both for the perspective. My understanding is that blocked editors are presented with MediaWiki:Blockedtext, which includes the block log entry. For that reason I try to be as descriptive in the log as possible, and usually include a link to Wikipedia:Communication is required. It might not show up on mobile though, I've never looked actually. As for creating new accounts, I think I usually disable account creation if I'm doing a block for noncommunication, but I'll double check that if I ever run into the problem again. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:23, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
That is a very concerning point raised and something that I will have to keep in mind in the future. Under normal circumstances, failure to communicate (when coupled with disruptive behaviour) is, however, reason enough for a block under WP:DE and, depending on circumstance, WP:CIR. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:29, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
My opinion is if they do not or (cannot) communicate per the above mobile problem and their editing causes issues, they should be blocked and then we should directly email the WMF dept's responsible telling them its their job to resolve it. Lack of communication is not an option. The actual policy responsible for requiring discussion is WP:Consensus and currently some mobile implementations do not fulfil that policy requirement. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:24, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
@Only in death: For them to know to do that though, they would need contact info in the block message of some sort. I also would worry about spam etc from non-mobile users trying to appeal their blocks to wmf. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:32, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

INFOBOXFLAG

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A discussion (not a formal RfC, yet) regarding the "military conflicts" exception of the above is under way at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Coats_of_arms_in_infoboxes. Input of further editors would be welcome. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Descriptions of political groups

Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I have been involved in a number of lengthy discussions over the years about how to describe groups outside the political mainstream. Some examples are the English Defence League, the Proud Boys and antifa. There doesn't seem to be any relevant policy or guideline, other than Contentious labels.

In my opinion, categorization of political groups requires expert opinion found in writings by political scientists and other social scientists or in watchdog groups with a reputation for this. However, many editors consider it appropriate to use news articles or passing mention in academic writing.

Journalists have no special expertise in political categorization. We rely on them to tell us what happened. For all we know they get their descriptions from Wikipedia.

Should there be a guideline for this?

TFD (talk) 13:18, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there needs to be any special guideline on this per WP:CREEP. Discussions like those are inevitably going to be contentious; all we can do is encourage editors to seek out the highest-quality sources available, remain civil, and abide by policies and guidelines like MOS:LABEL and WP:NPOV. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:13, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
I think this is missing the point – people's current understanding of policy leads them to make (what at least I would consider to be) questionable editorial decisions, like eschewing the academic understanding of political groups in favour of off-handed mentions of political labels in partially related news articles written by journalists. The solution to this isn't to just wish upon a star and hope people choose to interpret extremely general guidelines like WP:NPOV in a radically different way, it's to clarify policy guidelines.
I don't think any specific political expertise is needed to say what so and so group did, journalists are fine in this regard, but I don't think we should trust random journalists to accurately categorize groups political groups as say "neo-fascists but not white nationalists" or something. These are the kind of descriptions that should be left to experts, in a similar way to why I wouldn't trust a journalist's assertions about general relativity, but I would probably trust them to report on scientific consensus on the matter. --Volteer1 (talk) 08:39, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (not a formal RFC yet) on candidate boxes in UK election articles

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi all. If discussing policy around the prospective parliamentary candidate boxes in UK election articles is your thing, a new discussion has been opened by me here. at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Politics_of_the_United_Kingdom#Policy_discussion:_Candidate/results_boxes Many thanks. doktorb wordsdeeds 23:20, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Where to appeal a discussion close

Latest comment: 3 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

This is a question that arose at Deletion Review. There was a discussion on a policy talk page, and someone closed the discussion. Another editor took issue with the close, and appealed it at Deletion Review. I thought that Deletion Review was the wrong forum to appeal a close other than of a deletion discussion. I said that I thought that WP:AN might, be default, be the proper forum, because it is the forum for the appeal of closes of Requests for Comments. The closer then self-reverted the close, reopening the discussion, which resolved the question of whether DRV was the right forum. So my question is where any future appeal of a discussion close should go. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:58, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

That is an interesting question to raise. At this point, I would agree that WP:AN would most likely be the appropriate venue since it is for RfCs. —TheSandDoctor Talk 16:09, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Unless another board already exists for such a discussion, WP:AN is the default board for it. --Jayron32 16:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) afaik DRV only deals with deletion discussions from XfD venues or speedy deletions. Any other discussion close goes to AN (see Wikipedia:Closing_discussions#Challenging_other_closures). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:21, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I concur with all the above that WP:AN is the right venue since DRV is only for XfDs. There are also some other specialized review pages, though, like WP:MRV for move/rename (WP:RM) reviews.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:57, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Demerging

Latest comment: 3 years ago20 comments8 people in discussion

It seems odd to me that there is a policy on merging articles, but apparently nothing on demerging. In other words we can go through a lengthy merger discussion and come to a consensus to merge, and then a single editor can undo the merger. While the merger discussion is preserved on the Talk Page, there apparently no guideline about explaining the reasons for the demerger or even documenting it in an edit summary. Apparently, if other editors disagree with this single editor, they have to go through the whole merger discussion again, and then that single editor can demerge again without discussion... Is that correct?--Jack Upland (talk) 07:44, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

It's covered by WP:BRD and WP:CONSENSUS just like anything else. So while no, an editor shouldn't unilaterally undo a merge that has strong consensus, assuming you're talking about Goldberry, the "lengthy merger discussion" was three brief statements, opened and closed by yourself – not exactly an ironclad, let's-never-talk-about-it again result. Haleth made an appropriate bold edit to restore the article with additional sources, and the correct course of action now is to discuss whether it should remain, not get hung up on process. – Joe (talk) 08:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Joe's assessment of the situation: it wasn't a strong merge consensus to begin with, but the onus was rightly on me to present the sources that would justify the topic being kept as a standalone article. This topic area does not currently have a lot of active regular editors, though the most active editor Chiswick Chap, who has produced numerous GA class articles within the scope of the project, have concurred that the article should remain since there are ample good quality sources to write the article from, perhaps up to GA status even. Because consensus may change, there are plenty of precedents where even a strong prior consensus from AfD's are not "ironclad, let's-never-talk-about-it again results", as articles have been kept, redirected or deleted contrary to the previously established consensus. Haleth (talk) 14:31, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Wow Village pump (policy). Yes, it was BRDed and we've been discussing amongst ourselves to reach CONSENSUS just as Joe says. I actually wasn't at all enthusiastic about Haleth's resurrections, but it has been an illuminating time discovering the wealth of sources available and using them to make the articles as informative and robustly-sourced as I could. The result has certainly been to widen and deepen the Project's coverage of women, and indeed of sexuality, somewhere I never expected to go. The merger discussion was indeed minimal, and there was no visible attempt to make the case for the defence, which would have been strong. I agree with Joe that if anything is needed now, it's discussion, but to be honest the article now shows that such a remarkable number of scholars have voiced clear and diverse opinions about Goldberry that deleting her would be a flagrant failure of process - she passes the GNG with a flying leap (over flowering pots of water-lilies) - and merging her to Tom Bombadil would be extraordinary - she is a fully-formed character in her own right, and a glance at the two articles would convince 99.999% of known editors who've ever looked up a source that we have here two fully-fledged article subjects. Far from just mirroring each other, they, the scholarship about them, and indeed their appearances in Bored of the Rings, are in harmony yet strikingly individual. It all feels very right and proper. All the best to you guys, Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:43, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
No, obviously I was NOT talking about Goldberry!!! I deliberately made a general comment with a scenario that DIDN'T fit Goldberry. ASSUME GOOD FAITH!!!--Jack Upland (talk) 18:59, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
It's disingenuous of you to assert that it is "obviously" not about that topic when you never brought up a concrete example in the first place, and it isn't unreasonable for others to look at your most recent edits to get more context on what you are trying to say. It's not a case where you brought up Korean Peninsula first, only for someone to dig up your comments from the talk page for Goldberry in response. Your outcry about good faith is also inconsistent with the uncivil remarks you made against other editors on their talk pages, in direct retaliation to their remarks in this discussion after you realized that this discussion is not going the way you intended. Haleth (talk) 01:45, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
To address the general point: I'd say reverting a merger that was approved by a strong consensus is a bit like recreating an article after it has been deleted. If the article is identical to the deleted one, it can be speedily deleted, but a new article that does not have the deficits addressed in a previous AFD should be considered on its merits. So a simple reversion of a merger with no changes can be simply reverted with WP:BRD telling the de-merger to discuss. In the case at hand, a total rewrite showing independent notability means that a fresh merge consensus would be required. —Kusma (t·c) 17:50, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Insert routine agitation to remove RFMerge as a clearly useless process. Izno (talk) 18:11, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
On the general point, I agree with Kusma that no special process is required; as long as there's good reason based on the sources available, which of course may have increased in number and quality since the merger, then everything's fine. (And lots of shouting and exclamation marks don't help any; people can rightly assume context, since we have one here, without in any way assuming bad faith.) Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:11, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
This discussion is not about Goldberry. Please stop assuming that it is. I have a perfect right to raise issues about policy. However, since you bring up the "Goldberry scenario", I think that scenario is obviously very different from the scenario I originally raised. I think that scenario relates to a page with very few active editors, of which possibly none are actively watching the page on a long term basis. In this scenario, you can have a merger supported by (say) three editors and a demerger supported by two editors a few months later. I have encountered this situation at Korean Peninsula and many other pages. Potentially, this scenario could play out over many years, with the "consensus" changing depending on the handful of editors who are there at that moment. As I understand it under the merger rules a single editor can close a merger discussion after one week if there is no merger discussion and perform the merger. I've certainly done this. This scenario is I think equally problematic, but it is less asymmetrical. The only difference is the editor proposing the merge has to go through a process and provide a reason, while the demerger doesn't. This may just be an inevitable consequence of low editor involvement. It still seems problematic to me that there is no obligation on the demerger to explain why he or she is demerging. (Of course, this wasn't the case in Goldberry.)--Jack Upland (talk) 21:54, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
As I just said, I'm not assuming any such thing, and my last comment was in fact a general one. I'd also commented elsewhere that you seemed to have followed policy in the specific instance, so I have no issue there; what I do think is that adding more policy to demerging in general will not improve things in any way, and I'd oppose any increase in bureaucratisation there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:17, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
So why not remove the bureaucratic procedure about merging?--Jack Upland (talk) 22:22, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
The bureaucratic procedure is optional (any editor can merge anything at any time, but most such merges will be immediately reverted). It exists because it can be helpful to advertise and then have a formal discussion for contentious issues. I don't fully understand your point about asymmetry, as WP:MERGE and WP:SPLIT both can be done boldly or with discussion, and can both be undone boldly or with discussion. —Kusma (t·c) 23:18, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, Kusma, that's helpful. Yes, the correct term is split, not demerge... I guess then my question is is a split discussion warranted if it's been preceded by a merge discussion. I would tend to say yes. I would also tend to think it should be the other way round too, of course. That really clarifies the issue.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:48, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
I did provide a detailed explanation in my initial edit summary why I split the article back out. You immediately objected both to my rationale, and to the topic itself being revived as a standalone article even though the contents had been significantly expanded from the version that was merged and numerous sources have been added. Your position still hasn't changed going by your comments on its talk page almost two months after the split. So I find it hard to fathom that you are now saying "this wasn't the case in Goldberry". As I understand it now, it isn't prohibited to close your own merge proposals after 7 days (unlike AfD's), or for a merge discussion to be closed with less then a handful of participants who all provided one sentence responses. But I would say it isn't best practice, as both scenarios create a weak level of consensus that can be bold overturned or rebutted provided it is done with good reason by the editor who invoke WP:BOLD. Just as these kind of bold edits are confirmed to be acceptable custom by Joe, Kusma also pointed out that there's also no stopping other editors from boldly reinstating the already weak consensus if they are unconvinced by the substance of the additional sources or split rationale, which can be observed when looking at the edit history of Korean Peninsula. Haleth (talk) 01:45, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
Because my query was not about Goldberry and it wasn't the case in Goldberry that the split wasn't explained. Anyone who is interested can read your edit summary and decide if that is "best practice".--Jack Upland (talk) 04:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
  • First note that you do not need to go through the AFD procedure to merge two articles... it can be agreed upon informally by those working on the two articles. However, you do need someone like an admin to carry it out. There is a very simple reason for that... maintaining copyright. The merged article needs a record of what has been merged and where it came from. Blueboar (talk) 22:57, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
I have been following merger policy which says that I can conduct the merge myself...--Jack Upland (talk) 00:30, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
  • With regard to my comment about explaining reasons for splits etc, I think on reflection this is a matter of etiquette and good record-keeping. I think if there has been a previous discussion on a talk page and you have decided to take the article in a different direction, then you explain why you have done so. At the very least it is good to provide a signpost so that a later editor can fathom what has happened. I see many talk pages where it is very difficult to understand what has happened. But, as I say, this is a matter of etiquette.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:50, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
  • See also WP:N, WP:LENGTH, WP:SPLIT, WP:SUMMARY, WP:CFORK. If a subtopic that has been merged into a broader topic is not independently notable, it should not be split back out again, unless the main article is so long and complex that it needs to branch out into "child" articles with concise summaries left behind at the main article. (And even that doesn't necessarily mean that the subtopic in question must be one of those that needs to be split out. Plus care has to be taken not to produce a content fork much less an outright PoV fork. The "story" of whatever that subtopic is needs to clearly "live" in a single place, with any other summaries and mentions of it clearly pointing back to the place and not contradicting it).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:16, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

People's birthdate, conflicting (reliable) sources, and WP:SYNTHESIS

Latest comment: 3 years ago67 comments18 people in discussion
Closed with a consensus to include all birth dates for which a reliable source exists, noting discrepancies. There was no consensus to contact the subject themselves, no consensus to include only one "most likely" date or to choose a date from one of two or more reliable sources, no consensus to leave the information out entirely if conflicting dates have actually been reported in reliable sources, and no consensus to attempt WP:OR to extrapolate the date of birth ourselves. Once a clear and consistent date of birth has been widely reported, the consensus is to update the information to reflect this. A loose necktie (talk) 21:46, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

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.

There's a dispute on Talk:Taylor Lorenz on whether the subject's date of birth can be included in her article. Regardless of the specifics, this case raises some interesting questions:

  1. is it ok to "construct" a person's DOB from multiple reliable sources? (In Lorenz's case, her birthday was based a brief mention of her's in "today's birthdays" section on Politico, and her birthyear was inferred from a September 2020 Fortune article listing her age as 35.)
  2. is it ok to make a judgement call between conflicting sources? (In Lorenz's case, another source gave her age as 31 in 2018, implying a year of birth of 1986/87, but Brandt Luke Zorn argued to rather trust Fortune)

