Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

This issue has disrupted multiple threads on unrelated issues, so I figure I should raise it at a nice central location where we can hash it out once and for all:

Is notifying the relevant Wikiprojects to a discussion ever a violation of WP:CANVASS?

(My position is no, it's not, but I'll save the argumentation for later.) Loki (talk) 02:02, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

It can be, if the Wikiproject is unrepresentative of the broader community. There are several ARBCOM principles relevant to this, including:

Participation:

The determination of proper consensus is vulnerable to unrepresentative participation from the community. Because of the generally limited number of editors likely to participate in any given discussion, an influx of biased or partisan editors is likely to generate an improper illusion of a consensus where none (or a different one) would exist in a wider population.

Canvassing:

While it is acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, messages that are written to influence the outcome rather than to improve the quality of a discussion may be considered disruptive. In particular, messages to fora mostly populated by a biased or partisan audience — especially when not public — are considered canvassing and disrupt the consensus building process by making participation lopsided.

No exception is made for if the forum is organized as a Wikiproject; an influx of biased or partisan editors is an issue regardless of whether they came from a non-representative Wikiproject or another non-representative forum.

WP:CANVASS says the same thing; it forbids notifications to a partisan audience, and makes it clear that WP:APPNOTE does not create exceptions to these rules; Do not send inappropriate notices, as defined in the section directly below, and do not send messages to users who have asked not to receive them.

It's important to note that most Wikiprojects are representative and non-partisan; our rules on canvassing only affect a very small number, and even those are only partisan on some topics within their area of interest and can be notified without issue on the rest. BilledMammal (talk) 02:09, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have only a few short things to say:

1. The idea of a "partisan Wikiproject" is ridiculous. If such a thing existed, it would be WP:NOTHERE and get booted.

2. A Wikiproject tending to vote a particular way is not the same thing as a partisan Wikiproject: consider for instance a vote about whether evolution should be treated as true where everyone from WP:BIOLOGY and half of all other editors voted the same way while half of all other editors did (and assuming these groups are roughly balanced). In this case, the Wikiproject members are clearly in keeping with the global consensus and it's a minority of non-members that aren't.

3. The line in WP:APPNOTE that you're quoting was added only about a year ago with little discussion on the talk page. You are in fact one of the people who advocated adding it.

4. Both those lines from ArbCom that you're quoting come from the same case which was about a secret and partisan outside forum. Neither even contemplates the idea of notifications on Wikipedia being canvassing. Loki (talk) 02:32, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

We've had a long history of issues with partisan Wikiprojects, recently for example WikiProject Roads which became so hyper-partisan that it ended up forking rather than complying with policy and guideline when all their attempts to destroy those policies and guidelines failed. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 13:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If a WikiProject is so problematic/"partisan" that it is causing significant issues and vote brigading, it needs to be taken to Arbcom. A project cannot be considered problematic by definition without at the very least community input through ANI, but preferably an Arbcom case. Curbon7 (talk) 21:50, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

No, it isn't. I have been accused of selective notification for notifying Wikiproject Quebec about an RfC concerning a Quebec premier, while not notifying other provincial wikiprojects, which is ridiculous. Anyway, the correct solution to perceived imbalances in notifications is always to notify more editors through various means of mass notification; it is never to accuse editors using these mandated channels of "canvassing" - the latter is what is disruptive, IMO.

And concerning BilledMammal's comment on this, the idea that any WikiProject would be a biased or partisan audience is set out here without any shred of evidence. Nor is there any evidence that Arbcom or INAPPNOTE had these public, on-wiki fora in mind when cautioning against partisanship. The fact is that Wikiprojects concern topics, not ideologies (whether on-wiki or off-wiki ideologies) so if you want to be informed on a topic where you disagree with the opinions of the most active contributors, the sensible thing has always been to join the wikiproject or at least to follow its page for updates.

Just for emphasis: accusing editors of bias because they belong to or notify wikiprojects is itself a violation of WP:NPA and disruptive. When I was accused of bias and canvassing for notifying Wikiproject Quebec, I felt both hurt and falsely accused - that is, once I was finished laughing at the absurdly false assumptions the accusation implied concerning my views about nationalism. Newimpartial (talk) 02:18, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

the idea that any WikiProject would be a "biased or partisan audience" is set out here without any shred of evidence.

As I understand it, the intent of this discussion is to determine whether it is theoretically possible for a Wikiproject to be unrepresentativeormostly populated by a biased or partisan audience and thus inappropriate to notify.

Whether any specific Wikiproject is unrepresentativeormostly populated by a biased or partisan audience is a different question that can be addressed elsewhere. BilledMammal (talk) 02:23, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't see the question posed in this section as whether it is theoretically possible for a Wikiproject to be biased and notifying it to be canvassing; I think the relevant question is whether this is a practical or relevant concern. What matters isn't the theoretical (how many angels can fit on the head of a pin) but rather the practical (is there an angel on the head of my pin, and if so, does it give me an unfair advantage in discussions to determine consensus of the community on a topic).

What is clearly the case is that these kind of accusations - claims that specific wikiprojects are partisan (always without evidence; always a "theoretical" concern) and that notfiying them is therefore partisan - have had real, and unmistakable toxic effects on-wiki. These effects have included individual editors feeling attacked and misunderstood, and also community time wasted on dramaboards, and to my knowledge the community has not reached consensus that any wikiproject notification was ever canvassing, though efforts have been (correctly) made to ensure that editors having differing perspectives on issues are also notified.

In any event, there is a clear and present cost to the community thanks to toxic discussion when certain editors insist on retaining the accusation of "canvassing by notifying partisan wikiprojects" within their arsenal. Given this evident pain point, it seems clear to me that the onus is on those holding this belief to present evidence that it is a real, not theoretical, possibility. Otherwise we are dragging down the level of civility in the community and wasting the time of editors and administrators just because certain editors believe they ought to be able to make a certain argument - even though, to the best of my knowledge, the community has never reached consensus that this argument was ever borne out in an actual situation on-wiki. Newimpartial (talk) 02:55, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

always without evidence; always a "theoretical" concern

That's not accurate; the discussions that Loki linked as provoking this discussion included evidence. However, I won't go into it here, both because I don't want to derail this discussion with talk of specific WikiProjects and because you are topic banned and thus can't engage with the evidence. BilledMammal (talk) 02:59, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Before this is closed, I wanted to clarify that when I said, to my knowledge the community has not reached consensus that any wikiproject notification was ever canvassing, I was referring to the act of issuing an appropriately worded, neutral notification to a Wikiproject. Issuing a non-neutral notification, whether to a wikiproject or a dramaboard, can of course be canvassing. The fairly extensive contributions made to this discussion have confirmed my opinion that a neutrally-worded notification to a wikiproject is never canvassing, and that the solution to selective notifications (e.g., concerning Israel-Palestine issues) is always to notify more editors, bringing in diverse views from other relevant projects or through centralized boards. I don't think this is applied Neutonian physics, here. Newimpartial (talk) 14:29, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Agreed with @Gnomingstuff. While I don't deny there have been legitimate and serious issues with canvassing, canvassing is slowly becoming Wikipedia's Stop the Steal. By that I mean, it's a accusation freely thrown out by someone when their idea loses at a !vote or is suddenly drowned out by opposing ideas. The obvious intent is to try for an appeal by mass discrediting any opposing opnion, rather than accept their idea might might have been an unpopular one. So any policy changes, IMHO, should be to clarify what is and is not canvassing and not introduce more confusion and open more doors for appeals and lawyering when ones proposal isn't suceeding.Dave (talk) 14:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Disclaimer: As someone who thinks CANVASS is a bad policy ("good intentions..."), I think notifying WikiProject is a good practice, per Linus's Law. That said, as some others have mentioned, it can be a problem if one notifies only WikiProjects related to one side of an argument. The more, the merrier, is a rule of thumb. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:57, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I fail to see how anyone could consider any WikiProject to be related to one side of the argument. Such an argument presumes that everyone who has a particular WikiProject's page on their watchlist is of the same opinion and such a presumption has no factual basis. TarnishedPath^talk 03:29, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Actually it doesn't presume that. It only presumes that people with a particular interest are more likely to gravitate towards projects matching that interest and less likely to gravitate towards other projects. This is obviously true. The same group of people are able to watch Wikiproject India and Wikiproject Pakistan, but it will not be true in practice that the same group of people do watch them. If an issue regarding a dispute between India and Pakistan is notified to only one of those projects, it is reasonable to suspect an intention to bias the discussion. Zero^talk 07:47, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

My point is that someone watching Wikiproject India for example may fall either side of being for or against India's interest. It would be a mistake to presume that notifying Wikiproject India in regards to some hypothetical discussion is going to result in an homogenous group of editors all voting along national interests. TarnishedPath^talk 07:55, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Theres no such thing as a WikiProject being "unrepresentative", literally any editor can watchlist any WikiProject's talk page. I watchlist, for example: Wikipedia:WikiProject Arab world, Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball, Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography, Wikipedia:WikiProject Egypt, Wikipedia:WikiProject Human rights, Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam, Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel, Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration, Wikipedia:WikiProject Jewish history, Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism, Wikipedia:WikiProject Palestine, Wikipedia:WikiProject Syria, Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism, Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges. Any notification to any of those I would see. Now there are times where notifying only specific WikiProjects that have an intended audience may be an issue, like only notifying WikiProject Palestine about some discussion also relevant to WikiProject Israel, but notifying WikiProjects that have within their scope whatever is under discussion is not canvassing. nableezy - 02:31, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Theres no such thing as a WikiProject being "unrepresentative", literally any editor can watchlist any WikiProject's talk page.

They can, but the possibility that they can doesn't mean the forum isn't unrepresentative if they don't. Consider a hypothetical; lets pretend that 90% of people affiliated (watchlisting, members, etc) with Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel are pro-Israel in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Clearly, it would be unrepresentative, and a WP:CANVASS violation to notify unless there is an equally unrepresentative forum in the opposite direction that is also notified (perhaps Wikipedia:WikiProject Palestine).

To be clear, I'm not saying either of these are unrepresentativeormostly populated by a biased or partisan audience; I haven't looked into either of them, and am only using them for the sake of example. BilledMammal (talk) 02:38, 28 May 2024 (UTC) Edited 02:51, 28 May 2024 (UTC) to clarifyReply

If something is not relevant to WikiProject Palestine, like say an article on some random company in Tel Aviv, then notifying WikiProject Israel and not WikiProject Palestine would be totally fine. If something is relevant to both, then only notifying one would be an issue. I literally just said, in the comment you are replying to, there are times where notifying only specific WikiProjects that have an intended audience may be an issue, like only notifying WikiProject Palestine about some discussion also relevant to WikiProject Israel. But the idea that a page that any and every registered user can watchlist can be a target for canvassing is silly. I guarantee you "pro-Israel" users watchlist WikiProject Palestine, and "pro-Palestine" users watchlist WikiProject Israel. If the notification itself is neutral, it isnt a CANVASSING violation to post to a WikiProject about a discussion in its scope. nableezy - 02:43, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is similar to how I feel about it too: there are times when notifying only certain Wikiprojects says bad things about the notifier's intent, but I don't think there's ever a time where notifying only certain Wikiprojects ever causes provably skewed results.

(Furthermore, not notifying the relevant Wikiprojects is often also suspicious in this way. Sometimes it smacks of not wanting a decision to be scrutinized by people who regularly edit in the topic area.) Loki (talk) 02:48, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

You previously discussed your point of view regarding partisan WikiProjects at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 49 § Modifications to CANVASS, and it didn't get much support. As I said then, WikiProjects are just groups of editors sharing a common interest and working together to further the goals of Wikipedia, usually by working on various initiatives. Most of them are oriented around a content area, and thus attract the knowledgeable editors in that area. Notifying the corresponding WikiProjects for related content areas is considered to be a neutral way of reaching the interested editors who are best able to bring greater context to a decision. It's not partisan to be interested in a content area.

There can be groups that, by their nature, have self-selected a set of editors with a specific position on some issue, and thus its members are more prone to make partial arguments for that position. If someone set up WikiProject solely to vote in favour of removing all foreign language names from English Wikipedia articles, for example, then notifying it would result in vote-stacking. However the community has dealt with this by reaching a consensus that the group's purpose is counter to the best interests of the overall project and disbanding the group. isaacl (talk) 03:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• There have been issues relating to very cliquey Wikiprojects/similar pages. Not a huge number but hard to say "ever". The question says "the relevant Wikiprojects", which is plural, while I assume the issue is usually with a relevant Wikiproject. The common practice of simply notifying all Wikiprojects on the talkpage, with a neutral message the same across all notifications, works fine in the vast majority of cases. CMD (talk) 02:46, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  The question at issue here was originally sparked by someone notifying the relevant Wikiproject and all people on the talk page about an AFD for an essay closely related to LGBT issues. The assertion by some editors for deletion, including the person who started the AFD in the first place, was that WP:LGBT was biased such that notifying them at all, even in combination with a group of editors including some editors known specifically to oppose the existence of the page, was canvassing. Loki (talk) 02:52, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• No, the only thing that would make a Wikiproject notification a violation of WP:CANVASS is if the notification itself was done in a POV manner, such as calling for everyone at the Wikiproject to vote a certain way. Or you might get called out if it was, say, an RfC on a religious topic and the only Wikiproject you notified was Wikiproject Atheism. Though the solution to such a case is just to notify the other relevant Wikiprojects, which anyone can do. The only other case I can think of that would get you some side-eye and comments is if you were notifying Wikiprojects that very clearly had nothing to do with the topic at hand, such as if it was a Biology RfC and you went and notified Wikiproject Football. Though that would less be canvassing and more just...confusion. Silverseren^C 03:08, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  FYI, notifying WikiProject Football about a Biology RfC would violate WP:CANVASS; see Spamming and excessive cross-posting. BilledMammal (talk) 03:11, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• No, notifying relevant Wikiprojects about a discussion does not in itself constitute violate WP:CANVASS. To be frank, some of the claims that it does have seemed to necessarily—whether the users writing such claims intend it or not—involve prejudicial assessments, such as the presumption that WP:LGBT is somehow inappropriately 'partisan' in a way contrary to Wikipedia's purpose because—why, honestly? Because of a presumption that the project draws in LGBT editors, and on top of that a presumption that LGBT editors are inappropriately 'partisan' about LGBT-related topics compared to cisgender and heterosexual editors? I really don't see how this claim, either in the abstract or in context, doesn't inevitably hinge on prejudicial presumptions about editors that violate the wmf:Policy:Universal Code of Conduct's tenets about collegiality, good citizenship, and creating a pleasant and safe space for participants. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 06:32, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
• Notifying a WikiProject cannot ever be a serious canvassing problem, since it's open, widely broadcast message. The issue usually is that some people sitting on a favoured WP:LOCALCON get upset at the extra attention it brings. Bon courage (talk) 07:36, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I think I've seen that happen. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:41, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• No, the basic assumption is IMO that Wikiprojects can be watched by all kinds of people. Hopefully several of them do so because of a general interest in the topics that can pop up, and not out of a desire to promote whatever every chance they get. Some projects are pretty close to various CTOPS, like Israel/Palestine, India/Pakistan and FTN, but that is still my basic assumption. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:40, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
• In general and in principle, no; but in practice, in the past, certain WikiProjects have been problematic and hard to deal with. For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography fought a long and historically successful campaign to have their own SNG for pornstars, which allowed sources that weren't independent. The fighting went on for years until the SNG was finally deprecated in 2019 after this RfC; subsequently most of the pornstar "biographies" that Wikipedia used to host got deleted on the grounds that they didn't contain any biographical information at all. Porn performers' names, dates of birth, nationalities, families and career history outside porn are understandably kept quiet, so all the information we had on these people was pure kayfabe. And for another example, although the Article Rescue Squadron isn't a problematic WikiProject, it's certainly had its share of problematic members leading to various tedious Arbcom cases. I think that what history tells me is that where a WikiProject has started to develop their own groupthink and begun to diverge from mainstream Wikipedian thought, then we're going to have a problem; and people getting unhappy about notifying that WikiProject about discussions can be an early symptom of that problem starting to be noticed. To the best of my knowledge, there aren't any WikiProjects at that stage at the moment, but it's worth keeping an eye on.—S Marshall T/C 07:47, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
• The Article Rescue Squadron also came to my mind, but that was because how it partially operated historically - a few users were using it to try and vote-stack AfDs with the goal of keeping articles rather than engaging with the arguments for and against deletion and/or improving the article. It took effort but those users were dealt with and that problem has passed. The groups current focus on improving important articles that would otherwise be at risk of deletion is unproblematic. So yes, partisan WikiProjects is a theoretical problem, but unless the OP or anyone else has any actual evidence of WikiProjects attempting to distort consensus then there is no issue here. Members of a WikiProject sharing an opinion is not itself evidence of anything untoward.
  An editor selectively notifying only some relevant WikiProjects is correctly dealt with by neutrally notifying the other WikiProjects, and, if necessary, separately engaging in dispute resolution regarding that editor. Similarly an editor notifying unrelated projects and/or making non-neutral notifications is an issue with that editor. These are not evidence of a problem with notifying WikiProjects generally or with notifying specific WikiProjects in particular. TL;DR neutral notifications to relevant WikiProjects is almost never canvassing. Thryduulf (talk) 08:56, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I think there are cleaner examples. ARS' purpose was to find promising candidates for a WP:HEY response, so it's reasonable for them to talk about current AFDs, even if it did have some problems. Similarly, I think it's usually fair to notify Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard about disputes involving fringe-y subjects, even though the dominant POV there is decidedly anti-fringe.

