Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 147

WP:5P1 used to read Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written for the benefit of its readers [1] and I've continued to believe that but now note that it currently doesn't mention written for the benefit of its readers.

Was this an intentional change of policy?

I raise it here because it seems to me to be a major change to policy. Happy to take it to another page if that is more appropriate. But I'd like us to consider putting it back somewhere, perhaps not at 5P but somewhere! Or is it still there and I'm missing it?

I've done a little research, see here, following a post at an RM which asked whether readers or editors were our primary focus, and which caught me a bit by surprise.

It's been discussed before I see, again there are several links in my sandbox, but I can't see evidence of consensus to change this principle. Again, am I missing it? TIA Andrewa (talk) 20:43, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

• It was added on 10:07, August 17, 2007‎byDhaluza (talk · contribs) with edit summary " 'written for the benefit of its readers'. See discussion on talk page."
• The talk discussion appears to be this one
• It was taken out on 09:09, March 9, 2008 byCentrx (talk · contribs)in 2012with edit summary "Fix some recent regressions, which dictate editors' intentions, and word order)". This user seems to have lost it in 2012 and has been indeffed since then.

• Support restoring this text. Might seem obvious but then again, sometimes I wonder. It does seem like a reasonable thing to say out loud instead of imply. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:17, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - Is there evidence that a significant number of editors think the encyclopedia's mission is to serve editors? If not, these would be more wasted words added to the ever-growing heap of wasted words.
  Editor1: "Per WP:5P1, Wikipedia's mission is to serve readers."
  Editor2: "I'm serving readers."
  Editor1: "No you're not, because [...]"
  Editor2: "Yes I am, because [...]"
  Repeat until one editor is tired. The preceding was not a productive discussion.
  Except for rank vandals, I've never seen an editor who didn't believe they were benefiting readers. Rank vandals don't read the pillars, and we don't need pillar language to deal with them. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:49, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Good point, asking "how will it make a difference in practice?" Guess I don't have a good answer to that. How about you, @Andrewa:? Can you explain how it would make a difference in practice? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:55, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

I do so below. Andrewa (talk) 06:28, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose - 5P1 is about what Wikipedia is, or more specifically how the community understands what it means to be an encyclopedia. It's not a mission statement; it's a description of content/genre. That it's supposed to be for readers can be tacked on to any of the pillars ("if rules prevent you from improving Wikipedia for its readers, ignore all rules"; "we strive to serve readers by writing in an impartial tone"...). I also don't necessarily agree. Wikipedia is for everybody, regardless of whether they read it. It's also for people who want to reuse its content, for example. What's important for 5P1 is that it's an encyclopedia. That doesn't mean it's not for readers -- just that that adds a different dimension that's both unnecessary and potentially distracting. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:47, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - While I agree it sounds like some nice, grandiose sentiment, it's really pretty meaningless. Like, it doesn't need to be said that Wikipedia was made "to benefit its readers". That's kind of implied with any encyclopedia, any educational material, or arguably any written work. There's nothing special about the fact that it's there to benefit readers. Is there a conceivable reality in which volunteers from all over the world collaborate to create a vast, free compendium of human knowledge without the intention of "benefiting readers"? It's kind of silly if you think about it. Spelling it out in 5P1 just sounds self-congratulatory and arrogant. Swarm ♠ 07:41, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support and yet, just to say Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written for the benefit of its readers does have the markings of "WTF? over". Maybe we should consider something like, Our encyclopedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers. It is written by readers for the benefit of readers. Wikipedia is not a... (in order to express its primary distinction)?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  16:13, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

• Just to clarify, what I support is the need to be "up front" about readers writing for readers. And I've adjusted 5P1 in the following manner:

	Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
	This encyclopedia was created and designed to be written by readers for the benefit of readers. It combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers. There are several things that Wikipedia is not. Wikipedia is constructed so that future generations can also benefit from the ever-increasing sum of all knowledge found on these pages.

Thank you! for your time.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  13:28, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth: Why did you remove the list of things that Wikipedia is not? I think that is an equally important feature of this pillar (even since the 2008 revision that the original proposer cites) that your revision is deprioritizing. Mz7 (talk) 20:00, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

To editor Mz7: because it's pillar one, and I can't see starting out so negatively, "WP is not this and WP is not that" not not not. It's still there in the link to What WP is not. Guess I think the first pillar should begin on a more positive note.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  04:42, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

• Support I think this needs to be forefront, as there are editors that, while not necessarily OWNing articles, tend to put how they feel a topic should be presented over clarity of the readers. The infobox wars are one area that I think suffers from, where the omission of infoboxes from articles are to make the article pleasing to editors but without considering readership. --Masem (t) 16:23, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
• Supplemental In followup to my "support" notvote above I just ran across a good quote in The "Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists" by Athur Plotnik (1982 ed) ... An editor edits above all to communicate to readers, and least of all to address the sensibilities of editorial colleagues. (pg 2) I often think a lot of the drama at Wikipedia is for recreational drama over what are frequently arbitrary issues. I wish that didn't happen. On the other hand, I still don't see how adding the text (which I support for feel-good reasons) will really make a difference in practice. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:55, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support if only from conservatism - we ought not to be messing with this fundamental page without a very clear consensus and wide discussion. This is also an important principle which should be upfront somewhere. Johnbod (talk) 01:31, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support (disclosure: I of course started this section and suggested restoring the clause, this is just to make it explicit). This section was started specifically because a contributor asked Does Wikipedia exist for the benefit of its readers or for the benefit of its editors? [2] which took me by surprise, and then I found out that they were right, our policies didn't say either way. The answer to me is commonsense, and some seem to agree, and think that it's unnecessary to spell it out. But it would obviously help at least one editor if we did spell it out, and I cannot see any downside to spelling it out, nor any previous consensus to make this change to the first pillar, and it seems unlikely that any such consensus could be achieved now. So the clause should be restored, for several reasons. Andrewa (talk) 06:28, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

• ? That discussion is about disambiguation pages. The most relevant guideline is MOS:DAB, which starts with: "Disambiguation pages (abbreviated often as dab pages or simply DAB or DABs) are non-article pages designed to help a reader find the right Wikipedia article when different topics could be referred to by the same search term, as described in the guidelines on the Wikipedia:Disambiguation project page. In other words, disambiguation pages help readers find the particular article they want when there is topic ambiguity." -- In its first two sentences, that dab pages are for readers is stated twice. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:22, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Heh, speaking purely from wholesome naïveté, the ideal answer to that question is that Wikipedia's editors are its readers. In other words, all readers of Wikipedia are nominally also its editors, because all readers have the technical ability to edit most articles. This is the core principle of Wikipedia really: an encyclopedia written by the people who use it. This is somewhat codified in that third pillar. Obviously, there are many more distinctions made in practice: between active editors, once-a-month editors, blocked editors, readers that don't know how to edit, readers that know how to edit but aren't interested. In short: ideally, Wikipedia exists for everyone. Mz7 (talk) 06:21, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

That discussion is about disambiguation pages. Agree. But the question raised there applies to all of Wikipedia. The main namespace, containing the articles, DABs and some redirects, is the encyclopedia proper. But all other pages, including project pages, talk pages, even use pages and the other weirder namespaces, exist to support the presentation and development of the main namespace. In this sense, all of Wikipedia exists for its readers. Andrewa (talk) 06:29, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I'm not saying it shouldn't be written for its readers, just that it is of too little value to say in a very valuable space giving the major principles for editing Wikipedia. The case needs to be made that this is a principle that if new editors are not made aware of they may edit in way that is significantly worse. Dmcq (talk) 19:50, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support in part, oppose in part. I wouldn't be opposed to including something to this effect in the description below the header "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", but I don't think it should be added to the header itself. Back in 2008, it wasn't bolded either. I fear that if it's added to the header it may distract a little from highlighting the importance of the WP:NOT policy, which is also what the first pillar is about. Mz7 (talk) 05:51, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
  • My original suggestion was in fact that it mightn't be added to WP:5P at all, just somewhere. Andrewa (talk) 06:32, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support. WP:5P1 Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. What is an encyclopedia?

"Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come."
Diderot Reference: Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert Encyclopédie. University of Michigan Library:Scholarly Publishing Office and DLXS. Retrieved on: November 17, 2007

An inherent part of purpose of an encyclopedia is to transmit the knowledge widely, to all people, including to people suffering from systematic bias. Merely to mention systematic biases causes people to think on it, and it leads to better decisions on helping the product being available to the widest audience. Wikipedia is not a repository, it is a living, growing document with purpose. Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

Three essays that immediately come to mind on belonging in WP:5P1 are Wikipedia:Reader, Wikipedia:Readers first, & Wikipedia:Product, process, policy. The third does not include mention of "readers", but it does expound on "improving our encyclopedia", which begs the question "for who". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:17, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Is it worth mentioning that re: the Encyclopedie quote, that encyclopedia was a for-profit venture, with constant tensions about changing text to please the church, the state, publishers, editors, writers, etc. with all sorts of financial, philosophical, religious, anti-religious, political, radical, professional, and personal interests wrapped up in its production? :) (this isn't a real attempt at rebuttal btw, but here is a fun example of Diderot writing about his resentment about having to include material his publishers insisted readers wanted). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:28, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it's always worth mentioning such things; might even be therapeutic both for the mentioner and the mentionees. There were a lot of things that I don't think anybody could have predicted. This was a crazy new endeavor after all, with surprises all around. And here we are, still trying to improve even our pillars. Seems to me that the phrase, "just keeps gettin' better and better" sounds less and less sarcastic over time. Wikipedia rocks!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  18:07, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

• Support Everything should circle back to readers. Sometimes it seems like we blindly follow a policy or guideline, or edit based on writers' needs.—Bagumba (talk) 09:37, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support restoring. It helps to set the tone and focus, even if not strictly necessary. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:35, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, out of fear that someone will point to that clause to justify something that would arguably help readers but isn't encyclopedic. Also doesn't really communicate anything, so it just adds text. One of the things that's great about the pillars as they are is that they are concise and easily readable. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 13:35, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose because the language can be used to argue that every other policy should be ignored if the material in dispute is "beneficial to the reader". Indeed, the argument made by the IP editor, below, may at least imply this very argument. That is, of course, a specious argument, but we don't need to fuel it. - TransporterMan (TALK) 02:53, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support Some editors seem to forget entirely about the audience. I would use this phrase instead: "primarily for the benefit of laypeople." When I look at some of the articles on math and physics, I feel like some of our articles are either written for Ph.D. students or for the author to show off their skill at writing something only experts can decipher and appreciate. It reminds me of some incomprehensible user manuals. --David Tornheim (talk) 03:26, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support I do wikiwork because I got annoyed at the lack of a good description for a few things i'm interested in (Not much, by the way). Besides, I don't see a reason not to. MoonyTheDwarf (BN) (talk) 19:02, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose This page isn't really that useful. It's not public facing as far as I can tell, and is pretty much something you'll read if you're already interested in editing. We don't really poll our readers on anything (not that I think polls would be a great idea in the vast majority of cases), but already "reader first" mentality is leading to flawed arguments of "I'm an average reader and this is my opinion" on this RFC. People who edit Wikipedia are already a very small slice of the population and not a representative sample, so it's inaccurate to claim that one is an "average reader". So, saying Wikipedia is for the readers on a page directed at editors is functionally useless but only serves to fuel arguments that are aimed at avoiding policy and instead appealing to some imagined generic reader. Maybe if this were a primarily reader facing page it would make sense to make readers feel appreciated but as it is, it's not useful. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 00:13, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
• Strong support. Anything that reminds editors that readers are important is good. If anyone wants to get into tiny wording details, it gets even better: despite the title of this discussion, the proposed wording doesn't say "readers first", but "for the benefit of readers". It is legitimate, correct, and not redundant. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:10, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

There are two early oppose !votes above.

Both seem to agree that the principle is sound and important, but think it unnecessary or even inappropriate to spell it out, and that in practice it makes no difference to do so. I hope I have answered that.

We seem agreed that the change was made without consensus support.

But I have been in consensus-based decision making processes where the motion was put and there were literally hundreds against a handful, so the chairperson said let's just hear from the handful and they convinced us. In that spirit, Mandruss and Rhododendrites, I'd like to hear more.

And the other person who might contribute something relevant is Robkelk, who (rightly as it turned out) asked the question that so startled me. So pinging him too. Andrewa (talk) 06:54, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Yikes.

It looks like you're trying to spin the opposition in a way that seems to support this proposal... and you're doing it at multiple venues (that one of them is Talk:Fan (machine) makes me think this is more about that argument than 5P). I explicitly said that Wikipedia is for everybody. It's for people reading it, listening to it, writing it, looking at its pictures and graphs, republishing it, referencing it, analyzing it, etc. I suppose that can all be boiled down to "readers" but let's not turn this into a self-evident question of "are readers important?" Bringing it back to that discussion this seems to be about, at the fan article, "think of the readers" shouldn't be a trump card in an argument, but it's relevant to the disambiguation process. The way to propose a change that would make dab pages more useful to all users is to start a discussion about our disambiguation process, not to add something to 5P to use as basis for that dab argument (apologies if I'm misreading that thread).

I hope I have answered that. - Where?

We seem agreed that the change was made without consensus support. - ??? No. Someone added the text, legitimately, based on a very small discussion on the talk page. Someone else removed it a year later, legitimately. Nobody contested it. Then it sat there on one of the most visible projectspace pages for ten years. WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS. I.e. the evidence that there was consensus for it is that it sat uncontested for ten years. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:53, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

The regrettable shortcut "WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS" carries an unfortunate vibe of weight that runs contrary to the spirit of consensus. This shortcut is only a few months old and I objected at the time (but with very little input from others and I didn't feel like fighting). So here we have an authoritative table-pounding using this shortcut as the gavel. Well, look deeper. The shortcut points to a section in our WP:CONSENSUS policy. In that section is another link which points to our explanatory supplement WP:Silence and consensus. There we see a section titled "Silence is the weakest form of consensus". In the same vein, since Aug 2011 our essay WP:Arguments to avoid in discussions (rated mid-importance) rejects WP:CONTENTAGE as a reason for much of anything. Finally, assuming there were ever any consensus about any of this, we come full circle to our consensus policy, which provides WP:Consensus can change. In short, the mere passage of time can not turn "I just don't like" reasoning into slam-dunk reasoning. In even fewer words maybe we need a shortcut that says WP:Time means squat. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:22, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Sidestepping your opinions about implicit consensus, which we can talk about elsewhere if you want, the point is that Andrewa argued the small discussion that led to the text being added in the first place should carry such a forceful consensus that when someone changed it a year later it was (a) illegitimate and (b) doesn't matter that nobody contested the change -- not then, despite having hundreds of people watching it, and not in the ten years since then. Consensus can change, absolutely, so I wouldn't argue that what has stood for ten years can't be changed, either, but the idea that what has been there for ten years should be undone because a handful of people had a talk page discussion the year before but didn't contest the change is absurd. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:32, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't mean to twist your words but I think I agree. To be specific, I think that what happened in the long ago means squat and the important thing is what people think today. If that's what you said, then yes I agree. If that's not what you said please elaborate a little where I got it wrong. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:40, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Close enough. :) I would personally grant a bit more weight to what managed to stick on a highly watched page for a decade, but neither of them need to dictate what happens now (i.e. it's less that I want to preserve some action from ten years ago and more that I disagree with Andrewa's notion that a change "made without consensus support" ten years ago is relevant to this discussion). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:57, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Agree that neither of them need to dictate what happens now and the important thing is what people think today.

The lack of consensus support at the time of the change would be relevant only if we cannot come to a consensus decision on the wording now. Far better not to go there. But in that unfortunate scenario, it becomes relevant, unfortunately. Andrewa (talk) 20:10, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

I knew that question was going to kick off debate, even when I asked it. I've seen cases at other wikis where the act of creating and naming and filling in pages in just the right way, even when particular requirements would never be noticed by most people who use the wiki, got in the way of collecting and sharing information. The former is what I was thinking about when I asked whether the wiki existed for the editors, and the latter is what I was thinking about when I asked whether the wiki was for the benefit of the readers. That said and out of the way, we come to this proposal. If it needs to be said so that we focus on everybody who uses Wikipedia instead of focusing on those of us who edit here, then let's say it... but I hope that it wouldn't need to be said. Thus, I'll abstain on voting here. --Rob Kelk 00:09, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

As it turns out, you were probably wiser than I. Apologies. Andrewa (talk) 06:15, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

We seem to have answered part of the question. Nobody seems to doubt the truth or validity of the point that Wikipedia is... written for the benefit of its readers (my emphasis). Some see it as good to say so explicitly, while others object strongly to doing so, but nobody questions the principle itself.

So getting back to the original question, is this a fair comment? Andrewa (talk) 11:18, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

See above. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:14, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

OK... but what exactly is wrong with it? Andrewa (talk) 20:04, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

The supports and opposes are to restoring the text, following the first respondent’s lead. If you are not proposing the text be restored, and are simply trying to clarify whether “Wikipedia is written for its readers”, then it would be fair to say both the supporters and opposers agree that it, of course, is. It would be completely inappropriate to change the wording based on this though, because you cannot override the opposers just because you want to. You would need to make this an RfC with wide community advertisement to make changes to the text, given the fact that this is a controversial proposal. Swarm ♠ 20:10, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, there is a poll above (not initiated by me) into restoring the text.

Initially I was certainly asking whether we should restore the text, but also whether this had been a deliberate policy decision. And that seems to have been answered in the negative, there was no intention to change the policy, just to remove unnecessary clarification, and there is still no intention to change it. The only disagreement is as to how the policy should be expressed.

So far, several editors have supported the proposed change, and two have opposed. But both of these appear to me to support the principle. I really do not see what the fuss is all about.

I'm certainly not trying to fork any discussion. I'm trying to centralise discussion here on these matters, on which a heads-up was posted (again not by me but I think it was a good thing and said so) at WT:5P#Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written for the benefit of its readers. Both issues are obviously of relevance to that talk page. I have replied there to comments made there, but if anything, others are forking the discussion, not me.

A formal close to the poll would be good IMO. Where we go from there depends largely on the close. Andrewa (talk) 20:49, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

The repeated misrepresentation of this thread is getting concerning. ... and two (yourself included) have opposed -- at the time you wrote that four users had opposed, and five (yourself included) had supported. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:51, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

An honest mistake which I tried to correct but have had several ECs... one of which at least was probably one of the oppose !votes.

Please read WP:AGF and consider adopting it. Andrewa (talk) 20:56, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. I suppose that was a bit harsh. Struck the first part with apologies. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:26, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Rock in pond.... I might switch to "oppose". Here's why.... let us assume for sake of argument that everyone agrees (at least on paper) that Wikipedia is for the reader's benefit. Now suppose we say that on paper. What would be the impact of such a decision? Mandruss (talk · contribs) has already contemplated a new (sad) line of argument in the ephemeral debates we have to deal with. The only reason I first voiced support is the wishful hope that saying this would magically reduce some of the questionable behaviors from longtime users. But the discussion and further reflection leaves me thinking that there isn't really anything constructive to be gained here. The question arose at a great example where two options were being considered for an article title, "Mechanical fan" versus "Fan (Mechanical)" and somehow the differing views in the talk thread were boiled down to two supposedly conflicting policty statements, and supposedly the determining factor would be whether Wikipedia is (or is not) "For the benefit of readers" (Same diff that Andrew posted above) I am not qualified to offer an opinion if the logic is sound, because I am an involved editor championing a third option ("Fan (air circulation)"). But I'm not impressed that the partipants arrived at a point of trying to reconcile their reading of policy on this question. This is the sort of unexpected thing that could happen if this text is restored. "First do no harm". Before we risk inviting new lines of possibly lame argument by restoring/adding this text, what exactly do we gain? How will it be used to make the project better ? In my mind, this is how the question should be decided. Before I bother with the clerical task of switching to oppose, I thought I'd float the qustion a second time, since your first attempted answer "it would help at least one editor" wasn't really an explanation . NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:13, 27 August 2018 (UTC) PS At the source venue, if the two policies being debated are indeed in conflict (on which I'm dubious but neutral) then the answer is not messing with a third policy. Instead the two supposedly conflicitng ones should be refined so they are in harmony. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:25, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

It would help at least one editor was my whole reason for making the suggestion that we consider putting it back somewhere, perhaps not at 5P but somewhere (please note that someone else then decided to make it a poll). Actually it's two editors... I used to refer to this policy a great deal. Now I guess I'll need to appeal to commonsense instead, which doesn't seem an improvement. But for every user who says they have the problem, nine others know they have it and don't say. For every user who knows they have it, nine others have it and don't know. On the other hand, there seems no harm in making it explicit. It's agreed that Wikipedia is for readers, the policy used to say that, and the case for removing it seems incomprehensible to me... mere speculation as to what damage it might cause, with no evidence that it did cause any damage at all in the years it was policy, but strong feelings that the damage would be there.