Lorenz isn't the only case, just the most recent that caught my attention. For a similar case from 2017, see Talk:Vernon Jarrett (there, too, we needed to weigh between conflicting information from the Library of Congress, various obituaries, and the person's own headstone). Bottom line: the question is whether any of this violates WP:SYNTHESIS. The WP:SYNTHNOT essay doesn't include this case among its many exceptions, but maybe it should. --bender235 (talk) 18:24, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Edit: after digging through the VPP archives, I saw that the second point had been briefly discussed in 2013. Jayron32 concluded that it's better to include the contradicting dates (and attribute them explicitly) than to leave the birthdate out entirely. --bender235 (talk) 15:19, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  • Jayron32 stated, and I quote, "either cite them both and attribute them explicitly in the text ("Source A says that he was born in 1963, but source B says that he was born in 1959) or leave it out entirely." (emphasis added). --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:14, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
@TheSandDoctor: ... and he continued, in the very next sentence, with: "The former is better because it does what we're supposed to do, represent reliable viewpoints in proportion and allow the sources to speak for themselves." As I have summarized. --bender235 (talk) 22:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
The point is that both were presented as valid options, which the initial edited quote did not represent. It is also worth noting that what has been advocated for and repeatedly restored is neither of these two options that were described by Jayron32. --TheSandDoctor Talk 02:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
Two options were laid out as to be considered, not as to be valid. One was argued to be favored over the other. I don't understand why you continue to misrepresent this. If I write "if Sec. 230 is revoked Wikipedia could either adopt or shut down. The former is better because..." does not imply I consider both options to be equally good. At this point you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. --bender235 (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
I've been working on such situations for years now, often including discussions at BLPN. Rebecca De Mornay (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Lee Grant (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and Lydia Cornell (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) are examples. I'll take a look. --Hipal (talk) 18:39, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
Clearly identifying all the references on the talk page would help. It's also important to note any that address WP:DOB, or at least clearly stating WP:DOB status given the refs. --Hipal (talk) 18:52, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I view (1) as acceptable under the routine calculations exception to WP:OR. Regarding (2), if one source is clearly more acceptable than another, I'd say we're allowed to make a call, but if there's genuine confusion, it might be better to note the uncertainty. Keep in mind that, since many sources rely on Wikipedia (even if they shouldn't), getting a birth date wrong can result in citogenesis that makes it harder to sleuth out the truth down the road. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:15, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
  • A thought: since the subject is alive, why not ask her? Yes, she could lie about that fact (some have, see for example Ann Coulter & elsewhere in the Talk archives of that person), but for the most part I'd trust any person about such basic facts if there is no other source for them: date of birth, where they went to school, name of people in family (i.e. spouse, parents, children). If the person lies, well the misinformation is on that person, not us. And if they decline to share that information, then we go with the best information we have. Yes, there might be a problem down the road with relying on someone for such basic facts, but if it is confirmed by circumstantial evidence & stands up to common sense, it won't be harmfully wrong. -- llywrch (talk) 21:51, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Or better yet, if we don't have clear sourcing for a birthday, just forego it. With rare exceptions, it's trivia. So long as their is enough information in the article to put the subject in a generational context, the exact date of birth is trivia. --Nat Gertler (talk) 21:57, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Asking a person is not a good option. How would we source it, to make it verifiable? Also, this question wasn't about a situation win "no source exists", but a situation in which multiple reliable sources are in contradiction with each other, or each have only a "piece of the puzzle." --bender235 (talk) 23:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Get a reply by email, save a copy with headers at the Foundation, as we do now with copyright permissions on photos. I would think people would be willing to have facts about them in Wikipedia correct. (And if a given person does not want that fact in their Wikipedia biography, we could record that too.) The only reason we don't do something like that now is due to a misdirected emphasis on secondary sources. -- llywrch (talk) 23:33, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
  • In some cases, original research to estimate a birth date might work. However, it is a bad idea for Wikipedia as I have seen many examples of complete guesses based on something like a Twitter post saying "Happy 21st!!!". Unsourced or poorly sourced birth dates should be removed. Johnuniq (talk) 23:19, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I am the main proponent of adding the birthdate based on the Fortune 40 Under 40 article naming Lorenz as a notable person under the age of 40. My reasoning is simple: of the three conflicting sources, this is the only source that is biographical, the only source in which the primary subject is Lorenz, and because "40 Under 40" is an age-based commendation it is the only one in which her age is a key fact. The other two sources are about completely unrelated subjects and provide Lorenz's name only in passing, because she (1) happened to be a witness to a random incident on a train and (2) happened to have participated in a trend and could offer her perspective and experience for a trendpiece. Neither of those two sources are reliable in and of themselves with respect to Lorenz's age, much less preferable for that fact. There is reason to trust the Fortune source as accurate, but no reason to trust either of the other two over Fortune here. I think it's important to not just ask the surface-level question "do these sources provide different information?" and leave it undecided, because we should also ask "is there a good reason to trust one source over another for this piece of information?" No one in the discussion has identified a reason why the anonymous CBS News article could be the only one that got it right, because no one seriously believes that; there is no shred of evidence to suggest that an anonymous breaking news reporter working on deadline to get out a story about a loud sound on a train actually researched Lorenz's age and found the correct answer, an answer that later eluded a Fortune reporter whose main task was determining her age. The age inconsistency among the sources is a footnote curio at best. The train article wouldn't even be worth citing otherwise, unless someone wants to work "Lorenz once heard a loud sound on a train" into her encyclopedic biography. —BLZ · talk 02:54, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
    If we had to choose just one reference, I'm not sure I'd pick the Fortune over the NYTimes. I've often wondered how much fact-checking Fortune does for their lists vs having each individual submit the information for the brief biographies that appear with the lists. Still, choosing one high-quality ref over another is rarely a good strategy.
    Here's the CBN News ref: CBS News staff (February 1, 2016). "Cries of "oh my God" heard on moving Amtrak train". CBS News. Retrieved March 6, 2021. --Hipal (talk) 03:48, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
  • OK, let's talk about the New York Times article: it's "These Companies Really, Really, Really Want to Freeze Your Eggs" (August 29, 2018). Is Taylor Lorenz the primary subject of this article? No; it's about trends in oocyte cryopreservation (in common parlance, "freezing one's eggs"). Lorenz is quoted for her perspective and experience as a woman who had frozen several of her eggs. I have no doubt that her perspective and experience are valid and even interesting, but she is not an expert in this field, just someone who can speak to their own anecdotal experience and serve as an example illustrating a (purported) trend among "ambitious, focused and hyper-organized millennials". Lorenz appears in two paragraphs total—the 27th and 28th paragraphs of a 40-paragraph article. The New York Times article has two subsequent editorial corrections: one error was a misattribution of an expert source, the other a misstatement of the location of a clinic described in the story. Both of those errors cut much closer to the heart of what the article is ostensibly about; it is not about Lorenz and it is not about her age.
    I want to emphasize that I am not, in any way, saying "Fortune is always and in all cases a categorically more reliable source than the New York Times and should be preferred in all instances whenever there is a discrepancy between the two sources". I'm just saying that for this fact, in this context, we have only one source where her age is a central fact. —BLZ · talk 06:40, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
WP:BLPPRIVACY says "Wikipedia includes [...] dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object to the details being made public. If a subject complains about our inclusion of their date of birth, or the person is borderline notable, err on the side of caution [...]". If we have only a few sources and they're inconsistent and none are for the whole birthdate, such that we're having to both judge one of the sources to be more reliable than another for the year and then combining that with a different source for the day (whether we consider it unacceptable WP:SYNTHing or acceptable WP:CALCing), it's clearly not "widely published by reliable sources". Like NatGertler suggests, just omit it pennding better sourcing. -sche (talk) 07:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
At the risk of taking this on a tangent, WP:BLPPRIVACY is one of the most unhelpful policies that we have. I have led several attempts trying to delete or at least modify it, precisely because of this arcane terminology like "borderline notable" (where is that defined? Certainly not anywhere on WP:NBIO) or "widely published" (what is widely published on the internet? WP:PUBLISHED doesn't help), but as I said, this is beyond the topic of this present debate. --bender235 (talk) 17:15, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
It is, however, still part of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, which is a policy that is fundamental and must be followed. Despite insistence, BLP and its sub sections are still in effect until such a time as they are removed/repealed via a successful RfC. Based on the discussion you linked, the attempt was snow closed; as we know, snow closure meaning by definition that it had "a snowball's chance in hell of being accepted" . Taking a stab at what "widely published" would mean: it would, at minimum, mean "multiple" (reliable) sources stating the same thing. We currently don't have that according to the references available/discovered at this time. This discussion isn't a place to argue for/discuss the repeal — in full or in part — of a policy. That needs its own RfC ran separately. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:06, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@TheSandDoctor: WP:DOB was added in the early days of Wikipedia without any discussion, and it caused issues ever since. The trigger for the 2019 RfC was an issue with the Bryna Kra article, where a reliable source for her DOB clearly exists, but WP:DOB was misused to argue that it is up to Wikipedians to claim privacy on Kra's behalf without her asking for it. This absurd privacy theater was only made possible because of WP:DOB's ambiguous language (WP:RS isn't enough, it has to be "widely published", too; and "borderline WP:NBIO" are exempt anyways, because reasons) which I sought to remove in this 2019 RfC. Bottomline: DOB's are no different than any other biographical fact (name of high school, name of parents, year of graduation, etc.) and as such should be held to same standards as them (i.e., WP:RS). Nothing more and nothing less. Instead, WP:DOB lumps birthdates together with "phone numbers, addresses, account numbers" as if any of the latter even remotely had any encyclopedic relevance.
Ending this tangent and bringing this back to Taylor Lorenz, though: if you are arguing on the basis of WP:DOB, you essentially have to claim that Fortune magazine published her age without Lorenz's knowledge and consent. Because that's what the policy says: you have to infer that the subject objects to her DOB being "published" on Wikipedia (despite it being published elsewhere). And good luck trying to square the "we can infer a person's privacy concerns" with "we should not infer birthyear from age at date" argument. (I'm being sarcastic to demonstrate how absurd WP:DOB is). --bender235 (talk) 17:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
If it wasn't already technically a part of the biography of living persons policy (BLP), it is now due to that RfC you cite. The RfC effectively renders any historical discussions or precedents that could be cited moot. Generally speaking (in an abstract from this discussion), citing an RfC that has one outcome as justification for doing the exact opposite of that outcome is not in line with consensus (in spirit or otherwise). Ignoring consensus could be potentially considered disruptive behaviour. IAR does not indemnify editors from the latter and cannot be used to go literally against the result of an RfC (that hasn't been superseded) just because the editor does not like its outcome. The correct way to change a policy/guideline is with the successful passing of a new RfC (preferably dedicated solely to that question). This thread is not the venue appropriate to that discussion; Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons would probably be the best venue, with VPP itself and WP:BLPN being alternatives (all cross advertised to whichever ones aren't the host, of course).
Going into this historically though, it appears that the birthday section was indeed present (in a form) when BLP was upgraded from a guideline to a policy in July 2006. With that said, privacy has been a key consideration in the BLP page since December 2005 when it was still a proposed guideline and not in effect. --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:58, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
I am definitely on board with making sure the birth date is accurate and sourced to high quality RSes, as that does have aspects of privacy concerns. (eg I'm asked for my birthday all the time when I see medical professionals to confirm identity). But I would reasonably say that the birth year and/or the person's age or estimate thereof can have weaker sourcing requirements, as long as there's still some reliability involved. Outside of a few situations, how old someone is is far less a privacy issue and something most people can guess +/- 5 years from just looking at a person's picture, so not something you easily mask. --Masem (t) 15:01, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
I agree with you that WP:RS is the threshold for inclusion of any kind of information, but a date of birth is not trivia. Not more than a person's middle name, or which high school she attended. --bender235 (talk) 17:17, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
sorry, meant in the case of BLPs, and in particularly celebrity culture garbage, there is an obsession with the age, height, bodily dimensions etc. it all comes under trivia. Arguably there's a hint of ageism in this too. Acousmana (talk) 10:39, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I would say that if there's conflict between dates, neither one is obviously a clearly better source, and no source notes the conflict, we should forego it entirely. Choosing either one would be unacceptable for reasons that should be obvious; covering the disagreement is a problem in this case because we're essentially "creating" a conflict ourselves. That is, if no source notes the conflict, yet we put "sources differ" in the article, we're essentially introducing this concept that there's confusion or disagreement over the subject's birth date whole-cloth ourselves - in practice it is WP:OR / WP:SYNTH. A mild form of it, yes, but I'm not convinced it's a simple WP:CALC / WP:BLUE thing, because outright stating there's disagreement turns what could be a simple typo in one source into a bigger conflict. If it's something where we don't particularly have to weigh in immediately, and where there is ultimately one right answer, it's better to wait until we can state the correct answer with more confidence. --Aquillion (talk) 17:11, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
@Aquillion:: I mentioned at the top that this is not strictly about Taylor Lorenz, because there have been plenty of similar cases in the past. And so just to be clear, in case of conflicting sources, would you prefer to leave out the DOB entirely, or to handle it as in Vernon Jarrett, where a judgement call was made by Lwalt and myself (see Talk:Vernon Jarrett), and a footnote mentioning the conflicting sources was added to the article. In my opinion, this would be a valid solution in Lorenz's case, too. Do you agree? --bender235 (talk) 01:24, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Several participants in the discussion have requested (or bemoaned the lack of) a direct side-by-side comparison of the three sources at issue. I want to lay this out as plainly as possible:

Article Publication Date Lorenz's ascribed
birth year 		Is Lorenz the
article's central subject? 		Is Lorenz independently notable at the time of publication? What is Lorenz's relation to the article's central subject? Would the source be worth citing on Lorenz's Wikipedia page for any purpose other than her age? Is Lorenz's age
a central fact of the article? 		Is the article
(presumably)
error-free
otherwise?
"Cries of 'oh my God' heard on moving Amtrak train" CBS News 2016-02-01 1985
(2015 − 30) 		No No She directly heard the unexpected unexplained loud noise on the train Definitely not No Yes
"These Companies Really, Really, Really Want to Freeze Your Eggs" The New York Times 2018-08-29 1986
(2017 − 31) 		No No She can provide her anecdotal perspective of participating in egg-freezing; she serves as an example of a purported trend among "ambitious, focused and hyper-organized millennials" Maybe; it notes "she broke off an engagement of several years", which could be clarifying in the "Personal life" section Somewhat; it matters to the extent that Lorenz is a "millennial" (i.e. born 1981–1996) No; two corrections for two substantive errors
"Taylor Lorenz — 2020 40 under 40 in media and entertainment" Fortune 2020-09-02 1984
(2019 − 35) 		Yes Yes She is Taylor Lorenz Yes Yes Yes

I also want to concur with Aquillion, who was very astute to point out that the claim that Lorenz's age is somehow objectively "in dispute" is a ("mild", and perhaps not unacceptable) form of WP:SYNTH. The fact is, in the real world, Lorenz has a set birthdate. No actual reliable source points out this "dispute". (This December 2020 article in The Washington Free Beacon notes the discrepancy among sources, but I would not make the case that the Free Beacon is reliable generally and regardless the article is labeled in the site's "satire" (?) section—make of that what you will.)

Along those lines, something conspicuous is that no one is making the affirmative case that "the CBS story was most likely to be right based on [reasons], making the other two wrong" or "the New York Times story was most likely to be right based on [reasons], making the other two wrong". The two sides of this discussion are "the Fortune story was most likely to be right based on [reasons], making the other two wrong" or "the fact that generically reliable sources differ at all means that Lorenz's age is unknowable (and therefore she could in principle be older or younger than stated in any of the three sources)". In other words, the argument is: "if all three are 'reliable' yet differ, then none are reliable". This makes no sense, especially when no one is actually affirmatively vouching for context-specific reasons to prefer the CBS article or the NYT article, other than falling back on their big-picture reliability as institutions (which I do not dispute at all; CBS and NYT are perfectly fine sources in general). —BLZ · talk 07:47, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

why does it matter when this "American culture and technology reporter" was born? it's fluff. Acousmana (talk) 10:43, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
If the date of birth (of this person or any other) is fluff, then what isn't? Does it define her as a person, or her role in history, or her notability for Wikipedia? Probably not. But neither does her college degree, or which social media service she used in her 20s. Trying to look at all these biographical tidbits and ask "does this really matter?" is like looking at a map of the US and ask "now where is the economy?" It's the whole thing that's relevant. --bender235 (talk) 01:12, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
I can't see an age in the Fortune article myself, but assuming that it is like the other two and just gives an age as-of date, what that gets you is a range: (cf: {{Birth based on age as of date}}
  • Age 30 on 2016-02-30: born 1985 or 1986
  • Age 31 on 2018-08-29: born 1986 or 1987
  • Age 35 on 2020-09-02: born 1984 or 1985
That still leaves a discrepancy, but is it possible that she had a birthday between being interviewed and one of these pieces being published? Very unlikely for the CBS source, given the nature of the story, but the other two it is plausible in the abstract. However, if the 31 October birthday is correct then it is unlikely as there would need to be almost a year between interview and publishing given the dates of the pieces - not impossible, but unlikely. It's not implausible that one was published a couple of months earlier than anticipated or it could simply be a typo - which adult is going to bother to correct an article saying you are one year younger than you actually are? However, how reliable is the 31 October date? Politico is described at WP:RSP as "reliable for American politics", but Ms Lorenz doesn't seem to be involved in politics. All in all, I'd say leave it out as there is no apparent way to arrive at an accurate figure without original research. If it really must be included, say "born circa. 1984-1987"). Thryduulf (talk) 13:00, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
I concur with Thryduulf and Aquillion. The argument (link) to choose Fortune over the others because the publication is "by far [the] most credible" and because it gives the oldest age is literally based on personal opinion and original research, as is saying that she lied (itself a baseless aspersion and OR at this point) and then putting a version of that in the article. (The rest of the rationale for unilaterally restoring the age content is also problematic, as I broke down at Talk:Taylor Lorenz#Birthdate, which started this thread.) What Thryduulf pointed out about Politico in RSP and where it is reliable also raises a new concern for me that it is being used outside of its current determined purview.
I do, however, agree that the line located in Taylor Lorenz#Personal life about her being witness to a murder is WP:TRIVIA. However, the CBS source shouldn't be discounted when it comes to this discussion and the concerns raised related to age. We simply have no real way based on reliable sources to determine her age appropriately at this time. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, going into the future we also must keep citogenesis in mind. --TheSandDoctor Talk 14:55, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: Politico has reported Taylor Lorenz's birthday as October 21 every year since 2016; here's 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2020 again. Politico reports on the inner goings-on of the media biz (especially in D.C., New York, and along the Northeast Corridor) and to suggest that that subject is somehow outside of the scope of their reliability, or even that the business of journalism is somehow completely detached from the topic of "politics", strikes me as absurd.
@TheSandDoctor: You returning to the point that I suggested Lorenz lied. I'll admit that may have been uncharitable of me, but as I've already said it's not central to my argument at all. I'm not out to prove Lorenz lied and I don't have to. The discrepancy in reporting could just as easily be explained as being a typo, or getting notes mixed up, and ultimately whatever happened it does not matter anyway. We don't actually know why the different ages were reported, they just were. I merely suggested a plausible explanation given that Lorenz is almost certainly the only person they would have asked for her age for those stories, which were—after all—not about Lorenz in any significant sense. Personally, I don't care whether or not Lorenz lied about her age and even if she did, honestly, good for her, I celebrate that. I really have no anti-Lorenz ax to grind here whatsoever.
But my question, again, is: why should we trust the CBS News story or the New York Times story over the Fortune story? Note carefully: this is not about the publications, as we all agree that those three publications are all reliable, but what about those three stories. Is there any indication that for that fact exist solely in the CBS or NYT stories, but not in the Fortune story? The answer seems to be no, so instead the argument becomes: "two normally reliable sources got this fact wrong in the margins while reporting on other matters, therefore the most recent and only actually biographical source must also be wrong on this fact." It makes no sense. —BLZ · talk 05:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

An example of what we have done in a somewhat similar situation after a few RFC,s is seen at Joan Crawford.--Moxy-  05:10, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

