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Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
Recently a number of Lists of UK Bus Routes have come up for AfD, two closed on Delete and more closed on No Consensus.
Postdlf's closing statement on the last of these would seem sum up the problems associated with these debates:
The result was NO CONSENSUS. ...to delete outright, at least. The principle Thyduulf supports is unresolved (see also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of bus routes in Peterborough) as to whether such bus route lists should be viewed as in furtherance of Wikipedia's coverage of real places, or should be viewed as a WP:NOTDIR violation. The assertion that "Wikipedia is not a bus directory" doesn't help answer the question, even if "true" (i.e., consensus-supported interpretation), as what makes an article a "directory" or not can be a matter purely of detail and presentation (e.g., including ephemeral info such as timetables, street intersections for bus stops) rather than subject matter. Particularly given the vast number of bus route articles that exist (take a look atCategory:Bus routes in England, for example) it would probably be best to have an RFC or other centralized discussion to resolve the issue, rather than try to delete individual lists here or there when the reasons for deletion target the whole subject rather than being specific to that list. This particular list is unsourced at present, but I do not see an argument that it is unverifiable, nor is there a clear way to apply WP:GNG here.
Some of these articles are sourced to Primary sources - Timetables, etc - others remain unsourced.
The arguments against are that the articles fail WP:N, WP:NOTESAL, WP:NOTDIR, WP:NOTTRAVEL, WP:SAL amongst others
The arguments for are that such lists do not form a directory or travel guide (removing WP:NOT arguments), that the lists are WP:V, and that if the list meets WP:5P (section #1 - Wikipedia incorporates elements of general and specialized almanacs, and gazetteers.) then notability can be established by the number of sources even if those sources do not meet WP:GNG.
Whilst I've !voted Delete for these AfD's I think there are some ways the lists can be integrated into Notable Articles - For instance some lists are contained not in a SAL but within the articles on the operating companies within each region (articles on first Bus are good examples like First Aberdeen) , Also in some cities a SAL may actually meet GNG and could be justified in remaining.
Finally WikiProject Buses previously considered a set of notability guidelines for Lists of Bus Routes, their now inactive guideline read:
Generally, if the bus routes in an area descended from streetcars, a list is appropriate, and if the system did not exist at all until the 1990s, it is probably not. In between those extremes, use your own judgment.
currently I see no evidence that the age of the routes is being taken into account by the editors creating some of these lists.
So the questions needing discussed.
Are lists of Bus routes automatically notable, even if GNG cannot be met?
Do Bus route lists establish a directory or Travel guide failing WP:NOT?
if not automatically notable, Should a Guideline be established to differentiate lists of routes that are automatically notable due to their longevity, and those that are notable for more recent reasons?
I believe they should be treated the same as databases. The information contained is not notable, in fact shouldn't be referred to unless as a primary source relating to information given by a secondary source. Dmcq (talk) 15:10, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No special case of notability for any type of schedule that is subject to change - that includes busses, trains, subways, airlines, etc. If the route is notable via the GNG (which I'm sure there are some examples from major cities), an article about it would make sense but even then, the detailed route schedule wouldn't make sense (it's one thing to say "the route is renown for regular hourly punctuality" as a general comment, and a full list of every stop and timetable). --MASEM (t) 15:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think our coverage of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. and U.K. is an area where we are producing huge volumes of content that are unlikely to be the sort of thing that benefits our users. There is this idea that individual subway stations and now even bus stops and routes are notable and should be included here. What's next? Taxi stands? Cross walks? A major metropolitan transit authority is notable. The individual routes driven by it's buses are not. The individual stops on a railroad or subway are generally not, although there are some exceptions such as Victoria Station which has a fully fleshed out article with 40+ sources. A bus route is extremely unlikely to ever have that depth of coverage. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
At least one bus route has GA status - The Witch Way, which I wrote based on a whole string of sources I found by accident. Others such as London Buses route 73 are notable but aren't as well written. Lists of bus routes are different in that the general topic doesn't usually receive coverage as a whole, but individual members or smaller groups often do. Perhaps prose articles about the buses in a town or county with written information about individual routes would be a better way forward. Buses in Bristol is a good example, but even that benefits from not having to cover the information in List of bus routes in Bristol. Alzarian16 (talk) 15:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A few thoughts:
These articles are not schedules. Schedules contain times of arrival and departure, these articles don't (or shouldn't). Anybody who cannot even realise this basic fact before spouting off about how they violate this or that, doesn't deserve an opinion at Afd or in this Rfc.
These articles are not directories. An actual directory of bus routes would contain information on all stops and all streets served. These don't (or shouldn't). Again, people who don't realise this should have their views weighted accordingly.
These articles are not even decent travel guides. They are most certianly not intended to be travel guides, whatever anyone thinks. No date of last update is given, no tourist information or telephone helpline information is given, nothing you would find on an actual, useful, usable, travel guide is included in the articles, except the route number, operator, and major way points. This would appear in a travel guide, and it would also appear in an encyclopoedic record, if it wished to document bus routes in an area. These are as much travel guides as road maps are tbh. And Wikipedia has no problem with documenting what road goes where as being a 'travel guide'.
Merging to company articles is not a satisfactory alternative. Right across the country many routes are operated by multiple operators, often with the same number, or if not, the exact same route. And a good many individual routes have two different operators - a daytime commercial operator and an evening/weeked subsidised one, again with the same route and number. Merging all of this to company articles would simply be a waste of reader's time, and be a pointless potential sources of confusion/obfuscation, if it is accepted that lists of routes is valid content. Infact, several companies don't even have articles, where would their routes get documented, if not in a 'bus routes in place' type article?
Primary sources exist in abundance, verifiability of any of this content is never an issue frankly, and while it can get out of date if not updated by editors, that's never been a reason for deletion anywhere on Wikipedia
Changes to bus routes, either individually if the change is siginificant enough, and especially if changing whole networks, will always get at a minimum, independent secondary coverage in the local news. Some will even be protested. Improvements or initiatives, especially governemnt funded ones, also always get their fair share of free publicity. There is no way that national coverage would ever happen, but then again, what national coverage ever exists for schools? Or any other local type of infrastructure that Wikipedia documents?
Having said all that, while I would never in a million years waste the time trying to looking for GNG type coverage of a route directory, I cannot see how anybody can predict what might be found by someone motivated to keep such an article. So, I see no way that the status quo can be improved by a guideline, or by declaring a straight yes/no as to automatic notability. Sending to Afd will have to remain the status quo imho. At best, I would recommend such articles should be kept to county level and above, as these are the level at which bus services are provided/regulated, and that such lists should be incorporated into wider 'bus transport in X' type articles (but per PRESERVE, not deleted until that happens). MickMacNee (talk) 16:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's also the issue of whether specialist sources like Buses MagazineorBuses Yearbook etc etc are GNG type coverage, as they do contain coverage of whenever major routes/networks are changed. I used to think not, but having seen what sort of aviation-porn type source is routinely held up as the reason for all the 'omfg meets GNG eeeasily' type votes at Afd whenever you dare to suggest to Aviation editors that a small plane crashing in the woods kiliing 10 people but never written about again except in the likes of Flight Magazine or primary sources (which is what NTSB reports are, whatever some people say), just might not be historically notable. MickMacNee (talk) 16:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
1) If the article only cites primary sources, it's a good bet it won't pass notability. 2) The difficulty of AfD-ing something shouldn't deter us from setting a guideline on them. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite18:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yet, at the same time, if articles from a certain realm consistently survive AfDs, then the guideline needs to be revised to account for the consensus that these types of articles are considered typically notable. It's a classic case where guidelines don't accurately reflect a wider consensus. A potential pitfall, that is. oknazevad (talk) 20:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We currently have 168 articles with intitle:"Bus Routes" - That suggests 168 lists (there may be a few that aren't lists) Of those 11 have been to AfD (with one 2nd nomination - London) 6 AfDs were No consensus on virtually the same grounds as above - 6 AfDs were keep - yet reviewing them I find them much closer to no consensus - for instance Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Colombo Bus Routes which only had one vote more towards keep. What's worse is that even when these articles are kept they can remain unsourced and unimproved for years after the AfD - even when the closing Admin specifically mentions this needs done. A further 18 not included in the current 168 have actually been deleted.
Above this we have 305 Articles on individual bus Routes - I think 69 have been to AfD with 12 Keep, 8 NC, and a further 22 Deleted. So for both there is currently a balance of keeps and deletes. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 21:55, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
305 sounds too low. Category:Bus routes in England and its four subcategories have 362 between them (it used to be over 600, but many have been redirected to lists or deleted). There are plenty more for other countries too (80 for Canada, about 60 for the USA and 40 in Bucharest to name but a few). So anything that comes out of this discussion will have wide-ranging consequences
Speaking only for the UK, there have been two previous attempts to clean up bus route articles: one in May 2009 as a result of Wikipedia:WikiProject Buses/UK bus route quality drive, which redirected a lot of poor articles but did little to improve the 400 or so that survived, and one in April 2010 which took in this discussion, thirty AfDs and two ANI threads, and basically led to a few articles being improved, a few being deleted, and a proposed task force that never got off the ground. Let's hope this one achieves more, or we'll be at arbitration by next year... Alzarian16 (talk) 22:06, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm agreeing with what Beeblebrox wrote above. While I admit to being a staunch inclusionist, I have a hard time imagining why anyone would want to consult Wikipedia for this kind of information. How does having having a separate list of bus routes, without detailed schedule or route information, meet a need that having articles like Public transportation in XorPublic transit in X fails to address? Even interurban bus routes can be handled with a sentence in the respective articles, e.g. "Weekly bus service from here to there is provided by Acme Coach". I'm open to persuasion that I'm wrong, but I just don't see a need for these kinds of articles. -- llywrch (talk) 22:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This comment by MickMacNee, caught my attention '"Infact, several companies don't even have articles, where would their routes get documented, if not in a 'bus routes in place' type article?", If the company is not notable enough for an article, how could it's product (a bus route) be notable? The answer to MickMacNee's question is that bus routes get documented in a bus schedule, which Wikipedia is not. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I had the same question and you beat me to it; There was a comment in one recent AfD that suggested that "scheduled public transport are generally considered notable"; if this is a widespread presumption of notability it doesn't seem to be vindicated by available sources. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Bus routes aren't 'products', they are part of physical geography. A 'bus routes in X' article is in no way comparable to a 'list of company X's products' article. Not least because they include routes from different operators. To suggest we would only include routes by companies with an article is absurd. And that comment was a rebuttal of the merge argument, it was not an argument that the articles themselves are automatically notable, so you were rebutting a point I never actually made. And as I said above, people who cannot appreciate the difference between a route and a schedule should have their opinions weighted accordingly, they aren't the same. MickMacNee (talk) 11:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry but Bus Routes are not physical geography in the way that a road or train line are. They are constructs that may have similarities to physical geography but they arbitrarily change at the whims of Drivers, Schedulers, Road Works, Weather conditions; even the time if day. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:31, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, not at all. While the actual route taken on any one day may change due to transient effects, the design of the route is very much a fixed item, which does not infact change, in the UK at least, half as much as some here might want to make out. And how many times has this got to be said? The issue is documenting routes, NOT schedules (timings, frequencies etc). And as someone else said I think, it's surprising how many routes have varied little from the (very fixed) geography of trolleybus systems, which were mostly dismantled in the 1950s. Just because they can change, doesn't mean they have, or even do. In London, the routes are infact fixed for 7 year periods, and most have not actually been altered for decades. In the rest of the UK, the design of the route is fixed for the term of the registration - penalties are imposed for not sticking to it in full, or simply withdrawing it. Active competition aside, which is also very regulated as to what you can and can't change, and why, the design of routes is only really substantially changed due to changes in physical geography, such as new roads/estates. Any large scale changes for simply operational reasons are likely to be covered by secondary sources for their basic impact on the town/city's basic transport system - just search for Firstbus and their large scale 'Overground' network changes made in many cities, and you'll find coverage all over the place in local news, for no other reason than it involves changes to the design of many long standing fixed bus routes. If all of this isn't convincing as to the physical nature of bus routes, one thing's for certain, bus routes in the UK certainly cannot simply be changed at a 'whim' of anybody, and certainly not in any unverifiable and unpredictable way, not at all. And on a side note, while trains tracks don't change, train services do - and Wikipedia devotes massive amounts of coverage to documenting such services in addition to the tracks they run over. In terms of encyclopoedic worth and verifiabiltiy/notabilty, there's really not much difference between train services and bus routes tbh, not in the UK at least. MickMacNee (talk) 13:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"there's really not much difference between train services and bus routes"; Per WP:STATION If it does not meet GNG, include the station or line in a parent article. It is pretty simple either there are independent source the meet GNG or not, if there are add them to the article and it passes WP:N. Else delete or merge and redirect. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't see the revelance of guidance on what to do for individual station articles has to articles about whole bus route networks. Particularly when there would be no merge or redirect target for several of the routes, as already said. If your'e trying to claim that the millions of train services (not lines) are backed up by GNG type coverage, I think your'e just wrong. If you're trying to simply say list of bus routes must have GNG coverage, I haven't actually disagreed with you there have I? MickMacNee (talk)
We agree that each article needs to meet GNG, I don't see what the relivance of what "no merge or redirect target" is. If it fails WP:N it either gets deleted or it merges, if there is no place to merge to then you either create the article (assuming it meets WPN), or you delete the content without merge. A completely off topic example would be an article on the "left foot of thumper", if his foot does not meet WP:N, then we can merge and redirect to the artilce on Thumper (Bambi), or up the next stage to Bambi, failing that up the next stage to Walt Disney. If the only place to merge to is content on "left foot of Thumper" is to Walt Disney, then merge and redirect there, where it may stay (or more likely) be deleted. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's an important issue being avoided here: bus routes, unless shown otherwise, are transient. In other words, ignoring the asserted case of the UK, bus routes can be changed, dropped or renamed at any time. While in many cases the transit organization must negotiate some amount of government red tape, a bus route is far more transient than either a road or railway. In those cases, there is the cost & labor required in acquiring right-of-way, & creating the infrastructure. (Admittedly, there are temporary railroads -- they were common in the early 20th century & used in the NW United States to move harvested timber by loggers -- but these individual railroads would not be notable by Wikipedia standards.) This whole issue is, IMHO, just another example of Wikipedia editors confusing the trees for the forest: we have countless articles on specific subjects, some highly developed, yet generalized articles on more generalized subjects lack proper attention. -- llywrch (talk) 19:47, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm surprised that there hasn't been any discussion yet of municipal/public bus service coverage versus commercial bus service coverage. From List of bus routes in Bristol, it looks like even the "city, suburban, and county services" are run by private companies (in addition to the "coach services") rather than government transit authorities? I can see an argument to some extent for treating municipal transit authority bus routes (the kind you will find in American cities) as infrastructure, even tolerating some primary sourcing for the sake of completeness (and such primary sources would ultimately be produced by municipal transit authorities, and so reliable). Given the vicissitudes of public funding, service coverage to needed areas, etc., you would even expect a good degree of (local) secondary source commentary on individual routes whenever changes are proposed, at least. But is there any reason to treat commercial bus lines the same way rather than impose the standard notability requirements, and the usual summary treatment of stating that "Company X services Towns A, B, and C"? postdlf (talk) 12:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see no reason to do so. Municipal ownership and operation is only a tiny part of UK bus provision - only in Northern Ireland and a few remaining outposts. There's no difference in reliability between sources from local authorities and private companies, and local authorities tend to provide information on both anyway - even wholly commercial services have to be registered as regards timing/route details for set periods of validitiy. London aside, where buses are still run by (many) private companies even though the network is municipally designed, on the whole the only role local authorities play elsewhere in GB is to subsidise socially necessary routes not provided commercially - and these in no way can be logically seperated from the commercial networks, not least as they mostly parallel them, just in the evenings/weekends. As such, I don't think comparisons to US authorities/practices is relevant really, and to consider one system notable and the other not, would probably be a case of WP:BIAS. MickMacNee (talk) 13:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Prior to 1986, we had three kinds of bus operator in Great Britain - those owned by one or more of the local authorities (which were generally confined within the boundaries of the local authorities concerned, except where one LA operated services on behalf of another); the state-owned operators, which agreed their areas of operation amongst themselves; and the independent privately-owned operators. Bus operators falling into either the second or third group had to get a license from the local authority, and if a bus route crossed a local authority boundary, it needed licensing by both authorities.