But really, it's not worth this angst. I still support making it explicit (again), but if commonsense it must be, commonsense it will be. I fear that will lead to more fruitless discussion not less, but nothing we can't deal with. Maybe we just need to do so. Eh bien, continuons. Andrewa (talk) 06:07, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

A valiant effort to make a change for good, but IMHO I think "fruitless discussion" would be unchanged either way. Some folks just like to argue about nothing. And to emphasize the #1 thing I got out of this, in the source issue at Talk:Mechanical fan if the two policies claimed to be in conflict are really in conflict, the answer lays in refining those policies so they march in harmony. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:50, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

I used to refer to this policy a great deal. Good, some actual practical experience, something real, empirical evidence. The question is: When you referred to this policy, did that affect the outcomes?
if commonsense it must be, commonsense it will be. No, "common sense" is equally useless, as it varies widely between individuals. It's been clearly established that the number of editors who don't understand that this encyclopedia, like all encyclopedias, exists to serve readers is zero or insignificant. That means you don't need a pillar to refer to to make that argument in a discussion. Whether the argument succeeds or not is a matter of consensus like everything else. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:42, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Strongly disagree that it has been clearly established that the number of editors who don't understand that this encyclopedia, like all encyclopedias, exists to serve readers is zero or insignificant. On two grounds. I don't think that has been demonstrated at all, but respect your opinion that it has been, and again I'd like to hear more. But more important, no editor or group of editors is insignificant. Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

At the risk of linking to my own essay, perhaps we might address the underlying concerns by promoting and/or developing User:Andrewa/creed? This concentrates on the positives rather than the negatives, as did the for readers clause of course. Andrewa (talk) 18:01, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

I think this concept is something that probably gets overlooked more than people realize. I won't get into specifics to avoid any drama, but recently there was a portal that made a decision about the templates of their articles, in favor of removing information. The community of readers voiced their opposition to it pretty clearly and loudly, but were ignored in favor of "policy" (no specific WP was cited), and even the compromise (removing bullet lists, and rewriting the info as prose) was ignored in favor of simply removing the information. As a result, READERS were negatively impacted. While people may feel this is a "common sense" thing, having it stated officially would go a long way to resolving issues regarding content that may not fall in line 100% with all guidelines, but is beneficial to readers nonetheless. 64.222.174.146 (talk) 14:53, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

• A proper month long RFC after which uninvolved admins made a policy based decision to remove the section from pro wrestling articles. Misrepresenting the process shows that some people will never be happy with a process that does not support their POV.  MPJ-DK  02:11, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Feel free to correct whatever was misrepresented. I pointed out it ws a policy based decision, and also that no specific policy was cited. I even went back and double checked to make sure my memory wasn't biased. Nothing I said in my comment was misleading, at least not intentionally. I specifically support this because of the fact that policy decisions can be made without factoring this bit of "common sense" into account, as its not officially stated anywhere. I intentionally didn't mention specifics so as to avoid dealing with people biased for/against the previous topic, as the topic itself is mostly irrelevant. My point was it would be nice to have this somewhere so policy based decisions can weigh it accordingly. 64.222.174.146 (talk) 16:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

So if I am reading this right your argument is that no policy was cited in the closure? There were plenty of policy based arguments made by participants and the closer agreed that the policy based arguments of one of the sides is what decided the outcome. Or am I misreading your comments? Not sure what "for the readers" would have invalidated there, it is not Wikipedia-Kryptonite that trumps all else. MPJ-DK (talk) 22:52, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Not trying to argue for/against that specific subject any more, that point is moot. The point I am making is that when a decision is being made based around policies, having a policy in place that factors in stuff like a large contingent of readers being against a change. The arguments to make a change may be based around policy, and may be valid, but when a majority of the people actually reading the content are against the change, this policy prevents the outright dismissals of "Just because you like it doesn't mean it should stay." 64.222.174.146 (talk) 16:18, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

A heads-up has been postedatWT:5P. Andrewa (talk) 11:29, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

• Support WP is the rebellious child of encyclopedias - unquestionably descendant, but irreverent of it stodgy fore-bearers. You can read in the subtext in many of our policies that we do it like so to avoid the failure we see in our predecessors. This notion of benefiting our readers contrasts with those that were more invested in promoting their own politics or allowed clearly biased primary sources to rewrite their own history. ghost 14:28, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi, is it allowed for a group of people to contribute to Wikipedia using only one account? Basically, is a shared account allowed? I’m not talking about one people controlling a group of accounts, that would be sockpuppetery.--▸ ‎épine _talk♬ 16:52, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

WP:NOSHARING. DonIago (talk) 16:59, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

No, that's not allowed; see WP:NOSHARINGorWP:ROLE. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:59, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Such an account would be blocked as being compromised. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:02, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks @TonyBallioni: and @Ivanvector: can a CheckUser detect if an account is used by a group of people?--▸ ‎épine _talk♬ 17:15, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Theoretically, yes, a checkuser could detect activity that would suggest one account is being used by several people. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:40, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Well, not exactly. They can see whether it's multiple devices/web browsers, but they can't see who's typing. One person logged in at school and again at home looks exactly like one person logged in at school and a different person logged in at home. Evidence that it's different people is usually behavioral (like saying that you never saw a message that your account replied to). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Or, for example, using the pronoun "we" a lot. Most role accounts admit it because they don't know it's wrong. It's very rare to have a role account which is deliberately being shared deceptively. It is hard to envision a situation where to do so is useful for the user. --Jayron32 14:22, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Yup ... they're all being spammaged by the same infobox. Allegedly because they are all part of anti-consumerism.

Infoboxes have gotten out of control before, and I know somehow they were reigned in, but recently I've started to see more junk hits (e.g. from anatomical regions) somehow coming up from Google searches again, and more outrages like the long, long, long, long trailer by the side of the Kaczinksi article that makes it sound like he wrote Walden. (Admittedly I suppose people who enable scripts more often might see something different, but all that spam is still dumped in the article whether it is read or not. I mean, would I rather see articles get 32K more text apiece or 32K more spam apiece?)

I'm thinking some random policy applications like:

• This is a giant coatrack that would make Goatse quail at the sight of it. I mean, was Pope Gregory I an anti-consumerist? Pencil him in!
• I laugh to think of the secondary source that would list these three together. Maybe we should write a grievance studies article?
• I shudder to think of the reaction I would get from some editors if I manually typed a tenth of that list of terms into the See Also section. Probably end up under a topic ban...

But is there anything else I'm missing? What can be done here? Wnt (talk) 13:44, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Small nitpick - that isn't an infobox. --Gonnym (talk) 13:47, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

It's not the size of the sidebar that matters; it's how you use it. There's always "Navigation templates are particularly useful for a small, well-defined group of articles; templates with a large number of links are not forbidden, but can appear overly busy and be hard to read and use." from WP:SIDEBAR. This seems kind of like an unhelpful one. At worst, it could always be converted to a (horizontal) navbox and dumped at the bottom of the article, which is where these things usually go to be ignored. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 13:58, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

The reason this is happening is that we are having the discussion here instead of at the article talk pages OR at the template talk page. I would recommend the following steps for dealing with these problems 1) WP:BEBOLD and remove the offending template yourself. If it stays away forever, congratulations. If it comes back 2) Start a discussion at the article talk page where it was put back and see what WP:CONSENSUS is or 3) Start a discussion at the template talk page, post a notice on every article talk page where it currently appears, and reach a consensus as to which articles should and should not have it. Once you have consensus, you can enforce it. --Jayron32 14:21, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

• If it is demonstrably WP:OR/WP:SYNTH to group these together, you could try WP:TFD to delete the template (and remove the transclusions. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:40, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Is this something we even need to track? I would just get rid of it entirely. CThomas³ (talk) 03:59, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Some articles have two or even more messages saying that they are stubs and specifying that the stub is related to something. Just one of these specialised stub messages is okay but when theres multiple of them it could be confusing for readers. I think a policy or a style guideline needs to be made to prevent this. 🌸 WeegaweeK ^ 🌸 22:55, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

• The purpose of the stub notices is to bring the article-needing-expansion to the attention of people who are interested in expanding articles in particular topic areas. I was involved several years ago in the massive stub sorting project which led to the current stub topics structure. Why not just use categories? The distinction is in the definition of stub: A stub is an article deemed too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject. (WP:Stub). There are, of course, other ways of dealing with this, such as only using {{stub}} and making all topic stubs hidden but enabling of special stub sub-categories within standard categories = one of many alternatives. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:05, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Yet another alternative is to use the project tagging on the talk page to see if it is a stub. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:41, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

I know you're not supposed to link from mainspace to draft, but I can't find any policy which actually says that. Where is it? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:32, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Are you talking about cross-namespace redirects? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 14:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Well, there's WP:MOSLINKSTYLE "Do not create links to user, WikiProject, essay or draft pages in articles, except in articles about Wikipedia itself (see Self-references to avoid)." Natureium (talk) 14:37, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Ah, MOS:LINKSTYLE is what I wanted, thanks. The specific issue was a user had linked to a draft from a WP:DAB page. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

AtWikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot, discussions are underway about a request from User:TheSandDoctor to run a bot to rename 35,226 articles on elections. Many consequent edits will be required on templates etc.

This follows an RFC on anamendment to WP:Naming conventions (government and legislation) (WP:NCGAL), at WT:Naming conventions (government and legislation)#RFC_inadequate,_bot_not_justified.

That RFC was closed as a consensus to change the naming format from "Foo election, YYYY" to "YYYY Foo election". However, only 16 editors !voted, by a margin of 11:5 in favour. (so only 3 or 5 more opposes would have pushed it into no consensus territory).

That seems an inadequate basis for such a big change.

And I don't see any sign of a consensus anywhere to use a bot to bypass WP:Requested moves for these 35,226 articles. I am not aware of any precedent for using a bot in this way, especially without a clear consensus to bypass WP:RM.

The discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot is even considering how to handle exceptional cases such as Polish presidential election, 1922 (special) and Polish presidential election, 9 December 1922. Discussions such as that belong at WP:RM; they should not be buried on a technical page.

I do not suggest that any of those involved are acting in bad faith. But I do think that in their enthusiasm, they are acting in excessive haste with inadequate consensus-formation.

So is there any way to persuade WP:BAG to hold off such a huge exercise until it is clear that there is

1. a broad consensus that the limited-participation RFC adequately reflects the view of the community?
2. an RFC to support using a bot to bypass WP:RM on such a huge scale

--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:33, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

• PS see also my comments at WT:Naming conventions (government and legislation)#RFC_inadequate,_bot_not_justified. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

• The original RfC has been reopened for further comments: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (government and legislation)#Proposed change to election/referendum naming format. Number 57 15:03, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

There is a request for comment on the Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources guideline:

Should the following section be included in Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources § Questionable sources?

Web content by non-staff contributors

Shortcuts

• WP:CONTRIBUTOR

WP:CONTRIBUTORS

Onnews websites, periodical websites (excluding academic journals), and blogs, web content authored by non-staff contributors is questionable if the contributors are subject to reduced editorial oversight, even if the web content is published in a source that is otherwise reliable. Compared to staff writers, contributors generally have a lesser reputation for fact-checking and error correction. Reliable publications distinguish articles written by staff writers from ones written by contributors by indicating the author's job title in the byline. Less reputable sources only display the author's job title on their profile page or the website's masthead.

Examples of sources that publish content from non-staff contributors include Forbes.com and HuffPost.

Opinion pieces in reliable sources have their own guideline, which applies instead of this one.

If you are interested, please participate at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources#RfC: Designating web content by non-staff contributors as questionable (revised). Thanks. — Newslinger talk 01:15, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

The law of defamation is seen as a "slippery slope" topic within the freedom-ist point of view, because it severely restricts the public's right of free speech in the area of what individuals in the general public can say about individuals in the "private" public. But putting that aside, this question deals with what treaties have direct influence on defamation law.

More to the point, what secrecy protocols are in place which affect such treaties, such that public law has aspects which are affected by the secrecy protocols attached to treaties? And in particular, what secrecy aggreements exist between the United States and Britain exist that restrict American free speech and have an influence on Wikipedia at the policy level? -Inowen (nlfte) 23:36, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

This... seems like a WP:RD kind of question. --Izno (talk) 00:34, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

So because of defamation law, is it de-facto illegal in the United States to say the British monarch has committed a crime? Even though there should be serious limitations on defamation law claims. And how would that "law" have come about, and how is Wikipedia affected? -Inowen (nlfte) 03:09, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

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

There's an RfC on adopting the proposed guideline for transport stations, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Irish stations), here. Interested editors are asked to weigh in.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:52, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Suggest a simple issues section of WP:VP where issues are listed. -Inowen (nlfte) 23:25, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

What do you mean by issues? --Izno (talk) 03:59, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Should Wikipedia:Category names, in part or in its entirety, be downgraded to a guideline from a policy? The last discussion was in 2009, and the page has remained a policy since at least April 2014 (which is when the guideline tag on the page was replaced with the policy tag). Jc86035 (talk) 08:36, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

• (RfC initiator) I would support at least partial downgrading, since most of the page refers to specific conventions that do not need to be codified as sitewide policy. The page also largely refers to itself as a "set of guidelines". Jc86035 (talk) 08:36, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
• Comment re. similar pages: WP:AT is policy, WP:MOS is a guideline  pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 12:20, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

  The most-appropriate comparison is to the various naming conventions, which are guidelines. --Izno (talk) 16:17, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

• Support change to guideline I have no idea why this is listed as a policy at all, and who thought it would be. Policies and guidelines are different things and perform different functions at Wikipedia. This has the function of a guideline, and should be called such. --Jayron32 16:27, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support change to guideline, per above discussion. The page is quite dogmatic in language, and too easily pointed to as policy when slight exceptions and differences would work better or as well. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:33, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support change to guideline not "policy" material. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:01, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support change to guideline - i should never have been a policy.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Doug Weller (talk • contribs)
• Support change to guideline - looking through the page history, it has been a guideline far longer than it has been a policy, and, so far as I can tell was only made into a policy due to a misunderstanding by a single editor. Certainly, it has the function of a guideline, and if we can establish a clear consensus that this is what it ought to be, then hopefully it won't be changed back again... Anaxial (talk) 21:04, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Its my understanding that comments on talk pages should not be removed by other editors because they could abuse this priviledge. On Talk:Brexit a section of comment was removed by political actors claiming to be acting out of neutrality. There should be no censorship of criticism of the British government, as it informs article development, and it seems like that is what that is, disguised as neutrality. -Inowen (nlfte) 23:25, 23 October 2018 (UTC) PS: Talk pages are for discussing an article, but what counts as article discussion is itself a political issue. There should be other ways to deal with problematic usage of talk pages, but then this is not vandalism, and the formal way to handle problematic use cannot allow for systematic bias and censorship. -Inowen (nlfte) 23:29, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Two editors (neither of whom are known to be "political actors") told you that your talk page post was off-limits as violating WP:NOTFORUM. They perceived of it as idle speculation. I'd take the constructive criticism they offered: if you truly want to discus changes to the article, do so based on reliable sources you can point to, because all content on Wikipedia needs to be verifiable from such sources. I agree that fundamentally there is no definitive way of telling what on a talk page targets changes in the article and what doesn't, because our articles don't exist in a vacuum separated from the real world. But in this case, it was entirely unclear what you wanted to accomplish with the post. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:23, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I delivered a short three-paragraph statement of the internal politics of Brexit as a starting point to develop those ideas for the article. They objected to the tenor of the content, but they do not have a right or due cause under Wikipedia's guidelines to remove my comment. It also looks political. -Inowen (nlfte) 00:54, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, we do have the right. See the second bullet point of WP:TPO. Promotional material also includes political promotion. This information if youer personal political opinion, not encyclopaedic information. I see nothing there that is geared towards improving the article, which is the point of the talk page. If you think I have acted incorrectly, this is entirely the wrong venue to start this discussion: try asking the question at ANI to see how the general community views the actions. - SchroCat (talk) 04:03, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Its a very political topic and editors like myself will at times express a point of view. The Brexit is a massively important policy, which ostensibly contradicts the will of the autocratic government, and if that government demurely overturns the Brexit vote it will engender outrage among the British citizenry. It could be civil war, and a chance for the United States to assist the English people accomplish a "restoration" of the democracy the monarchy mocks under the name "Cromwell." So naturally there needs to be some handling of these things in the article, and nothing about what I write on talk pages except for an occasional jab is POV. If you're saying that every statement one writes needs to be sourced to a print publication, that is not an accurate account of the policy regarding talk pages. Also because Britain is not a democracy, there is a problem that non-British Wikimedians might be imposed upon to do what it says. The argument of democracy versus monarchy needs treatment. We American Wikipedians sometimes have to push back against systematic creep coming in from Europe. -Inowen (nlfte) 05:09, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Your political views have absolutely no place in the articles or on the talk pages encyclopaedia. The talk pages are for discussions on how to improve the articles (see the notices at the top of the talk pages which say exactly this). The second bullet point of WP:TPO allows users to remove such political opinion. If you can't take this on board, I'd be happy to open a thread at ANI suggesting your two threads are removed. - SchroCat (talk) 06:10, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

It is my understanding that only comments which are vandalism are to be removed outright from talk pages, because of the threat of abuse by abusive editors, who might disguise themselves as neutral, and make themselves appear productive by making useful edits. There seems to be strong language in WP:TPO that honors the continuity of discussion ("The basic rule—with exceptions outlined below—is to not edit or delete others' posts without their permission") and severly curbs the way for editors to remove comments, even though there is a short list. Maybe WP:TPO needs some editorial review. Do you have anything productive to say, as others have, with regard to the comments I've made on Talk:Brexit? -Inowen (nlfte) 06:33, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

1. Per TPO and NOTAFORUM, posts not geared to improving the article can be removed. Both your threads fall into that category.

