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Obsolete policy proposals appearing in Google answers
If you do a Google search for "Do Wikipedia edits have to be approved?" the first search result is a link to Wikipedia:Edit Approval. Google displays a passage from it, highlighting "If an administrator or a person who is considered trustful by any two administrators believes the edit is a valuable contribution to Wikipedia, they will approve the edit." Does anyone know how to ask Google to stop coughing up historical policy proposals as answers to questions? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:32, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I see a "Feedback" link at the bottom right of the snippet, I was able to click that and select that it was "Inaccurate content" and then explain why. How Google actually take that feedback into account is another question, but maybe if enough VPM watchers do the same thing it could help. the wub"?!"22:05, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be very surprised if Google took the slightest interest in a few complaints about their search engine. They've been misrepresenting AI-generated nonsense of their own as Wikipedia content for years, and clearly don't care about inaccuracies as long as they can generate search results that look superficially convincing - what AI does best. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:20, 9 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The disadvantage would be making it difficult for those who are specifically searching for particular pages to find them. CMD (talk) 03:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's a difficult question. I would like to say that people who believe AI-generated nonsense only have themselves to blame, and that we should leave people who want to find out whether a proposal has been rejected before in peace, but lots of people seem to prefer to believe the AI-generated nonsense. Is it our job to protect people, and Google, from themselves? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:50, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you have a deep hole on your property, you put up a fence. It'll stop most people from falling in, and if someone really wants to climb under the fence--whether to study the hole or out of stupidity--you did your part and you're innocent. But if you don't put up a fence and someone falls in, that's completely your fault, because how were they supposed to know the hole was there?
I've reverted the NOINDEX. We shouldn't be in the SEO game. Pages that are failed proposals are just as interesting as other pages from a search perspective. Let's not second-guess what pages people want to find when they do a search, and let's not second-guess what google shows to their users. RoySmith(talk)03:15, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If we want pages to appear in normal search results, we can still exclude them from Google snippets using a "data-nosnippet" attribute. [1] Do we (or can we make) a template that would put this attribute on a page? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:40, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In theory, we should be neutral between search engines and can't hope to pander to the idiosyncrasies of all of them. In practice, Google has such a monopoly that we should probably do this. Certes (talk) 13:53, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's two distinct issues here. One is whether we should be hiding specific pages from search engines based on our evaluation of whether they're obsolete or not. The other is the mechanism used to do this. I'll stick to the first question, and my opinion is emphatically that we should not.
Our job is to write an encyclopedia. Let the search engines worry about what they index and how they present it. Once we get into customizing things to optimize how the search engines present our stuff, it'll never end. If we hide obsolete policies, why not failed FA, GA, DYK, ITN, etc, nominations? Failed RFAs? How about AfDs which ended up getting overturned at DRV? Maybe search for every place somebody struck out text and figure out how to get the search engines to ignore that?
We already have ways to mark content as obsolete, for example the {{historical}} and {{Failed proposal}} templates used here. If the search engines want to use those to adjust their internal rankings, good on them. If not, then not our problem. RoySmith(talk)14:54, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The slippery slope argument? Really?
I'd support noindexing that page. Wikipedia should be giving accurate information. If we know a failed proposal is leading to inaccurate search results, and adding one line of text to the page will fix it, we should fix it. And if that happens again with another page in the future, we should fix that page, too.