Bristol was a city with no purely municipal bus operator - all the bus services there were provided by the Bristol Omnibus Company, which was jointly owned by the state and by Bristol City Council, and whose area extended many miles from the city boundary - they had depots as far north as Cheltenham, as far east as Swindon, and as far south as Warminster, and operated even further - such as to Oxford, some 70 miles from Bristol.
In 1986 we had Bus deregulation in Great Britain, which had several effects: the larger operators were broken down into smaller units; all the state-owned operators were sold into private hands, as were the majority of the municipal operators (a minority, such as Reading Transport, remain owned by the local authority); all the boundaries and area agreements were dissolved; licensing was relaxed but not entirely eliminated - operators could, technically, run buses wherever and whenever they liked provided that they gave the local authority eight weeks notice.
This is why there are now so many private bus operators in Bristol: the state aren't allowed to, and the city council is discouraged from doing so. Bristol is by no means the worst case; Manchester is utterly crazy. London is now the only part of Great Britain where the local authority has any proper control over the bus routes, and even there, they're all privately-operated. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:11, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that modern bus routes are encyclopedic. I wouldn't necessarily object to a List of bus routes in Hometown that says things like "Route 2: serves northeast end of town, running from downtown to the Foo Hospital and Public School #3", but except for WP:SIZE issues, I think such a description should would be better off in the article about the agency that operates the routes. I would not include a complete list of stops anywhere: That job should be delegated to the bus agency's own website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Break
This RFC never closed, as it was archived instead, however it has subsequently received a further comment whilst in the archive which may inspire further comment; and as it is relevant to a current AFD it seems prudent to get it closed formally. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:18, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Another comment from those supporting these articles which might inspire further debate on the subject:[reply]
If these routes have been mapped interdependently of the operator (By Local authority, or Federal mapping agency) then this map is a reliable secondary source asserting the notability of the route system.
YMMV Buses are much the same as trains, planes and other forms of mass transit. The extent to which they are notable varies and our coverage will vary accordingly. Each case therefore has to be judged on its merits. London buses certainly merit detailed coverage as there are copious sources which detail their history. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When in question, notability is pretty easy to show. Add independent reliable secondary references to the articles. If there are severel it is notable if, not... JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:24, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with both points but several AfDs are closing where the subject does meet what would be considered notability for any other subject and are bending policy and guideline in a manner that takes extreme liberties with the intent/spirit of these guidelines. However closing admin's have little guidance on whether the liberal interpretation is a valid interpretation and have been closing on no consensus rather than a keep or delete. In general the history of an extremely large city's bus routes are liable to be the subject of reliable secondary analysis so List of bus routes in London is sourced to the Guardian Newspaper and works specifically about the history of those routes, similarly List of bus routes in Manhattan is sourced to the New York Times, as well as Histories of the routes. By contrast a small city, large conurbation, county may have sources that discuss bus transport within the area but only give a general overview of any actual routes or network - in this case a prose article similar to Buses in London, or Buses in Bristol or a history of a specific operator such as History of Lothian Buses is more appropriate than these list articles and a condensed list of important routes should be discussed in that article. The only exception would be if the size of the Prose article is already large where spinning the list out into another article may be appropriate (and I don't see this as the current case with List of bus routes in Bristol which I feel should be condensed and merged into Buses in Bristol.
The problem appears to be that lists of Bus routes are Fancruft to some people. On one users talk page, I saw him declare that he didn't care about types of bus or the general bus history of regions but he was a big fan of learning "where buses go" - to me recording "where buses go" is an indiscriminate list of information and essentially a database both of which are things that Wikipedia is not. Repeatedly I've heard the argument that these lists fulfil our remit to be a gazetteer - hence claiming notability from the existence of a map rather than a source giving an actual discussion of the route system, but even gazetteers have a level of discrimination which varies from gazetteer to gazetteer. Some gazetteers draw the line at towns of a specific size; others document every post box; we have no policy or guideline to set that level of discrimination for our articles other than the GNG, whilst some editors claim that the GNG doesn't apply to our remit to be a gazetteer - only to our remit to be an encyclopaedia. Ideally we need some sort of guideline to establish when articles for individual routes are appropriate, when articles for lists of routes are appropriate, and when articles on the general state of bus transport within a city are appropriate and this would help to guide both those editors churning out these articles particularly in the UK where a lot of the editors creating these articles (at least 3) are extremely young and perhaps need the extra guidance, but also Admins who could use a clear guideline/policy on which to judge the keep/delete arguments. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:25, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What makes something be a "secondary" source is the fact that the author based his work on stuff written by other people. "Secondary" is about how the source was created. "Independence" is about who created it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is representing someone else's data in a different format without adding some sort of analysis of the data even enough to move a source from primary to secondary? I would say no, though if the bus company routelist is assumed to be primary then that is what is being claimed about the map by those defending it as a reliable secondary source. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 20:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think bus routes could be encyclopedic, especially if someone can figure out how they get that way. I mean, some of the lunatic bus layouts in the U.S. seem like a five year old child could think of a smarter way to arrange them to get people around, and you wonder how such bad decisions are made.
Actually, I think that Wikipedia should abandon WP:NOTDIR. We have the servers, we have the people, we have the inclination --- just make directory articles like this, give them a special tag, or put them in a special namespace. They'll serve the public and do no harm. Those limitations in WP:NOT aren't some kind of moral crusade, but just a statement of incapacity from the earliest days of Wikipedia. Get rid of them. Wnt (talk) 08:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
and another AfD closes as no consensus List of bus routes in Colchester there is a need for a clear guideline on the subject . Unlike Wnt, I believe notability serves the key purpose of maintaining the signal-to-noise ratio of the encyclopaedia. Allowing directory style lists just because something is verifiable fills the encyclopaedia with articles that are of very specialist interest and may be misleading to general readers. What would people think about working together and thrashing out a potential guideline at Wikipedia:Notability_(buses)?Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:16, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let's try to avoid making a new notability guideline just because something wasn't deleted (or was deleted) to one's disliking. The problem here is understanding what WP:NOTDIR is meant to apply to. Clearly details of bus routes should be falling under that, but there's some that feel that we should have that info somewhere. (Note: I see nothing wrong with putting details of bus routes to something like WikiSource or another sister project). Maybe the better solution is a larger RFC that is to identify the role of NOTDIR with public transportation schedules, instead of trying to focus on a single AFD. --MASEM (t) 14:25, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There already is a projects specifically tailored to (at least the UK part) on Wikia but at least one of the editors responding in this latest AfD claimed that the wiki there wasn't popular enough (seen by enough people) and I could see similar arguments appearing for any sister project. My issue isn't that something wasn't deleted (or was deleted) but that now for the 5th AfD on the subject in a row no decision whatsoever has been made. It's also the second time this RFC has been delisted and a neutral summary of the points raised by an uninvolved editor or admin may assist in showing the direction required. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:51, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Since this discussion seems to have died again, is there any benefit in moving it to a centralised discussion page e.g; Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Bus Routes and is there anywhere that this discussion has not been advertised that might ignite further debate? My concern is that this discussion has generally erred on the "These lists don't belong" consensus but whenever an AfD is started a whole host of editors who are not involving themselves in this debate (despite the debate being raised at the relevant wikiproject) appear and lead to no consenus being formed. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 15:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Should passing WP:RFA be a prerequisite for being granted CU or OS rights ?
The question has been raised occasionally, and as of now it's not a requirement, but recent events brought this back on the table, and subsequent discussion indicate that a clarification on the issue would be desirable. The question of this RFC is: Should adminship, obtained via WP:RFA, be a requirement for being granted checkuseroroversight rights by the arbitration committee ? This excludes CU/OS rights acquired through arbcom elections (this would have to be considered in another RFC). Cenarium (talk) 23:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
Actually, let's make this much simpler:
1. Is adminship a pre-requisite for appointment to advanced permissions?
2. If adminship is not a pre-requisite for appointment to advanced permissions, how shall non-admin functionaries be given the ability to view deleted revisions?
a) adding the necessary permissions to checkuser and oversight bundles
b) creating a new userright that includes the viewdeleted permissions
I would prefer that we leave question 2. for later as it would be a valid question in either case since 1. should exclude arbs. Cenarium (talk) 00:14, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, election to adminship or the Arbitration Committee should be a requirement for access to CU/OS access and the functionaries list—rather than allowing the ArbCom to appoint anyone it chooses—for two reasons: (1) the fewer eyes are on a candidate, the greater the chance of an error being made; and (2) the tools should be handed out only if needed, and an editor who isn't an active admin working in areas where they're useful, or isn't member of the ArbCom, has no need for them. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS00:08, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Adminship is not an election, or so we keep being told. More particularly, there is nothing in the RFA process that vets users as potential checkusers or oversighters. Do I take it from your comments that you have no objections to having the toolkit realigned so that there is no barrier to non-admin arbitrators? Risker (talk) 00:12, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Risker, I think we should cross that bridge when we come to it. We've never had a non-admin elected to ArbCom. If we do, the community would be saying it had no objections to that person being given CU/OS access too (Foundation rules permitting). SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS00:22, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note about the RfC bot: I believe it posts everything before the first signature, so anything after that won't be part of the RfC. I've therefore moved Risker's comment into the next section. Hope that's okay. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS00:27, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No it's not okay, and I have reverted you. I agree there is value in having an RFC about this, but it is very disrespectful to the community to force them to have to revisit issues over and over. Risker (talk) 00:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved Risker's cmt because I don't see how it makes things simpler to have three questions instead of one, not mention what 'advanced permission' means, or 'functionaries', 'view-deleted', etc. Cenarium (talk) 01:16, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps because it would be best to discuss it once, rather than two or three times? Could we move this to a separate page? The village pump's purpose should typically be to point to (or transclude) the relevant discussion, not to house it entirely. –xenotalk02:37, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is standard practice at VPR, and also very common at VPT. I don't think there's a need for a separate page. I suggest to later make the proposal for the change in permissions at VPR. Cenarium (talk) 12:50, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a need to draw this out over a period of months. I am drafting a separate page for the technical implementation. –xenotalk13:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not months, just wait that this discussion concludes so that we're fixed on this issue. But seriously, this is a minor technical change, there's no need for a RFC on a separate page, VPR is largely enough. Cenarium (talk) 13:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't see the two questions as inextricable. As you know, there is now a parallel discussion on the technical change here. –xenotalk18:29, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, there are level headed, thoughtful, experienced users that I'd be more than willing to trust with advanced permissions that simply won't run through RfA. He might kill me for using him as an example, but I think of Chzz in these situations. Chzz is a highly dedicated and competent user, AfC would probably disintegrate into mush without him, he runs several smaller operations which most people will never see but which do a lot of good for the project, and he'll just about help anyone with anything if you ask him too. In short, he's an ideal wikipedian. He, however, is too afraid of the monster that RfA has become to go through it. Wikipedia shouldn't prevent good, talented people from acquiring advanced permissions just because they don't feel a desire to run through hell week. Being a checkuser is more about technical knowledge than it is about being able to protect pages. Serving on a committee to investigate abuse is more about trusting the committee members than it is about blocking. Admin and AUSC or CU are totally different things. Sven ManguardWha?00:31, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Chzz tried and failed at RfA, due to potential socking issues. Your example is a perfect example of issues that might be exposed at RfA that might not have been exposed otherwise. I am not commenting on the validity of the accusations against Chzz. Gigs (talk) 19:52, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No While RfA is certainly one vetting option, ArbCom is entirely capable and willing to vet non-administrator candidates for the advanced tools, provide the vetted candidates for a period of community feedback as long as an RfA, and select only candidates who have a level of community support consistent with the gravity of the permissions being delegated. Likewise, there are plenty of Admin functions which are unnecessary for an AUSC community member, and might even bias their objectivity, leading to the perception that the insiders are policing their own. There is no particular reason why Checkuser, for example, which has nothing to do with edits, should be handed exclusively to the same people who have been chosen for their willingness to hand out blocks, protect pages, and delete articles. Jclemens (talk) 00:47, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And how would arbcom alone be able to vet candidates equally well as all the community plus arbcom ? The more eyes, the better. Moreover, the community participation in the AUSC and CU/OS appointments process is marginal, there's been only a few comments by candidates, see below for statistics. Also, AUSC doesn't 'police' admins, it 'polices' CU/OS, AUSC members themselves have CU/OS, and furthermore every arb has CU/OS rights, so the insiders are in any case choosing their own policers, and policing their own. Cenarium (talk) 01:11, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The community is no less able to vet candidates for advanced priveleges simply because we hold the discussion at a page without the prefix Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/. For the most recent appointment process, we accepted comments from the community of any form, transmitted by any method - editors could have even lined up along Support/Oppose lines if they wanted to. If you have suggestions on how to increase community participation with a view to providing additional meaningful feedback about the candidates, do not hesitate to let us know. –xenotalk01:40, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's a progress that you make the suggestion. I recognize that there is a social argument for not requiring admin rights. The problem with the appointment is that arbs would still make the final decision. Users aren't inclined to participate because their participation has no clear weight on the final decision. A possibility would be to have a confirmation vote, i.e. users need a majority of support to be confirmed as candidate, but the comparative results between confirmed candidates doesn't bind in any way the final appointments by arbcom. This incitement would provide for more participation, and therefore scrutiny, comments. Regarding AUSC, I think they should be elected during the arbcom elections. Cenarium (talk) 01:56, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well that's just it - arbitrators will always be making the final decision on CU/OS, per Foundation-wide policy. I would not be happy to learn that a significant number of people are withholding relevant comments on the candidates because they think their comments will be ignored or not have a meaningful impact on the result: this is simply not the case. –xenotalk02:23, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The WMF policy allows for community selection if desired, but I don't think it's best. I think the community should participate more, the current practice marginalizes the community participation. What do you think of a confirmation vote ? Arbcom would still make the final appointments, but it would entice for more community participation. Cenarium (talk) 02:50, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Votes" traditionally have not provided meaningful feedback to either the candidate or the committee, but I'd like to explore these ideas separately ahead of the next appointment process - especially if significant numbers of editors feel the current process marginalizes community participation (of this, I am not convinced) –xenotalk03:11, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, because also passing RFA provides greater scrutiny and feedback. RFAs have revealed evidence of sockpuppetry, copyright violation, and other difficultly identifiable inappropriate behavior. Checkusers and oversighers have had their rights stripped by arbcom because of sockpuppetry and other inappropriate behavior, all reasonable steps should be taken to ensure that the granting of CU/OS is made with the highest possible standards. CU/OS work is also similar to admin work, just more sensitive, how a user uses admin tools can help in determining if the user would use CU/OS well. You become trusted when you're scrutinized enough and nothing is found that can make you untrustworthy. CU/OS is so highly sensitive that it requires a high level of trust, so we should ensure that candidates are scrutinized enough. RFA is an imperfect process, but it helps in providing scrutiny, the AUSC or CU/OS appointment process alone is not sufficient, as currently practiced it doesn't invite much community participation, RFA has been consulted 4 times more than the AUSC appointments page during the community consultation period [1][2]. Of course plenty of non-admins are trustworthy, but we shouldn't think that the AUSC or CU/OS appointment process are in any way less daunting than RFA, arbs ask you private questions, you need to identify to the WMF which is a significant step, people can ask questions and comment on you in public. There are also practical reasons, in order to perform their work efficiently, oversighters need to be able to delete pages. Cenarium (talk) 00:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, what this shows is that even with all the scrutiny that RFA provides then that Arbcom and other users provide, we still have issues. So we need to use the highest reasonable standards, which includes requiring RFA. Cenarium (talk) 01:23, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest it reflects more on the fact that being an administrator and being a good checkuser/oversighter are not related issues. Risker (talk) 01:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If someone finds evidence that the user has sockpuppets, then it doesn't matter that he's a CU/OS or admin, he should have all rights removed. Cenarium (talk) 01:45, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cenarium, I believe you are doing a disservice to the few users who have had the checkuser/oversight permissions removed on this project. I've been involved in all of these removals, I think, and I don't recall any that involved sockpuppetry. I believe you are thinking about another project. Risker (talk) 02:19, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That was an example of difficultly identifiable behavioral issue, not implying anything. To clarify, of course the rights are different, but all require common standards. Greater scrutiny can provide for more likelihood to detect difficultly identifiable behavior (such as sockpuppetry, copyvios, etc), and even if the appointment process were improved considerably, the appointment process + RFA would be better. Cenarium (talk) 02:46, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's so much wrong with this that I'm not sure where to start. The economic concepts of diminishing returns and opportunity cost are relevant here. More and more hoops to jump through will not necessarily produce better appointments, and could even make them worse by limiting the pool of potential candidates. I would also say that CU and OS, which require users to reveal their real-world identities and provide for easy removal of privileges, already provide a superior process to RFA. Good + bad != better. And I'll stop there because otherwise I'll go all TLDR. --RL0919 (talk) 04:11, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, considering the social argument against requiring RFA, that it is better to enhance the community participation and scrutiny in the AUSC appointment process directly than to use RFA in order to counter-balance. Cenarium (talk) 12:50, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. Requiring admin status to get other rights is the exact opposite of the direction we should be going. We already have too many responsibilities bundled into a single status that supposedly is "no big deal". Many voters in ArbCom elections already exercise an implicit requirement of adminship for ArbCom membership (sometimes explicit, as shown in some voter guides), and now we're talking about effectively imposing this as a requirement for Audit Subcommittee appointment. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. A stable long-term governance structure requires separation of the various responsibilities and authorities involved, so that there are some checks and balances. We should be demanding that ArbCom and AUSC members give up their admin bits (if they possess them when appointed) to eliminate the blatant opportunities for bias and conflict of interest that exist in wearing multiple hats. Now I'm not expecting that anytime soon, but at the very least we can avoid throwing even more weight into the admin role and not make it a mandatory gateway to other rights. If greater community scrutiny is desired for CU and OS permissions, then we should address that directly by altering the processes for those appointments, although frankly I'm not seeing the pressing need for that. --RL0919 (talk) 01:31, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, administrator has never been a requirement for advanced privileges and I don't see why we should start making it one now. I actually tried to give up my administrative rights at one point, but they are currently required for my duties as a bureaucrat due to objections raised to a simple technical change. I think what some administrators are forgetting is that not everyone wants to be an administrator; and further, that not everyone wants to be an administrator forever. This does not make them untrustworthy people. The fact that it is currently a technical requirement for the proper functioning of other privileges should be remedied. –xenotalk01:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Sensitive tools require very trustworthy people. Such 'powers' incentivize faking identities; people have subtle personality issues. We need many eyes to help spot early warnings. I do like the separation of powers idea. I'm primarily concerned with there being a stringent vetting process; if there were a separate process with participation and standards higher than RFA, that might be OK. However, requiring existing adminship is a great way to increase scrutiny, so everyone can see how they act with admin tools. IMO "So-and-so can't pass RFA but should get more-sensitive-than-adminship powers" argument is weak: if the community doesn't trust someone with adminship than why give them greater powers? While ArbCom might have better judgment than the broader community sometimes, going against the community's wishes itself is a bad idea. ArbCom would have to put in an incredible amount of work to equal the number of eyes something like WP:RFA provides. Quarl(talk)02:09, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No This is most definitely a social issue, as has been pointed out by Arbitration Committee members, and just illustrates the division of opinion between administrators and non-administrators. As Risker pointed out in the other discussion, all of the users who have said yes so far are administrators themselves. I remember past discussions of this nature, such as the perennially shot down VandelFighter user right of being able to block users and not having to be an administrator. In those discussions, the majority of the opposition came from admins, because the passing of such would strip down the abilities that admins had to themselves and, thus, would bring them closer to the rest of the editors on Wikipedia. I am in full support of any divestiture of user rights so that they have to be individually applied for and are not a part of the admin package. It makes it so that there aren't so much different levels of users as there are users that work in specific fields and are trusted with the user right(s) that apply to those fields. Such a system would make much more sense and would be more appropriate, since it would make it so users didn't have rights that they never use, they would only have ones that they specifically applied for because they wished to use it in their everyday activities. It would help in the trust category because it's easier to show that a user is trustworthy for this certain right than for a user having to prove they are trustworthy for the smorgasbord of, mostly unused, user rights that admins currently have. SilverserenC02:45, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No - (edit conflict) a consensus view is that RfA is for use of admin tools. Hence is not just about "is this user trustworthy?" Wikipedia should be a level playing field whereever possible. Restricting roles to admins is not conducive to this pathway. Casliber (talk·contribs) 02:47, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would amplify this by saying that RFA does not prove trustworthiness. Never has and never could under anything like the current process. What RFA shows is that a significant portion of the community is already willing to trust the successful candidate, which is entirely different from showing them to be trustworthy. Trustworthiness is best proven by giving someone a role, and then closely watching what they do with it, with the option to take the role away if it doesn't work out. In this regard the process for CU and OS is far superior to RFA. --RL0919 (talk) 04:11, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I think the current RfA system has nothing to do with trust and instead has to do with how many users like the applying editor verses how many dislike them. This is why users that are active in contentious areas (and act perfectly well there) are rarely accepted as administrators, because the opposition in those contentious areas oppose their application. SilverserenC04:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No Adminship comprises a different set of rights than CU/OS and should be judged independently. As it's quite rare for non-admins to be granted CU/OS rights, this is not a major problem. I think ArbCom is competent enough to decide who should be given CU/OS permissions and who should not. And if we trust someone with CU/OS but not sysop, then there is a serious trust problem going on in the community. I think Risker's question, "If adminship is not a pre-requisite for appointment to advanced permissions, how shall non-admin functionaries be given the ability to view deleted revisions?", is more relevant. We could, of course, simply use the researcher flag for non-admins who will need to see deleted revisions, or just add viewdeleted to OS. Either makes sense to me and should not be a big deal. /ƒETCHCOMMS/03:09, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Co-opting "researcher" is not really a viable option as it does not contain 'deletedtext'. Adding the viewdeleted bits to oversight was the most sensible solution, and as such this is what was requested. –xenotalk03:19, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. ArbCom is trustworthy enough to hand out and remove tools from people as necessary. No need to turn these permissions into the clusterfuck that RFA has become (for the record I am an administrator). --Jayron3204:57, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The unasked question is this: Does the Arbcom have the authority to make changes in the way that permissions are granted without any prior discussion with the community. I believe it does not or should not. This RfC should have occurred prior to the request for this change, and the Arbcom should practice transparency whenever confidentiality is not required. Will Bebacktalk07:05, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Very strenuously no for reasons laid out at the "subsequent discussion" link. This has little to do w/ Arbcom's trustworthiness and everything to do with preventing further spread of "adminship" as a social super-user rather than a technical position. It does not suit WP:RFA to be turned into a catch all filter for every advanced permission on the wiki. Protonk (talk) 07:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, precisely per Protonk. I'll repeat Protonk's last sentence for emphasis: It does not suit RFA to be turned into a catch-all filter for every advanced permission on the wiki.—S MarshallT/C09:43, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, but...' Adminship should not be a prerequisite, though a non-admin functionary seems only marginally more useful than a chocolate teapot to me. What should be a prerequisite is some form of community scrutiny—be it RfA, an ArbCom election or some other vote or !vote. Inevitably, in an appointments process like the one used for AUSC (while light on drama, which was pleasant), the only people who comment are those who have strong opinions and I think the holders of permissions considered "higher" than adminship should be subject to the kind of scrutiny admins get at RfA. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No as far as prescriptive policy is concerned. I agree that all user groups should generally be self-sufficient. For that reason alone I support changing the user group setup to make this a reality. We can still discuss which usergroups are considered as social prerequisites before (s)elections. In my opinion, Bureaucrats and AUSC members do not need to be admin, while Arbcom members, CheckUsers, and Oversighters should be admins. However, I see no reason to actually codify a prescriptive policy: Consensus can change anyhow till the next (s)election, and since we will always get an implicit consensus if a non-admin is (s)elected for any advanced permission we do not need to decide this now. Any editor can still maintain their personal set of requirements and test in the (s)election whether consensus is on their side. In the selection that prompted this RfC, I explicitly considered and approved the non-admin candidate, presuming that the community would welcome the diversity in that auditory role (Boy was I wrong). If consensus in the feedback was with me, well, then there you have it. To give us the freedom and flexibility to actually focus on actual suitability of a candidate, without worrying about technical framework issues or predetermined requirements (this ad-hoc culture used to be a strength of Wikipedia), we need to change our user group setup accordingly. Amalthea09:56, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. I think we should be able to split the CU/OS bits from admin bits. Speaking as an admin, CU, and OS, one does not have to be an admin, IMO, to receive the other bits. If the purpose of receiving the bits is for oversight of other CU/OSs, or even to run a CU check or judge if something is oversight-worthy, one does not have to be an admin. However, in my opinion, to follow through on said decision, such as blocking a sockpuppteer, I think the bit is necessary. I think it is reasonable to move the viewing deleted page ability into the OS usergroup. What I remain uncertain about is the ability to actually suppress or unsupress a a revision, as this is a "deletion"-type privilege which is in the admin domain. Whilst it is irrelevant for oversight of standard privilege users (as would be the case of an AUSC member), in order to follow through on a decision if something is suppression worthy, I think that the admin bit may still be necessary (although I, as always, reserve the right to change my mind if convinced by sound reasoning and arguments). -- Avi (talk) 15:19, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No Not only are the talents used to become an admin not relevant to those needed to be a valued checkuser etc., I think, in fact, that it makes more sense to require that CUs not retain or use admin tools otherwise. The primary requirement for becoming an admin seems to be to "avoid angering any substantial group of editors", which primarily means maintaining a low profile. This has absolutely nothing to do with the technical role of a checkuser or oversighter whatsoever. In fact, having the community "vet" a checkuser or oversighter is likely one of the poorer methods for choosing such technical positions. I note, in fact, that those with such rights are fully vetted as to actual identity and character, which is the logical primary real requirement, rather than jumping through the flawed (IMO) RfA process. Collect (talk) 15:30, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know But there'd better be some kind of effective scrutiny before handing over Checkuser rights. Something more than just a vote at Arbcom. CU is among the most sensitive positions here, there needs to be some sort of process above and beyond Arbcom giving thumbs up on an editor. RxS (talk) 15:40, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Arbitration Committee, in vetting and appointing the candidates, most certainly did far more to scrutinize the candidates than a simple show of thumbs. The community was also invited to scrutinize all the candidates, and still no one has explained to me how the fact that the consensus discussion was held at a page that did not begin with Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/ made it any more difficult for the community at large to provide effective scrutiny of the candidates. –xenotalk17:16, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The name of the page isn't the question. The question is enticing community participation and scrutiny. In the current practice, most users don't see the point of commenting and scrutinizing since they don't consider that their input will be of noticeable weight to the appointments. The election process used before provided for enticement, but I agree it's not that good because arbs should retain discretion in the final appointments. This is why I suggest a method of confirmation, which I think is a good balance and allow to enfranchises the community, so enticing participation. The community would vote on confirming or not a candidacy among the candidates preselected by arbcom, provide comments (private or public), and then arbcom would finally choose the appointees among the confirmed candidates (those who received a majority of support for confirmation, with no regard to comparative results). Cenarium (talk) 18:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You keep saying that ('most users don't see the point of commenting'), but I sure would like some way of determining if your statement is accurate. In any case, improving the community participation in the process is quite peripheral the question being asked here. –xenotalk18:24, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There has been much more questions to candidates in the 2009 elections, more than 300 users voted. In the 2011 elections, there's been only a handful of questions and public comments. You will note that the most supported views in the CU/OS selection RFC were for more community participation in the process. We'll likely have a definite answer on that point when the proposal is submitted (not any time soon). The question isn't quite peripheral as if we increase participation in the process, it weakens the argument for requiring RFA. Cenarium (talk) 20:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Xeno, as I understand it, Bahamut (the person you're talking about) received a "limited purpose CU-ship" for the purpose of auditing other CU's activity. Unless I'm mistaken, he didn't receive the authority to conduct CU investigations on his own, which is what we usually think of when giving the CU bit. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 02:13, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Whether AUSC members use the tools for matters unrelated to AUSC business is something that is presently left up to the subcommittee member; also, subcommittee members may have to re-run checks or to run additional checks in the course of an investigation. I'm not exactly sure what the thrust of your message is; candidates for AUSC should be scrutinized just as much, if not more, than candidates standing for straight CU or OS. –xenotalk13:10, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No - RFA is a disaster, a Lord of the Flies-esque Cool Kids Club. Put the tools in the hands they need to be in, whether or not the editor has run the gauntlet. I, for one, never will and I assume that I'm not alone in my antipathy for the whole bizarroworld RFA culture... Carrite (talk) 20:47, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
ummm .. naa Protonk puts forth a compelling narrative here. I think that if you can trust someone to do a CU, or OS, then they should be trustworthy enough to have the few extra admin. buttons, but on the other hand ... RfA has sunk some folks that would have actually been a "net positive" with the tools. Usually because of some minor "he said a bad word" or they got 1 or 2 CSD things wrong over a year ago. Don't see a reason they need to be an admin to use the tools. What WP giveith, WP can takeith away. — Ched : ? 03:04, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. I agree with Protonk that we need to consciously break the assumption that sysop is a necessary step, and with Carrite that RfA is a disaster — RfA should not be the only way to be deemed 'trustworthy' by the community. Candidates for different roles need to evaluated on their suitability for the role they are seeking. John Vandenberg(chat)07:13, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No - while I find it hard ot believe that anyone who never became an admin should be a CU or OS, but aomeone who gave it up while in good standing should be able to have these rights without getting back adminship. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu08:21, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No - even if someone went through RfA and failed before - for whatever reason - either they may have grown out of that 'reason' but still not want to run the gauntlet again (please be honest with (y)ourselves here - we're all human, we alloccasionally do something totally bloody stupid, and it's a bloody inhumane society that doesn't give people another chance to be trusted) - it doesn't mean that they couldn't now be trusted with CU and / or OS; likewise, there are almost certainly those who would use those tools very effectively and in a totally trustworthy manner who just don't want to 'do the RfA thing'. For whatever reason. Pesky (talk) 08:57, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. I fully agree with Pesky's reasoning above; there are "those who would use those tools very effectively and in a totally trustworthy manner who just don't want to 'do the RfA thing'." Guoguo12--Talk--19:49, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Much, much less blood loss. RfA is a cesspool of hatred and bad faith where old grudges are rehashed and small mistakes are overblown. It's where good editors go to be told that they're shit. It's like a dominatrix without the intercourse.... you get the idea. Nowhere else on Wikipedia is nearly that bad. People don't want to go through RfA because they don't want to suffer the process more than any other reason I've seen. Sven ManguardWha?22:58, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes Only people who have passed RFA should be authorized to do CU investigations, just like (supposedly) only duly appointed judges are authorized to order wiretaps. This discussion has confused receiving the CU bit with the authority to do investigations. We normally think of investigative authority as part of the CU appointment and that authority is what I'm saying should be limited to admins. This discussion arose because of someone getting the bit without the authority, in order to serve on AUSC. That's like a phone company security officer having the technical capability to wiretap a line by accessing the phone switch, but not the authority independent of a judge's. It's fine if the appointment process for such a person is different than that for a judge. As mentioned on the "technical RFC", I'd prefer to handle this with an "auditor" role, that includes the CU bit if necessary, but the policy difference should still be there regardless of the implementation. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 02:13, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added: to be clear, I think CU is a social and not just technical role. CU's have to be able to discuss behavioral sock evidence in private with editors, and that means they have to have some knowledge of the personalities and dramas in various parts of the project, without getting sucked into the dramas themselves. This takes good human judgment and not just technical skills. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 02:32, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes (needed) for CheckUser. Checkusers routinely get involved in dispute resolution, and routinely make public posts in cases of user dispute. They routinely issue (or endorse) blocks and other actions as part of their role. They act on users and IPs, not just content, and have a far more "general" role than Oversight. This is a different skill, and as we have seen with admins, can be done gracefully or poorly. For that reason I would want to see evidence of how a CU candidate conducts themselves with admin tools before letting them loose on CU.