2. As to your recent thread on the talk page, it's uneducated tripe that has no grasp of the constitutional configuration of the UK or its relationship with the EU. The comments others have made are that your post shouldn't have been made. - SchroCat (talk) 08:28, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

See, your not neutral, you are claiming the UKs "constitutional configuration" is meaningful when its Queen can veto the popular Brexit vote without explanation or account to the people of England. The word "constitutional" is meant to evoke the idea of "democratic government" but its meaningless when there is a monarch. And it's certainly the case if the Queen of England has meddling in Wikipedia we should know about it. -Inowen (nlfte) 02:44, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

What utter nonsense. Just because I understand how the British constitution works does not mean I am not neutral. I have an eight year old daughter who has a better grasp of British politics than you do. You need to read some reliable sources, rather than spouting la-la land fantasy gibberish. If you continue to post nonsense on the talk page you'll be inviting an ANI thread, but there is no point continuing this thread until you read some proper sources. - SchroCat (talk) 03:31, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

For those who are genuinely interested in how a democracy with a queen works here is a fascinating video on the topic:[3] --Guy Macon (talk) 04:51, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

From WP: "A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed.", which says nothing about democracy, monarchy or any other form. Whilst we are mentioning English definitions, please try to learn the difference between "your" (belonging to you) and "you're" (you are). Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:00, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Oooh! A grammar flame! How very original. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:41, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Your write. There comment is two much too bare. GMG^talk 13:47, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Wee mussed dew the best: week Anne two rite with care it; is a fete of witch won should, bee proud sew talk page calm int. flaws argh knot aloud --Guy Macon (talk) 13:58, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Ow! You two (too?) are painful. :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:00, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

As others have pointed out, we can and should remove talk page comments at times. These include forum style posts and can include BLP violations, copyright violations, etc. Our talk page headers often carry a message such as "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Donald Trump article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject." Doug Weller talk 14:12, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Doug Weller, Talk:Brexit#Overview section and Talk:Brexit#Internal politics are the two threads in question. Neither is based in fact or reality, and neither are designed to improve the article, except from the point of view of a conspiracy theorist. - SchroCat (talk) 14:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

• If it is listed as being removable at WP:TPOC, it may be removed. If not listed, we are not allowed to delete it. Some things listed at WP:TPOC may be collapsed but may not be deleted. Anyone who replaces the specific rules at WP:TPOC with "I looked at it decided that it should be deleted" really needs to stop doing that. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:57, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

• In this particular base bullet point two of TPOC is the key: "Removing prohibited material such as comments by banned users, libel, legal threats, personal details, or violations of copyright, living persons, or anti-promotional policies". Specifically "anti-promotional", which is WP:NOTOPINION: "Opinion pieces. Although some topics, particularly those concerning current affairs and politics, may stir passions and tempt people to "climb soapboxes", Wikipedia is not the medium for this". In such a contentious topic, if it ain't useful, it shouldn't be on the page. As the your edit summary "Anyone who replaces the specific rules at WP:TPOC with "I looked at it decided that it should be deleted" really needs to stop doing that": that's not the case here, and no-one thinks it is. The comments from a number of users on the talk page in response to Inowen's rather odd threads are all of one mind: it's nonsensical POV that shouldn't be there. - SchroCat (talk) 15:20, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
  • @SchroCat: how about Talk:Marriage#In world culture. These edits seem to be an example of why we have to remove talk page comments at times. Doug Weller talk 15:54, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
    • Wow... I hadn't seen that lot. Firmly in WP:NOT territory, and one who doesn't listen to explanations of just how this place does work. I can't decide whether this is deliberately disruptive low-level trolling, a competence problem or just an inability to accept the norms of the community.Whichever of those, it will soon start getting up to ANI and inevitable sanction. - SchroCat (talk) 16:49, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

• • • • @SchroCat: while looking at a more recent edit, I found this old discussion at Talk:Jesus#The name which User:Jytdog closed with the rationale "no change to content is being proposed, no RS have been brought to support the (nonexistent) content proposal. WP:NOTFORUM" Doug Weller talk 19:33, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
        • since I was pinged.... Yep I regularly close discussions on talk pages that are going no where. They are often driven by people who don't understand what we do here. The really bad thing that happens is that more established editors get drawn offsides, into general discussion of the topic or discussions about the original poster, which is good for nobody. (I got dragged to ANI for doing it at Talk:Sarah Jeong, here) I ~sometimes~ remove things if they are blatantly not what talk pages are for. We should help each other stay on task. And if a discussion is closed, a new, better-focused one can always be opened. Jytdog (talk) 19:55, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
          • @Doug Weller:, more nonsense at Talk:Restoration (England)#Introductione. This is arguing from a position of ignorance if ever I've seen it! – SchroCat (talk) 04:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
          • Well the article is about a controversial topic in a non-democratic country. And some from that country edit Wikipedia; there are bound to be disagreements. -Inowen (nlfte) 23:03, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
            • "non-democratic country"? You really don't have a clue, do you? There are children with a better grasp of things than you. It's not about disagreements over Brexit: it's about you not having half a clue about a foreign political system. - SchroCat (talk) 23:10, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
              • Britain is not a democratic country. That's a fact. Its a "constitutional monarchy," which is a kind of monarchy. And they call the end of a short period of English democracy in 1660 "The Restoration." Another fact. -Inowen (nlfte) 23:44, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
                • Oh dear. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In your case you are too set upon a term you've heard to think flexibly. Yes, Britain is a democracy. And a constitional monarchy. The two are not mutually exclusive, and it comes down to the definition of "democracy", of which there are several. Any reliable source will clarify that Britain is a representative democracy based on the Westminster system. Yes, we have a monarchy, but that doesn't stop us being a democracy - the same is true of Spain and the Netherlands too. As to the nonsense "fact" you've written above, "The Restoration" wasn't a period of democracy; the full name "The restoration of the monarchy" may give you a clue as to what was happening. As you seem to be unable to listen and learn even on basic stuff, I would advise you steer clear of any articles on British history or politics and to use the talk pages to discuss the improvement of articles based on information from reliable sources. - SchroCat (talk) 04:10, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

I too would have shut down the talk page discussion in question ... the reason: it violated our WP:No original research policy. Inowen wishes to discuss his/her own analysis and conclusions concerning Brexit, instead of the analysis and conclusions of others (ie reliable sources). We don’t allow that. Had he/she wanted to discuss what sources say, then the conversation at the talk page would have been fine. Blueboar (talk) 00:00, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Oh how I hate original research, conspiracy theories and general ignorance about my country...Alssa1 (talk) 00:12, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

There is currently an RfC at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)#RfC:_Amendment_for_BIO_to_address_systemic_bias_in_the_base_of_sources about a proposed addition to the notability guideline for biographies. All are invited to participate. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:46, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Trypophobia#Should the image be removed, retained in the lead but collapsed, or moved down?. A permalink for it is here. Note that this page is being notified because the image in question was subject to debate here in 2015. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:02, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Some time ago the foundation created a PageImage feature which grabs an image from the lead section of articles. If there are multiple images, it selects one. That image is then used to represent the article itself in PagePreviews, in some search results, and possibly elsewhere. It has just come to my attention that PageImage is grabbing the photo of one of the candidates in an upcoming election and using that candidate-photo to represent the article itself. Yikes! This is grossly promotional of one arbitrary candidate in the election.

Phabricator Task T91683 would add some way for us to select a specific image (or no image) for an article. However it does not yet exist.

At the moment the only workaround I can think of is to move the infobox (or images) down out of the lead section. It's a pretty crappy option, but I applied it to this article as a quick fix. If there's a wikiproject or other group that handles upcoming elections they should be alerted to address this issue in other articles. Alsee (talk) 01:53, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I would not call that a "promotion," that's poor choice of word to describe this. It's a technical limitation, nothing else. Your change was promptly reverted and I will surely expect more reverts if anyone embark on a mission to unilaterally change thousands of pages on elections due to this reason. If you want all infobox in election articles to be moved out of lede section then that needs a detailed rationale in a proper RFC. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:05, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

A contextless image cannot be promoting anything. I don't see a problem here. If people see a bias in a random photograph, that's their own internal biases, and has nothing to do with Wikipedia. --Jayron32 10:46, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm surprised the problem here isn't immediately obvious. If someone goes to the Wikipedia search box and starts typing a future election, it returns one of the candidates. If you hover over a link to the article it shows one of the candidates. It doesn't matter whether someone deliberately edits an article so it's their favorite candidate, or if it's dumb-luck which candidate Wikipedia appears to be siding with. There is a severe problem if Wikipedia is actuallyorapparently taking sides in an election. It's a gross violation of NPOV, and it's giving grossly Undue Weight to one candidate over other candidate(s). We need some sort of solution for this.

Pop quiz: Should searches and previews for the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election show Trump, or Trump's opponent? Do we really want to be running that RFC? Alsee (talk) 13:20, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

How is a picture taking a side. It's just a picture. --Jayron32 14:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I'd say that people who see bias here, WANT to see bias here. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:11, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

It's not promotion, but it's not adhering to WP:NPOV either. And it's not as bad as Wikiquote using a Hillary Clinton quote on its front page today. That said, we ought to at least try to adhere to the Wiki's ideals. Perhaps including a seal/icon that represents the office being elected in a prominent position to force the PageImage choice? Cabayi (talk) 19:24, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

This is also the image that gets used when a third-party platform (for example, Discord (software)) embeds a link to Wikipedia. And when it comes to election articles, the image selected should not be of a single candidate. It doesn't have to be any sort of explicit bias to reinforce the familiarity with a specific candidate, in the same way that advertisers constantly bombard us with reference to their product, even though we all already know it exists. The OP is correct here, and until there's a technical solution in place, this seems like a reasonable workaround. The argument used in reverting (that it's inconsistent with other articles) isn't convincing. This was a specific workaround to address a problem on a specific page. While consistency is always good in general, it never overrides more fundamental principles. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:36, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

To add more to this specific example, here's a screenshot of how Discord displays the embedded link. (I'm assuming/guessing that the image chosen here is the same as discussed above; I don't know all of the technical details here.) This isn't a picture without context – the context is pretty clear from the accompanying blurb. And again, in this case, it seems inappropriate to display in this manner. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 18:20, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

If the software displayed the candidates from a particular party, then we could claim bias. But from what I understand it is chosen at at random, so no bias. Blueboar (talk) 18:27, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Is it actually chosen at random, though? I'm getting the same one displayed every time. Maybe it's being cached somewhere. If it's being cached on WP's end, then that doesn't really help much. If it's being cached on the platform's end, that's better, but it could still be a problem if it doesn't go stale quickly enough and/or if it's widely viewed. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 18:57, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Completely agree with Alsee that this is something that needs attention. I do not understand how, in 2018, anyone is arguing that displaying a single representative from among a field will have no effect. "it's just a picture" sounds like the strawman that would start off an educational video covering the massive amounts of research showing that seeing a brand, a product, a candidate, a concept, etc. (one option from a field of many) has an effect on decision-making. It's why lawn signs aren't just a means of the lawn-owner's self-expression and why candidates (and companies, etc.) try to get names and pictures out as much as possible. I cannot fathom how much money we could get if we auctioned off a single photo spot, taking campaign funds. The picture matters.

That said, if it's truly random, it's not pressing, but it's still not ideal. One approach might be to create a single image from two. Then, of course, we leave out those other than the main candidates, but in that we would simply be doing what all of the other mainstream sources do. By contrast, surely the New York Times is not going to publish a summary of a particular election and only publish one candidate's picture. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:01, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Testing with an arbitrary US election, United States Senate election in Florida, 2018, I've reloaded a bunch and tried 3 different browsers and all return the picture of Rick Scott (see here). According to this, it's not random; it includes things like image size in addition to order. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:07, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

What I mean by random is that it isn’t favoring Democrats over Republicans (or Republicans over Democrats) ... nor do I see it favoring incumbents vs challengers. I don’t know how the program is choosing which pic to display, but it isn’t doing it based on any political bias that I can detect. Blueboar (talk) 22:57, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Agreed with Alsee - we need to show both (all?) candidates, or neither. I would likely be swayed by a demonstration that the chosen candidate was random, but it appears that the opposite is currently true. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:19, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

NOT RANDOM. Any editor can set the image to show their favorite party/candidate by editing the order of images in the lead section. Alsee (talk) 08:04, 26 October 2018 (UTC) Actually I'm investigating details. It's not fully clear how it selects an image, but it's not random after the image has been cashed. Alsee (talk) 17:07, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• What Discord shows is not our problem at all. They could show any image or none. As far as on our side, it just seems like it's an archive of image selection and not any deliberately "biased" process. We don't make articles less useful to fix backend technical issues (if indeed there even is one), but honestly, I don't see how this could be "biased". It's just an artifact of a process that's designed to put an image up of everything from Egyptian pottery to US presidential elections. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:27, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: I was just using Discord as an example because it's something that I use regularly and is easy for me to test with – there are plenty of others. And I'm not so sure that this isn't actually on Wikipedia's end, because when I copied the same article to my sandbox and embedded a link there from Discord, I got no image or blurb at all, even though the content of the page was identical. It's not that the process in image selection is inherently biased, but the potential to create bias is there as noted above. Moreover, if a page on Egyptian pottery gets a weird image, it's no big deal. If pages on elections are selecting images of just one candidate, that's a big deal, regardless of if anyone's doing it deliberately. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:54, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

A photo of one of the candidates is not a "weird image" for an election. It seems a very logical choice. If someone is going to base their vote on what image is shown when a Wikipedia article is linked, well, I wouldn't even know what to say. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:16, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

It's like those people who still haven't made up their mind when they're in the polling booth - so they vote for whoever is first on the ballot paper. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:09, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

If there's evidence people vote according to who come first in Wikipedia image, then that's not Wikipedia problem. The people who do that need psychological help. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:22, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm not worried about influencing elections due to this. I'm worried about an appearance of bias on Wikipedia's part.Tazerdadog (talk) 06:14, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Does this really matter? Anyone who actually clicks on the link will immediately see that there are photos of all the major candidates at the beginning of the article. Having the infobox showing the candidates at the start of the article is useful, and removing them to try to avoid "biased" links would be damaging the encyclopedia for a really petty reason. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 07:21, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Seraphimblade: What Discord shows is our problem, because I believe they are calling the Wikipedia's web API to retrieve the article text and PageImage. One of the Foundation's projects has been to encourage social media and other websites to embed this kind of Wikipedia content, via simplified standardized and automated web-request. Those web requests serve up a single PageImage.

Red Rock Canyon: It matters on two levels. One level is actual effect, and the other is appearance of bias and the reputation of Wikipedia.

As for actual effect: Whether it is a product or a political candidate, piles of research establishes that people are more likely to select the one that looks or sounds more familiar. The mere fact of repeatedly seeing a name or image creates a familiarity effect. Advertising works, whether it is a deliberate ad or if it's incidental. TV ads, billboards, and general appearances on the internet create this familiarity effect, regardless of any meaningful content about the product or candidate. It doesn't change the minds of people who have already made a firm choice, but it indisputably shifts the percentages when people make a decision in the store or in the ballot box.

And as for appearance of bias and the reputation of Wikipedia, I think we all know half the people in the US (and many outside the US) are going to see it as objectionable if Wikipedia serves up only Donald Trump's opponent image in connection with the next US presidential election, and the other half are going to see it as objectionable if we serve up only Donald Trump's image. I'd like to solve this now, before Trump or some other candidate or some media outlet or the blogosphere starts raging conspiracy theories or bias or anything else against Wikipedia. Alsee (talk) 18:24, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

The code in the PageImages extension seems to work as follows, at least in the version currently deployed.

1. The process starts when the "LinksUpdate" hook is run. This is when the data is collected and saved for things like the member listings on category pages and the operation of Special:WhatLinksHere.
2. On Wikipedias, it extracts the lead section and parses it. Other Wikimedia wikis parse the whole page.
3. Images generated during the parsing of the wikitext from step 2 are collected, via hook functions in ParserFileProcessingHookHandlers.php.
4. Every image is scored by code in LinksUpdateHookHandler.php, using some data configured in extension.json. Add together the scores for each category below. If the image is used multiple times, the highest score is used.
   • Image width: (Note this doesn't take into account any CSS cropping that might apply.)

     	0–99px	100–119px	120–400px	401–600px	>600px
     Inline, display width	-100		10	5	0
     Gallery, native width	-100	0

     Images displayed at small sizes are assumed to be icons, while very wide inline images are assumed to be panoramas. For images using "thumb", the default size is used (220px here on enwiki).
   • Order encountered in the wikitext:

     First	Second	Third	Fourth	Later
     8	6	4	3	0

   • Ratio (width/height): (Note this doesn't take into account any CSS cropping that might apply.)

     <= 0.3	0.3 – 0.5	0.5 – 2.0	2.0 – 3.0	> 3.0
     -100	0	5	0	-100

   • Blacklist: Images on MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist get -1000 points.
5. The page image is the one with the highest score. But if no image has a non-negative score the page has no image. In case of ties for the highest score, the image that first appeared earlier in the wikitext wins (even if the score belongs to a later appearance).

In an election article I'd guess the candidate images are all going to get 10 points for being displayed at 120–400px and 5 points for having an aspect ratio around 0.7, so it'll most likely choose whichever one comes first in the infobox. We should be able to prevent any candidate images from being chosen by displaying them all with the width set to 119px or less (e.g. {{CSS image crop|bSize=119|...}}). To make PageImages choose a placeholder image, we'd probably have to put it before the infobox and hide it with CSS (i.e. display:none), which would be less than ideal for people using browsers without CSS.

The page image selected will most likely be picked up by other sites that link the page, such as Discord as mentioned above, since they're told to via a <meta property="og:image" /> tag in the page's header. HTH. Anomie⚔ 01:34, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Comments are requested for a discussion of article naming policy (DIFFCAPS) at Wikipedia talk:Article titles. Thank you. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:03, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

New convention proposed at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (works of art); discuss at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#RFC on works of art naming convention (not here). Dicklyon (talk) 17:19, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

For the Wikipedia as encyclopedia credibility and respecting the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy I propose the need of at least one reference link in any Wikipedia article. It means a new page should'nt got stub classification without at least one acceptable external link.

This clearly mentioned at one section only - at the end of Wikipedia:Stub#Creating_and_improving_a_stub_article

This has a softer approach "Strongly encouraged" what against the above statements Notability#Notability_is_based_on_the_existence_of_suitable_sources,_not_on_the_state_of_sourcing_in_an_article

• I am asking the community to agree/ support it and spread this consideration over the guidelines.

Several guides to mention this factor e.g.:

• Wikipedia_talk:Substub#Stub_needs_source
• Wikipedia:Stub Makers
• Wikipedia:Editing_policy#Wikipedia_is_a_work_in_progress:_perfection_is_not_required
• ...

--Rodrigo (talk) 11:54, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

You should clarify that you mean "references"/"citations" not "links" or "external links", since many old and now rather obscure topics will be almost entirely offline or non-indexed. (Indeed, I feel like Google finds less every day). But I do think that given the very harsh treatment that WP:Articles for Creation are given, it makes no sense to let people be posting entirely sourceless new articles at this point. Wnt (talk) 23:08, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

@Wnt: Link means not only hyperlink, it not certainly a web document. It may refer any written/ recorded document book or known newspaper/ documentary. --Rodrigo (talk) 12:53, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

• Idon't see any consensus in the discussion to change the wording of the concerned policy.Amidst the infighting between (1):- being transparent, (2):- the concept of article-ownership, and (3):- imposition of over-bureaucratic means, none has managed to stay ahead as a clear winner.

• Accordingly, Swarm's reversion executed over this editis Y stayed.

• Among all the proposals that were put forward, Proposal 2 fared the best but many specifically opposed on the grounds of addition of the phrase of significant contributors and sans the addition, it's fairly equivalent to what currently exists.

• The community has firmly rejected  N:-

• That an editor nominating an article for proposed deletion is required to notify the article's creator or any significant contributors.
• That there is any need to explicitly mention the specific circumstances under the purview of which, ideality may be deviated from.
• That there exists any mandatory requirement to provide a rationale for de-prodding an article.(This is not a license to engage in mass-de-prodding(s) and test the limits.)
• And some 'outlandish' proposals like abolishing the entire proposed deletion process, preventing article-creators from deprodding their own creations and limiting PROD to a semi-automatic tool.

∯WBG^converseat11:47, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

There is an issue currently with the proposed deletion policy (PROD) which is causing some confusion and ambiguity. In January this year, user Green Giant boldly edited the policy to simplify the wording, but in doing so, changed the suggestion to notify article creators to a requirement. It appears as though this was not compelled by any discussion to make that change, and it was also certainly in good faith and possibly not intended to have changed the meaning in this way. Up until this change, our various deletion policies all suggested notifying article creators and significant contributors as a courtesy, but did not require it (and requiring AfD notification is a perennial proposal). With Green Giant's change, PROD stands out as the only deletion process requiring notification. The change has also not been well publicized or recognized - this post is inspired by an editor reported to ANI for failing to notify, and several editors and administrators responding that they were not aware of the change.

I am proposing a three-pronged discussion/straw poll to determine the community's current opinions about proposed deletion. Please comment in one of the sections below. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:33, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Also, just because it's come up a few times already, note that WP:BLPPROD is a separate policy from WP:PROD, with different criteria and different processes. I'm not saying anyone shouldn't talk about that other policy, I'm just making a note of it to avoid what might end up being a confusing discussion. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 11:29, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

The editor nominating an article for proposed deletion is required to notify the article's creator or any significant contributors.