There are some fundamental differences from the Crawford situation, most notably that in Crawford's case, we have third-party coverage of the uncertainty of the date; that uncertainty becomes part of the story. It's not just a matter of we Wikipuddlians finding conflicting sources. (Also, last I checked, Ms. Crawford remained outside the blanket of BLP, although so many weird things went on in the past year that I may have missed some news on that regard.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 12:54, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I would just like to add that Wikidata pretends to know the birthday of Taylor Lorenz, and just says "21 October 1984" with no indication of synthesis (d:Q89135464). But Wikidata is great at presenting conjecture as fact (my favourite is d:Q55072099). —Kusma (t·c) 16:23, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Kusma: That was added by the original proponent of that date/year in this discussion, Brandt Luke Zorn. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:42, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    TheSandDoctor, and now I've removed it. Better not to present conjecture as fact. (No idea what to do about B. Traven, though, so I'll keep that as an example for Wikidata's lack of subtlety). —Kusma (t·c) 16:48, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Kusma: I agree that conjecture as fact is problematic. What troubles me is that the disputed information has been re-added and my revert reverted citing this discussion as being dead and ignoring the direction that it appears to be going. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:51, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Kusma: removing the information is not a valid solution. Wikidata has Qualifiers for a reason. --bender235 (talk) 16:53, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    Bender235, that's nice. I wasn't aware of these. I still think removing potentially inaccurate data is better than keeping it in unqualified, but I don't mind giving the best available data as long as we state that there could be doubts about it. (Thus my addition of "likely" to the infobox on here). —Kusma (t·c) 17:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Kusma: generally I'm in favor of keeping all the information (together with qualifiers on how they're contradicting each other) rather than none of the information. Both on Wikidata and here on Wikipedia. --bender235 (talk) 17:05, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    Bender235, Wikidata now says "possibly". If you know a better qualifier, by all means change that. —Kusma (t·c) 17:49, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) A major problem though, at least here on Wikipedia, is presenting one of them as fact to the reader by including it in the infobox and lede without qualifying it as being at most a guess (which Kusma has now partially addressed). When sources utterly conflict on info like this though and it isn't widely published, it probably shouldn't be prominently displayed, if included here at all. We need to get it right, not synthesize conflicting reports and decide one is clearly "right" unless RS also notes the issue and makes that determination. Personal opinion and original research don't belong in Wikipedia articles or as justification to include such material. --TheSandDoctor Talk 17:50, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    DOB's (or any other biographical fact for that matter) aren't presented as fact when there's a prominent footnote (or other comment) explaining discrepancies. Case in point: Fred Trump's article mentions the fact that there are conflicting sources about his ancestry: some RS claimed it was German, others (including himself) claimed it was Swedish. By your logic this contradiction of RS implies we cannot include either, whereas the common practice on Wikipedia so far has been to include both (or all), and comment on the veracity etc. --bender235 (talk) 18:06, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    Aye, but there is a range in that one. What is being advocated for here is a single date/year be included in the body/lede. That is what was restored. --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:42, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • It cannot be a precedent as was stated in the summary of this edit to the RfC question unless consensus was established; two editors agreeing with each other isn't widespread consensus conducive to a precedent either, nor is one editor's opinion precedent on its own. Going into what was stated though in the discussion bender linked, contrary to what bender stated above, Jayron32 offers two possible solutions: include everything in the lead or nothing at all in the article. Both of these solutions are not what is being advocated here/what started this discussion, which is the inclusion of a single date/year as being the only correct one due to personal opinions, speculation, and original research. (Worth noting that both personal opinion and speculation are literally WP:NOT.) I would be fine if all three were mentioned/cited in the lead or, as Jayron32 stated at the time, none were (i.e. how it is at the current moment/timestamp of writing this comment). --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:09, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I really don't get why this is such a contentious issue as to require so much discussion. Surely we should simply say what is verifiable. If a birth date is agreed among reliable sources then we should say it in the lead. If it is not agreed we should not say it there. If there are reliable sources reporting a disagreement then we should say so, but if not we can't go beyond saying that reliable sources do not agree. Isn't this simply basic verifiability, which all edits should follow? Phil Bridger (talk) 18:22, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Phil Bridger: that is what I have been saying all along. WP:ONUS also applies. No two sources state the same information about her birth year and no source I have found has mentioned this disagreement between other sources. Despite this some others here seem to think otherwise, wanting to pick one as being correct and having continued to add it in the article despite this ongoing discussion. --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:48, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Again, mind the Vernon Jarrett precedent: conflicting (reliable!) sources existed and neither "mentioned a disagreement", so a judgment was required; and it was not based on the number of sources citing one date, but on the most plausible one. WP:SYNTHESIS does not require us to be brainless zombies, unable to decide which source is more credible than another. In fact, WP:RSCONTEXT points out that weighing RS and judging "whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article" in pretty much exactly the way Brandt Luke Zorn did in the table above, is exactly what we should do. --bender235 (talk) 22:19, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Two editors does not exactly make a strong consensus, let alone a particularly convincing precedent. Vernon Jarrett doesn't fall under BLP and therefore has different standards which must be satisfied; with that said, the Jarrett article also has a date/year range included in the lede, which is not what has been repeatedly restored by yourself and Brandt Luke Zorn. As I have also previously stated in this discussion, I would be happy to compromise with a date range in the lede and a note. However, implying that you are advocating for that is misleading when, on the same token, you restored back twice in favour of a singular date (the same one that started both the Lorenz TP discussion and this one) during this discussion. While this was in disregard of the ongoing discussion here and the responsibility to gain consensus bestowed by WP:ONUS, it also was not in line with the end/actual result of the Jarrett discussion that you have cited both here and in edit summary. --TheSandDoctor Talk 02:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
At some point I have to assume bad faith in your constant misrepresentation of my position. I wrote multiple times already that I'd prefer the most plausible date to be listed in the opening paragraph, plus a footnote (as in Vernon Jarrett) to point out that conflicting sources exist. --bender235 (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
@Bender235: There is very clearly no consensus in this discussion (or any other that I'm aware of) that any one source for a singular date is more reliable than any other. Any use of a singular date in the article is therefore inappropriate WP:OR and/or WP:SYNTH. Thryduulf (talk) 11:14, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
I think we can all agree that The New York Times one is not as high quality as the other two, and when there are better sources than that we should use them. Unfortunately they two conflict in this case. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:36, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
@Emir of Wikipedia: I am not sure we can all agree that. We have three sources that all disagree with no external indication about the accuracy or inaccuracy of any of them for this particular fact. Any statement that one of those dates is more or less reliable than the others can be no more reliable than our own original research. Thryduulf (talk) 18:03, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
I am not really sure what you mean. There is a table comparing the sources side by side. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:01, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
The opinions of one Wikipedian based on original research (of them and/or other Wikipedians), which is what the table presents, is not an external indication of the accuracy or inaccuracy of any of these sources for the birth date. It is noted that two substantive errors in the NYT article have been corrected, but doesn't specify what those facts are nor whether they have any relevance to the birth date. It also implies that at least one other round of fact checking has been done on the article, then if so it might make it the most reliable for the other facts it contains - or it might not. The point is that we have no way of knowing. Thryduulf (talk) 21:27, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: Did you even look at Talk:Vernon_Jarrett#Date_of_birth? Do you think a wrong decision was made? If so, which one would be better? --bender235 (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
Regarding Vernon Jarrett, it seems the 19 June date is clearly supported so that's not at issue. I'd have said something like "circa 1917-19 (sources differ), the 1921 in some sources is probably erroneous" There was a whole heap of original research and primary sources involved in that discussion and we should never be treating the results of that as more reliable than secondary sources. Thryduulf (talk) 17:59, 28 March 2021 (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.

New guideline

Latest comment: 3 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
April Fools! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:52, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

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.

Hi all! In response to the flood of recent non-notable mailbox articles at AfC, I am pleased to present for your consideration Wikipedia's newest subject-specific notability guideline: Wikipedia:Notability (mailboxes). - {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[April Fools!]

I expect this will be put up not for AFD, but for RFD. --Nat Gertler (talk) 00:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
It should outlast other similar documents as any request for deletion must be posted. To a very cool mailbox. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:16, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Ah, yes. It is april, isn't it. Notability mailboxes to the rescue!   --TheSandDoctor Talk 15:30, 1 April 2021 (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.

Debundling sysop rights

Latest comment: 3 years ago19 comments14 people in discussion
  Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Adminship rights debundling ( Posted here after pointed away from VP: policy)
Closed to unfork as requested by Xaosflux. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 19:54, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

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.

I would like to work on a proposal to debundle all rights that normal users can apply for from the administrative toolkit. I know auto patroller is an example, but I'm not sure what other rights are included in the administrative toolkit that normal users can also apply for. I want this proposal to make it so that administrators no longer have automatic access to the extra rights, and instead they can ask a normal granter of those rights to grant them at any time. ( So if an administrator had auto patroller + the toolkit you could take away auto patroller individually while letting them keep the rest . )I definitely need other people to help flesh out this idea, though. Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:04, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

  • Note: To add a little additional detail, I would like to propose that all user rights aside from the 3 core administrator rights ( Delete pages , block users, and protect pages), are no longer automatically given to administrators, and administrators have to apply for those user rights at the regular forum. ( The point of this is to enable taking away certain rights from administrators without requiring a formal Desysop by Arbcom) The main technical question is whether the ability for an administrator to grant themselves the newly unbundled user rights could be disabled while keeping the ability for admins to grant those rights to other users. I assume that this would probably take a formal RFC, and I am seeking a coauthor to help draft an official RFC proposal. Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:47, 31 March 2021 (UTC)


@Jackattack1597: This is a frequent topic. Please read Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals and Wikipedia:Unbundling administrators' powers for some of the previous disuccsions. If you have a new and different on this topic, and I suggest starting at WP:VPI and to discuss and get the details worked out with other editors. RudolfRed (talk) 00:08, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
In practice, bits and pieces have been done over time, which is why we now have so many kinds of user rights. BD2412 T 02:32, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
@Jackattack1597: quite a lot of this has happened already. For example, I'm a template editor and a page mover, allowing me to edit high-use templates and move pages over redirects - and I'm not an administrator. The core features of deletion and blocking are unlikely to ever be unbundled - and if someone is trusted with those, they better be trusted with everything else (also, there's interface administrator, a role that not all admins have, for interface pages - that used to be bundled into adminship). OwO (what's this?) 09:08, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Strictly speaking, this actually has a different facet to the perrenial - that of removing certain standard bundled rights. Except, the issue there is...why? Lots of the ancillary rights are needed to bits of the workflows - admin background tasks are quite a bit broader than the traditional core three. There are certain rights where this would be good - I'd actually like to disable autopatrol on articles I move to mainspace, rather than endeavouring to remember to depatrol (though I've seen a better idea of using a bot task that admins can opt into). Nosebagbear (talk) 11:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
    @Nosebagbear: The bot task would be interesting. I'd even be interested in taking/tempted to take a crack at it. --TheSandDoctor Talk 15:24, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
    TheSandDoctor: Just so you don't duplicate efforts, DannyS712's bot already does this task; would simply need to be given a new set of rules, such as whether the user opted in, and with which settings. –xenotalk 00:53, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    @Xeno: Thanks for the heads up. DannyS712 I think that this would be a good task to have. ---TheSandDoctor Talk 05:11, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    @TheSandDoctor: Will file a BRFA if/when any admins ask me to unpatrol their creations DannyS712 (talk) 05:23, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    @Nosebagbear, why do you want to depatrol articles that you move to mainspace? Do you think we shouldn't trust you, or are you trying to make extra work for others on purpose? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    @WhatamIdoing: while I somewhat appreciate a second look at my articles, it's particularly there for my AfC reviews. AfC has long had a bit of an ideological split as to whether reviewers who are also patrollers should also patrol. A trade of work vs 2nd opinion. Both sides have a basis to them. Autopatrol effectively shifts me to the side I don't stand on. To answer your actual question, I'd proffer a third option: I wilfully make choices that are not fully trustworthy. As a reviewer I use a rough guide of "Is it 80% likely to be kept at AfD? If so, move to mainspace and let the Community decide", others do similar. It is these cases that (as well as general community viewing) that I think are most beneficial to have a second pair of eyes in the form of an NPP patroller. While manually depatrolling is an option, it's easy to miss them. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:12, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
A good suggestion in my view. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 23:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • As I wrote in the parallel Idea Lab thread, I believe it would be useful to create a new "vandal fighter" userright that regular editors can request at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions. The userright would include the ability to issue short term blocks (up to 72 hours) to IPs and non-autoconfirmed users for vandalism and severe disruption, and to semi-protect pages for up to a week. Noticeboards such as RPP, AIV and 3RR are regularly backlogged now and it often takes hours to get action on a report there, even while active vandalism is ongoing. We need to give regular editors a new tool to address the situation. Nsk92 (talk) 01:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Another example, from today's thread at User talk:Explicit#CfD Category:Aldrich family, shows that due to large and persistent backlogs at CfD, the de-facto practice there has become to ignore the WP:NACD guideline and to allow NAC "delete" closures in non-controversial cases. For such closures the actual deletions are still performed by an admin later on, but the NAC closing statement for the relevant CfD remains. I don't know if it's technically possible to create a userright only allowing a user to delete categories rather than articles or other types of pages and files, but if yes then it might be worth doing. Nsk92 (talk) 16:55, 2 April 2021 (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.

Articles where (almost) every section is marked as needing references

Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I occasionally run into articles where it seems every section is marked as needing references added (except maybe one or two sections.) Is it reasonable to remove the individual section templates and put one template at the top that the article needs more references? RJFJR (talk) 18:41, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

@RJFJR: I would think so. I imagine that it would also fall under WP:BOLD. --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:35, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

RFC on hyphenation of "virtual reality" and other similar phrases

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

There is an RFC on WT:Manual of Style on whether phrases like "virtual reality" when used as an attributive adjective such as in "virtual reality headset" should be hyphenated or not. --Masem (t) 06:07, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Inconsistent lists of protected classes

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
  FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Harassment#Inconsistent list of protected classes
Summary: the lists of protected classes (race, religion, etc.) at WP:Harassment#TYPE and WP:No personal attacks#WHATIS do not agree.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Notability of presidential executive orders

Latest comment: 3 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Are all Executive orders from the President presumed notable? Or do they have to pass WP:GNG?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Theleekycauldron (talk • contribs)

I guess the big question is – do secondary sources discuss the executive order? If yes, clearly it is notable. If you have some highly obscure executive order which secondary sources don't discuss, maybe not. If all you have to base an article on is primary sources, then you don't have notability for an article. It is like the US Congress sometimes passes acts to rename post offices. I think in general US Congressional legislation will be notable, but an act to rename a post office probably isn't individually notable (although you could justifiably have an article on that type of legislation collectively). And I think you will rarely find secondary sources individually discussing such acts. You may well find that there are types of executive orders which are similarly obscure/trivial. Also keep in mind that there are over 200 countries in the world, and many of them have something equivalent to executive orders – if all executive orders of a US President are notable, do we apply the same standard to all the executive orders (or whatever they are called) of the President of Uzbekistan? And what about the executive orders of US state governors? Mr248 (talk) 02:18, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm assuming this closes the discussion– while executive orders are likely to pass WP:GNG, there's no presumption of notability. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 02:27, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree. I wanted to add, here is an example of an Executive Order which probably isn't sufficiently notable for its own article – EO 13970. Every year, without fail, the US President issues an executive order to adjust pay scales for US federal employees. While that sequence of executive orders may be notable enough for an article, the individual annual members of that sequence quite possibly are not. It might make sense to have an article about this type of executive order (I'm assuming reliable sources covering the topic of US government pay would cover it, but I haven't really looked into that), but I'm less convinced we actually need an article on each such annual executive order. Maybe just an article on the type/series, and then redirect the individual members of it to that type/series. Mr248 (talk) 03:02, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Either a redirect there, or a redirect to a list of that president's executive orders, or a soft redirect to Wikisource. OwO (what's this?) 09:05, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
While alone they may not become notable enough for standalone articles, referenced orders will typically be appropriate in a list. — xaosflux Talk 10:27, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Arbcom members' freedom to discuss active cases on outside forums

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This is already closed. — xaosflux Talk 15:43, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

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.

RfC opened here. Thanks, Lourdes 06:47, 2 April 2021 (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.

What is a genuine secondary source for birthdates?

Latest comment: 3 years ago28 comments14 people in discussion

MOS:BIRTHDATE says that all biographies should open with a paragraph containing the date of birth of the subject, but WP:BLPPRIMARY prohibits using primary sources for this kind of information and instead requires that the information "has been discussed by a reliable secondary source." (Further WP:BLPPRIVACY demands that this source is "widely published," whatever that means.) A secondary source, according to WP:SECONDARY, "provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources" and "contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation," etc. But except maybe for pseudo-controversies like Obama's birth certificate, a person's birthdate is never "discussed" by published sources to the extend that it merits the rank of a secondary source. So my question is: what do WP:BLPPRIMARY and WP:BLPPRIVACY actually imply, and which sources are permissible?