Fully agree with RoySmith. If Google produces inaccurate search results because it is misreading correctly tagged information on Wikipedia, that seems to be something Google could be interested in fixing. The search results for "questions" at Google often answer incorrectly or not the question I asked; it is not our business spending any effort on improving that. —Kusma (talk) 16:58, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Should a failed proposal ever appear in a data snippet? If not then we might add "data-nosnippet" to the {{Failed proposal}} tag. Is that any worse than using the blunt instrument of __NOINDEX__, which we already use in appropriate templates? Certes (talk) 15:26, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That would just prevent the banner from appearing in a snippet. We'd have to wrap the entire page in a div with data-nosnippet. Nardog (talk) 15:35, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What about making {{nosnippet}} render <meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:0">? I'm not sure but I think that can be thrown in the body anywhere (so at the top of a page) without having to be part of a div/span/section. We could then add {{nosnippet}}to{{failed proposal}} and other similar templates. Levivich (talk) 16:10, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So that means we'd need a closing template to close the div tag, right? Ugh. Idk, imo, all of WP: space should be no-snippeted. WP-space pages, including policy pages, are not good pages to snippet, as the snippet will undoubtedly be taken out of context (as demonstrated here). Maybe that should be the Phab request. Levivich (talk) 16:55, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm opposed; perhaps a search engine comes along that does a good job at making snippets, and we shouldn't block that. —Kusma (talk) 16:59, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's highly speculative. If and when someone develops technology that will correctly snippet Wikipedia policies and failed proposals (mark my words: that will never happen), then we can remove the no snippet. Levivich (talk) 17:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If people are running LLMs or similar on Wikipedia and ignore page headers that clearly state the page is obsolete, they clearly do not care about the quality of their results. Improving untrustworthy machines slightly can be bad if it increases trust. —Kusma (talk) 17:29, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@CertesShould a failed proposal ever appear in a data snippet? Of course it should. If I was researching failed proposals on wikipedia, I might run this search. I would be pretty annoyed if I discovered that all the failed proposals were missing from the search results. RoySmith(talk)17:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you would want it in your search results. But "data snippets" seems to be something other than search results: an AI-based or AI-like attempt to answer your question by writing an answer based on information from Wikipedia and elsewhere. Unless the question is "which failed Wikipedia proposal would have required two supporters for each edit", this isn't the right answer. Certes (talk) 17:14, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some people prefer to use their favorite web search engine to find old conversations, etc., which can include "historical" pages. I have done it myself, though I'm generally happier with the internal search, as it correctly handles "shirt" -stripes searches, and others don't. (As a general rule, Duck Duck Go gives me pages that still include stripes, and Google gives me pages that don't include shirt.) I wouldn't want to break searching in general, but when we have a known problem, I don't mind doing what we can to fix it. It's more important to me that people understand how Wikipedia works than that we maintain a consistent system internally.
That said, I do sometimes wonder where all y'all are when the question is about "letting" Google index new articles. I see several people here saying it's not our job to protect Google from a known-bad page, but I feel pretty lonely in conversations about whether unknown-and-probably-okay articles should remain NOINDEXd to protect Google's search results from something that definitely doesn't qualify for speedy deletion but isn't in very good shape. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've complained to Google as The wub suggested. Pinigng NPerry (WMF) in case he knows someone at Google to notify as well. In the meantime I'd support a NOINDEX of all failed proposal pages because misinformation is bad, and misinformation about Wikipedia is ultimately bad for Wikipedia, regardless of whose fault it is. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:21, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(This box only shows for autoconfirmed users.) WTF? It's bad enough we're talking about manipulating how the search engines index particular pages, we've got warning boxes on our own site that we hide from unconfirmed readers? What's next, shadow banning? Enterprisey (my apologies for the tone) can you explain why you thought this was a good idea? RoySmith(talk)16:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Since the box says "Feel free to move to a better title", and only autoconfirmed editors can move pages, it's not unreasonable to restrict the box to people who can actually do the proposed task. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The more I think about it, the more I think that Wikipedia should nosnippet the entire website. I don't trust snippet algorithms to accurately summarize Wikipedia articles (nevermind our policy pages), or to grab the best excerpt from articles--even when it's grabbing a portion of the lead, it might mislead readers by grabbing the wrong portion and presenting something out of context. Since nosnippet is not the same as noindex, it would still allow people to search for and find information from Wikipedia, it would just stop the unreliable snippets from being presented to readers who are searching for stuff. Let them click on the link and read the Wikipedia page in context. Levivich (talk) 16:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitration committee 2023 election: nominations to start in a month
The nomination period for the 2023 arbitration committee election will start in just under a month. If there is someone you'd like to see run, or if you want to know someone else's plans before making your own decision, I encourage you to talk to them now, well in advance of the election. For more information about the work involved with serving on the committee, see the arbitrator experiences page. isaacl (talk) 22:51, 16 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Review and comment on the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection rules package
Please review and comment on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection rules package from now until 29 October 2023. The selection rules package was based on older versions by the Elections Committee and will be used in the 2024 Board of Trustees selection. Providing your comments now will help them provide a smoother, better Board selection process. More on the Meta-wiki page.
What the difference between Dissolution, Collapse and Breakup of states/countries? Why we call Breakup of Yugoslavia but Dissolution of the Soviet Union? Kaiyr (talk) 04:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure where I should bring this up. I guess this is the best place? This is about Norwegian geographical names, specifically SvarthukeninSvalbard. Once named Negro Point by English sailors, changed in two steps to the current Norwegian name... but does the English name for a location follow name changes in Norwegian automatically? The impact and interest for the place should be minimal for English speakers so maybe it does not matter. If you have an opinion, please comment in Talk:Svarthuken. BRG Hubba (talk) 13:15, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done Edward-Woodrow • talk 00:22, 10 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