• Oppose. Reyk _YO! 13:40, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Since nobody owns any Wikipedia article, then why should it be required to notify someone just because they happened to create the first revision? Also worth noting is that, a times such editor (who made first revision) may have long left Wikipedia or many editors contributed to the article more than them —thus more worthy of notifying. Making this notification a requirement will just add another layer of bureaucracy to already ineffective process and more importantly, it will go further to undermines the authority of OWNERSHIP policy. –Ammarpad (talk) 13:55, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, because there will be times this isn't feasible, but they really should be making every effort to notify the creator. And "or any significant contributors" is bad here for two reasons. Firstly, but less importantly, it should be "and any other significant contributors". Secondly, the term "significant" is undefined; that doesn't mean we should spend months defining it, it means we are better off not using it. If we do end up going with this crappier option it should just say "the article's creator". Fish+Karate 13:58, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Ammarpad. Suggesting is a significant difference from mandating; one's a matter of courtesy, and the other's a matter of rule creep and WP:BURO. Thank you for noting that this seems to have been done by accident. Nyttend backup (talk) 14:06, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support The PROD process does not initiate a discussion and so it's too easy for a proposal to pass unnoticed by anyone. As the process is frequently used for new articles created by new editors, the disappearance would seem quite mysterious to such editors and there would be no note on their talk page to explain what had happened and how they can appeal at WP:REFUND. Silent removal would be uncivil per WP:BITE. Andrew D. (talk) 14:13, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Creators don't have any more claim to an article than any other contributor. If it's mandated that creators be informed, other contributors should be informed as well, but someone must then decide who is worthy of being notified. I would be annoyed to receive a talk page message every time an article I edited was PRODed. Natureium (talk) 14:26, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:GRAVEYARD. At the point where you PROD an article, the creator may have been indef blocked. What would be the point of notifying them, other to rub salt in wounds? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:42, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Mainly for the required to notify any significant contributors. As Natureium said, they would be annoyed every time an article that they edited was PRODed. Twinkle has the feature to notify the article creator of a PROD, and I think it is good practice to do so. But requiring it of people is needlessly bureaucratic. Jip Orlando (talk) 14:46, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support per Andrew Davidson. The PROD process already lacks adequate scrutiny, and this lack of scrutiny will be even worse if the creator and contributors are not notified. It would be even better to place a notice of relevant PRODs on each deletion sorting list, but this rarely seems to happen. James500 (talk) 14:54, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Here is an example of a notification that was so out of place, it was reverted and the talk page protected. It was AfD rather than PROD, but that's not really the main point - mandatory notifications would mean we would need to post in the talk page of globally banned editors, which by definition they can't do anything about. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:43, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

We don't have to choose between "notify everybody no matter what" and "you don't ever have to notify anyone". We can say "notify the creator except, obviously, if they cannot participate in the discussion (indefinitely blocked, community banned, globally banned, deceased...)". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:49, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support as long as it's an "or", and not a requirement to notify everyone. As long as somebody sensible gets a notification (namely, not the person who created the redirect, but the person who actually created the article), it doesn't have to be comprehensive. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:04, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support - I've never found any of the oppose rationales convincing at all. We can say "required ... unless there is an obvious reason not to, such as being blocked or banned". That's the exception. A suggestion isn't strong enough when it should be done in nearly all cases except for obvious exceptions. It's not because it's an ownership thing, it's common courtesy because we're editing in a community of editors and all dedicate considerable time and effort to the encyclopedia. There is literally no downside whatsoever to this proposal, if handled with obvious exceptions. Reading more than the headline for proposal 2 (which seems contradictory to the heading), it seems what I'm saying is also very close to that. Require (with exceptions). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:38, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support (with exceptions) for creators only. There may be some difficulty in defining who is a "significant" contributor and a requirement shouldn't stop the process. --Enos733 (talk) 16:32, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Ritchie333 and my argument below: there are legitimate reasons not to notify, additionally, I feel sorry for any admin reviewing expired PRODs after this: having to check article history plus notification history would add a lot of unnecessary time and to be blunt, it would prevent me from ever looking at CAT:EX (not that I am particularly active there, but I wouldn’t even check at that point.) TonyBallioni (talk) 16:41, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support creator, Oppose significant contributors. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:51, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support with exceptions for creators only. Obvious exceptions for users that are indefinitely blocked, community banned, globally banned, or deceased, for users that have indicated on their talk or user page that they do not want to recieve such notifications or that they have retired from Wikipedia, or for cases where notification would be impossible due to user talk page bans or protection levels. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 17:00, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Just as a note “support with exceptions” would have the disadvantage of making this unenforceable: people seem to forget that admins have to manually check all of this stuff. Either people would ignore this as dead letter the instant it was approved or the exceptions wouldn’t exist because it’s too much work to check all of them. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:09, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• people seem to forget that admins have to manually check all of this stuff - why? I don't see that as part of the proposal. The point is to make sure notification is part of the process, and that there is grounds to object if someone routinely prods without notifying. All of this could be made a simple part of the prod template to display differently if no notification parameter is present, and automated with Twinkle. If someone doesn't notify, it's a behavioral issue of not following process. Refund is already cheap, so there's not much difference to refund due to non-notification as with refund for any other purpose. In short, I don't see why this should change anything other than that which can be automated, and to give some teeth to the requirement that can be enforced at ANI, etc. where necessary. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:14, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Because we can’t delete unless the policy requirements are met. If no notification existed, we’d then have to check if one of the exceptions existed. This is a waste of admin time for a non-issue: the overwhelming number of people already use Twinkle on its default settings. What this proposal is suggesting is adding additional work (and if we have exceptions, two additional layers of work) to solve a problem that quite frankly doesn’t exist. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:19, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support for creators only. It's simpler to have a requirement without exceptions, if a creator has died etc there may well be editors watching te talk page to help with any issues. However, hardly anyone bothers to alert major contributers so that can be left out because if they are interested in the article they should have it on their watchlist so will be informed that way provided there is a proper edit summary, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 17:20, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose because watchlists are a thing. --Jayron32 17:28, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - nobody OWNs an article (and the creator might not be the most significant contributor), watchlists exist for a reason, and there are multiple exceptions in which notification is not required and might even constitute rubbing in someone's face (retired user, blocked user, TBANed user, etc.). Icewhiz (talk) 17:33, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose "Suggest" is exactly right, and applies to the article's creator. (I believe that Twinkle does this automatically.) I STRONGLY oppose any requirement to search through the article's history and notify significant contributors. --MelanieN (talk) 17:48, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose in favor of Option 2 below. shoy (reactions) 18:01, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support (with a remark): It is so annoying to get your articles deleted. (I have experienced it.) (By your I mean those that have spent lots of time on writing them.) Thus, the most involved (remark: how do you define that?) should be notified so that they can correct or add something to the articles. Per W (talk) 18:51, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose notifying the article creator should be recommended and is good practice, however I don't think even that should be an absolute requirement. Earlier this year I nominated a large number of articles created by a now-banned user for deletion, and I didn't bother notifying them. "Significant contributor" could be a lot more people and it's a lot less likely that they would care. That term is likely to be interpreted as anybody who made non-trivial changes to the article (more than reverting vandalism, fixing typos, formatting templates, etc). Hut 8.5 19:16, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose in most cases If the article is BLP prodded and has been created within 7 days or a few weeks, you can make it a requirement to notify the creator of the article. But for most other PROD cases, it's best to not make it a requirement to notify the creator due to as stated above the creator of the article may not be as big of contributor to it as others and may not even be active anymore. PROD is supposed to be non controversial, adding a requirement to notify the creator of a PROD sort of takes away from that IMHO. JC7V-constructive zone 19:43, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ivanvector, I Struck the BLP Prod part. I won't talk about BLP prods here again. My bad. If the prodded article is new (created within a week or so) I believe that notifying the creator should be mandatory because at that point they are more attached to the article than they would be if they had created 10 years ago. However if the article is like 5 years old for example and has many many contributors who did more work on the article than the creator or if the creator is gone, then it makes no sense to be required to contact the article's creator. Users who PROD an article should use a case by case basis for deciding whether to notify the creator of the article and not have to officially notify them. Twinkle users can still notify the creator automatically and some users can still do it because they want to not because they have to. No more Bureaucracy. JC7V-constructive zone 19:53, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

The way I read WP:BLPPROD, notification is required. But BLPPROD is also a separate policy. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:46, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose as instruction creep. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:33, 24 September 2018 (UTC).
• Oppose as instruction creep, and based on the idea that people do not own the articles they created nor any contributions they made. People are responsible to pay attention to the parts of Wikipedia they are interested being involved in. We should not add extra burden to those seeking to clean up the cruft that constantly accumulates. HighInBC ^{Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}}} 01:16, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose due to the "significant contributors" part and due to instruction creep. This is generally irrelevant anyway because all the tools we use at New Page Patrol automatically send notifications to the creator. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 01:57, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose: instruction creep and does not work in some cases. --K.e.coffman (talk) 05:52, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support but only for creators because this is easy to do automatically--Twinkle is the simplest way. Anything else is too complicated and debatable. I suppose we could develop a way to programmatically that would identify everyone who had contributed more than x% of the content or Y bytes, but I cannot see it would be worth the effort. There are higher priorities for development. DGG ( talk ) 07:39, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support but only for creators (this is sufficient, and mandating more would be unnecessarily burdensome). Per about support arguments, basically. AfD is different because that's a discussion with a lot of people (and FWIW IMO you should notify the creator -- the script does it automatically I think. Since you should there's no reason to add a except if you're lazy or don't care exemption, which is what making things optional does, usually). I mean, I haven't seen a compelling argument that "Enh, I just can't be bothered to notify the creator and I really don't give a rat's ass about that" should be valorized. If it shouldn't be valorized, why should it be even allowed? It there's some particular reason to not notify the creator -- she's banned, or is a troll, or hasn't edited in seven years -- probably no one will object not notifying, although again I don't see the harm in notifying the creator even then.

But... kudos to the OP for bringing this up, and trouts to the person who made the change without discussion. I think that WP:BRD applies here, and the previously existing state is the default, and the proposition to change (to a requirement) should have to show consensus support for the change to not be rolled back (which I'm not seeing this consensus to change so far). I say this as someone who supports the proposition on the merits, on the basis that procedure should applied correctly here, and I call on the closer to note this. Herostratus (talk) 09:04, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose - I think the prior version that it is a suggested course of action fits the vast majority of the parameters. I would have stated support, with the caveats of some of the above editors, but I think that that position is most well served by returning it to the suggested phraseology. In addition, I believe that currently both the curation tool and TW automatically send notification to the first person to work on an article. I also feel that this change might produce an undue burden on an already stretched thin admin corps.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:45, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose—practically the point of proposed deletion is to reduce bureaucracy by being simple for the "obvious" cases. Requiring notification undermines that simplicity. PRODs can even be opposed after the fact and undeleted on request; I don't see the point of adding needless requirements to such an otherwise minimal, non-binding process. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 14:20, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose While this si agenerally a best practice it should not be a hard-and-fast requirement, for the various reasons already stated above. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:45, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Simply put, we do not require editors to notify the article's creator when the article has been nominated for deletion. The {{prod}} tag should not by any different. —Farix (t | c) 18:50, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose We should not be making creator notification mandatory. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 22:28, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support for creators, but 'significant conributors' can be hard to define, so wouldn't support mandatory for those -- Whats new?^(talk) 07:11, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support with common sense exceptions (e.g. long-term blocked users; users who haven't edited in 5 years), and if there are other clearly identifiable significant contributors then they should be notified as well. This requirement should be applied to every deletion process without exception. Thryduulf (talk) 12:21, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as instruction creep and cause no one owns a given page. -DJSasso (talk) 15:48, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. -FASTILY 05:54, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. I am not willing to clutter the talk page an inactive editor who hasn't been around for years, and I will not be compelled to do it. —Xezbeth (talk) 09:16, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - It's common sense really .... It's courteous to notify the creator but on the other hand it's pointless notifying someone who's either indeffed or inactive, You simply take the common sense approach here. –Davey2010^Talk 22:17, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support only for creators - contacting significant contributors is a significant addition to the complexity of nomination. Really "creators and sig contributors" and "creators only" should have been made as separate propositions. Additionally, this would make it very hard to nominate via script (twinkle etc), since it isn't designed for contacting more than the creator. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:45, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support with common sense-for the creator and if an editor has a lot of edits on an article they could and probably should be notified. Its just polite and respectful in a community that should be supportive of collaborative principles. If we think of courtesy,ie the other guy first, perhaps this is a less difficult situation to decide on.(Littleolive oil (talk) 17:21, 6 October 2018 (UTC))
• Oppose per WP:OWN. If an article is that important to someone, they'll have it on their watchlist. Number 57 20:13, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose As per WP:OWN, if someone cares about the article, they'll have watchlisted it. MoonyTheDwarf (BN) (talk) 19:25, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose with the current wording which appears to be a device to suppress PRODs, but PRODs are sometimes useful. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:14, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose There should be no reason to notify the creator when their opinion likely won't matter anyway (not like with AFD's which can be improved in the spirit of WP:BEFORE). As to significant contributors, if "their" article gets deleted, they can always request it to be restored.—Mythdon (talk • contribs) 08:20, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, mostly per WP:OWN. A courtesy notice is nice in many cases, but requiring it goes to far. That's why you have watchlists. And WP:AALERTS. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:04, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support Per WP:OWN. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:32, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:OWN.The article creator has no greater rights over 'their' article than any of the other editors or indeed anyone else. Amisom (talk) 19:11, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

  The proposal is not about giving anyone "rights", it is about facilitating a collaborative editing process. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:19, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

  @Hawkeye7: OK, then read my comment as if it said: Oppose per WP:OWN.The article creator has no greater standing in relation to 'their' article than any of the other editors or indeed anyone else.

• Support Yes there is WP:OWN, but I don't think we need to make it any easier to scare away new article creators. SL93 (talk) 01:41, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support basic fairness. I can think of no instances where it would be inappropriate,; if the creator were in bad faith, the articles should be deleted at CSD, not PROD. DGG ( talk ) 03:43, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Weak support. Support the first part (creator), but requiring to identify major contributors, ugh. Too much work. Maybe 'creator or a major contributor', giving the nom a choice? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:52, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. If no one comes to defend the article, its utility is doubtful. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:34, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose – This requirement would only encourage knee-jerk de-PRODding, thus defeating the whole purpose of the PROD process. — JFG ^talk 13:08, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - Nabla (talk) 19:09, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. This would complicate a process that is supposed to be simple; and would be actively countrproductive in the sense that "is anyone actually watching this article?" is a valid thing for the PROD process to test. An article with no active eyes on it has no chance of improvement, which lends weight to any issues identified in the PROD. Beyond that, the addition here was accidental and clearly deviates from long-standing policy; nobody has actually identified any existing problems with the prod process that this change would solve. --Aquillion (talk) 09:48, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Comment. What would be really nice would be if someone could develop an enhancement that flags articles in your watchlist that are currently at AfD or have a prod tag on them. Determining which editors who are still active might care about an article isn't straightforward, and flagging articles in watchlists is perhaps the best option for making interested editors aware. --Michig (talk) 09:55, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

@Michig: Jolly good idea; perhaps open a new thread with this suggestion? — JFG ^talk 23:46, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I've made a proposal here. --Michig (talk) 06:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose, bureaucracy and unclear definition of major contributors. Stifle (talk) 10:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, it's good practice, it's courteous, but it shouldn't be elevated into a procedural loophole. Cabayi (talk) 11:10, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

The editor nominating an article for proposed deletion should attempt to notify the article's creator and any significant contributors, as a courtesy.

• Support the "creator" bit, Oppose the "significant contributors" bit. Reyk _YO! 13:40, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support, as the better of the two options, although "should notify the article's creator wherever possible" is better. No need for the nebulous "any significant contributors" (and if it has to be there, and I think it should not, it should say "any other"). Fish+Karate 13:54, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support, I put myself in this section too. I'll also point out that PRODded articles can be automatically REFUNDed, so an editor who finds out their article was deleted in this way can just go ask for it back. But (also for this reason?) I have leanings toward deprecating the process too, which is why I brought it up here. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:08, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose If the article is removed and there's no notice then nothing left behind. One of the main principles of a Wiki is that there should be transparency and a good audit trail. Andrew D. (talk) 14:16, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, specifically the "significant contributors" part, because this requires some method of determining who is a significant contributor and who is a lesser contributor and this gets murky. Natureium (talk) 14:26, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose for the 'significant contributors.' I'd support if the significant contributors clause was omitted because I see notifying the creator as good practice. Jip Orlando (talk) 14:48, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Neutral SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:05, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support (2nd choice) - My view, described above, is that it should be part of the PROD instructions to notify the creator, with obvious exceptions (sock puppet, community banned, etc.). I.e. a smidgen stronger than the "should attempt to notify" here. BTW the heading makes it sound like this second proposal is just the opposite of #1. "Do not require notification" doesn't imply "should attempt to notify". Suggest changing it. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:41, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support the above is added bureaucracy and there are legitimate reasons not to notify: as an example non-G5 spam creations by socks. I notify every time but this, and I think there are very good reasons not to notify blocked users. Also, oppose the and significant contributors bit: it will never be followed because Twinkle doesn’t do it, and Twinkle is how most of these happen. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:38, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose significant contributors, Support creator. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:52, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Throwing out a scenario: at the ANI I mentioned, the reporter was annoyed that another editor PRODded an article they had written which was an expanded redirect. Technically (and as Twinkle sees it) the "article creator" is the editor who made the redirect, not the reporter who made all of the significant contribs. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:49, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support as a non-required courtesy. Significant contributors are actually more important than creators (there are a number of prolific creators running about creating stubs...).Icewhiz (talk) 17:37, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support as a non-required courtesy for the original author. Leave it up to the nominator whether to notify any other significant contributors. --MelanieN (talk) 17:51, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support - Better than Option 1 above, reduces bureaucracy. shoy (reactions) 18:00, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support creator, oppose significant contributors unless the wording is tighter. If that means someone who expanded it from a stub to a start class article then OK, if it means someone who added a sentence once then no. Hut 8.5 19:19, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as written the word should implies a requirement and goes directly at odds with as a courtesy. Something like "The editor nominating an article for proposed deletion may attempt to notify the article's creator or other contributors if they feel it may increase the chances of the article being improved to the point that it benefits the project." HighInBC ^{Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}}} 01:19, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose "should" implies a requirement. Figuring out who is and who is not a 'significant contributor' is arbitrary. Side note: the 'creator' should be the creator of the first non-redirect revision. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 02:00, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support but I thought this was already policy. Personally, I regard not trying to do so as a grave error in basic fairness. There are situations in CSD where notification would be counterproductive, but they do not apply to prod. DGG ( talk ) 07:41, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support If there are significant contributors then their interest can be assumed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:39, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - as per Natureium and Insertcleverphrasehere. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:15, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support for the article's creator, oppose for significant contributors (isn't that what watchlists are for?). Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:48, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Weak oppose: per HighInBC, "should" is normative and implies a requirement; "is encouraged to" or similar would be OK. While it's best practice, PROD is so lightweight, and easily reversible, that it's not hugely important if contributors aren't directly notified. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 14:25, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

  In my experience, in Wikipedia policy, "should" is most often interpreted as a strong suggestion, not a strict requirement. "Must" is a requirement. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:23, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

  When possible, we should avoid it being necessary to interpret policy with domain-specific norms. Phrases like "is encouraged to" lack the ambiguity of "should" you're apologizing here; we should avoid needless ambiguity. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 15:07, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

• Counter proposal Adopt the same language used at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#substantial. —Farix (t | c) 18:56, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support Notifications to the creator should be optional. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 22:28, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support. PROD is a useful process and notification is a nice courtesy, but mandatatory notification would be inappropriate bureaucracy. Note to closer: To avoid redundant postings, please count this !vote as an oppose on each of the other sections. Thx. Alsee (talk) 05:53, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support (oppose all others). PROD should be an all-around lighter option to the nom than AfD, which does not require notification. There are also cases where notification might be totally unwarranted (permanently blocked users, retired users, deceased Wikipedians). Listing all such exceptions would be WP:CREEP. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 07:26, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Strongly implies requirement, which is what I'm opposing above as well. -FASTILY 05:54, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support again per common sense and courtesy - Notify those who are active if you want, Don't bother for those inactive or indeffed. –Davey2010^Talk 22:20, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support per WP:OWN. Number 57 20:13, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support - This is normally done for the nominator if they use Twinkle and it doesn't become confused. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:15, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per my reasoning in proposal #1.—Mythdon (talk • contribs) 08:21, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support in principle, but I don't agree with the proposed wording. "You may notify the article's creator and other contributors..." seems better than should attempt. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:08, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

• Support Everyone should be doing this already. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:21, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support, as less bad of the options - Nabla (talk) 19:10, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support though "should normally notify" would be better than "should attempt to notify". Somebody who does a bunch of prods and doesn't notify a couple of blocked or vanished editors should be normal and easy to tell from someone who prods a slew of articles and never notifies anyone. ϢereSpielChequers 00:21, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, adds instruction-creep and seems actively counterproductive. Articles require maintenance - every article should have eyes on it. If an article doesn't, then I would usually take that as one indication that it being prodded is probably a good thing. --Aquillion (talk) 09:45, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose; identifying major contributors is too significant a burden. Stifle (talk) 10:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

The proposed deletion process is deprecated and marked historical; all nominations for article deletion are done through articles for deletion, except in cases where one of the criteria for speedy deletion apply.

• Oppose. Reyk _YO! 13:40, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, would be a step backwards. Fish+Karate 13:47, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support Deletionists keep trying to exploit and abuse the process. It is supposed to be for uncontroversial deletions but is repeatedly used to try to delete good faith contributions without discussion. Andrew D. (talk) 14:18, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Care to provide a concrete example? Or do you just want to attack a bunch of unnamed "deletionists"? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:18, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

User:Shadowowl/PROD log would be a good place to start. Notice that it's mostly blue links. Andrew D. (talk) 10:10, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: With the exception of the massive strings of BLPPRODs -- many of which appear to have been de-PRODded without a citation of a reliable source, in violation of policy (the most recent, and egregious, being this) -- in July and August of this year, it seems be about 50/50, and even were that not the case, the large number of blue links, if anything, would seem to show that the system works to preserve the articles that don't need to be deleted, surely?