No (not needed) for oversight/suppression. Oversight/suppression is a very much narrower and more straightforward tool and usually non-contentious. Use of the suppression tools follows the format "does text X fall into categories ABC?", and access to suppressed text is trust not interaction based. If Arbcom and the community agree that a non-admin shows required maturity of judgment and trust, then they will probably do oversighting well. As a far more rule-based and off-wiki tool mainly working on edits rather than editors, the manner of tenure of admin tools wouldn't add much evidence.
No, This will allow us to have non-admin members on the AUSC. The following is copy pased from WP:ARBN
I had considered putting my name in for consideration of candidacy for AUSC to represent a community (non-admin) position. I observe that adminship, while claimed to be "no-big-deal", is a "big-deal". The recent RfAs have either been gigantic landslides, schadenfreude laced inquisitons, or snowball "not a chance in hell" closes. The landslide approvals see many administrators giving weak reasoning. To me it appears like a "old boys club". Having someone on the "review" board that is not part of the club gives the community at large an opportunity to select someone they trust to review the CU/OS decisions should a objection be raised. I liken the community non-admin representative to the role of the muslim familes controlling the lock and key for the Church of the Holy SepulchreHasteur (talk) 18:21, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, because, in my opinion, the sorts of tasks that checkusers and oversighters perform are similar enough to administrators' tasks in order for them to require community consensus if the admin bit does. The ability to suppress material, and to view previously suppressed material is, after all, something like an enhanced version of the deletion right – hence, in order for a user to be able to petition for permission to view suppressed material, surely they must first have been given community trust to view deleted material? Checkusers have the ability to access non-public information which is of an even more sensitive nature than that which admins can look at (e.g. a user's deleted contributions). Again, if they are to be trusted not to mess around with the former, then presumably they initially need to be trusted not to mess around with the latter? Thus, re. Protonk and others, I feel that in this instance adminship would not be a bauble/hoop to jump through/etc., but rather a relevant indicator of proficiency in relevant fields. It Is Me Heret / c11:01, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No though per HJ Mitchell, I think that a review process for CU/OS access should be setup so that the community can have a greater say. —James(Talk • Contribs) • 9:35pm •11:35, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. Many excellent points are made here, and I'd like to add that in a Chzz-like situation. a non-admin candidate entrusted with such tools will be under an enormous amount of scrutiny, and I'm confident that any problems would be exposed in very short order. Lankiveil(speak to me)21:36, 19 April 2011 (UTC).[reply]
No. I don't find the reasons advanced for requiring otherwise compelling. Restricting the pool of candidates artificially doesn't seem like the sensible position. Angus McLellan(Talk)22:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. I considered answering the call for CU candidates a couple years ago (but withdrew due to time constraints), before I became an admin. My qualifications then and now are no different; therefore, the fact that I happened to pass RFA should have no bearing on any decision to grant CU rights to me. The same should be true for any other trusted, high-volume editor, sysop or not. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:14, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yesor they should pass a CU election with the same or tougher standards as an RFA. I do think the technological limitation should be removed so that each Wiki can make their own decision and so the decision we make isn't constrained by the software. Those who need CU tools by virtue of WP:OFFICE duties should of course be exempt provided they limit the use of their tools to OFFICE-related uses and give up the tools as soon as they are no longer working for or on behalf of the foundation. Also anyone currently holding checkuser who hasn't passed an RfA or higher should vacate that role within a year or stand for a confirmation election. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Same level of trust as being an admin, if not higher. There could be an exception for WMF duties or a steward giving themselves checkuser temporarily for cross-wiki issues. --Rschen775409:13, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all. This will make the admins more fraternity-ish. I fear that this will lead to the CU service being more enclosed and more requests being directed outside the public space. PaoloNapolitano (talk) 18:50, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No Adminship is certain, defined tools, and very narrowly defined social privilege (closing certain discussions, imposing discretionary sanctions). It should not be a gate through one must pass to stand for other roles- that makes RFA and the admin flag even more significant that they already are- which is too significant already. Courcelles19:32, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
admin required for oversight and checkuser but forbidden from 'crats Checkusers and oversight need to be trusted as shown by a successful RFA. I believe 'crats should be required to not be an admin or a bot operator, to remain neutral. Zginder 2011-04-28T02:21Z (UTC)
Yes to oversight. Only admins are allowed to view deleted revisions; no one should be allowed to delete material but not to undelete it; oversight is a method of deletion. Hence all oversight should be done by admins. In my opinion, RevDel is already being done much too quickly and much too often, so no expansion of the candidacy is desirable anyway. Wnt (talk) 08:25, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That happens precisely because the revdel tool/bit was bestowed en masse to all existing admins even though their qualifying exam did not include anything about the use of the (then non-existent) tool. So having passed the frat hazing test did not actually make them anymore competent of the use of yet-to-be-created tool(s). Tijfo098 (talk) 00:13, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe so, but the last thing we need is more people getting access to this thing. Finding crossed-out revisions in the article history has reached what NOTW would call No Longer Weird. I just saw a bunch at Talk:PlayStation 3, for example, because of someone's moralizing about a now thoroughly compromised encryption key. Wnt (talk) 02:09, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. Adminship should not be a requirement. In my capacity as an administrator and volunteer, not as an employee action. - Philippe16:55, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was recently shown the Scientific citation guidelines page by another editor. I believe this policy may be offering too liberal a precedent for attribution and verifiability, as well as the possibility of original research. In particular, the idea that a statement need not be referenced with an inline citation because it is well-known among string theorists, or even undergraduate physics majors, does not ring true to me. Am I totally off base here, or is this article not strict enough with regard to verifiability of scientific and technical content? Andrevan@04:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The guidelines are an attempt to halt rediculous referencing requirements for what should be non-controversial facts. Water is a liquid at room temperature.[citation needed] is a completely silly thing to do. The question is whether or not the material is contentious, rather than whether it is well known. This is actually the standard in most Wikipedia articles, but it becomes a bit problematic in scientific articles where something which is universally accepted, with no real challenge to its truthfulness, is also completely impenetrable to a lay person. For example, just to take a random non-scientific article, Emmanuel Servais makes a claim that he was the fifth Prime Minister of Luxembourg. This claim is uncited, but it isn't unverifiable; there's any of a dozen highly reliable and easy to find sources where I could look this up, and it isn't a highly contentious fact. I suppose there's nothing stopping me from providing a reference for it, but there's nothing about it that makes a reader say "That's total bullshit!", even one who has never heard of the that politician before. It is an uncontentious fact. In scientific articles, the same standard applies, however the text is often only understandable to people in the relevent field. Take Wittig_reaction#Preparation_of_simple_ylides as a random example, there is the sentence, uncited "The Wittig reagent is usually prepared from a phosphonium salt, which is in turn made by the reaction of triphenylphosphine with an alkyl halide. To form the Wittig reagent (ylide), the phosphonium salt is suspended in a solvent such as diethyl ether or THF and treated with a strong base such as phenyllithium or n-butyllithium:" Now, unless you've taken an introductory organic chemistry class, most people couldn't understand even every third word from that sentence. However, that doesn't mean it needs to be specifically sourced. The sentence can be verified quite easily since the Wittig reaction is part of literally every single organic chemistry textbook written in the past 20 years, the description of how to produce an Ylide is an unsurprising and unremarkable thing in the field of organic chemistry, and requires no special citation. That is the core of the SCG. It does not override the citation requirements of Wikipedia, it merely clarifies them for scientific articles, and makes special emphasis on the fact that just because something is only understood by a smaller subset of the general population, doesn't mean that it is contentious or likely to be challenged. --Jayron3204:43, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's the whole point. Making sense to a specific reader is not the standard we use, anywhere at Wikipedia. I just checked the three organic chemistry texts I have at the house, and they all dicuss the Wittig reaction. I also tutor students at several local universities; in the second semester organic class (Organic II usually, or some similar name), the reaction is taught as part of the normal curriculum. I learned it 15 years ago in much the same manner. If nearly every student who makes it through to second semester Organic chemistry is taught the Wittig reaction, and has been for decades, then it is pretty much in the realm of "common knowledge", even if that actually represents a tiny fraction of the total English speaking population of the world. So there is no need to cite a fact that is so common in its field. THAT is the core behind the SCG. --Jayron3205:04, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that "Making sense to a specific reader" is not the standard we use. But, isn't that the standard you are using to claim that we don't need to cite the Wittig reaction? If it's so common in textbooks, why not just cite one? The argument that something is common as a reason not to cite seems backward to me; all the more reason to. Andrevan@05:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Because then, in scientific articles, every sentence or every other sentence will have to have a reference, even when most of it is obvious information that is not contentious. While the layperson may not understand it, that doesn't change the fact that they won't dispute it (or if they do, they don't have a basis for doing so, since they don't know what it means). Not having to reference common facts is generally done on Wikipedia so as not to make a dense forest of reference numbers in the text that make reading articles more difficult. SilverserenC05:16, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The verifiability policy is very clear that any unsourced statement may be removed if challenged. I agree we don't literally reference every sentence as it would be impractical. But I feel like the scientific citation guideline as written is creating a looser standard, where a challenge to a statement could be refuted with reasoning like, "This is common knowledge to organic chemists." Andrevan@05:19, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I am of the opinion that there is a distinction between "the sky is blue" and "the sky is blue because...". The latter is 'common knowledge', but the reason why it is in text books is that it needs to be taught as opposed to being a property which is known and shared by casual observers. One solution to the "source but don't be crazy" is to use the General Reference method . . . but this invites the potential for edit warring over which textbook to use (the one I wrote or the one you wrote, for instance). Just because there are many sources for a fact (set of facts) does not mean that the fact (or set of facts) should remain unsourced; it is a matter of whether to source in-line or as a general reference. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 05:28, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The point is that, if someone is challenging a sentence for a specific reason beyond the fact that they don't understand it, then that means that it is contentious. Obviously, there are limits if they are trying to push a fringe version of what should be common knowledge, but that is unlikely to happen very often. The standard is written not to be used as an argument, it is just used in general to not oversaturate with references. If someone ends up challenging anything with a valid reason, then that means that the sentence is contentious and requires a source. This guideline is not meant to be used as a defense against that. If you feel there should be a clarification in the guideline that states that it shouldn't be used in that way, then I agree with that, but that doesn't change the fact that it documents common practice across Wikipedia in terms of common knowledge. SilverserenC05:39, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I look forward to taking organic chem next year then so i'll be able to understand such articles. :3 SilverserenC 05:16, 21 April 2011 (UTC
I may not have much (read: any) experience in scientific articles, but it sounds questionable to me that certain editors needn't follow the same verifiability guidelines. The cited examples like "Water is a liquid at room temperature.[citation needed]" can be solved just through the use of common sense applied on a case-by-case basis. What is contended is the stuff that a lot of people may not know. No one is knocking any editor's ability to scout out misinformation or original research, but if something ever went under the radar, an uninformed reader could read it and become misinformed on the subject (or at least misinformed from a verifiable theory to original research). Everyone agrees that stuff like "Water is a liquid at room temperature." is something that needn't be referenced. However, no verifiability period seems wrong. - The New Age Retro Hippieused Ruler!Now, he can figure out the length of things easily.05:36, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The point is that laypeople who do not understand the topic and what is or is not common knowledge would have no reason to challenge any of the information. And this guideline is not saying to put no references in an article, it's saying that you should have a few general references on the topic for a section and that's it, since there is no need to overspam every sentence. SilverserenC05:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is no actual problem concerning citations within scientific articles because any reasonable request for a citation can be satisfied. The verification policy requires that all assertions are verifiable, so if someone wanted to put {{cn}} after the Wittig reagent text mentioned in Jayron32's excellent post above, it would be fine for an editor to remove the cn and post on the talk page with a brief outline of what Jayron32 said, while mentioning one textbook with the info. If someone wanted to take it further, the matter would have to be argued out, however the Wittig reagent text is verifiable and so satisfies the V policy. While an editor might have a reason to challenge a particular assertion, if they cannot explain a basis for their challenge on the talk page other than "I didn't know that", their case is unlikely to be supported by other editors. Obviously it would be unhelpful to cite every uncontentious assertion, and an editor needs to articulate a reason before claiming that standard textbook information is contentious. Johnuniq (talk) 06:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing that says you are forbidden from citing; its just that it isn't a requirement to do so. That is, no one should be slapping "insufficient citation" tags at the top of such articles, no one should be littering them with "cn" tags, and no one should be raising objections to them at WP:FAN because of "insufficent referencing". No one is demanding that we remove sources for statements like the Wittig reaction, or a persons status as the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, nor is anyone forbidding you from adding one. But common knowledge simply doesn't need to be cited; it never has. I could also provide a citation for "Water is a liquid at room temperature". There are hundreds of books I could cite that to; but such a fact is common knowledge and so it doesn't need a citation. Lets make this clear; this isn't about forbidding people from providing citations, its about not requiring them to provide citations. --Jayron3213:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We do encounter editors who erroneously believe that the policies require every single sentence or every single paragraph to contain an inline citation, or that anything outside their personal (usually highly limited) experience must have been pre-supplied with an inline citation. Editors (vandals?) have tagged some of the most non-contentious sentences as requiring inline citations. (Real example: Someone once tagged a sentence that said "The human hand normally has four fingers and one thumb" as requiring an inline citation.) And I've run across another editor recently who thinks that he builds the encyclopedia by deleting vast swaths of material simply because the editor who added it (possibly years ago, before <ref> tags were in use on the English Wikipedia) didn't happen to supply an WP:Inline citation before he encountered it.