  In other cases, the only possible connection is that you happen to know this group has an opinion. For example, editors should not notify Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers about proposals to change Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes, because that group has a history of disputes over infoboxes in "their" articles, and because if you were interested in infoboxes, you would probably not know that. A page about musicians is not an obvious place to look for information about infoboxes. However, it would be fine to notify Wikipedia:WikiProject Infoboxes, because it's an obvious page for anyone interested in infoboxes to be watching. Regardless of whether you are pro- or anti- or something else, and regardless of whether you were actively participating or silently lurking, if you wanted to be involved in infoboxes, you would expect to get infobox-related messages there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• No. Notifying Wikiprojects is generally fine, and not prohibited as a purpose of projects is to provide all kinds of notice, neutral wording of the notice is key, though. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:25, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
• Yes. Suppose a project -- let's say it's astronomy -- has people who are used to what's in specialized teaching or publications. Pinging them when the issue is what's best for the general reader -- let's say it's whether to capitalize Universe -- can tilt WP:MOSCAP talks. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 12:52, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  No, we absolutely want editors familiar with a topic to participate in a discussion. You seem to be saying that editors that are familiar with a topic will be less interested in what is best for the encyclopedia than editors who are not familiar with the topic. Assume good faith until proven otherwise. Donald Albury 13:51, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I didn't say what you claim I "seem" to have said. Try AGF yourself. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:17, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  To the question, Is notifying the relevant Wikiprojects to a discussion ever a violation of WP:CANVASS?, you responded "yes", and then said, Suppose a project -- let's say it's astronomy -- has people who are used to what's in specialized teaching or publications. Pinging them when the issue is what's best for the general reader -- let's say it's whether to capitalize Universe -- can tilt WP:MOSCAP talks. How am I supposed to interpret that to mean something other than you are opposed to pinging a project because its participants may have specialized knowledge and would therefore "tilt" (I presume the "wrong" way) the discussion. Can you rephrase your answer to make it clearer to me? - Donald Albury 17:38, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I will rephrase the words "Try AGF yourself." thus: You said I "seem to be saying that editors that are familiar with a topic will be less interested in what is best for the encyclopedia than editors who are not familiar with the topic" -- which would be an aspersion against my esteemed fellow editors, so you're making a conduct accusation. Then you suggest I try AGF. I'm hopeful that others didn't interpret my remark as aspersion or lack of AGF, perhaps because they can't read any such thing in them, perhaps because they can read WP:MOSFAQ. I won't engage further with you about this, unless you take it to WP:ANI. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:35, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I had a similar interpretation of what your original statement meant. I think this would have been more productive if you'd simply replied "That isn't what I meant; what I meant was..." I still don't know what you meant. Schazjmd (talk) 22:03, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I too thought you meant editors that are familiar with a topic will be less interested in what is best for the encyclopedia than editors who are not familiar with the topic when you said Pinging [people who are used to what's in specialized teaching or publications] when the issue is what's best for the general reader -- let's say it's whether to capitalize Universe -- can tilt WP:MOSCAP talks.. You have since stated that that is not what you meant, but you haven't stated what you did mean. Given I misunderstood the first time, I do not think my guessing again is likely to result in my getting the right answer so I will refrain from speculating. Thryduulf (talk) 22:23, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  That's polite of you. Well, I pointed to WP:MOSFAQ so you know the idea is that Although Wikipedia contains some highly technical content, it is written for a general audience. While specialized publications in a field, such as academic journals, are excellent sources for facts, they are not always the best sources for or examples of how to present those facts to non-experts. When adopting style recommendations from external sources, the Manual of Style incorporates a substantial number of practices from technical standards and field-specific academic style guides; however, Wikipedia defaults to preferring general-audience sources on style, especially when a specialized preference may conflict with most readers' expectations, and when different disciplines use conflicting styles. This sort of argument actually did arise in the series of universe|Universe discussions, and I remember an astronomer participant suggested magazines like Astronomy or Sky and Telescope weren't scientific journals, thinking that mattered. I have a vaguer recollection that the WP:CONLEVEL words ("... participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope.") appeared when another project group thought their rules should apply within their project's articles, but that's not what I had in mind, I was only thinking about and mentioning capitalization of Universe, where I believed that specifically addressing those people would not be addressing representatives of the broader community, and subject expertise is not contested but it's about style not subject. And yes ngrams came up too, and I see that you mentioned a case (maybe a WP:MOSCAPS thread about something in French?) where subject expertise was helpful, ngrams were not. But I believe that in the case I brought up the opposite was true. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:49, 29 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Thank you, that was very helpful. I agree that it's important to have some sort of feedback to stay connected with the general reader, and I wouldn't want our running text to read like an Auguſtan newſpaper, with Words random'ly Capitaliſed. On the other hand, the improvement to the reader in clarity, meeting "expectations", etc. for MOSCAPS standardizations like the one mentioned, seems to me about epsilon. If these style confrontations significantly deter motivated editors from improving the encyclopedia, it is a net loss to us in terms of how much the general reader is actually able to learn from the encyclopedia in the future. This isn't intended as a declaration that "the WikiProject is always right"; just a reflection that our standing assumption that "the WikiProject is always wrong" may not actually further the goals of the encyclopedia. Choess (talk) 01:19, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  There was an issue related to this with capitalisation in the rail transport area a while back. In at least instance the MOS-focused editors had not understood that the same 3-4 word term was being used as common noun in one context and as a proper noun in another context meaning things like ngrams were not relevant (as they have no context). This is not something that would be obvious to most non-specialists but is clear to those knowledgeable about the topic area. Subject-specialist knowledge is, in many discussions, important context required to reach the correct decision - whether that decision is to follow specialist conventions or not. Thryduulf (talk) 15:02, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  This touches on something that's puzzled me for years. When a group of editors who are principally interested in interpreting policies & guidelines come into conflict with a group of editors, like a WikiProject, with some subject-matter expertise, we default to treating the latter as parochial fanboys. But it's not clear why this should be so in a broad moral sense: the P&G interpreters are not typically a larger or less hyperfocused group than a WikiProject. I think we tend to assume that because the community at large has ratified P&Gs to embody broadly-agreed upon principles, every statutory interpretation that invokes those P&Gs for a specific case enjoys the same level of broad community support. I'm not convinced that accurately describes the sentiments of the community, though. Choess (talk) 05:01, 29 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I agree. There is a tendency among some (but not all) p&g interpreters to assume that disagreement of their interpretation is disagreement with the policy/guideline rather than disagreement with their interpretation. In the rail transport area this has on multiple occasions manifested itself with sometimes heated accusations about disliking/objecting to/ignoring community consensus regarding e.g. capitalisation of common nouns when the actual disagreement was whether a given term was a common or proper noun. Thryduulf (talk) 07:43, 29 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• No, neutrally notifying a WikiProject about a discussion clearly within its subject matter is always permissible. It would not be at all helpful, for example, to prohibit notifying WP:MED on the basis that its members are more diligent about applying WP:MEDRS than the average Wikipedian, and thus "partisan". WikiProjects fundamentally are places where editors can be notified of discussions and editing opportunities related to a subject area. If a WikiProject can't reliably be notified of discussions within its subject area, it can't meaningfully function. It would be fairer to take any allegedly problematic WikiProjects to MfD rather than to try and place restrictions that would allow them to exist in name but not function.--Trystan (talk) 13:44, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
• No, the idea that we should view people with an interest in a topic as being a biased set rather than an informed set is to speak against the value of knowledge. An informed person is of more value in a relevant discussion; we want the deletion discussion of the Smoking cures broken legs AFD to have more interest from those interested in Wikipedia's medical coverage in general and not just those who found themselves part of making such a page. The fact that the medical editors will not come up with the same view as whatever other editors choose to involve themselves in that discussion is a plus, not a problem. The idea that we can contact Wikiprojects only if they will respond in the exact same ratio as other editors would make contacting Wikiprojects pointless as it would have no impact on the results. The idea that Wikiprojects having an informed POV makes them a problem would suggest dismantling the entire Wikiproject system. Selectively notifying Wikiprojects with the intent of skewing results is a problem, but notifying all the obviously related Wikiprojects is not. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:24, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
• No, I don't believe there's partisan wikiprojects to the extent that notifying the relevant ones is canvassing. In obvious cases (i.e. only notifying WP:ISRAEL for a dicussion about the Second Intifada) selective notifications could be a sign of canvassing, but properly performed WP notifications are not canvassing. AlexandraAVX (talk) 16:48, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Or at least attempted canvassing. It seems probable all kinds of editors would watch something like WP:ISRAEL. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:05, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Agreed. AlexandraAVX (talk) 17:07, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Another example is if we are discussing whether Foo (film) or Foo (train) is a primary topic or if Foo should be a dab. Notifying Wikiproject Film but not WikiProject Trains might seem unfair. However, I agree that 99% of notifications to projects do not constitute canvassing. Certes (talk) 17:17, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Only if the notification does not meet WP:APPNOTE or is to a project which attempts to enforce a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. If it is the former, rephrase; if it is the latter, focus on the local consensus-enforcement bit. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:56, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  The contention I'm trying to argue against here is that there are some projects that are biased such that notifying them at all would not meet WP:APPNOTE. So, could you please rephrase? Loki (talk) 13:08, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  If there are projects that are so biased that a neutral notification about a topic relevant to their topic area would not meet APPNOTE then the Community needs to have a serious discussion (I guess at AN(I)) about that the problems with it and/or the relevant participants can be resolved. I'm not currently aware of any such groups, but if you are then please present the evidence. If you haven't got any such evidence, then please refrain from casting aspersions. Thryduulf (talk) 13:14, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Please read more carefully: the contention I'm trying to argue against here Loki (talk) 15:36, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  My apologies. Thryduulf (talk) 18:40, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  No problem! Loki (talk) 19:31, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Is notifying the relevant Wikiprojects to a discussion ever a violation of WP:CANVASS? No. Can the language of such a notification be canvassing? Yes. Can there be disagreement about which projects are "relevant"? Sure, but I don't see a way to avoid case-by-case determinations of that. All of this said, it's not impossible that a project could function like a canvassing club, but that would need lots of evidence and again should be handled on a case-by-case basis. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:15, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
• WikiProjects are an accepted option for dispute resolution per the policy Wikipedia:Dispute resolution § Related talk pages or WikiProjects. Some issues would be if the notification is phrased in a non-neutral way, or if only a subset of reasonably relevant projects were notified. —Bagumba (talk) 09:46, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
• No, and saying "yes" is, inadvertently or on purpose, helping along years' worth of reputation laundering of the deletion crusades waged by like 10 editors against topics covered by certain WikiProjects -- cricket players, football players, roads, I'm probably missing a few -- by creating consensus for reasonable, unobjectionable-sounding policies and/or against scary-sounding straw men like "partisan bias." The idea is to make it easier to do this stuff as covertly as possible, without having to deal with the pesky obstacles of the rest of the project. To establish a kind of pre-emptive canvassing where they are the only people who ever find out about deletion requests. Gnomingstuff (talk) 22:03, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Yeah, I will also say that my immediate reaction to the accusation that started all this was "not giving notification to anyone who might like this essay that you're trying to get it deleted is also unfair for the same reasons as canvassing would be, and it's weird we don't have a policy about it". Loki (talk) 22:20, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• WP:APPNOTE leaves no room for ambiguity on this:
  

An editor who may wish to draw a wider range of informed, but uninvolved, editors to a discussion can place a message at any of the following:

• The talk page or noticeboard of one or more WikiProjects or other Wikipedia collaborations which may have interest in the topic under discussion.
  

The policy says explicitly "one or more WikiProjects" (my emphasis on the word one). Therefore we can conclude from the actual WP Behavioural Guideline that drawing attention of a discussion to only one WikiProject is acceptable per WP Guidelines. TarnishedPath^talk 12:55, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You need to read all of APPNOTE; the third last paragraph makes it clear that it does not create an exception to INAPPNOTE.

This makes sense; why would we ever wish to permit biased, partisan, or non-neutral notifications? BilledMammal (talk) 13:02, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I fail to see how notifying any WikiProject could ever be taken as "biased, partisan, or non-neutral notifications" given that there are likely to be editors on varies sides of the coin who have any WikiProjects on their notification list. TarnishedPath^talk 01:40, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Per WP:INAPPNOTE votestacking is Posting messages to users selected based on their known opinions (which may be made known by a userbox, user category, or prior statement). Posting to only one WikiProject can not constitute that because an editor has no way of knowing the opinions of every editor who has a WikiProject's page on their watch list. TarnishedPath^talk 01:46, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• It really depends on the context... Not all wikiprojects are created equal, some are good places where non-partisan experts on a topic can be found and some are toxic slime cultures of fans and die hards. The biggest issue for me isn't really notification or non-notification its selective notification... People seem to want to talk about the Arab-Israeli conflict so lets use that as an example: if when soliciting comments to a discussion involving the war in Gaza a user notifies only WikiProject Palestine but not WikiProject Israel or vice-versa thats a problem. From my perspective if WikiProjects are being solicited then all of the relevant WikiProjects should be notified, but again it depends on the context. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 13:55, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  But in that particular example, is it really a problem? Isn't it likely enough interested editors are watching both? But sure, for a Arab-Israeli conflict thing, if you're doing one, may as well do the other. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:00, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  That doesn't seem likely, everything I have ever experienced on wikipedia suggests otherwise. Notifying different wikiprojects brings different people to the discussion, I have never encountered a topic area where multiple wikiprojects are made up of the exact same group of people. Anything that has the effect of skewing the discussion towards a specific POV is a problem and thats true whether or not canvassing is involved. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:09, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• I infer a couple of different sentiments in play here:

A) "It's just as likely for pro- and anti- users to watch the same WikiProject. It's WikiProject Israel, not WikiProject ProIsrael."

B) "In practice, participants in WikiProject Thing are mostly pro-Thing."

Is there any way of determining which of these is true? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 15:04, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The difficulty is getting a list of participants. The ideal list would be a list of editors who watch a Wikiproject, but that data is not available. Instead, I've created an approximation based on the editors who are listed as members and the editors who have made at least five edits to the projects talk page.

For the purpose of demonstration I have applied to this Wikiproject US Roads in relation to this RfC; I have done so because the RfC is long past and Wikiproject US Roads has forked, so I feel using them as an example will produce less drama and be less likely to derail this discussion than more recent examples.

The evidence tells us that for some Wikiprojects there are topics the editors are collectively biased on, but I don't think it is true of the vast majority of Wikiprojects. BilledMammal (talk) 03:32, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

1. Why do you think this approximation is any good? Clearly the list of members is a lot more likely to actually agree with the project of the Wikiproject than the list of watchers, right?

2. Roads is a bad example exactly because they forked. Your argument would be benefited more by a negative example: if you could show some Wikiprojects where the membership does not seem to share similar opinions on topics relevant to the topic area that would at least prove WP:LGBT is exceptional. Loki (talk) 03:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

1. The result is the unchanged if I only include editors with at least five edits to the talk page.

2. The question is "can a Wikiproject be partisan", to the extent that notifying them is likely to generate an improper illusion of a consensus where none (or a different one) would exist in a wider population. Roads is a good example of this because they demonstrate that it is possible. If you believe all WikiProjects are partisan, then I encourage you to provide the evidence, but I am skeptical. Alternatively, find a WikiProject that editors would not expect to be partisan, link a few well-attended, centrally-held, binary RfC's that the WikiProject was notified of, and I can do the analysis for you. BilledMammal (talk) 03:55, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is to me a centrally flawed concerned; it basically brings it down to "it's okay to alert a Wikiproject only if they are so in accord with non-members that it makes no difference in the results", which is silly. We want informed people making decisions based on being informed, and information should be something that changes perspective. (It is also impracticable; we cannot be effectively surveying a given Wikiproject for their view in advance of notification, so implementing the idea that notifying a relevant-but-biased Wikiproject is canvassing would in essence shut down notifying Wikiprojects at all.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 23:12, 5 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I appreciate this data, but I interpret it quite differently from BM. For one thing, I would not regard the population of "non-members" who participate in a discussion as a kind of target for how the members of an "unbiased" wikiproject should be distributed. We have no way of knowing how well "non-members" represent the rest of the community or why they were motivated to participate in the discussion

Also, I want to point to the actual impact of the participation of project members on the four proposals mentioned. The first proposal was supported by members and non-members alike, so the participation of members was not likely to affect the outcome. The middle proposals were supported by members and opposed by non-members, and therefore did not reach anything approaching consensus even though members disagreed.

The most interesting case, though, is the last proposal. The net preferences of members and non-members pretty much canceled out, leaving the discussion seemingly deadlocked. I would argue that this is actually a desirable outcome of member participation; if we assume that members are more likely to be contributing to content development in this area, then it is better to have a non-consensus in which their voices are heard (motivating further discussion and new proposals) than a clear consensus against in which their perspectives are seemingly excluded.

And of course what makes this case relevant is also what makes it unusual: that members of a single wikiproject, sharing similar views, make up such a large portion of those !voting on a set of proposals. The much more typical case is that appropriate notifications of projects with different perspectives, or the use of WP:CENT, dilutes the participation from any one group to a small - if sometimes the best-informed - part of the whole. Newimpartial (talk) 21:14, 5 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think both are true depending on which project we're talking about, there is a large diversity of WikiProjects and no generalization is going to apply to all of them. I will also note that some wikiprojects are strongly "anti-thing" like WikiProject Discrimination and WikiProject Alternative medicine. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:45, 5 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• We need to give up the idea that all Wikipedia editors are at the two extremes. Either ideal where the objectives of Wikipedia fully overrule biases, or where where biases are so strong that they overrule the objectives of Wikipedia. In reality most editors are somewhere between those two extremes. Conversely, give up the idea that mere expression of concern of biased-influenced editing is is a severe accusation and violation of wp:AGF. On average, a wiki-project is typically going to be slightly biased. Regarding notifying them on a contentious topic, this should be recognized (and adjusted for by casting a wider net) but IMO it doesn't rise to the level of precluding notifying them or considering it to be a wp:canvas violation. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:03, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
• I strongly disagree with the notion that a WikiProject can be considered partisanorproblematic without the involvement of Arbcom or some other discussion venue; otherwise, those are just an editor's personal opinion. I am also concerned with the conflation of specific canvassing cases which occurred in private or semi-private off-Wiki venues (EEML and Tropical Cyclones) with on-Wiki WikiProjects. Curbon7 (talk) 02:47, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
• I think I agree with Thryduulf's point (and Curbon7's too now I guess) here that a claim that an Wikiproject is so partisan that it is inappropriate to notify them of something within their scope of interest is a user conduct issue, an accusation of which should only be made with evidence at an appropriate forum (AN/I, but also AE or ARCA for CTs). Alpha3031 (t • c) 04:22, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  It is certainly possible to CANVAS via a wikiproject notification … by wording the notification in a non-neutral way with the intent of generating desired support/opposition to an issue. However, that is a flaw with the wording of the notification, not the location of the notification. Blueboar (talk) 22:59, 5 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• I think neutral notification of relevant WikiProjects is almost never canvassing. Part of the disagreement centers on the word partisan, which has expansive enough of a definition that we can be talking about very different things. BM's analysis of various WikiProjects above has no way of distinguishing between problematically partisan ("we vote differently than the general community because we're non-neutral") and positively partisan ("we vote differently because we know more than the general community"). I think Nat Gertler's thoughts on this are well-stated. A case against a WikiProject needs much more evidence, being essentially a misconduct allegation against a large group of editors. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:32, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Firefangledfeathers: what about the other point raised which is about selective notification of relevant WikiProjects? If someone notifies one relevant wikiproject but not another could that be an issue? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:07, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think commonly understood best practice is to notify them all if you're going to notify one. I sometimes think it's overkill. For example, I remember at least considering notifying some projects about a dispute related to J. K. Rowling and being torn about whether or not to notify WP:WikiProject Gloucestershire. I certainly wouldn't hold it against someone if they did so, and I wouldn't call it canvassing if someone left it off. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:35, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

In cases like that it makes sense to consider whether the specific dispute is relevant to that WikiProject. For example, if it was a dispute about whether Yate (where she was born) should be described as being in "Gloucestershire" or "South Gloucestershire" then the Gloucestershire project is definitely relevant. If the dispute was about which articles to include in her bibliography then the relevance is harder to see.

In general I don't think it should ever be regarded as wrong to notify all the WikiProjects that have tagged the article, or all the ones that are not tagged as inactive. If you think there is a relevant project that hasn't been notified, then the best thing to do is notify them and AGF that not doing so was not an attempt at canvassing unless you have a good reason not to. Thryduulf (talk) 01:59, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It isn’t great to selectively notify, but the answer is to then notify the other relevant wikiprojects. nableezy - 02:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• An issue seems to be that the "is relevant to that WikiProject" test can be surprisingly subjective and unpredictable, as far as I can tell. People employ different (often unstated) heuristics to estimate relevance. Regarding "the best thing to do is notify them and AGF", this is my view too. I wonder about the scope of the AGF policy and its relationship to project notifications and the WP:INAPPNOTE guideline. AGF applies to individual editors. Wikiprojects are collections of editors. So, the AGF policy presumably extends to Wikiprojects as collections of editors. In that case, bias/canvassing concerns presumably always need to be evidence-based. Given the scope of AGF, assuming it extends to collections of editors with a shared property (like project membership), allowing people to use their own biases (maybe rebranded as 'common sense') to make non-evidence-based guesses about project bias impacting apparent consensus seems a bit inconsistent. Having said that, the AGF policy probably has its limitations in contentious areas where there is polarization and dishonesty (sockpuppetry), but it is policy, nevertheless. Sean.hoyland (talk) 03:44, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  On this question of selective notification: for a certain RfC about René Lévesque (former premier of Québec) at article Talk, I notified wikiprojects Canada and Québec, but I was told that that was somehow canvassing. The editor making the accusation then proceded to notify wikiprojects for the rest of the Canadian provinces that had nothing to do with Lévesque's career.

  I didn't formally object at the time - based on the "more eyes" theorem - but the notifications of apparently unrelated wikiprojects did feel to me like canvassing. What is the evaluation editors here would make that kind of (presumably tit-for-tat) notification? Newimpartial (talk) 10:43, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  There's a big difference between Wikiprojects, though. I can remember some of them listing AfDs for "their" articles on their Wikiproject page and descending en masse to vote Keep - topics that spring to mind were aircrashes, tornadoes (and US roads before they threw their toys out of the pram) - whereas participants from many other Projects treated the AfDs impartially and were quite willing to get rid of articles that didn't meet policy). Black Kite (talk) 11:01, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• It is my opinion that while current policy does allow for the notification of WikiProjects, it is clear that there is a bias for folks involved in them to keep articles that are in their subject area, as no single WikiProject is representative of the overall community, which is why it is considered a specialized community in the first place. While it is an open message available for everyone to see in theory, in reality it will only be seen by a segmented and unrepresented faction of the overall community, and the evaluation of sources is not something that people can't do simply because they aren't in a WikiProject related to the article at question. Even when the wording is neutral, often the notification will come from someone who has already voted !keep, so how is that (or any other vote) a neutral notification? Let'srun (talk) 13:03, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Even when the wording is neutral, often the notification will come from someone who has already voted !keep could not be more wrong. First of all, you're assuming this only occurs for AfDs, when in fact AfDs are probably the one of the fewest things notified to WikiProjects (RMs and RfCs likely being the most). Additionally, your assumption that it is primarily people who have X opinion on the topic are the one's who notify is just not backed up by reality, to the point it seems you are arguing against notifications altogether. I think you are focusing too much on the why question (Why should WikiProjects be notified) rather than the what (What WikiProjects should be notified). Curbon7 (talk) 21:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  That's fair, and my opinion may be a bit biased just because of what WikiProjects I have viewed in the past. I have seen notifications for RFCs and RMs as well, and it should be made clear that the wording is neutral while also explaining why the project deserves a notification. Let'srun (talk) 03:28, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Just as likely to come from someone !voting delete, if they are on the losing end! — Iadmc♫^talk  21:41, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  If someone with a strong opinion is notifying in an attempt to sway the discussion (which does happen, but is far from the only or even most common reason) then it's equally likely to be someone arguing to keep or delete if it's going the other way, or more likely from someone arguing for deletion if it looks to be headed for no consensus. It's probably equally likely to come from either side if the trend is merge or redirect. Not that notification in such circumstances is guaranteed to have the desired outcome - I recall one discussion a few years ago where someone arguing for deletion notified a WikiProject with the intent of preventing a no consensus outcome. Several editors saw the notice and showed up to the discussion but were evenly split and it still closed as no consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 21:59, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Just because an editor has domain area knowledge doesn't mean they are willing to bend English Wikipedia's standards for having an article. Domain area experts typically know the best reliable sources for their area of expertise, the most reliable indicators that the standards for having an article can be met, and what achievements are actually significant versus those that just sound impressive to someone unfamiliar with the domain. If there are cases where editors fail to adhere to general consensus on the standards for having an article, then I feel the community should deal with these situations individually. If mechanisms like WikiProject article alerts aren't going to be used to notify editors interested in a topic area, there isn't a scalable way for those interested editors to be involved in related discussions. In my view, I think that will reduce the effectiveness of these discussions. isaacl (talk) 01:27, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• WP:APPNOTE is clear that notifying one or more WikiProjects is appropriate notification. The argument that notifying specific WikiProjects may result in an influx of editors who are not representative of the Wikipedia community is not a convincing one because there may be editors who fall on either side of debates who have those WikiProjects on their watchlist. TarnishedPath^talk 10:16, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm thinking it might be useful to have a reason for deletion that covers a swath of articles that never improve, but are technically just over the bar of notability. To come under this category, the article:

1. Must be a barely notable subject, or be reasonably well-covered in other articles. A one-off event, a small subset of a main topic, or fancruft, say.
2. Must have severe deficiencies in citation or bias
3. No substantial edits in six months.
4. Has had at least one nomination for deletion a minimum of six months ago.
5. Will get three months to improve before a final deletion decision.