Also, if you're going to talk about Shadowowl in that manner in a discussion in which they are not already involved, the least you could do is ping them. Calling someone a "deletionist" and saying they "keep trying to exploit and abuse the process" is a pretty strong accusation to make.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:44, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I looked at the log also. I counted 139 PRODs and 78 BLPPRODS on that list. The PRODS are approximately a 2-1 ratio of Blue to Red links. It is a little more Blue than the one day I looked at and commented on below (3 Blue links on this log were from that day). I don't see someone who is abusing the process, maybe a little over aggressive with the tagging but not abuse. I did see one article where it was PRODed, removed and then Shadowowl reinstated the tag and another editor removed it a second time. There was also an article where Shadowowl added a PROD tag and realized it had already been to AFD and immediately removed the PROD. I have seen abuse of the process where an editor added a PROD tag, immediately removed it and came back 7 days later readded it like it had been there the whole time. That was an abuse of the process and they are no longer editing. What I see here is a system that works the way it supposed to work. Shadowowl should look at their log and reevaluate their tagging but this is not a reason to remove the whole process. ~ GB fan 14:43, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose While I don't find PROD to be all that useful because anyone can remove it for any reason, it has its place. Natureium (talk) 14:26, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Although it's not always useful. What would be more useful, in some cases, is to expand the CSD categories. For example, a suitable speedy category would be BLPs with no sources. Alternatively, require all BLP creations to go through AFC. (In fact, requiring ALL new articles to have sources would drastically reduce the number of PRODs anyway...) Black Kite (talk) 14:28, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

  BLPPROD requires a reliable source to remove the PROD tag, which basically makes it a CSD criterion without the speedy. --Izno (talk) 14:31, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, but that often doesn't work. For example, someone creates an article on a non-notable sportsperson. When it is BLPPRODed, they add a cite from an otherwise reliable source pwhich is simply something like the name of that person in a list. Or for an actor, a reliable source mentioning them in a cast list of a TV programme, even if their appearance was for 15 seconds in the background. That sort of thing. Black Kite (talk) 14:36, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Just pedantically noting that WP:BLPPROD is a separate policy. It's based on this one, but separate. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:39, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@Black Kite: I like what you say here, but requiring AFC for all BLPs would make the process I go through whenever I link to the name of a still-living scholar in an article I'm writing on classical Japanese poetry (or whatever) that happens to already be a blue link to an unrelated topic even more frustrating. I either have to unlink pending the article's creation, or speedily create a stub: I always pick the latter option, and while even my stubs are better-sourced and less "stub-like" than most of the stuff you're probably talking about, requiring them to go through AFC, when the whole point is to replace an identically-named redirect, would be counterintuitive and just unnecessary work. (For reference, the articles in question are Jun Kubota, linked from Fujiwara no Nagaie, and Hiroshi Ono (scholar), linked from Man'yōshū.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:29, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I would strongly support requiring all new articles to have at least one source, and if someone opened this RfC they would be a wikipedia hero. Natureium (talk) 14:37, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Well then, why don't you be the hero Wikipedia needs? Reyk _YO! 14:39, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• I just don't have the brainpower right now to draft a cogent RfC. Natureium (talk) 14:51, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• According to this link: Wikipedia:Proposed_deletion_of_biographies_of_living_people#Objecting, there are ways to deal with the article creators abusing the process. JC7V-constructive zone 20:13, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support In practice, PROD is basically a useless process. In my experience, most PRODS are removed without fixing anything or without any explanation, and unless policy is changed so that cannot be done, then there is no point: PRODS all end up at AFD anyways, so it doesn't save any time. --Jayron32 14:34, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• No, it has its place. Have a look at WP:PRODSUM - you'll always find a number of old articles in there that were created, were never notable, but have lain around not being useful for years. As a perfect example, the very first article currently in the list is a 4 1/2 year old article about an Under-16s football competition that was cancelled and never happened ... it's not eligible for CSD, and oit's got a source, but there's no way it should exist. Black Kite (talk) 14:41, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• If it only worked that way. In practice, what happens is, if I were to PROD some article, a user would come along within minutes and remove the PROD without explanation or fixing anything, or at best say "Has a source, take it to AFD." That's the point. Hypothetically, PROD should work that way. In practice, bad-faith editors who have no intention of making the article better come along and just force you to use AFD. This is why we can't have nice things... --Jayron32 15:14, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, in many cases you are right. However, I think it's still useful - there is some stuff that gets PRODded that even the most rabid inclusionist won't de-prod because they know they'll be accused of disruption. It's happened before. Having said that, I still think expanding CSD is a better route... Black Kite (talk) 15:49, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose It can be a way to get rid of older articles which no longer meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion without spending lots of community time on the issue. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:38, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support. PROD is an unsatisfactory process. It should not be possible to nominate an article for deletion for any reason. A valid reason should be required. The PROD process has a lack of adequate scrutiny because there are too many PRODs and not enough patrollers. Most PRODs are erroneous, and they often slip through the net because the community is not watching closely enough. James500 (talk) 14:42, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

I believe any PRODded article can be restored simply by going to WP:REFUND and asking for it back. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:44, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

I wouldn't be surprised if the above was a reference to this, where a bunch of one-sentence sub-stubs about astronomical bodies about which not much more could be said than a single sentence, that duplicated information from elsewhere on the encyclopedia, were successfully PRODded, the above user requested they be undeleted, they were AFDed, and all deleted with unanimous consensus, excepting a piecemeal OSE statement on one of them from yours truly. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:49, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Wow, what a pointless waste of time that was. I'm starting to wonder if competence-related topic bans from PROD should be easier to hand out. Reyk _YO! 10:03, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

"Too many PRODs"?! There were 36 yesterday. On a weekday there are usually fewer than 20. And the suggestion that "most are erroneous" isn't backed up by the evidence. Yes, there are some, but they should be rejected by the deleting admin anyway. Black Kite (talk) 14:49, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

The number of PRODs is huge. The last time I checked there were about 40 per day on average. On several occasions I have examined the PRODLIST over a period of many weeks and I found that consistently more than half of the PRODs listed there were erroneous. And I have seen a lot of erroneous PRODs slip through the net. James500 (talk) 15:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

"I have seen a lot of erroneous PRODs slip through the net" Let me know what, and I'll put them in your userspace for improvement (provided they are not vandalism, libel or copyvios). It's pretty much my SOP. As it is with anyone in Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to provide copies of deleted articles. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:24, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

I will go one step further as a contested PROD belongs in the mainspace not the userspace if you are contesting any PRODs. ~ GB fan 17:23, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I've used PROD a few times (mostly successfully). AfD has a lack of participation problem for some things. PROD is good for, as it says, uncontroversial deletion where lack of participation is not a problem. Editors can always contest it and then the process is completely stopped. It's good for, as others have said, for removing older articles that are not up to scratch as far as the inclusion criteria goes. Jip Orlando (talk) 14:55, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Reduces bureaucracy in a few cases, which is a good thing. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:00, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - No case has been made here. Don't even know why this is connected to the other proposals. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:42, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - Looking at the reasons for support above I was wondering if I could find evidence to support the comments. I looked at the last 5000 deletions dating back to 00:01 21 Sep 18, of those there were 74 normal PRODs and 3 BLPPRODs. On average there were less than 20 articles deleted per day. That is not an overwhelming number of articles to look at. I also looked at one day of PROD nominations, 18 Sep. On that day if I counted correctly there were 33 pages nominated for PROD with only 16 of them left. Of the 17 PRODS that are no longer on the list, 1 was removed because it was a Draft and therefore ineligible. 1 was deleted as an A7. 2 were merged with another article and redirected. 2 are now at AFD and the rest were declined for a variety of reasons and have no pending deletion action. I did a quick look at the nominations without looking at the actual articles themselves and none of the nomination statements are problematic. In my quick look I do not see the problems mentioned above. ~ GB fan 17:23, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. I agree it reduces bureaucracy sometimes. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:27, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. PROD saves time for deletion of very poor content by blocked or long retired users. If the creator is around - it is indeed mostly useless.Icewhiz (talk) 17:39, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as AFD is already backlogged with low participation and endless relists so this would make it worse, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 17:40, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Comment mostly in response to Atlantic306's sentiment above: PROD is meant to be for uncontroversial deletions. If an uncontroversial deletion sits at AfD for a week with nobody objecting, there's little difference between that and a formal PROD, just a different page. It also ought to be a simple close and not really add to the backlog, and somewhat likely would result in a WP:SNOW delete which would be faster than PROD. On the other hand if a PROD is controversial then they wind up at AfD anyway. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:47, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose PROD is a very useful halfway point between the instant-removal of Speedy and the community deliberation process of AfD. If something sits at PROD for a week, where anyone can remove the PROD for any reason, then it really is uncontroversial and should be deleted without further ado. If someone objects later that it shouldn't have been deleted, undelete requests are routinely granted. --MelanieN (talk) 17:55, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose PROD still has an important role to play. shoy (reactions) 17:56, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose PROD is a critical time-saver for new page patrolling that allows editors to unilaterally handle uncontroversial deletes that don't quite meet speedy deletion criteria. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:17, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose it has a role to play and getting rid of it would mean additional load on the AfD process for no particular reason. AfD requires a substantially greater amount of editor time than PROD does. I'm open to persuasion if someone could show data which indicates that the process doesn't work very well. Hut 8.5 19:22, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose PROD should be made stronger (with disruptive editors like two of this proposal's supporters so far being required to provide an explanation for removing PRODs, since currently they are allowed remove it just for shits and giggles), not deprecrated. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 21:59, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• 'Oppose more time would be wasted. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:31, 24 September 2018 (UTC).
• Oppose pbp 23:35, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose The PROD process is about getting cleanup work done with a minimum of bureaucracy(no offence intended towards out esteemed bureaucrats). The last thing AfD needs is a bunch of articles that nobody has any interest in defending. HighInBC ^{Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}}} 01:21, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, while a lot of prods get contested and sent to AfD, it is a useful process that helps reduce wastage of valuable time of experienced editors at AfD discussions. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 02:03, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose its the simplest way to get rid of stale junk. I would support getting rid of it if it meant automatic deletion but it does not: I and a few other editors try to scan the lists on a regular basis to deProd anything that might need discussion, and this is enough of a check. I've been doing it for many years--I remove maybe 5%, and others remove an equal amount. About half of that 10% eventually get deleted. DGG ( talk ) 07:44, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose prod still works well. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:34, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - PROD should remain an option. @Black Kite: An effective alternative to PROD for unsourced BLPs is returning the article to draft. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:59, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - keep the existing tier of PROD - particularly as per the arguments of Rosguill, HighInBC, DGG, and MelanieN. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:51, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Proposed deletion fills a specific niche: cases that'd be ignored or "snow" deleted at AfD, but that don't meet the narrow speedy deletion criteria, can be deleted with minimal effort on the part of volunteers (compared to the non-negligible overhead of AfD). It's designed to be minimal; a contested PROD should either be immediately moved to AfD, left alone, or (if after the fact) restored. If someone can produce evidence that it's not working in practice, then I'd be open to reconsidering, but my current position is that it's a good design. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 14:42, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Per reasons above. We shouldn't try to axe this process. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 22:28, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose there is no reason to axe a process that works well. -DJSasso (talk) 15:50, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose – it works. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 00:31, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Just no. -FASTILY 05:54, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose  pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 19:14, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - Very still useful process, especially now that PROD has extended to files. Also, it helps being an alternative to FFD, which formerly suffered from tremendous backlogging before the implementation of File PROD-ding. Those saying the process is useless should realize the benefits of PROD-ding, especially to files. See this, for example, and then type either "PROD" or "File:". George Ho (talk) 22:10, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - PROD still works, Admittedly I don't use it now as I prefer to AFD everything but I've certainly seen it work on different articles, If it works then keep it. –Davey2010^Talk 22:24, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - I'd prefer people to send it through AfD where there is a 1% lack of surety, but PROD does remove a significant number of articles that would otherwise clog the process unnecessarily. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:42, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Prod largely works; the biggest issue is the ability to remove it without a rationale. Number 57 20:13, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - PROD is exactly what it is meant to be, a useful policy to get rid of crud (non-controversial deletes), and getting rid of it would either burden AFD or require new CSDs. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:17, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

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

Many of the !votes for proposal 1, both support and oppose, cited the needs for exceptions and opposed pinging signficant contributors. This is an attempt to capture that:

The editor nominating an article for proposed deletion is required to notify the article's creator, except in the following circumstances:

• The page creator is indefinitely blocked, community banned, globally banned, deceased, or otherwise unable to respond to the nomination
• The page creator has indicated on their talk or user page that they do not want to recieve such notifications or that they have retired from Wikipedia
• Notification would be impossible due to the nominating user being banned from the page creator's talk page or due to the protection level of the page creator's talk page

• Support as proposer (pinging users that !voted either way for #1: @Reyk, Ammarpad, Fish and karate, Nyttend backup, Andrew Davidson, Natureium, Ritchie333, Jip Orlando, James500, Rhododendrites, SarekOfVulcan, Enos733, TonyBallioni, and Guy Macon:). --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 17:09, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as the exceptions are bureaucracy that would create more work for no benefit. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:11, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Too many rules to keep track of, when a suggestion of notifying the creator is sufficient. Is there anyone upset that their articles are being PRODed without notification? If so, they should probably stop creating so many articles that could qualify for deletion. Natureium (talk) 17:13, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Supportish - Doesn't need to be this long, but it's also not true that these are rules that everyone must keep track of. There's nothing here that shouldn't already be common sense. The existing problem is that people don't follow common courtesy/common sense of notifying in those cases when it should be done. Page creators should be notified by default. That's it. Nothing else to remember. Our policy should reflect that. If it was created by a bot, by a banned user, by a deceased user, then of course there's no requirement to notify, and I cannot imagine anyone objecting to someone not notifying in those cases. Spelling out that there are cases when notification shouldn't be necessary shouldn't be necessary, but here they are because those exceptions seem to be the basis for most of the opposes in the first proposal. I can't imagine anyone feeling like they need to remember this list (Twinkle will notify the page creator regardless of the above -- these are just when it's not necessary). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:21, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Comment - I would prefer "is expected to make a good faith effort to..." because it's simpler without the need for additional guidance, allowing context to rule. But I support notification as a criteria in principle, because PROD is the only deletion criteria where the creator (or anyone) can unilaterally challenge the nomination and send to AfD instead. Adding that failure to notify isn't necessarily on the back of reviewing admins to check (it need not be part of the deletion criteria per se to be a generally accepted community expectation), but would be a good faith reason to restore the article if requested, seeing that, if restoration is requested, it could be presumed that the PROD would have been challenged and therefore should have gone to AfD instead. Common sense would dictate that the restoring admin should notify the nominator so they may decide whether to take the article to AfD. GMG^talk 17:19, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose because watchlists are a thing. --Jayron32 17:27, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. If the creator is interested - there is a watchlist. There is no need to create a long and arcane list of allowed exceptions.Icewhiz (talk) 17:41, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Leave it as a suggested courtesy notification. Do we really have a serious problem with PROD nominators who never notify the creator? If so, counsel that nominator. This proposal is a solution in search of a problem. --MelanieN (talk) 17:59, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Comment I agree with GMG that there should be a reasonable expectation that a good-faith attempt be made to notify the creator. But I'm leery about adding a list of exceptions for the reasons mentioned above. Jip Orlando (talk) 18:02, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose As far as I can see, we already are required to do this, although that is perhaps because of POV-pushers wording the PROD instructions in such a way as to force the process's users to do things that aren't actually required by policy. Forcing this in a formal manner is a bad idea, and the above exceptions don't go nearly far enough: many page creators are subject to TBANs, etc., or are simply not active anymore. On top of this, if policy requires a notification, that normally overrules talk page bans. This proposal is just a mess. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as instruction creep. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:29, 24 September 2018 (UTC).
• Oppose - its fine as a recommendation, though I think it should recommend sending the notification to the creator of the first non-redirect revision. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 02:06, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, stop making this stuff complicated. "When you tag an article for proposed deletion, let the creator know unless this is not appropriate." That's all we need. Fish+Karate 08:59, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
  • I think this should be offered as an alternative (or even better: When you tag an article for proposed deletion, let the creator know unless this is not appropriate (e.g. an editor has indicated they do not wish to receive such notifications). ​ Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:42, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose- I agree with the sentiment, but I do think this will end up being more instruction creep than we really want. Reyk _YO! 09:01, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Comment If this is adopted, then inactive creators (e.g. no edits for over a year but no obvious indication of retirement) should also not be required to be notified as well as those listed above, as there's no point notifying someone who's never going to pay attention to the notification. Iffy★Chat -- 10:20, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose This is really no different than Proposal #1 and my reason still stands. —Farix (t | c) 18:58, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as instruction creep and cause no one owns a given page. -DJSasso (talk) 15:50, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support- This makes the most sense of all the options. I think the creator should be notified. If someone took the time to create the article they should at least be made aware of its proposed deletion. I always notify when I prod anyway.--Rusf10 (talk) 00:20, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Reeks of process creep and promotes WP:OWN -FASTILY 05:54, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as IMHO no different from #1 to which I opposed aswell. –Davey2010^Talk 22:26, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose; making further requirements increases the burden of this intentionally simple process. By the way, Ahecht, sorry for the delay, but I don't log in frequently; my main account is better for notification. Nyttend backup (talk) 13:34, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:OWN. Number 57 20:13, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as stated, appears to be a method to suppress PRODs in order to make it easier to keep crud. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:18, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as stated in proposal #1; creator's opinion likely doesn't matter anyway.—Mythdon (talk • contribs) 08:22, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose, for the same reasons as why I opposed #1. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:12, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support as a minimum. But the exceptions are unnecessary if the process is made automatic. DGG ( talk ) 03:45, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

• Support. Not all use watchlists. Not all log on weekly. A user_talk page notice provides the best notification, to the user, and to others watching or reviewing the user. In fact, when reviewing drafts, the author's user_talk page is very useful for the record of CSDs and PRODs. The user's contribution history is near useless, because the worst of their contributions are hidden from non-admins. Sometimes not notifying is appropriate, such as when the author is already blocked, or the author is not the real author, there being a history of a redirect, or a request for article creation. Surely, Twinkle does this so easily that this is not a practical problem. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:52, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose current system seems to work pretty well, and it should either be notification is required, or it isn't. Exceptions just make it hard to enforce. zchrykng (talk) 16:01, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - useless instruction creep. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:37, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose – This would only encourage knee-jerk de-PRODding, sometimes by creators who have not contributed to the article for years, and are suddenly reminded "oh yeah, I once wrote an article about my street, why do these dorks at WP want so bad to suppress it? Damn, WP:ITEXISTS, you jerks!" — JFG ^talk 13:12, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, leans towards WP:OWN and adds pointless instruction-creep that would complicate a process that is intended to be streamlined. Wikipedia articles require constant maintenance; if there is nobody watching the article at all who wants to save it, and the prod passes the test of the admin who actually has to implement it, then it's reasonable to delete it. Giving the article creator some special weight or presence in this process doesn't make any sense and doesn't fit with the general idea behind WP:OWN - article creators should never be given any sort of special weight or status in any policy. --Aquillion (talk) 09:43, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose any hard requirements as instruction creep and would just result in more traffic at AFD. Stifle (talk) 10:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, it's good practice, it's courteous, but it shouldn't be elevated into a procedural loophole. Cabayi (talk) 11:12, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Either in an edit summary or on the talk page. Should be uncontroversial: proposing deletion requires an explanation, preventing trolls and POV-pushers from quietly getting pages deleted without explaining why, but currently no explanation is required the other way, resulting in messes where someone who has not even read the article, or is just having a laugh, removes the PROD and a resulting week-long AFD sees unanimous consensus for deletion or equivalent (see [4]). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support As nom. Yes, dealing with individual abusers of the policy could be handled wih TBANs and blocks, but when it's been going on this long and the permissiveness of the policy itself is generally blamed, I think it would be a good idea to try fixing the policy first. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay, it's obvious this is going nowhere, so I'm withdrawing. However, it seems the reason it's going nowhere is not because other users disagree with me on the principle here, just on whether it would be better to enshrine the principle in policy or deal with it on a case-by-case basis, so I'd still like to discuss below. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:10, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose PROD is intended for articles where deletion is uncontroversial. If someone objects, for whatever reason, then deletion is by definition controversial. Let's not set up a kind of AfD-lite, where people end up arguing about whether the explanation or rationale is good enough or not. Just send it to AfD and let the community decide. If there are some people who are abusing the process and unPRODding everything, they could be subject to a topic ban if the behavior is egregious. If it's just that they are little bit more keep-ist and the PRODder is a little bit more deletionist, that's what AfD is for. --MelanieN (talk) 00:59, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose in reality but support in spirit. As the numbers above bear out PROD's are relatively few and there has not been any sort of widespread trolling documented. So discussion is good, being considerate and saying why you're removing a PROD is good, creating bureaucracy and opportunities for editors to accuse each other of not following policy or removing a PROD in bad faith to solve a problem that hasn't been shown is not something I can support at this time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:04, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose PROD is only inline with our discuss and reach consensus model because it is only used for undisputed deletions. If someone disputes it then there are other avenues for deletion. If there is a problem with people just bulk removing prods that can be dealt with using our disruption policy. HighInBC ^{Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}}} 01:24, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

@MelanieN and HighInBC: Both of you open your !votes with the statement that PROD is only for uncontroversial deletions, but what about when the only reason deletion is "controversial" is because User X doesn't like deletion and wants to create more hoops to jump through to get an article (orfour articles in the space of eight minutes, or 23 articles out of 50 mainspace edits over a period of two weeks) deleted? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:10, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