The actual standard is "VerifiABLE", as in "people are ABLE to verify that the information is not made up, using the resources at their disposal, including their own favorite web search engine, local library, WP:General references, and other sources named in the article". The policy is not "somebody else must have magically known this paragraph would confuse me and have pre-supplied an inline citation before I happened to read the page". WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:53, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying that literally every sentence need be cited or that I previously understood that to be the case. I'm questioning the idea that scientific articles should be held to a lower standard than other types of articles. Andrevan@15:28, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They are not held to a lower standard. The same standard applies to all areas. WP:SCG simply clarifies what the standard means in the context of scientific articles. As SCG says, "This page applies the advice in the policies, and in the citing sources guideline, to referencing science and mathematics articles." — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:43, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But they are not held to a lower standard. The requirements set out at WP:MINREF applies to all articles, regardless of subject.
SCG does not tell you that you may not provide inline citations. It does not tell you that scientific articles are exempt form the normal rules.
I don't think that is even a proper example of what we're discussing here, since the information in that article is referenced. There's no need to spam that single reference to every line in the article. It is listed as a reference and it is a reference for all of the material (since information on such a notation will cover all of it in a textbook). The tag that asks for further references is appropriate, but there is no current need for inline citations at all. SilverserenC08:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
[Edit conflict] In what way is that example a problem? This seems to be a simply definition of a notation, plus a couple of simple consequences. As such, it doesn't involve much (if any) synthesis between multiple sources (other than adding an example). I would strongly suspect that it comes from a single page or two of the cited book. The only problem I see with this example is that it doesn't give the relevant page from the book in the reference. Bluap (talk) 08:30, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't see grounds for putting in that tag. I think it was wrong as it was perfectly obvious where to look up the term. Though I'll edit the article to say 'circular permutation' too as well. Dmcq (talk) 12:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is very basic material. You would be able to find the same stuff in virtually any abstract algebra text in at least as much detail as in the article. There are three textbooks listed as references. (To compare perhaps more accessible examples, this is like requesting specific citations to statements like "Animals are composed of cells", "Eukaryotic cells have nuclei" and "George Washington was the first President of the United States".) --Danger (talk) 13:20, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Could part of the problem be that our deep science articles are generally written at a higher level than the layperson, or at least "skip" that necessary introduction and jump immediately into the deeper material where anyone that understands it is unlikely going to worry about references for it? Take for instance the Cycle notation article. Why is it important? (I know some modern algebra but this is a rhetorical question) If it is just defining a type of notation used in modern algebra, then why do we have an article about it? We don't have articles that are purely dictionary definitions, and in the same manner we shouldn't have articles that just define a set of symbols or term of art. Why couldn't this just be under permutation since it seems only to apply to that concept?
The reason I ask these questions is that the types of references that usually inline are the ones that answer these questions for the layperson that is not familiar with the topic and giving them more places to go look up details. Cycle notation does not have anything short of one lead sentence that does this. And thus, I certainly can understand the need to say "these details are all obvious from the references at the bottom and no need to cite", but that's tied to assuming that the article is written in the fashion we want for WP. --MASEM (t) 13:54, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Usually "dictionary definition" refers to an article that is nothing more than a definition, and has no reasonable chance of being expanded. Otherwise, "Cat" and "Hydrogen" would also be a dictionary definition articles, since all they do is define a certain animal and a certain element. In this case, the article is a reasonable start-length article, including a couple examples. It may stay relatively short, but that's OK. We haven't traditionally tried to merge these all into a small number of long articles. That sort of long-but-shallow article is what Britannica does, and this is one reason their coverage of math and science is so much worse than ours. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I grant that the article is not likely fully fleshed out, but it still has problems. "Examples" have no place in an encyclopedia - that's for textbooks - unless assured understanding of that concept is necessary to understand a larger one. So I can understand why one would have to tell the reader what cycle notation is before proceeding into permutation theory, and likely giving the lay reader an example, but this should not be done in standalone. WP has redirects and the like, so it is still possible to make long comprehensive articles but with necessarily short sections on key topics for the reader. Not to get too far off the point above, but the fact that there's little here for the layperson to learn in context even though it is a fundamental basic idea for those in the know means that the main editors are likely rejecting any requests to make changes because they don't feel it necessary, but the article begs for more or otherwise to be put into the scheme of a larger topic. --MASEM (t) 14:27, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Examples do have a place in an encyclopedia. They serve fundamentally the same goal as images: they help readers figure out what we're talking about.
To give a relevant example ;-) imagine the average parent faced with the sort of awful education-ese that is used in a curriculum writing. A Kindergarten student should "develop geometric vocabulary and skills to describe spatial relationships". The parent may have visions of trying to prove whether triangles are congruent, until you explain that this simply means the teacher is going to have a "math lesson" about the words near and far, and another about above and below, and possibly a lesson how to use a simple ruler. The examples make the meaning behind the jargon clear—which is important, if you're trying to reach everyone, rather than the people who are already experts in the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:25, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see no reason for any specific exemptions to WP:V. "Water is a liquid at room temperature" is an unsourced statement. We should have an inline reference, because that way, there's a link to whatever kind of text is authoritative for that - it might be an elementary chemistry textbook or a sophisticated scientific study exploring the range of liquid water from deep space to Jupiter's core. The crucial point for all to understand is that if we don't have a source, the statement should not be arbitrarily challenged --- it should only be challenged and removed as an unsourced statement if the editor proposing the removal actually has some iota of suspicion that it isn't true. Nobody should be removing unsourced material purely because it is unsourced, if they don't actually think it might be wrong. Wnt (talk) 08:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't mean that an inline citation should be required. But I think inline citations are good, and the more the better. Wnt (talk) 02:10, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The whole point of this is to make sure that articles aren't over-referenced, at least in terms of the little numbers appearing in the text. In most scientific articles, if you had to also add references for the general knowledge, you would be impeding reader's abilities to follow the text, because they would be stopped by a little blue number every other two words. A better alternative may be to have such general textbooks for such general information in a Further reading section, without a direct link to it. That was, the reference is in the article, but it wouldn't be cluttering the article text. SilverserenC03:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, maybe this is a bridge too far. My main point was that people shouldn't be challenging things as unsourced without some actual suspicion, and it is kind of a silly example. Wnt (talk) 06:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
At the moment, on the "Did you know" section on the Main Page, there is a link to Chris Rock's "The [MF] With the Hat," with the full word spelled out. I know that Wikipedia has to include words like that due to its encyclopedic nature, but shouldn't there be a policy against having that sort of language on the Main Page? That will naturally be the very first page most people, including children, see on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.181.197.100 (talk) 14:34, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing as how every child I know, before the Internet was made, immediately looked up "fuck" the first time they got their hands on an dictionary and had heard of the word, and then giggled, I'm not sure we're damaging anyone here. The few that have never seen the word won't understand that it's bad. I'm not necessarily saying this as a defense of "omg we can never censor", I'm saying that... I'm not really seeing the harm here. Anyway, there are only two viable options: Keep it, or remove it. Bowdlerizing it to "The [MF]er With the Hat" would be a horrible idea. --Golbez (talk) 14:44, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Option 3 would be to use The Mother With the Hat which is what the producers are using to advertise it on television; unlike the MF version, it is a legit alternate title. oknazevad (talk) 15:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I didn't get the memo that User:Roux was empowered to end discussions. There's no need to be either peremptory or insulting; it's a perfectly valid point to raise, for political and PR reasons if nothing else. I'd suggest a deal: you don't refer to our "delicate sensibilities", and we won't refer to your "jejune drivel". Herostratus (talk) 04:03, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's not how I read Roux's statement. I think he was just pointing out that policy is pretty clear on this point. Whatever the case, no need to make it personal. Wickedjacob (talk) 08:28, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the IP user was suggesting any censorship - he specifically says these words should exist on Wikipedia (which is all Wikipedia is not censored concerns it's self with.) However he asks for Prudence in what content is selected for the front page (or how it is displayed on the front page) this seems a reasonable editorial decision that in no way affects our being considered censored. I would be likely to display word on the Front page that has an educational purpose such as Vulva, Grope Cunt, or even Fucking but would consider whether a word like Mofo which exists only to offend should be on the front page? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 08:51, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not intended to offend. It is the name of a play. Are we really going to exclude certain articles from the front page because they use certain language? I am distraught by the notion of wikipedia deciding front page content based on social norms rather than content excellence or relevancy. It might not technically be censorship of the entire encyclopedia, but it certainly censorship of the main page. Wickedjacob (talk) 09:14, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The word is intended to offend and that fact is recognised in numerous sources about the play that go on to discuss the fact that the plot does not mirror the offence of the title or that discuss the difficulties in promoting the play because that word causes offense. Equally it is commonly titled with asterisks in reliable sources so we're not censoring to use the same title that the majority of sources do . Not all articles are suitable for the main page and editorial judgement is already used to decide which ones are suitable - just because something isn't suitable for the front page doesn't mean it's censored. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 09:52, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think pointing to wp:NOTCENSORED is a perfectly acceptable response. eskimo, indian, 666 (number)orMohammed without the S.A.W. title are considered offensive as well, should we ban those from the main page? If not, how would you draw a line between what is and what isn't offensive, keeping in mind we get visitors from all over the world? Yoenit (talk) 10:54, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Two replies up, I justified the use of Fucking, Cunt, and Vulva and you're questioning whether I would censor eskimo, indian, 666 or Mohammed? That sounds like the beginnings of a Straw man - There is a difference between a term whose use (or misuse) can offend some people and a term whose use is purely pejorative and that is a bright line not a fine one. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If motherfucker is purely pejorative somebody should change our article on the word (and probably inform Samuel L. Jackson as well). Or you could accept that what is offensive to you might not be to somebody else and there no such thing as a "bright line". Yoenit (talk) 12:55, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What? None of what you just said makes sense; you link to the variants section which lists variants which are used exactly because the original is generally considered pejorative and you somehow think that Samuel L. Jackson (and Chris Rock) don't know the word is Pejorative? People who are fans may not be offended by their use of it, but that doesn't mean the word has any non-offensive meaning - the meaning is still exactly the same; it hasn't gone through amelioration unlike some other pejoratives . Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:27, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Would you be offended if I called you "one badass motherfucker"? I do not consider that pejorative, so it seems to me it has undergone amelioration in some contexts (been a while since I had to look up a word, thanks for that beautiful term). Yoenit (talk) 13:55, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on the context if you were my peer and called me it, I'd be fine because friends talk junk about each other and let each other away. If you walked up to me in the street as a stranger and shouted "Hey you; the badass motherfucker!" yes I'd be offended. So I don't think it has genuinely undergone amelioration, I think we just choose to ignore the offensiveness in some specific circumstances. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:59, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To each their own; every time someone yells "hey you; the badass motherfucker", I'm not offended. It's just a statement of fact. ;) EVula// talk // ☯ //16:05, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The German Wikipedia had Vulva (with photo) as main page FA on March 23, 2010. See here for the excerpt. Some people were not happy, but nothing bad happened. Certainly nothing as bad as self-censorship, which we have to avoid. If people want censored encyclopedias, they shouldn't use a free one. —Кузьма討論17:19, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's no longer April 25, but the IP's concept deserves an honest discussion: the phrase in the title is one that intends to offend. There are any number of playwrights who have happened to use such a phrase in the dialog of a play, but to suggest that a play doesn't intend to offend is naïve and to suggest that a play with a word like this in its title doesn't intend to offend is a bit beyond that. One may as well say that a song or a film or a joke doesn't intend to offend. I would not argue that the intention to offend should justify exclusion from the encyclopedia. But I would argue that there is a difference in presenting an article about something that intends to offend and promoting that article on the front page. And I would argue that a discussion like this about that difference is not served when everybody on the pro-promotion side cannot even admit that intentional offense. There are inherently offensive things in the world, and other things that are not inherently offensive but are given a skewed presentation as such. Vulva is not inherently offensive, it is a body part. Cunt is inherently offensive, because it isn't the body part to which it refers, it is a vulgar term of extreme misogynistic contempt. (Frankly, I wonder about the preponderance of images at vulva, and think perhaps that is where the article courts offensiveness. We present seven photographs, one ultrasound, five diagrams, and five artworks. Two particularly striking, large images appear as primary photo, one with and one sans hair, while technical diagrams are relegated to further down. Uvula, for example, leads with a diagram and presents two photos; Arm leads with its only photo; Human leg leads with a drawing, has a dozen diagrams, and ends with two small photographs of legs, none of which have hair; Chest has no photo, and Pectoral leads to a disambig page where one finds Pectoralis major muscle which also has no photo. Why Arm goes straight to an article about a human arm, but leg does not, and the first image one sees at Penis are several animal members disembodied together in jars, is another editorial question bordering on offense that we might discuss.)