What do you think? Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 14:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Huh? So this is for "articles", that have already survived AfD - then what exactly do you want to happen? Do you want AFD's to be able to close with a result of Up or out? Or do you want to make a new policy rationale that can only be argued on second AFDs? Do you even want this to do through a second AFD, or is this some sort of speedy criteria request? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:56, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Looks like he wants those rationales, as a group to be acceptable at AfD? Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Only at a second AfD. AfD currently normally acts as a check for potential. This is for articles unlikely ever to improve, after substantial notice - ones that will never reach the theoretical potential, with terrible quality. The kind of articles where the keep rationales are solely down to sources existing, nothing about the article as it stands being sufficient to keep it. It's also meant to be a very slow series of checks, to give it every chance. Also, preliminary suggestion; workshop at will. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 18:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

if something is notable, why delete it? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

It is not clear to me whether you are seeking to delete these pages so that they never have Wikipedia pages, or you are seeking to delete them with the hope that a healthier and more fertile page will grow in its place. If the latter, I should note that the argument WP:TNT usually is given accepted weight in deletion discussions, even if it's not exactly matched in policy and guidelines. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 20:54, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

So we want to delete barely notable articles now? Why? Who decides what is "barely" notable? Notable means notable, if we start deleting articles that are notable but that we don't like, there'll be no point in having WP:N. Cremastra (talk) 20:25, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Comment - I am on purpose not going to answer this question, because "what I think" is that it demonstrates what is wrong with a lot of deletion processes (especially AfD) at present, all of which assume the key question to be, "should X topic have an article?" I think this is almost always the wrong question.

I think the right question, almost always, is "does this verifiable information belong in an encyclopaedia?" (content that fails WP:V never belongs). There can be various reasons, set out rather inconsistently in WP:NOT, WP:BLP, WP:DUE, WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE and even WP:N - which isn't supposed to be a content guideline - why certain content doesn't belong in an encyclopaedia.

For content that belongs in an encylopaedia, the question then is, where should it be placed? WP:PRESERVE and WP:PAGEDECIDE are among the few places that address this question clearly, but unfortunately WP:N has been the tool perhaps most frequently used by editors to argue about decide whether to remove or retain content. I think this is an unfortunate situation - there are very few circumstances in which the encyclopaedia benefits from not having articles on "marginally notable" topics, except when the content of those articles is not encyclopaedic to begin with (WP:POVFORKS, for example).

If we had a way to talk about encyclpaedic inclusion directly, away from Notability, we might be able to defuse some misguided "zero-sum" conflicts and design an encyclopaedia more the way actual editors would design it, rather than allowing the shape of Wikipedia's content to emerge from a series of bar brawls between editors with particular presuppositions about what topic does or doesn't "merit an article". I know that wasn't the question lol, but that is my answer. Newimpartial (talk) 15:40, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'd say marginal articles are fine if they're of reasonable quality, but if articles are going to languish in a permanently bad state, that's a problem. There are cases where a very bad article is worse than no article. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 16:08, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I absolutely know the type of article you are talking about, I recentlty nominated an article for deletion that has been a one-sentence stub for fourteen years. However, I don't think "this survived AFD but we're still going to delete it" has much of a chance of ever becoming policy. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 17:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I just want to give articles every chance to thrive before we do delete them. There's other ways - WikiProject notifications, etc - but AfD usually forces a check of the article's potential: is there sources, etc - that I don't think any other current process does. If it has no potential, it gets deleted at the first AfD. If it's already of reasonable quality, this process shouldn't apply: it has thrived. This needs to be a slow process to have any effect. As I see it, though, this would be an argument to raise in a second AfD that would trigger the countdown to the final review. The review would be one admin comparing it to the state at the time of the failure to thrive AfD (which I think is sufficient given the number of steps before this) Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 17:50, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

A way I think this could work: we make a template for something along the lines of "this article doesn't have enough quality sources in it to establish notability (regardless of whether those sources exist out there somewhere)". Then if X amount of time passes and the situation hasn't changed, that's taken as strong evidence in an AfD that, regardless of whether the sources exist somewhere, they can't actually be used to write an article. Loki (talk) 19:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

But the proposal here isn't for articles that aren't notable, rather ones that are borderline. I think everything here is in violation of WP:NO DEADLINE. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:08, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

And not voting for it is in violation of WP:Delete the junk. Essays aren't policy. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 22:25, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Could you give an example or two of the sort of article this proposal is envisaged to apply to? – Teratix ₵ 11:12, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Note that this is just some things I've found by looking through the articles without sources categories, and some fad categories. These haven't passed through AfD, some of them might be handleable with a merge, and some might be salvagable - but the point of this proposal is to try and save the articles first.

  • Naked butler: It's possible this could be saved, but it's a lot of text, very little of it cited, so the accuracy and verifiability is very questionable. It's probably a thing, but such a weak article on a marginal subject is more likely to put inaccuracies into Wikipedia than to be genuinely helpful.
  • Campaign desk: Again, subject probably exists, but there's some oddities that make me concerned. The phrase "at popular retailers" makes me wonder about copyright of the text a little bit: it's a weirdly advert-y phrase. Uncited.
  • List of Fantastic Beasts characters - fancrufty article. Maybe it'll be saved, maybe not, but there's nothing in here that isn't redundant to the films' articles.

  Should these be deleted right now? No, the whole point of this proposal is to encourage attempts to salvage articles in this kind of state. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 13:41, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Funny that the only citations in "Naked butler" are in the "Popular culture" section. Donald Albury 14:18, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  There were more citations (four) in the article as originally posted (I have made no effort to see if their removal was appropriate.) However, there is more sourcing to be found, such as this Evening Standard article. I'm not sure how the procedure here would help this article (if it were even eligible, which it is not) any more than standard tagging. With articles this old, we cannot assume that the original editors are still involved enough to be aware if the article was threatened by deletion. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:36, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  And, in fact, finally looking at the talk page of the article, there is (and has been since 2013) a long list of news sources which could be used. Any attempt to delete this article could be quickly laughed away by that list. If there are any good examples to which this proposed procedure should apply, this is not among them; someone who had concern with the quality of the article could improve it much more quickly than creating a deletion argument with the hope that someone else will do so. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:44, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Campaign desk appears to have text that is an exact copy of text at this site, but the text has been in WP since 2004, and the web site was first archived at the Internet Archive in 2006. Donald Albury 14:31, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  For the record, I'd say that the key type of article this would be good for dealing with is minor fads, advertising, or one-off events long past in similar states to those articles. But I'm not sure it's worth trying to find the perfect exemplar. While I do think articles on such things can be encyclopedic, there is a certain point where you have to say that if an article with only minor notability, especially one where the interest peak is long past, is still terrible, that we need to consider if it's ever going to get better, whatever the theoretical potential. If this results in people actively working on these articles instead, that's all the better. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 16:15, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Well, were I pressed I would say, yes, as a matter of practice having marginal subject articles is a detriment to the encyclopedia because they are often abandoned junk in practice, at best filled with templates for years upon years, at least telling the reader, "if you have not figured it out yourself, which you may well have, this has been bad since 2010, and Wikipedia does not care about bad articles and bad information" (that's a real detriment to Wikipedia). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:51, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Improving existing articles slightly is a much lower hurdle than creating a brand new article. If an article is full of irrelevant unsourced text but has a notable core then it should be reduced down to that state, not deleted. There's no deadline for when Wikipedia needs to be perfect, and an article existing in the first place is conducive to improvement. AlexandraAVX (talk) 18:19, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, Wikipedia does not care about bad articles and bad information is what you just articulated in practice. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:23, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

If you find an utterly terrible article on a notable subject, be bold and stubify it. I don't see why we need a process specifically for deleting bad articles on notable subjects. If there's no consensus to TNT then there isn't. AlexandraAVX (talk) 18:27, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Let me relate a Wiki tale, although not directly on point to these marginal articles, not too long ago an architect's article was eligible to be featured on the main page for winning an award, kind of like a Nobel Prize, and the article was in poor shape under wiki policies, so seven days it stayed at the news desk while some harried pedians made some effort to improve, and it was not improved sufficient to feature. (and it may still not be good enough). Now, if there were no article and it was written up with the sources that came with the prize and which surfaced in a few days, that would have been easier for the crew, instead trying to source prose and facts when one does not know where it came from. Nor would coverage of the subject have been improved by stubification, certainly not good enough to be in decent shape and probably not good at all (especially when a good number of the world was looking for the topic). So, hope for the more marginal is likely misplaced. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:09, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

If the prose is unsourced it can be deleted. There's nothing preventing someone from being bold and with good reason tearing out unsourced and bad prose and possibly replacing it with entirely new text. If the article really is entirely beyond saving, WP:TNT is a recognised option at AfD. AlexandraAVX (talk) 13:03, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Its not about "preventing someone", its about the doing the work by anyone, which we know through decades of practice is not something anyone apparently wants, coupled with the common sense of past is prologue. You say just delete a bunch in the article or just do other work, but cleaning up, if you care, is about significant work. In comparison, it's easier to create a decent article from the bottom up without having to do the cleanup first. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:58, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Once again, whether it is easier to create an article from the bottom up or easier to create an article based on someone else's work is a matter of opinion. Thryduulf (talk) 11:26, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It remains, not having to do cleanup first is less work. Alanscottwalker (talk) 05:06, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Apparently, it's a matter of taste; I find cleanup and reclamation to be much easier. Toughpigs (talk) 05:16, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What do you find easier? To write a decent article you have to research and write, to cleanup you have to delete, try to understand what someone else was thinking, rework, test for cvio, etc. as well as research and write. The first is less work. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:50, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If the existing article lists some sources, then I don't need to spend as much time looking for sources.

If the existing article has some solid sections, I can ignore those and focus my effort elsewhere.

If the existing article has information that wouldn't have occurred to me, then I get a better result.

I usually find it very easy to "understand what someone else was thinking".

On the flip side, if the existing article is really lousy, then a quick little ⌘A to select all and hitting the backspace button solves that problem. Even in such cases, the article 'infrastructure' (e.g., infobox, images, and categories) is usually sound, and keeping the existing ones usually saves time and effort.

I don't pretend that what's easiest for me is what's easiest for everyone, but I personally don't mind working with existing articles. Perhaps you are the opposite. That's okay. My experience doesn't invalidate yours, and yours doesn't invalidate mine (or the experiences of the multiple other people who have disagreed with you). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You are mostly off-topic as the premise of the proposal is only dealing in really lousy articles, and indeed ones that no-one is even doing your process of deletion or the rest. You think deleting large swaths is easy but it seems from your telling that is not something you spend much time thinking about it. As for your presumption about infobox and images and categories, your basis is for that is just assumption not evaluation. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

WhatamIdoing's point is simply that other people have a different opinion to you. Your assumptions about why that be are irrelevant. What constitutes a "really lousy article" is also a matter of opinion, and yours is no more or less valid than WhatamIdoing's or anyone else's. Do you understand that people can have a different opinion to you about subjective matters and contribute in good faith or are you being deliberately disruptive? Thryduulf (talk) 13:47, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It is you who are being deliberately disruptive and you who are trying to prevent the presenting of opposing views. Somehow others can present opinions (who introduced "easiest" or "lousy") but just because you disagree with my view, you label it disputive. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:52, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am not labelling your view disruptive because I disagree with it (see other people whose views I have disagreed with without labelling disruptive), I am labelling your view disruptive because you appear to be either unwilling or unable to distinguish between fact and opinion. Thryduulf (talk) 14:18, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

That makes little sense and I see now how why you disrupt things, I am using words as others use them, and your inability to not read my comments as statements of view is your fault, not mine. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:23, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

WhatamIdoing, If you care to reply to my 13:38 comment perhaps best to do so down here. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:05, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps what we need is a second review process … one that is focused on Non-Improvability, rather than Notability. It would consider articles that are in such poor shape that they (arguably) can not be improved… regardless of whether the topic is notable. Blueboar (talk) 18:20, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I can't see many cases where a topic is notable without being possible to improve. If the article is irrevocably badly written then it can just be stubified. AlexandraAVX (talk) 18:23, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

There's strong WP:OWN issues sometimes there, especially in walled gardens. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 20:23, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think that's true, but does your proposal really include a reliable and lasting method for overriding a WP:OWN editor's wishes?

Giving editors less leeway on WP:OWN – by significantly increasing the likelihood that engaging in WP:OWN will result in being permanently blocked – might contribute quite a bit to solving your question as well, not to mention several other ones. TooManyFingers (talk) 16:24, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

In principle, we don't want people to get permanently blocked. Also, it's sometimes difficult to tell the difference between "ownership" and "knowing what you're talking about", so some of these would likely be wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:19, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

People who do know what they're talking about, but when pressed cannot show (in the Wikipedia-prescribed way) that they know what they're talking about, are intentionally and specifically excluded from Wikipedia. I don't think that's a good thing, but they are. Isn't that one of the most notable conflicts in wiki history? TooManyFingers (talk) 06:12, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

(IMO some of the best content on here is from real experts who quietly disregard certain rules and do the right thing instead. But also some of the worst content is from ownership fanatics.) TooManyFingers (talk) 06:19, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

While there may be articles covered by this that should be deleted, I don't think that editing inactivity is of any use in identifying them. And some of the other subjective criteria would be practically impossible to define or implement. Thanks for the idea and bringing it up here but IMO this is not workable and also not a very useful way to find articles that should be deleted. North8000 (talk) 18:58, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I was initially torn between liking the idea of having a way to constructively reassess borderline articles that have not been improved in a long while, but also between being a firm believer in eventualism and the importance of recognising that Wikipedia is a work in progress. However, the more this discussion has gone on, the less I'm liking this. Merging, stubbifying, improving articles yourself (including using TNT), and similar activities that are not deletion are going to be preferable in nearly all cases. If you lack the subject or foreign-language knowledge to improve the article yourself use resources like WikiProjects to find people who do have that knowledge, sharing lists of the sources you've found but not understood to help them get started. If you don't have access to the sources (e.g. they're offline) then there are resources like the Wikipedia Library and at least some chapters offer grants to help you get them. Only when all of these options are unavailable or have failed, which is a small percentage of a small percentage, is deletion going to help and I'm not sure we need something other than AfD for that - especially as in a good proportion of these few cases notability is going to be questionable. Thryduulf (talk) 19:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

What if we have a process for quickly moving such articles to draftspace, and requiring AFC review/approval for them to be returned to mainspace? BD2412 T 20:00, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think that would basically be a backdoor deletion in many cases, a lot of the bad articles I come across are sometimes over a decade old and the original author is long gone. A PROD or AfD will let me and others interested in the subject area see them in article alerts, draftifying won't. AlexandraAVX (talk) 20:04, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

@AlexandraAVX: An AfD can lead to draftification, which can lead to deletion for abandonment (or, rarely, revitalization), but at least this resolution avoids keep rationales based on possible improvements that will never actually be made. BD2412 T 21:13, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure how to ask my question without it sounding weird, but here goes: Who cares if the improvements are never made?

At the moment, the subject qualifies for a separate, stand-along article if the real world has enough sources that someone could improve it past the doomed WP:PERMASTUB stage (plus it doesn't violate NOT, plus editors don't want to merge it away). The rules do not require the article to be "improved", and never have.

So imagine that we have an article like User:WhatamIdoing/Christmas candy. It's two sentences and 100% uncited. Imagine that we all agreed that Wikipedia would almost certainly die before that article ever got improved. Why should that be considered a deletion-worthy problem? Why can't it just be left like it is? Who's it hurting? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Anyone who reads the article and comes away believing something false or likely to be false?

Like, I don't see why this is hard to understand. Loki (talk) 04:25, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Do you see anything false or likely to be false in that article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If there's something false in the article you can delete that. If the subject is a hoax then that's already a speedy deletion criteria. If it isn't a hoax you can remove any information that can't be verified. If the subject is notable then there inherently must be coverage that makes something about it verifiable. AlexandraAVX (talk) 09:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. This seems like an ornate process for which the problem it would address has not been actually identified; the OP came up with no examples that would qualify for this treatment. The standard processes allow for re-AfDing if the material is not notable under current guidelines, or stubbifying if it is. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 20:22, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

One structural note. Since the suitability of the article to exist in main space technically relates only to the subject of the article, technically, the subject of the article should be the only reason to remove it from mainspace. North8000 (talk) 20:32, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

That's not quite true, as there other things that are relevant in some circumstances - copyvios are the most obvious, but also articles not written in English or written by socks of banned editors. However, other than newly discovered copyvios I can't think of any that are likely to be relevant to articles being discussed here (and with old articles the chance of suspected copyvios turning out to be plagiarism of Wikipedia are of course greater). Thryduulf (talk) 20:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Thryduulf: Well copyvio is a problem with content, though if you have an article that is 100% copyvio there's really nothing to save. North8000 (talk) 13:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I can understand this frustration. All the time I see articles that were poor quality get sent to AFD, the commenters there say that the existing article is crap but (minimal) sources exist, so the article should be improved rather than being deleted. It gets kept, then...nothing happens. 10-15 years later, the article is still very poor quality and essentially unchanged. Whatever original sources existed might not even be online anymore, but a second AFD probably won't get a different result. Sometimes I can stubbify/redirect, if there's gross BLP violations I can sometimes just delete it, but most just exist in this limbo indefinitely. If nobody cares to make a halfway decent article, then maybe we shouldn't have one. I would like it if there was a shift at AFD, especially for long-term poor quality articles, from "should this topic have an article" to "is this particular article worth showing to readers". In 2005, the best way to help Wikipedia was with a pen (writing new articles). In 2024, the best way is with pruning shears (removing bad articles, or trimming irrelevant bloat within articles). I'm not sure the best way to accomplish this, but some sort of draftification for these articles might be a good idea. 6 months is probably too soon, but setting it at 5 or 10 years would cut out a lot of crud. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 21:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• The OP ignores fundamental principals like no time limits, deletion is not cleanup, preserve, before etc.. it would be political and contentious. And I'm not sure it would do much to improve Wikipedia, plus alienate and piss off editors. The whole idea of keeping a crappy article on a notable topic is that someone will find it and work on it, "hey look at this crappy article I can make it better". -- GreenC 22:54, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

  He's not ignoring those ideas, he's trying to gain support for changing them. Sure, it would be contentious but that's not a reason to not discuss it. And yes, ideally someone will find a crappy article and work on it. But for many thousands of articles, it's been years and that hasn't happened. It probably never will. So the few people who stumble upon them are left with an unvetted, unsourced, incomplete or even misleading article about a topic. Jimbo had the right idea in this post[1], which became the foundation of our BLP policy but can apply elsewhere too. It's better to have no information about a topic than bad information. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 00:26, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  What if Nupedia, but without the experts? I think [2] from that same thread presents far more useful ground for reflection. Choess (talk) 01:59, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I have a single sock that is 30 years old. Nobody makes or sells those ones anymore, and I myself have no others like it. I have a policy of keeping single socks until the matching one is found, so the sock sits there.