This wasn't asked of me but as someone who, to my regret, inclusionists would call a deletionist I don't see an issue. The editor there didn't do this for all PRODs and so some editorial discretion is being applied. That seems completely with-in the spirit of what PROD is designed to do. Would doing so with a discussion further the project? Yes, but that doesn't mean there weren't reasons or we need to legislate this sort of action out of existence. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:31, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

As I said above, and HighInBC did too: if the person is being disruptive, actually demonstrably disruptive, in removing PRODs - but not in other areas of the 'pedia such that they should be blocked - then a topic ban is probably the best remedy and AN would be the venue. --MelanieN (talk) 03:16, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

P.S. A "requirement to provide an explanation" wouldn't help with a dedicated PROD remover like the one you cite here. They would just change their edit summary from "remove prod" to some canned rationale like "remove prod, subject appears notable". And you'd be right back where you were. What you have here is not a system problem; it is a user problem. We don't rewrite our systems because of one user. --MelanieN (talk) 03:24, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I'd love if this was something we could enforce, but new editors will have no idea of this rule even if we put it in bold letters on the template and will just lead to edit wars restoring the template. If the editor removes the PROD, they will get a discussion at AfD explaining to them why it wasn't appropriate, which helps them learn. Helping new editors learn is important. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 02:08, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose The prod template provides a place for the proposer to state their case. There is no corresponding place for an opposer because a prod is opposed by removing the template and so it goes away. If discussion is wanted then this is typically done by taking the matter to AfD and, per WP:BRD, the onus is on the proposer to start such a discussion. Discussions don't belong in edit summaries as they are supposed to be succinct summaries of what was done in the edit. Per WP:REVTALK, "Avoid using edit summaries to carry on debates or negotiation over the content or to express opinions of the other users involved. This creates an atmosphere where the only way to carry on discussion is to revert other editors!" For example, consider the recent case of Azia. There was a lot wrong with this proposal for which the stated concern was "Completely unsourced and topic of minimal notability. Suggest a merge." Everything said here is wrong. The article has sources and states them clearly at the bottom of the article. The topic is a town in Nigeria and all such places are considered notable. And the proposal is to merge the content. Merger is not done by deletion and there's a different template for making such proposals. Explaining all these errors requires some space and effort and the prod process does not provide this. It is, by design, a lightweight process. If you make it more burdensome then you'll just reproduce AfD. Andrew D. (talk) 07:13, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

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

!Voting "oppose" on an already withdrawn proposal is evidence enough that it was a user problem, with a user actively engaged in trolling "the deletionists", so I guess MelanieN's advice regarding how to deal with such user problems applies. Thank you to whoever closed the above, anyway. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:55, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to toss this out for what it's worth. pbp 15:02, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose The whole point about prods is that they are completely uncontroversial, even if the person is the creator, if they object that means it is no longer uncontroversial. -15:56, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. The quality of prod nominations is often so bad that an article creator should be free to remove a prod. --Michig (talk) 13:27, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

@Djsasso: @Michig: Let me ask you this: why wouldn't an article creator remove a PROD from an article they created? Allowing article creators to decline PRODs is a lot like not having PROD at all. pbp 23:09, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Sometimes the prod is culling early articles that the creator now knows are not really notable, at least that's the scenario that I am aware of. For example players who made a notable team but never actually came off the bench. ϢereSpielChequers 00:30, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Obviously a lot of the time article creators don't remove prods, even though they currently can, as a lot of articles get deleted via prod. --Michig (talk) 07:39, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose. Good grief. Softlavender (talk) 00:33, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Yeah, this is a bad idea for multiple reasons: it would actually be counterproductive in that article creators, even good-faith content contributors, would be forced to turn to disruptive "keepist" editors who will happy deprod anything they think is low-vis enough that no one will notice; in the rare occasion that a legitimate "deletionist" shows up (... I dunno ... INeverCry, I guess?) they could just target low-vis articles that only the article creator is watching; on those few events that preventing the article creator specifically from deprodding would be useful (Tanka prose for example) AFD actually works just fine despite the presence of disruptive keepist editors. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:42, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

  I think you mean "inclusionist" Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:06, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. PROD is basically speedy with a "speak now or forever hold your peace" component. If a PROD is contested, that means AfD is needed. bd2412 T 01:35, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose the article creator should be permitted to have as much input as anyone else. Lepricavark (talk) 03:15, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose I get the idea that there could in theory be someone going through the prod queue and deprodding systematically. But I'm not aware that that actually happens and people deprodding to protect their own work is not that issue. ϢereSpielChequers 07:49, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I'd like to toss this out for what it's worth. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:01, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
• Is there such a thing as a SNOW oppose? - Here's a scenario, someone creates a niche article; say on the bio of a notable bowls player. Then, as it's a little niche, someone puts on a PROD. The article creator then cannot undo this, and has to get someone else to do this for them. We'll get tonnes of people trying to get things de-PRODed. However, if it's a non-popular item, they may not get as many eyes on it; and thus much harder for someone to remove it organically. However, the article itself, was notable. If the article doesn't fail any speedy criteria, and the creator, or anyone else doesn't agree it should be deleted, it should go to WP:AfD. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose – Impractical and unfair, per Lee Vilenski's scenario. — JFG ^talk 10:14, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - unless the article has been tagged for projects it's possible that only the author is the only interested person aware of the article. Cabayi (talk) 11:15, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

As nothing seems to have consensus yet, I'll suggest this formally. The PROD tag can only be added through Twinkle or a similar semi-automated editing tool. That tool should send a talk page notification to the page creator, unless they are prohibited by a {{nobots}} style tag on the page creator's talk page, or the PROD nominator explicitly opts out of sending a message. Editors who cannot or do not use Twinkle are encouraged to used the WP:AFD process to propose deletions. power~enwiki (π, ν) 16:03, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support as nom power~enwiki (π, ν) 16:03, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose This seems like an end run around the fairly clear consensus forming above that you do not need to notify. Secondly users should not be forced to use certain tools to be able to take part in standard processes like PROD>. -DJSasso (talk) 16:09, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per Djsasso. We should not mandate the use of specific tools to be able to do certain things. Reyk _YO! 16:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Nobody should be forced to use tools to automate anything. --Michig (talk) 13:28, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per wot Michig said. ϢereSpielChequers 00:32, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. It is ridiculous to require all editors to use automated or semi-automated tools to edit Wikipedia or to PROD an article. Softlavender (talk) 00:35, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. I PROD the old-fashioned way and I like it that way. bd2412 T 01:36, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, not all editors can use these tools. Stifle (talk) 10:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Lepricavark (talk) 03:16, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - the choice of toolset (if any) is up to each individual. Cabayi (talk) 11:17, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per all the above users rightly pointing out that automated tools should never be a requirement for any process. Iffy★Chat -- 14:43, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

The main issue with the PROD process is article creators performing knee-jerk de-PRODding, sometimes without a good grasp of our notability policy. The PROD notice should include the requirement that de-PRODding requires a policy-based rationale asserting notability, with appropriate links to educate unaware editors. Merely removing the tag with no explanation could be reverted on-sight, with a gentle warning to the infringing de-prodder. If a rationale is provided in the de-prod action, that constitutes a good basis to either keep the article, or to start an AfD with stronger arguments for and against. — JFG ^talk 13:21, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. Barely any prod nominations are policy-based. Arguments against prods are likely to be guideline-based rather than policy-based. --Michig (talk) 13:29, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Notability is not a policy; it's just a guideline and so explicitly allows for exceptions. The OP doesn't seem to understand this and many article creators will not understand such complexities either. The prod process does not provide a discussion in which to explain and debate such issues. Anything of this sort should be done at AfD where it can be properly discussed and resolved. Andrew D. (talk) 22:49, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support Makes sense. pbp 23:09, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support Okay, my insincere "procedural oppose" did no good, it seems. And once again Andrew Davidson, the one who even those who oppose this kind of proposal think should be specifically required to explain deprods because of his problematic tendency to deprod without explanation, then show up at the subsequent AFD and make a counter-policy argument, is opposing this, which ... yeah, just no. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:01, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. We don't require specific policy-based rationales for numerous kinds of deletion, so it makes no sense to require it of PROD. Softlavender (talk) 00:36, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose prod is for uncontentious deletions, if it is contentious it should go to AFD. We have more than enough things to argue about on Wikipedia, please don't add "was this prod decline reverted on a correct understanding of policy". ϢereSpielChequers 00:39, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, unworkable as written. Requiring that they say something when deprodding might work - that is, they have to provide an edit summary, no matter how brief or cursory - but requiring that it be policy-based opens a can of worms that the prod system (intended to be streamlined, simple, and requiring minimal review or oversight) can't really handle. If someone provides a rationale, and you want to argue that it's not policy based, and you start a discussion over whether it's policy-based where people weigh in to reach a consensus... that's WP:AFD, which is where contested deletions should go. --Aquillion (talk) 09:38, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• OP comment – Striking "policy-based" from my proposal, as several editors explained that notability guidelines are not policy. @Michig, Andrew Davidson, Softlavender, WereSpielChequers, and Aquillion: Thanks for your remarks; would that update make you reconsider? — JFG ^talk 23:43, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
  • This was SNOW Opposed above: WP:Village pump (policy)#PROD proposal 5: Require an explanation for removal of a PROD template WITHDRAWN. Plus, you can't drastically change the content of the proposal after several people have !voted on it. My !vote remains Oppose, as it has been for all three of these identical proposals. Softlavender (talk) 00:00, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Prod is not always about notability, so explaining why you think the topic is notable isn't always going to help. I think we should encourage deprodders to give a rationale for their deprodding, and that rationale somewhat belongs in the edit summary. Currently the start of the instructions just say "Any editor (including the article's creator or the file's uploader) may object to the deletion by simply removing the tag" whilst in Wikipedia:Proposed_deletion#Objecting you are "strongly encouraged" to give a rationale and to consider doing a couple of other things. I'd be inclined to reorganise the bit where you are "strongly encouraged" to "consider" as that reeks of compromise rather than clarity. But more important, and back to your point. I'd be OK with the start of the instructions being "Any editor (including the article's creator or the file's uploader) may object to the deletion by removing the tag, but please say why in your edit summary" The template currently states that "Although not required, you are encouraged to explain why you object to the deletion, either in your edit summary or on the talk page" could this go to "Please explain why you object to the deletion, ideally in your edit summary"? ϢereSpielChequers 08:36, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Re-wording PROD instructions to encourage editors to provide a rationale would be a good step forward. Current message is too permissive. I'd be happy to help craft a new message if this suggestion gets traction. — JFG ^talk 09:25, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per above. The point of PROD is to delete those pages that everyone agrees are candidates for deletion; if no one objects for any reason, the page is deleted. However, if someone does object, the page can go to AfD, which is where the policy-based discussion can happen. I see no reason to change this. CThomas³ (talk) 00:12, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• Partial support This should be used as an ANI sanction only. SportingFlyer talk 03:35, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per above, especially WereSpielChequers. Once you have to discuss the topic's inclusion, AFD is the place to do it, not the talk page. Bad-faith de-PROD-ing can already be sanctioned as disruptive behavior. Regards SoWhy 09:05, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose again. The whole idea with prod is that if you don't think it should be deleted it needs to go to Afd. Doesn't matter what your reasoning is. -DJSasso (talk) 12:15, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose requirement. However, an explanation in the PROD notice that an unexplained removal is more likely to result in AFD than a justified removal - that may result in a more considered removal and reduced workload all round. Cabayi (talk) 11:21, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

• The specific wording change I'm referring to changed the fourth step of the nomination process from:

to:

(emphasis in original) Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:48, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• Generally it's polite to notify the page creator. But sometimes, such as when it's a permabanned user or a dynamic IP that's now changed, there may be no point. Twinkle notifies automatically, and I'm happy to let it do its thing, but if I were to PROD something manually I'd check to see if notifying the page creator is worth it. Reyk _YO! 13:43, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Pages by a permabanned user don't need to be PRODded, they can just be deleted under CSD G5. IPs can't create pages. Fish+Karate 13:47, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
    • Pages by a user who wasn't permabanned at the time they made the page, but were permabanned later, are not eligible for G5 speedy. And IPs used to be able to create pages, and there's still lots of hopeless IP creations still out there. I AfD'd one just today. Reyk _YO! 13:49, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
      • Fair point, although I guess that's covered by "except contributors (who) are no longer regarded as active editors on Wikipedia" (my typo fix in bold). Fish+Karate 13:52, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
        • Just another example as to why it shouldn't be mandatory; I almost always notify PROD/AFD creators, but a while back I came upon one created by a fairly well known editor who was deceased... Black Kite (talk) 14:30, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
  • This is generally where I fall. "Highly encouraged in most situations" with a quiet "use judgment." Like BK above me, it is worth using judgment on edge cases, and I certainly favor a "You should definitely do this, it's a really good idea, but if you have a good reason for not doing it, that's fine." ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:31, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• I'm just curious what reasons people have for not using Twinkle. Seems like it really simplifies the whole process (especially for AfD, but also for PROD). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:43, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

I spent more than a year doing this stuff manually IIRC, because I thought Twinkle was an add-on third-party software, and not an in-browser extension, because I don't know how to computer. GMG^talk 17:22, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

You are not the only one. This may be a fairly common reason. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:18, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Twinkle automatically leaves a notice for the creator of the page (if you tell it to); it can't identify "significant contributors", or cases where the creator shouldn't be notified. It's really a non sequitur in regards to the subject of this RfC. ansh666 18:28, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• leave out except when creators are not considered active, as its easier to inform them routinely and other editors may be watching their talkpages, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 17:37, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Seconded. Samsara 18:20, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
• Just a note, I've changed the wording back to the previous version, pending an actual consensus in favor of changing the policy (currently, there's a strong majority in opposition to the change, and per WP:CONLEVEL policies should not be changed by BOLD editing to begin with). (Swarm ♠ talk) 19:53, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
• I find it strange that I read the section headings and expected a debate on whether we should notify article creators and significant contributors, but the actual debate is about what counts as reasonable effort in notifying creators and significant contributors. It seems that we generally agree that the prodder ought to notify and are debating edge cases. But isn't PROD about relatively uncontroversial attempts at deletion, and any edge cases should go straight to AfD? Deryck C. 11:14, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

• There should be *automated* warnings for certain actions (nominations for deletion included, some tags, ...) to users watchlisting the article *and* opting-in for such warnings. Creators should have no special right nor the burden of being warned in the cases they do not care anymore (and I bet there are more than a few of those). On the other hand, the watchlist is mostly useless as warning about deletions, and it could be a useful improvement to get such drastic changes to show up more prominently - Nabla (talk) 19:22, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: Notification of the creator is absolutely unnecessary because any article creator who only belatedly discovers that their article has been PROD deleted can automatically get a copy of the deleted article without even providing a rationale. This is why PROD works so well as the first stop in article culling: Articles that are just drive-by spam from SPA accounts who have since left Wikipedia are easily culled without further ado, and articles from good-faith editors who may have been absent or distracted during the week that the PROD was placed can easily get their article restored. Best of both worlds. Softlavender (talk) 04:40, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

• While we're talking about the PROD policy, I'd like to propose that a person deproding a page, be required to give an explanation of why (either in the edit summary or on the talk page). Too many times do people deprod without any reason. This allows the extreme inclusion group to force AfDs which waste everyone's time. If I have to give an explanation of why an article I PROD should be deleted than I don't think its too much to ask for the person deProding it to explain why it should be kept. That explanation may convince the person proposing deletion not to go any further or at the very least give them a point to refute when creating an AfD.--Rusf10 (talk) 00:27, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

• Moral support- I don't see this having much chance of getting up, but I generally agree.Reyk _YO! 08:44, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Weak Support The reason why PROD exists is so that obviously unsuitable articles (WP:SNOW) can be deleted without much of a fuss. I would support only requiring the page author or apparent SPAs to explain the dePROD, since they would likely object to deletion. funplussmart (talk) 01:16, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
• Strongest possible support requiring a rationale is the only thing keeping PROD from being a farce, which it basically is.--Jayron32 01:20, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
• Comment This is the same as the withdrawn Proposal 5 above. --MelanieN (talk) 02:33, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose It is up to wanna-be-deleters to justify deletions. If they want a discussion the AFD is the way to proceed. The people that just remove the prod, probably have no idea about the procedures here, and so you are giving an unfair advantage to the established editors that do. If however, there is someone removing a lot of "prod"s for no reason, or a wiki-political reason, then that is disruptive editing that can be dealt with in another way. Not only that, prods can also be overturned after deletion, without reason. It is better to simplify the process rather than add more even work. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:48, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

• Hmm. "Wanna-be-deleters," I am hearing of this for the first time. So what of the wanna-be-keepers? Why can't they provide reason to justify keeping if they indeed believe the article should stay?. Why? –Ammarpad (talk) 05:20, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

  Because our Wikipedia:Deletion policy requires that a bona fide reason be given for deleting an article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:59, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per the closed discussion above. Note also that most prodders don't provide a detailed reason – they usually just make a vague wave to some other page. For example, consider Rusf10's most recent prod: "as per WP:NOTNEWS". One could wave back with exactly the same policy, which states "editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events". The devil is in the details and prod is not the place for this because there's no provision for discussion. Andrew D. (talk) 08:54, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the devil is in the details: details like how the reason "the closed discussion above" was closed in the first place was because of Andrew's disruptively showing up to harangue me after I'd already withdrawn my proposal. The "consensus" was weak at best, and even the outright opposes (of whom there were two; one was essentially a "support in principle, but oppose as unpractical") appeared to agree that Andrew's behaviour was problematic and should be addressed with individual sanctions rather than an amendment to policy. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:37, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose for now Per my own identical proposal above, I agree with this in principle, but the reason I withdrew it is because it's not going to happen at the moment. Dealing with the disruptive deproders individually, perhaps with sanctions, should be a priority; see if problems persist even with good-faith editors after that happens, then propose changing he policy. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:37, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose By contrast, the risk of losing valuable articles by prodders unfamiliar with subject content is significant. DONOTLIKE prodding is all too common and should be reverted on sight, no explanation needed. Don't like it? Go through AfD. Samsara 18:17, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose because removing the prod template is all you actually need from de-prodding. Adding the template means "I think this should be deleted, and I think that doing so will be uncontroversial". Removing it, even if there's not a single word typed, means "I think this should not be considered an uncontroversial deletion". If you want it deleted, then your next step should be AFD, not badgering the editor who thought the deletion might be controversial to provide an explanation that will WP:SATISFY you. You already have all the explanation you actually need: someone disagreed with you, and therefore it does not qualify for PROD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WhatamIdoing. Use AFD. Johnbod (talk) 22:39, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
• Weakest possible support I like the idea in concept, but in practice 99% of the rationales are going to be WP:ITEXISTS, WP:ILIKEIT, WP:ITSIMPORTANT, WP:VALUABLE, etc., making it effectively useless. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 16:39, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WhatamIdoing; PROD is for strictly uncontested cases, and a successful de-PROD does not produce prejudice against other sorts of nominations. Keep it simple. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 17:30, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support This is the biggest problem with prods – removals by IPs with no rationale that just mean countless hours wasted on AfDs that will almost always result in a delete outcome. Number 57 20:13, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, as Nihiltres makes a good point. We could consider changing policy to disallow IPs from deprod'ing articles and use a bot to enforce it, which would at least add some accountability. When a regular user deprods, you can always just ask them why. With an IP, that is often impossible to do. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:58, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - The burden should be on the person nominating an article for deletion to explain their rationale, even when prodding it. However, I think Dennis's proposal is also something to seriously consider. There are quite a few good, productive IP editors who can be trusted to reasonably contest PROD tags, but there are at least as many vandals or otherwise inexperienced unregistered users who simply delete tags and move on. It makes sense to limit this ability to registered users. Kurtis ^(talk) 18:01, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - The PROD process works as it is supposed. Articles are deleted that n one has any concerns about. If someone has any concern about an article being deleted it shouldn't be deleted via PROD. This would just add a bureaucratic step that add nothing to the process. I can agree that it is best to explain why the PROD was removed but see no reason to mandate it. ~ GB fan 19:51, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - Too many IPs posting drive-by PRODs with no rationale. [5] Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:46, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose The whole rationale for PROD is that it's for non-controversial deletions. If it's to be turned into something else, a kind of ultralite AfD, I could see an argument for that, but the case should be made explicitly, not folded into a procedural requirement. --Trovatore (talk) 03:14, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support as making at least a token effort to explain one's decision (just as a PROD-er has to explain their reasoning) is civilised. Amisom (talk) 19:15, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Because sometimes a trolling anti-deletionist will do a massive dePROD just because they hate the idea of a PROD, and it is difficult to deal with them outside asking an admin for a POINTy disruption evaluation. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:55, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose adding a formal requirement. If there is disagreement, the Prod process already escalates to AfD automatically. Deryck C. 11:10, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. It should be encourage, but if someone believes an article shouldn't be deleted, it's not an uncontroversial deletion. A significant number of prod nominations each week are thoroughly incompetent, coming from editors who seem to look for any articles in bad shape and try to get them deleted for that reason alone, irrespective of whether they are likely to be uncontroversial deletions. Removal of prod tags is not the main problem here. I would also note that a deprod should not automatically result in an AfD nomination, as taking articles that are unlikely to be deleted to AfD results in an unnecessary drain on resources. Deprods with an explanation of why the subject is notable are routinely taken to AfD by some editors as a knee-jerk reaction. Those editors are the problem. --Michig (talk) 17:53, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Agree with the principle, we should explain every non.trivial action. But as U:WhatamIdoing explined quite well, (de)proding is self explanatory. So, oppose - Nabla (talk) 19:26, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Too much scope creep in this. Once we start require explanations, then we'll get into "well, your explanation wasn't good enough for me" sort of nonsense. Softlavender (talk) 00:39, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• This was already SNOW Opposed above: WP:Village pump (policy)#PROD proposal 5: Require an explanation for removal of a PROD template WITHDRAWN. Why is it being re-introduced? Softlavender (talk) 03:21, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Only if PROD requires a reason. But then, a reason for, a reason against, go to AfD. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:07, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose We have 3 sections all proposing the same thing...but might as well oppose here as well. -DJSasso (talk) 12:16, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

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

The current protection level on Reference Desk pages seems to be doing a good job filtering recent vandalism there. Unfortunately it also seems to be deterring people who want to post post legitimate questions there. For comparison, the Math Desk (which is the one I normally monitor) got about a question per day this time last year, but hasn't a new question posted in over a week this year. The protection level seems to be designed for main space article pages, and I assume it works well there, but the Ref. Desk is a somewhat different situation. It seems that most people posting questions to the Ref. Desk have little or no interest in editing articles, and so either have no account or an account with very few edits. So the block is keeping out most of the people the Ref. Desk is there to help. Another issue is that this particular vandal is using tools that the current protection level was not designed to deal with: shifting IP addresses, automated edits, and a large supply of dummy accounts. With a computer doing most if not all of the actual work, the vandal really has no incentive to stop and the vandalism continues again soon after each block is lifted and continues until the next one is imposed. The result is that Wikipedia admins are putting in more work with setting up the blocks and banning accounts than the vandal is in doing the damage in the first place.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but the situation has gone on for over 3 weeks now and there is no sign it will change any time soon. I do have a few ideas, and I'm certain others can come up with more, though I don't know which will be effective or even technically possible. But perhaps some combination will be an improvement over the present situation.