I must interject . . . the above is an excellent passage describing the use of illustrations in articles. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:53, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
MF is inherently offensive on both counts, the literal meaning and the usage. (That cannot be said about any of the terms/articles mentioned by Yoenit.) I remember the day that Gropecunt Lane appeared on the front page; I read it and found it mildly interesting, but I didn't kid myself that it was not intended to offend when it was promoted for front-page status. Of course it was. I'd like to point out that if people are going to stand on the grounds of "not censored" and "but it's verifiable" or notable or what-have-you, then people who do intend to be offensive or provocative (or are just snickering children, literally or figuratively) will always get to have their way. Beyond Gropecunt Lane, I have no idea how many Tickle Cock Bridges and Fucking, Austrias have been promoted for the front page and denied on the basis of that it was not really that notable but for the fact that it had a profane name. But I certainly hope that that could happen, and would happen, despite the weak arguments presented by most respondents here.
I will accept that the Broadway debut of other notable celebrities with high Q ratings would rate an appearance on DYK even when they do not have a gimmicky profane name, and I will accept that this Broadway debut of this celebrity in this gimmicky profanely named show rates an appearance, but I will not accept that people would argue gimmicky profane names are not intended to be offensive. Embrace that we're promoting offensively titled articles if that's something you like, embrace that the snapshots of several anonymous females of various ages decorate Vulva but only one anonymous person decorates Arm, but don't act like people who want to discuss the question of promoting offensively titled articles have no basis to characterize them as such. Censorship is so far from the editorial decision being discussed here as to be its polar opposite, so we have room to concede a point and get somewhere with discussing the editorial decision (particularly in the context of the editorial decisions regarding the other titles noted) while still erring far on the opposite side of censorship. Anyone who only sees two options isn't actually taking their editorial responsibility seriously, and "Wikipedia is not censored" is not the end of a discussion, it's the beginning. Have it or don't, but as long as we're taking a default position on prudish sensibilities, we might as well be cognizant of where that puts us relative to prurient sensibilities and then let those who are both capable and interested in doing so discuss all these territories and others sensibly and objectively. Abrazame (talk) 11:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And it wouldn't matter. So what if, somehow, we could block every dirty image on Wikipedia from being displayed to kids? These kids have Google. No one is remotely "protected" by such censorship, as anyone who has been "protected" can then do a simple web search and promptly unprotect themselves. I can't imagine anyone saying, "Darn, no pictures of boobs on breast? Oh well, that ends my efforts!" --Golbez (talk) 16:00, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that other sources are available is unimportant. Any person who does not want to see such images should not be forced to view them. "Not censored" does not mean "I have an absolute, unfettered right to fill your computer screen with images that you find offensive" (however you define offensive, whether that means seizure-inducing flashing images, naked bodies, or pictures of religious figures, not however I define offensive). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:04, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, Jayron32, if I intentionally choose to read the article titled penis, I should expect to see a human penis, yet there is not a single depiction of a human penis at that article, and in fact there is not a single image of a penis attached to a body at that article, as I already stated, the primary image features several animal penises in jars (as if something sliced off and put in a jar is what anybody expects to be the first thing they see when they visit a page ostensibly about the human body, or even about the bodies of other creatures) and a meal made of a goat penis (ditto). That is not what one should reasonably expect to see at penis. Or is it what you expected? Or did you just link that without visiting the page because you presume both that you're dealing with some prude and that some prude couldn't possibly have a valid point?
How about I flip it on its head since Golbez and yourself aren't actually able to grasp the issue: shall I plunge into Vulva and make the primary image several sliced off and put in a jar? How about leading with a bucket of KFC at Breast? This was a (large) parenthetical in a post otherwise about a broader issue, but if this is the tangent people want to pick up on, then give it a real shot, don't just jump to conclusions and dispense stock responses. You're proving my point about the MF, which is that the attitude that "Wikipedia is not censored" as a defensive posture does a disservice to the editorial responsibility of an encyclopedia, when the response is to strike a stance, make a joke, and remain oblivious to what is actually being discussed. Because why should I expect to see more breasts or vulvas or what-have-you than arms or legs, unless the point is to present "uncensored" material, as in nudie shots, and not to present encyclopedic material. I'm not arguing for fewer penises, I'm arguing for human penises (and the other sort at a secondary article). I'm not arguing against vulvas, I'm pointing out that people are more inclined to post so-and-so's twat than they are to take a photo of their arm or their leg, and we might, just might, actually be cognizant that we're seeking to present a work of some consistency and not merely the bleakest and least profitable amateur porn site on the net.
But I support WhatamIdoing's point, that even if anybody made any attempt to bring balance to these articles, some people might want to access some information without seeing images they find offensive. I think (yes, think) that the article Death of Khaled Mohamed Saeed is something that people should read, whether or not they are likely to be upset at the graphic image of his battered corpse, because the story about it is the relevant thing, and the image of it is secondary. But that image is enough to turn people off to learning more about the topic because they can't reasonably be expected to read the article without it and they can't reasonably be expected to make the image go away. I don't think that the MediaWiki:Bad image list was conceived with battered corpses in mind. I also read the rather involved technical steps someone has to take to disable the images for their own viewing, which seems untenable: Junior or Granny or just Average Joe- or Jane-who-doesn't-want-corpses-and-porn-in-their-encyclopedia has already seen the thing, now they've got to click on it to get the file name in order not to see it? I think there should be some way for people to click on a file name to opt-in to view a photograph like that. It's not censorship, it's akin to turning the page to read or view more, and indicating what sort of more that is. In addition to the fact that some people enjoy seeing photos of nude people (or some sort of person in particular), there are some people who enjoy seeing photos of dead people (or some sort of person...). And just as there are various motivations for wanting to show a particular person or sort of person nude, there may be various motivations for wanting to show a particular person or sort of person dead. I want to make sure that we are not indulging these sorts of people, and offending the other sort, under the guise of "not censored" when, as I said, that is supposed to be the start of the conversation and not the end of it. For example, post mortem photos of Michael Jackson are about to be shown in some sort of trial. Someone has claimed these photos prove some allegation or other, so then what, one or two go in an article here? Is that really what we're about? And if it is, is it that important that we present it unhidden in article space, rather than, again, in some sort of pop-up window or gallery page or something.
I've had the same blind, knee-jerk policy arguments disallow the image of a defunct band's logo, or a musician's album art, when obviously that was an intentional public presentation of the subject as they were and wished to be seen, and are what one would expect to see when visiting those articles. I know fair use, I also know these images appeared in magazine and newspaper ads and are available elsewhere on the web. The argument, therefore, isn't, "we may as well present all the vulvas that fit on the page, because Junior will only surf elsewhere without them," because Junior can surf to the logos and album art at AllMusic or Rolling Stone or a fansite. And that was actually cited to me as a good reason for why we needn't present them here. The image policies are flawed, and what's more, the policies aren't even applied consistently within a class of articles. We've all got two arms. Only half of us have a vulva. So why are there a dozen shots of vulvas and only one of an arm? The answer to that is the problem with the way "Not censored" is being enforced at the expense of encyclopedic relevancy. I thank Gadget850, I clicked on the link and see there is a huge amount to read both in the three pages of the text and the longer discussions, which I will try and get to in the coming days, but as my points were being mischaracterized here by some, and picked up on by others, I wanted to expound. Abrazame (talk) 08:03, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
tl;dr. None of this has to do with the fact that "Motherfucker" will harm no one, and we can't predict who will be offended by what words, and if we are going to omit words because they might offend someone, we'll have to omit a lot of things other than the words sancitified by George Carlin. --Golbez (talk) 19:19, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not censored. And we don't do parents or children a service by pretending otherwise. Children who come here can go a long, long way down the rabbit hole just reading. And whatever bogus policies we have against pedophiles, they're purely make-believe - this is an encyclopedia anyone can edit. A few choice words like that serve the beneficial purpose of putting parents and children on guard, which is what they should be. Children can come here, they just need to be ready to face the world. Wnt (talk) 08:17, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Requested move formatting - indents or bullets?
Lately I have been participating in quite a few requested moves, and I have always wondered about the formatting. On the one hand, they occur on article talk pages, which generally use indents (per Help:Using talk pages#Indentation and WP:INDENT), and on the other hand, the Support/Oppose discussion format is similar to Articles for deletion which uses bullets (per WP:AFDFORMAT). The tension between these two often leads to discussions like this one, where indents and bullets are used interchangeably and it all looks very messy. I have tried to find advice at the requested moves page, but it seems there is none to be offered. I think it would be a good idea to decide which formatting to use and add this to the requested moves page as policy. What do others think? — Mr. Stradivarius♫19:31, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's true, indeed. In that case, how about a guideline just to stick to the same formatting in each discussion? That way we are not restricting editors more than is already the case. — Mr. Stradivarius♫06:22, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what problem you are trying to fix. Personnaly I don't have any problem understanding the flow of the conversation on the move request you linked. Are you trying to make things easier to follow? If the problem is that it looks messy, I don't think that is a reason to add policy or guidelines. GB fan (talk) 15:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the problem is that it looks messy, not that it's necessarily hard to understand. The only reason I bring it up is that it's an incentive to edit war over formatting. Some editors prefer indents and some prefer bullets, and if one editor is convinced another is using the "wrong" formatting then they will want to change it. I'm not proposing a radical change - it could just be something as simple as adding the following text to WP:RM: "Generally requested moves use indents, but try and use the formatting other editors have used; don't re-format the discussion just for the sake of it". I think a guideline that looks something like this would be better than no guideline at all. — Mr. Stradivarius♫02:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If it looks messy... just fix it. :) Seriously, I've made edits before that did nothing but fix indentations (either by removing or adding bullets, or by removing line breaks so bullet levels were honored). I don't recall ever starting an edit war over it. (nor do I recall ever seeing an edit war over it) EVula// talk // ☯ //16:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the Village Pump (idea lab) NOT primarily for Consensus Polling as well?
It seems to me it would be great to be able to both get positive, constructive feedback and to do some sample polling to see if there is any substantial population that is in favor or not in favor of any one idea.
The concept for me is as simple as the Facebook "like," the Slashdot news story, Digg, or Reddit. Maybe even Youtube is the best example. If I can say "thumbs up" it can be a big motivator to really follow through on an idea and get more feedback.
This seems to make more sense to me than going out of our way to say "WAIT, don't do the natural, helpful thing you want to and give some simple feedback! Only the TRULY COMMITTED commentors are welcome." That is exactly what the following graphic and first sentence say to me:
This Village Pump is for developing ideas, not for consensus polling. Rather than merely stating support or opposition to an idea, try to be creative and positive. If possible, suggest a better variation of the idea, or a better solution to the problem identified.
Feedback, +1's, -1's, "likes," or thumbs-up/down are welcome!
No, because that's for definite ideas, while Matt's suggesting encouraging straw polls to see whether people are vaguely in favour of or opposed to vague suggestions. If most people are vaguely opposed it probably isn't worth anyone's while working out the details for a definite proposal. Peter jackson (talk) 10:33, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal with policy implications: Major edit user right
A proposal for a new user right is detailed here. It would be automatically triggered when the account had been in existence at least 24 hours and at least 5 edits had been made in mainspace. This Major edit user right is an anti-vandalism measure, intended to block edits algorithm-determined to be likely disruptive in nature. RedactionalOne (talk) 18:26, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Per the responses at proposals. Existing review of IP and new editor seems to be effective enough that the harm of loosing potentially constructive major edit contribution of new users outweighs any potential upside in reduced vandalism from the proposed restriction. Monty84502:29, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The idea of IP editing is to allow users to get right in and do things. This proposal saddles them with a new set of rules, like no use of images. The ban on extensive rewording sounds harmless... except half the time when I look at a diff it shows whole sections of the article deleted and remade, when really I only messed a few words around. Will new users interpret that as Wikipedia being super careful about vandalism, or just being broken/hard to figure out? Plus as someone pointed out at the target discussion, making vandals do smaller edits is not really doing anyone a favor. Page blanking you can fix - the wrong boiling point for tungsten carbide, not so much. Wnt (talk) 08:13, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A strong case could be made that colorizing (or more generally digital restoration or editing) is original research. In most cases, I think we should prefer an uncolorized version. This walks dangerously close to the unsolvable question of, "When does digitally editing a photo constitute original research?" That's a can of worms probably best left unopened. Jason Quinn (talk) 23:01, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For how long may userfied versions of deleted articles remain in userspace? I ask as a number of these pages are showing up at WP:MFD and there is no policy which gives an explicit description as to how long they may stay. WP:FAKEARTICLE, WP:NOTWEBHOST, and WP:USERPAGE do not provide an explicit length.Smallman12q (talk) 12:19, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In general, I believe six months is taken a a rough (unwritten?) guideline. Of course, for problematic pages (copyright violations, BLP violations, pure promotional stuff...) immediate deletion is needed (and accepted under the WP:CSD criteria). I also think that this 6 months limit isn't restricted to userfied deleted pages, but that the same standards apply to all pages in userspace that are article-like. Even when they are no-indexed and identified as a userspace draft, they may still appear in e.g. "what links here" from the mainspace, and in general they violate WP:NOTWEBHOST. Fram (talk) 13:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(basically copy-pasted from my earlier comments) Pages deleted by consensus should not be allowed to be archived indefinitely in userspace. The point of userfication is to give an editor the opportunity to improve the article so that it meets the community's requirements. In the case of BLPs deleted on grounds of notability, I think this is even more important. Non-notable people should be left alone and not only in the article space. Thinly sourced BLPs should be deleted and not just from the article space. Note also that to most readers, there's little difference between a mainspace article and a userspace page that looks just like an article. So while we should of course tolerate userfication for purposes of editing, userfication for purposes of archival should be discouraged. As for specific time limits, 6 months sounds reasonable but I'd prefer a shorter delay for deleted BLPs. It's trivial to undelete the draft when someone wants to start working on it. Pichpich (talk) 15:05, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would add another criteria, if there have been no (substantial) edits to the content in few days to month, it should be deleted. If someone wants it in user space to work on they should be working on it, if they want to work on it off line, they can copy it to text program and work on it there. If it is deleted for copyright or BLP it should not be in user space at all. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:41, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're all in agreement about copyright or BLP violations. But a more typical case is that of a BLP that doesn't contain negative coverage but is still about a non-notable individual. Pichpich (talk) 16:15, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think it all depends on whether the article in the draft is being worked on. If there has been no activity on it in a year, then I would say that an MfD should be started (or it should be moved to mainspace automatically if it appears to be good enough to stay there). But if a userspace draft is being worked on, then it doesn't matter how old the draft itself it, the user is still working on it. The only issue with a user taking too long in finishing a draft is that the chances increase that someone else will create the article in mainspace themselves. I've had that happen to me before and I had to scrap the draft. But, either way, it all depends on if it is being worked on or not. If it isn't, then I would say inactivity of editing it for a year is long enough to put it up for MfD. SilverserenC07:27, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is no deadline. While we should not have problematic BLP articles (userfied or otherwise) which contain uncited text, if the userfied article does not violate WP:BLP, is not a BLP article, or otherwise is not spam, etc, then there is no reason to nominate it for deletion. We already have enough problems with WP:BITE and the editor retention problems Sue Gardner mentioned in the March 2011 update which was also covered in the Signpost. I can think of at least a dozen editors who have left Wikipedia after getting fed up with others MFDing article drafts in their userspace, etc. --Tothwolf (talk) 08:36, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, let me put it another way, at the very least, the user should be reminded about the existence of the userspace draft if they haven't edited it in over a year. They have may forgotten it entirely. If they feel that they are never going to complete it, then it should probably be removed or perhaps someone else can move it over to their own userspace to work on it.