  Sometimes, policies are faulty, or need changes to accommodate reality. TooManyFingers (talk) 06:47, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Adam, I started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Ready for the mainspace the other day, on what it means for an article to be "ready for the mainspace". This seems to be an idea that some editors have adopted. Back when we were new, the general idea seemed to be that you determined whether something's ready for the mainspace (and almost all of us created everything directly in the mainspace back then) with a two-part checklist:
  1. Is the subject itself notable (e.g., if you spent time looking for Wikipedia:Independent sources, then you could find enough to write several sentences, even though nobody's bothered to do that yet)?
  2. Is the current article exempt from Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion (e.g., not a copyvio, not Wikipedia:Patent nonsense, not an obvious test edit)?
• This could, and did, and was meant to, result in articles that said little more than "A campaign desk is an antique desk of normal size which was used by officers and their staffs in rear areas during a military campaign". (BTW, ProQuest 374234967 might be a useful source for examples that article, as will this one, if you'd like to add them, and https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/15/archives/now-on-the-home-front.html will be particularly useful if you'd like to generalize from the desk to any sort of purpose-built furniture for mobile military officers.) However, I think that a minority of editors want to expand this checklist to look a bit more like this:
  1. Is the subject itself notable?
  2. Does the current version qualify for speedy deletion?
  3. Would I be embarrassed if someone I respected said "Hey, I was looking at this short Wikipedia article the other day..."? (e.g., the article has fewer than x sentences, fewer than y cited sources, fewer than z links...)
• If requiring a certain volume sounds nice, what I think would be more practical is if we talked about what percentage of articles we were really willing to sacrifice to the spirit of "immediatism because I'm embarrassed that someone hasn't already WP:FINISHED this old article". If you're willing to delete, say, 1% or 10% or 50% of all articles to artificially raise the average quality of Wikipedia articles, then we can calculate what x, y, and z would be.
  NB that I don't think that deleting articles for problems that could be solved by ordinary editing would be a good idea, because I've found some of those old, neglected, even uncited substubs to be of immediate value to me recently, when often what I wanted was an easy way to figure out what the official website was, or a quick definition of an obscure term (19th-century furniture and clothing has ranked high in my searches recently, so Campaign desk is exactly the kind of article that I have been finding helpful). But if you're bothered enough to want to WP:DEMOLISH articles because they're not being developed to your standards, then let's talk about how much is the most you could imagine destroying, and see if we could figure out what we'd be losing as a result. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:57, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
• Read:
  1. Wikipedia:FIXTHEPROBLEM
  2. Wikipedia:There is no deadline
  3. Wikipedia:Beef up that first revision
  4. Wikipedia:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built
  5. Wikipedia:Don't panic
  6. Wikipedia:Enjoy yourself
  7. Wikipedia:Potential, not just current state
  8. Wikipedia:Rome wasn't built in a day
  9. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress
  10. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a volunteer service
  11. Wikipedia:Delete_the_junk#Alternatives_to_deletion
  12. Wikipedia:Template_index/User_talk_namespace/Multi-level_templates#Blanking/Removal_of_content

Case closed. IMO the time people spend here would be put into better use to improve our articles. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 04:42, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Of the three example articles given early in this discussion, viewing them outside of this discussion: #1 Would fail wp:notability #2 is good enough as is, and #3 is in Wikipedia's Twilight Zone: there is no system / mechanism that really vetts list articles. North8000 (talk) 13:50, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

For Naked butler, I can find a few sources:

• Paul Majendie. “Butlers Buff Up Party Scene Forget the Quintessential Image of the British Butler as the Epitome of Discreet Decorum -- the Latest Fad on the British Party Scene Is Half-Naked Waiters.” Townsville Bulletin.
• Sagar, Tracey; Jones, Debbie; Symons, Katrien; Tyrie, Jacky; Roberts, Ron (December 2016). "Student involvement in the UK sex industry: motivations and experiences". The British Journal of Sociology. 67 (4): 697–718. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12216. ISSN 0007-1315.

These are both available through Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library. Perhaps someone would like to put them in the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I based my comments #1 based on a quick guess. The question is coverage of sources on the specific topic. Which in turn needs the article to be about a specific topic. My first guess is that that isn't there. But the overall point is evaluating articles based on things other than lack of development activity, and that the latter is not much of an indicator. North8000 (talk) 16:49, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Well, that's one of the problems with the proposal: it encourages people to seek deletion not on the basis of what sources might be available, such as this article in the Evening Standard (page 2 here) or this Herald-Tribune piece, but rather on their guesses of how the page will develop in the future. I see nothing in the OP's proposal that indicates that the goal is to try to save the article first, it makes no call for the implementer to try to save the article, just allows for the possibility that someone else may do so. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:10, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Huh? When something goes to 2nd AfD it could be "saved" like any other time, indeed that's when people often work on such (yes, yes, 'not cleanup', but that does not mean cleanup by hook or by crook is not good) the 2nd delete participants basically have to agree 'yeah, no one cares' for it to go. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:39, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it could be saved then, but it would take an odd interpretation that the goal of an AfD filing is to save an article, when the very point of an AfD filing is to request its destruction. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 18:56, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Indeed starting an AfD with the aim of doing something other than deleting the article could (arguably should) get the nomination speedily kept (WP:SK point 1). Thryduulf (talk) 19:08, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I did not say goal, I said it is regularly the outcome (including everytime there is no consensus or keep), the conversation is still about the suitability of having this article, nonetheless. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:03, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You appeared to be saying "Huh?" to a statement about the goal; if you were not "Huh?"ing that statement, I don't know what you were saying. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I did not think you were speaking about the goal of AfD, the proposal is for a new multi-factored rationale (like is this adequately covered elsewhere, etc.) that the AfD participants can either agree in or not. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:35, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The goal of creating an additional excuse to delete things is to have things deleted. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:00, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Well, I would call it additional rational but yes, when the alternatives given are delete large swaths of the article or just let it continue to sit there in bad shape for more decades. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:28, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I strongly suspect that #2, Campaign desk, is a copyvio, and has been so since it was created 20+ years ago, but I cannot yet prove so beyond any doubt. If it is determined that the original text, which is 95% of the current article, was a copyvio, then the article will have to be deleted. Donald Albury 16:36, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It was written by an admin, AlainV. While it's not a perfect indicator, generally speaking, if I were looking for a copyvio, I wouldn't start by suspecting something written by an admin who wrote ~150 articles. It's at least as likely that the article was original here, and got copied over there. We have a copy from 2004; the Internet Archive has a copy of the Wikipedia article from 2005; the Internet Archive has a copy on a different website from 2006. I would not assume from this information that our article is the copyvio. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The wording's weird, though. That one phrase at the end... Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 20:21, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Campaign desks were something of a trend back around the time this was written, so it doesn't seem as odd to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

One reason that I haven't acted on my suspicions is the possibility that the website copied from AlainV's articles (all 48 or them, with only three or four desks listed on the website that AlainV did not create an article for). I left a message on his talk page, but he hasn't edited in two years.

Looking more closely at Cylinder desk, I see that AlainV and others modified that article after he created it, and the website matches the state of the article in April 2006 rather than the original state when AlainV created it in November 2003. Given that, I withdraw any suggestion that AlainV copied from the Arts and Crafts Home website. Donald Albury 00:08, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

That was a good piece of detective work, Donald. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

As for the viability of "campaign desk" as a topic, why, here's just one of several books that I find on the topic of campaign furniture, so it appears that content on the topic can be sourced. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:07, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose There is no such thing as an article on a notable topic that will never improve. They always improve eventually if they are left for long enough. We have many articles that were massively expanded after more than a decade of inactivity. If a topic satisfies GNG, there will be people able and willing to improve it. The proposal is incompatible with the policy WP:ATD. James500 (talk) 04:19, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
• General Comment I think that the advice at WP:NOPAGE is far too often neglected, and in many cases we would be better off upmerging content. By the same token there are definitely some encyclopedic topics that would be undue detail for a parent article, but will never expand beyond a few paragraphs because there isn't anything else to say about them, and that really isn't a problem either, those type of articles exist in traditional encyclopedias; people who are interested in the niche information can still find it, and it doesn't get in the way of everyone else.
  At some deeper level of course this is a request to rethink WP:N, especially WP:ARTN, and maybe shift the current consensus a bit as to when no article is better than the existing content. Much more specific criteria than failure to thrive will be needed for that to happen, and in the end we have to confront the fact that most articles simply do not meet the theoretical baseline standard (the small percentage that do become WP:GAs after being checked), and if history is any guide, changes will considerably increase the disruption associated with deletion, at least for a time.
  That isn't to say the underlying concern is without merit, and we all want better written articles, I'm just skeptical this is the best approach to get there. 184.152.68.190 (talk) 04:01, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think we should refocus the discussion away from AFD… we DO have a problem with articles that are about notable topics, but are seriously problematic in other ways. I am thinking that we might need to create a NEW process to deal with such articles. Perhaps (for lack of a better name) we can call it “GAR” (for “Gut And Rebuild”)? Please discuss. Blueboar (talk) 14:41, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would be for a policy making it clearer that stubifying and similar are acceptable for badly sourced and very poorly written articles. But we already have several projects for rebuilding and restoring bad articles: WP:CLEANUP, WP:REFCHECK and WP:GOCE. I don't think creating a new process for it would help. We already have the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle for that. AlexandraAVX (talk) 14:50, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The "problem" is no one is doing it, whether it is because it is relatively harder or just not interested, someone still has to do the research and write, I suppose this GAR could draw attention to what no one is doing and it could help but doubtful it will make the article itself decent, what it could do is produce a list of sources which would certainly be better. It is better to direct readers to RS than whatever so-called "lousy" article we have. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:50, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

So, here’s the crux as I see it… when the issue is notability, we have a fairly clear threat (deletion) we can dangle in front of editors to force them to address the problem (or at least make the attempt). We also have a clear solution (supply sources).

But for other issues we don’t have a threat to dangle in front of editors to force (or at least strongly encourage) them to address the problem. We simply hope that, some day, someone might get around to it.

The question is… IS there some sort of threat (other than deletion) that would achieve the goal? The closest I can think of is: “Gut it back to a stub”. Blueboar (talk) 15:48, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure "threat" is the right word, but it seems to me that criteria for compulsory draftification - and a dedicated noticeboard for that - could serve the intended purpose. Heck, it could even be accompanied by a proposed or a speedy draftification process as well. The trick is to come up with a word that starts with a letter other than D (or B). Articles for Transformation (AfT)? Newimpartial (talk) 16:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The problem with non-notable articles is that they are, well, not notable, and shouldn't be included in the encyclopaedia.

What is the problem with notable articles that are short that we are trying to solve? We can already remove unreferenced information (after looking for sources and either adding the sources you find or remove it as unverifiable if you can't find any). Why do we want to force people to expand this notable article under threat of deletion after a week (AfD) or six months (draftifying)? What does the encyclopaedia gain from this? Thryduulf (talk) 16:31, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Again, I’m trying to take deletion off the table here, and yet still convey a similar sense of urgency to editors (fix this “or else”). The only “or else” I can think of is: “We will pare this article down to a stub”. Blueboar (talk) 17:03, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm trying to understand why the urgency? Why do we suddenly need a deadline? Thryduulf (talk) 17:10, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Which editors? If we're dealing with old rot articles like discussed above, they are likely not editing Wikipedia any more. If we're dealing with newer problem articles, we're asking the editors to suddenly become competent? If you get into a war over paring something down, yes there are live editors and you can ask for a third opinion or somesuch., but in general, problem articles are better addressed by improving or paring them than in creating another system that relies on others. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:24, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think that threatening editors is probably the wrong way to build a healthy community or encyclopedia. Toughpigs (talk) 17:25, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@NatGertler, what if I don't want to do the work? What if my goal is to make other people do the work? I'm a WP:VOLUNTEER. I don't have to do anything I don't want to. But maybe I'd like to force "you" to do the work that I don't want to do. Threatening to take away basically accurate, appropriate information works on a timescale that humans can recognize. Either nobody cares, and the ugly article goes away, or a volunteer drops everything to save the article. I get to congratulate myself on prompting improvements without lifting a finger to do the work myself.

Waiting for someone to notice the problem and feel like fixing it doesn't feel like it works. Sure, some of them might get improved, but I can't see the connection. AFD forces people to do something about the specific article that I don't like. m:Eventualism just says – well, maybe some articles will get improved and maybe they won't, but I'll never know which ones, and it probably won't be the ones that I care about. I feel helpless and like there's nothing I can do, especially if I don't want to (or am not competent to) improve the articles myself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Blueboar, "gut it back to a stub" won't work, because for the most part, the articles that are disliked are already stubs.

Also, nobody's stopping anyone from doing that now. Wikipedia:Stub#Stubbing existing articles (guideline) officially endorses it. Wikipedia:Editing policy#Problems that may justify removal (policy) provides a list of reasons for removing bad content without deleting the article.

I think the desire is to force other people to do this work. "My" job is just to complain that your work is sub-par (sending it to AFD requires three clicks and typing a sentence); "your" job is to put in whatever work is necessary to satisfy me (could be a couple of hours of work, especially if I dislike the subject and so demand an even higher level of activity).

Consider Campaign desk, given as an example above. It's a long stub (10 sentences, 232 words according to ProseSize). Two editors easily found sources for it. It's at AFD now. Why? I don't know, but I will tell you that it's quicker and easier to send something to AFD than to copy and paste sources out of this discussion. I also notice on the same day's AFDs that someone has re-nominated an article because the sources that were listed in the first AFD haven't been copied and pasted into the article yet. Why not copy and paste the sources over yourself? I don't know. Maybe adding sources to articles is work that should be done by lesser beings, not by people who are trying to "improve Wikipedia's quality" by removing anything that hasn't been improve to my satisfaction by the WP:DEADLINE – the deadline apparently being "whenever I notice the article's existence". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Part of an editor’s job is to highlight problems that the author needs to fix. I do get that we ideally wear both hats at the same time, but… sometimes we can only wear one. It is quite possible for editors to identify problems with an article that they can not fix themselves because they don’t know the subject matter well enough to do so. We need something that tells those who DO know the subject matter: “hey, this urgently needs your attention”.

As for why there is urgency… we simply have too many articles flagged as having with serious problems that have never been addressed. We need something that will push those who can be authors into actually authoring. Blueboar (talk) 17:48, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

That model of "editors" and "authors" is based on a hierarchical professional structure that does not exist on Wikipedia. Everyone is an "editor" on Wikipedia; that word doesn't hypothetically grant you power over me. Toughpigs (talk) 17:51, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Blueboar, a while ago, I dropped everything to save articles such as White cake. (Please do not blame the innocent AFD nom; he, like 99.9% of people, didn't know the modern white cake is a technological wonder, and finding high-quality and scholarly sources about everyday subjects requires more than an ordinary search.) I had fun doing it, and those articles are much better now. (I'll deal with the complication that is fudge cake later).

But: Do you know what I could have been working on instead of those articles? Cancer survivor. Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education in the United States. Epilepsy and pregnancy. Suicide. Multiple chemical sensitivity. The targeted articles are much better now. But is Wikipedia as a whole better off, when you consider the opportunity cost? I doubt it.

I think @Thryduulf is on the right track when he asks why we have such urgency. There was no urgency whatsoever about White cake. There were no errors in it. It had sources. It was, admittedly, much less awesome than it is now, but there is nothing seriously wrong. Ditto for Campaign desk, and almost all of the other "ugly" articles. So: Why should fixing that have been urgent? Did we really need something to push me into improving the article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, but you did not need the article to do the research and write on white cake, and why it matters, is we are not showing our research, after sometimes decades, and thus adding value, rather we are suggesting that someone shared their thoughts on white cake on Wikipedia, when you can look at the rest of the internet and google for people's thoughts on white cake. The reader would have been better off, in the reliable information department, by finding reliable information on their own, then reading the unsourced, unexamined decidedly unreliable by Wikipedia's own disclaimer article. Anything that said in effect go, read this stuff, it is a good source, would have been better. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Alanscottwalker, why do you say that an article that cited seven (7) sources, including one from Oxford University Press, and that contained no errors is unsourced, unexamined decidedly unreliable?WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh, sorry, I thought your story was about it being AfD'd for lack of sourcing, was it that the sources cited were unreliable or irrelevant meaning with no evidence in them of notability? (so yeah, the rest, of my comment would apply to the unsoured parts). Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:42, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Here's the article on the day it was nominated for deletion. It was one paragraph/six sentences long. That one paragraph had seven inline citations. Here's the AFD page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:29, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, such AfD nominations are always hard to understand, as the inner logic of the nom is 'this is part of a notable topic' (here, cake). That's similar to the campaign desk example, the salient issue is whether to redirect to campaign furniture. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:28, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict × 2) That doesn't explain why there is urgency. It identifies that you (and some other editors) dislike there being lots of articles that haven't been improved to your satisfaction yet. It does not explain why that many articles needing improvement is a problem, why nominated articles need fixing more urgently than the other articles, why you can't or won't fix it yourself, nor why you get to decide what articles other people need to prioritise. Thryduulf (talk) 17:55, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

(Friendly reminder: If you don't like edit conflicts, try that Reply button. Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and "Enable quick replying" if you don't see one at the end of every sig.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Honestly, just the fact that you're considering "threatening" people in order to "force" them to do what you want suggests that this may be more about you than it is about the articles. The AfD process isn't about "threats" and "force", it's about identifying and deleting articles on non-notable subjects. Toughpigs (talk) 18:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I’m just being realistic. “Force” may not be the intent of the AFD process, but it is certainly a product of that process… because we “threaten” to delete articles on non-notable topics, lazy article authors are “forced” to provide sources to properly establish that the topic is indeed notable.

In any case, what I am fumbling around trying to envision is a process that would be “about” identifying and fixing seriously flawed articles on notable topics - a process perhaps similar to AFD, but not AFD. Blueboar (talk) 10:59, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The only things such a process could bring that existing policies, processes, task forces, collaborations, etc don't are a deadline and consequences for failure and nobody has yet identified why we need either of those. Thryduulf (talk) 11:09, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• OK… let’s break it down into more bite sized chunks… first: let’s consider articles with serious WP:NOT issues (That might be a clearer example of where the topic might be notable, but the article, as it currently stands, is problematic). Do we have any sort of process that would help us better identify and therefore fix such articles? Blueboar (talk) 11:51, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Yes - the various cleanup templates and categories. Thryduulf (talk) 12:03, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  What is the process behind those templates and categories? Blueboar (talk) 12:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  1. an editor identifies the that an article is in need of cleanup and applies the template.

  2. optionally, it gets added to a list (e.g. a backlog drive)

  3. an editor who can improve the article finds it through one of several methods (see below) and does so

  Methods of finding an article include:

  • seeing the banner template on an article they are reading
  • seeing the article in the category (directly or via some category intersection tool)
  • seeing the article in a list
  • seeing the edit applying the template on their watchlist

  Thryduulf (talk) 13:02, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  In other words… eventually, someday, maybe, someone might get around to fixing the article. But until that eventual day comes (perhaps years after it is identified) we are apparently OK with Wikipedia continuing to contain content that a (somewhat core) policy explicitly says Wikipedia should NOT contain?

  I’m sorry, but if that is our “process”, I don’t think it is effective (or at least not effective enough). I think we need a better process. A process that will incentivize our authors to fix WP:NOT issues sooner rather than later. Blueboar (talk) 14:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  As I stated the only things our processes lack is a deadline and consequences for failing to meet that deadline and you still haven't identified how having either of them will benefit the encyclopaedia. Policies and guidelines already allow you to remove policy violations when you see them. Thryduulf (talk) 14:13, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Looks to me, Blueboar has done so, 1) effectively disincentivizing long term-policy violations; 2) effectively. reducing long-term policy violations. 3) Wikipedia taking effective responsibility for long-term policy violations concerning the central reason Wikipedia exists, its content, because we can't/don't insist on individual accountability (no one can make an editor source that article they wrote 10 years ago) we need to make process for entire-project accountability, when individualist work has over the long-term failed, concerning its central mission. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:51, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I thought the whole point of this proposal is to deal with articles that aren't policy violations? Articles that are policy violations should have the policy violating parts fixed or removed, or (if that would leave nothing viable), nominated for deletion as soon as someone sees them. Thryduulf (talk) 15:54, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  What you're suggesting is a "double AfD" -- if an article has been at AfD and it's been demonstrated that the subject is notable, but you personally still don't like the current state of the article, then you want an extra do-over that gets you the result that you want. Toughpigs (talk) 15:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  And that someone else has to do the work, because if the only point was to fix the article, you could do that yourself. There is nobody in this discussion who is incapable of remedying serious policy violations in any article, including subjects we're unfamiliar with. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  With English Wikipedia's current consensus being that stub creation is encouraged, and with Wikipedia editors being volunteers, I think the only scalable way to continually improve articles is to build up groups of editors interested in various topic areas—which in the context of English Wikipedia, are WikiProjects—who can work through the queues of stubs. I realize that with most WikiProject talk pages being dormant, this isn't easy. Now that new editors each have their own personal newcomer homepage with an assigned mentor (though at present on English Wikipedia, due to a shortage of volunteers, only 50% of newcomers are shown a mentor on their homepage), perhaps mentors can help point new users to active WikiProjects. (Building a new consensus to manage the quality of new articles is an alternative, but personally I don't foresee a change being feasible in the intermediate term, given the most recent discussions amongst the editors who like to weigh in on this matter.) isaacl (talk) 16:09, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Should expanding stubs be prioritized over other tasks? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  You know the answer to that already: it's up to each person to decide what they want to work on. A group of interested persons can discuss situations, of course, and that may influence individual decisions. isaacl (talk) 16:23, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Our choices about which backlogs to "advertise" affect the choices people make. If we say "Stubs are bad, so please prioritize expand stubs", then we'll get more stub expansion. If we were instead to say "Improving popular articles is more important than ignored ones, even though they're less likely to be stubs", then we would expect to get more focus on popular articles. Each person will make their own decisions about what to work on, but people will also take official recommendations and nudges into account when making their individual choices.

  Some years back, Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine set an official goal of getting all Top-importance articles past the stub stage. (These tend to be rather generic subjects, like Burn and Infection.) I think that was valuable, but I'm not sure that there is similar value in encouraging the expansion of the least-read 50% of Wikipedia's articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Sure, that's up to the interested editors to decide upon. For better or worse, I can't keep other editors from discussing queues of interest to them. I can raise my concerns about their relative priority, and thus try to influence whatever decisions are made (whether that's tasks undertaken or text on a WikiProject page). isaacl (talk) 16:59, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  @Blueboar, could you give me an example (preferably hypothetical) of an article about a notable subject that has serious NOT violations? None of the examples above (e.g, Campaign desk) seem to be NOT violations.

  I feel like the common objections behind these discussions (which have been going on with some intensity for a couple of years now) don't involve serious policy violations at all. Instead, the objections appear to be:

  • WP:ITSUNREFERENCED, and I want someone else to add sources right now. We couldn't get a rule adopted to require sources in non-BLP articles earlier this year, but I want this non-BLP article treated as if we did adopt that rule.
  • It's an WP:UGLY little article. Personally, I prefer that articles be Start-class, or at least long stubs.
  • There has been WP:NOIMPROVEMENT for a long time and other editors are making WP:NOEFFORT to expand it.
  • This subject feels unimportant to me, so WP:WEDONTNEEDIT (e.g., species articles) even if it is accurate, verifiable, and cited.