• Since the vandal seems to have no problem changing to a new IP address or a dummy account, limit the number anonymous/new account edits to only a few per day. This would be equivalent to imposing the current semi-protection block for 8 hours after any such edit. This would help frustrate bot editing but still allow legitimate questions to be asked.
• Install a 'spam filter' on new edits for the page to automatically revert and ban the author of posts containing certain words. There are ways around this but it should at least ensure that the vandal has to put some work into getting edits saved. Legitimate questions posted should have no problem getting through such a filter.
• Change the protection level to Pending changes. The people who monitor the reference desks tend to check it frequently so there should be no problem with unprocessed edits.

Unless an alternative is found, I think there will eventually be no choice but to make the current semi-protection level permanent, effectively limiting access to a small minority of the people who might use this valuable service. I don't know if other areas of WP have been attacked the same way, but it appears to me that as more sophisticated tools become available to vandals, WP will need a more sophisticated arsenal to combat them.

(Per WP:DENY I'm keeping this discussion away from the Ref. Desk itself and its talk page, but if it's better placed somewhere else please feel free to move it.) --RDBury (talk) 16:16, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

• I'm not sure how to technically throttle editing in the way you suggest.

  Regarding the filter: It's being done, by This filter. It doesn't work much. The troll is savvy enough to vary their message enough to dodge the filter. Updating the edit filter with new words only serves to cause him to change to new words. It's the manner of attack (repeated, rapid posting of the same message over and over every few seconds) which is the problem. Defeating the edit filter isn't too hard.

  Pending changes doesn't matter; the offending edits are still in the page history, and he uses section headers and edit summaries which are beyond-the-pale offensive and need to be removed immediately. Pending changes leaves all of this visible except to unregistered users, so it's not really useful.

  Good luck in coming up with a better solution. Don't think we aren't trying! --Jayron32 16:23, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

An utterly unacceptable solution would be to trust the users. For example, you could set up a bot with admin privileges to revert all contributions from a given IP or non-confirmed account to the Refdesks retroactively for 24 hours and block the same account ongoing, and have it take this action whenever anyone on a list of Refdesk regulars (which could be autocompiled, and could be limited to persons with extended-confirmed access) would name the IP on the bot's talk page. Namers would be warned, of course, that it is an offense to make the report frivolously; there'd be criteria. The result would be that any protection or manual admin deletions would be unnecessary.

An even more unacceptable solution, which I prefer far more, is to utterly give up the moral panic about what if somebody looks at the edit history. If you must, have a bot post every 50 edits that everything alleged in this edit history is mechanical bollocks. Let the users clear the spam when/if they see a need. Party like it was 1999 and democracy had a future! Wnt (talk) 19:34, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

We've got better than a bot, we've got real, live human beings basically doing exactly that! You don't even need to tell them, usually they just take care of it, though sometimes they may not notice it needs taking care of, so we have WP:AIV as a good place to get those people's attention. But generally, this particular troll is noticeable enough that someone usually stops them within a few minutes. --Jayron32 19:50, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

That would be great if they didn't say it's too much work and they need to permanently semi-protect the desks. But a bot could do what they do immediately, automatically, without the need for such measures. Wnt (talk) 11:33, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks User:Jayron32 for removing the block early since the spammer seems to be taking a break. I had a feeling that not much could be done in terms of prevention without changes to the infrastructure. But I'm glad to hear that people are at least thinking about the problem. Another idea I was thinking about is to require some kind of reverse Turing test whenever an anon or new user makes an edit. Again, probably not possible with the current infrastructure. (I know that, for licensing reasons, WP refuses to use CAPCHA, but presumably there is some open-source alternative. I haven't created a new account recently so I don't know if one is in place for creating new accounts.) WP can't be the only site that's faced with this kind of problem, so it seems unlikely that a solution doesn't already exist somewhere. --RDBury (talk) 20:30, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia requires a CAPCHA for anon and unconfirmed users who add URLs to mainspace articles. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:16, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree with OP. It is of utmost importance that newcomers not be prevented or discouraged from asking questions. Benjamin (talk) 21:37, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Just an update, the spammer has returned so the issue is still ongoing. --RDBury (talk) 23:55, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello English community! I'm an (ex-)avid editor from your sister Spanish Wikipedia. I was just wondering about the possibility to allow users from other languages to review GA or FA here. You see... in the last years Spanish Wiki has suffered from a decline in editions due to the outflow of editors there. However, I personally found myself so thankful for all the work you do! Many articles that I edited, were translated primarly from here! For that reason, I'll find it very interesting if I could help in some manner towards you. Thanks a lot, for real! --Gtr. Errol (talk) 03:37, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Sure, but you'd be expected to speak English here and apply our GA and FA criteria here. We certainly aren't overflowing with reviewers. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:21, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

• Any editor can participate in the GA and FA process, and many more participants are needed. You would just have to learn how the project works here. But once you have done that you are more than welcom to review as many articles as you can.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:23, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
• Hey Gtr. Errol. To add on the above, There are lots of areas where it would be valuable to have increased input from bi-lingual Spanish speaker. I'm working on an article right now where I can't read 90% of the sources. We also have comparatively few bilingual editors active at Articles for Creation, and drafts that rely heavily on non-English sources often take an immense amount of time to get reviewed. We've also got more than 3,000 articles in Category:Articles needing translation from Spanish Wikipedia. So there's definitely no shortage of work that needs done. GMG^talk 20:30, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello, GreenMeansGo! Well, I'm aware that at any Wikipedia version there's always work to do! I can help you for sure, so why didn't get in touch by writting me what exactly you want me to do? I hope I can be helpful. By the way, I've been abscent for almost 5 years now, so I just edit casually, and not as hardcore as I did some time ago. I'm always amazed by English Wikipedia; it sincerly upholds what really Wikipedia means. --«[Gtr.]» Errol 21:19, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Recently a single user moved 497 249 figure skating pages that had xxxx–xx year in title to xxxx–xxxx without discussion. I requested they be moved back, but was told I should start a discussion on village pump first.

• Per conclusion of previous RFC, "applications such as sports seasons, fiscal years, and consecutive years use the two-year date range convention without problems. These applications can continue to do so." I'm okay fine with continuing that, and thus request the undiscussed moves to be reverted.
• Mover's argument has been that MOS:DATERANGE prefers xxxx–xxxx. My reading of MOS: it states xxxx–xxxx is the general format and it states xxxx–xx may be used for two consecutive years. Guidelines does not say xxxx–xxxx is preferred to xxxx–xx for two consecutive years.
• Looking at other Wikipedia article titles, xxxx–xx is the established preferred format for two consecutive years and xxxx–xxxx for three or more years. (Searching on "2017–18", I found many examples, e.g. 2017–18 Men's Hockey League season, 2017–18 NBA season, 2017–18 Premier League, 2017–18 UEFA Champions League, 2017–18 La Liga, 2017–18 EFL Cup, 2017–18 NFL playoffs, 2017–18 Manchester City F.C. season, 2017–18 Formula E season, etc. As for "2017–2018", I only found a few non-sports articles using that format, though many non-sports articles used『2017–18』format, e.g. 2017–18 Australian region cyclone season and 2017–18 North Korea crisis.) And until a few hours ago, figure skating articles fell in the xxxx–xx camp.

To focus the discussion, I'm particularly interested in titles of sports articles that have a two consecutive years range in the title. For consistency, I feel all these articles should use the same format, either xxxx–xx or xxxx–xxxx. Currently, from my searches, xxxx–xx is the preferred format. I believe for consistency (and since it's okay with the MOS), the figure skating should be reverted to their original page names. Alternatively, all other pages with this issue (presumably several thousand pages) should be moved to xxxx–xxxx format.
Thus I'm asking everyone what format should be used? Thank you all, 15zulu (talk) 00:01, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Edited above to correct number of pages moved. Initially I counted the number of lines in user contributions which lists each page moved as two contributions. So total number of pages moved was 249. Sorry for any confusion, 15zulu (talk) 04:37, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Should sports articles use xxxx–xxxx or xxxx–xx date format for two consecutive years? — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 09:36, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

I believe the move to 2015-2016 was justified. Years and year ranges should be spelt out in full to avoid ambiguity. Examples of problems include 2004-05 (could mean May 2004) and 1999-00 (wtf). The solution is to spell these years out in full, and for consistency it should be done always. If thousands of pages are named incorrectly, the sooner we get started with fixing them the better. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 04:59, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

• Question is too broad WP:DATERANGE is already clear that XXXX-XX is OK: "Two-digit ending years (1881–82, but never 1881–882 or 1881–2) may be used in any of the following cases: (1) two consecutive years; ..." Its applicability for a given sport should be based on the conventions of that sport in reliable sources. Prescribing a specific format for all sports is undue. WikiProject National Basketball Association and WikiProject College Basketball use XXXX-XX.—Bagumba (talk) 05:58, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

@Bagumba: The 500 articles that were unilaterally moved are mainly about figure skating. This RfC is intended to clarify the situation on sports articles title date format before deciding to revert a non-trivial number of moves. The question is deliberately broad for overall consistency. The current guideline which says xxxx-xx "may be used" but that in general xxxx-xxxx is "preferred" is not at all helpful when dealing with such a large number of good faith moves. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 08:23, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

It is a mistake to generalize it about sports. It should be dependent on the convention of the specific domain e.g. ice skating. With all due respect to WP:BB, it seems over-aggressive to change 500 articles in the same domain en masse without first asking about its background and the fact that it maybe "right". If, in fact, they made these changes and already aware of the MOS:DATERANGE exception, it also seems rash to make widespread changes from an accepted format to their self-described "preferred" style without dropping a note at the affected WikiProjects.—Bagumba (talk) 10:33, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

@Bagumba: There does not appear to be a specific guideline for skating articles and I am not aware of any notification or discussion that occured beforehand. At the same time, 500 moves is a lot to undo without a good reason. What do you suggest is done moving forward? — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 10:45, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

I think this is a figure skating issue, and not a general or sports issue. The orginal mass move failed WP:RMUM: It seems unlikely that anyone would reasonably disagree with the move. There was not a problem per WP:DATERANGE, which allows XXXX–XX, and it's debatable if this is an improvement when 500 some-odd figure skating articles were already consistently named. The onus is on the orginal mover to gain consensus for the new XXXX–XXXX title. This could have been done at WP:RM, but the RfC is already open, so let's go from here.—Bagumba (talk) 10:29, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

The previous RFC was regarding all year ranges xxxx–xx, so this question about sports is significantly less broad. As of right now, figure skating has no guidelines in place on Wikipedia and a single user unilaterally decided to move approximately 500 pages from xxxx–xx to xxxx–xxxx. Going by my original research, isu.org primarily uses xxxx/xx format while news sources use xxxx-xx format. The figure skating WikiProject is mostly defunct and it's likely most people editing figure skating pages will not see any question posed there. Regardless, while specific sports can have their own format, I feel that we should have generic/default Wikipedia guidelines too. 15zulu (talk) 08:08, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

FWIW, I went and left a notification of this RfC at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Figure_Skating.—Bagumba (talk) 10:10, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

I noticed that not all events that span two years have the second year in their articles. 2008 NFL season is one such example. At what point do we include the second year in the title?

I'm under the impression that it's included if a significant portion of the event takes place in the second year. In other words, an event that starts in October and ends in January would probably do with just the first year. Would I be correct? --Ixfd64 (talk) 18:42, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

The conventions at Wikipedia obey the conventions outside of Wikipedia. The NFL, by convention, only calls its seasons by one year, even though the playoffs extend into the next year. Wikipedia did not invent or create this convention in the naming of its articles, it merely followed the existing convention. That's how we do everything here. We don't make up things, and then create our own reasons why we made them up, we obey what reliable sources do. --Jayron32 18:51, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. However, what about other events that don't have an official naming convention?

For example, suppose there is a large series of protests in Washington D.C. that lasts from October 2020 to April 2021. Would the article be titled "2020-2021 Washington D.C. protests" or just "2020 Washington D.C. protests"? --Ixfd64 (talk) 18:57, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

I have no idea. It would depend on what reliable sources were already calling the events. Show me what they are called when sources outside of Wikipedia write about them. --Jayron32 19:03, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

A descriptive title like that may be constructed owing to the absence of a single recognizable name for the series of events, or a recognizable name which is unsuitable for Wikipedia due to NPOV or BLP issues. In such cases I'd follow MOS and use 2020–21 Washington D.C. protests (don't forget the en dash!). – Reidgreg (talk) 17:35, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• Use whatever form the RS use – as discussed above. For the figure skating example, the ISU seems to use XXXX/XX (their web site is a mess but that's what the cited ISU sources use for example at 2015–2016 Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final). I'm not crazy about the slash but that's what they use. Kendall-K1 (talk) 00:29, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  As I mentioned above, while ISU primarily uses xxxx/xx format, news sources for figure skating (including general news sources & figure skating specific sources) use xxxx-xx format. Also other figure skating organizations, like USFSA and Skate Canada, use dash. While one primary source uses slash, the majority of reliable secondary sources use dash. 15zulu (talk) 04:08, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  We do not use slashes to indicate date ranges per DATERANGE. No comment on the actual concerns in this RFC, but that's a solid "we do not use slashes, ever". --Izno (talk) 16:24, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

  A slash may be used in place of an en dash for adjacent years when supported by a majority of sources, per MOS:SLASH and MOS:DATERANGE (special periods), but the former also generally discourages slashes which are one of those troublesome characters than can be interpreted as markup (along with ampersands, numeros, etc). If sources use a mix of styles, better to stay consistent with Wikipedia's broadly accepted style of xxxx–xx. – Reidgreg (talk) 17:35, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support xxxx–xx (with en dash, not a hyphen as in many of the above examples) as spelled out in MOS:DATERANGE. While 2004-05 is confusing and might be May 2004, the dash in 2004–05 indicates this is a range MOS:ENTO. The xxxx–xx format is particularly good for periods of less than a year which overlap calendar years, like fiscal year 2004–05, the winter (northern hemisphere) of 2004–05, and sports and television seasons. If it describes a period of 366 days or more, though, or if there are any clarity issues, I'd tend to use xxxx–xxxx. MOS is a guideline, and exceptions can be made if the context leads to confusion. I'm just not seeing why there would be any confusion here, or any reason to vary from the established style guideline. Adhering to the style guideline gives Wikipedia a consistent and professional look, and is meant to help avoid silly style warring. – Reidgreg (talk) 17:35, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Agree. Normal English-language usage should prevail absent a much stronger rationale than has been suggested. 121a0012 (talk) 03:36, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support xxxx–xxxx - The range of xxxx–xxxx should be used, as the goal of any written text is to be as clear as possible and that presents the most clear title. The distinction the previous editor said about periods of more than 366 days would be lost on most editors; I've been editing here for years and I've never known that might be a reason for such usage. A previous example of 1999-00 is also a clear example where this just fails and looks bad. There is no title space shortage issues (titles aren't long and this isn't print), other date ranges (in non-consecutive years) use this style and per WP:CONSISTENCY would also work better and this would also eliminate the may be used [...] issue which just leads to endless page-by-page fighting over meaningless issues. --Gonnym (talk) 11:46, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

  Well put. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 12:02, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support xxxx-xx, not only for two consecutive years, but for ranges of years within the same decade, and maybe more. What's wrong with 1939-45, for example? I reject the notion that it's ambiguous. Sure, out of context 2002-05 could mean May 2005 as well as 2002-2005 in some contexts, but in most if not all cases the context makes it obvious, and xxxx-xx is just as WP:PRECISE as xxxx-xxxx, and is obviously more WP:CONCISE. I'll concede crossing a century boundary probably should use xxxx-xxxx (e.g., 1997-2002), but that should be treated as an exception, not a rule that affects all other ranges. --В²C ☎ 18:17, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support xxxx-xx for two consecutive years, for sure. For years spanning centuries, you need xxxx-xxxx. In between, don't care, doesn't matter, editors should do what they like and leave alone what they find. We should probably say exactly that in the guidelines. That's my story, but some additional points:

• Argh, don't say reliable sources when you mean notable sources (orscholarly sources). Since it's not a question of whether xxxx-xx or xxxx-xxxx is true, reliability does not enter the equation. Readership and maybe scholarly standing do. The difference can matter in these discussions, so correct terminology is helpful.
• But anyway, sources are used here for content. If sources all say an event occurred on the eighth day of October in 1881, we report that in the article. If the sources all use the format "October 8th, 1881" we ignore that formatting. Of course we do. We have our own style guide, and don't/shouldn't much care what style guide the editor of the Podunk Times happens to use. (Or rather: what the outside world is a data point, but only that. If virtually everyone uses a particular format, that's a reasonable argument for us using that format too -- not proof, but a reasonable argument.. If it's like 75%-25% or something, forget it, ignore that.) Official use, too.. in the spirit of WP:OFFICIALNAME, who cares if the 43 Man Squamish League uses 2017-2018? They don't get to tell us how to write. If they used 2017-8, should we use that then? 2017-018? MMXVII-III? The official use is a minor data point, but no more.
• Big trout to the editor who changed all those pages -- this is roiling the text for no purpose, substituting their own personal idiosyncratic preference for the personal idiosyncratic preference of the person who originally titled the articles. This is pointless and stop doing that. The pages should be rolled back on principle -- it's important to support WP:BRD on principle precisely to quash this sort of behavior -- and then take the argument to talk (actually the person wanting the change should do this). FWIW I don't even think that WP:BOLD should apply to title changes in the first place -- as we see here, it can be a massive headache.