One question I have though is what about retired users? Users that have left the project? Clearly, their userspace drafts are never going to be finished unless someone else takes them over, which is unlikely to happen if they are buried away in the retired user's userspace. Maybe we should have a different process, something called Abandoned Drafts, where we list userspace drafts that have been abandoned and let other users decide if they want to take over for the page. If no one does, then it could be put up for MfD. Does that sound like a better process for it? (Of course, if we're talking about existing users, then we can first ask them if they plan on working on it anymore and, if not, then it could be moved to this Abandoned Drafts project.) SilverserenC09:31, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why would a userfied article material be subjected to a higher standard/ongoing review than all of the other stuff that users are free to keep in their sub pages? (sandboxes etc.) Conversely, I would think that housecleaning of all subpages of a clearly retired-and-gone user might be in order. North8000 (talk) 12:38, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Among other reasons: because when we reject junk articles (spammy, non-notable, original research) but userfy them as a courtesy, the authors then sometimes link to the fake article on websites, in forum discussions, etc. as if it were a real Wikipedia entry. --Orange Mike | Talk13:41, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest that *any* userfied pages be automatically no-indexed. As Orange Mike correctly points out, these can sometimes turn into a top-5 google hit for the subject, and it is often difficult for the casual reader to realise that what they're looking at isn't a "real" article. In fact, I would recommend that we move toward no-indexing user space entirely. I can say honestly that many BLP-violating pages, attack pages, pages that provide inappropriate personal information, hoaxes and other problematic pages are present in user space, but are almost completely unpatrolled or identified by our routine review and patrol processes. We have a hard enough time trying to keep this stuff out of the encyclopedia proper, and it is poor use of our editorial resources to also have to patrol and monitor user space as well. Risker (talk) 14:03, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the "no index" is a good idea. Also a guideline that says that anything that looks like an article has a "this is not an article" notice or template at the top. North8000 (talk) 14:10, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"no-index" only works on search engines; it doesn't help with the editors who post the fake article's URL (with or without a redirect) themselves. Thus, the aforementioned mandatory header would be helpful, if we are able to enforce the mandate that such a header be present. --Orange Mike | Talk14:15, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Only a tiny proportion of our readers come to Wikipedia through direct links; most come through search engines. In particular, spammers have to ensure their non-mainspace stuff shows up in search engines or they've not filled their mission. If we address the larger part of the problem, it is easier to fix the smaller part. Let us not fall into the trap of seeking a perfect solution, and start off with a 'good' solution. Risker (talk) 14:42, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the same goes for both ideas. A guideline would do much, even even if it not enforced 100% by searches etc. North8000 (talk) 14:58, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is absolutely no reason to delete a userified article merely because it is old. All the userification states is that it is not suitable, or the author does not wish it to be in, article space. There is no saving of disk space by deleting the page. There are some reasons which may be valid, but which would require investigation and evidence, there are clearly content issues (BLP, copyvio, illegal content etc) which would be near-unanimously supported by the community as reasons for deletion or partial redaction. That should be it, lacking any serious evidence of problems in this area. RichFarmbrough, 17:56, 29 April 2011 (UTC).[reply]
What do you think of my Abandoned Drafts project idea? I mean, the main point of userspace drafts is for them to be finished and put into mainspace, not to sit in userspace forever. Thus, the project would take Abandoned Drafts and ask other users to adopt them in order to finish them. Userspace drafts of retired users would automatically be added to the project. For userspace drafts of active users that have not been edited in over a year, they would just be asked if they were planning on finishing the article or if they would like to submit it to the project for someone else to finish. If they say they are going to finish it, then that's fine. The point would be to remind them of the draft's existence, because they could have forgotten about it if it's been a year since they've edited it.
There may be reasons for drafts sitting for a long time in userspace. For example, a user may be waiting for more information or better references or some holiday time to get round to sorting it out. I fully agree that the exceptions mentioned by Rich - BLP, copyvio, illegal content, potentially offensive material - should be subject to scrutiny and weeding out. But uncontentious stuff... why bother? --Bermicourt (talk) 19:30, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If the user has a reason to keep it, then they keep it. But some users may decide that they're just not going to have the time to finish it or aren't interested anymore, so they can donate what they have to the project. And what about retired users? I don't think their drafts should just be deleted. Most of their stuff is probably worthwhile to work on. SilverserenC19:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think WP:NODEADLINE and the fact that Wikipedia does not have space requirements, and we shouldn't be deleting things just because "it is taking up unnecessary space" allows userspace articles to be open as long as they want. As long as it isn't a violation of a policy like BLP or copyright, it should be fine and left alone. Deleting these test articles just further pushes new users away from editing when they can't even edit in their own userspace without getting yelled at. Even if the articles never make it into mainspace, it still allows the user to practice writing an article. Blake(Talk·Edits)19:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What do you think about my Abandoned Drafts project idea outlined above? It wouldn't involve deleting drafts and they would only be transferred to the project in terms of active editors if the editors themselves agreed that they wouldn't be finishing the draft. SilverserenC20:03, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure how well that would work. It would essentially be WP:Articles for Creation, which I thought was already backloged as it was. I think if a user wants to be bold and move it into their own userspace, that is fine. I don't know how you would know what userspace articles to look at. Some userspace pages aren't even suggested articles, and are things like task management, sandboxes, and games. Unless they were tagged with {{Userspace draft}} it would be hard to find. The whole process sounds messy. Blake(Talk·Edits)20:10, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What if it just focused on drafts by retired users? It's not the same as Articles for Creation, since these drafts already have some form, they aren't needing to be made from scratch. Obviously things that aren't meant to be articles wouldn't belong with the project, but it's purpose is to utilize drafts that have been abandoned by retired users, but that could still be made into a good article. Finding them is the tricky part, but it could be more of a system where it works on things that are brought to its attention. SilverserenC20:16, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And instead of asking users whether they're going to be finishing a draft, what if it just has an open submission system, where it allows users to submit links to their drafts in their userspace, since they don't feel like working on it anymore or aren't going to finish it. That part of the project would be completely optional. SilverserenC20:16, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think that that would be better. I'm thinking that those are such a mixed bag of situations that it would still be a challenge. For example, where they got AFD'd for not having yet established notability. And those could include subjects truly capable of meeting it and others not. And some articles in really good shape and others in such bad shape that it would be easier to start over. North8000 (talk) 20:19, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think those situations could be dealt with in the long run. I just feel that we need some sort of method of dealing with userspace drafts that have no way of being finished and will end up being forgotten in some corner of the userspace by users who have left. It would also be a helpful alternative to these constant MfDs of drafts. SilverserenC20:35, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who's had a userspace draft I haven't touched since July, I can say that setting a hard deadline could have undesired effects. It's not for lack of desire that I haven't done anything with mine; it's a matter of getting what I would need to write about it. I have every intention of finishing it, but it's awfully hard to write about a book when one doesn't have the book in question, and it's not a particularly easy book to come by. I think that the solution of poking users a year after the last edit to their draft would be a good idea, but setting a hard deadline could lead to someone returning from a month-long wikibreak to find an MfD that wound up deleting their userspace draft they finally got the things necessary to work on. Knocking out the attack pages and vandalism is important, too; as for copyvios, can't we run one of the bots over userspace pages too? I know CorenSearchBot and VWBot run through articles pace and EarwigBot (whatever the correct number is) runs through AfC space, couldn't one of those be programmed to run through userpages? That wouldn't take out everything, but it would nip some of it at the bud. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My idea for an Abandoned Drafts project wouldn't have any drafts be deleted (unless they broke the rules in general) and it wouldn't remove drafts that belong to users unless they don't want them anymore. So your example draft that you plan on finishing doesn't apply. It would only be if you weren't sure if you were going to finish it, that you could then donate it to the Abandoned Drafts project in order for someone else for adopt it. I'm actually thinking about making this a real idea.
As for your search bot and copyvios question, the issue is that, in running through article space for these subpages, it will also run through main userpages. And a lot of userpages, mine included, have things like quotes and other stuff in them that could set off the bot. I think too many false alarms would result from this idea unless we could somehow exclude main userpages, but I don't know how to set them just on subpages, since they are categorically set directly from userpages. SilverserenC04:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The inverse of this discussion, which I have seen, and is relevant; What about a good draft, with promising potential, found in what appears to be an abandoned state? I would be far more interested in a process which located these abandoned efforts not primarily for deletion, but for the good ones too; Mostly! This {{helpme}} request is why I know the inverse to also be true. My76Strat (talk) 04:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My Abandoned Drafts project idea would cover that. Though it depends on whether it is an active editor. If it is a retired editor, then all of the drafts would be linked to from the project for users to adopt and move to their own userspace. If action, then it is optional, though users would be free to donate their drafts that they don't have time to finish or aren't interested anymore to the project to find someone else to take care of them. Though if it's a user that is active and wants to keep it, then that is their right to do so, though reminding them of its existence would probably prompt them to finish it up. SilverserenC05:36, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Userfied articles should be moved to the Incubator
The project should really move towards putting potential articles in the Article Incubator instead of userspace. Particularly deleted material should not be kept in userspace, but in a project with defined goals and timelines where the community encourages everyone to participate. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
Why are all of the recent responders not reading the discussion? In the discussion above, I came up with an idea for a Abandoned Drafts project, a counterpart to AfC (since partially made drafts don't really fall under the purview of AfC and they're already going to be overloaded with the non-confirmed no article creation proposal going through). This project would automatically make links to drafts that have been made by retired users, in order to have other users adopt these drafts. And then, active editors can submit drafts that they don't have time to finish or don't have an interest in anymore to the project for others to adopt as well. That way, there won't be any deletions of userspace drafts unless they violate actual policy rules for articles. What do you think of the idea? SilverserenC06:33, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I did read what you wrote, and it seems like most of that (functionality, if not the actual mechanics) is covered by the Incubation process. Why remake it? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
Because no one really uses the Incubator. It's essentially defunct at this point. See the discussion here. And I feel that it would be better to start a whole new initiative that works differently rather than trying to revive a process that has been shown to not have all that much participation. We need to do something new that will get some more life into things like drafts and other stuff. SilverserenC07:19, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Viewed independently, there is nothing wrong with your proposal and I would endorse it. The problem is attracting participation, which is the Incubators problem, the 3O problem, the article RfC problem, etc. Any process (incubator, your proposal, anything) that forced abandoned userspace drafts along with the deleted and userfied articles into a deadlined process you'd have many desperate editors working on these things instead of both the drafts and the processes going stale. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
I think you've misunderstood. The project would only be involved in abandoned drafts from retired users and donations from active users (making them essentially self-abandoned). It won't deal with deleted articles or even ones that have been userfied, just so long as they're not attached to a retired user. And it won't have any deadlines, because the purpose is to get other users to adopt the drafts. There will probably have to be some sort of process as well to determine whether submitted articles to the project, if they've been sitting there for an excessive amount of time, are actually going to be able to be turned into valid articles (which would be the assumed reason or why they hadn't been adopted.) But that's something that can be determined at a later point in time. The whole purpose is getting it set up first and then getting some abandoned drafts into it and then we'll see about how to get people to adopt them. SilverserenC08:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In a word: no. The Article Incubator is merely a delayed deletion mechanism, and doesn't really accomplish what I'd previously proposed (and SilverSeren reinvents in part above): a central place where not-currently-encyclopedic, yet non-problematic (no BLP/attack, copyvio, promotion) articles can exist indefinitely, searchable via explicit user selection only, awaiting the day some user will come and spiff them up and make them presentable for mainspace. Jclemens (talk) 04:27, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have created the proposal for such a Wikiproject here, feel free to voice your support for the idea or add a comment to the discussion section if there's some part of it that you feel needs clarification. If you wish to be a part of it, please say so along with your support vote. Thank you. SilverserenC05:23, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
deleting a page about me
I have a theoretical question on wikipedia policy, since I couldn't find an answer in existing discussions, disclosures. Let's say someone creates a biographical page about me. Apart from other information it contains some personal details, such as my name and place of birth, current residence, employer and past achievement. Information that links this article directly to my persona.
According to data privacy legislation in many countries, such information cannot be published without my consent. Furthermore, I may be strongly opposed to the existence of a page about myself altogether. My question is - what rights do I have to ask for the deletion of such a page, whether it infringes on my country's data privacy laws or even if I simply dont want to have a page about myself? And how do I prove that I am the person this page is about?