  All of those shortcuts point to Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  • Sure… Suppose an article about a relatively obscure regional restaurant chain that does nothing but list every franchise outlet and its address, thus violating WP:NOTDIRECTORY. The chain might well be notable and thus worth an article… but the article we currently have is problematic. It probably needs a complete rewrite, not deletion… So… let’s say someone stumbles upon this article. They can identify the problem, but they don’t know the topic well enough to write about it (and perhaps they don’t really care enough to do so)… so they simply tag it and move on… And then… nothing happens… nothing changes… the article just sits there, tagged as violating policy, potentially for years. I don’t think that is in the best interest of WP. Surely there is some way to better incentivize fixing the article. Blueboar (talk) 18:43, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    The person who needs incentivizing is you. You are the one who's bothered by the article's existence. You can be the one who fixes it. Take out the addresses, look for reliable sources (probably in newspapers, for a restaurant chain). If you don't find any, then put it up for deletion. If you do, add them to the article. The problem is solved. You solved it! Toughpigs (talk) 18:46, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Hmm… Nope… I’m not in a position to fix the problem myself. I don’t live in the area served by my hypothetical restaurant chain, I have never eaten there, I know nothing about it, I don’t even know what sources would help me to write a proper article. All I know is that the article (as it currently stands) is a directory of franchises (a WP:NOT violation). I DO care enough about WP to alert others to the problem, but I am not qualified to fix it myself. The best I can do is tag and move on.

    So, I ask again… THEN what? Do we (as a community) continue to just ignore the problems with the article I have identified?… because that is what is currently happening! Surely we can do better. Blueboar (talk) 19:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Then you nominate it for deletion. We already have a process for this. If the article is kept, then at least a couple of sources have come up, and glaring problems like the addresses have been fixed. Toughpigs (talk) 20:43, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Nah… If I nominate for deletion, I get told that the topic is notable (apparently there are reliable sources, even though I personally don’t know which are reliable). I get told that AFD isn’t for article clean up (so the WP:NOT violation persists), and I am scolded for wasting people’s time. Blueboar (talk) 21:32, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    So... you don't want to use AfD because you'll be told that you're wrong. Instead, you want a separate AfD process that will tell you that you're right? Toughpigs (talk) 21:36, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Not at all… I want a new process that will better draw attention to problems and do more to incentivize editors who CAN fix the problems to actually DO so. That new process might (or might not) be modeled on AFD… I’m still very open to suggestions and inspiration on that. I simply know that our current “tag it and hope that someone eventually fixes it” system isn’t working. Blueboar (talk) 21:59, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Is fixing that the right goal for Wikipedia?

    I think this point needs to get some direct attention. I agree that the hypothetical article described above is a WP:NOT violation as written.

    But: Is this really a "Oh my goodness, that actually violates a policy! Please, somebody do something, quick!" situation? Or could this be more of a "That's unfortunate, but not actually harmful, and frankly an article that only lists the locations is not as important as other problems I could be fixing" problem?

    Most of what we do is being done by about 10K experienced editors each month. The available volunteer hours do not expand to accommodate someone's desire to have this fixed on the m:immediatism time line. Incentivizing the editors who can clean up that article "to actually DO so" means incentivizing those editors to leave other problems unaddressed. So – is this really worth the cost? Are you glad that I expanded Cottage Inn Pizza when it was prodded a few months ago? Can that question be fully answered, if you don't consider what else I didn't do, because I spent an hour or so on that "relatively obscure regional restaurant chain"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    If there isn’t any urgency, perhaps we should downgrade WP:NOT to an essay?… or rename it to: “What Wikipedia arguably shouldn’t be.” Ok, snark there… but yeah, I do think dealing with violations of major policies should out weigh a lot of the other, pettier things we obsess about as editors. Blueboar (talk) 00:20, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Blueboar, you asked, "Do we (as a community) continue to just ignore the problems with the article I have identified?" And for me, the answer is that I would rather have lots of imperfect articles than give you and X other people the power to mass-delete articles that would pass AfD but you still think are kind of "meh".

    (Note that you have already said that the articles would pass AfD and that you would be accused of wasting editors' time if you nominated them.)

    If your proposal is (paraphrased), "Let's have a system that 'forces' people to improve random articles on notable subjects at my personal instruction or they get deleted whenever I want," then I vote for the system that we currently have. Yes, that hypothetical chain restaurant article is absolutely hypothetically fine with me. Toughpigs (talk) 01:25, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Well, I don't think I'd describe the hypothetical article as "fine", but I also don't think that fixing it is urgent. If it gets done sometime before the heat death of the universe, then that would be great. But if we have more important content to work on, then I'm okay with it still being in its harmless but WP:UGLY and nominally policy-violating state when I die. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Toughpigs… I’m not sure why you keep bringing up deletion… I opened this section by removing deletion as an option. But just to be clear - I am envisioning a new process to fix problematic articles… and NOT delete them. Blueboar (talk) 10:29, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    So this new process highlights that it is vital that someone drops what they are doing and fixes this article to your satisfaction right now. What happens if nobody does? It's already a stub, so gutting the article isn't an option, and deletion is apparently off the table, so we can't do that. What else is there? Do we pick an editor and stop them doing anything else until they've fixed this article? How do we choose which editor? What happens if they walk away from the project instead? Or do we just leave the article with a different banner on it to let people know that not only is this article is in a bad state but we disapprove of it being in bad state and we were unable to force anybody to fix it in time? Thryduulf (talk) 10:56, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Thryduulf, part of the problem in my hypothetical is that the article (as it currently stands) ISN’T “already a stub”… it’s a directory of franchises and addresses. I could definitely see “stubify” being a step in the process (the “Gut” part of my suggested “Gut and Rebuild” name for the process) but what we really need is the next step… something that will incentivize editors to rebuild. That’s what I am searching for… and I don’t have the answer yet. I am hoping that I will become inspired as we continue to discuss. Blueboar (talk) 11:39, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Other editors have identified articles that they see as being part of this process which are stubs. Thryduulf (talk) 11:42, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Fixing the Policy Violation™ 😱 requires ten seconds. You open the editor, blank the list, and save it. Fixing that would be faster than manually tagging it, and approximately the same amount of time as using Twinkle to tag it.

    Now we have a substub with less information, which presents two problems:

    • Nobody who hates having an article with two sentences and a list of locations is going to be satisfied with an article that contains only the two sentences. It's still WP:UGLY and it's still irritating to all the people who want only high-quality articles right now.
    • "Less information" can itself be construed as a different Policy Violation™ 😱, because the Wikipedia:Editing policy says that Wikipedia should generally have more information instead of less.

    So now what? Keep complaining? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    @Blueboar, what if it's not so petty? The next major edit I made after that pizza chain was to expand Mastitis. I don't think we have an official policy that says "Improve health-related articles by providing accurate, well-sourced facts about common medical conditions, particularly if misinformation is spreading about that subject on social media", but I do consider that more important and more urgent than nominal compliance with a policy about whether Wikipedia should or shouldn't contain a list of locations for a restaurant chain. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:26, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Sure, there are things that are more important… but there are a lot of things we (as a community) obsess about that are less important. Perhaps we should adjust our priorities? Blueboar (talk) 11:44, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    Where does removing a list of locations from a pizza chain article fall in your priority list? What's less (and more) important? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

    The problem isn't "somebody do something quick!", but more that an article can be tagged as "somebody do something eventually", 5...10...15 years pass, and it is still tagged "somebody do something eventually". Meanwhile while the topic itself may be notable, we have had this article where every version wholly or substantially violates WP:V or other core policies. The article could contain wrong information, misleading our readers for years on end. As we grow, the numbers of them are just increasing which is why the problem is becoming more important to fix. This is the exact same circumstance that led to the 2009-2010 BLP mass deletion sprees and WP:BLPPROD, just without the urgency of living people being at risk which is why the issue has quietly crept along. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:51, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I think what you're aiming for is literally impossible. Not difficult, but actually impossible, without fundamentally changing what Wikipedia is. Wikipedia is not a publication (like a traditional encyclopedia), it is a content platform. There is no way to get the users of a content platform to all work towards the same goal (any goal). The only rule that a content platform can impose -- what you call a "threat" but is more accurately described as an enforcement mechanism -- the only enforcement mechanism available to a content platform is to not allow particular content to be published (what we call "deletion"). If you want to improve the content on a content platform, literally the only possible way to enforce any standards, is to delete (or not publish) content that fails to meet those standards. So: draw a line, delete anything that falls below that line, that's all we can really do. If the content meets the minimum standards, there is no real way to require or even encourage it to be improved beyond those minimum standards. Real money won't work, and nothing else matters to people in the end. You can hope people make better content, you can help them, you can encourage them, but you'll never be able to require it--all a content platform can do is remove substandard content. As analogies, consider how could YouTube possibly get people to make better videos, especially without paying them? How could a community garden get its members to plant "better" flowers? They can rip out substandard flowers, but beyond that...? I think there's nothing. Levivich (talk) 21:40, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

One thing that I have noticed that I think should be discussed here is the situation with articles tagged as advertisements, COI, or the like. There are some clearly notable topics that have been tagged as such (and indeed, may well have been written as such), for which — in my humble experience — improvement of the article is difficult precisely because editors may be dissuaded from working on the article at all out of concern that adding anything positive about the subject risks accusations of being involved in the advertising/COI issue, even where there is reliably sourced information that could be added. BD2412 T 03:22, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am somewhat unsurprised that no one has taken this up as an issue. BD2412 T 16:19, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The username policy disallows users to have a username that has "bot", "script" or other related words in them because they could potentially mislead other editors. In my on-and-off time on wikipedia, I never understood why these sorts of usernames should be prohibited.

My main issue is that I feel that it's too BITEY.

Imagine being a new editor, clicking on the edit button just to see a big ugly edit notice saying that you're indefinitely blocked from editing just because you put "bot" on your username. Wouldn't it demotivate, discourage, and dissuade you from ever editing Wikipedia, or going through the process of appealing a block?

I understand that admins should attempt to communicate to the user before taking any action, but I rarely see that happen.

The thing is, having a bot-like username is not disruptive to the encyclopedia. It's not trolling any users, or going to tackle the issue with bot-like editing.

So I ask you, what is the purpose of prohibiting bot-like usernames? OzzyOlly (talk) 01:57, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If I see a user account called CitationBot, I assume it's a bot that in some way edits citations. Prohibiting bot-like usernames is intended to prevent that assumption from being misleading. If admins are not explaining the block reasoning, that is a distinct issue from the policy itself. CMD (talk) 02:30, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I could how some users might ignore edits because of their username, but first, the vast majority of times it's someone who stuck robot in their because they like robots or are otherwise entirely in good faith, and also users can check the account and its contributions. OzzyOlly (talk) 02:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Many usernames could be made in good faith that fall afoul of the username policy, the policy was not created to deal with bad faith usernames but to provide guidance for selecting usernames that do not impede communication and collaboration (or create potential legal issues). CMD (talk) 02:48, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

My issue is that bot-like usernames don't impede communication or are disruptive. I think we're risking shutting out perfectly good editors over minor "what-ifs" OzzyOlly (talk) 03:11, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Bot-like usernames do both, because we editors do not communicate with bots, and expect edits by bots to be very constrained along particular lines. The username policy does not shut out any editors. CMD (talk) 03:28, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I know it's not really a total blanket ban on editors, but the issue is that I don't believe there's a net gain in doing this. I mean, recent changes automatically doesn't show you bot edits, and it's pretty easy to distinguish a human from a bot editor (especially the ones who added bot not as an attempt to communicate anything) even without having to check if it has the bot flag.

I've checked around to see how many people are blocked because of this, I've only found two instances of bot-like behavior, both of which are simply people not realizing they need to seek approval from BAG if they want to bring a bot from another project. Some are blocked for vandalism, sockpuppetry, and other stuff but the vast majority are of just regular newcomers, acting in good faith. OzzyOlly (talk) 15:09, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If an editor is so fragile that a username policy is something that causes them to leave this site forever, then don't let them know about all other policies and guidelines we have. Gonnym (talk) 18:01, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If we're not (at least) issuing warnings about potentially unwanted but not automatically rejected usernames at the time of account creation, maybe we should be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It could be editors create a login on another language Wikipedia that does not have this rule. They can edit there where "bot" means something different, but editting here is a problem if it sounds like you are a robot. Some other names are a problem, eg "administrator" or "official" which could mislead. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:29, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What if the person happens to be called LongBOTtom or likes the Bibles and uses TheSCRIPTures etc? There must be reasonable grounds? — Iadmc♫^talk  08:00, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The policy doesn't disallow those. It only disallows names that suggest the user's a bot.—S Marshall T/C 08:20, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh OK. Thanks — Iadmc♫^talk  08:22, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What about User:Notbot? Looks like a bot to me even though you can say he's claiming not to be a bot — Iadmc♫^talk  08:45, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is a borderline case and should be discussed with the community. I suspect it would?be allowed, but I can't be sure unless the discussion actually takes place. Animal lover |666| 12:35, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I really think we should offer to do the name change on their behalf rather than make them go through all this crap and then request one and then sit around and twiddle their thumbs while they wait for us to get around to it. At the very least, give them a week to come up with a new one or something, and then block them. jp×g🗯️ 08:35, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

We really shouldn't be indefing editors because of their username, unless it's obviously offensive. I know that's kind of what we do already, but we really should just look at their edits, and see if they're WP:HTBAE or not. If they are, drop a note on their talk page, ask them what username they want, instead of mass blocks and biting. OzzyOlly (talk) 15:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Theoretically, this is the rule, but in practice, the few admins who deal with this say it's too much trouble to check back to see if a request has been made. They block when it's not required because it's easier for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Usernames that suggest that the underlying account is a bot should be a communicate-level prohibited name-that is they should only be blocked after a failed attempt to convince them to change name. Additionally, they should never be blocked if their primary wiki is not English-speaking, and probably not even for other English-language wikis. And merely having words like "bot" or "script" shouldn't be a problem, only names which actually imply that the account is one. Any borderline case should be discussed with the community; "borderline" should be defined as anything that a good-faith, long-time community member may support allowing. Animal lover |666| 12:25, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What about robot*** or bot***, these cases used bot as prefix not a suffix? -Lemonaka 02:50, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

AFAICT anything that implies the user is a bot is disallowed, I'm assuming they used suffixes as an example, and not as a hard and fast rule. All I'm saying is that disallowing those usernames causes more harm than good, for resolving an issue that even a much more experienced editor like you has never seen. OzzyOlly (talk) 04:14, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@User:RobotGoggles Someone has called that your username is disallowed. Anyway, there are lots of user with a prefix instead of suffix and didn't cause any trouble. -Lemonaka 12:42, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am unsure what this discussion is regarding but I have had this username for years. It is a reference to Robotron 2084, the arcade game that was my original username, ages ago. When I lost that email and I had to make a new account, I created a portmanteau of Robotron and "Goggles", my high school nickname. It has nothing to do with any implications that I am a bot, nor that I am a human. I think, and I may be wrong about this, that users don't think that "robot" is a word to use to describe automated users on a web forum or wiki. Robots are physical machines, not just computer programs and software. I've, in fact, never even been accused by other users of being a bot, even in heated talk pages where you would expect such an accusation to be made. RobotGoggles (talk) 19:19, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Maybe they see "RobertGoogles"? I did — Iadmc♫^talk  19:28, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

In addition, Robot-Google. If someone thought " anything that implies the user is a bot is disallowed", then this username may both considered assuming that the user is a "bot" and a "COI" editor. However, unless editing disruptively, no one may give them a block just because of the username. So the topic is a little bit absurd. -Lemonaka 02:42, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Anyway, a bot from AmandaNP excessively positively detecting users may violate username policies, which may cause some trouble when a common newly registered user got a notice on WP:UAA just due to being detected. -Lemonaka 02:43, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

UAA should be done in such a way that doesn't notify reported users. Finding out about the report would be extremely BITEy for perfectly good user names, significantly BITEy for users with communicate-level disallowed usernames to find out that their names are problematic, and helpful for intentionally disruptively named users to help evade detection (I believe I covered the vast majority of reported names). Animal lover |666| 12:01, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Animal lover 666 Please report me for testing, I'd like to take a view whether they noticed reported users. -Lemonaka 14:30, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I wonder if instead of blocking editors, an admin can rename the account to something like "Renamed user UF7IHSJ5JKIS8K" and drop a note on their talk page to ask them to create a new username. OzzyOlly (talk) 16:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@OzzyOlly Sysop cannot rename user account, few sysops are global renamers. And Renamed user xxxx are left for vanished users. -Lemonaka 00:37, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@OzzyOlly I meant that if you contribute constructively, why would someone blocked you for your username? Just as @Animal lover 666, merely having words like "bot" or "script" shouldn't be a problem. This is not something hard and robust. -Lemonaka 02:40, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Of course it isn't robust, what I'm saying is is that it's unnecessary to resolve an effectively non-existent problem. And new users, even ones that are contributing positively do get blocked because of this rule. OzzyOlly (talk) 02:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am writing to request feedback on the meta:Movement Charter by 25 June to publish as community reactions in the next issue of The Signpost.

Hi I am Lane Rasberry / user:bluerasberry. I am an editor for The Signpost. I also organize wiki stuff off-wiki in lots of ways, including in-person Wikipedia meetups and professionally as a Wikipedia researcher at my university.

I am writing to share the news that somehow - perhaps as an endpoint to 10 years of strategic planning - wiki governance has produced a draft Movement Charter. There will be a global ratification vote on it 25 June through 9 July. Lots of people have lots of views of this. My view is that this document would greatly influence and justify how the Wikimedia Movement spends the US$1,000,000,000 (billion dollars) which the Wikimedia Foundation is likely to collect over the next 6-8 years.

I am writing here to seek comments and reactions to the Charter. Also, please if you respect the views of any other individuals or organizations, then ask them to comment. I want to publish this in the next issue of Signpost to help inform voter decisions on the ratification. I also asked for comment at meta:Talk:Movement_Charter#Request_reactions_to_Charter_for_Signpost_newsletter and Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom#Movement_Charter_Ratification_vote. Thanks for any reactions. Feel free to post here, in the newsroom, or anywhere just so long as you share what you did for reporting in The Signpost. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:08, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

My initial reaction is that it doesn't feature the word "encyclopedia", and that's a shame. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 18:34, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm concerned the statement "The Wikimedia Movement is based on and embraces a factual, verifiable, open, and inclusive approach to knowledge-sharing", while full of good things, foregoes "ethical" or any other terminology that would be fight against justifying a pirate site. -- Nat Gertler (talk) Nat Gertler (talk) 18:51, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This 'movement' is, needless to say, a fiction. People who edit stuff on WMF-hosted websites are no more a 'movement' than Redditors, or people who use X-that-used-to-be-Twitter. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:16, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

A movement for X
That used to be Twitter
From reading the posts
Must be named Xitter
Burma-shave

-- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:07, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@AndyTheGrump [3]: The “Wikimedia Movement” refers to the totality of people, groups, and organizations who support and participate in Wikimedia websites and projects. It includes all of those who operate within the policies, principles, and values of the movement. It's a thing but still you point that it is really a fiction. — Iadmc♫^talk  21:14, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am well aware of what the WMF claims in regard to this supposed 'movement', when trying to justify their funding efforts. I have seen precisely zero evidence that anyone has done any research into the extent those who use WMF websites actually subscribe to the 'principles' and 'values' claimed, or that they consider themselves a part of any particular 'movement'. There is nothing whatsoever in the terms of use that describes such particular beliefs, and it would be grossly improper to require them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:02, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This just reads like meaningless marketing jargon to me, like calling a shopper doing some price comparison "the client's purchasing journey". That's not what a "journey" is, and this is not what a "movement" is. JoelleJay (talk) 18:17, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@AndyTheGrump@JoelleJay Yes. Marketing probably. I Follow the WP:5P and all that goes with it. I know nothing of 'principles' and 'values' of WikiMedia. A ficticious jargon and a waste of time no one will read. — Iadmc♫^talk  18:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The 5Ps only apply to the English language Wikipedia, and while we adhere to them, there is no shortage of evidence that not everybody agrees with them. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:59, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Maybe the WMF should spend that money employing people in developing countries to digitize their print media rather than using it to create more and more ideological focus groups that have nothing to do with building an encyclopedia. JoelleJay (talk) 18:24, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The WMF's flight of fancy took off long ago, and it has completely lost contact with Wikipedia or any other real-world activity. It now exists mainly to deceive donors who think they are supporting Wikipedia into financing unrelated activities. I often consider making a constructive edit but do not bother, knowing that it would be abused in this way. I am not part of any so-called Wikimedia movement, and it does not represent me in any way. Certes (talk) 19:18, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

God, how good would a developing country media digitization effort be... and the WMF has the means to make it happen! ꧁Zanahary꧂ 05:27, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This would be the single most effective method the WMF could employ in its claimed campaign against "systemic bias", it would naturally stimulate Wikipedia involvement in underrepresented regions in addition to providing relatively cheap-to-WMF employment, the cost for digitization tools and webspace would be minor, the optics would be fantastic...but nope, gotta spend millions of dollars giving grants to special interest groups with limited Wikipedia relevance or to clueless initiatives to write articles on topics that neither proposers nor reviewers noticed already had articles... JoelleJay (talk) 02:55, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

initiatives to write articles on topics that neither proposers nor reviewers noticed already had articles...
Has this happened? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 03:17, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh yes. JoelleJay (talk) 03:22, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Jesus Christ lol. WMF please, a developing world digitization project. University of Burundi is digitizing their theses right now and it's incredible the knowledge they're opening to the world. And they're doing that with University of Burundi funding. Imagine the good that could be done! ꧁Zanahary꧂ 03:24, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Who the hell are the "stakeholders"? Does the W?F think we care about this corporatese nonsense? I know they're out of touch, but still...