So absent a clear rule, let the person who did the actual work of the project -- you know, actually researching, writing, and titling those articles -- at least the satisfaction of titling them as they think works best. We'll give the same courtesy to you. Within reasonable guidelines -- it's reasonable to allow a between xxxx-xx or xxxx-xxxx, but not allow xxxx-xxx or roman numerals, because those are weird and hard to read. Herostratus (talk) 03:40, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

• Who cares? use either. I respect MOS and page style discussions, but this is one of them where I think an RfC causes more effort than it is worth and we don’t need a community consensus for it. Stick with whatever the stable title is. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:45, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
  • ... an RfC causes more effort than it is worth ...: I reiterate my original point that the question posed by this RfC was too broad for the specific problem at hand, so it follows that this has not been productive.—Bagumba (talk) 04:36, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Well, the stable titles for the figure skating articles for years has been xxxx–xx. As previously stated, a single user unilaterally & without discussion decided to change the format for ~500 pages. I was told that pages cannot be changed back without discussion, thus we're having this discussion. While Bagumba stated it's too broad to have generic guideline for sports, others above are discussing making guideline even broader, for all topics not just sports. Wikipedia MOS is very broad on purpose and while projects can have their own MOS, there should be some generic rules for when there isn't any project MOS. 15zulu (talk) 07:30, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
    • 15zulu, whomever told you that was wrong. Per WP:RMUM, if the title wasn't stable (read: the move took place within the last month) they should have been reverted to their original stable titles. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:23, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support xxxx-xx for two consecutive years, for sure. For years spanning centuries, you need xxxx-xxxx. per WP:COMMONNAME used in the vast majority of the main stream media discussing cricket. --DBigXrayᗙ 19:32, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose xxxx-xx The new version is ugly and was done without consensus, and also pointless. Per BRD, this mass move should be reverted and the other editor should really be here. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 00:07, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Um, "xxxx-xx" is the old version (and supported by previous RfC for sport seasons & similar), "xxxx-xxxx" is the new version (to which 500 pages were moved without discussion). As for the other editor, they participated in discussion at WP:RMT (which occurred after the moves) where I stated that I posted here, but feel free to contact them. 15zulu (talk) 21:50, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Oh, oops. In that case, the pages should still be moved back to the old title because it's not nice to just move a bunch of pages like that for no reason. I would support this mass renaming if it had been done with consensus. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 20:03, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

• Keep all the digits – elision of digits is pointless in our digital medium where space is relatively free. This kind of abbreviation does not help clarity or readability. Dicklyon (talk) 04:26, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
• Neutral on xxxx-xx for two consecutive years (not too huge a fan, but it's fine), but for any period that spans more than two years (or two centuries), STRONGLY SUPPORT the full xxxx-xxxx. Paintspot Infez (talk) 15:38, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
• Keep all the digits by default; permit tabular data exceptions when it's only a two-year span. The compressed format can be appropriate in tables, some lists, and maybe infoboxes to save space (I'm being purposefully rather inclusive about what "tabular data" means). It should never be used when the -xx part is -01 through -12, except when applied consistently to a bunch of other tabular data in same format in the same material, because something like『2002–03』and『1911–12』are completely indistinguishable from hyphenated YYYY-MM dates in many fonts. This also applies to "2002/03" dating as used in some contexts; always use 2002/2003. "Use what the sources use" is ridiculous; we'd end up with randomly conflicting date formats, even in the same paragraph in many cases, and this idea has been rejected many times before at WT:MOSNUM, etc. In short, if we just adopted whatever style a numerical majority of sources applied, to every style question, we would have no Manual of Style at all, and our articles on Star Trek would be written exactly the way they are at a Star Trek wiki, our legal articles would be written in impenetrable legalese, etc., etc. WP uses sources for facts, not how we write about them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:58, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

So to summarize above (please correct me if I misstated your opinion):

• 15zulu (me): move should've been discussed & should be undone; RS, i.e. figure skating news articles, use xxxx-xx
• Frayæ: any further action should be discussed before moves undone or other moves made
• Dondervogel 2: move was good; all articles should be moved to xxxx–xxxx
• Bagumba: move should've been discussed; each sport/project should decide based on RS
• Ixfd64: comment/question
• Jayron32: titles based on RS
• Kendall-K1: titles based on RS, ISU uses XXXX/XX
• Reidgreg: xxxx–xx
• 121a0012: xxxx–xx
• Gonnym: xxxx–xxxx
• Born2cycle: xxxx–xx
• Herostratus: xxxx–xx; move should've been discussed
• TonyBallioni: move should've been discussed & should've been undone; stick to stable title
• DBigXray: xxxx–xx
• FenixFeather: xxxx–xxxx but move should've been discussed
• Dicklyon: xxxx–xxxx
• Paintspot: neutral for two consecutive years

Majority agree that the move should have been discussed first. Not counting myself, 5 editors stated articles should be xxxx–xx, 4 editors stated articles should be moved to xxxx–xxxx, 3 editors stated titles should be based on RS (which from my observations of figure skating news articles would mean xxxx–xx), 1 editor stated titles should be go back to stable state (i.e. xxxx–xx), and the rest were neutral/comments/questions. From that I conclude: figure skating articles should be moved back to xxxx–xx and any similar moves should be discussed first. Further thoughts? Thanks, 15zulu (talk) 11:03, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Obviously my above summary does not count additions made after I wrote it (including additions posted above the summary). Please do not edit or add to the list I created since that creates errors in my concluding paragraph. Thank you, 15zulu (talk) 12:11, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

@15zulu: Thanks for taking the time to summarize this. As far as my position, since the move wasn't discuss and WP:DATERANGE allows xxxx-xx, the affected figure skating pages should revert back to their original xxxx-xx, given that there is no consensus for xxxx-xxxx. This is consistent with WP:RMUM: If you disagree with such a move, and the new title has not been in place for a long time, you may revert the move. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 10:23, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

• xxxx-xx - Such a big and potentially controversial move should've been discussed first. 4 digits are not necessary in the second year in the range, especially for consecutive years. Matt14451 (talk) 13:08, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Use either format for consecutive years, as allowed by MOS. Source conformity can be a weighing factor. Undiscussed mass-moves should be reverted, and a standard WP:RM discussion should be opened. — JFG ^talk 23:51, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• xxxx-xx is clear and concise. SportingFlyer talk 04:56, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• The discussion regarding RS is irrelevant IMO because this is about writing style. We have our own house style, intended to promote uniformity across the English Wikipedia. For this house style my preference was and remains xxxx-xxxx, across the board, because it removes all ambiguity (there could be exceptions permitting xxxx-xx, but only where space is of the essence). Second best is xxxx-xx, again for all articles. The present mix of xxxx-xxxx for some articles and xxxx-xx (or even xxxx/xx?) for others is untidy and unencyclopaedic, and fails to achieve the objective of uniformity. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 15:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
• There is now a proposal at WT:MOSNUM to amend the MoS to bar the use of YYYY-01 thru YYYY-12 in articles and titles ("unless in close proximity to other ranges in this format that end with numbers outside the 01–12 range"). Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Clarifying date ranges in YYYY–YY format. 80.41.128.3 (talk) 12:53, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
• Per WP:NAMINGCRITERIA: Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. For the most part, people searching for a season article will most likely be searching under its common name, not a wikipedia MOS guideline for a numbering/dating system. Vice versa, people outside of that region's dating style probably will not be searching for the article at all if they do not already know the common name. Many seasons that last between consecutive years are most commonly called xxxx–xx (in North America at least). So based on that, using XXXX–XX when used in the majority of reliable source meets the Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, and Conciseness pillars of WP:NAMINGCRITERIA as well as the WP:COMMONNAME. Furthermore, most of the articles that are called『XXXX–XX season』clarify the extent of the time frame with phrases in the lead (ex: the season lasts from October 2018 until April 2019) and a duration parameter in the infobox, which should clear up any potential confusion to meaning of the title. I am pretty sure that is exactly why the "consecutive year exclusion" exists in DATERANGE in the first place. Yosemiter (talk) 23:28, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

  What they search for is irrelevant; redirects exist for a reason. We have five, not one, naming criteria and they're all co-equal. If the most common name fails one or more of them, we use the second-most common. More to the point here, however: WP:ATisnot a style policy. Never has been, never will be. Otherwise we would have no MoS, or at least nothing in it could ever apply to titles. Yet in reality we cite it about 100 times per day at RM, and we do in fact apply MoS to titles; it's the most common ruleset we apply to titles (probably more MoS than AT arguments are applied, and accepted, at RM, since moves more often involve style twiddles like over-capitalization or mis-hyphenation than a completely wrong name having been chosen). The naming conventions pages that deal with style, such as WP:NCCAPS, are simply summaries of MoS points as they apply to titles, and are derived from MoS, not vice versa. In short, you do not understand our title policy, the applicability of our guidelines, or how WP article titling works.

  We do not, in fact, apply reasoning like "If the majority of sources spell something the XYZ way, then WP must do it too." We routinely, nearly daily, reject that reasoning. For a style matter to be "imposed" on Wikipedia by off-site stylization, the style in question must be found with nearly complete consistency in all reliable sources for the case in question (e.g., virtually no one writes "Ipod" in professional-grade publications, thus we write "iPod" like everyone else does, despite it being weird from an English-language-norms perspective). We never, ever have that sort of near-unanimous consistency in sources for the date formatting of sports seasons, TV-show seasons, election cycles, fiscal years, or any other circumstance in which people want to use confusing and inconsistent abbreviated date formats. The only practical use for them on Wikipedia is in tabular data, and only then when space is at a premium, and enough of them are used in one place that no one can be confused into thinking that something like『2002–03』is a YYYY-MM date.

  The rather recent (and recurrently controversial) "consecutive year exclusion" exists in DATERANGE because people who don't understand any of this stuff have gnashed their special-interest (mostly sports wikiproject) teeth long enough that they've tendentiously worn out reasoned opposition and gotten their pet peeve inserted. I'll happily bet real money this will not last, because the result is a stupid, reader-confusing, editor-frustrating mess that serves no one's interests. It serves no interest at all other than making a handful of editors happy that they get (for now) to mimic what they see in a football or TV magazine. Cf. actual policy at WP:NOT#NEWS: "Wikipedia is not written in news style." That includes sports and entertainment journalism, and that, in turn, includes their lazy, ambiguous date formatting.

  PS: I say all this as someone who founded a sports wikiproject, and regularly edits TV-related articles. This isn't about topics, but about the specialized-style fallacy, the nonsense idea that sources reliable for facts about a topic are somehow the most reliable sources for how to write about that topic for a general audience, when they are really often the worst, being representative of only how specialists write for other specialists in the same area (be that professionals in science/law/etc., or fans in sports/sci-fi/hip-hop/etc.). Failure to understand that specialist writing does not dictate WP writing style is the proximal cause of about 90% of style-related squabbling on Wikipedia.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:14, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

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

Discussion here.--David Tornheim (talk) 22:51, 27 October 2018 (UTC) [revised 09:19, 31 October 2018 (UTC)]

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Funplussmart (talk • contribs) 20:27, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Recently I dePRODed the Cara Morey article. Failure to meet WP:NHOCKEY was given as one of the reasons why it was proposed for deletion. Reading through the criteria, it appeared to me that there are no entries applicable to women's teams or coaches. When I stated this, I was told that the criteria for females was to have been in the Olympics or to have played in World championships. Considering this far narrower criteria for women, and the wider opportunities for men to have a presence on Wikipedia as notable players or coaches, it seems to me that more opportunities for participation in various competitions or leagues should be added to WP:NHOCKEY to be inclusive qualifiers of women's ice hockey, particularly as the organizations themselves are pushing for more females to participate in both playing and coaching. I am no expert on any sport by any means, but I am in favor of having more opportunities for women to have articles if they are indeed notable, so I thought I would present this here for more knowledgable editors to discuss. LovelyLillith (talk) 20:43, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

I think the first question has to be how popular women's ice hockey is as a spectator sport (which is how players would derive notability if not playing for their national sides). If enough people are watching the matches for the leagues to be fully-professional, then the leagues should probably be added to the list. If the leagues are semi-pro or amateur, then in all likelihood the players in them are unlikely to be given default notability. Number 57 21:50, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

@Number 57: In response to professional women's hockey as a spectator sport, four of five NWHL teams play in NHL teams' practice facility, with seating up to about 2000 max. The other is a local rec center in a Stamford park. As far as I tell, the NWHL does not publish attendance figures, however, those arena capacities are below what would be accepted for an expansion team in the ECHL, and are more in line with would be found in the Federal Hockey League or non-Major Junior ice hockey. (Although every game so far at the TRIA Rink for the Whitecaps have been reported as "sold-out", but with a four-game sample size.) As to "fully-professional", as of last season both the NWHL and CWHL pay player salaries, but not nearly enough for the players to not also need a second job in order to make a living. On the other hand, I don't agree that either being widely spectated or being well-paid directly implies notability per the WP:GNG, which is more about significant independent media coverage of each person as an individual. Although it can, and usually does, correlate (more spectators -> more media). Yosemiter (talk) 17:56, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Note the hockey-specific notability criteria are used as a predictor that the general notability guideline can be met. If it can be shown that the general notability guideline is met, the article can be kept. The hockey-specific criteria are just there to keep obvious cases from being quickly deleted, so they are set very conservatively. isaacl (talk) 21:54, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

I've also raised this issue in the past. I've never come across a criteria which extremely explicitly discriminates against women's sport before, and I've seen articles deleted because of it where a man in the exact same equivalent league with the exact same equivalent referencing would be a unanimous keep. It's an odd one out - I can't think of another notability criteria on Wikipedia period which specifically names only men's competitions as resulting in notability (and yet purports to cover women). I couldn't care less about hockey as an Australian, but it sits very badly with me. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:08, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

WP:NBASKETBALL comes close. Players are notable if they play for the NBL but not the WNBL. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:29, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Which is absurd. The University of Canberra Capitals were far more likely to be household names in their area than the Sydney Kings were in theirs, with the newspaper and television coverage to boot. This is a perfect example of where the assumptions a minority of editors make break with reality. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:52, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

For better or worse, the general notability guideline is based on a subject receiving suitable coverage in independent, non-routine, non-promotional, reliable sources. The sports-specific notability guidelines do not seek to replace the general notability guideline, so equivalence of achievements is not used to determine their criteria. The criteria are set based on their ability to predict the existence of suitable sources such that the general notability guideline is met. isaacl (talk) 08:44, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Except that they're not - they're based on an assumed notability, regardless of its relationship to actual sources. And this is is how you can have a male player considered notable and a female player considered not notable with the exact same sourcing - and a level of sourcing that is extremely common across Wikipedia's sports coverage generally at that. There is no reasonable basis for holding women to a higher sourcing standard than men for the sole reason that they're women. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:52, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

If suitable non-routine, independent, non-promotional reliable sources can be produced, then the article can pass an article for deletion discussion. In addition to not setting a lower bar, the sports-specific notability guidelines are not used to set a higher bar, either. There are plenty of members of the hockey WikiProject who would love to have more coverage of women hockey players and would back up any discussion if the sources are there. isaacl (talk) 18:09, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

@The Drover's Wife: Except "a male player considered notable and a female player considered not notable with the exact same sourcing" is not true. In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tatiana Rafter, I immediately pointed out two other male players with more coverage of the so-called "exact same sourcing" that were deleted (here and here) without argument in the same time frame. Yosemiter (talk) 19:03, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Number 57 is right. Quite frankly, most Women's sports receieve nowhere near as much coverage in sources of any kind compared to the equivalent Men's sports. It's not our job to give coverage to Women's sports where reliable sources don't just because the Men's equivalent gets covered by reliable sources. The WP:NSPORTS SNGs should make clear where coverage is equivalent (e.g Tennis), and where it isn't (most other sports). Iffy★Chat -- 12:09, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

• Is the criteria for women hockey players not also significant writing in reliable source texts? Is there some extra hurdle for writing articles about female hockey players? --Jayron32 14:05, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • This isn't about an extra hurdle. What WP:NHOCKEY provides is a substitute for significant writing in reliable sources. There just needs to be a record of having played at a certain level or in certain number of games, rather than an article discussing a given player. The criteria seem to be tied to the sizes of the audiences for the various leagues. Where audiences are large, this criteria is saying that players can be well-known in the Wikipedia sense because they have been seen by large numbers of people, rather than having in-depth written coverage. StarryGrandma (talk) 16:46, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    • If you don't have reliable sources to add content to articles, where are you getting the information you are putting in articles? --Jayron32 16:50, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
      • The issue is notability. If a person is notable enough for an article, then local newspapers, interviews, team websites, and other sources that don't establish notability are fine for content. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:05, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
        • That's bass-ackwards. It is the newspapers and interviews and other sources that establish notability. Please read WP:GNGorWP:42 or the like. The lack of reliable, independent source texts is what determines whether or not we have an article. The only reason for the concept of notability to even exist at Wikipedia is to establish if we have enough useful source text to even bother writing the article. If the source text exists, we write it. If the source text does not, we don't. It's not more complicated than that; any confusion caused when understanding the concept of notability at Wikipedia is largely caused by people who couldn't find enough good source text to write articles about things, so tried to create loopholes in this otherwise sensible standard. --Jayron32 18:05, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
          • • Not really, the criteria is significant commentary, beyond WP:ROUTINE. Having a source that says Bob Smith scored two goals in a minor league game in a local newspaper is not the same as a, e.g. Newsweek interview with the person. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:12, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
              • That's about content not about notability. We would never write about the performance of a single, routine game in an article about an athlete. If the entirety of a person's life story exists entirely of such writing, then they aren't notable, per WP:GNG, no matter what their job title is. The whole point of notability is to establish that enough good content can be put in an article. You've just brought up an example of content that would never be added to an article. --Jayron32 18:26, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
    • The sports-specific notability guidelines do not provide a substitute for meeting the general notability guideline. They just provide a buffer to avoid quick deletion when there is very good reason to believe that the general notability guideline can be met. (This was the consensus agreement when the guidelines were created, and it has been affirmed many times since then.) isaacl (talk) 18:15, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Here's what I wrote in an earlier discussion.

Simply put, the caliber difference and the visibility of women's hockey/NWHL in general is what makes the NWHL players less notable than NHL players. The NWHL is a 3 year old league, 5 teams, with a 2.5 million dollar budget, which more or less bring it to par with the NHA. The NHL is over 100 year old, has 31 teams, and is considered the premier hockey league in the world, with revenues in the $2.5 billion range. While NHL teams are exclusively North American, it draws players from all over the world because no other league compares to it. Norway women don't train for years hoping to be part of the NWHL. While the NWHL may want to be the equivalent of the NHL for women, if you compare its status amongst in women's hockey, it falls short of the status of the NHL in men's hockey.

This still applies. When leagues have equal status in a sport, leagues should be treated as equivalent for notability. The top male/female leagues of tennis, badminton, ping pong, curling, bowling, etc... have equal status. The top male/female leagues of hockey, baseball, basketball, football, don't. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:19, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't really want to repeat what I wrote at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tatiana Rafter again, but the short version is that GNG-worthy coverage needed to consider ALL players in the CWHL and NWHL notable is too inconsistent. It is mostly relegated to coverage from the local NHL team's SBNation site, less than that of the NHL team's AHL affiliate, and tends to come from the more blog-like posts on that site rather than the paid editors (SBNation is a bit of mix these days). So the hockey project treats women hockey players on a case-by-case basis for GNG, some of which pass. Having spent some time trying to fix women's team pages this year in the CWHL, I have had a hard time finding reliable sources from as recent as 2010 (as I mentioned at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Archive72#Looking for some clarification) when the CWHL appears to have only been consistently covered in personal blogs until a championship game. As discussed in that AfD, women's hockey gets about as much coverage on its own as a niche sport like water polo or lacrosse (which also do not have a SNG, but there may be other reasons for that). Yosemiter (talk) 18:41, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Also, as it pertains to women's teams, they are presumed notable in both the CWHL and NWHL. However, as I pointed out in the above archived discussion, finding reliable references for many of the teams from prior to about 2014 has been quite difficult. I challenge any editor to find what arenas the Quebec Phenix played their home games in reliable refs, without using any wikipedia references (because I had to fix them using recently, it was apparently wrong here for years). Yosemiter (talk) 14:47, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

A tricky situation here. Should NHOCKEY be gender blind or not, in its application to ice hockey? GoodDay (talk) 18:22, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

As much as it pains me to say it, no, it shouldn't. NHOCKEY, like all of NSPORTS, is essentially a shortcut to answering "does this person have enough non-routine coverage to make them notable per GNG?". While playing a game in the NHL or 200 games in the AHL is a pretty good indicator that the person gets non-routine coverage, thanks to bias in public interest (as reflected in the media), the same isn't true for women's hockey. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:34, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Then there's the transgenders in ice hockey & how NHOCKEY should deal with them. GoodDay (talk) 19:01, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Okay, so technically gender of the player doesn't actually matter, it's whether they play in a men's leage or a women's league. If a transgender person (or a woman for that matter) played in the NHL or 200 games in the AHL, for example, they would pass NHOCKEY. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:13, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Harrison Browne did receive plenty of coverage in the NWHL as transgender, but not really for anything that could be written as a NSPORT-type SNG, just that fact that he was transgender and playing hockey. As for women in the AHL, if it were to happen, they would almost certainly (speculation of course) meet GNG for the rarity of it. In the times that women have played in the pro leagues that are traditionally male (as there are no league bylaws stating a player must be male), they have received coverage for it (Shannon Szabados, Manon Rhéaume). But I am also unaware of any female players that have played in the men's leagues (at any level) that did not also play for an Olympic team anyways. Yosemiter (talk) 16:32, 1 November 2018 (UTC)