Let me give some examples:

  • Is NBC Sports a primary source for the DOB of a marginal NFL player like Tae Crowder? It doesn't give the source for the information, neither does the site evaluate or discuss anything.
  • Are the Library of Congress Authority Files a primary source for the DOB of a university professor like Kannan Soundararajan? LOC generally states the source of the information (e.g., "Info. from Princeton University Archives") but generally doesn't contemplate the information in any form. And presumably the Princeton Archives themselves aren't permissible sources either.
  • And I presume a self-published CV doesn't qualify as a valid source for Mark Duggan's birth date either, because obviously primary.
  • How about short profiles in a niche academic journal? It is published, but is it widely published? Also, the author's reflection on the DOB seem to be missing once again.
    My point is: how does a genuine secondary source for birthdates actually look like? If our policies set the bar this high, we should be able to clearly define this standard. Or can someone at least give an example of a reliable source that passes both WP:BLPPRIMARY and WP:BLPPRIVACY? --bender235 (talk) 16:33, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
I believe only the first one, NBCSports, would definitely qualify as a secondary source as we operate on the presumption they have done fact-checking. LoC does not engage in fact checking or have editors so they would not satisfy secondary on their own. CV would certainly be Primary. The last one likely satisfies secondary as they have an editorial team in place, though I am not familiar with the specifics of them. Slywriter (talk) 16:48, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
On what basis exactly can we conclude that NBC Sports conducts a more thorough fact checking than does the Library of Congress? --bender235 (talk) 17:49, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
MOS:BIRTHDATE does not say that all biographies should open with a paragraph containing the date of birth of the subject. You missed out the all-important word "usually". Reading back to MOS:OPENPARABIO shows that this is an explanation of the sentence "dates of birth and death, if found in secondary sources." If the date is not found in such sources it should be omitted. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:06, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
But that is precisely my question: how does such a secondary source look like? --bender235 (talk) 17:47, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
On the narrow question of the difference between a secondary source and a primary source, every single one of the sources you note above are secondary sources. A primary source is a source like a birth certificate, a baptismal certificate, census records, etc. Whether or not any of the sources you cited are good secondary sources for this information, I will not comment on, but news organizations, employer profiles, and even CVs are secondary sources because they report on what would be in the primary sources. --Jayron32 16:26, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) They are two of the most accomplished musicians in modern history, so definitely. I would support a weaker word than "usually" per the reasons you list, Phil Bridger. --TheSandDoctor Talk 19:50, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • DOB can also be cited to a decent WP:BLPSELFPUB source, assuming such exist. Checkmarked Twitter etc. The OP:s Mark Duggan CV fits "published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object to the details being made public." Personally, I don't have a problem with 99% of BLP:s not having date of birth. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:06, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
    I agree with Slywriter. It comes down to expected fact-checking. I'd expect NBCSports to fact check. I don't expect the Library of Congress entries to be fact-checked, and have encountered articles where we've disregarded LOC as a reliable source for dob. Short profiles are questionable, as the info often comes from a questionnaire or form sent to the subject that gets no independent fact-checking. If there are disagreements with different sources, the refs where we can expect fact-checking should be given precedence. --Hipal (talk) 21:02, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • The only time it would be incorrect for a biography to have no date of birth information would be when their date of birth is/was the subject of significant commentary (Traci Lords is the first example to come to mind), but by definition that means there are multiple reliable sources in which it features so there are no problems. For people whose birth date is uncontroversial and there is no evidence they object to it being public, a primary source can be used if there are no reliable secondary sources available. Whether such a primary source should be used is a matter for consensus at each article.
    Where sources contradict and there is no discussion of the contradiction, then present options/a range (applying qualifiers like "most sources state X" if that is true) or just omit it. Thryduulf (talk) 11:25, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

The policy WP:BLPPRIMARY forbids using public records as the main source of information about the birth date of a living person. This limitation does not apply to dead people. So this thread should really be divided into two different threads, one for dead people and one for living people. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:07, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

That is a good point. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:37, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it is perfectly acceptable to use a self-published source for a person's date of birth, if the person is otherwise notable and if they are okay with that information being present in Wikipedia. On the other hand, just because a person publishes their date of birth in their CV on their website, they may not necessarily want it included in their Wikipedia article. If the article subject turns up (whether as an editor or through OTRS or however), their preferences about whether the article should include their date of birth or not ought to be respected. Mr248 (talk) 23:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I mean of course you can use the person's birth certificate as a source for their birthdate. In fact it's the most reliable source. Even birth certificates aren't always correct, but they're more reliable than any other source, so using any other source is deliberately introducing a greater chance of error. Don't do that. If there's a rule against it, well, there are a lot of rules here, and that one's silly, so ignore it.
If the person doesn't want their birthdate published, that'd different of course -- you'd want to honor that, if you can. I believe the assumption is that putting in birthdays at the top of the article is OK unless the person specifically requests us not to. It's very key to getting a basic grasp of the subject (well, the year at least). If you're looking up an actor, or an athlete, or whatever, it's key to know right off if they're 20 or 45 and so on. This is why we always do it. I've never seen it not done except when the info isn't know or nobody's gotten to it yet. This is what we do. Rules are supposed to codify best practice. Ignore silly rules. Herostratus (talk) 07:30, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Herostratus, There is a rule against using birth certificates. It isn't a silly rule at all. If a person's date of birth is not already public knowledge, Wikipedia should not be making it public knowledge. If an editor somehow comes upon an article subject's birth certificate, they should not be adding information from that document to the article which is not already public. In many (but not all) jurisdictions, birth certificates will only be issued to the person and their close relatives (their parents, sometimes other relatives such as children), so they are kind of private documents, and you shouldn't be putting private information about someone on Wikipedia. (It might be different if everything in their birth certificate was already known to the general public, through media sources, etc – but that is probably only going to be true for very famous people.) Mr248 (talk) 03:08, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
User:Mr248, alright, I see your point. It's a privacy issue, a WP:BLP issue. That's different, and fine, yes that makes sense. I was thinking about the (somewhat silly IMO) admonition in WP:RS not to use primary sources generally.... to avoid cherry-picking mostly I guess. It's hard to cherry-pick birthdates tho.
BLP, in its "Privacy of personal information and using primary sources" is equivocal. It says using the birth year is OK, and it's kind of unclear on whether you should or should not assume that that subjects don't want their vital info published if they've made no indication of that.
But if the presumption is that we shouldn't, we probably shouldn't usually use secondary sources either. The fact that somebody else dug up someone's vital stats and published them doesn't affect us all that much. For one thing our articles often come up high in google results for a person and are thus a big part of their public face, and for another our data will probably persist and follow the person around for a long time. There's a big difference between the Terra Haute Times-Dispatch publishing a person's birthdate and us doing it. In the first instance, one can find the info if one really wants to and is digging for it (at least now -- but maybe not in 20 years), in the second instance it's put right up in the world's face forever. Big difference. Herostratus (talk) 04:52, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I guess one concern with the birth date is identity theft. That's why BLP says giving just the year is more OK. Still, a lot of people don't want their age to be known, or anyway trumpeted worldwide by us. Place of birth also, maybe -- T S Eliot was born in St Louis, and Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho Territory, and it's quite possible they'd rather the world forget that (if they were alive).
Still, I've basically never seen an article where any of the vital stats are deliberately elided... It's general practice. Even for Jackie DeShannon, we give her birth year even though I think she'd like people to think she's younger. That's... not good. But general practice is to do that.
I'm liberal and expansive on subjects' BLP rights, so on reflection, I've changed my mind from my statement above, and for my part I'll avoid adding vital stats except nationality to any more (living) bio's I write. But BLP doesn't really require that, at least not clearly, and I expect other editors will come along and add it in. I can't control that, but I can control what I myself do anyway. Herostratus (talk) 04:33, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Herostratus, I agree in general, but I'd make two points. Firstly with But if the presumption is that we shouldn't, we probably shouldn't usually use secondary sources either – it does depend somewhat on what the source is. For example, for a university professor, if their official biography posted on the university website includes their date of birth, it is probably okay to use it. Whereas if some obscure newspaper published it, maybe not. Secondly, I think it also depends on how much of a public figure someone is. For someone who is very much a public figure, like a senior politician, I think there are less concerns about privacy, than someone much more obscure – such as an artist which many people have never heard of. (Your cited example is one of those – I've never heard of her before, and I'm sure I'm not the only person in that category.) Mr248 (talk) 04:46, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Are privacy concerns even applicable if the primary source document can readily be found by any person using the internet? LOC records, for starters, are readily accessible. BD2412 T 04:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
User:BD2412, yes. MOS:BIRTHDATE and MOS:BIRTHPLACE are guidelines, but the presumption of privacy is more important. WP:BLP is a policy and trumps guidelines. It's equivocal about when it's OK to publish vital info, but it says "Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources..." (emphasis added). "Widely" is open to interpretation, but BLP should be interpreted liberally in presumption of privacy.
"Can readily be found" I guess means "If a person wants to dig" (I don't know what a LOC record is. If it's not a high result on a google search on the person, it's not "readily found".) There's a lot of difference between "a person who really want to know it can find it" and our screaming it to the world forever. Otherwise BLP kind of doesn't make sense. Herostratus (talk) 05:02, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
User:Mr248, right. There's no need for us to elide Emmanual Macron's birthday or whatever. As to the official college bio... I guesssss.... it's kind of the persons public face already, probably. If you have to dig to find it, maybe not. It's possible that the person is of the mind "Ugh, I can't stop them from publishing my vital stats, but I'd rather the world not know that I'm 60". It doesn't really demonstrate permission, I suppose.
Interestingly, an unvetted interview (where the person gives her birthdate or year) is a good indication that she doesn't mind our publishing it, but it's not a good source itself. People are not good sources for their own birthdates. We'd have to find another source (and it would have to match what the person said). Herostratus (talk) 05:12, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
On the Jackie DeShannon thing, if you just put in no birthdate... somebody's going to come along and be like "oh, vital stats missing, I'll add them!" and then put in either her real birth year (BLP violation) or the one she put out (giving the reader false info). So don't know the solution there. Herostratus (talk) 05:19, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Articles can contain notes to editors in html comments saying things like "do not add birth date, see talk" with an explanation on the talk page of why the article contains no birth date. If someone does add it then it can be reverted. I don't know it is possible to search for these easily, but Anoushay Abbasi contains a note in the infobox "<!-- Do not add a date of birth without citing a reliable source in the text. -->". Thryduulf (talk) 10:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct – 2021 consultations

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a universal baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire Wikimedia movement and all its projects. The project is currently in Phase 2, outlining clear enforcement pathways. You can read more about the whole project on its project page.

Drafting Committee: Call for applications

The Wikimedia Foundation is recruiting volunteers to join a committee to draft how to make the code enforceable. Volunteers on the committee will commit between 2 and 6 hours per week from late April through July and again in October and November. It is important that the committee be diverse and inclusive, and have a range of experiences, including both experienced users and newcomers, and those who have received or responded to, as well as those who have been falsely accused of harassment.

To apply and learn more about the process, see Universal Code of Conduct/Drafting committee.

2021 community consultations: Notice and call for volunteers / translators

From 5 April – 5 May 2021 there will be conversations on many Wikimedia projects about how to enforce the UCoC. We are looking for volunteers to translate key material, as well as to help host consultations on their own languages or projects using suggested key questions. If you are interested in volunteering for either of these roles, please contact us in whatever language you are most comfortable.

To learn more about this work and other conversations taking place, see Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultations.

-- Xeno (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

English Wikipedia Request for comment: Universal Code of Conduct application

Further to the above, I've opened an RfC at Wikipedia:Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultation, and community comments are invited. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

DefaultSort for full name redirects

Latest comment: 3 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

Should redirect pages from full name have a DefaultSort template? For example, should a redirect page titled "John Frederick Smith" (to "John Smith" -- added 22:24, 5 April 2021 (UTC)) have a DefaultSort of "Smith, John Frederick"? How does it work for redirects from and/or to non-humans? Recently returned from lurking, DePlume (talk) 01:24, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I have requested comments at Talk:Michael John Graydon Soroka, the page concerned. Please comment there, DePlume (talk) 02:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
The relevant policy page is Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects, which says When the title being redirected is a person's proper name, consensus is to modify the sort key from its default action, (usually sorted by {{PAGENAME}}, the redirect title in this case), to instead sort it by surname. Of course many redirects are not categorized at all. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:32, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I have expressed knowledge of the green text in the Soroka discussion already - thank you none the less. As for the redirects sorted by first names (e.g. Michael John Myers), should they be the ones changed instead? --DePlume (talk) 22:34, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
The text on that page from {{R from birth name}} says be sure to include {{DEFAULTSORT:(surname), (given name)}} for correct category sorting of this person's name, so yes. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:36, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Important: May I propose a category for redirects tagged with {{R from birth name}} but not {{DEFAULTSORT}}? --DePlume (talk) 22:43, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Nobody can stop you from proposing it. I don't think it is technically possible, but if it is possible it's probably a good idea. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:47, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
This is a complete waste of time. An RfC was started at Talk:Michael John Graydon Soroka without any mention of this existing thread, and it went through several convoluted revisions. No RfC was necessary, a simple question at either WP:HD or WP:Teahouse should have sufficed, where a simple answer would have been provided, along the lines of "use {{DEFAULTSORT:Soroka, Michael John Graydon}} per WP:NAMESORT". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:56, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Religion or Race in "Early Life" sections of biographical articles

Latest comment: 3 years ago27 comments13 people in discussion

I've noticed something. In any biographic article, if a person is of Jewish descent or ancestry, that information is prominently displayed; but this is not true of other religions. A bio never points out that so-and-so is an Episcopalian. Or that someone-else is Hindu. It's only if they are Jewish when this is brought up. At first, I thought that this was because of race and not religion, but you won't find similar markers for Black, Asian, or any other race mentioned, so this mentioning must only be because of religion. Which then bring me back to the question: who is going around sourcing every Jewish person on WP to specifically add information that really isn't integral to the article. Are we to actually care if a person is or is not a particular religion? Is that germane to the person's life?