This isn't nearly as bad as the magnificently nonsensical meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2024-2025/Product & Technology OKRs, but still fails to actually establish anything useful.

And there are of course sneakily vague bits. Take, for example,

All contributors and other volunteers must follow Wikimedia Movement policies applicable to them while contributing and undertaking volunteer activities.

“policies applicable to them” is as open a loophole for the W?F to ban a few people they happen to not like for whatever reason as I've yet seen. How about

All contributors and other volunteers must follow the policies of the Wikimedia community (e.g. English Wikisource, French Wiktionary) they are contributing to.

I, for one, will be voting against this W?F nonsense. Cremastra (talk) 16:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

They can make up arbitrary rules for me to follow, but they won't change my current behaviour which I believe to be perfectly reasonable. Of course, they can office-block me for pointing out their deficiencies. However, if they do that to everyone, they will soon find themselves with no community and a stale encyclopedia that no longer generates the donations that pay them for watching us write it. Certes (talk) 17:35, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Cremastra, you have already individually agreed, on at least some twenty thousand separate occasions, that you will follow those policies. Have you ever read the foundation:Terms of Use? I suggest that you do so, paying particular attention to ==Resolutions and Project Policies==, which says "The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees releases official policies from time to time. Some of these policies may be mandatory for a particular Project or Project edition, and, when they are, you agree to abide by them as applicable."

While I'm here, I'm always surprised to see people, even editors who have been around for a while, claiming that "the movement" is something that was created by the WMF and has nothing to do with us. The idea of 'the Wikimedia movement' was created by volunteers. It dates back to at least 2004, when the WMF had zero paid staff. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I support the Wikimedia movement. I contribute to four Wikimedia projects and wish more people would do the same. Cremastra (talk) 12:22, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Hi all - wearing my Movement Charter Drafting Committee hat here for a minute. I can quite reassure you that the WMF was not directive in what is contained in the Movement Charter that will be voted on starting next week. In fact, getting the opinion of the WMF on various topics was really difficult, especially in the early days as we started the process. The content of the Charter is largely reflective of recommendations from the 2030 strategy initiatives, which were released back in 2019 (it was released just as the world came to a screeching halt with the pandemic). We have no idea on the Drafting Committee how the WMF Board of Trustees will vote when it comes to the Charter; we'll find out at the same time as the broader community does.

  The ballot has two sections: a support/--/oppose section (with the "--" taking the place of the word "neutral" as it's hard to translate into some languages); and a comment box. People can vote any way they feel is right, AND they can include an extensive comment on their reasoning. Several people in this thread have expressed opinions; I hope they will vote and include those opinions in their ballot. A summary of all of those comments will be published, regardless of whether or not the Charter is ratified. If it is ratified, we have a Charter. If it is not ratified, we will have a much better idea of how individual community members are thinking, and that will definitely help in determining next steps. We have had so few individual community members participating in the discussions leading up to this ratification vote that there's no way to predict an outcome. We just hope that people will participate in the vote itself, and tell us what they're thinking. What do you like about the Charter? What do you not like? What made you decide to vote the way you did? We really look forward to finding out more.

  I know you'll see more about this ratification vote in the coming days and weeks, and I hope a lot of people participate. Takes off MCDC hat and goes off to eat dinner. Risker (talk) 04:43, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  What are the languages where we’ve been able to translate the draft charter but haven’t been able to translate the word neutral? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 06:35, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  If it is not ratified, we will have a much better idea of how individual community members are thinking, and that will definitely help in determining next steps.

  @Risker Under what circumstance will the Movement Charter be considered "dead"? There is a non-zero part of the community which considers the Movement Charter efforts structurally flawed enough that it needs to stop. I personally think the efforts so far are underbaked and overly convoluted at once; but am not sure if that requires more effort to fix things, or the charter should just go away.

  Community fatigue is a thing (with so many elections and ratifications happening over the last few months) and I'd like a bit more clarity on what circumstances would lead to either outcome. Soni (talk) 17:30, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Soni, there isn't a good answer to this question. A lot of it is dependent on (a) the actual results of the vote and (b) the nature of the comments received. We will have to wait and see. Risker (talk) 20:55, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Fair enough. I guess pre the actual charter vote, my main question is just... "What's the point of all this?" I've tried to follow the entire discussion in meta, here and elsewhere. Nowhere can I find a clear simple articulated "Here's why we're doing this", as opposed to "People in this meeting back in 2021 recommended it" and "We've been working on this for N years, here's a timeline".

  Why is the MC a thing? What does it change for day-to-day work in the projects/top level decisionmaking? Will the movement charter be binding over WMF? The community? How is this different from ToU/UCoC/WMF's Annual Plans? Similiar question for GC/GCB but with U4C/WMF BoT? Will the decisions of GC/GCB be binding over anyone?

  I can probably think of a few more adjacent questions. It's not that none of them have been answered if you carefully read between all the lines, it's that the entire process could really use a "Simple answers FAQ" instead of a "Here's all the ways you can help the MC" style FAQ page we have. I remember giving this feedback to someone from WMF/MCDC working on this, but the FAQ continues to be as unhelpful as ever. Soni (talk) 22:15, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Soni I agree, that level of clarity and simplicity is needed. A Charter and Council tend to help movements with coordination, something we do need and expend many head-desks trying to work around in its absence. In particular, even our own Foundations have a hard time coordinating with the communities they are designed to support. I tried to motivate a few specific goals here.

  Zanahary and JoelleJay, digitization of sources and archives is indeed one of the greatest ways we can advance knowledge and fill gaps in coverage. It's not always clear where we can have that impact, but a project to identify such initiatives and what they need would be promising and could help better direct funds. The 'special interest groups' you mention that got WMF grants in the past were just chosen from the pool of knowledge projects nominated for consideration, after a public call. I don't know if that will happen again, but a) this is the sort of thing that is clearly aligned with our mission that we can do now, and b) a Global Council is imagined as the community-run body that could prioritize and act on that, more meaningfully than disparate community feedback on sporadic calls for nominations or requests for comment. – SJ + 14:41, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello, when I was discussing Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/2-Pyridone_(data_page), some one noted that there are lots of datapages on Category:Chemical_data_pages, much of them are created by Edgar181 (talk · contribs) who was banned years ago. These pages are in different styles, and some of them lack references. We may need a policy for such pages, for example, should they merged to main article of the related chemicals? Should they moved to Wikidata? Is there Any additional requirements for such pages since they are not an article?

I've viewed previous discussion on project, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/Archive 36#Data pages and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/Archive 50#Chemical data pages - move to Wikidata?, no clearly consensus got. Some users who discuss this topic also banned for years. -Lemonaka 02:45, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Pinging Graeme Bartlett, Boghog, and Bduke, who seem to know things about chemistry.

Lemonaka, these look to me like very large infoboxes. Perhaps they could be transcluded into a collapsed section? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Count me out. It is 20 years since I was a chemistry academic and I was more into physical chemistry and not individual chemicals. Bduke (talk) 05:04, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think I was the someone in that discussion. I am by no means an expert in chemistry but as an outsider I would assume that people who need such information have a better source for it than Wikipedia pages. I suspect that most of the pages are pretty-much unused but I would be happy for any deletion/merge decisions to be made on a case-by-case basis in case some some of them are considered useful.

I would suggest changing the line If using the full Chembox, a supplementary page should be created as soon as time allowsonWP:CHEMBOX § Supplementary data page. Even if some data pages are useful, I don't think it is useful to encourage indiscriminately creating them for all chemicals. Mgp28 (talk) 07:25, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've added links to this discussion from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Chemistry and Template talk:Chembox Mgp28 (talk) 07:37, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Much of the info on the datapages are in the main articles under chemboxes. I never even knew these datapages even existed. They seem to be miscellaneous pages or partly redundant compared to chemboxes that are found in main chemical articles which provide up to date info. And some that I looked at don't seem to be updated for years on chemicals properties. Some carry interesting documents like Materials Safety Datasheets (MSDS). Ramos1990 (talk) 08:08, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

We should discourage datapage creation. Instead articles should be made if the information is too detailed for the main article. I like the idea of "Properties of chemical". The banning of Edgar181 really has no bearing on the quality. But the main issue with the datapages is the lack of references. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:58, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I like this idea. I would be much happier with any extra information being presented in properly-sourced articles. Mgp28 (talk) 11:03, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Wikisource seems like the most appropriate place to include additional data that is beyond the scope of an encyclopedia article. Masem (t) 12:30, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  You may mean wikidata?? -Lemonaka 12:40, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• I vaguely recall AFD for the lot of them a few years ago, that did not get consensus to delete. Can't find the page at the moment... DMacks (talk) 03:08, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello. Recently I learned by observation that Wikipedia tends to use DMY date formats (except for US subjects). Can someone please cite that policy? MOS:DATETIES applies to the use of English by country, as does MOS:TIES. I cannot find an applicable policy for subjects from non-English-speaking countries in MOS:NUM. I searched your archives and found mainly arguments, not really a useful pointer, sorry. Thank you for your time. -SusanLesch (talk) 14:21, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The applicable guideline is "Retain existing format". In summary,

*The date format chosen in the first major contribution in the early stages of an article (i.e., the first non-stub version) should continue to be used, unless there is reason to change it based on strong national ties to the topic or consensus on the article's talk page.

Jc3s5h (talk) 14:27, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for the quote. That's exactly what I need. However the administrator who corrected me thinks MOS:VAR doesn't apply. He says MOS:DATETIES covers Italian subjects. I have read, and re-read MOS:DATETIES and conclude that no, it relates to English usage by country. Where does MOS offer guidance on date format by country? -SusanLesch (talk) 14:38, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

When I use the feature at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers to search the archives for the word "countries" I see 127 discussions. The most recent discussion I found was Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 161#Date Formatting for non-English speaking countries. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you again. I read the entire recent discussion. Exasperating. The result was an upset stomach, not answering the question, and instead reminding me that Wikipedia does not even know whether or not it should use citation templates. (If someone were to advocate for the metric system, to do away with daylight savings time, to prohibit pharmaceutical advertising on television, and to adopt the DMY date format, they'd have my vote in the US November elections.)

I guess this means my argument is with the administrator who corrected me without consensus, and not with Wikipedia policy. -SusanLesch (talk) 16:53, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Were you guys going to notify me about this topic given you are talking about me? The height of bad manners.

I repeat - Italy uses DMY (see Date and time notation in Italy), hence why the articles on Leonardo da Vinci et al do. Retaining an existing format does not count when the existing format is incorrect. If a British person was to create an article about a US politician, would it stay DMY? No, course not. GiantSnowman 17:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Publications, including Wikipeda, use whatever date format is called for in their style manual. Would-be authors who don't want to follow the style manual are likely to get rejection letters or the equivalent. Looking outside the rules of the publication to see what is or isn't "correct" is the wrong approach. But if you want to change the rules, that's a different matter. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:40, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What are you on about? Italy uses DMY and so Italian-related topics should follow that. GiantSnowman 20:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

For evidence that a publication may use whatever date format they want see an obituary in the Telegraph about Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini which uses『24 March 2024 • 9:11am』for the timestamp of the article but "January 5 1942, died March 23 2024" for the birth and death dates of the subject of the article. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:29, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Date and time notation in Italy says DMY is standard. DMY is also used in USA (military) but is not standard. GiantSnowman 20:38, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@GiantSnowman: MOS:DATETIES says (emphasis added) Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country. Last I checked Italy is not considered an English-speaking country, so MOS:DATETIES doesn't apply. Anomie⚔ 21:19, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

True. That said, MOS:DATEVAR simply says unless there is reason to change it based on strong national ties to the topic with no mention whatsoever of English-speaking, so either GiantSnowman's reasoning is correct, just filed under the wrong MOS shortcut, or if national ties in DATEVAR was meant to apply specifically to English-speaking countries, it needs its wording adjusted. AddWittyNameHere 21:26, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Since MOS:DATEVAR immediately follows MOS:DATETIES, it could easily be that "English-speaking" was omitted from the latter because "strong national ties to the topic" was considered a reference to the previous section titled "strong national ties to a topic". When the language was originally added in December 2007 the two were even more closely associated. Checking Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 92 for contemporaneous discussion, I see some discussion over "English-language" along the lines of GiantSnowman's argument but it doesn't seem to have resulted in its removal at the time. Anomie⚔ 21:57, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Just a note here that the "height of bad manners" is supposed to refer to me. I came here for information, and when a break occurred I went back to post on the original thread. Another editor had entered the conversation at length. -SusanLesch (talk) 22:16, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

We should remove 'English-speaking' - otherwise we have carnage, as shown here. GiantSnowman 17:29, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

WP:DATETIES is good for English speaking countries and their 2 formats (DMY, MDY). For countries that do not align with the 2 English formats (eg, most of Asia) then DATETIES is also fine with first come, first served. But for non-English countries such as Italy that do align with DMY or MDY, then I say we should honour that that format. It is for the same reasons that we let Yanks have their format and Brits have theirs - to align with the most likely readers and editors of those articles without constant edit wars. It is only for articles tied to YMD countries (typically Asia) and articles not tied to a specific country that should be first come, first serve.  Stepho  talk  08:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Which "most likely readers"? Wouldn't Italians be more likely to read the Italian Wikipedia, since that's in their own language? Unless maybe they're wanting to practice their English or think their own language's coverage is lacking, but do we really want to be in the position of deciding which non-English Wikipedias aren't "good enough"? Anomie⚔ 11:06, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

As you are specifically talking about non-English speaking countries, what they do is absolutely irrelevant. How they write the dates is no more important to us than what word they use for "dog". --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's reasonable to think most of the edits in the English Wikipedia will be made by editors who's first language is English. Although most editors may be able to look at a few dates in most European languages and figure out what the format is, they likely will not know what reference works best represent editorial practices in non-English speaking European languages, nor are they likely to possess copies of those works unless they're free. Requiring editors to figure all this out is an undue burden on editors. I know if I have a English-language date format question outside of Wikipedia, I'd look at, perhaps, the Chicago Manual of Style or the Associated Press Stylebook, and I know which shelf I keep them on. If I had a similar question about Polish, I would have no idea where to look. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

A place to look is the Italian Wikipedia, it:Aiuto:Manuale di stile#Date which permits only DMY ordering. This concurs with Date and time notation in Italy, the sources used in that article, and every relevant hit (reliable and unreliable) I found on the first three pages of a google search for What date order does Italy use?. In other words, every relevant bit of evidence suggests that articles about Italy should use DMY. Thryduulf (talk) 19:19, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

May I suggest that anybody interested in making that change explain it at MOS talk and maybe we'll see the guidelines revised? For now, MOS:DATEVAR has precedence. -SusanLesch (talk) 20:58, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If you want to enforce the Italian Wikipedia's manual of style you can go and do so on Italian Wikipedia. There is and should be absolutely no requirement for English-speaking Wikipedians writing in English on English Wikipedia to know or care what it.wiki's manual of style says. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:11, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You have completely misinterpreted my comment. I am not advocating applying the Italian Wikipedia's MoS to the English Wikipedia, but for using the Italian Wikipedia's MoS as one point of evidence regarding what Italian style guides state is correct usage in Italian/in Italy. Jc3s5h stated they wouldn't know where to look to find what is correct in Italian, I simply pointed out places to look to find the answer. Thryduulf (talk) 14:29, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

and I have already highlighted Date and time notation in Italy multiple times. GiantSnowman 17:00, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I personally think it's pretty silly to have MDY set on articles whose topic doesn't touch North America. It's just awkward to work with when most quotes and literature will be in the other format. Remsense诉 17:59, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Well, we could solve all of this by uniformly using metric dating (largest to smallest, or year-month-day-hour-minute-second, etc). That would be the international standard, but of course I'm just stirring the pot here. Risker (talk) 22:10, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

ISO 8601 FTW! RoySmith (talk) 22:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This conversation should be merged with the parallel conversation at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#DATETIES_vs._DATEVAR. There are currently editors contributing to both discussions on both pages. Doremo (talk) 07:40, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Looks to me like User:EEng edited MOS:DATEVAR to clarify it as a result of this discussion, User:GiantSnowman decided to edit war over it because it clarified that his interpretation wasn't what the guideline intended, and then someone started a discussion about the edit on WT:MOSDATE which quickly shifted to discussing whether "English-speaking" should be removed from both MOS:DATETIES and MOS:DATEVAR. I'm not sure "merging" this discussion would be appropriate, but notifying that people here who have something useful to contribute there (and aren't afraid to get into a MOS-warring discussions) should do is. Anomie⚔ 11:26, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you; this summary is helpful. Doremo (talk) 12:26, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I did not edit war. GiantSnowman 17:41, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am not sure what is the purpose of the current discussions in the NPOV talk page. I am concerned that people want to remove "Not taking sides" from the nutshell, because they feel that it can be used to prevent rejecting fringe theories. So, I wrote this essay about rejecting vs including info, because I think this fundamental issue should be discussed first. My hope is that I can stop discussing in the NPOV talk page and let others discuss. People blame me for that and claim that I must discuss, because I want to change the policy, but that is not true. I do think that a global discussion about NPOV is useful, but not in the policy talk page, not until we have a concrete proposal. So, I removed the policy from my watch list, despite the blame for not wanting to discuss. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:29, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Note added: The last comment from Shooterwalker was not there and I was not aware of it when I started to write this. This last comment might have taken care of the issue. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:42, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I would like to know the policy on translation. I don't mean translation of entire articles, I mean translation of specific quotes, such as for example the lyrics of a song. Should there be a) only the original language text, b) only our translation, or c) both? My concern is that a) prevents some people from understanding the article, b) in a way misquotes the sources, and c) ends up with a lot of [original text] (meaning [en text]), or similar, that clutter the article a bit. I didn't manage to find this as most translation-related page are about translation of full articles. Thank you, — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 18:47, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Both… If the lyrics of a song are significant enough to quote, they are significant enough to include a translation. Consider a footnote if you think it would clutter the article. Blueboar (talk) 20:38, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I like the way Cædmon's Hymn does it.—S Marshall T/C 20:42, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Unfortunately that all looks rather odd unless your using a standard desktop resolution, as it's trying to force a specific formatting by using spaces. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:29, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Are you talking about the part where each half-line is separated by three spaces? That's actually conventional formatting for Middle English alliterative verse. But what I meant was the part where the translation is side by side with the original.—S Marshall T/C 22:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I mean the side by side doesn't line up properly, as new line placement is all over the place. These are better handled by tables, so the lines match the correct placement for each other however it's viewed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:26, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh, that's interesting. It uses {{verse translation}} so you're describing some kind of problem with the template rather than the article. It looks fine to me, on my laptop, desktop, tablet and phone.—S Marshall T/C 15:19, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The policy says that we should provide translation… it does not (and in my opinion, should not) specify how to do so. There are lots of different ways to provide translations… all are acceptable. Which to use can be left up to consensus at the article level. Blueboar (talk) 14:38, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Please, see MOS:FOREIGNQUOTE. Ruslik_Zero 20:48, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also see: WP:RSUEQ Blueboar (talk) 01:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you all! — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 07:19, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is an attempt to continue here a "great and important topic" that started in the talk page of NPOV. In short, North8000 started by saying that the section on due weight was "obsolete on two fronts in the post-journalism era and the current media-are-now-partisan-advocates era", Philomathes2357 agreed and asked how would you rewrite it and Masem mentioned "the need to value sources far separated in both time and relationship to the topic at hand than those that are very near the topic in both ways."