Thank you all for considering and perhaps forwarding this question to the powers that be at Wikipedia
Wikipedia only writes or has articles on information that has already been covered in reliable sources. Information seldom originates on wikipedia. That would be what we call original research. So if there is information that has already been published, that information can be used to build the encyclopedia, as long as it follows other guidelines as well.--JOJHutton12:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It should also be noted that a page written about a person, for whom the only reliable data is basic personal data, like dates of birth, employment record, etc, would be deleted on notability grounds; generally what is needed is that someone outside of Wikipedia has written extensively about their lives, in the form of reliable books, magazine articles, newspaper articles, etc. However, if you are the kind of person who routinely receives coverage in the mainstream press, if someone has written entire books about your life, etc. then Wikipedia articles will be written from those already existing sources, and likely will not be deleted. --Jayron3212:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To add to that, I believe there is a small grey area where people are only just about notable enough for an article. Such people can have articles but they don't make a big hole in the encyclopaedia if we don't have them. Those articles have occasionally been deleted by the subject's request. This would not happen if a major controversial public figure, say like Donald RumsfeldorHenry Kissinger, were to request deletion of the articles about them. It would damage the encyclopaedia not to have coverage of such important people. The best they could hope for would be to have any unreferenced, biased or trivial coverage removed from the article and maybe to have it protected if it was particularly prone to vandalism. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:36, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To answer the question about how you prove who you are, you would have to email Wikipedia from an address that proves who you are, such as a work email address. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:52, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please reference the same discussion on WP:AN where the nominator displayed the same notice and was thoroughly chastised for a non-neutral notification intended to influence the decision. This is the second place I've seen this notice with the original notification in place.Hasteur (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
True, erm. I was chastised by one user who just previous to this I'd been having a disagreement with. I was busy and overlooked this one, hence struck now. Casliber (talk·contribs) 21:40, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have been privately asked to shelve this for at least 24 hours while the immediate issue that prompted this is being dealt with. Once the immediate issue is dealt with, then I will reopen this, as it's still an issue very much worth dealing with. Sven ManguardWha?02:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is something that isn't going to be popular, but I'm giving it a go.
If a user is indefinitely blocked or banned by ArbCom, and either
a) the case involved IRC behavior, and/or
b) the incident was the result of private deliberations,
then I propose that the blocked user is also indefinitely blocked on WMF IRC channels.
This will be a small minority of banned users, even a minority of ArbCom banned users, but it's important that we do something like this.
This situation came about because an ArbCom banned user (who meets both of the above criteria) was spotted in a WMF channel earlier today. The user was banned, as far as I have been told, for pedophilic behavior, or at the very least for pretending to be someone much younger than xe actually was and for using Wikipedia and the WMF IRC channels to talk to younger users. Even if that type of person isn't posting in the threads, their very presence there, and their ability to read everything that is said by other users (who are unaware of the allegations against the banned user,) is a serious problem and a possible danger.
The IRC operators frequently say 'the IRC isn't Wikipedia' and that bans don't carry over. However we as a community can demand that in these cases, where ArbCom has made the judgment that a user is using Wikipedia in ways that are dangerous or illegal, that bans do carry over. This isn't a matter of turf wars or ideology, it's a matter of safety and integrity.
Question: Is it technically possible to ban certain users from the public WMF IRC channels (there are several dozen of them), without banning them from Freenode entirely? I am not certain that, barring serious disruption within the channels, Freenode would be willing to do this. It's my understanding this is one of the reasons why bans of any type are almost impossible to port over to IRC. Risker (talk) 02:38, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
ArbCom hands a list to the WMF channel ops, and the WMF channel ops manually block the offenders on sight. This would not be a freenode thing. Sven ManguardWha?02:44, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The PlayStation Network outage article has a timeline at the very top of the article, which results in a user seeing a wall of table code before they actually get to the article head. Yesterday to make it easier for editors I moved the timeline text and turned it into a template (Template:PSN outage timeline). It made the edit window clear and easier to understand, and even received a thank you from one editor on the talk page. Last night the template was Speedy Deleted with the proposer stating that because it is only used on one page the Template must be deleted on sight. Is that correct? I can find nothing in the Speedy deletion criteria that says that. I'm also unhappy with the deletion process, deleted with a G8(dependent on a non-existent or deleted pag) after an incorrect page move. Can Speedy deletions be challenged at deletion review like a normal deletion? - X201 (talk) 07:22, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No to your first question, yes to your second one. It expected that you tried to resolve it directly with the deleting admin before you start a DRV though. Yoenit (talk) 07:34, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That looks like a really awful call by the admins involved. If they don't respond within 24 hours, I'd go to DRV and ask for an expedited process. Sven ManguardWha?07:52, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
At the very least this should have been moved to a subpage of the article and transculded like that. The "get rid of it entirely" solution isn't constructive in this situation. Sven ManguardWha?17:39, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That is just downright destructive to delete a page with citations just because it resides in the Template namespace. It is pretty obvious that the deleting admin was more concerned with following the rules that building an encyclopedia. Quite unfortunate. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I believe I saw someone propose something similar for the (very large) infobox at the top of Earth once. Transcluding from a subpage seems like a sensible intermediate approach, particularly if there were a way to add an 'edit this box' button to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Single-use templates are very acceptable in several cases, but there's no real universal rule. For example {{Infobox hydrogen}} is used on hydrogen, because this cleans up the edit window significantly (likewise for all the other element infoboxes), and just makes everything easier to deal with (infobox maintenance, vandalism monitoring, etc....). But there's no {{Infobox up quark}} for the up quark article, and I think that one would be kinda useless considering it's not a very big infobox. Template:Infobox Earth would make a lot of sense to me (likewise for the other main bodies of the solar system), but not so much for some random exoplanet or star.
For the PSN outage, I don't see why this needs to be templatified, or even presented like it currently is, that looks really awful to me. A section list seems much better to me. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books}16:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nicole Seah is a very prominent Opposition candidate in Singapore that has received widespread press in both pro-government (print media) and pro-Opposition (alternative media) sources, and Tin Pei Ling is a ruling party candidate that has been widely ridiculed in real life and on the street, but is likely to be elected -- er -- appointed into the parliament, despite massive backlash.
Yet, despite such massive evidence (millions of google hits!) that show these two candidates are notable -- and their contests symbolises an entire nations' elections -- such notability fails to convince some editors say that these two fail WP:POLITICIAN because they are candidates that have not been elected yet, and therefore automatically their articles must suffer through rounds of afd against common sense. I find this puzzling. Did Wikipedia change that much in my two years of absence? I don't recall such inflexible use of policy before.
What I primarily do wish to comment is that WP:POLITICIAN's guidelines really are only fit for candidates in liberal democracies. There must be an alternative set of criteria established for candidates who run under less-than-free political systems. Elle vécut heureuseà jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 19:37, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't this be covered by point 2: "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage."? It's important to remember that any subject can be notable if the appropriate coverage exists. Ntsimp (talk) 19:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There appears to be a group of several editors (who have little expertise on the subject) that opposed my suggestion to speedy close (which I withdrew but initially thought reasonable) and seem to have some sort of crusade against these two articles. I like to think myself as rational, so could there be comment on their reasoning? They assert that these two candidates have no notability at all, fail general notability guidelines and should be speedy deleted, when the local print press coverage has been hot, the online coverage massive and even the international media is commentating. I am simply exasperated. I am a veteran editor, or so I thought. Elle vécut heureuseà jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 20:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I wonder with how much zealousness these WP:POLITICIAN criteria has been applied. I would think that even American small town candidates who make significant local press (i.e. for notable, nonroutine issues, e.g. unique environmental issues that would attract scientific attention) should be included, and rightly these guidelines say they should be so, but whether these types of candidates too, face overzealous deletion. This "not notable until elected" rhetoric really puzzles me. Elle vécut heureuseà jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 20:08, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The best solution is for you to provide as many WP:Inline citationstoWP:Reliable sources as possible in the articles. It's very hard to get an article deleted if someone has gone to the trouble of naming 20 or 30 separate newspaper articles about the subject.
The "non-notable until elected" issue is primarily to keep independent candidates of essentially no significance from writing articles about themselves to give themselves undue weight right before an election. It's not meant for someone like Doug Forrester, who although he lost his Senate bid generated a great deal of attention. However, this "non-notable until elected" meme, like other things as basic as WP:V and WP:N, get taken literally by some people, so it's sometimes a fight to apply basic common sense. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Suggested new user right: Ability to edit fully-protected articles in Template space
For articles, full protection means that something should not be edited.
In the template space, however, full protection just means it's used a lot. I have done a lot of work creating templates, and face the problem that many of the Templates I created I now cannot edit, and will never be able to again, because they are so widely used.
While not a problem for simple templates, for complicated templates, this means that I - the person who knows the template best - am unable to do any maintenance work anymore. There is no way I'm going through the hell of RfA, so I ask that, per the recent decoupling of the move right, that we should decouple this right as well.
Another possible right that could be decoupled is the ability to change protection settings on templates, which is often helpful, but not a necessary part of this proposal. Adam Cuerden(talk)19:52, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This suggestion is just a band aid. In a reasonable world, any user who needs adminship would be given it. Especially template experts. Of course, some templates should not be edited even by admins unless truly necessary (no idea how much work it would be for the servers to work through changes on the heavily transcluded metatemplates). —Кузьма討論20:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is no chance I'm going to become an admin given Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Matthew_Hoffman, which, although withdrawn, have left me completely unwilling to engage with the Wikipedia activities which would get me through adminship, because that single arbcom case put me under so much stress I had to drop out of University. I am never again going to do anything but poke around the borders of Wikipedia, in things that suit me.
Something like the ninth-highest search for my real name is an alt-medicine site, WikiSynergy, creating a lying attack page using that case as truth, even though Arbcom withdrew it. Arbcom havce denied any responsibility for the fact that I will now find it that much more difficult to get employment in perpetuity.
No, I decline to help Wikipedia in the extensive way you want me to,a nd if anyone wants to blame me because User:Charles Matthews' power tip has had devastating Real-life consequenses on me, I trust they know what to do to themselves. And if you're going to try to claim I should have withdrawn from the case, note that it was my only chance to avoid having a real-life impact on my employment possibilities for the rest of my life, given my unique surname. It failed, and Arbcom are 100% at fault. Adam Cuerden(talk)20:45, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Have you considered a subpage to start the formulation of the template, present it for community review, and then let an admin move the changes over (with your consultation)? It's nice to take credit for our own changes, but if it improves the community why does credit matter? Hasteur (talk) 21:00, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hasteur has the correct idea here: There are ways to fix a template without directly editing the currently visible version; copy the template code, paste it as a user subpage, fix it, use {{editrequest}}, and ask for the new version to be pasted in place. Problem solved. --Jayron3221:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Proposed solution does not work. Many templates interact with 37 other templates. Have you looked at the backend for, say, Commons' MOTD (which I coded), WP:OPERA's Composer of the month system, also coded by me, or, to give an example which is similar to what I'm working on at the moment, the system behind POTD These things cannot be tested in isolation, and {{editrequest}} is a good way to not be able to fix bugs if anything goes wrong in very complicated code. {{editprotected}} isn't at all appropriate at a level where the next step after making a change is meticulously checking that the dozens of other templates haven't run into any trouble; there's no point making a change if you can't undo it quickly.
If you didn't know,. I am currently (rather slowly, but that's due to the free period I had devted for it getting frittered away by Wikidrama, putting me in a very busy period, with little free time, and, once again, beginning to wonder why the hell I bother with this site) working on the Main page backend for Featured Sounds and lists. I am also Featured sound director, so need to be able to edit protected description pages for files on the main page if maintenence is needed. {{Editprotected}} doesn't even begin to be practical.
If anyone hasn't gathered, I have a very much love-hate relationship with Wikipedia. Love the idea of it, but have no tolerance for all the bullshit that happens anymore. Adam Cuerden(talk)21:57, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If it's all that complicated, have you considered copying it over to Test Wikipedia, where you could tweak and test the changes until you were certain that they were perfect, and then use editrequest to get the proven versions pasted in? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I've been suggesting this for a while. Some users are not willing to become admins. Some users the community is unwilling to make admins. I feel I fall in both, but I am very talented with template syntax. Editprotected edits work fine and dandy when there are no subtemplates. When you get into multi-level templates, complicated infoboxes, etc, it becomes next to impossible to test out changes. Often the admins that come in to the editprotected call (unless its one of the two or three templating admins) are ignorant of the changes being made, requesting links to discussions for consensus, etc, for minor changes. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲτ¢00:31, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support Full protecting templates is to keep them from becoming vandalized or to keep someone who has no idea what they are doing from messing things up. If a person can be shown to be competent with templates I see no reason for them to be left behind. Can I please ask that if this approved that it is not handed out like candy by admins. Unlike the filemover, this could have disastrous consequence in the wrong hands. --Guerillero | My Talk02:39, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Strongest Oppose - I'm sorry, but no. If the templates are so commonly used that they have the potential to break vast swaths of the wiki if malformed, an example MUST be created that demonstrates the change. I'm expected to trust Admins because they've been reviewed by the community and know that edits to fully protected pages are done only for very good reasons. The fact that you are wanting to improve the templates without any sort of community consensus, procedure for testing, or roadmap to completion really worries me. "Make a change and see if stuff broke" is not the right way to make improvements to critical portions of the Wiki. Hasteur (talk) 15:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support - The {{editprotected}} system really doesn't work well for anything other than small, minor edits, or edits to simple templates. Even a little bit of complication can make using the editprotected system inefficient and difficult. It becomes difficult to explain how to conduct the change and often what the change does. Even admins who do work with templates don't work with every template; they may not know the intricacies and inner workings of templates that they're asked to edit. I agree with Guerillero though that approval for this needs to be a lot more stringent than approval for rights like rollback. This also isn't technically possible with the current software, so implementing this would require more work than rights like rollback. @Hasteur: I think you're overestimating the skill of admins when it comes to templates. While there are some that are skilled in editing templates, most aren't and template editing isn't something typically reviewed at RFA. I would be surprised if any actually followed something like that process outline. A roadmap for what might be a single edit? "Community" consensus for things that may not even be noticeable? Mr.Z-man.sock (talk) 18:24, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Inline defined references versus list defined references
List defined references has been available since September 2009, but isn't much used sadly. At the moment they are merely described as an advanced features under the MOS, and I think this should be changed.
In my opinion all references should always be defined inside the <references/> and not inline. I've done an example conversion at Death of Osama bin Laden (had to use a script (https://gist.github.com/ec7220609b5449cc4023) due to the 20sec edit conflict window), and while it increases the page size a but, it makes the running text readable, and not the usual tagsoup that can exists when there are many references.
The steps I want to be introduced is:
remove recommendation for inline reference definitions form mos and make list defined references the norm
convert all current inline definitions to list definitions
be happy when people actually can edit the pages again :)
Wikipedia currently has no method to control content other than manually blocking individual images for logged-in users. There is an ongoing discussion on adding content control features; see meta:2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content: Part Two, especially the section User-Controlled Viewing Options. See also WP:NOTCENSORED, WP:CHILDPROTECT and Wikipedia:Guidance for younger editors. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:29, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