It seems a little forced to me, and unnecessary to point out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.70.2.200 (talk) 13:45, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia's guidance on noting a person's religion and race is located at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography, which states under the shortcut WP:ETHNICITY "Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless it is relevant to the subject's notability. Similarly, previous nationalities or the place of birth should not be mentioned in the lead unless they are relevant to the subject's notability." Whether or not a person has or has not followed that guidance in any one particular article or not will vary from article to article. If you find that an article does not follow this guidance correctly, WP:SOFIXIT, but in cases where there is an active dispute (i.e. if someone objects to your changes), then please discuss your rationale for the changes at the talk page per WP:BRD, and if there is an impass, use Wikipedia's dispute resolution system to get outside help. --Jayron32 13:56, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Someone is "going around sourcing every Jewish person on WP to specifically add information"? evidence? you might also notice that American BLPs display a clear obsession with "ancestry," but that's the result of a socicultural preoccupation with "heritage" in the US and not the result of one individual going around sourcing this irrelevant information. Acousmana (talk) 14:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Well, it can be a subject of discussion at any particular article -- not too long ago, iirc, there was a dispute involving a WP:BLP in which the living person took exception on the basis of relevance and that had to be worked out. It also seems sometimes people confuse "nationality" which should generally be in the first sentence, with "ethnicity", which should go later, if at all. I would note also, that the OP asked about the "Early Life" section, which is usually the first section below the lead, and the OP is right that it should not seem "forced", so perhaps reword it, or if there is a dispute discuss it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:55, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
@Alanscottwalker: Well, the term "nationality" can be confusing because it has multiple meanings. On the one hand, it can refer to ones legal nationality – which usually (but not universally) goes hand-in-hand with legal citizenship. On the other hand, the word can also refer to "national identity", which is about whether a person subjectively identifies with a particular "nation", and whether others identify them as such. This is not a legal concept, and something which counts as a "nation" for purposes of subjective national identity may not be accepted as an independent sovereign state under international law. For example, a Kurdish nationalist may view "Kurdish" as their national identity even though there is currently no Kurdish nation-state; an Arab nationalist may view "Arab" as their national identity even though the Arab world is currently divided into 22 separate sovereign states. And "national identity" has an unclear relationship with "ethnicity", since what some will call a "nation" others will limit to the status of an "ethnic group"–the question of whether something counts as an "ethnicity" or a "nationality" is often the kind of political question which various flavours of nationalists will fight over. As I mentioned in another section above, I've been working on an essay which attempts to unpack all these complexities in an unbiased way, with the hope that it might replace the current Wikipedia:Citizenship and nationality essay (which is full of factual inaccuracies, and in my opinion is trying to push a particular POV). Mr248 (talk) 23:34, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
The point of nationality, is primarily context of place in the world, to quickly answer for the reader the 'from where' question. So, best not to complicate it, but sure there will be edge cases. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:36, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I think part of the problem is that many people think that the answer to "from where" has to be the name of an recognised independent sovereign state (or possibly a dependent territory) – a person may be from McMinnville, Oregon, but nobody would call that their "nationality". However, that collides with others who think that their nationality is something other than a sovereign state or dependent territory, such as a subnational division (a "nation-within-a-nation" such as "English", "Scottish", "Québécois", etc) or an ethnic identity such as Kurdish ("I'm a Kurd from Kurdistan"). And then the first group of people respond with "that's not a nationality, that's an ethnicity!". Deciding what counts as a "nationality" and what counts as an "ethnicity" is often a very political question. Mr248 (talk) 01:23, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Less often than general, and general practice is just that, general, while in edge cases, there are often several ways of finessing it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:07, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
well that is interesting, so there is evidence. Personally, I don't think any of this kind of stuff (religion/ethnicity/ancestry etc.) should be listed in BLPs unless it can be shown - via reliable sourcing - that: 1) individuals self-identify with one or other label; 2) that said label is a notable aspect. Acousmana (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
The culture someone is raised in, or the church their family went to, or the ancestry of their parents, is relevant biographical information for any person. This is not the same as "labeling them", because what they later practice or not identify with or not as an adult is a separate question. "Smith was raised in an Episcopalian household" ≠ "Smith is an Episcopalian". postdlf (talk) 23:43, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
relevant only in so far as WP:RS sources support worthiness of mention, otherwise, the "culture someone is raised in, or the church their family went to, or the ancestry of their parents" is fluff, people obsessive over this stuff, why? because they like to pigeonhole folk, it's BS unless the subject themselves lends importance to these aspects of their lives, and if they do, RS will probably reflect this. Acousmana (talk) 11:57, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Of course we are only talking about verifiable information. But I don't get the view at all that we should limit ourselves to only what the subject thinks is important about them, or that anything not on a CV is "fluff". We write biographies of human beings, not bullet pointed resumes. postdlf (talk) 17:33, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
just don't think it's necessary to detail aspects of someone's past if it has zero to do with why the individual is notable. I've seen some particularly egregious "ancestry" examples that have just left me scratching my head. Acousmana (talk) 18:00, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I think one issue about that article in particular – there is a long and horrible history of antisemitism, and the article author is concerned that describing article subjects as "Jewish" may have antisemitic motivations, or may have the consequence of encouraging antisemitism even if that was not the Wikipedia editor's intention. By contrast, there is no significant "anti-Episcopalianism" in the contemporary world which wants to harm or denigrate Episcopalians, or blame the world's ills on a shadowy Episcopalian conspiracy. Maybe the author's concerns then are more specific to the Jewish identity – and possibly other identities which may be on the receiving end of a similar degree of hatred – than concerns about identity in general. Mr248 (talk) 01:48, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
antisemitic motivations would certainly be problematic, and would no doubt warrant attention. Acousmana (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Part of it is the general trend that someone being Jewish (or another minority ethnicity) is (usually) considering an "interesting fact" about a person by reliable sources in most White Anglophone countries since being a White Anglo Saxon Protestant is the default. (not many people care about the denomination a Protestant Christian is since most people know nothing about the theological differences). e.g. Sandy Koufax is famous in part for being the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time (Airplane! had a joke about pamphlets of famous Jewish sports legends), Barry Goldwater is famous in part for being the first ethnically Jewish candidate for president in the US, etc etc. Non Jewish examples include Derek Jeter and Tiger Woods being mixed race. While this could be seen as reflecting systemic bias in the sources we're using that's the way this enyclopedia works. We're not here to right great wrongs.
There's also other cases like Bernie Sanders whose religious views are explained due to it being a topic discussed by many reliable sources (there has been speculation on if he's an atheist; it's necessary to include the context that he was born a Jew and that he identifies as one as this has been a significant topic discussed in reliable sources). There's also Larry David or Jerry Seinfeld whose Jewishness provides necessary context to their work. These aren't really cases of systemic bias.
That being said there's a lot of cases where people have been identified as Jewish in their articles and this topic hasn't been discussed at all in reliable sources; or editors have found obscure sources that state someone is Jewish and don't acknowledge that WP:DUEWEIGHT means they shouldn't be ID'd as such. While I'm not going to mention anyone in particular since it would go against the spirit of BLP here; there's a lot of media executives or people in the banking industry with Jewish-sounding names (who may or may not be actually Jewish) are getting mentions in the Early Life section despite no reliable sources actually commenting on their perceived Judaism. It really makes me think about if there's some kind of (((tagging))) campaign targeted at Jews in certain industries. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 20:46, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Can confirm: I just got done bringing up one such instance on a Talk Page and outright removing another from David Solomon after a casual CTRL+F of the sources cited. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 23:16, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I think there's lots of different phenomena happening here, and it's often impossible to tell which is responsible for any one instance of content. There are antisemitic people, largely on the far-right, who wish to paint a picture of Jewish conspiracy and so might add the label to someone who they see as part of the "mainstream media", "liberal elite" or another political enemy—notice it's a sort of "one-drop rule", that someone is considered Jewish by these people if one of their great-grandfathers was Jewish and the other seven great-grandparents were Protestant. There are also, completely unrelatedly, lots of us who enjoy repetitive categorisation-based activities, which is why AWB and other semi-automated tools are so popular. Someone of this vein may go on a hunt for sources/BLPs to identify as Jewish, even if, like in the other case, it's rather a stretch in many cases. This was the situation for the Commentary article case.
    On one hand we have a neo-Nazi, on another we have a well-intentioned editor and if you've got a third hand you can put some Jewish people who proud of their culture and heritage who are also prone to over-categorising. I've seen several websites/news media by well-meaning Jewish people who over-categorise public figures as Jewish—Dave Gorman once did a stand-up bit about such a source categorising him as such, though he's not Jewish. So even in the cases where someone is unduly categorised as Jewish, but not any of the other descriptors that are equally (ir)relevant, it could be a case of anti-semitism, an editor who's completely neutral on the topic, or even an over-eager Jewish person. Very tough situation to deal with, but the overall effect is often an anti-semitic bias on our BLP pages (all of the over-categorisation will heighten this "Jewish conspiracy" mentality and lend it false credence), so it is a phenomenon we all need to be really aware of. — Bilorv (talk) 00:29, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
I think there can be a kind of inverse bias of the one you're mentioning above that people should also be aware of – while nazis, overzealous Jewish people and overzealous categorizers (probably) end up giving undue prominence to the fact that people are Jewish throughout Wikipedia, I think knowing that fact can make you more hostile to the inclusion of the fact that someone is Jewish in early life sections than you would otherwise be. Especially for articles about an American subject, being any religion other than Christian in the US is probably perceived as noteworthy in and of itself, and as Acousmana pointed out, there is a kind of sociocultural obsession with ethnicity in America that leads people to care a lot and be very interested in people's ethnicities.
Take for instance the first paragraph of the early life section of Joe Biden: The oldest child in a Catholic family, he has a sister, Valerie, and two brothers, Francis and James. Jean was of Irish descent, while Joseph Sr. had English, French, and Irish ancestry. This doesn't make me look twice at all, these kind of categorisations: Catholic, Irish, etc., are genuinely noteworthy information for a BLP. You should just be careful not to overcorrect for the bias you think people particularly fond or particularly averse to Jewish people create, for an article of a sufficient length most of the time the fact that someone is Jewish is noteworthy information relevant enough to include in an early life section, no one should be batting at eye at the Jewish equivalent of Joe Biden's biography and thinking "darn those dastardly pro/anti Jewish crusaders" – most of the time it really is fine. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 17:00, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Stepping away from the context of the United States, we have some categories for rather fine ancestry-based groupings like Category:Lebanese people of Iranian descent. Is categorising people like that generally problematic, or generally okay? In some cases you won't find a direct source stating "X is a Lebanese person of Iranian descent", you may even have to do a little bit of WP:SYNTH ("X is father of Y", "Source Z says X is of Iranian descent", ergo "Y is of Iranian descent"). I don't know the cultural context of how being of Iranian descent is viewed in Lebanese society – might there be concerns about feeding anti-Iranian sentiment, much as there are concerns about labelling people as being of Jewish descent in the American context? Or does nobody over there care? I guess I'm concerned that Wikipedia is a global resource, and so whatever rules we come up with have to make sense globally, not specific to American (or even Anglophone or more broadly Western) concerns. Mr248 (talk) 22:56, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Those hyperfine categorizations I feel are usually problematic. Take for instance this argument about whether or not Louis C.K. fits into the category Category:American people of Mexican-Jewish descent and how that fits in with Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent. I really just can't imagine any reader genuinely interested in scrolling through the "American people of Mexican-Jewish descent" category, and I can't imagine anyone at all looking at Louis C.K.'s page and saying "oh yes I'd be interested in seeing more American people of Mexican-Jewish descent show me more of that please Wikipedia". They spawn rather silly, WP:SYNTH-y, WP:OR-y arguments for effectively no gain at all to the project. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 05:03, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Indeed. Categories should be defining and a good test for this is "would a reader click on this category because they'd like to see more articles meeting this criterion?" I similarly doubt many of these types of categories pass this test. Unfortunately, in practice categories can often just be busywork, sources of conflict and a collection of internal pages for editors rather than front-facing content for readers. — Bilorv (talk) 18:37, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
The thing about politicians (usually American ones) is that their religious views get discussed a lot in the media and oftentimes forms a central part of their public character. Biden often mentions in public statements that Christianity is about caring for people or whatever and he's had to address the situation of being between the Catholic Church's position on abortion or birth control and his party's position. His Irish roots are also remarked about as well in reliable sources; but Irish people aren't as much of a target (anymore) of white nationalists conjecturing a Hibernian Occupational Government trying to infiltrate the American political obsession. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Just mass move all BLPs about Jews to triple parentheses. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

The OP said "but you won't find similar markers for Black, Asian, or any other race mentioned". However, that is incorrect. Almost every Canadian Inuit bio, living or dead, will state in the first line that the person is Inuit. I've seen that for Métis and First Nations and the more generic indigenous. It's used in articles about Sherpa people and Indigenous Australians. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 01:42, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Muslim is also almost always mentioned in UK/European articles (and categorised) - which I appreciate is not an ethnic term, but in the vast majority of cases is synonymous with "non- European" and "non-white" ancestry and heritage. There are sometimes good reasons why we mention the religion or ethnicity of a person (particularly an elected politician perhaps) - it would be remiss for us to fail to state that Obama was different from all previous US presidents in at least one very obvious respect - but religion and ethnicity are sometimes included when they have zero relevance and aren't covered much by sources. A scientist, medical person or academic or similar may well be entitled to keep (and may have succeeded in keeping) their ethnicity or religion as their personal business. Pincrete (talk) 07:03, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

RFC on issues with airport pages that violate policies

Latest comment: 3 years ago13 comments6 people in discussion
MOVED
Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports#RFC: Airline & Destinations/Airport Traffic Tables/Focus Cities – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:27, 6 April 2021 (UTC) (non-admin closure)

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.

Apologies if this is posted in the wrong place (please move if it is). I am requesting a RFC regarding two issues on pages regarding airports that perhaps are running afoul of WP:NOTTRAVEL and WP:RAWDATA. I am posting here as the previous one on the WP:AIRPORTS talk page has gotten virtually no traction.

1. On the "Airlines & Destinations" tables in airport articles, we need to consolidate the mainline/regional carriers (i.e, American Airlines/American Eagle) under the marketing carrier (i.e, just American Airlines). This has been discussed before and was last attempted around 2 years ago. The consensus at the time was to leave it separated, but the problem is, there were really no valid arguments made from a purely encyclopedic standpoint as to why they need to be separated. It also did not address the inconsistency as to why we allow it for some carriers (such as KLM/KLM Cityhopper, Air France/HOP, etc), but not for others (i.e, American Airlines/American Eagle, Delta Air Lines/Delta Connection, etc). The COVID-19 situation has drastically exasperated the ongoing problems with maintaining the tables, and there is so much error as to which destination is mainline and which destination is regional (see O'Hare International Airport for example). At the end of the day, it is still American/Delta/United regardless of whether it is mainline or regional. When the average Joe flies, they aren't going to care whether or not it is American Airlines or American Eagle, they just know it is American. American still does the background work for the flight, they just contract out the actual flying, but they still consider it an AMERICAN destination. Why must from a purely encyclopedic standpoint they continue to be separated? This is getting extremely frustrating to deal with. Already the tables are very close to violating WP:NOTTRAVEL, but perhaps this would help bring them more in line.

2. The annual traffic tables on airport pages have gotten too long in a lot of cases, and come really close to, if not outright, violating WP:RAWDATA. We already list the previous years annual traffic in the infobox, with a link where they can (presumably) see historical data. We need to either remove the tables or figure out a way to condense the information (as long as it is properly cited) so it doesn't go off the page. Blissfield101 (talk) 21:24, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

For #1: The entire table at O'Hare International Airport#Passenger reads like a travel guide IMO, not encyclopaedic content. Besides, if people want an up to date version of the list of routes flying out of an airport, surely there are more reliable and maintained sources than an encyclopaedia article? (certainly, Wikipedia is not the first place I would begin to look.) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:00, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Although... perhaps some airports have more information available about them than others do? For #2 I feel like graphs of historical information are useful information. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:07, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
As a note, as the airport data (passengers/etc.) is non-copyrightable, you can create .dat tables over at Commons for this information and just use graph functions to show the trends. That would cut down the length of those tables.
I agree that the example airlines section at O'Hare is overkill and something easily outdated. It is likely better to simply group carriers to an airport among "Current" and "Former" carriers, and among those, those that consider that airport a hub (such as United at O'Hare, or Delta at Atlanta) verses those that just include that airport among its destinations. There is zero need to include the list of possible connection cities there. (I can see this being the case of regional airports that can really only take puddle-jumpers, where there's only a handful of possible airports that they connect up with). --Masem (t) 23:14, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree the Airline and Destination tables have probably outlived their usefulness, but removing them is going to cause a huge firestorm. Blissfield101 (talk) 23:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
This discussion has already been started at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Airports#RFC:_Mainline/Regional_and_Annual_Traffic, so even if I am the only respondent so far it should probably be continued there. I am not aware of other sites with flight destinations in this format and would vehemently oppose its removal. These actually are kept very well up to to date, and this is in fact the first place I look for direct flight routes. Reywas92Talk 22:22, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
That depends @Reywas92:, usually they are, but sometimes they aren't. It depends on the airport page and how much traffic it gets. The primary issue with them is the mainline/regional difference and how it is very difficult to keep track of which is which, hence, why I strongly believe they need to be consolidated down to just the marketing carrier. Last time we tried a RFC on this, the users never gave an encyclopedic reason as to why they need to be separated, only aviation related ones. I'm neutral on keeping them overall though. Blissfield101 (talk) 23:57, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: What would be the best course of action here to get some more discussion? There isn't a lot of movement on this, and it's becoming a bigger problem as time goes on. Blissfield101 (talk) 18:30, 6 April 2021 (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.

Proposed MoS addition on optional stress marking in Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Korean, etc.

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
  FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC?, for a proposal relating to optional characters/marks for indicating vocal stress, used in some foreign languages, include "ruby" characters for Japanese and Korean, and znaki udareniya marks in Ukrainian and Russian. The short version is that, based on a rule already long found in MOS:JAPAN and consonant with WP:NOTDICT policy, MoS would instruct (in MOS:FOREIGN) not to use these marks (primarily intended for pedagogical purposes) except in unusual circumstances, like direct quotation, or discussion of the marks themselves. Target date for implementation is April 21. PS: This does not relate to Vietnamese tone marks.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

(Un)paid votes in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rt Rana

Latest comment: 3 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
  Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § (Un)paid votes in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rt Rana
 – FF-11 (talk) 19:57, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

According to this edit, users were told that they would be paid for voting "delete" (it looks like "salt", too). However they weren't actually paid. I however don't want to talk about paid editing or scam but wanted to say that the discussion seems to be manipulated. I'm not sure if anything should be done now. FF-11 (talk) 13:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

This seems more suitable for WP:AN, but I'm not a VPP regular so I'll hold off on moving this. GeneralNotability (talk) 18:54, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

this person other Wikimedia projects wiki-commons 6 photo , and wiki data , wiki commons Category all are deleted from a one admin and with out deletion discussion , its very large wiki vandalism , All of this is being destroyed by giving money, When I say this, some users forbid it from Wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rt_Rana https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29837035 MO-Quotes (talk) 11:36, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Sourcing for obscure technical topics

Latest comment: 3 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

Many topics goes under reported in the software world, with discussion limited to github issues, forums and reddit. But there is a wealth of knowledge that is undocumented on Wikipedia because of the way the sources are percieved as unreliable. Is there any way we can make them reliable, say through a Wiki vetting service that would allow this valueble “cyberfolk” knowledge to be cited? After observing many afds go the wrong way over the years I feel that a proper process needs to be set up here. The same process could be used to extract infromation from systemic bias affected topics and also convert COI sources into neutral ones. 94.175.6.205 (talk) 15:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

If a technical area is not covered by secondary sources, its not appropriate for WP to cover it. Software topics are obscure because they only appeal to a small number of individuals --Masem (t) 15:57, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
Per Masem, coverage by reliable sources is what makes a topic worthwhile fodder for a Wikipedia article. If something is not substantially covered by reliable sources, it is not an appropriate Wikipedia article topic. Having a lot of people talk about it on Reddit is not sufficient. --Jayron32 16:37, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Subject-matter experts can be cited, even from generally unreliable sources. OwO (what's this?) 09:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
There's another factor here as well: the ability of volunteer editors to craft an accurate encyclopedia. We aren't experts. We aren't reporters. But we are careful readers. Wikipedia only works if we are using reliable secondary sources that consult multiple experts, do reporting, and fact check their work. I could easily deceive people outside my field by pointing to a grab bag of not-great sources, especially if the language was technical enough. And you could deceive me as well, in your field. But if the topic has a bunch of regular press about it, someone with google would be able to sift out the fringe theories. That sounds extreme, but it used to happen a lot. You may have been around long enough to see this too. Before WP:MEDRS, WP:COI and similar WP:PRIMARY reforms, obscure companies would put their shady health products on wikipedia, quote three studies they sponsored of 15 people each and make their shady claims in wikipedia's voice. Since they were totally obscure, there were no contradicting studies. They only thing that got this film-flammery out of wikipedia was insisting on higher quality sourcing. All that said, I do agree with you that in software there are a lot of things that are not well covered because of this. But software also has some of the strongest free-knowledge communities out there. They are more chaotic that wikipedia. But they might become even more chaotic if they were tasked with deciding on a single "right answer" on certain topics with no authorities to cite. (Programming language discussions, anyone?) Chris vLS (talk) 16:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Are official companions to TV shows independent sources?

Latest comment: 3 years ago8 comments7 people in discussion

The specific example here is this book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) 04:53, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

For the purposes of notability, I'd say definitely not if produced directly to accompany the show by or for the production company/network. In my opinion they are usually going to be reliable (mostly) primary sources for the purposes of verification, but WP:RSN is the better place to ask that question. Whether it is an appropriate source though will depend on how and why you want to use it. Thryduulf (talk) 11:53, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
They do not establish that the subject is suitable for a standalone article, but insofar as that has been established by other sources, they are perfectly acceptable for information about the TV show in question (i.e. episode summaries, character biographies, etc.). Non-independent sources can be (and often are) very reliable for information, but insofar as the information does not show that other people have taken note of the subject it doesn't establish notability. --Jayron32 14:03, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Particularly given their example, I think OP is asking just for purposes of using it for information to add to an article, not for determining whether a show should have an article. postdlf (talk) 16:44, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

  • On the question of using it for information in an already notable article, yes it is fine, but it should be used reasonably sparingly to fill in high-level details that may not be readily sourcable to secondary material; that type of work should not dominate the sourcing for the article. For example, I can see such a work to establish, for an already notable character, where they were born and what high-level schooling they got; details that may be buried in a few episodes but easier to just point to that, before the article moves onto details of characterization and the like that we pull from secondary coverage. --Masem (t) 17:25, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
    Yeah, that was my question. I was looking more for the in-depthness– I'll have to dig for other sources, than. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 18:39, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Obviously not WP:INDY, any more than the producer's website is, or an interview with the author, a film's director, a game company's lead developer, or whatever fits the scenario. This is all WP:PRIMARYSOURCE and WP:ABOUTSELF material. It can be used, with caution, but only for certain kinds of claims, mostly "bare facts" matters, and only when there's nothing controversial or aggrandizing about it. ("Development started on May 13, 2001, at our Boston office" is probably not a controversial claim, for example.) When it comes to plot points, explanation of game features or system requirements, production/development anecdotes of a game/show/film, etc., official companion sites and books are probably relevant and reliable enough for trivial matters, but secondary sources would be better. And they can't contradict solid secondary sources that proves them wrong about something. Nor even better primary ones, like the published version of the work itself, which is more "canonical". An example close to my heart: My first ever companion book was one for Star Wars (the original film), and I got it before the film actually came out. It was in story-book format with film stills as illustrations. Early on, it shows Luke meeting with Biggs and his other friends on Tatooine. I would not be able to use that as a source to write those happenings into the film plot on Wikipedia, because they did not make the final cut of the film. However, a surviving copy of that book would be a good source (maybe for a note in the production section) for that material (also part of the plot of the novel version) having been part of the plot of the in-development film at some point, having been at least partially filmed, and what some of it looked like. (Not that we need it, since the deleted footage is all over the place on the Internet these days, of course. But it's still a good example.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Exactly what User:SMcCandlish said. They aren't independent, they are WP:ABOUTSELF, which is exactly what the "official" means. As SMcC points out, these are ok for bare facts, but not for the puffery you might find there, like "first show to show..." or "highly acclaimed" etc. Ideally, you can search for the most interesting tidbits or stories and find secondary sources that have published (and fact-checked) them. Chris vLS (talk) 16:35, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

RfC on FA protection

Latest comment: 3 years ago21 comments16 people in discussion
Snow close (with the outcome no blanket protection) as a perennial proposal where the reasons for previous rejection have played out again. No need to spend a month more discussing something that has been discussed many times before with no new angle. (non-admin closure) — Bilorv (talk) 23:11, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

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.

Should featured articles automatically receive some level of article protection? Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 14:38, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

  • No. Our front page says "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." FAs are supposed to exemplify our finest work; making it so not anyone can edit them makes them pretty bad examples. --GRuban (talk) 14:51, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No. Without an open "anyone can edit" policy, with protection only being used where strictly necessary, we wouldn't have so many FAs in the first place. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:10, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Sungodtemple: Why? Leaky caldron (talk) 15:20, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm torn on this. On principle, no of course not. We should seek to minimize protections where not necessary. In practice, however, I'd be curious to see research about how many new users' edits to FAs stick. We should consider that, as with active controversial topics, there is more pressure for editors to edit without even small mistakes and/or discuss before changing anything. Whether that reality is codified doesn't affect new user experience. There's something to be said for maximizing a new user's chances at success, and jumping into an FA decreases that likelihood. In other words, I think a new user who decides to get started with an FA is more likely to get discouraged by their first experience than someone who begins elsewhere. Seems like something that could use some data, though. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:25, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No, Wikipedia is about being a place where "anyone can edit". Also see WP:PEREN#Protect_featured_articles. — csc-1 15:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No Reviewing the stability of an FA article for it's continued status as an FA relies on the ability of editors to edit the article.Selfstudier (talk) 16:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No In the past, no one has ever shown that FAs receive an inordinate amount of vandalism, even while on the main page. The OP has also failed to show that. Given that it doesn't seem necessary, I see no reason to change this long-standing policy. --Jayron32 16:10, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No theoretically, if the FA process worked better and pending-changes worked better, I would consider this. As it is, it won't help the project. It's also unclear that there is a problem this solves. When specific articles have problems with vandalism, POV-pushing, etc., they are protected through the regular procedures. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 16:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No. Like any other article, an FA should be protected as a reaction to vandalism or other abuse, and only at the minimum level and duration needed to deal with the problem. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No; also, aren't we already discussing something very like this at VPR? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
    I was going to mention that other discussion myself. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Absolutely not. The WP:FAC wikiproject (and it is a wikiproject, it just doesn't happen to be named "WikiProject Featured Article Candidates") is already a WP:OWN / WP:VESTED problem factory, so much that for several years I've pondered proposing that it be shut down and replaced by some other, more transparent process that doesn't work like a self-righteous and un-wiki good ol' boy's club. The thought of using page protection to cement the content-control hegemony of participants in that project, and of particular "this is my article!" editors at particular pages, is just fucking unconscionable. If any particular FA is being subject to ongoing streams of unconstructive input like vandalism and PoV-warring, it can be short-term (and sometimes fairly long-term) protected, like any other article (and is already more likely to receive that protection than non-FAs anyway). This is a solution in search of a problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:47, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment: Sorry if the message didn't get through. What I meant was that long-term damage by unexperienced editors putting in original research, not keeping to a NPOV, etc. leads to a significant portion of article demotions. In the case of Bhumibol Adulyadej, revisions such as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhumibol_Adulyadej&type=revision&diff=214329503&oldid=214212028 led to the problem and subsequent stripping of featured article status. Now, protecting the article makes people not contribute to the Wiki, but, in my experience, there are many IPs and new users that don't understand how to edit Wikipedia properly, and then are bitten by experienced editors, which eventually results in them leaving. It seems like a case of 'pick your poison' here: Either drive away potential editors, or bite them and eventually scare them away. Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 02:14, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
    If you're concerned about an article losing its FA status, fix the article. You are an experienced Wikipedia user; you know what to do. Don't protect the article, instead do the work necessary to fix the problems with it. --Jayron32 14:21, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
    'Zac'ly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No, featured articles need the least protection because there are good editors well involved with the page. Summoned by bot. All articles are vulnerable to bad edits. Featured articles less so, because the thing that removes bad edits are editors who care and are watching, and featured articles are more likely to have those. It might feel like a featured article is "done," but they can get better. And featured articles are often popular, and new editors are more likely to jump in and learn from a popular article topic (with editors who will teach them) than obscure ones (where they are not interested and no one is around to teach). A well meaning proposal, but the counter-intuitive wiki approach has more strengths than it seems. Chris vLS (talk) 14:37, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No as per the comments above.Sea Ane (talk) 10:28, 10 April 2021 (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.

Rewrite Wikipedia:Citizenship and nationality

Latest comment: 3 years ago21 comments4 people in discussion

This failed proposal is based on a false assumption – that "citizenship" is a legal status but "nationality" is not. In fact, both are legal statuses. Nationality is a legal relationship between a natural person and a sovereign state, whereby the natural person owes the state a duty of allegiance and the state owes the natural person a duty of protection. Citizenship is a legal status of having political rights in a sovereign state, such as the right to vote in elections. Most of the time, the two go together, but more rarely it is possible to have legal nationality without legal citizenship. US law, for example, has a concept of "non-citizen nationals" who possess US nationality but lack US citizenship – this means they are eligible for a US passport but can't vote in US elections. Right now, the only people who are "non-citizen nationals" of the US are American Samoans, although there is a court case challenging the constitutionality of that. Similarly, the UK has a class of nationals known as "British subjects without citizenship" who possess UK nationality but lack UK citizenship. Current UK law makes it impossible to acquire this status, so it is eventually going to die out–most of the people with it had some connection with former colonies but for whatever reason did not acquire the nationality/citizenship of the newly independent state at independence. (Many of those people are people of South Asian origin in Africa and Southeast Asia–their ancestry in India/Pakistan was too distant for Indian or Pakistani citizenship, and those newly independent states sometimes denied citizenship/nationality to these minorities, leaving them with a UK non-citizen national status as a not very useful fallback.)

I was talking about this on the Talk page and WhatamIdoing was suggesting that some people in the UK use "nationality" to refer to one being English or Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish. I don't believe that is an official use – all official documents I've seen from the UK government only speak of "British nationality", not of "English"/"Scottish"/"Welsh"/"Northern Irish" as "nationalities" – some UK government forms speak of them as "ethnicities", which is probably the more appropriate term. However, it probably makes sense to note that this usage exists, even if though it is not an official or legal one. I think one shouldn't use this sense of "nationality" in Wikipedia articles however, since it is likely to confuse non-UK readers and produce the false impression that English/Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish are legal nationalities, when legally speaking they are not nationalities.

Anyway, I think, even marked as a failed proposal, having something in the Wikipedia namespace which is factually incorrect is problematic. I think the proposal should be written to make clear that both nationality and citizenship are legal statuses, and that with rare exceptions anyone who has one status also has the other. This in turn implies that having separate "Nationality" and "Citizenship" parameters in Infoboxes is a bad idea since they very rarely will differ, and I think if you look at the cases where those two parameters are being used, very rarely are they being used with different values (or one being chosen over the other) because of an actual legal situation of having nationality-without-citizenship. The rare status of non-citizen nationals could simply be expressed as a parenthetical remark in the "Nationality" parameter rather than needing a separate "Citizenship" one. @SMcCandlish: since you wrote the proposal I'm proposing we rewrite. Mr248 (talk) 03:26, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Huh? 01011000 (talk · contribs) wrote it; I just moved it to a more sensible page name, and cleaned up some of the most obvious issues in the text. Honestly, I think the outliers you mention above could simply be covered in footnotes with little impact on the overall gist. "Nationality" and "citizenship" as normally used in everyday writing and as typically understood by the vast majority of our readers have the meanings outlined in that proposal. Uncommon legal technicalities are simply exceptions to note in passing, in a footnote. Alleged vernacular British usage to distinguish between the UK as a "meta-nation" country and England, etc., as sub-national "countries" is another footnote. So is use of "nation" to mean "ethnic heritage" or "political movement", and there are probably some others. "Nationality" (in the usual sense and even most of these other senses, with narrow exceptions) usually is not a legal matter; it's a socio-cultural and sometimes socio-political construct (like gender roles, and like what passes for "race").

The typical solution is to move a failed proposal to a name like Wikipedia:Citizenship and nationality (failed proposal). However, it is possible that this piece can be "massaged" into an explanatory essay (which is mostly what it is already) without trying to also be a rule (which it was already rejected as). The problem I see is that the extant text is pushing an overly simplistic viewpoint, while you are pushing a "missing the forest for trees" nitpick-it-to-death viewpoint from the other direction. The solution is to retain the generality approach to the main text of it, then cover technicalities in footnotes, so they are there but do not mire it down in usually-inapplicable details.

But if this work isn't done to produce a sensible essay, I agree it would be problematic to retain it at the current name, since it purports to lay down rules or at least advice, and people can link to sections or anchors in mid-page, such that people cannot see the failed-proposal banner. So, it should either have "failed proposal" in the page name, or stop giving erstwhile advice/rules. PS: It requires no consensus discussion to just go do it and re-work the page to no longer be a failed proposal but instead an informative essay. Just try to ensure the resulting text will actually meet with agreement and serve an informative purpose with regard to most editing situations, not be a just a bunch of hair-splitting about oddball exceptions (footnotes, footnotes). See also the fallacy of equivocation; we all know any given word can have multiple meanings, and we have to keep them separated; making an argument about what "nationality" is and means in the usual sense of that word, and then changing the definition in mid-stream to something that only pertains to American Samoans, for example, and arguing from that basis ("Nationality is also a legal matter", etc.) isn't going to produce anything useful.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:41, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