Dominic Mayers (talk) 09:51, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• I see two issues that I see needing to be addressed. The first is that people too often jump right to UNDUE to exclude viewpoints instead of using DUE to weigh how they should be included. The second is an over reliance on breaking news coverage. This type of coverage, by its nature, omits nuance… and we need nuance to properly weigh what is DUE. Blueboar (talk) 15:20, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  There is a subtle aspect that should not be neglected. The way you present it, the viewpoints considered already exist. In practice, this means that the statements already exist. In that case, DUE is simply the opposite of UNDUE: if a statement is proposed and it is not rejected, this means that it is accepted. This is why there is a single rule "Undue and due weight..." But, achieving the neutral point of view often requires to provide new contents, such as the arguments or simply a neutral attribution, that are not yet under consideration. This is not at all simply DUE, as the opposite of UNDUE, at the least not the way it is stated now, because it refers to a known statement or viewpoint. In contrast, the neutral point of view often requires that we think out of the box to find what must be added. This means that the notion of weight as a total order (see my hidden comment above) is not useful. The knowledge that we must read and understand is not at all organized in this manner. Dominic Mayers (talk) 15:41, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  How is this different than arguing for a FALSEBALANCE? If we happen to know there are alternative views out there than what RS already cover, but otherwise not covered in RSes themselves, how are we supposed to include them? — Masem (t) 17:06, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I am not talking about alternative views out there than what RS already cover. I am restricting the discussion to views that can be found in reliable sources. I think you greatly underestimate what is required in a synthesis and what is the role of the editorial process. Once we are presented a given article and we have read and understood the reliable sources, we can judge whether or not there is FALSEBALANCE or undue weight, but that does not give you any method to avoid it. This method is the editorial process and the synthesis. My point is that the difficult part to achieve the neutral point of view (and avoid undue weight) is finding out what must be added. More attention is needed on that side. Just saying that the goal is to avoid FALSEBALANCE is not sufficient and, more importantly, only focalising on NOR, V and RS only tells us what to reject and that is, even more clearly, not sufficient. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:21, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I'mn a hypothetical situation, we can collect all the RSes about a topic ever written. From that, we could make a survey to catalogue all viewpoints given and tally the number of sources that support that viewpoint. We would the have a good measure of what are significant viewpoints and insignificant ones with which can use DUE, UNDUE and Fringe to properly present the most important st neutral POV as reported in RSes.
  However we do not have that ability to collect all sources. So what I have recommended is to do a sources survey, gather like 100 RSes on the topic, randomly select say 25 or even go through all 100, to do a source survey as to estimate the weight of viewpoints and then proceed to apply DUE, etc. — Masem (t) 18:47, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  You are proposing to completely change the way of writing articles in Wikipedia and what you propose seems to greatly underestimate the challenges in doing a synthesis and in the editorial process. It's difficult to further argue about that, because the process that editors use to understand sources, do a synthesis, etc. cannot really be explained and should be a shared background on the basis of which a discussion can occur. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  We are supposed to summarize viewpoints without bias. I can't see how this approach isn't good towards that. There is no invalid synthesis used. This is what editors should be doing as they write articles. Instead more commonly these days, editors have a preset goal they want to write for and only seek out sources to support that, and then often use that to assert what the majority POV is having not done a properly neutral evaluation of sources. — Masem (t) 09:53, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Again, the complexity of the editorial process (synthesis being a part of it) does not show in your description. The fact that it says 25 reliable sources are used is not the issue. The mention of the abstract notion of weight is not so wrong in itself either. Your description is wrong because of what it does not say, not because of what it says. I will illustrate a very small part of what it does not say. A notorious source says "Life is great". The name of that source is Joe Blow, but it does not show when you read the statement. It is only mentioned in the cover page. A simple editorial process could result in the inclusion of "Life is great" in the article, with the source as a reference, just as if it was a fact that life is great. I suspect that you will stop me and say that it is not what you mean and that we should, in that case, include "Joe Blow says life is great". But, even if you understand that an attribution is required in that case, it still remains that it is not mentioned at all in your above description. That is a small part of what I mean by the complexity of the editorial process does not show in your description. This small part is emphasized in the policy nowadays, but it used to say more, for example, that arguments must be provided. Regarding the arguments, you might again stop me and say that, yes in some cases we must provide the arguments. It is great, if that is the case, but it is not true that there is no need to have the concepts of arguments in order to do that and that a mechanical simplistic process will automatically extract the arguments only by counting occurrences of sentences. So, again, your description of the editorial process says nothing about key aspects of the process. As in the case of attributions, the description of the editorial process will not and cannot provide a simple criteria to determine when the arguments must be provided, but the fact that in some cases arguments must be provided should still be a part of the description. Ideally, simple examples should be provided and explained. The serious issue, not only in your description, but also in the current text of the policy, is the emphasis on the abstract notion of weight as if it was enough to cover the essential of the process. Dominic Mayers (talk) 11:09, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  WP:YESPOV is how we know or determine when attribution should be required to a statement that appears to be a statement of opinion rather than fact. There is a grey area here and there's no way we can set down exacting standards to when attribution may be used or not, though as I've talked before, when you see agreements in sources far distant in time and independence from the topic on a seemingly opinioned statement, that's when we can start treating it as more factual and drop attribution. But there is a lot of middle ground here, far too difficult to distill into any guideline, and instead, we do have to rely on editorial concensus. I would only think the key aspect is that if there is any serious question of whether unanimity of a subjective statement has been reached, we should always default to assuming some type of attribution is needed. Masem (t) 20:58, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I agree with all of that. The idea of the NPOV policy is to convey the idea how some method, in this case attribution, works to achieve the neutral point of view. Once the idea is understood, how and when to apply the method is to be determined on a case by case basis. Some simple non polemical examples could be needed. However, in the case of attribution, I think experienced editors already understand the concept. But, as I said, attribution is only a small part of what might need to be used to achieve the neutral point of view. Other times, we need to provide the arguments. There is no telling in advance what might need to be added to achieve the neutral point of view, but the policy would benefit from more examples that convey the general idea. I am repeating my last sentence here: The serious issue, not only in your description, but also in the current text of the policy, is the emphasis on the abstract notion of weight as if it was enough to cover the essential of the process. In the discussion below, I expand on this point. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:33, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• I think this misses the point... Neither of those eras actually exist. There never was a time when the media didn't engage in partisan activism, it only seems that way to white men with money because thats the only POV which was presented before the current golden age of journalism (yes, we currenly live in a golden age of journalism, it has never been better). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
• I'm all for improvements to NPOV, but we've been trapped for a little while now in a cycle of unproductive discussion. Pick any random section currently at WT:NPOV and you're likely to land on an illustrative example. If anyone has a concrete change to the policy to suggest, I hope they'll do so, here or at the policy talk page. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:10, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I have a concrete change to the policy that is basically entirely unrelated to this thread. :P

  (It's "rename it". Specifically, rename it to Consensus Point of View or something similar, to avoid the common misconception that it endorses a view-from-nowhere.) Loki (talk) 18:28, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  NPOV also is used to write and structure articles as to write in a neutral voice, and that should not be consensus driven compared to identifying sources are determining where the apparent viewpoints sit in terms of weight. — Masem (t) 18:32, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  (edit conflict) Discussion about terminology in terms of the impression it creates on the public, which is different from a request for the meaning of a term for our own personal need in the discussion, is also not productive unless we have already an agreement about the concepts themselves. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:36, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I don't think we ever will have an agreement about the concepts themselves, we'l have a consensus. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:32, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I only propose to try sharing our understanding. It will succeed at the least partially among rational people and that should result in a more interesting consensus. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:07, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I would strongly object to shifting to a “Consensus Point of View”. One of the core elements of NPOV is that we don’t omit significant views, even if they are minority views. How we include them is open to discussion… whether to include them is not. Blueboar (talk) 18:50, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I would add to this that the problem that the suggestion tried to solve is not an important one. The problem arises only when we use the definite article "The" before "Neutral Point of View", because the question is then what is this unique point of view that seems to come from nowhere. It is a moot issue, because it is easy not to do that. It is only done once in the text of the policy and, if that is a big issue, it could be modified. I see the use of the definite article as a reference to some unity among rational people, some unique point of view that is a stance to adopt when we write the articles. We could replace "the neutral point of view" by "the policy", but we would lose the feeling of unity. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:15, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Huge difference between “The” neutral POV and “A” neutral POV. In fact, the entire POINT is that there often isn’t one single POV, so we must discuss several. Blueboar (talk) 00:41, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  The article must present all relevant points of view. These are sources' points of view that are described in the articles. But when the policy refers to the neutral point of view, it refers to something else. It refers to an editor's point of view, a point of view that is used to describe the points of view in sources. The use of the definite article in that case, only indicates a unity among the rational editors. It does not conflict at all with the POINT that there often isn't one single POV in sources. This can be explained by an example. Joe Blow, a source, says "Life is great". "Life is great" is a source point of view. The neutral point of view is "Joe Blow says Life is great". If there are many notorious and pertinent points of view in sources, the neutral point of view includes them all. Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:07, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  (edit conflict) Asking for a conclusion before a discussion can conclude is how unproductive discussion starts. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:30, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I made an attempt at consolidating the many threads on this at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#Consolidated discussion on wp:weight North8000 (talk) 19:38, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Again this is just a duplicate of the very long discussion at WT:NPOV. Going over the same points. I still see no reason to split it here. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:25, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
• This is why we use overview sources like books and literature reviews. If it's not in an overview source, you shouldn't include it unless you have a very good reason to. If there are no overview sources for the subject, then reconsider whether it needs an article. News media should be the last sources we consider after we've gone through the overview sources and academic journals and there are still gaps. If you're making heavy use of news media sources in your articles, then your articles might not be very well-sourced. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:05, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Or the articles could be about something which while recent is notable... And the expectation is that in time the original news media sources will be replaced by higher more recent quality ones. There has never been a requirement that there be "overview sources" in any notability standard I am aware of. The opposite in fact... WP:NOTNEWS says "Editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:27, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

There's a big gap between what's required and what makes a half decent article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:36, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thats going to come down to what you think "a half decent article" is and I think you and I are likely in different neighborhoods there. For me a stub is half decent, a start is decent and it goes up from there. I would also note that because our current standards are based solely on existing coverage you could have a GA which used zero overview sources and academic journals if none then existed... But I don't think you actually meant by the consenus standard, I think you meant by your own ideosyncratic standard. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:42, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've written two essays explaining my thoughts on this in more detail: Avoid contemporary sources and The source, the whole source, and nothing but the source. Also, current GA standards require that there be no original research, which includes analysis of primary sources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:49, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am not going to take the time to read those essays today, although I may in the future. Was there something I said which suggested that I was advocating for original research or is that a non-sequiter? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:52, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I was looking at "you could have a GA which used zero overview sources and academic journals". If I was reviewing something like this at GAN, one of the first things I would check would be weight issues and whether the sources were used appropriately. It's certainly possible to have a well written article using only newspapers, but it's much more difficult, and I'd be looking to see whether the nominator used primary sources as an indication of weight, as opposed to just verifiability. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:59, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

And what does this response have to do with original research? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:07, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

...have you read our biographies? We likely have hundreds of thousands of articles on people sourced exclusively to news sources. It would be great if "4-sentence blurb from 1918 in local paper #1" + "5-sentence blurb from 1918 in local paper #2" wasn't a GNG pass, but that's exactly what gets through AfD all the time. JoelleJay (talk) 07:41, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• There is a related discussion in the NPOV talk page. I think the NPOV talk page should be left alone until we are closer to some concrete changes. Here is the right place. North8000 proposed, as an example of a misuse of DUE, that the mention of a "Help Starving Children" program not discussed in secondary sources, should nevertheless be not rejected using WP:DUE from an article in which that program is alleged relevant, even though some editors feel it is a way to promote the current government. Following this, WhatamIdoing, avoiding the polemical aspect, said that, in general, we should be allowed to add normal information expected from an encyclopedia, i.e., ordinary facts (e.g., when and were a person was born) even if sources [centred on the topic] don't dwell on them at great length. Firefangledfeathers commented I agree about ordinary encyclopedic facts, though maybe it's a common enough caveat that it doesn't need to be mentioned here. There was then an emphasis on the distinction between not so basic info such as that one day when the factory exploded or the a company's product line and some basic information about when it was in existence, etc. Then Blueboar added that it depends on the topic of the article: Is it an article about a company, or an article about an explosion?. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:11, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Here is my reply. A central point in that discussion is the distinction between basic and not basic information in the context of a given topic. The goal is to make sure that DUE cannot prevent us from adding basic information from reliable sources: we should not have to show that they have the required weight. This is an issue with DUE, but only a small part of a more global issue with DUE that I explored a bit with Masem (see above). The notion of basic information is not the most fundamental one. We must also consider attributions, arguments, etc. The reason why basic information are OK is that they are neutral. They do not take sides. Attributions, arguments, etc. are also ways to not take sides. Let me illustrate with an example, how the editorial process, which makes use of these added informations, is very important to create a good article that is coherent and not confusing. In the sources, we see that ExpertA says the number of immigrants is 10,000 and we also see that ExpertB says that it is 50,000. If the article stupidly says "The number of immigrants is 10,000^[1]. The number of immigrant is 50,000^[2]" that is just confusing. A good editorial process will carefully read the sources and find the arguments, etc. so that the whole thing is informative, factual and there is no contradiction. After having read more carefully the sources, the editors might write: "Using method A of evaluation, the number of immigrants is 10,000,^[1] but using method B it is 50,000^[2]". This is writing on the stance of the neutral point of view. Let me emphasis that weight has not entered into consideration in that process. More weight can be given to one side than the other in the final result, but the process itself is just a rational process that does not take sides. The process is not taking sides, even if at the end a method is shown factually to be less good. Even if one side is entirely dropped, after it has been given due weight in the editorial process, this is not taking sides. The key point is that the process often requires to add information and at that stage, as illustrated in the above example, the process should not be discussed only in terms of weight. There is way too much emphasis on weight in the current text of the policy and not enough on the need to add arguments, attributions, etc. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:36, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Please Dominic, step out of the drivers seat on this. You've started so many non-concrete NPOV discussions across two separate pages, and now you're sabotaging one concrete one started by another editor. I welcome your thoughts, even when I can't understand them, but why not let other participants lead the way for a while? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:00, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I think I am saying something very important in terms of the NPOV policy here. As far as my opinion regarding where the discussion should occur, it is just that I really cannot discuss in the NPOV talk page, because I do not think it is fine to have these long discussions over there, and therefore I reply here to say what I think is very important. And I am not sabotaging any discussion. On the contrary, I participate in the discussion here and I publicize it by making a summary, etc. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:15, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I’m not sure I understand very well what’s being discussed here; but I found the language / words used in the “summary” above not very neutral ... --Dustfreeworld (talk) 20:44, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I did my best to be neutral. Please tell me how it can be improved. I have no interest in not making a good summary: it is so easy to get to the original with the link provided. Also saying we understand nothing is not helpful in the discussion and it cannot be true. I don't buy it. It sounds more like a fallacious way to win the arguments. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:40, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Question: When we talk about the DUEness of “basic information” are we discussing RELEVANCY (ie, should article X mention factoid Y?) or are we discussing situations where sources disagree on relevant facts (source X says “sales = 5 million”, but source Y says “sales = 7 million”)? Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I generally understand people to mean everything under the WP:NPOVHOW heading when they say "due". WP:DUE is technically one subsection of that, but people generally use it to many any or all of those things. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:07, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  And that may be part of the problem here… we all mean different things when we say something is DUE/UNDUE. Perhaps it would help if we coined new wiki-jargon terms to help us differentiate what we are talking about. Lumping it all under DUE is just confusing everyone. Blueboar (talk) 18:25, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  The problem is not terminological. The concepts themselves need to be better understood. I want to point out something that might shed some light on the problem. The expression "due weight" is also used to describe how a judge in a court of law must consider the facts and arguments. In many cases, if not all cases, it does not refer to the final ruling. It refers to the attention given to the facts and the arguments. So, when a judge does not accept the conclusion of an argument, it does not mean that the judge did not give due weight to the argument. Of course, there will be a ruling in some direction, but due weight refers to the process, not to the final ruling. I feel this is a much more realistic concept, because the ruling itself is way too complicated and depends on so many factors. The important is that it is the outcome of a process that gave due weight to the arguments and facts. In Wikipedia, if my understanding is correct, it refers to the weight given to a POV in the article. It is also a useful concept, but it is not sufficient, because it does not deal enough with the process, including what information might need to be added. That is why I feel we put too much attention on that concept in the policy. There is a lot of distinctions, BALANCE, BALASP, etc. but the fundamental difficulty remains: how to evaluate the weight? it does not cover the process, including what kind of information might need to be added. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:45, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  It certainly applies to situations where sources disagree: we must give due weight to both. Relevancy is certainly a factor to consider to give due weight: the editorial process must give due weight to every point of view and the outcome will depend on relevancy to the topic. I think your question is what if there is only one point of view and we ask if it is relevant. Is this an aspect covered by DUE ? I think DUE applies as well in this case, for the same reason, because there is this point of view and the rest of the article. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:24, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Ok… I have to bow out for a while here. We all (including me) seem to be discussing different things. It’s clear that we all think “something needs fixing at WP:DUE”… but I don’t see any agreement on what that “something” actually is. If I’m confused, my continued involvement will just add to the confusion. I will rejoin once I am clearer on what we are actually discussing. Have fun storming the castle! Blueboar (talk) 22:21, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Yes, we are discussing different things. Some want to discuss due weight within some view of what it is. I am not rejecting that view, but I am questioning the need to further discuss and expand on due weight under that view, because the policy has already way too much expanded on it with all its subsections. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• @Blueboar: Rest from this thread as much as you need, but I inform you that it is not true anymore that people are discussing different things. North8000 just added a brief summary of the issue I raise, which I copy and paste here. @Masem: that may interest you too.

  Sourcing is at the core of of wp:verifiability and wp:nor. This policy moves that into a totally different area. Which is to have editor assessment of the amount of coverage in sources completely dominate over editorial decisions regarding inclusion/exclusion of material. This leads to numerous specific types of problems.

  Dominic Mayers (talk) 12:46, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Perhaps it would help to outline the specific types problems, so we could discuss them one by one. Blueboar (talk) 13:04, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I totally agree. We must give examples that illustrate the need to add different kinds of information (arguments, methods, what is at stake, attributions, etc.), depending on the context, to achieve NPOV. But examples alone will not do the job. The general principle must be well explained too. The problem with examples is that, even if they are hypothetical to avoid polemic, they are interpreted in terms of an existing polemic. It is important to see them as illustrating instead a general idea, which does not lead to any specific decision until we face a real case: it is always applied on a case by case basis. Dominic Mayers (talk) 13:25, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Sigh… could we please start with a basic breakdown of what the problems are? … we can discuss examples of these problems later. Blueboar (talk) 14:11, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  What you want might not exist or it is yet to be discovered, but when we see examples (attributions, arguments, methods, etc.), we appreciate that there are various problems. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:58, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Here I further comment on the difficulty with examples. North8000's example and the subsequent examples by WhatamIdoing illustrate the difficulty. These are examples about adding "basic information" to achieve NPOV. The key point to understand these examples is to accept that the information is only added for completeness, purely for a good encyclopedic purpose. I prefer WhatamIdoing's examples in that respect, but the idea is the same in all of them. Let us take the case of the original location of a company in an article on the company. This banal information is found in the company's website, which is reliable for that purpose. Let us assume, just to make it more robust, that the info is also mentioned in another reliable source not about the company, but in a paper about the history of the location.^[1] Some might consider this as a secondary source for that particular information. This banal information has low weight, because it is not extensively discussed in sources. Nevertheless, it is added in the article on the basis of these two reliable sources, respecting common practices in Wikipedia and the concept of a synthesis of reliable sources. We could add the argument that UNDUE should not apply to basic information, but to viewpoints. Now, John the POV warrior wants to say that the company is not a US company, but is actually a Chinese company that was originally located in China and he has a conspiracy theory that it is a way for China to invade the USA.^[2] So, he argues that this information should be rejected because it is not found in secondary sources on the topic, which are necessary, he says, to show that the information was properly analysed by the sources in the context of the topic. He claims that his dubious sources are secondary sources centred on the topic and should have priority. This example is drafted in the hope that it will be understood that it is a violation of NPOV to reject in this manner that simple basic information. Nevertheless, I claim that the challenge remains and that even that example, even a better drafted example, even with the extra argument, because of the current domination of UNDUE (and BALANCE, BALASP, etc.) will not have its place in the text of the NPOV policy, simply because it does not explain UNDUE, but a case where info must be added, and thus could be misinterpreted against UNDUE. Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:41, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  In that example, it would be up to John the POV warrior to demonstrate why the reliable sources that say it is a US company, in the absence of any other reliable source that says it is Chinese, should be ignored and not included. The national origin of a business is standard for WP articles so to argue against its inclusion because of a unverifiable conspiracy theory is absolutely not going to fly. This actually has nothing to do with NPOV in your example since NPOV deals with viewpoints; fighting over facts by claiming conspiracy theories is not covered by NPOV. Masem (t) 15:47, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  You repeat what I wrote. I insisted that the example was constructed so that it is obvious that the information must be added. I also mentioned that it is standard practice to include basic (factual) information and I even mentioned the argument that UNDUE applies only to viewpoints. Still, read the text of the policy and tell me where it is explained with an example that the information must be added. I disagree that it has nothing to do with NPOV. Certainly, the general case about adding info (arguments, methods, what is at stake, attributions, etc), which is my main concern, has everything to do with NPOV. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:04, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

For personal reasons related to my duties outside Wikipedia, I will have to stop participating in Wikipedia for about a month. This has nothing to do with this discussion per se or with whatever comments were made about it. I might reply to Masem's eventual reply, because it is not nice to close discussions too abruptly, but it will be more an acknowledgement that I read his point and that I will be thinking about it. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:36, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I find a lot of this discussion bewildering, rather meta, much talking cross-purposes or even agreeing or disagreeing about whether people are discussing the same thing, and like trying to grasp a greased pig which constantly eludes you. Also, it seems very similar in nature to the other discussion about this. Most of all, I don't see bits of ideas coalescing into cloudlets of agreement, that might someday reach a consensus about something, or really any concrete progress towards a goal at all. Am I the only one who has this impression? Mathglot (talk) 23:16, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Anyone could obstruct a thread and try prevent it from being pursued with that kind of comment. I am not saying that it is what you want to do, but please realize that, if we were to accept that kind of comment as a way to prevent a thread, then any majority, assuming that a majority would even give support to that kind of comment, could obstruct a thread because they don't like where it is going. The situation is simple. The thread is relevant to this page, but if nobody is interested or can understand anything useful in the thread, it will stop by itself. Nobody will pursue a monologue here. Dominic Mayers (talk) 23:41, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Mathglot. You alone have written thousands of words in this discussion, and we may actually be farther away from figuring out the question than we were before, let alone the answer. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:12, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Nothing more to add to what I already said. I mean, if there was a genuine question or even some criticisms of my comments that I could respond to, I would, but here I have nothing to say. Dominic Mayers (talk) 00:42, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have no wish to obstruct, and I cannot say that I don't like where it's going, because I do not understand where it is going. If by elucidating my lack of understanding I can give enough of a jolt to the discussion to get it back on track such that I, and perhaps others, understand it better, then that will be a service to you so you will be able to reach the conclusion you desire with greater understanding, wider agreement, and more rapidly. Yes, I'm interested, and no, I don't understand much in this thread. If it's just me, then I suggest you ignore this, and carry on with your discussion as before. You don't need my vote, and you give me too much credit to think that I can somehow "prevent a thread" (whatever that means) even if I wanted to. Does that help any? Mathglot (talk) 02:12, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