SMcCandlish Huh? 01011000 (talk · contribs) wrote it; I just moved it to a more sensible page name Sorry for the confusion, I misread the edit history. "Nationality" and "citizenship" as normally used in everyday writing and as typically understood by the vast majority of our readers have the meanings outlined in that proposal I disagree. As normally used in everyday writing and as typically understood by the vast majority of our readers, "nationality" and "citizenship" are synonyms. Normal usage does not attempt to draw any clear distinction between the two, neither the technical legal distinction I am talking about nor the purported distinction the proposal presents. Mr248 (talk) 06:18, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
They can't be synonyms if much of your and my and 01011000's point is that they're distinguishable even in everyday use. You can't simultaneously argue to keep and improve the page, which is all about these distinctions, and also argue for a lack of distinction. We have to trust that our readers are more-or-less fluent and know how to use a dictionary. Observation of usage of these terms clearly shows that people do in fact use them differently. So, I'm really not inclined to argue in circles with you about this. Especially since your response ignores everything substantive about what I said; more nit-picking. The goal here is to arrive at a solution for this page, not out-nitpick everyone. Other editors, as they care to comment, can either support the idea to essay-ize this page, which will hopefully produce an essay people agree with and find useful, or they won't, in which case I or someone else will nominate it for a rename that ends with "(failed proposal)". Or I suppose someone could try to re-draft it in a way that actually made sense as a guideline and re-propose it, though I give that a snowball's chance in Hell.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:31, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Let me clear about my point of view – in technical legal terminology, yes there is a reasonably clear distinction between "nationality" and "citizenship"; however, in everyday language, there is no clear or standard distinction between the two terms – many speakers treat them as synonyms; a small number of speakers (who are familiar with the technical legal definitions) will use the technical legal definitions even in everyday language; yet others draw some other distinction between them which is different from the technical legal distinction. You (and 01011000) seem to be arguing that a distinction between them, which is different from the legal distinction, is standard in everyday use, which is where I disagree. I guess the question is, what evidence (even reliable sources) do we have on how the two terms are consistently distinguished in everyday use, if in fact they are? Mr248 (talk) 08:39, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
As I say, I'm not inclined to pursue circular argument about this. No one but you has said anything about "consistently distinguished", and if we had that as a criterion half the project pages on the system would have to go away, starting with, say, WP:Consensus, WP:Harassment, and WP:Civility. The fact that terms can have multiple meanings has never impeded us writing about them or being specific as to a "WP meaning", we just have to be clear about it. And none of that equates to "are synonyms" as you claimed. But let's just move on to more the constructive approach below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish, I don't think the page is correct. Here are a few lines from the ==Definitions== section:
  • Nationality, on the other hand, denotes where an individual has been born... – No, where you were born is your national origin,[2] not your nationality.
  • Nationality is obtained through inheritance from his/her parents... – So is citizenship, for most people, but I think you meant national identity.
  • An example of nationality is Italian to a person with Italian roots born in the United States... – No, that's an example of ethnicity.  A person born in the US is a US national and a US citizen.
It is true that many people use these terms imprecisely. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:56, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, where you were born is your national origin I think the definition you linked ("the place of birth of an individual or of any of the individual’s lineal ancestors") applies for some legal purposes, but a person might not consider the country where they were born their "national origin". A good example of this is US Senator Ted Cruz – he was born in Canada, to an American mother and a Cuban refugee father, his parents had met in the US and only later moved to Canada, and his parents moved back to the US when he was four years old and thereafter he grew up in the US. Even though Canada is the country of his birth, he probably wouldn't consider it his "national origin". In fact, when he found out (as an adult) that he was a Canadian citizen, he renounced his Canadian citizenship. Mr248 (talk) 03:41, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
What a person believes about themselves is their national identity. In the case of Ted Cruz, his national origin is Canada (birth place), America (maternal lineal ancestor), and Cuba (paternal lineal ancestor). You don't have to have a single claim to a national origin. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:00, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree with the definitions that "national identity" is about subjective identity (what you believe about yourself, how others identify you), whereas "national origin" is defined in more objective terms. That said, I don't expect everyone is going to make that distinction – some readers will probably use the terms interchangeably, and hence may use "national origin" in the subjective sense as well. Mr248 (talk) 22:06, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree these definitions are half-assed at best, and I have no objection to improving them, as long as what results is something editors are apt to understand and agree with, which means it has to be cognizant of meaning variance instead of trying to hide the variances and suggest that each of these words can only possibly every have one specific sense. We know that simply isn't true. The very fact that they're potentially confusing is one of the reasons to avoid relying on them at Wikipedia as a means of conveying information we expect to be consistently understood by different readers. Even simpler concepts like "country" often mean very different things to different readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
I agree with you that there is value in helping editors remember that people (especially people from different parts of the world) often use these terms to mean different things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I tried to rewrite this essay to be accurate. Here is what I came up with – User:Mr248/Citizenship and nationality. What do people think of the relative merits of the current essay here to my draft? Mr248 (talk) 13:53, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Strikes me as a vast improvement, structurally and conceptually, though I have not pored over every word of it. My main concern would be that many of the definitions given are not ones many readers or editors will be familiar with or even encounter, so the first part of the essay should focus on the most common meanings. PS: My assumption is that your intent is to replace the failed proposal with a viable essay, not create a new guideline proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
I claim no special expertise in this area, BUT, nationality in the UK frequently relates to whether one is English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. These are distinct nations, and although membership of any one has neither any legal basis nor legal definition and confers no benefits or rights - one cannot dismiss this usage. Legally this may merely be 'national identity', but the usage is very deeply rooted, but the essay ignores this use of nationality. Secondly, not all countries automatically confer 'nationality' to all those born within the country. Germany for example only awards nationality and consequent citizenship to the children of German citizens (the children of 'guest workers' or refugees are not legally German, even if born there from parents legally resident in Germany - they must apply for naturalisation). The essay implies that only the children of illegal immigrants (plus diplomats and armed forces) are ever excluded from gaining nationality by virtue of place of birth, this is not the case. I don't pretend to know what the problem is that the essay attempts to solve, but I have to say I find the essay confusing rather than clarifying. Pincrete (talk) 18:01, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
Pincrete, but the essay ignores this use of nationality It doesn't ignore it. It talks about it in the section User:Mr248/Citizenship_and_nationality#UK_constituent_countries.
The essay implies that only the children of illegal immigrants (plus diplomats and armed forces) are ever excluded from gaining nationality by virtue of place of birth, this is not the case It doesn't. It says "Some states reject jus soli and hence a person born on their territory to non-national parents does not acquire the state's nationality no matter for how many generations their ancestors may have lived in that state". That's exactly the case of Germany, I just didn't mention Germany specifically as an example of it. I'll add that. (Edit: Actually, contemporary German law does grant children born in Germany to legal residents citizenship, at least in some cases – what you are saying is historically true, but no longer true since the 1999 legal reforms.)
I don't pretend to know what the problem is that the essay attempts to solve, but I have to say I find the essay confusing rather than clarifying The problem it tries to solve is (1) a lot of Wikipedia editors have a poor understanding of the variety of meanings that "citizenship" and "nationality" have; (2) the existing essay Wikipedia:Citizenship and nationality contains factual errors and to a great extent just reflects a single editor's questionable personal opinions, and I'm trying to replace it with something which is factually more accurate and more neutral. But if you have either concrete suggestions for improvements to the text, or you think you can do better, please go ahead. Mr248 (talk) 02:53, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I sympathise with the problem, but wonder if a universal solution is even possible - beyond the one we already use, which is that we refer to individuals nationality as WR:RS do. I admit I was wholly wrong about the 'German' situation, though I don't know how common such withholding of rights is. I think I am at least partially right about the UK-Eng-Sc-Welsh-Irish situation (which certainly is inconsistent and muddled at times, but which I recognise is often very important to the individuals written about). Merely by saying that nationality has a legal definition (and describing its properties), you contradict a major country where nationality has distinct definitions, most of which have no legal basis and confer no rights or privileges or protections whatsoever. Mentioning UK later cannot undo what has already been stated. Pincrete (talk) 07:50, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Pincrete, which is that we refer to individuals nationality as WR:RS do reliable sources very often call people "American" or "French" or "British" or "English" or whatever. But is that ascribing to them a nationality? Or a national identity? Or a national origin? Rarely are reliable sources specific about which of those three related concepts they are talking about, and to read a source as being about nationality specifically, as opposed to one of those other related concepts, when it isn't being explicit about which one it is talking about, is to run the risk of reading into it something which isn't actually there.
Merely by saying that nationality has a legal definition (and describing its properties), you contradict a major country where nationality has distinct definitions, most of which have no legal basis and confer no rights or privileges or protections whatsoever Did you read the introductory section of the essay? It says: Both are legal terms, and this essay will endeavour to give an overview of the legal distinction between "citizenship" and "nationality"; both are also used in non-legal contexts in ways distinct from their legal use, and this essay will also attempt to provide an overview of the different non-legal ways in which those two terms are used. It is being quite explicit that the terms have both legal definitions and non-legal definitions, and that those definitions are distinct, and it treats them separately – the whole essay is organised into two major sections, one dealing with legal definitions, the other with non-legal definitions. I don't understand the criticism you are making here. Mr248 (talk) 22:41, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm not going to quibble with you - good luck with this. Pincrete (talk) 06:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

@Pincrete and Mr248: If I may intervene a bit:

Pincrete: "Mentioning UK later cannot undo what has already been stated." That's a fair point, so using example like that earlier on to make it clear that these definitions are not universal to every context and party would be reasonable. So, Mr248 is correct that it's not "ignored", but where is placed may be, as Pincrete indicates, too little too late. We can't really assume everyone at this page will read all of it. It's important that the top-matter summarize the overall gist of it well.

Pincrete: "The essay implies that only [odd cases] are ever excluded from gaining nationality by virtue of place of birth"; Mr248 "It doesn't. It says 'Some states reject jus soli and hence [more explanation]'. Again, I'm going to agree with Mr248 technically, but Pincrete in spirit. Is there not a way to juggle some material around so that it's clearer? I don't think Pincrete has dain bramage, so if one of our editors is finding this confusing there's a good chance that others will and that it could use some wordsmithing, which may be about word choice, placement in the piece, or both. That is, let's try to massage the material to resolve the dispute rather than just argue until someone gets angry and leaves.

Just something as trivial as changing "Both are legal terms" to "Both are sometimes legal terms" or maybe even better "Both have various legal definitions", might help a lot, by making it clear from the very first words that no absolutist definitions are going to be offered. I know enough from usability work I did in ye olde tymes of the early Web that users of websites have a strong tendency (in LtR languages) to start at top left of the content proper, read just enough to be sure they're at the right place, then start skimming around rapidly for what they're here for, and will not settle into reading in earnest (if at all) until they've latched onto something of interest. So, there's a good chance someone will see "Both are legal term", conclude "Ah HA! Just what I was saying!", jump down the page to look for something pertaining to this that bolsters some point they're arguing about, find what they want and read it (without reading past it), then copy-paste some material quoted out-of-context and return to their fight. LOL.

I try to write essay material in ways that thwart this pattern, especially by avoiding statements that seem absolute and that are then later qualified, since people are apt to see and make use only of the absolute part. (It's also one reason that in guideline material we don't lead with a bunch of exceptions and then give a general rule at the end. We want people to latch onto the general rule and apply it unless there's a codified exception. If we led with exceptions, people would latch onto one of those and try to over-generalize from it, and never reach the actual rule, or ignore it if they do, hoping it doesn't really pertaining to their situation.) I know this is a lot of UE psych, but it's worth thinking about in the latter drafting stage.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:15, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I think that is an improvement that could be done after @Mr248 gets the already-an-improvement version pasted into the page. Maybe just add a big box that says "Watch out particularly for people from the UK saying that their 'nationality' is English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh, even though their own census form calls that 'national identity' instead of 'nationality'"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:33, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Protection templates excessive in article pages

Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

The recurrent use of {{pp-protected}} and {{pp-protected|small}} (which adds the lock image next to the title) is quite redundant and is NOT mandatory according to Wikipedia:Rough_guide_to_semi-protection. What's more pages are a little heavier to process and the image of a lock can discourage users from editing. Implicit protection (you can see it by trying to Edit Source or in Page Information) should be fair in the free encyclopedia, united to encouraging creation of persistent and trusted user accounts. Vaunting of protected articles through images of a lock is not the way to free encyclopedia. Brainfrogk4mon (talk) 20:10, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

My general view is that it's worth presenting a piece of information to readers if it affects the reading experience. In this case, I think having the padlock icons could help in some cases assure readers that a controversial article is at least somewhat protected from vandalism, so there is some benefit. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:17, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
I doubt that any of them notice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to add WP:GUILT to WP:BLP

Latest comment: 3 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Currently, GUILT is one of the principles listed in a final Arb Com decision in a 2006 case. It is currently subsumed under WP:BLPBALANCE which states Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association, and biased, malicious or overly promotional content. I'm of the mind that it should be integrated with BLP policy. A few quick examples of situations where it came into play:

  • JzG referred to it in this discussion ...this is an attempt to smear Joe Biden through guilt-by-association based on innuendo, facts already known and admitted...
  • I referred to it in at a different BLP, stating: His fallout is the result of WP:GUILT because of the start-up company's questionable business practices, not his own...

I am proposing that WP:GUILT be added to WP:BLP as a subsection of Writing style. My proposal also includes moving the relative guilt statement in BLPBALANCE to the new subsection as follows:

Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association, and biased, malicious or overly promotional content. Guilt by association is never a sufficient reason to include negative information about third parties in a biography. At a minimum, there should be reliable sources showing a direct relationship between the conduct of the third parties and the conduct of the subject (i.e. a nexus), or that the subject knew or should have known about and could have prevented the conduct of the third parties.

Survey (WP:GUILT)

  • Oppose due to redundancy. I appreciate the sentiment, but, as you note, WP:BLP specifically says to "Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association" and that biographies should be "completely sourced, neutral, and on-topic." Thus, this principle is already "integrated with BLP policy." The proposed new text would add new verbiage and headers, but provide no new substantive guidance for editors beyond what is already in WP:BLP, WP:SYNTH, WP:V, etc. Thus, I oppose this as redundant and instruction creep Neutralitytalk 03:35, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Not needed. It's already in there, the policy page doesn't benefit from the redundancy. --Jayron32 16:23, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Neutrality. Also, without commenting on the specific principle, an ArbCom case from all the way back in 2006 has pretty limited precedent-making power; Wikipedia was a radically different place then. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:05, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (WP:GUILT)

Policy for creating stubs

Latest comment: 3 years ago28 comments16 people in discussion

This has been moved from WP:ANI, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass-creating articles based on one unreliable source for context--Ymblanter (talk) 14:35, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

  Administrator note I left this section open (separate from the close above) as I believe this discussion is badly needed. However it's not a discussion that requiers admin attention, and should probably be moved elsewhere. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:13, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Is there are any interest in drafting a policy which would determine when standalone stubs of locations are allowed, and when they must be bundled into lists? Does anybody knows whether such a policy has been attempted, and whether it is an evergreen proposal? Pinging @Iridescent: who might know this.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:40, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, list vs standalone articles is a very broad scope questions; I am now only talking about localities (which I guess has at least some chances to be considered seriously).--Ymblanter (talk) 07:42, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
Even WP:GEOLAND carries this implicit assumption (this is why it uses the language "typically presumed to be notable" rather than "are notable"). Even for legally-recognised populated places, we are only presuming they can make a WP:GNG pass if someone does the research deep enough. Maybe this behaviour was OK when simply doing this based on Sports-Reference.com for e.g., pole-vaulters (I don't think it is, but the consensus hasn't historically been against it), but as soon as you try to do GEO articles the same way you end up with something like the Iranian "village" case because geography is much more complex than sports statistics. The amount of grief we've had over the assumption that X in Persian/Azeri/whatever is the same as "village".... FOARP (talk) 18:50, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
Well, let us not overdo things. I have created for example this article today, and it is currently sourced to two databases (well, to one statistical document and one government dadabase-like site). I will return to it later (which may well be over several years) to bring it to this stage. However, I do not think any sane person can argue that it has notability issues, or even that it would be more beneficial to have it as am element of a list. My argument is that at some stage of the development (which needs to be formalized, but something like the article about a locality only contains the name, the native name, administrative division the locality is in, population, and coordinates), it is more advantageous to have it as an element of a list and not as a standalone article. Such article should be redirected to the list.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:17, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
"Presumed notable" under notability guidelines does not mean that this necessarily needs to show the type of sources that meet SIGCOV, only that the article can be shown to meet criteria that is likely to lead to more SIGCOV for notability. Most notability guidelines are merit based (like winning a Nobel prize) and this approach makes sense, but the issue are cases in GEOLAND and NSPORT where simply proving something/someone existed at a certain level is a presumption of notability (in the case of NSPORT, having played a professional level game is the presumption that the person had to have a prior career to get to a professional level that can be documented). I'd also note that any approach like this would have to be aligned with CSD which has purposely rejected any "notability" factors and uses a far lower bar to allow articles to be kept. --Masem (t) 14:42, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I would support such a policy, especially if it applied to sports as well. How hard is it to find one SIGCOV source? If you don't have access to refs but expect them to exist, it seems much more reasonable to put the subject in relevant lists and make a post in the relevant wikiprojects asking if anyone else does have access. JoelleJay (talk) 20:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

As pointed out above, this discussion duplicates Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)#Mass-created village/neighbourhood Geostubs. Please comment there instead. – Uanfala (talk) 15:04, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Whereas my intention was to restrict the discussion to purely articles on localities, the discussion went more broadly and would not fit to Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)--Ymblanter (talk) 15:09, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Do you consider a locality as a place falling under WP:GEOLAND? Part of the lack of clarity here comes from the definition of WP:GEOLAND, I think. SportingFlyer T·C 15:10, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes, localities fall under GEOLAND, but there are a lot of other things which fall there, and which can not be treated the same way.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:17, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
My biggest gripe with geographic (and sport) stubs is not there existence but its that they clutter random and will discourage any reader/editor from pressing the button more than a few times. Quality articles have little chance of being discovered when they are drowned out in all the noise. So I would support any attempt to reign in stubs and replace them with descriptive lists.
For localities, Stub policy should be modified to explicitly prohibit creation of an article when the only information is available is database entries. A minimum of a history, geography, or other informative section should be required. Slywriter (talk) 16:19, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I second what you've said above. Störm (talk) 21:46, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
@Slywriter: I'm not sure about this. I've found our locality stubs on US locations are pretty good, say Lake George Township, Hubbard County, Minnesota (selected at random). Sure, it's not great, but it's better than nothing. I'm pretty sure everything in said article, other than the name history (which isn't really significant), came from databases. Would your proposal be against that type of article? Elli (talk | contribs) 22:25, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Elli, it's better than Meryemköy,_Çıldır but all the reader has learned is the US census data and outdated census data at that. So unless someone bothers to update that article next year, it will be two censuses behind current times with little hope of anyone every updating. A list of townships in Hubbard or Minnesota with links to us census, wikidata or other data points would serve readers better long term as a single page can be updated to point to the most current data and preserve historical data. Slywriter (talk) 23:26, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I'll third the Random button comment. It serves no purpose at this point unless you want to discover dozens of stubs of football players and plant cultivars. JoelleJay (talk) 03:25, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Not limited to stubs, not limited to locations; every new article creation should cite at least one reliable, indepth source. Articles lacking this should be tagged for improvement, and then (after a week or so) either moved to draftspace or redirected to a list (if a relevant list is available). Fram (talk) 07:56, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

 
chapel in Dolany
  • The random function could be easily configured or parameterised to include or exclude specific types of content, depending on the user's requirements. For example, I most often see "random article" in the Wikipedia iPhone app, which I browse daily. This seems to be already filtered so that only articles with images are shown.
Trying the app's randomizer, I soon find Dolany (Kladno District) – a Czech village. This is a stub but notice that it has has an image and infobox and so looks fine. Notice also that it has no citations – just an {{authority control}} entry. It was created from the corresponding article in the Czech wikipedia. Notice that the topic also exists in many other language Wikipedias and so is generally accepted as valid.
If editors want to flesh this stub out then that's what they should do. Deletion would be a retrograde step and therefore disruptive. Creating yet more rules would be contrary to policy per WP:CREEP.
Andrew🐉(talk) 19:02, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes an article that has a history section in Czech, has image galleries on commons and other points that show someone took effort in at least one language, and didn't just drop a line from a database
The mission also calls for wikipedia to last a 100 years, tens of thousands of one line articles that require updating to be relevant are of no help to future editors and readers.(Nor are database dumps of single game sports professionals nor genus/species articles that could be handled at the genus level because nothing is known about any of those species. And there is little call to delete the data, it's about changing how it is organized so there are less articles and more relevant lists/charts to capture these one liners. Slywriter (talk) 20:00, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
Nganzun, created in 2008, has two additional stub articles hierarchially above it before you get to an en-wiki article with any relevant information at Mandalay_Region. The Burmese wikipedia is marginally better though even there Nganzun and Nganzun Township could easily be one article, but better yet both could make Myingyan District an actual relevant article and editors have only one article to update going forward. Instead, 3 articles will languish untouched for decades. Slywriter (talk) 20:34, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
Burma and Bangladesh got hammered with loads of "village" stubs created by-bot/bot-like-editing by Dr. Blofeld (now Encyclopædius) back in 2008 or so. Almost none of them have been touched since. The articles were created from GEOnet data but - very importantly - what GEOnet calls a "populated place" can be literally anything that people might live/work in and many of the places it describes as "populated" may never have been populated (it's not like they send investigators out to check or do any work to validate the data they present). Nganzun doesn't even have that.
"Spray and pray" stub creation really is just a bane. FOARP (talk) 07:28, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Creating articles that are simply statistical data presented in prose-format is simply bad editing - everything Rambot added could have been (and probably was) a single line in a table and would have been more concise and more easily comparable to other places presented that way. I think we can and should do better than that. I will, however, say that using a bot to do this is still better than the cut/paste stuff that Carlos, Lugnuts, and Dr. Blofeld were doing, since human error is reduced. FOARP (talk) 08:18, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I have mixed feelings about geostubs, but oppose any new policy restricting their creation. There are a few good things about geostubs, even ones that languish un-edited for long periods of time. A few I can think of off the top of my head: 1) When we have an article, it allows readers to easily navigate to corresponding articles in other languages that may be better. 2) They provide infrastructure for new editors who may not be equipped to start an article from scratch with appropriate navbox/coords/etc. but who may be able to productively contribute to an already existing article. 3) For a similar reason, redirects to existing table-type articles probably discourage the creation of new geographic articles (someone who sees a table may think, but where could i add information about the history of this place?). And to the extent you say, well let's not use redirects, then, only the search function, then you have a problem where multiple places have the same name, which is a very frequent occurrence. And that makes things difficult for readers. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:14, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose any kind of mandatory merging/listing rule. There are definitely circumstances where that is appropriate, but just because something is short doesn't mean it isn't better as a standalone page than a line of an endless table or list. Redirects to sections or rows in tables are very easy to break and imagine trying to deal with that on a mobile device. postdlf (talk) 19:44, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Automatic Exemption from Hard IP Block for established logged-in users

Latest comment: 3 years ago12 comments9 people in discussion

I don't understand the rationale behind parts of the current Hard IP Block policy. Obviously it is important to prevent vandalism from unregistered or new accounts, however once an editor is relatively well established I don't see how this has any significant effect. Many people, myself included, frequently use a VPN service for perfectly legitimate reasons, in my case my ISP fails to connect to many servers elsewhere on the web. When I come across small errors on wiki, it is impractical to disconnect and reconnect just to fix it, so I often simply don't do it.

From my understanding, the reasoning behind such a policy is to prevent anonymous vandalism by ensuring that all edits are attributable. Provided a well established user is logged in then any edits they make remain attributable, regardless of the IP address they originate from. If such a user were to engage in vandalism, they would be blocked; they would then be unable to edit from the blocked IP, removing the problem.

I do not understand why automatic exemption should not be granted to such users; as they are still accountable for their edits there is no reason why this would have any meaningful impact on vandalism. I think that once a user has shown that they can be trusted to edit protected pages, their motives for using a blocked IP can be assumed to be benign.

Extended confirmed users should absolutely be trusted with this; the risk of someone creating an account (which cannot be done from the blocked IP), making 500 edits and waiting 30 days just to abuse an anonymous IP address is non-existent, given the user can still easily be blocked. I think autoconfirmed users are up for debate, however I would again point to the fact that accounts cannot be created from blocked IPs, providing an element of accountability.

While VPNs and other forms of anonymous proxies clearly pose a risk of vandalism, having a blanket ban fails to recognise that there are perfectly legitimate reasons for an editor to use these. Exempting established editors from these bans will not have any impact on vandalism or accountability, while removing barriers to them fixing issues they see on wikipedia from such IP addresses. If an editor is trusted with high-level permissions, why can they not be trusted to edit from a blocked IP?

Given administrators automatically receive such an exemption, it cannot be that difficult to add this permission to other user groups. Therefore, I propose that extended-confirmed users are granted this permission, and ask that we debate whether this exemption should be extended to auto-confirmed users. John wiki: If you have a problem, don't mess with my puppy... 12:17, 17 April 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by John wiki (talk • contribs) 12:01, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

There is already a mechanism for non-admins to work around hard IP blocks: Wikipedia:IP block exemption, which is open to anyone who demonstrates a need and can be trusted not to abuse the right. Since the vast majority of users don't need it, automatically giving this to a whole user group would serve no purpose, except to significantly undermine our ability to detect misuse of multiple of accounts (which is the main reason we hard block proxies, not ordinary vandalism). – Joe (talk) 18:39, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
@Joe Roe: How would it undermine the ability to detect socks? Also, how would a user be able to abuse the right? The main thing I'd be worried about are compromised accounts, but inactive accounts could maybe be excluded somehow. When you say that "the vast majority of users don't need it" I'm not entirely sure. Am I the only one who gets bombarded with VPN sponsorships on YouTube? They must be selling subscriptions if they can afford that. Some mobile internet ranges probably also get blocked every now and then. The vast majority of users is likely unaware of the possibility to get IP block exemption. In order to say anything sensible, we'd need to know how often extended-confirmed users are stopped from editing by an IP block. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:57, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Open proxies are hardblocked => Registered users can't use open proxies => Registered users have to use their own Internet connection to edit Wikipedia => Checkuser can detect all accounts on the Internet connection. (Ideal scenario)
Allowing users to use proxies means allowing them to hide their IP address from checkusers. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:10, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Checkusers can see 3 months back, so this would require some serious planning. On the one hand there is the theoretical risk of increased vandalism because of that, on the other hand there are potential missed contributions from legitimate users who happen to use a VPN. Since the former is theoretical and we don't have stats on the latter, there is no way for us to come to an informed decision. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:07, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Before I peeked behind the CU curtain, I would also have been sceptical that someone would spend months getting an account extended confirmed just so they could switch to a proxy to evade a block. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people with that much time on their hands, and the disruption they cause also often goes far beyond vandalism.
As for awareness, yes, the majority of users probably don't know that IPBE exists. But the message you see if you're affected by a proxy block points you to it, so hopefully the percentage is much higher for those who actually need it. – Joe (talk) 07:29, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
"Extended confirmed users should absolutely be trusted with this": No, as it would take away the scrutiny and requirement for justification that WP:IPBE provides. Extended-confirmed sockpuppeteers, even admin sockpuppeteers, exist. A prominent case was Edgar181. This case was prominent because it was a rare occurrence and the trust implied in sysop permissions is even higher than the trust required for IPBE. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:17, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
If you think that sockpuppeteers would not go to the trouble of creating multiple extended-confirmed socks to disrupt with, you haven't met some of our most dedicated sockmasters. Black Kite (talk) 20:23, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Absolutely. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:49, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure how best to preserve the ability to detect socks, but I feel strongly that any situation that makes it as hard as it currently is to edit from, say, China is unacceptable. Benjamin (talk) 08:53, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
I strongly oppose this proposal, because I believe it's founded on a flawed premise, namely that the risk of someone creating an account (which cannot be done from the blocked IP), making 500 edits and waiting 30 days just to abuse an anonymous IP address is non-existent. Simple vandalism, logged-out or otherwise, is only part of the issue here; extended-confirmed is not hard to game, and I could list dozens of socks who had EC (or other, manually granted permissions). The blanket IPBE grant that is proposed here would make it extremely easy to sock. The CU team is willing to grant IPBE for users who have to circumvent the Great Firewall or similar government censorship mechanisms and does so regularly, after review – and that needs to stay this way if we want to keep CUs in a position to deal with skilled sockmasters through technical evidence {{webhostblock}} and {{colocationwebhost}} already point users to WP:IPBE, but if additional mechanisms for pointing users towards WP:IPECPROXY are needed, that can of course be done. Blablubbs|talk 13:58, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Heck no IPBE can be granted at request. It should not be given out if not necessary. The potential for abuse is quite high. Gaming ECP isn't that hard. Our socks are dedicated to the art of abuse. AdmiralEek (talk) 23:22, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Attribution when copying within Wikipedia

Latest comment: 3 years ago35 comments15 people in discussion

Copying within Wikipedia: Should hyperlink attribution be allowed?

Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia#Hyperlink says:

"A statement in the edit summary such as copied content from page name; see that page's history for attribution will direct interested parties to the edit history of the source page, where they can trace exactly who added what content when. A disadvantage with this method is that the page history of the original article must subsequently be retained in order to maintain attribution."

Do we want to consider this to be proper attribution? -Guy Macon (talk) 16:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

  • No: as proponent. In my opinion, this creates a copyright land mine. Requiring that a page never be deleted because someone made a copy isn't reasonable. It would be too easy to miss the one edit summary that makes the page undeletable and delete it anyway, thus creating an inadvertent copyright violation. Making a page undeletable could be abused by someone who opposes deletion. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. It's one of the three methods of attribution explicitly allowed in the Terms of Service. I think we can trust WMF Legal in their interpretation of the license. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:14, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    • No it isn't. That page says "a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using" (along with two other ways to do it) A hyperlink to a page that no longer exists does not qualify. If you allow hyperlink attribution, you must make the page you hyperlink to undeletable. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:49, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. As Finnusertop points out, including a link to the original source page is one of the three explicitly mentioned methods of attributions allowed under our legal policies. As ProcrastinatingReader mentions below, if you are legitimately concerned that the source page may be deleted at some point in the future, you could add {{Copied}} to the source page's talk page to inform deleting admins of the copyright issue. In the event that someone uses this strategy to game the system to make a page that should be deleted undeletable, the situation could be repaired by moving the page out of the mainspace, e.g. to a subpage of the destination article's talk page, and then updating the attribution accordingly. In practice, this seems to be an issue very rarely, and I would want to see evidence that this is an actual recurring problem before considering a change to our guidelines here, as well as a viable alternative solution beyond the "list of authors" idea. Mz7 (talk) 17:24, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. This is already allowed, and recommended, in the copyright policy. The alternative – tracking down and listing authors – is often impractical. The biggest problem is not source pages getting deleted, but editors not providing attribution in any way when copying, and this is not going to get any better if we make the required process more burdensome.
    As for preserving histories - this is done not just for attribution, it's best practice anyway. I really don't see any issue with "undeletables". If the source page needs to be removed for whatever reason, then it's history should just be kept under a redirect, possibly at a different title. There's no benefit to deletion here. If under some exceptional circumstance the page does need to actually be deleted, then the deleting admin can extract the list of authors and mark it on the destination page; there's no need for this to be forced in all other cases. – Uanfala (talk) 22:50, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Well, I would be disappointed that deleting admins don't know what it means and what happens when they delete page history. I think, I was aware of what happens on deletion in wiping out history very early. Has not someone written instructions for admins about preserving history, when needed? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:44, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, obviously this should be allowed. Despite the policy page saying there are "three" methods, two of them are "hyperlink" based. The third method is listing every individual contributor. Listing every contributor in the edit summary is often impossible due to character limits, and is always inconvenient. So as I understand it, this will often make splits/merges impossible. There's already a template for talk pages when there is substantial edit-history relevant to content on other pages, so accidental deletion isn't really a concern. 力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:54, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes no good reason to change the status quo. Elli (talk | contribs) 05:40, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes per Mz7. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:35, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (attribution when copying within WP)

  • Does this exclude the use of oldid/diff links? I understand the concern to the base bare article name, but using links w/ oldid/diff that contains the text that was copied should be fine? --Masem (t) 17:03, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Would that make the original page undeletable? I am not sure if the diffs work after deletion. An edit summary like "Added 'I like cake!', originally posted by User:Masem" along with the diff would preserve attribution even if the diff no longer works. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:27, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • How else would we maintain attribution when merging articles or copying content? – Joe (talk) 17:05, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Merging deletes the source without deleting the history, so we would have no undeletable article. For short sections of content, see my answer to Masem. If someone wants to copy a large page with many editors, preserving the history for attribution is an absolute requirement; failing to do so violates the CC BY-SA 3.0 License. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • This is the only feasible way to do attribution in many cases. For example: copying a template or another page into a sandbox. I'm not going to sit and dig through the page history and write down the name of everyone in the edit summary every time I create a sandbox. It's not really reasonable to expect when splitting or merging pages either. {{Copied}} exists to make sure the page doesn't get deleted. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:09, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Then you are saying that it is OK to make the page you copied from undeletable. Preserving the history for attribution is an absolute requirement; failing to do so violates the CC BY-SA 3.0 License. I don't like it either, but following copyright rules is not something that we abandon when it becomes inconvenient. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
      • It's well and good that you say this is an absolute requirement, but that is really a question for the Foundation's lawyers. If they feel it necessary, a list of editors who contributed to a deleted article could be provided for compliance, avoiding all the practical problems of the proposal. In practice, these pages are generally kept as redirects with revision history. 力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:57, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Could we have some background, please, like what exactly is the issue and where have the previous discussions on the topic been? Does the proposal aim to ban editors from linking, or to force them to always provide a list of authors? This can work if the number of contributors is small, but how do you trace all the contributors to a section of a large established article when splitting it out? Also, a list of contributors may be sufficient for copyright purposes, but having the actual history of that content is always preferable: it shows how the content has developed, it allows in principle to see who wrote what exactly (helpful, for example, if one of the contributors later turns out to have been partial to creating hoaxes), and it preserves a record, in the edit summaries, of justifications for parts of that content.
    And why would the original page need to be deleted? It can always be turned into a redirect (and also potentially moved to a different title), preserving the history, and if there's anything actually nefarious in that history, it can be revdeled. And as for inadvertent deletions, when are these actually likely to happen? The copying is normally indicated in a talk page template, or sometimes in the edit summary of the source page; even if it's not, then the source and the destination pages would almost always have some obvious connection, like one being a redirect to the other. – Uanfala (talk) 17:23, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Re: "And why would the original page need to be deleted? It can always be turned into a redirect (and also potentially moved to a different title), preserving the history", that's not the problem. The problem is when you copy a chunk of a page to another page using a hyperlink for attribution and then years later the original article gets deleted at AfD. Bam. Instant copyright violation.
    The problem is real. Not allowing hyperlink attribution is one solution. Making an ever-increasing number of pages undeletable is another solution (but we would need some way to keep track of which articles can never be deleted). I would love to hear a solution that is better than the above two, but "Ignore the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and purposely create copyright violations because it is convenient" is not an acceptable solution. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:41, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    Not allowing hyperlink attribution is not a solution by itself; we still need a way to attribute the text. Should we be dumping the authors to a list and including it on, say, a subpage of the corresponding talk page? It would be helpful in that case for the software to provide additional support for this. isaacl (talk) 18:02, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    Another possible software enhancement would be for it to support a "link to history" mechanism, so you could link a new article to the history of any ancestor articles. If an ancestor was deleted, then the software could provide a way to still extract the editor names. But something else still has to be done until any new feature work gets planned, scheduled, implemented, tested, and delivered (if it ever happens). isaacl (talk) 18:06, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    Because Guy didn't answer, this is clearly related to the DRV topics discussed at WP:AN#Review of DRV supervotes by King of Hearts. Izno (talk) 18:27, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    You may think that it is "clearly related" but I wasn't aware of the above until just now. This has pretty much nothing to do with the general question I am asking, but see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Frobozz1/PA-design, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#I feel personally attacked for good faith edits - MfD my user page, Incident threats, BRD disruption - still learning, am I wrong? and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Parental Alienation if you really want to get into the weeds. --Guy Macon (talk)
    The relevant bit in the AN/DRV threads – as far as I can tell from all the layers of procedural wrangling – is to do with the Squid article, and the fact that an admin was presumably aware of the issue of attribution, but decided to delete the article anyway. As for the MFD case, as far as I can tell from a quick glimpse, what is at stake is the deletion of a target of a merge, and not its source, so attribution shouldn't really be an issue at this stage, should it? – Uanfala (talk) 19:53, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    Thus my statement, "This has pretty much nothing to do with the general question I am asking". I original ignored your request for "context" because there is no context, just a general question about our policies. Then Izno answered for me and got the answer wrong. None of this has anything to do with the question I am asking in this RfC. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:12, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Does this not have legal implications? Is this not an office matter? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

A potential solution

  • What it sounds like we need is a mechanism to handle the following situation:
  1. Article X is created and expanded over time
  2. Article Y takes a sufficient amount of article X to require attribution (eg not just a citation, but like a whole paragraph). Attribution is added by linking of some time
  3. Sometime after this content is added to Y, article X is sent to AFD and determined to be deleted (not merged nor redirected, nor where it would make sense to history merge X into Y).
So that the deletion "breaks" the attribution that was on Y that pointed back to X that would have been there by X's page history, which would likely still be there to admins but not to regular users. We need to find a way that keeps the history of X available but without having the article of X there. Perhaps when we know that there has been some copying done (can it be possible to automate this check?) that we cannot delete articles but make a deleted target a redirect to some common special page that talks about the history being retained for proper attribution and how the user can go back to the redirect's history to explore that? --Masem (t) 18:12, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
That's essentially what I was brainstorming as a possible software enhancement, though I don't see how the check can be automated, so I think the editor creating page Y would have to explicitly link to the history leading up to a specific version of page X. Note this applies to all Wikipedia pages, not just articles. isaacl (talk) 18:19, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
I'm sure there's a few checks that can be made if the {{copied}} template is found on the talk page, or if the history edit summaries contain a diff or oldid (which is uncommon, so this could at least be a list that can be checked manually). But we're likely going to miss other ways that the current language currently allows for (the plain hyperlink w/o oldid or diff), so maybe there's almost a need in Wikimedia that if someone clicks on an oldid/diff of a page that is deleted, that they are taken to a special page to explain what they may be able to do from there; thre we can explain they can contact an admin to help - and if we have this redirect system in place, then the admin can restore+redirect to suit the purpose. I can't see any easy way to do a full Wiki-wide search this way, but we can set up processes to prevent the issue in the future and respond when the need from past deletions comes up. --Masem (t) 18:25, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, that's what I mean by needing an editor to explicitly link the history, whether it is through the {{copied}} template or a new user interface. To help reduce the window for race conditions, I think a new user interface would be better. isaacl (talk) 18:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
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