There is no right track on which we must return. From my perspective, this discussion has accomplished a lot and, if there is no more questions or criticisms about the content that is in direct relation with the policy, it's great. Some times, a discussion just help some people, may be just one or two, to improve their understanding. Even when someone don't understand the thread, but still questioned some aspects of what he understand of the policy, it is a progress. Dominic Mayers (talk) 04:37, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

So, I just stumbled upon Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki/OKA. TL;DR, there is an NGO sponsoring translating high quality articles between Wikipedias. But on EN due to our COI/PAID policies they are required to use AfC, which means that their articles, which usually are very good, are delayed through AfC backlog, to which they also contribute. I think this is an excellent initative that however needlessly clutters AfC due to our current rules, and I'd like to suggest we consider giving it exception from the COI requirement to use AfC. It makes sense to direct paid-for spammers to AfC, as their articles are often problematic (notability, etc.) but what we have here is very different (translations of good quality articles from other wikis - ex. current drafts include Draft:Renaissance in Ferrara, Draft:Spa Conference (2-3 July 1918), Draft:Formal procedure law in Switzerland, etc.), yet this stuff is caught in the same "COI" net. (See project page linked above for links of articles already published, links to drafts waiting for review, and their instructions to translators) Thoughts? (Courstesy ping project founder @7804j). PS. A question to 7804j - how are articles chosen for translation? How is the system designed not to be abused by spammers? Perhaps if an exception is granted on en wiki, it should not apply to articles about companies, products or living persons? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:27, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would dispute that "this is an excellent initative" or "that their articles, which usually are very good". They have caused a lot of work; mostly these are machine translations by people whose English is rather poor. The titles chosen are often completely ungrammatical (Greek Classicism Sculpture was a typical one) or inappropriate, & in the past they have chosen often subjects we already have. The texts are just whatever the language taken - usually Portuguese, Spanish, French or Italian, has on their wiki, & the quality of the original is often poor, & errors introduced by machine translation go uncorrrected. There have been numerous complaints. They have got slightly better, but I think still don't publish a full list of articles they have paid for, whicgh they should. The Open Knowledge Association isn't really "an NGO" - as far as I can see it's a single Swiss guy with a bit of money to spend, who you have rashly decided to endorse. Johnbod (talk) 02:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think that the principle is sound: high-quality articles can and should be translated into languages where they're missing. Doc James ran a similar program for certain medical articles a few years ago (e.g., during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks), to public acclaim. However, he was working with pre-screened professional translators, and OKA seems to have struggled with quality control. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:19, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Unfortunately the ODA model makes absolutely no attempt at quality control. As will be clear to anyone who reads one of them, they are just machine translations dumped onto en:wp with no aftercare. Many that were forks were just turned into redirects, which the ODA doesn't appear to have noticed. The ones that are left take a lot of cleaning up, when some regular editor can be bothered. Johnbod (talk) 01:52, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am afraid that your anecdotal analysis above is different from mine. The articles from OKA I've seen seem pretty decent, at start+ class, and would survive AfD if nominated. Can you recall which articles were redirected - and prove that they are a rule, and not an exception? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:50, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Whether they would survive Afd is almost all about the notability of the subject, and that is not usually an issue - the quality is. In fact the worst issues arise when they tackle very prominent subjects. I never claimed that redirected ones were the "rule" - I make no attempt to search out OKA efforts, but then clearly neither do you. Draft:Crow-stepped gable is a recent creation, objected to, for which we have a redirect already in place. Not much of it will survive, I'd imagine. If they kept proper lists of their articles on wiki I would be able to find some, I imagine. Johnbod (talk) 03:12, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Johnbod List here; may not be everything. Mathglot (talk) 03:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, but I don't think that is at all complete. The template was only set up in October 22 (by 7804j), well into OKA's project. Stuff may have been added later. You used to able to access an off-wiki spreadsheet 7804j maintained, but I can't see that you can now. User:7804j? For example, the earlier efforts of User:Racnela21, one of the most prolific OKA editors, are not templated - see the 48k bytes of Brazilian Romantic painting (typically, initially called Brazilian Romanticism Painting). Johnbod (talk) 13:08, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This list contains all articles created by OKA after the template was created. Oka was created relatively shortly before the template was created, therefore there are not many articles without it (probably 90+% have the template). The off wiki tracker is still at oka.wiki/tracker 7804j (talk) 13:24, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also, I'd like to highlight that quality is not really the topic of this discussion, since this is about whether COI should require all paid editors to go through AfC and, as you pointed out yourself, AfC's goals are not primarily to check quality. I'd suggest moving the OKA discussions somewhere else such as our talkpage in the intertranswiki project 7804j (talk) 13:27, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Piotr brings up "would survive AfD" because that's the standard AfC uses. If OKA articles typically have quality issues that wouldn't be enough for deletion, then there's no point insisting they go through AfC – assuming reviewers are doing their job properly, they'll just send them right through. – Joe (talk) 11:00, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Things that would make them fail Afd include repeating articles we already have under a different title, a perennial problem with OKA, which reviewers don't always pick up, but sometimes do - as currently at Draft:Crow-stepped gable. Besides, some reviewers (perhaps not "doing their job properly" - how shocking) insist on minimal standards of coherent English, etc. Johnbod (talk) 14:31, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Health translation efforts from English to other languages are still running. https://mdwiki.toolforge.org/Translation_Dashboard/leaderboard.php Our translators are mostly volunteers with a mix of Wikipedians and professional translators. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:40, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Piotrus,

Thanks for initiating that discussion! I am fully supportive of such an exemption, as I see this AfC requirement as additional red tape that consumes a lot of time for OKA translators and AfC reviewers.

Our core principle is that our translators are free to work on anything that interests them. We provide them with a monthly stipend, some training on how Wikipedia works, but we then see them as volunteer contributors on whom we impose some process to ensure they do not abuse the grant and provide overall value (eg, quality checks, quantity checks). To help them find articles to translate, we curate an optional backlog (atoka.wiki/tracker). Articles of this tracker primarily consist of "Featured" and "Good" quality articles from other Wikis, as well as red links from these articles. We also complement this with articles that we find important, eg, about geographical features such as lakes, mountains, etc. The broader principles for articles prioritization are described at oka.wiki/overview

Note that there was a similar discussion in the Interwiki talkpage, which can provide useful additional context.

Regarding Johnbod's response, I would like to bring 3 points of context:

1) While overall quality is good, it may vary. Because we have many different translators, with difference levels of experience, the quality will not be uniform. We are providing them with training, and we have observed their quality improved over time. We stop providing grants to translators wjth recurring quality issues. Overall, I do not agree with Johnbod's characterizarion of a high degree of quality issues. Often, the issues raised with OKA's work were not due to the quality of the translation, but because of the source article itself. We have published several thousand of articles, most of which are still live with very minimal change vs their original published version.

2) This discussion is not about assessing the quality of the work, but whether the COI requirement to go through AfC should apply to OKA. The only reason why our translators go through AfC today is because of the COI policy, which was not created primarily to check quality of paid translations but to eliminate bias. Therefore, I don't think such arguments are appropriate in the current discussion.

3) Our funding comes from many different private individuals, but it is true that currently I am the main donor. That being said, this should not make any difference as to whether we can be called an "NGO". Would the Gates Foundation not be called an NGO just because most of its funding comes from Bill Gates? We have over 15 full time translators who agree to do this work with a very small stipend, much smaller than what they could earn in a regular job, so the work of OKA is much more than that of a single person 7804j (talk) 08:46, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Personally, I don't care how high quality the articles end up being, if you have a financial tie to a subject you should go through AfC. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:59, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would prefer not to couch any action in terms of "an exception" for a named user or group. Rather, I would prefer to see an adjustment to WP:PAID to make a modification to allow "philanthropic paid editing" where the articles in question and the content added are chosen by the paid editors and there is no oversight by the payer. At that point, individual articles and editors would be subject to the same kind of oversight as any other. It seems to me that philanthropic paid editing to expand the encyclopedia is within the scope of WP:HERE, and this should not be formulated as an "exception" as if something were wrong with it in the general case. Mathglot (talk) 09:14, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I agree with [[U|Lee Vilenski}} if you have a financial tie to a subject you should go through AfC, The given example Draft:Renaissance in Ferrara is very poorly translated. Theroadislong (talk) 09:19, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Courtesy ping: Lee Vilenski. Mathglot (talk) 09:22, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

But that's the thing, OKA editors don't have a financial tie to the subject. They're paid by an organisation to edit Wikipedia, but the selection of topics is independent. It's basically paid editing without a COI, which is a bit of blind spot in our current policies. – Joe (talk) 09:30, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Indeed. What "tie to the subject" is there in "Renaissance in Ferrara"? We might as well call COI and PAID for Wikipedia:School and university projects or most of WP:GLAM stuff, and various edit-a-thons, since there is $ involved in it as well. Do we require AfC from Wikipedians in Residences?_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:48, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Actually I would be interested to understand what are the requirements for projects such as the ones you mentioned to *not* qualify as paid editing. As you pointed out, Wikipedians in Residence do not need to go through AfC -- what are the formal criteria/policy allowing them to be compensated without being considered paid editors? 7804j (talk) 20:17, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

As per foundation:Policy:Terms of Use/Frequently asked questions on paid contributions without disclosure#How does this provision affect teachers, professors, and employees of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums ("GLAM")?, Wikipedians-in-residence are still considered paid editors for contributions for which they are being paid. isaacl (talk) 22:30, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Isaacl:, yes, but as I read it, they are free to make edits of their choice without even disclosing their paid status, as long as they are not making specific edits about the payer institution. The way I read it, is that GLAM employees do not need to disclose because: "Disclosure is only necessary where compensation has been promised or received in exchange for a particular contribution". That section recommends a simple disclosure for W-in-residence, but only in the case where they are "specifically compensated to edit the article about the archive at which they are employed". Paid status need not be disclosed for general edits unrelated to that. Do you see it differently? Mathglot (talk) 02:20, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I do, and so has previous discussion at Wikipedia talk:Paid-contribution disclosure. If they are being compensated for a particular contribution, as per the section you quoted, then they fit the definition of a paid editor. :foundation:Policy:Terms of Use#Paid Contributions Without Disclosure does not distinguish reasons for the paid contributions. isaacl (talk) 06:14, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes they do fit it if compensated for a *particular contribution*, and the Paid FAQ linked by the foundation Policy you cited above specifically calls out the circumstances when paid editors do *not* need to disclose their contributions. Those circumstances match those of paid OKA volunteers, who, had they been a Wikipedia-in-residence or a GLAM-paid instead of OKA-paid, would not have had to disclose their status, according to the wmf policy FAQ itself. Mathglot (talk) 06:39, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

On the English wikipedia we do require that disclosure "If you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for your contributions to Wikipedia, you must disclose who is paying you to edit (your "employer"), who the client is, and any other relevant role or relationship." Even if the foundation FAQ says that per the foundation they don't per English wikipedia they do. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 06:44, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The FAQ is giving specific examples, and is non-exhaustive. As explained in the first paragraph of the section, you are only required to comply with the disclosure provision when you are compensated by your employer or by a client specifically for edits and uploads to a Wikimedia project. This is in accordance with the actual Terms of Use: if you are being specifically compensated for contributions, you are a paid editor, but this does not extend to your contributions that are not within the scope of your compensation. If you are being paid to edit about your employer, that's within the scope of your compensation, and so the relationship has to be disclosed (and the example is about this specific situation). isaacl (talk) 13:24, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

So in the same line of thought, this means that all articles created by Wikipedians in Residence in the context of the organization that pays them need to go through AfC (as @Horse Eye's Back suggests in the comment below), is that also your understanding? 7804j (talk) 16:21, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Note that "Wikipedian-in-residence" is just a self-described title, without any oversight from anyone involved with the WMF or Wikipedia, so the scope of their role is entirely decided by their employer and them. Some of those who have participated at Wikipedia talk:Paid-contribution disclosure have said that they do not edit Wikipedia as part of their role; they provide education and support to the institution's staff. isaacl (talk) 16:56, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

"Do we require AfC from Wikipedians in Residences?" The outcome of the recent case involving the BYU library's Wikipedians in Residence clarified that the community does in fact expect Wikipedians in Residence to use AfC. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:54, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Mathglot "philanthropic paid editing". I like the term - hope it makes it into our updated policies. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is one reason I prefer the term financial conflict of interest. "Paid editing" focuses on a transaction—being paid to edit—but the real issue is the tendency to bias created by some financial relationships. Wikipedians in Residence are the paradigmatic example of people who are literally paid to edit but don't have a conflict of interest; it seems like OKA translators are another. If we shifted the guideline to talk about FCOIs instead of paid editing, the need for an exception for philanthropy would disappear. – Joe (talk) 11:24, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hear, hear. There is nothing inherently wrong with folks making $$ out of volunteering. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:17, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

By definition you can't make money out of volunteering, if they're making money they're working not volunteering. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 05:39, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedians in Residence all have signficant conflicts of interest, primarily in relation to their employer. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 05:43, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Everyone has significant conflicts of interest, primarily in relation to their employers. The issue is whether they make edits in those areas or not. If a WiR at the Museum of Nowheresville was editing Museum of Nowheresville, there'd be a problem. If an OKA translator was editing Open Knowledge Association, there'd be a problem. But that's not what we're talking about here. – Joe (talk) 10:49, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

So OKA has been on my radar for some years now due to off-wiki reports sent to the paid editing queue. I was extremely suspicious of it at first and (along with others active in UPE patrolling) worried it would be a sort of front for the usual abusive paid editing. However, I have to hold my hands up and say that it's been c. five years and nothing like that has come up. From what I've seen, the selection of topics is genuinely made based on what's missing on enwiki, and the quality of the translation are at least no worse than average. @7804j: You perhaps made an initial strategic error in structuring/talking about this as "freelancers" doing "paid editing", because this puts you in a category of people that the volunteer community, for good reason, have come to be very sceptical of. Essentially identical activities that are framed as grant-making or residency do not raise the same eyebrows, especially if you can get some sort of buy-in from the WMF (which is not hard).

Quality is a separate issue and something that pretty much always causes friction when people who aren't very familiar with Wikipedia are incentivised to contribute to it en masse. There is no easy to solution to this. Specifically, making them go through AfC isn't going to help – AfC reviewers don't have the time to do a close reading of drafts to look for translation issues. They'll take a look through for major problems (which OKA drafts don't seem to have) and for notability (virtually guaranteed because these are substantial articles on other Wikipedias) and then pass it through. So we'll end up with the same outcome as if they were created in mainspace directly, just with some extra volunteer time wasted within an already backlogged process.

As to whether OKA creations need to go through AfC, I am usually the last person to point this out, but technically this is a request not a requirement. AfC is broken by design because generally we don't want to encourage paid editors by giving them an efficient route to publication, or encourage volunteers to do work that someone else will get paid for. As Mathglot says, Neither our COI policy or the AfC process was designed with 'philanthropic paid editing' in mind. I think it's fine for OKA editors to bypass this and create directly in mainspace. This isn't an exception our a change to the rules, it's just applying WP:IAR and recognising that forcing good faith creations into a broken process because their creator got a stipend while writing them, or because they might have some translation issues, is not in the spiritofWP:FCOI. – Joe (talk) 09:25, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Joe Roe "extra volunteer time wasted" - exactly, this is the problem I am trying to address. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:12, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks @Joe Roe!

Initially, I also thought that the AfC requirement for paid editors was a request and not a requirement. However, @Seraphimblade raised in my talk page that any OKA editor creating an article in the mainspace without going through AfC would be blocked. Hence why we started requiring all our translators to go through AfC since early May.

I agree with you that it was a mistake from my end to have initially used the term "freelancer". Our translators are volunteers receiving a grant to cover basic costs of living (~400 usd per month for the ones working full time). Going forward, I will make sure to always use the more accurate terms of "Grant/stipend recipients". I did not want to use the term of "Wikipedians in Residence" as it seemed to me that this requires that the work be related to the institution itself. I wasn't aware that there are options to get buy-in from the Wikimedia foundation, but I will explore this avenue as it will indeed help with acceptance of OKA among the community.

In general, I strongly with the idea of introducing a broader exemption to the AfC requirement of the COI policy to either philanthropic institutions that do not target specific topics and give high degree of freedom to grant recipients, or to payments that are too low to represent full wages (e.g., <xxx$ per month/ per hour).

7804j (talk) 11:54, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Specifically you might want to look into meta:Wikimedia thematic organizations or one of the other categories of meta:Wikimedia movement affiliates. – Joe (talk) 12:06, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Whatever avenues you explore, I would not get into proposals related to trying to find a threshold where a payment is "too low" to make a difference, and thus presumably not trigger a PAID concern. Experience with paid crowd-sourcing platforms such as MTurk shows that micropayments may attract volunteers for certain tasks, even sometimes for a larger than average task such as a translation. Mathglot (talk) 18:04, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This might be a dumb question, but I'm tired and can't find it: where in the policies do we require paid editors to use AFC? (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 22:05, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

WP:COIEDIT states that paid editors "should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly". _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:52, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I see. Primefac (talk) 12:38, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ah, so here's this month's OKA thread, I thought I'd miss it!

If an organization of this sentiment really wanted to help the English Wikipedia, they would be working exclusively on poorly developed vital articles. Then there would be no AFC necessary. The English WP is far past the point where creating new articles is an effective way to make meaningful improvements. Unless, of course, this creation targets areas of systemic bias where there is a genuine dearth in coverage.

To me this appears much like the organizers have gone so far in one direction that whether or not their effort is actually worthwhile is no longer a consideration. Even with their current infrastructure, it would be considerably more effective to take EN FAs and translate them into other languages. Aza24 (talk) 07:29, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You've created 68 articles, the last one two weeks ago. Are we to understand that that was the last one we needed? – Joe (talk) 11:22, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Halleluyah, we are done! _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:27, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The English Wikipedia does not need new articles nearly as much as it needs improvements on existing ones. As I said, the only exception is to fill systemic bias gaps, which yes, includes a woman poet! Comparing a single editor with an entire organization does not track.

Unfortunately, the OKA is fundamentally flawed in this regard, but it doesn’t seem like an object of concern for them. Aza24 (talk) 17:09, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I should add that if I'm being overly critical, it's because this organization should be held to a high standard. Sine it is under the guise of effective altruism, the former "effective" qualifier needs to take more prominence. I can't see anywhere that it's even been considered how to most effectively help Wikipedia. Otherwise, the OKA would have approached the community before founding, to identify what is actually needed. Since they didn't, now we find ourselves in these same threads, time and time again. Aza24 (talk) 17:35, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Your argument appears to be about your opinion on how work on Wikipedia ought to be prioritized, and is a red herring. One of the central features of a volunteer organization, is that volunteers work on articles of their choice, not articles of your choice, or some committee's choice. Thank goodness I didn't have to listen to you, or I never would have had the opportunity to translate that article about a medieval Catalan peasant uprising, when there were no doubt many hundreds of thousands of tasks more urgent than that one at the time. The OKA volunteers who translate articles of their choice in their own manner should be held to the same standard I was, namely, Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and nothing else. Mathglot (talk) 19:14, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank goodness I don't have to listen to you either! Aza24 (talk) 19:45, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Aza24 I do not think this is the right place to discuss this. This thread is about whether to make changes to the AfC requirement of COI, not about how OKA prioritizes articles. So I would suggest moving that discussion for example to the OKA taskforce talkpage.

That being said, we (OKA) already operate along the lines of what you seem to recommend. Many if the articles our translators work are are about neglected topics in EN wiki, for example, articles about geographical features of non-English speaking countries (eg, Spain, Latin America) or non-English speaking historical figures. I would actually argue that improving coverage on these topics is much more important than extending already extensive articles on important topics. But most importantly, it takes different skill sets to translate vs expand articles. The editors who receive our grants would not necessarily be sufficiently familiar with these topics to be able to expand them starting from scratch.

Regarding your recommendation to translate from English to other languages: we do that already. We published thousands of articles in the Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedia, with a strong focus on under represented topics in these Wikipedia such as mathematics, computer science, etc. There's been a lot of off Wiki analysis of opportunities to maximize impact on donation that went on before we decided to set up OKA the way it is, and I'm happy to share more detail about the rationale if there is interest 7804j (talk) 19:41, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm going to retract my comments. Given your response, I don't think I'm nearly as informed as I should be on the organization to be casting such aspirations/critiscms. Also, my comments seemed needly inflammatory; my apologies. – Aza24 (talk) 20:54, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Aza24 I just wanted to say that it is quite rare to see folks backtrack and even apologize in Internet discussions (and that includes on Wikipedia). Regardless of the issue at hand, I would like to say I very much respect and appreciate you for what you have just said above. Cheers, _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:47, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply