Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 134

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Is there any official wp policy that prevents the incorporation of primary source material in wp articles?

Hi! I'm a relative newbie, but have made significant contributions to pages, both small and large. Many experienced editors have appreciated and/or accepted my contributions of discussions of very recent primary sources from respected, peer reviewed, scientific journals, including one that is a GA article which had especially careful review by experienced editors.

Knowing that one well-known editor has objections to inclusion of primary sources, I began a discussion of possible inclusion of 4 recent primary sources into a wp page about an evolutionarily conserved gene DCC that is involved in axon guidance. I would use the references to discuss axon guidance (agenesis of the corpus callosum) and evolution (birds have had this gene deleted twice in 2 different lineages). I want to emphasize that this discussion would make no recommendations for medical treatment. It is simply interesting genetics, that tie in with popular culture (Kim Peek the megasavant inspiration for the movie Rain Man, had agenesis of the corpus callosum).

The well-known editor objected (on the DCC talk page) to inclusion of the references. One other experienced editor (who is a medical student) encouraged me to make the addition to see what I write before judging, a stance with which I am perfectly happy. The well-known editor cited WP:SCIRS as evidence that I shouldn't include the discussion. Yet, WP:SCIRS specifically states "Respect primary sources A primary source... may be a valuable component of an article. A good article may appropriately cite primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. Use of primary sources should always conform to the No original research policy."

I have come into conflict with the well-known editor repeatedly over the issue of inclusion of respected, peer reviewed, publications in wp articles. I am not going to be intimidated by his snarling and barking like a junk yard trained dog, but I will cease and desist if somebody can show me a specific, wp policy that prohibits use of primary sources. I understand that discretion should be used in citing primary sources. I don't look at articles from the Frisbeeland Journal of Science. The 4 articles were published by the Nature publishing group, which is widely regarded to be in the top 3 of most respected scientific publishers. I also understand that primary sources cannot be used to establish notability of a topic, regardless of how prestigious the publication.

In summary, before the well-known editor and I end up in an ani, it would be beneficial if someone could cite a wp policy that contradicts the official policies I read that respect the inclusion of primary sources, and support the well-known editor's insistence that I don't know how this place works. (note: none of the editors I ping below are the well known editor.) Thanks very much, DennisPietras (talk) 20:36, 10 March 2017 (UTC)_{@Aspro, Jordanben, and PriceDL:}

I use a lot of primary sources myself. "Primary sources" can have a couple of different meanings here. The first one is when people write about themselves or their organisations. This is very likely to to be a COI situation, but still these sources can be used for uncontroversial facts. But the sources you talk about are not these. However the sources may be presenting ideas of one person or unconfirmable "facts". The findings may later be discredited or totally ignored by others. So please consider if there is also a review article (secondary source) that includes the facts mentioned in the primary source. I often use a different "primary" source that talks about research from another source in its introduction. This adds similar confirmation that the ideas are supported by someone else, as they would in a review. Primary sources of the original research are also often useful as they usually add far more detail than a review article would. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:28, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett:Thanks for your comments. Yes, I do realize that primay sources are not optimal, but recent primary sources have not had the time to be reviewed. Also, the 2 pairs of references actually "reinforce" each other, so I don't believe that there is any significant chance that they will be proven wrong. Thanks again, DennisPietras (talk) 01:39, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

It's important in this context to remember that WP:Secondary does not mean independent; the sources that Graeme describes are usually primary, non-independent, and self-published (e.g., stuff in a press release or on an organization's website). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:59, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• There is no rule against using primary sources... but there is a policy that limits how and when to use them appropriately. See WP:No original research. Blueboar (talk) 01:43, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Right. Primary sources are vulnerable to interpretation -- you almost have to interpret -- and that's tricky. Also, I always figured that another reason to be leery of primary sources is... if there's no secondary source, is the material really notable? Like if I want to put in an article "Smith tweeted such-and-such" and link to the tweet, a reasonable objection is "But wait, not a single newspaper saw fit to report on that? Then how is it notable enough for us to report"? You're working in science stuff, but I guess a parallel objection would be "Wait, not one single journal reported that? Then is it really important enough for us to describe here?" If it's a matter if timeliness though -- a journal hasn't reported it yet because journals lag -- that's a reasonable counter to that, maybe. Herostratus (talk) 07:18, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

This has long been a bone of contention here on WP. My view: If no good secondary exists then primaries are acceptable when the editor has in-depth knowledge and can place them in 'proper' context. I.E. If a study was done on a small cohort (due to lack of adequate funding perhaps) which means that cohort may not be representative of the whole. That should be mentioned and a good editor will point that out when using primaries. Some editors think that a newspaper is a reliable source. Read many an article and watched many a TV news slot where the Science Corespondent (whom may have a science degree in one discipline or another) but in order to reach the publication deadline, fluffed it up badly due too little time to understand the science in a different field from his own. So his interpretation was hopeless – yet should some editors think this should be deemed 'reliable'? Next. If the national press hasn't published it, is it notable? New breakthroughs travel very fast these days in the age of the internet. An encyclopedia is not actually and foremost a compendium of facts and figures – it is a means to disseminate the current views and thoughts for further discussion and debate. New findings often help to join up many of the dots. WP is work in progress. Not being a paper encyclopedia we can update fast and correct when necessary. We don't need editors that throw spanners in the works, who do not understand the field and progress being made...however well meaning they may be. Because it keeps WP rooted in the bygone days of William Caxton the printer. So I say, we can and are free to use primaries if we need. For those editors that object to this, perhaps they should create an centralized Objection Help page or something, rather than hog the talk pages. This may save worthwhile contributing editors (whom are actively adding content) the trouble of explaining and re-explaining every objection to the small but vocal cohort of objectors spreading their POV across many articles. --Aspro (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, whomever, you are, named @Aspro:, to be very blunt, Wikipedia should not trust your "expertise", nor should it trust your claim that we really have to know the latest thing now, though Wikipedia. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:03, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

• I would be the subject "well-known editor". See User_talk:DennisPietras#Secondary_sources and the discussions linked from there, for the background. The focus on kind of sources is kind of wrong headed - the real issue is mission.

The OP is an academic who wants to:

• • 1) write literature reviews in Wikipedia on biology topics built off primary sources, even when good secondary sources are available. (example here: GRIN2B). They can't see how this is WP:OR and not what we do here. The correct WMF project for this activity is Wikiversity -- a different WMF project than Wiikpedia.
  • 2) take "hot science papers" (primary sources) and write news about them in WP, like this and this (same edit in two articles) or this, complete with "recently, X happened", inserting "hot news" about academic research that may never be commercialized into an article about plastic recycling - something that goes on all around us in the RW, and our article does a pretty poor job of describing the actual processes that are used to recycle plastic today -- the last thing it needs is confusing content added about academic research. Here we have a policy against this - WP:NOTNEWS. And in any case the correct WMF project for writing about news is WikiNews -- a different WMF project than Wikipedia.

Neither thing, is what we do here in en-WP. We write encyclopedia articles that summarize the accepted knowledge that we find in secondary sources and other tertiary sources, using primary sources rarely and with care.

To say that another way:

• • the mission of en-WP is to crowdsource articles that provide accepted knowledge to readers; the strategy through which the community does that, is described in the policies and guidelines; and the tactics are to find high quality secondary/tertiary sources (and yes primary sources, rarely and with care) and summarize them in WP
  • DennisP's mission here in en-WP is to write literature reviews and science news; their strategy is unclear to me, but their tactics are to generate that content, often with their own interpretations, based on primary sources.

Rather than wasting your own time and everyone else's in pursuit of the wrong mission in all these different fora, Dennis why don't you just get aligned with the mission of en-WP already? I keep replying to you because you could be producing so much useful content if you would just get with the program. What is going on with you, happens with academics when they come here sometimes - they will not let go of the kind of writing they do in the real world under their own name and insist on doing this kind of thing here in WP, where it is more or less WP:OR. WP is a radically different environment. This is discussed some in WP:EXPERT. Jytdog (talk) 00:51, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:EXPERT is not policy but an essay. It appears too, that is is slowly being transmogrified away from its original purpose of guidance for the newbies. May have read the history of the article wrong but one of the edits by Jytdog was to swap 'scientific' for 'academic'. Own judge and jury one might say, based on an essay (not policy) he contributes to. There is also an attempt to confabulate by suggesting these changes to the essay will ensure a NPOV. We already have a policy on that and it don't need it to be 'bent' with the addition of little hidden away clauses on essays. So, think Dennis's time is being waisted by others that have too much time on their hands and only have superficial knowledge of a few subjects and feel sidelined when some new kid comes to live on their block. The WP credos is that we all work together.--Aspro (talk) 17:06, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

What I wrote is not based on EXPERT; do not misrepresent what I wrote. (am capturing the diff) My arguments are based primarily on the policies WP:NOT and WP:OR, as I very clearly stated. Of course EXPERT is an essay. It is a very helpful one to assist people from academia and other fields adapt to the strange environment that is WP. We do all work together, toward the mission of WP. Disputes occur on many levels here but very often they are on the level of mission. People who come here to promote some idea or product (advocates of all kinds) are one example of people who are NOTHERE to build an encyclopedia. Academics who want to write literature reviews here are another. What Dennis wants to do belongs in Wikiversity or Wikinews, not here. Jytdog (talk) 21:41, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

It continues to perplex me that jytdog claims that I do things that I don't while citing references opposed to his point of view. He points to the literature review link as something that is my "mission". From that link, I quote "A careful literature review is usually 15 to 30 pages and could be longer." I have written one article from scratch in response to an article request. It is Polysome Profiling. If anybody is still reading this thread, including jytdog, please point out to me how that qualifies as a literature review. Jytdog wrote that I write "science news". No, I don't. I read new science. My mission is to update (and all-too-often correct crud in) wp articles by citing primary sources. Jytdog has written things to me that seem to me to indicate that he does not respect primary sources. en-wp does instruct editors to respect primary sources, even in a link he provided to me! ODD! Jytdog appears to not accept that, and I'm not some candy-assed coward that is going to let him anonymously bully me into his unfounded (as yet, nobody has shown me a policy that prevents use of primary sources) view of what wp is. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of editors have looked at what I've contributed. I've been thanked. I've received barnstars. I've collaborated with other experienced editors. The one thorn in my side is jytdog. I respect what jytdog does for COI, and understand that anonymity is important for that work, but to anonymously claim that my mission is something that it isn't and to enforce a vision of wp that is not supported by wp policy, is absurd, and maybe psychotic, IMHO. Unless somebody can show me that primary sources are not allowed, I am going to continue to use them to update and/or correct and/or add information to wp articles, and I'll meet jytdog in arbitration or an ani if he continues his personal crusade against me and primary sources. I'm as tired of his bullshit as he and I both are of non-GMO zealots, and I hope he can somehow learn how wp actually works, rather than the construct he seems to me to have built in his mind. DennisPietras (talk) 01:45, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

While you reasonably may find it irksome to be, as you see it, misrepresented by Jytdog (making him a big irk ;-)), calling his statements "maybe psychotic, IMHO" is a bad idea and you should probably strike that. IMHO, "My mission is to update (and all-too-often correct crud in) wp articles by citing primary sources." is a focus that can be problematic, partly because of what WhatamIdoing writes below. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that this situation is more complicated than is easily explained in any single comment. Also, with a quick glance at some of the diffs, it looks like User:Jytdog's problem with these edits isn't the mere use of a primary source (which, contrary to the narrow view that we're getting here, is not something that Jytdog rejects in every single case), but the problem of figuring out whether it's relevant and encyclopedic. For example, the edit to Expanded genetic code basically says "Some researcher made yet another genetically modified mouse", which is trivially verifiable in the cited source and not WP:Biomedical information as the English Wikipedia conceives it – and, it's also completely unclear whether anybody should care. Another diff, at Plastic recycling, is similar: yup, someone's researching ways to improve plastic recycling (and the article actually should mention, in a general way, that this is an area of research), but, nope, there's no way to tell whether these particular researchers are the best or most representative ones.
I think that it'd be better to take these individual edits to article talk pages or to WP:NPOVN. The general rules are broad enough that they're not especially useful to resolving this kind of dispute. You need to get a handful of editors considering the exact wording and presentation, rather than just waving at some 'rules'. That's not going to happen here, and it's not likely to happen at all if you're considering dozens of edits at once. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:59, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

dennisP is just bristling more fiercely. Not sure how to get through. Bummer Jytdog (talk) 07:28, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Think you can't get through because you have come up against Newton's third law. Semantics perhaps? Personal uniformed interpretation of primaries vis informed ability to explain the primaries. I've noticed it in my own discipline that some other editors are quick to delete, only to have another editor reinstate because they understand the difference between science grounded on solid foundations and those of poor quality. Whilst you do some sterling work at patrolling our articles you do never -the-less appear hammer constantly until you get your own way. Think you should take a step back and patrol other pages for a while. The modus operandi of your Malleus Maleficarum is becoming obvious now and is creating an opposite reaction amongst other editors thus proving Newtons third law.--Aspro (talk) 14:00, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you aspro! jytdog as the recent discussion at mediator proves, I am more than willing to learn from and correct my mistakes. We actually have multiple common views, and can work cooperatively, as with abscription. I will not use any sources to offer medical advice on wp. I ask you to not reject the updating of wp articles with new primary sources unless you carefully look at the references and decide if they are reputable. Updating and correcting (meticulously, to the point of hugely overeating peanuts for comfort) wp is my "mission". I hope you understand. If I knew how to do it, I would close this discussion, but I'll leave it to you in case you want to reply further or give anybody else the opportunity to comment. DennisPietras (talk) 02:41, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

DennisP you should be aware that Aspro has a long history in WP of advocating for FRINGE medical and science positions based on crappy sources and skewing WEIGHT of content based on OK sources, and the two of us have tangled a lot in the past. Be careful whose advice you take. Aspro plays the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" game in WP, which is probably why they are being all chummy with you. (I can back all that with diffs, except the guess about why they are supporting your particular misalignment with the mission of WP) Again, you will do as you like. And I will continue to remove NOTNEWS content and reviews created in WP based on primary sources, regardless of who generates them. Neither thing belongs here in Wikipedia. I continue to encourage you to explore Wikiversity and Wikinews if that is the kind of content you want to generate. Jytdog (talk) 19:12, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

FRINGE ? This is news to me! Sure, I worked for some six years in R&D. Cutting edge research and development. Some editors appear to be getting 'cutting edge' confused with lunatic fringe. Think Jytdog owes an apology to all those that labour away and even take their work home with them, because they care so much about making our World a better place and advancing humane knowalage. For example John Zarnecki's marriage broke down because of the very long hours he was putting in on the Huygens probe. So there are editors on WP that look more like wikilawyers and school marms than a useful contributor. --Aspro (talk) 23:33, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Just one example: Aspro giving a barnstar to an editor on a one-month block diff. The editor was not only blocked but topic banned from GMO, alternative medicine, human health and medicine, and WP:MEDRS discussions. A barnstar (check the wording) which suggests the editor is right and all the sanctions are wrong is very unhelpful and plainly absurd. Worse, the barnstar's wording can only encourage further inappropriate behavior on the part of the editor, and that will get them indeffed. Johnuniq (talk) 02:41, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Check your temporal time line. Couldn't use the barnstar earlier as was still being processed. You should surly see that was for work done previously.--Aspro (talk) 13:47, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to come in here, but I see some dubious claims that I'm silly enough to comment on. We need to realise that the basic rules of Wikipedia were not originally formulated with scientific articles in mind, and later attempts to stretch them to cover science were only partially successful. A particular example is the assumption that anyone who has access to a source will be able to check whether it supports the text cited to it; that is not generally true for scientific sources. Another example, relevant to this discussion, is the assumption that the "primary sources" of science have similar nature to the "primary sources" of the humanities and so should be viewed the same by the rules. This assumption is profoundly broken: the idea that a medieval manuscript and an article in the current edition of Nature are even remotely similar is simply ridiculous. I'll address one issue arising: there are those who claim that something which has so far only appeared in a scientific journal should not be in Wikipedia. Not only is this a misapplication of the rules, but I'll argue that it is inimical to the needs of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia exists for its readers, not for its editors. What do readers of scientific articles want when they come to Wikipedia? Easy, they want articles that are comprehensible, correct, and up-to-date. A scientific article that is not up-to-date is deficient at best and misleading at worst. This doesn't mean that every minor paper has to be reported—rules like WP:DUE still apply—but important advances should be reported when they are published. And the editors who should report them are the editors who understand them. Zero^talk 09:52, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, but what you are saying is that Wikipedia is "broken" for science the same way it is "broken" for everything else, the pedia does not have a way to check that editors understand their sources or their topic before it allows them to write. That is why it stresses reliance on the proven, and re-proven on topics. Giving undue weight to something is also "deficient at best and misleading at worst," and, yes, such undue emphasis shades into original research. Textbooks and encyclopedias are tertiary, they lag, so one does have to have some comfort with that. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:43, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Don't see how you conclude that Zero is suggesting WP is broken. Since its very start, WP has been evolving and improving via incremental steps in policy. What is being pointed out is that one size doesn't fit all articles and the current growing gamut of subjects. Agree with you that OR is an unhelpful path to walk down and that the majority of newly published scientific papers must be treat with great caution -rather than being accepted as gospel. We should be striving (as said above) to provide the reader with articles that are comprehensible, correct, and up-to-date. For this to happen there needs more clarity and subdivision. Hence the discussion here, to decide how we go forward. WP is not a paper encyclopedia.--Aspro (talk) 12:55, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Why such an obtuse comment? No. As Wikipedia science readers, we most certainly do not want Wikipedia editor's opinion on what is "correct", we want what the science community says is correct, and for that to happen, Wikipedia editors do have to show it with sources from the relevant science community - even if you are (bizarrely) convinced you are able to "update" the world via Wikipedia. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:06, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Zero that scientific articles are not exactly like other primary sources. Such an article is usually peer-reviewed, which means other experts in the relevant field have checked it and the conclusion it brings. As such, it can be agreed that such an article is indeed a reliable and acceptable source to be used. The only caveat is that, as per other policies, you should not interpret the article in any way yourself (except for resuming what's directly written it), but rather let secondary sources do it. However, it remains that scientific papers can almost always be used as sources for facts, and that they usually should be acceptable for the interpretations made of those facts (we can safely assume that scientists know what they're doing and that they're (except the rare exception) not making stuff up...). 69.165.196.103 (talk) 16:37, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

• On the primary scientific literature in biology and medicine, see Replication crisis. If you are reading a primary source in the humanities (say a verified letter from George Washington) that is what is Washington said. A primary source in the sciences that claims a mutation in gene Y is a key player for schizophrenia is not the same thing, nor is even say a more basic science claim like a mutation in gene Y causes changes in the frontal lobe . We could attribute of course, but there are generally boatloads of primary sources about gene Y, schizophrenia, and the frontal lobe, and WP would turn into a laundry list of attributed claims from primary sources. That is not what we do here. We use reviews for several reasons - they tell us what research has been picked up and validated by the field and really importantly, they leave things out that the field has not picked up on for any number of reasons. We rely on the experts in the field who publish review articles or textbooks to tell us what is accepted knowledge. Jytdog (talk) 17:53, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

(1) Your analogue doesn't work; you are confusing the text of a source with the assertions made by the source. A more correct analogue would be using GW's letter as a source for a claim he made in the letter, which is quite different from citing the letter merely for what it says. (2) Articles that look like laundry lists can be written perfectly well without recourse to primary sources. It is not about the nature of the sources, but about the ability of editors to judge WEIGHT and choose the correct balance between completeness and conciseness. (3) Review articles and (very recent) textbooks are an excellent resource that we should utilise. However, I don't think we should be protecting readers from the real nature of science by waiting for everything to get into those sources. It often takes years. I think we should also report important new announcements and important disputes. Zero^talk 08:38, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it does often take years for new developments and understandings to filter down. So agree most whole heartedly with Zero on those points he has made (and they concur with many of my own). The dissenters views, I find interesting too and useful also. Think we have come to yet another Rubicon in WP policy development. For instance, Alanscottwalker says: ”we want what the science community says is correct”. Well, the 'science community' is now embracing WP – we are here! But I think the dissenters have something else on their minds that they can not yet put into words to express their unease. Think we need to acknowledge that, before we can move forward. Think we all here, uphold our credo that 'anybody' can edit WP. Although, I agree with many of DennisPietras views, he (as a new editor) appears to be suggesting that "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others". It is this view that I think irks some other editors. However, isn't is this win-win situation? The scientific community is now here and active. They can plough through the mountains of published papers and filter out those of importance. Then contextually add them to the articles in a way that makes sense to 'all' editors regardless of their walk-in-life. You can bet, that other editors in the same scientific discipline will scrutinise those edits and come down heavy if an other expert errs into factual inexactitudes. Scientists become scientists (instead of mere technicians)because they are naturally sceptical and require a convincing argument before they can accept. Whilst many technicians (not including every one here) become psudo-skeptics. With a policy review (such as this) we can ensure that WP remains an encyclopedia that anyone can edit,is up-to-date and as accurate (and better) that any popular science magazine can achieve.--Aspro (talk) 15:53, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

No. The scientists that matter are not, here. The ones that matter publish off-Wikipedia - it has nothing to do with equality, it has to do with editorial honesty -- anyone of us may be the foremost expert on whatever, but that is undetermined - "on the internet, no one know your, etc." If any actually are expert, what we need from them is 1) a facility to identify excellent sources, and 2) write for a general audience what those sources say - that's all (whether they are expert in this task, we shall see). Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:34, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

That is exactly what primary sources are -published off Wiki. A simply definition of an excellent source is a paper which reports a study that has been well designed and helps to join up more of the dots. They (the authors(s)) always cite other studies (often behind pay-walls – which many editor may not be able to access) . By reading between the lines, ones own experience (if one is in that field) tells you if it it a quality paper or should be ignored. Whether it be Nature, New Scientist, BMJ, Scientific America, etc. They reject most because they are paper journals and only have so much room (ink space) and only so many staff, for which to produce the next edition. The world has changed... Information can and is being disseminated faster than ever before. WP is not a paper encyclopedia and we are not no longer in William Caxton age. It was Jimmy Wales's wish that we should embrace all – now we have the scientific community also willing to contribute. Why change our minds (or you try to change our minds) and revert back to the William Caxton era? --Aspro (talk) 18:57, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Aspro, New Scientist and Scientific American are popular science magazines, not scientific journals. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 04:37, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

That is my very point and I think the point that DennisPietras, Zero is making. We should not be wholly dependent on popular science magazines to provide us with sources. They cater to the lowest common denominator – i.e., their main readership. Yet, some editors are pontificating that we should never-ever cite original scientific papers because they are primaries which is against WP guidance. As Solon the Lawmaker of Athens (638-558 BC) quoted (and has oft been subsequently misquoted): “Laws are for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools”. Where are the WP laws banning editors from using primaries when they are the best references for the article? Where are they? --Aspro (talk) 13:57, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

What? Of course primary sources are off-wiki - what a useless observation. Much crap is off-wiki, too. It's odd that you keep saying the same bromide over and over, it's precisely that we are not a traditional encyclopedia that we reject editor's creative reinterpretation of primary sources. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:13, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

How did "creative reinterpretation of primary sources" get into it? Nobody here has argued for the overthrow of WP:NOR that I can see. Zero^talk 02:06, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to all for your contributions. To try to settle this, I have started an ani at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#request_for_block_of_user_.40Jytdog:_to_prevent_him_from_removing_valid_edits DennisPietras (talk) 03:27, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Thoughts in 2 different areas. Wikipedia policies and guidelines often require and get interpretation for the particular situation at hand. If there is a particular situation involved, the poster should note it. Otherwise IMHO one is (even inadvertently) being somewhat manipulative. Trying to get general comments non-policy comments (given without knowledge of the details of the dispute) on policy talk pages and then using them in a particular dispute. Second, the discussion has a bit of a structural flaw. Wikipedia'a sourcing related policies relate to what constitutes suitable sourcing for challenged or likely-to-be-challenged material, not to allowing or disallowing source types per se. North8000 (talk) 14:38, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with what Blueboar and Herostratus said earlier, that it's more a matter of how to use primary sources, than whether. And I also agree with Jytdog about "hot" new sources. I'll give some examples of my personal take on the ways that this applies to science content. Not too long ago, I had a very productive interaction with Dennis over a primary source at Cichlid: [1], [2], [3]. That was a very helpful use of a primary source, and a very recent one at that, but that is because (a) it was in a particularly prominent and strictly-refereed journal, and (b) more importantly, the subject (evolution of a family of fishes in a lake in Africa) is something where there simply aren't a lot of experts disputing with one another over not-yet-settled issues. In my own expertise area, neuroscience, I view it this way: If a page about medium spiny neurons in the caudate nucleus contains a statement that the typical diameter of the cells is "x" number of microns, there may well be a secondary review article that could be cited for the number, but I would have no objection to citing a primary study. That's because it's a simple statement of uncontroversial fact, and there is essentially no risk that a new study will come out next year saying "no, they are much larger or smaller". But – if instead the content is about genes that have been implicated as playing possible roles in giving rise to schizophrenia, that's a very different situation. That's a subject where there are constantly new primary sources coming out, saying that the previous primary source was probably wrong, and it is not yet anywhere near to being settled. So I would likely insist on a secondary source, rather than depending on the most recent primary source because it is "hot". And if instead the content were about the kinds of medicines used for people with schizophrenia, then we would be solidly into WP:MEDRS territory. So that's an important way in which Wikipedia is and should be different than scholarly science journals: editors here cannot or should not make the subjective judgment that a recent primary source in an active area of research is "hot" – because doing so would be WP:OR. We need to leave that evaluation to secondary sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
• I have experience with this too. I was approached by an athlete who was upset that her birth date was incorrect on Wikipedia. Birth dates affect eligibility for certain events, which is why they are published, and why we have them in the articles and the infobox. It was reasonable for her to feel that our incorrect date was tantamount to an allegation of cheating. She of course had evidence in the form of ID to back up her claim. Note that WP:BLP states that "We must get the article right" - a clear reference to WP:NOTFALSE, which in this era of fake news and disinformation really needs to be upgraded to a policy. On checking, I found the (usually) reliable source contained a typographical error. Working to avoid WP:NOR, I corrected the date, and replaced it with another WP:RS that had it correct, along with a footnote explaining that the first one had a typographic error. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:06, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
• I have experience in writing scientific primary research articles, review articles, book chapters, and being interviewed by newspapers (secondary sources). For those not experienced with scientific publishing, if a paper (primary source) is submitted to a reputable journal, it will be peer-reviewed by 1 - 3 (maybe more) experts in the subject and may take a year to be finally published. In my experience of TV news and newspaper interviews, I believe there has been little, if any fact checking by the non-expert reporter and it is published within 24 - 48 hrs. So, which is the most reliable source? DrChrissy ^(talk) 22:16, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps this discussion is worth continuing anyway, but I'll note the OP has, sadly, retired, following frustration about the outcome of the ANI thread he mentions above. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 23:03, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Not a happy outcome. At all. Jytdog (talk) 04:26, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

No. Well, maybe he´ll be back at some point. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:34, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment: overhaul of WP:BROTHER essay

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

---

Greetings fellow Wikipedians,

I am here to discuss the essay of WP:BROTHER with you. I know that this humorous essay has existed for a long time and has been used to prevent claims of vandalism or sock puppetry from being countered with "my account was hacked" or something similar. However, I do have concerns that the wording is being applied too literally. There is nothing in the sock puppetry policy that explicitly states whether family members of blocked users are allowed to create their own accounts and edit Wikipedia, even while the other editor is blocked. CheckUser evidence will retrieve the same IP range and prehaps even the same device(s), but as long as the family member is not editing at the direction of the blocked editor, this is not block evasion and therefore the family member's account should not be blocked.

I've seen several cases where this appears to have happened, and the family member has requested unblock and been declined citing WP:BROTHER. A few of the exact cases which I am referring to can be found here, here, here, and here. I know that several of them are many years old, but they are still good examples. I have drafted two proposals below, please share your thoughts and comments as long as they are civil. I personally support either proposal.

Proposal 1

The WP:BROTHER essay will be overhauled to include information regarding family members of blocked vandals. The actual information is TBD, but I would propose something like "you must disclose your connections, especially if you plan to make constructive edits to same topic areas that were vandalized". This of course, is only the baseline. More information would be needed. President (talk) 00:09, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Support

• Support. As proposer. President (talk) 00:09, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose It's just an essay, you could easily write your own one countering the position. Exemplo347 (talk) 00:17, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose and snow close. This is a bad faith WP:POINTy proposal by someone who is not a new editor. MarnetteD|Talk 00:44, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Neutral

Comments

@THE PRESIDENT: Please explain, with specifics, how a totally new editor such as yourself has seen several cases where this has happened. Exemplo347 (talk) 00:17, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Proposal 2

An amendment to the sock puppetry policy will be made, laying out official rules and regulations in terms of family member editing. Unlike proposal 1, this will make an offical policy as to whether or not family member editing should be allowed or not.

Support

• Support. As proposer. President (talk) 00:09, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose No justification to change current policy. Exemplo347 (talk) 00:17, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose and snow close. MarnetteD|Talk 00:46, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Neutral

Comments

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

DATING Guideline Proposal

Wikipedia is now read and used by people in most of the countries of our small world. I myself is using Internet more or less ten hours per day; of those hours I use WIKIPEDIA around 90%! Unfortunately there is an important item that is overlooked in your (our, of course) encyclopedia: How do different people write the dates? Here are some examples: October 9th 1970: 10.9.70, 10.09.1970, 9th October 1970, 9-10-70, 09.10.1970, 9. Okt. 1970 (Scandinavian). I believe there are many other styles that I do not recall at the moment.

Why not make the WIKIPEDIA dates «standardized» in a way that all (maybe almost all) countries that use the latin alphabet will recognize? This standard will also be completely unambiguous (I hope). The style I here propose is what I personally have made a standard in all my articles, pictures in my computers:

9.Oct.1970. In shorthand: d.mmm.yyyy

If this is possible to implement I believe there will be a lot less confusion about the factual date.

Another question is the timestamp. Should it be hh.mm.ss or mm.hh; or ss.mm.hh, mm.hh. Should we use 24 hours or 12 hours AM/PM day? I should like to know other readers opinions. (Not only English-US readers are enjoying our efforts!) Andy-Phil. 07:23, 23 March 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andy1111no-phi (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia timestamps display as whatever you've set them to display as here; there's no global format. Regarding dates in articles, we use the appropriate format for the variant of English in which the article is written (9 October, 1970 or October 9 1970) as appropriate, with the month always written out to avoid ambiguity, and in very exceptional circumstances UTC format (1970–10–09). The full range of acceptable date formats is here. Scandinavian etc date formats are irrelevant; this is English Wikipedia, so we only use formats which are in use in the English language except when they form a part of a direct quotation or an article about date formats. ‑ Iridescent 07:46, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Repeating defamation in WP

I read User:Mwalcoff's legal comments about Jerome Kerviel from 9 years ago, and was wondering if any policy has been made about the topic. He provided a long list of legal cases to support his premise that repeating a libel is still libel, even when the source of the original libel is given. Another legal expert in a recent article made the same argument, and added cases where just linking to the original libel can be considered repeating it, and thereby become a libel. So can WP editors repeat a libelous statement in someone's bio?

There are actually at least 3 hypothetical questions that can be created from that:

1. Presume a RS website makes an allegation about a person (the subject of a WP bio) and they get sued by that person for libel. The suit makes the MSM news. Can, or should, WP give cited details about the lawsuit and repeat the original allegation?

2. Same facts as above, but what happens if the RS website also subsequently admits the allegation was false and publicly apologizes, which also makes the news. Can or should the original allegation be repeated?

3. Same facts as #2, but now make the website an unreliable source per WP guidelines. Maybe even a blacklisted source for WP to cite. Can the original allegation be repeated? --Light show (talk) 02:38, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

• I think this sort of thing involves a delicate mix of legal considerations, policy considerations, and good editorial judgement. Case by case judgments may be unavoidable. I started to write a more detailed response, with a bunch of hypotheticals, but I don't think we can really cover enough possibilities to really be useful. I think the handling of things at Donald Trump–Russia dossier provides a good example of how we can balance those concerns. While we could probably include more details of the allegations from a legal standpoint, even if the statements are clearly libelous (assuming they are false), editorial discretion dictates that we describe things in more general terms, without getting into the salacious details of the allegations. Monty₈₄₅ 03:14, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

If we're worried about legal implications of such actions, we have to force the Foundation to make a clear statement on such. We should not speculate one way or the other on the legality of such serious issues. I agree that, if legality were not a concern, we still have an obligation to use sound editorial judgement, but we're all just a bunch of randos on the interwebz here. If its a legal concern, there is one entity who needs to make a clear statement, and that's The Foundation. --Jayron32 03:18, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

But if legal implications are not a factor, and only editorial policy is considered, could anyone then comment on the 3 questions? --Light show (talk) 04:15, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Then you would discuss it on the article talk page of the specific subject, and come to a consensus with other editors on how to proceed. --Jayron32 04:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Any notable allegation about a public figure may be stated, as an allegation, provided that we give the best evidnce as to its level of accuracy (disproven, under investigation, admitted lie, etc). It doesn't matter how unreliable the source is. The allegation itself may be a lie, but the statement that the allegation was made isn't. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:19, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

No, it absolutely matters that the source for the allegation is reliable!!! If the New York Times reported that "Jayron32 accused Od Mishehu of molesting chickens" and we cited the New York Times that would be fine. If I, as some rando on the internet, posted on my website "Od Mishehu molests chickens", we would NOT republish that. The reliability of the sources ALWAYS matters. --Jayron32 04:34, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Could that imply some relevance to question 3? --Light show (talk) 04:42, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

No idea. My statements here in the general should never be construed as evidence one way or the other in solving any content dispute in the specific. I was only saying that, insofar as we did report such a thing (if we did) that sourcing should be reliable and probably also expressly attributed. However, please do not take these statements as an endorsement of anything in any specific dispute. --Jayron32 04:45, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Of course not. My main question is only about general policy guidelines, if any. --Light show (talk) 04:48, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

If the allegation is notable, then you can repeat it, along with any necessary statements of unreliability/flasehood, and link to third-party sources which discuss it; if the allegation itelf isn'tt notable, it doesn't belong on Wikipedia. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:14, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Discretionary 1RR in place of edit-warring blocks

I've noticed in cases of WP:EW / WP:3RR that what's been particularly helpful is when I can simply restrict someone to a reasonable 1RR due to WP:ACDS instead of blocking them. It's proven to be surprisingly effective at preventing further edit-warring (in my anecdotal experience) and seems to be received much better than an eternal block-log-of-shame entry. Obviously a block does accomplish the same prevention of continued edit warring, but things become slightly tricky if an experienced editor, who might otherwise make good contributions, missteps (even accidentally). Or if they edit war but not enough to be 3RRing, but still obviously enough to be unacceptably edit warring. The only recourse so far is blocking for non-ACDS topics, but does it always make sense to block someone from all edits? Why should the page they're edit warring on need to be in an ACDS topic for an admin to take—at least what seems to me to be—a less-harsh action than blocking? You'd think it'd be the other way around, right? :P

Anyway, that got me thinking: why not just allow admins to impose a reasonable 1RR on an editor in place of an edit-warring block, regardless of ACDS status, if they feel it would be appropriate? It seems like it's win-win: in place of a block an uninvolved admin could, at their discretion, decide to restrict an editor to 1RR for either the same, normal period as the block or a reasonably padded one (e.g., if a block would have likely been less than a week, as is usually the case, a 1RR of up to a month in its place would probably be reasonable). It could be appealed in basically the exact same way as a normal block: an uninvolved admin reviews it and decides if the 1RR was inappropriate, of excessive length, etc... *shrug*. Seems like just one more tool in the toolbelt—one that's a little more finely tuned to the situation at hand and a little less walloping than a full block.

The real goal of preventing edit warring down the line is to create an extended period during which someone has to consciously keep themselves from edit warring—they have to develop a self-regulating habit of not edit warring—and a day or two (or whatever) of forced non-editing doesn't seem like enough to help form that habit (or at least, it probably doesn't help that much and seems more punitive for someone who might otherwise edit constructively). A week/month of 1RR, on the other hand, seems like it has a much better chance of succeeding as both an administrative action and a super-strong final warning before a block (at least, in some situations).

Thoughts? --slakr^\ talk / 10:27, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

I am guessing, if editors didn't follow a policy (WP:3RR) why would we expect them to follow another one (WP:1RR) when told to do so? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:00, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, it sounds interesting, and I actually think that this is a pretty good idea. But, what happens when an editor violates the 1RR? It seems that this is a good idea anyways, but it should be recommended that if an editor violates it, they should be placed under a short block (say one day or so) at the start, and then have that increase to normal block times. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 16:36, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Sometimes they don't understand it completely or have difficulty with the subjective portions. Some that come to mind are when people think they're "in the clear" because they think something is an exception to 3RR, for example, weren't clear on partial reverts, or are simply editing a high-traffic page and didn't notice they were technically edit warring. 1RR is much clearer, imo. You revert once and if that fails, you go to the talk page. No counting involved. There's obviously always the block option, but this is something less harsh for those situations where there's a reasonable assumption that the person will try not to edit war for the 1RR-restriction period.

@RileyBugz: Violations would then subject to a block as usual. This is more for situations where, like I was saying to Jo-Jo Eumerus, there's a reasonable assumption that someone will try to behave. There are obviously plenty of situations where, despite being warned, someone just needs to be blocked straightaway. :P

--slakr^\ talk / 23:44, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Gonna try canvassing some of the usual AN3 patrollers in case they'd think it useful too: @El C, EdJohnston, Coffee, and NeilN: --slakr^\ talk / 23:53, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

It's useful but it can be already done without changing policy (well, I do it anyways sometimes). I offer the editor the choice of being blocked for x days or going on 0RR or 1RR for y days where y > x. They invariably choose the revert restriction. This implements WP:CONDUNBLOCK without having the stain of a block. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:02, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I actually did sort of offer this as an option to an experienced editor I blocked for 3RR: unblock and a week or so of 1RR versus retain the 24-hour block—they ended up turning my offer down. Perhaps the duration of 1RR was just too lengthy. I suppose they didn't want to have that disadvantage for that long versus just a 24-hour block. But the problem with that, for me, is you have to wait for the editor to respond to the offer—I usually close an AN3 report as soon as I see it, whether the editor being reported responds or not. But I'm open to offer to established editors who violated 3RR a few days (say, 3 days) of 1RR to go along with an unblock from now on as a pilot project. Or maybe offer it instead of a block if they respond quickly. I'm willing to try it out, within reasonable time constraints. El_C 00:12, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Of course, violating the 1RR option would have to come with serious deterrence: like a week-long block or something. El_C 00:13, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

My only concern is that 3RR would lose its deterrent factor without a block as a given countermeasure. El_C 00:15, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

There are still plenty of grumpy admins out there who would just block ;-) I only make the offer if I feel the editor is trying to make a good effort towards finding consensus. Not just, "I'm right and I explained why I was right!" --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:28, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm generally meow! But self-improvement, I've heard of it.El_C 00:34, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I would say that if they are genuinely trying to find consensus, and stop when warned, in most cases a block isn't required at all. While someone who violates 3rr should know they are inviting a block, it still falls to admin discretion whether a block is necessary to stop further disruption, even after policy gives the green light. Sometimes a good, non-template, cut it out message will stop it too, even if the template one didn't, particularly when it comes from an admin. (Obviously, if two people are edit warring, you want to make sure to treat them similarly, regardless of how lenient or strict that is) Monty₈₄₅ 00:48, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I've long thought that the best sanction for an isolated instance of edit-warring, where a good-faith editor has gotten caught up in a dispute and needs a break, is just to direct him or her to stop editing that article or that page for a specified period of time. That way the edit-warring cycle is broken, but the editor is still able to contribute productively on other topics. I have never understood why this idea has not enjoyed substantially more support. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:17, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Yup, 0RR. Very handy as the editor can still participate on the talk page and keep discussion going. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:19, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

(Of course, for the first 24 hours, that article that the 3RR applied to, there will have to be 0RR—we can't give them an extra fifth revert there.) But overall, 0RR for say, 3 days, instead of a 24-hour block, is an even more strict approach. El_C 00:29, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't even thinking of a variation on xRR necessarily. More like "go edit something else entirely for a day while things cool down." Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:48, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Exactly. That should be done more often, particularly with someone who normally builds good content but who let themselves get sucked into a fight. A block can follow if they are unable to take friendly advice from an uninvolved admin. Johnuniq (talk) 01:38, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

In particular, a non-template/personalized warning/advice can be extremely effective, even if the person has ignored a template warning from another editor. Editors, and particularly experienced editors can get in a mentality where they ignore perfectly accurate template messages, thinking the template placer is just trying to win. Some people don't respond well to templates at all, even from uninvolved admins. Its not policy, and sometimes a template is still the right call, but we should all consider WP:DTR when it comes to any type of warning template being directed at an experience editor. Monty₈₄₅ 02:49, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

---

I've tried the pilot project for the first time today. User chose four days of 1RR on all pages over a 24-hour block. I did block for 10 seconds, though, to note in the block log that this was the user's 2nd 3RR offense. As I mention to the user, the penalty for violating the 1RR is a week-long block, but the user is allowed to self-revert in case they forget. The major drawback is how to make sure they really keep to the 1RR—I just don't have time to watch over every edit they make. El_C 08:11, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

RfC: First sentence of bilateral relations articles

As has previously been raised at WT:WPFR, and others have agreed to at WT:LEAD, the current widespread practice of beginning bilateral relations articles with "X–Y relations refers to bilateral relations between X and Y..." is not in compliance with the Manual of Style, specifically WP:BOLDAVOID. It was suggested that an RfC be filed in order to determine how best to address the issue; I'm placing it here as the project talk page doesn't appear to see much activity.

The questions here are:

1. Is there consensus that the above interpretation of the MOS is correct, i.e. such wording should be avoided and a natural sentence without bold text preferred instead?
2. If there is consensus, how should the current bilateral relations articles be dealt with?

Personally I don't think all instances of the construct need to be corrected at once. If there is consensus, editors should be advised of the fact, and corrections can then be made gradually as interested editors go through the articles. Editors should also be advised to refrain from reverting such changes. --Paul_012 (talk) 04:00, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• Comment [Pinged by bot] - Certainly, WP:BOLDAVOID asks us to avoid bolding for such phrases. But BOLDAVOID is probably the most violated edict on Wikipedia, and it would be a humongous task to clean up the leads that violate it. Bilateral relations articles are probably the most obvious violations. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:23, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
• I think that you've missed some alternatives. You don't have to use "refers" in such sentences. You could equally begin the article with something like these:
  • "X–Y relations formally began in 1724, when the King of X sent an ambassador to the Queen of Y to form an alliance against pirates from Z" (a statement about their history)
  • "X–Y relations have been tense since 2010 as a result of what scholars call the Tomayto–Tomahto Incident" (the current relationship).
  • "X and Y are each others' most important trading partners, so X–Y relations has long been dominated by pressure to maintain free trading arrangements between the two countries, as both countries' local economies could be plunged into depression by any significant disruption" (a quick summary of long-term issues). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
    • WhatamIdoing, thanks for the suggestions. However, I think the third example isn't really okay because the WP:LEADSENTENCE suggests, "If possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence." If it doesn't then it there's no need to try and accommodate it in boldface elsewhere. --Paul_012 (talk) 20:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
      • That's trivially fixed by copyediting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
• Would prefer the X–Y relations formally began... lede the best. Less awkward than using "refers to" and allows bolding per style guidelines.---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 04:26, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Should notability be inherited with composition?

In the deletion debate page for Slate Star Codex (a blog), User:Exemplo347 maintains that Wikipedia:Notability (web)'s No Inherited Notability rule implies that a blog cannot be notable merely because articles on the blog have notability. This does not seem to match my reading of NIN, which seems entirely concerned with relations of association, not composition. Particularly since merging is considered an accepted alternative to deleting an article that is not independently notable, and the merge target of a bunch of articles on a blog would be an article about the blog (since a blog is the set of articles on it), and merging must preserve notability or be useless, it seems that logically notability must be inheritable along relations of composition.

My reading of Wikipedia:Notability (web) seems to back this up, as it says: "Similarly, a website may be notable, but the owners or authors do not "inherit" notability due to the web content they wrote."

Which seems to imply that the website itself does gain notability due to the article on it.

I see two alternatives: either, the NIN rule should be extended to say "In fact, even the website itself does not inherit notability due to the content that is on it.", or it should be extended to say "However, a website, being merely an aggregation of content, does gain notability from the articles on it, such that a website may sustain an article merely as an aggregation of individually notable content." FeepingCreature (talk) 21:10, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I took the opposite position to User:Exemplo347 on this question in that deletion debate. I completely agree with you. In the implausible event that we were to have three articles that were each about three different blog posts from the same blog, and the community judged that all three articles should be merged into one article about the blog, it would not serve any encyclopedic interests for editors to object to this on the grounds that "blogs aren't notable just because they have notable blog posts on them". The content of blog websites typically consists of about 99% standard blog posts, and maybe 1% "special" posts like About pages and maybe these days a "Please donate to me!" page. In other words, a blog is, to all intents and purposes, a collection of blog posts, and I would argue, notability should transfer from a blog post to a blog, and similarly should transfer to other things which are compositions of other things - like, for example, events that a person was notably involved in, and their life as a whole. (With the caveat in that case that when it comes to people notable for only one event, an article about them may not be appropriate.)--greenrd (talk) 22:09, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

The "Should notability be inherited?" issue is not something that can be settled by a post here. The process would require a Request for Comment discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability and ongoing discussions should not be put on hold while it is decided, as this process can take months. Exemplo347 (talk) 09:25, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I was told to bring it up here on IRC. I agree that the deletion debate should not be held up by this; I just bring it up because it seems the rules are unclear on the topic. FeepingCreature (talk) 17:33, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

The crux here is depth of coverage. If a RS merely links a blog post with minimal or no commentary about the blog itself that doesn't merit mention in the Wiki article about the blog, much less convey notability. The OP's statement, "In the deletion debate page for Slate Star Codex (a blog), User:Exemplo347 maintains that Wikipedia:Notability (web)'s No Inherited Notability rule implies that a blog cannot be notable merely because articles on the blog have notability" is not an accurate summary of this. VQuakr (talk) 20:05, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Yep, the Single Purpose Account that started this post has suddenly appeared because I said a few passing mentions about a blog entry do not add up to significant coverage in reliable, independent sources. Never mind though, notability isn't inherited, according to WP:GNG and nor should it be. Exemplo347 (talk) 20:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

If you check my edit history, you will find that this "single purpose account" which btw carries the same name that I use literally everywhere else online was created back in 2008. I just don't edit much.

That said, you are outright ignoring my point. WP:GNG (web) says specifically that notability is not inherited between associated topics; a blog and a blogpost is a bit more than an association. At the very least, WP:GNG (web) is unclear and should be amended. FeepingCreature (talk) 13:34, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:INHERIT specifically says that "parent notability should be established independently; notability is not inherited "up", from notable subordinate to parent", which seems to cover exactly this question. Of course, WP:INHERIT is an essay, not a guideline, but the principle seems to me to make sense. If we say that something which is composed of notable constituent parts is itself notable, we start running into all sorts of problems: if I create a blog today which has the text of Pride and Prejudice as its only content, I would argue that it shouldn't be notable, but the interpretation put forward by user:FeepingCreature above would suggest that it is. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:09, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I would argue that a blog that contains the text of Pride and Prejudice is a poor example. A more relevant example would be if a blog that posts, say, serial fiction, should gain notability if a specific update chapter is discussed in the media.

You're right in the case of parent notability. However, I believe the case is different here from all the examples listed because a blog is the natural unit of organization of its blog articles, but (for instance) the AFT is not the natural unit of organization of an Einstein. Would Einstein's works ever be merged into his AFT page? That, I believe, is the one case in which inheritance upwards is not just possible but necessary.FeepingCreature (talk) 13:39, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I see how this case differs from the Einstein/AFT chapter case. What I don't see is how the case you are proposing differs from the Pride & Prejudice case. Why is it that you think that a blog which posts already-notable fiction should not inherit notability from that fiction, while a blog that posts fiction which is not yet notable should inherit notability if the fiction does become notable? Do you likewise think that an album should become notable if songs from it gain notability but there continues to be no coverage of the album? Should an album containing already-notable songs be automatically considered notable? I don't see that the exception to WP:INHERIT that you are arguing for is at all clearly defined at the moment, and its fuzziness potentially contains many things which I think are not notable and should not become notable... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 14:45, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

That's a very good example! I do think that an album whose songs are notable but that does not receive individual coverage should become notable, because if there was an album whose songs were notable but not significantly notable, then the album page would be the natural page to merge those songs into, and this would lead to the odd sequence of "pages are made for song, pages are insufficiently notable, pages are merged into single page for album, content on page has enough notability to sustain an article but is deleted because the topic of the article does not have independent notability at all."

[edit] Ah, I think I see the issue you mean. I think if there's a topic that has notability for an independent page, then this notability should not also get to be double-counted for the containing subject; that would indeed violate the spirit of WP:GNG and the examples. In a sense, the notability is "expended" to sustain the page. :) My concern is only about topics that are sub-notable and hence merged into a container article. FeepingCreature (talk) 21:04, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

I would like to suggest something slightly different. I agree that for an album with only one notable song, the album should not become notable, similarly to how living people not in the public eye should not become notable for one event. However, if there are two (or more) songs covered on Wikipedia from an album, regardless of whether one of them is individually sub-notable or they are both notable but are simply both stub articles with little possibility for expansion, then notability concerns should not prevent the most logical merge of the two articles, i.e. into an album page, if that is desired by the community. And the same should go for blogs and blog posts, I think. Indeed, I now think a personal blog by a living person, at least, should not be deemed notable by us merely for having one notable post, for similar reasons as the reasons why we have the BLP1E policy.--greenrd (talk) 22:57, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

That makes sense. My concern is mainly with merges invalidating notability, which invalidates merges as a tool for combining sub-notable pages. FeepingCreature (talk) 10:20, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:COSMETICBOT update RFC under way

Please see Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#WP:COSMETICBOT update for the discussion. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:01, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Fix guidelines

I've posted this to Jimbo's talkpage here: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Suggested_fix.

Long-time users habitually cite "Subject fails wp:PROF" even in the face of the fact that the wp:PROF guideline itself is designed merely as an alternate means of establishing notability in cases where a potential academic bio subject doesn't prove notable otherwise, viz., through there being sufficient reliable secondary sources per wp:BIO. These users' awareness of this language at these guidelines indicates their lack of candor in promoting their favored work around WP's actual guidelines. This needs to be fixed by rewording the guidelines at wp:BIO and wp:PROF, etc., to indicate that academics and the like are to be held to a higher standard in certain cases than other potential subjects.

--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 22:09, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Again community input is politely requested for Jimbo's tkpg with regard ur expertise in gen. notability per wp:GNG & applicabilities of eg wp:PROF, wp:AUTH, etc. w/in AfD's

... here: User talk:Jimbo Wales#Suggested fix.--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 00:33, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Should the bureaucrats maintain the existing private mailing list for matters not suitable for on-wiki discussion?

Interested parties are invited to comment here. –xeno^talk 13:15, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

RfC regarding NACs

While not strictly a matter of "policy" per se, there is an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Non-admin closure#RfC regarding unregistered editors which may be of interest to those here. TimothyJosephWood 21:20, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Should redirects be automatically created when moving to draftspace?

I was just looking at WP:CHECKWIKI error 95, and I was pondering why MediaWiki creates redirects to draftspace when articles are moved there (my understanding is that such redirects are instantly eligible for deletion under WP:R3). I would be far more inclined to move articles to draftspace if it did not leave even more mess behind and draftification would seem a far less WP:BITEy way of dealing with poor quality (but not WP:CSD worthy) articles than immediately PRODing. I've run across quite a few editors who seem to have good intentions but haven't got the required WP:COMPETENCE (yet) and have been thoroughly trodden upon by the CSD/PROD/AfD stampede. Thoughts? TheDragonFire (talk) 12:21, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree with you, TheDragonFire, but a redirect to an article moved to the draft namespace at least serves the purpose of indicating there is a draft of that article, and that would prevent recreation. If this is enough to keep such redirects, then it seems best to make them soft, so that readers are aware they're exiting the article space. – Uanfala (talk) 08:02, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Uanfala: There is already a notice that displays when there is an equivalent article in draftspace (see Arts Project Australia for an example). TheDragonFire (talk) 01:16, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Media sources and WP:UNDUE

We have been having a lot of discussions recently about various media outlets and whether they pass WP:RS... but I think we could use some discussion about media outlets (in general) and how they relate to another policy provision: WP:UNDUE. Now, I know that UNDUE is really focused on putting viewpoints in proportion (and not blowing minor viewpoints out of proportion) ... but I am beginning to think that it is possible to give a media report UNDUE weight as well - especially when the event it is reporting on has just recently occurred, and we don't yet know the long term significance of the event. Thoughts? Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I am approaching the issue of recent/current political and ideological controversies and other topics in a draft of guideline I would like to propose at some point about how WP should be dealing with this topic area, where the application of UNDUE for the press as Blueboar alludes too happens too frequency. Mind you, I'm also focused more on us having awareness that the media is not as objective as they were went most of these policies were written, and when coupled with UNDUE, can swing the tone of political/ideological topics towards one side easily. It is far from complete, but the points of merit that would need to be addressed towards this I've got summarized as User:Masem/RSPoly. --MASEM (t) 14:32, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Apart from rejecting Masem's claim about "more" bias, this is a severe problem in that we do write about "current events", and it is a terrible fit for this encyclopedia for multiple reasons, but beyond RECENTISM, NOT, and yes, UNDUE/the whole OR/NPOV/V triumvirate, I am not sure what magic words of policy could be added (Policy to not write things unless they have had widespread, coverage for say three months to six months? Specific policy more targeted on BLP and shifting burden and onus, more against additions in "breaking" areas?)Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:42, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

It's not about there being "more" bias, the bias of the press is the same as it 10 or so years ago; it is the lack of objectivity the press has gained since, which causes more bias to become visible and by nature of our policies, drive content creation towards that bias without considering the long-term picture. Look how many issues there have been and continue to be over the US election and people and topics related to it, mostly driven by a highly critical press. All the issues at play are magnified with this current situation. --MASEM (t) 15:20, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Again this argument I have seen from you is without basis - it is your opinion. Now, it's not that 'they have more bias', its that 'they have less objectivity' - no, they do not - it is the same as it was, when these policies were written. Your somehow coming to this new realization of yours "recently", is just "the problem". Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:27, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Masem. The traditional media have changed immensely in the last 10 years, as has their playing field. Much of the firewall between informative content and opinion content has disappeared. And a much more spontaneous form (the internet) has taken over much of what they were doing. North8000 (talk) 16:02, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Another opinion? Really? How unhelpful. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:11, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

If you doubt that things have changed in the last decade or so, then perhaps you'd like to type something like "how has news reporting changed" in your favorite web search engine and see whether the reliable sources tend to agree with you. Here's what one says: "Fewer journalists are reporting less news in fewer pages....Reporting is becoming more participatory and collaborative....advocacy journalism is not endangered—it is growing. The expression of publicly disseminated opinion is perhaps Americans’ most exercised First Amendment right, as anyone can see and hear every day on the Internet, cable television, or talk radio. What is under threat is independent reporting that provides information, investigation, analysis, and community knowledge, particularly in the coverage of local affairs. Reporting the news means telling citizens what they would not otherwise know."[4] It's not hard to find sources like this one that trace the financial effects and its consequences.
Also, I'd like to point out that "when these policies were written", they were based on editors' experiences and long-term beliefs about what the news media was like, rather than an absolutely up-to-date understanding of the exact state of journalism in 2003. So I believe that journalism has changed a lot in the 14 years that have elapsed since those policies were begun (and the reliable sources agree with me on that point), and I think that when those policies were begun, they were based partially on a 1990s-era understanding of journalism. Also, Wikipedia itself has changed dramatically since then. Back then, the basic hope was to get people to please, please, please cite something; now, many editors are pushing for citing only high-quality sources. Rejecting a peer-reviewed article from a reputable scholarly journal because it's "not good enough" is an everyday occurrence now. Given that reality, it is hardly surprising that some editors are interested in reviewing the use of media sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing: That you cite an article from almost ten years ago that things have changed from ten years ago is just nonsense. Moreover, you respond with strawman. Your source does not say high quality or mainstream journalism, which is what NPOV, NOR V and RS value, is "more biased", nor does say it is "it has less objectivity." If you have literature reviews that compares say the front page articles of the New York Times 10 years ago with today and actually makes the currently unsupported conclusion than bring it forth, don't hand wave to 'things change'. Prove the unsupported assertion. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:18, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

That particular article is 7.25 years old, not ten; furthermore, there are many more like it.

The discussion here is not specifically about "high-quality" or "mainstream" journalism. The OP's comment refers to "media outlets (in general)", and the comments you particularly replied to talk about "the press" and "the traditional media".

But... if you really want to convince people that the media haven't changed in the ~15 years since this advice was first talked about, maybe you could produce a suitable source for people to read and contemplate? So far, I see you asserting your personal opinion that the media hasn't changed during the last 10 years (an opinion that I, at least, can't find any reliable sources to support), while denigrating other people's views that it has changed for failing to provide sources ....just like you failed to provide sources to support your opinion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

You cited an irrelevant article and ended up making a nonsense point, that is all (as I said, the source is almost 10 years ago). I take it you have other irrelevant articles, which just goes to show you have no proof that mainstream and high quality media is less objective or more biased than 10 or 15 years ago. This discussion is about "mainstream" and "high quality" because that is what all the central policies V/NPOV/NOR/BLP require (otherwise again your comments are irrelevant). We have to adhere to mainstream, high quality media because that is policy. If you say the mainstream, and high quality media has changed that it is now more biased and less objective (thus, no longer high quality, and mainstream) the burden is on you to prove it (not wave at "things change"). The person who asserts always has the burden not the one who denies. That's basic logic. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:10, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Policy is not a blood oath or a law, it can change, and consensus can override it. But really, it's not a change of policy that is needed but avoiding selective reading of it. UNDUE is used as a sledgehammer to eliminate viewpoints that aren't in RSes, or to demand we include subject statements from RSes as fact because many RSes report the same. That's not what the whole of policy and guideline sets out, but its how its used to shut down any consensus discussion. Further, it is not that today's media aren't mainstream or high-quality, just that relative to what they were 10-15 years ago, that measure has certainly gone down, but it has gone down across the board, so that high-quality sources from 10-15 years are still the same high-quality sources today because no sources have improved in quality otherwise. And policy/guidelines do give measures of how to handle that if we don't use selective reading of them. --MASEM (t) 19:52, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I've been thinking that one of the fundamental issues underlying many wiki-problems arises from giving a common English term "reliable" a completely different/independent definition in Wikipedia. This inevitably leads to the falsehood of automatically giving a WP:RS the imprimatur of being actually reliable vs. taking it in the context of it's own limitations. In reality, even sources meeting wp:RS often aren't.....they contain factual errors, apply terms in erroneous or fringe ways, apply highly-POV terms as fact, and provide spun and distorted coverage. I think that Masem is onto something and doing excellent work in one area on this. That is to at least deal with this in the area where it is most often a problem. North8000 (talk) 14:53, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that there may be something to what you're saying about language. A little while ago, I was part of a long RSN-type discussion over a source, which some editors declared to be "unreliable". Problem: Professionals around the world, including some of the Wikipedia editors participating in that discussion, actually do "rely upon" that source in the exact way that the source was being used in the article. (I doubt that we will ever stop referring to acceptable sources as "reliable".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

IMO the solution is to strengthen two other criteria (expertise and objectivity with respect to the text that cited it), combine these and traditional wp:RS criteria together into a "strength of sourcing" metric, (thus taking the "magic bullet" from wp:rs criteria by itself) and then say that the strength of sourcing has to be suitable for the particular situation. North8000 (talk) 12:56, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Folks... we are wandering off topic... could we discuss media sources in terms of UNDUE and not reliability. Blueboar (talk) 10:40, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I would certainly agree with your paragraph that opened this thread. Except that newness of events is only secondary to the discussion. But under current wp:undue, you are going to have a hard time because what wp:undue sets up as the ultimate arbiter "a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources" is an un-usuable facade. I mean, has anybody ever seen that criteria actually truly implemented? I don't even know how it could possibly be objectively implemented. North8000 (talk) 13:06, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I think if you want a more focused discussion you might want to quote the parts of NPOV and RS that you want discussed (we do have to read undue in context of other policy/guideline). Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:22, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

UNDUE is one of those things that needs a time consideration. UNDUE readily applies if we're talking a debate or controversy a decade ago: the dust has settled, and we can readily use reliable secondary sources to get a view of how that situation was viewed. But when we're in the midst of a controversy, where their might be a popular opinion but no clear "winner" of the situation, UNDUE has to take a back seat to staying neutral and document the controversy fairly, if we are going to allow editors to keep articles as up to the minute as we do now. Editors need to use UNDUE and think about how the article will be written many years down the road, not just what is prevailing in the media at the current time, and that's hard particularly for anything political now adays. UNDUE has to also reflect that the media more than ever is far from being "independent" sources in these controversies (eg the media cannot be independent in the situation around "fake news"), and UNDUE should be used to evaluate principally independent sources. --MASEM (t) 14:16, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Blueboar, I think that UNDUE is difficult. The usual approximation (as in "to a first approximation, the entire universe is made of Hydrogen") is "whatever the sources talk about the most, that's what's DUE".

However, this isn't adequate, because there is material that is DUE even if sources mostly ignore it (e.g., birth and death years for biographies, what a notable company sells, prognosis for a disease, etc.). We don't really want an article about, say, a 19th-century university president to omit birth and death dates on the grounds that most sources don't include his birthday and those that do barely mention it in passing.

On the other end, news media over-emphasizes certain events. If you took raw news media as the standard, then 50% of Michael Jackson should be spent talking about child abuse, and 25% of Paris Hilton should be spent talking about drunk driving, because that percentage of news sources (across the entire spectrum of quality) seem to mention those subjects (at least in passing). But that percentage is really about what generates money, and not what you'd get from, say, a scholarly biography of the subjects.

I'm not sure how you'd write this into a policy statement, though. "Some stuff is inherently DUE, so include it if you can verify it at all, but other stuff is overemphasized in the media, so play that down" is not very useful. And IMO the real rule – which I might summarize this way: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a mindless regurgitation of whatever generates clicks on headlines – is not sufficiently instructive for the people who don't already know what to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Related issue: assigning weight to primary source opinions

• This seems like a recent issue that is possibly related to the subject of this thread. I second the need for more clarity on UNDUE, vis-a-vis new media kinds of sources. I am particularly concerned about what I think is an overly legalistic reading of policies and guidelines surrounding UNDUE in the context of this RfC. I think that the UNDUE policy should explicitly mention the need for secondary sources if it is unclear how to assign weight to an opinion. There is WP:BALANCE that does mention the need for secondary sources (and, surprisingly, that is the only place in NPOV where secondary sources are mentioned at all), but that's more in the context of discussing two opposed and widely-held opinions. The guideline as currently written does not appear to offer enough guidance on how to assign weight to published opinions that are not widely held. (I would have thought that a standard application of WEIGHT would be to exclude them, but I am being berated by a tag-team pair of relatively long-time editors that I and others "don't have a clue about policy".) Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:10, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
• Speaking of that, in the realm of undue weight, should we be required to disclose, in article text or citation markup, if a source's publisher has any direct relation (i.e. ownership stake or similar factors) to the subject of something being discussed? Obviously, coverage could be weighted in favor of that entity if they had a vested interest, and I think it should be a standard practice for use to disclose them whenever possible. ViperSnake151  Talk  03:11, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Is it much too easy to create Start and Stub articles of low importance on Wikipedia

Recently some graphs were updated on the Wikipedia page from 2015 to their current 2017 updated form. The graph seems to show that the fastest growing category is in the Start class articles of Low Importance, with all the other category breakdown growing at much slower rates representing much lower aggregate number of articles. Is this a concern; that the largest amount of editor time is being devoted to Start class articles of Low Importance, by a least an order of magnitude over other classes of Wikipedia articles? Is it much too easy to create Start and Stub articles of low importance on Wikipedia?

Quality-wise distribution of over 5.5 million articles and lists on the English Wikipedia, as of 29 January 2017

  Featured articles (0.11%)

  Featured lists (0.04%)

  A class (0.03%)

  Good articles (0.50%)

  B class (2.00%)

  C class (4.32%)

  Start class (26.41%)

  Stub class (53.01%)

  Lists (3.65%)

  Unassessed (9.94%)

Importance-wise distribution of over 5.5 million articles and lists on the English Wikipedia, as of 29 January 2017

  Top (0.91%)

  High (3.20%)

  Medium (12.21%)

  Low (51.68%)

  ??? (32.00%)

There were interesting update edits which were done on Wikiproject tabulations for 2017 here [5]. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 17:54, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Some examples of what you consider "start class articles of low importance" might help—bear in mind that most articles start off short and get longer, and that what's unimportant to you isn't necessarily unimportant to someone with an interest in the topic. Also bear in mind that "start class" is an utterly arbitrary grading given by driveby editors, and has no real meaning—I've seen articles with a "start-class" or "unclassified" grading passed unchanged (or minimally changed) at FAC. ‑ Iridescent 18:12, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

OK, having looked more closely you're using "Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and quality" as your metric for "importance". You can't take that as a metric for anything—all it would take to make any given page "top importance" is to set up a Wikiproject dedicated to that subject. Besides, the vast majority of Wikiprojects are totally moribund, so what you're actually measuring is "how important is the article to the few remaining active projects like WP:MILHIST and WP:MED?". ‑ Iridescent 18:17, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Also... remember that the articles on topics that are likely to be considered important by a wiki project were probably started in the early days of WP... well before 2015... so what is being written now (in your sample time frame) are articles on topics that are less important. Blueboar (talk) 18:28, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

@Iridescent and @Blueboar; Thank to both editors for their comments. I guess these are the two graphs being discussed and I'll put the 2017 version here. The 2015 version was just updated by another editor as is available on the Wikipedia history of previous edits. When I look at the Start and Stub articles then it seems fairly clear that the vast majority of Wikipedia contributor time is being spent there on the Low Importance, Start and Stub class articles. Similarly, the active Wikiprojects which are still around do continue to have their say about importance, and a number of the current Wikiprojects are relevant as to their endurance for their useful help even in 2017. The Low Importance articles then in the second graph, again indicate that Low Importance articles are receiving the lion's share of contributor time from Wikipedia contributors. In the presence of these two updated graphs, it seems usefull to inquire as to why a vast majority of total editing time is being devoted by all Wikipedia editors to Low Importance, Start and Stub articles. Do Wikipedia editors know that this is where the majority of contributor time is being spent by editors? Is it much to easy to create Start and Stub articles of low importance on Wikipedia? ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 20:16, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Most articles get rated as "low" importance upon creation, these graphs don't make it clear which importance rating they took. Was it the highest rating? Because something like Xbox One is high importance to WPVG, low importance to WP Blu-ray. –xeno^talk 20:33, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

@Xeno; It is my understanding that the highest rating is taken if more than one Wikiproject has assessed it. Its fairly clear that the Low Importance, Start-Stub class article are receiving the lion's share of editor time from all of Wikipedia's collected contributor time. Is this generally known as to the question that total edit time on Wikipedia is devoted to Low Importance, Start-Stub articles? Is it a good allocation of the total contributor time at Wikipedia? ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 21:00, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

@ManKnowsInfinity: In addition to the issues raised by Iridescent and User:Blueboar, there is another problem with the methodology you are using. It seems to you are making an invalid jump from "number of articles started between 2015 and 2017" to "amount of editing time spent between 2015 and 2017." Many "high importance" articles were started many years ago, so they would not show up as recent creations in your chart of newly created articles—but people are still spending lots of time editing those articles to (hopefully) improve their quality and keep them current. For example, suppose that last month I made 99 edits to existing "high-importance" articles. Then, last night I created one new article, which someone will come along soon and tag "start class and low importance." In your statistics, that would be recorded in your statistics as "one new start-class, low-importance article" with no recognition that I made 99% "high-importance" edits. So while I think you've indirectly put your finger on one reason we are drawing fewer new editors (i.e. that much of the "low-hanging fruit" article creations are long since done), I'm not convinced by your broader conclusion. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:12, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad; The comments you make need to be heeded as making an accurate point. The issue of quality control in Wikipedia article development over time has been looked at in two studies I have found and it would be interesting to hear if they are supporting your point. The short version of the links from the article for English Wikipedia states that "researcher Giacomo Poderi found that articles tend to reach featured status via the intensive work of a few editors, and a 2010 study found unevenness in quality among featured articles and concluded that the community process is ineffective in assessing the quality of articles."[6] Cheers. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 19:17, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

@ManKnowsInfinity: Regardless of "importance" (which is really arbitrary, and based solely on the opinion of the person assessing the article in almost all cases), creating Start- and Stub-Class articles should be easy. They are the lowest level of article, so there should be no reason to make it harder to create them. So basically, the answer to your question is, "Yes, it's easy, but it's supposed to be that way." ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 21:20, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

@Nihonjoe; Yes, it's easy, but it's supposed to be that way. Your comment is fully accurate and editors should have access to readily create articles for new books and new films, for example, which are continuously coming out into the public through publishers. My interest here is to reflect that the graphs and pie-charts posted here indicate that nearly 75% of Wikipedia's articles appear to be in this category of Low Importance, Start-Stub class article, which seems disproportionately high. The often repeated quality control comment on Wikipedia is usually quoted as: "In 2005, Nature published a peer review comparing 42 science articles from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, and found that Wikipedia's level of accuracy approached Encyclopædia Britannica's." That is the quote, though the lion's share of editor and contributor time at Wikipedia is not spent on articles at that level. The lion's share of total editor time appears to be spent on Low Importance, Start-Stub articles, which the pie-charts posted here from the English Wikipedia article seem to verify and confirm. Is it a concern that the majority of editor and contributor time is being devoted to Low Importance, Start-Stub articles? ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 19:37, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

No. It's not a concern. This is a volunteer project and editors will work on what they want to work on. –xeno^talk 19:44, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Like Newyorkbrad suggests, the original post seems to suggest more edits are devoted to lower-importance and/or lower-quality articles, but the graphs just show the distribution of articles, not the distribution of edits. Is there any tool/report which can show where edits are devoted? I would be interested in seeing that applied to, say, the 1 percent plus of Wikipedia covered by WikiProject NRHP, focused on the United States' National Register of Historic Places, which has a pretty good importance rating system in place. It is one where all the higher importance articles (the objectively more important "National Historic Landmark" sites and the most prolific architects/builders/engineers) are in fact already created. There also are lots and lots of "low-hanging fruit" available, i.e. the opportunity to create articles on topics that will always be rated "low-importance" but which are each locally very interesting/important. The suggested concern probably does apply; it is my sense that the vast majority of edits are in creating/expanding the lowest-importance articles, and also that extremely few edits are done in improving articles towards featured status, i.e. from when articles reach start rating and beyond. It would be helpful to be able to document/measure any of that. --doncram 21:23, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

The great majority of individual species, barring a few WikiProjects and excepting those with major economic, agricultural, scientific, etc. impact are rated 'low importance' in their respective WikiProjects and rarely fall under any other WikiProjects which may give a higher importance rating. For the extremely speciose orders, this means a lot of articles, many of which are still redlinked/have only recently been created. Many new species are also described each year. I would not be surprised to find a significant amount of those low-importance stubs to be species articles. I know that low-importance stubs under the banner of WikiProject Lepidoptera amount to almost 4.7% of all stubs (and to about 1.8% of all articles) regardless of importance. The quality of many of these articles *is* a problem (though many of the old lowstubs are in worse shape than the newer ones, which generally at least include references, functioning taxoboxes and most of the necessary categories, and are significantly less likely to prose-wise consist solely of the sentence "Binomial name is a moth in the family Family-name."); the existence of them in my opinion is not. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:38, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

• What's too easy is destructive criticism of the work of others, contrary to WP:BITE. Per WP:CHOICE, it is up to individual volunteers what they work upon. If the OP and others wish to work upon vital topics then they should please just get on with it. Myself, my three most recent creations are Koshe, Agnata Butler and Papa's. They are not of the highest importance but they add to our broad coverage of such topics. "Many a mickle makes a muckle" Andrew D. (talk) 00:27, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
• An additional problem with the analysis is the assessment system itself. Many articles are assessed not long after they are created, when they are in their infancy, and then never assessed again. My favourite example is Jian Ghomeshi, a 2,700-word article with 79 references, 4 images and no cleanup tags, rated start-class. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:25, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

• @Ivanvector; That is true though Wikipedia does keep track of the progress which articles make in having their quality improved as represented in this graph (linked below) maintained by Wikipedia dynamically. I am assuming that in principle that featured articles are promoted from good articles, which in turn are promoted from "B"-class articles, etc, as reflected in the statistics in this table. I do not know if its possible to measure how long it takes for an average article to get promoted by one incremental level at a time though it would be interesting to see something on this. The stats are maintained here: Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Statistics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Cheers. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 19:04, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

• You might well be assuming that in principle that featured articles are promoted from good articles, which in turn are promoted from "B"-class articles, etc, but you'd be talking complete nonsense. This is not how Wikipedia works, nor is it how Wikipedia has ever worked. Per every single person posting here other than you, your comments are based on a complete misunderstanding of how Wikipedia operates. ‑ Iridescent 19:14, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

• @Iridescent; A word of clarification then. You are stating that during article development that most articles do not become GA articles before they become FA articles? It seems that this is a process of incremental improvement which occurs over and over again for articles at Wikipedia going through the improvement process toward higher quality. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 19:23, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

• Looking at the last batch of FA promotions, we have an article promoted from start-class[7], three articles promoted direct from "unrated" to FA[8][9][10], and two direct from B-class to FAC[11][12]. To reiterate, every assessment other than FA and GA is completely arbitrary and you shouldn't place any store by them. I'm not going to keep repeating this as you appear to be in full-on WP:IDONTHEARTHAT mode, but the quality assessment scale (other than FA and to a lesser extent GA) is the legacy of the long-abandoned WP:1.0 project, and you shouldn't take the assessments on talkpages remotely seriously, while the "importance" scale is meaningless since it only measures the importance of the article to those projects which still operate importance scales—as a glaring example, every visual arts article is automatically "low importance", no matter how significant the artwork, artist or movement, because Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts deprecated article assessment as pointless many years ago (so by your measure Painting and Visual arts are of the lowest importance possible). ‑ Iridescent 19:29, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

• @Iridescent; I'm completely in sympathy with your comment though its equally true that Talk page after Talk page for nearly all Wikipedia articles continue to repeat and maintain this information about article importance apparently because editors and readers find this information to be useful. I have read that other editors also share your opinion about the relative usefulness of this data, and possibly you believe that the current standards might need to be phased-out over time and replaced by something better to reflect quality control of articles being developed at Wikipedia. If you have seen an article on this topic of alternatives to the current quality assessments procedures being used by Wikiprojects at Wikipedia then I would be interested in reading them. Sounds like others might also be interested if you have read something about alternative approaches to quality assessment at Wikipedia which you could show us. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 19:48, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Two important things to remember here, in my opinion:

1. The more important a topic is, the more likely we are to have had an fa article about it a long time go; over time, the articles left to create would tend to have lower importance level.
2. It;'s easier for one person to write a stub, and then for many users, perhaps over several years, to improve it eventually up to GA - than it is to create a GA-level article in a short time span. Please see Wikipedia:There is no deadline. signing for Od Mishehu from 3-19-2017 (thanks for comment).

Something to consider: when I spent some serious time a few years back re-evaluating articles, I found a quarter of articles still graded as Stub-class were properly Start-class or better, & about 10% of articles graded Start-class were properly C- or B-class. The lack of interest in doing systematic re-evaluation (versus improving articles) is making us look worse than we are.

On the other hand, a lot of articles I started as stubs 8-10 years ago are still stubs, & except for some cosmetic changes untouched, which is why I am reluctant to create stub articles. But YMMV. -- llywrch (talk) 23:08, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Statistics and Quality control

@Od Mishehu and Llywrch: Thanks to both editors for their comments in the section directly above. Although I opened that discussion there to try to get comments on the very lop-sided data provided by another editor in the pie-charts given above, the responses from several editors were instead very strongly oriented to Quality Control concerns at Wikipedia. The discussions and comments made in the above section go well beyond what is covered on Quality control and cover the topics of editorial improvement and editorial drift in quality of content in articles over time, sometimes over months or even years. Od Mishehu makes the strong point that there is a large discussion at the nomination pages at both of the very active FA-project and the GA-project pages about articles which become listed or de-listed over time (months or even years). Similarly, Llywrch makes the point of spending much time updating article evaluations which seem to have not always positive editorial drift in quality over the years. Neither of these important issues is dealt with effectively in the WP:Quality control article and possibly there is more to be said on this by way of comments or observations from other editors. We have not heard from many of the editors involved directly with the FA-nom and GA-nom pages, and possibly they might have some experience points to make. Does the topic of Quality control deserve more attention than it has been receiving in recent years, especially as reflected by the differences in emphasis seen in the new section directly above and the older concerns covered in WP:Quality control policy page? ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 16:43, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Quality Control and Wikipedia:Quality assessment are two very different topics. I think it is Wikipedia:Quality assessment you are interested in rather than WP:Quality control.

The alternative to a flawed quality assessment system is not necessarily an alternative quality assessment system. Many of us edit here quite happily with little to no involvement in the quality assessment system at all. I take the view that if I correct a particular typo across the whole of Wikipedia I have improved that aspect of Wikipedia quality. How much of an improvement in quality I leave it to others to measure. ϢereSpielChequers 22:26, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers; There is a significant difference, I agree, between WP:Quality control and WP:Quality assessment. The editors responding in the section directly above this one were discussing many concerns which seem to overlap these two areas but are not covered in either one of these standard Wikipedia policy pages. There is likely a notable difference between Quality control when looked at from the standpoint editing content as opposed to observing and controlling editor conduct on Wikipedia articles. For example, the Quality control page seems to spend much time talking about protection from vandalism (an important topic on its own) though not directly related to maintaining and improving genuine article content over time. The issue of editorial drift is also not covered on either of those policy pages where, for example, the original editors of a page may have left Wikipedia and other editors get involved in partial and perhaps mistaken directions for further over-edits leading to the type of article deterioration in content quality over time which Od Mishehu seems to refer to above. None of this is covered on either the Quality control page or the Quality assessment page, though its a significant issue for articles as they are edited over months and often over years after the original top editors for a particular page are long gone. Then there are the other Editing content issues notably raised by the other editors here responding in the section directly above. Should the pages for Quality control and Quality assessment somehow be rewritten to cover all of these issues discussed in this thread, or, should they be covered under some other policy page not yet mentioned in this thread? ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 16:02, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

How article assessments actually work

ManKnowsInfinity, I think you need the whole backstory before you're going to understand any of this.

Once upon a time, when Wikipedia itself was only about two or three years old, a small group of editors looked around Wikipedia and said, "This is really cool, but what if you don't have access to the internet?" This affected schools, libraries, and people in developing countries. So they looked into the feasibility of burning Wikipedia onto CDs (yes, those big silver-colored discs that were created in the early 1980s). Even though Wikipedia was much smaller then, it was still too many articles to fit on a comfortable number of discs.

So they said, "How about we only burn the best and most important articles to the CDs?" Well, that obviously meant that someone would have to determine what the best and most important articles were. The first batch was done by a small corps of dedicated editors. After a while, though, they enlisted the WikiProjects (that's "groups of editors who want to work together"; there were a lot more small ones back then). Assessing articles (I've done tens of thousands of assessments over the last ten years, so I know a bit about this) became a way for interested groups to identify the best articles ("quality") and the articles that they cared about the most ("importance" or "priority"), and to increase the likelihood that those articles would be included in the offline/CD-based releases. The original corps devoted themselves to the infrastructure aspects, such as setting up the bot that updates the statistics. The WikiProjects used this as a source of motivation (you wanted your best stuff on the CDs, of course) and to prioritize the improvement of articles that mattered to them.

However: nobody really needs CD-based copies of Wikipedia any longer. It's an outdated media format. If you want an offline copy, then you're going to use a thumb drive or sideload articles onto a smartphone. The last use of these assessments for the original and main purpose was seven years ago.

So why do we maintain this? Well – mostly, we don't. People, including me, have generally stopped updating article assessments as often. I am still happy when the assessments are correct, but it's not urgent or even important. Readers almost never see this, and editors mostly don't change their behavior based on this. There are still a few uses, so we don't need to remove it: WPMED tracks some statistics (mostly for us to talk about, but also for use in presentations to non-Wikipedia groups). A list of top- or high-priority articles is a good way for a new editor to find articles to watch. A list of high-quality articles is handy when you need examples (e.g., to show people unfamiliar with Wikipedia's best work, or to use as models for articles that you're improving).

But does it truly matter? No.

Also, when you try to interpret stats related to article creation, then it's worth remembering this: We already have articles on nearly every recognized disease. We have articles on only a small fraction of notable medicine-related organizations (e.g., pharmaceutical companies, local hospitals, notable surgeons, health-related charities, etc.). So if you had a perfect list of all missing articles, and you randomly picked a missing article to create it, WPMED would very likely tag your article as |importance=low and |society=yes. That doesn't mean that your contribution is useless to the world; it means that the particular editors who focus on medicine-related articles don't really care about articles on that subject. Leonardo da Vinci had a hugely significant effect on anatomy – but it's a low-importance subject for us. And if we're the only group that provides an importance rating (which is very common for newer articles), then you're going to see our disinterest in those stats, even if the article would be normal or higher interest for a group that doesn't bother with ratings very often (such as WikiProject Organizations) or one that refuses to list importance on principle (like MILHIST).

The bottom line is this: You have found a flawed and outdated dataset that existed for a different purpose, and you should be exceedingly cautious about even attempting to (mis)use it for the purpose of trying to decide whether new articles were worth creating. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing; That is a very good summary of the Chapter in the book titled The Wikipedia Revolution from 2009 written by sysops User:Fuzheado, which I have read and I recognize your points in your good summary of his Chapter on this issue. The point remains, that editors and administrators who are spending truly large amounts of time upgrading and delisting articles for FA-review and GA-review feel that their efforts are highly important to Wikipedia and they devote very large amounts of time to the creation and maintenance of FA-articles and GA-articles. Many editors consider it a sort of badge to place their FA stars and GA stars on their user pages to indicate how important they feel their contributions to the FA-level and GA-levels of articles has been over their long editing time at Wikipedia. Yes, your summary is accurate above, but its also accurate to acknowledge the very large amount of time which even very experienced Wikipedia editors expend to produce FA- or a GA-articles throughout Wikipedia. Your comments on the med articles I also have to agree with almost in the entirety of all you say here; still the editors of those peer-reviewed articles also attach a good deal of importance to improving the quality of those med articles that eventually reach FA- and GA-status. It is a big deal to them.

My comment about the statistics comments you make is really very rudimentary since I only have an interest in the data itself represented in the graphs. Anyone, you or me or anyone, who takes an introductory statistics course or probability course is very quickly introduced to the fact that data sets of statistics are sometimes deeply skewed from medians and averages; that's just the way the real world works. However, the same professors who teach that also state that when statistical data sets are skewed or lop-sided, then its probably important to try to understand why the data sets are lop-sided. That was all I was referring to when I posted those two pie-charts in the section at the top of this thread as provided by User:Hanif as an update of the Wikipedia statistics for 2017. The statistical data represented there is very lop-sided and elementary statistics teaches that such things should be explained for the benefit of future study and analysis. The current article at Wikipedia for WP:Quality control and WP:Quality assessment do not cover most of the strong comments which you and the other editors have made already in this thread. Since so much time and effort is devoted at Wikipedia to creating and maintaining FA-articles and GA-articles (especially in the med articles) then should there be some improvements made to the apparently outdated policy pages for Quality control and Quality assessment at Wikipedia if only to make them better? ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 20:37, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

• I find that the stubs or starts can be helpful, and should be made (if notable), as they will be improved when someone who wants to improve it comes along. Sometimes they improve it a whole lot. My only real example of such is with "my" Iazyges page. Compare diff 722458881 with how it is now, or compare its beginning as a one sentence stub in 2001 to now. Sometimes articles lay dormant and low quality for a while, but if it's notable the potential for use is still there. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 14:58, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@ManKnowsInfinity: I find the stats fairly helpful - see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds/Assessment#Statistics - as it gives me some idea of the state of play of the wikiproject. Many articles are inaccurately categorized but as a global ineact overview it is helpful. As far as buffing content and the proportion of stubs, I entirely agree, which is why I have run the Stub Contest and Core Contest. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:19, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

The state of the art at Wikipedia

This is a summary of the strongly lop-sided graph representing the statistics of the over one hundred to one ratio between the vast number of Start and Stub articles in comparison to the much lower count for High importance articles at Wikipedia. There are over 2.5 million Low importance articles compared to less than 40,000 articles each for articles of Top importance and High importance. As of April 2017, there are approximately forty thousand of the highest quality articles maintained by Wikipedia known as Featured Articles and Good Articles which cover the core topics and vital topics in the online encyclopedia. At present there does not appear to be any integrated plan to address this imbalance in quality of articles. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 14:59, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

There probably never will be an integrated plan because Wikipedia does not have that type of structure or management to implement such an idea, even if it were possible or desirable. While it remains open to anyone to edit any article then human nature dictates that most editors will edit what interest them rather than applying any arbitrary priority of importance. I don't see this as an issue. Nthep (talk) 15:12, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Clarifications about WP:BIO1E/WP:BLP1E and terror attacks

This is somewhat related to the recent discussion at Talk:2017 Westminster attack over whether to merge the suspect's article into the attack's article.

There are several questions here:

1. Do WP:BDP and/or WP:BLP1E apply to recently deceased criminals (or suspected criminals)? This one should be fairly straightforward. I've been convinced that the answer is no, but plenty of people do seem to think otherwise.
2. What constitutes a "significant event" as described in WP:BIO1E and WP:BLP1E? Does "significant" == notable, or is it more strict? If the latter, what would be a good bar of significance in relation to terror attacks?
3. Even if a subject passes the barrier of WP:BIO1E/WP:BLP1E, would they possibly still be better off covered in the article on the event (or vice versa, the event being merged to the subject's article) if there does not end up being coverage outside of the event and size permits? This is especially pertinent for deceased subjects, where there will not be a trial.

These questions have arisen because there is no real consistency with which these policies/guidelines have been applied in this topic area. For example, the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks: the two in the Charlie Hebdo shooting (Chérif and Saïd Kouachi) do not have an article or individual articles, but the suspect in the Porte de Vincennes siege does (Amedy Coulibaly, and so does his wife Hayat Boumeddiene, who may have helped plan the attacks but did not participate). Similarly, the suspect in the 2016 Nice attack (Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel) has an article, but the one in the very similar 2016 Berlin attack (Anis Amri) does not. Of course, some of this may be chalked up to differences in coverage making some meet WP:GNG and some not, but in many cases, those who do have articles have little more than what is already present in the articles on the events, and would be better covered there in context instead of in a standalone article. ansh666 22:38, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

• Comment – Actually, per WP:PERPETRATOR: "A person who is known only in connection with a criminal event or trial should not normally be the subject of a separate Wikipedia article if there is an existing article that could incorporate the available encyclopedic material relating to that person."  {MordeKyle}  ☢ 23:33, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

• Fair point, but I am uneasy about WP:PERP. The phrasing is weird - what does "The motivation for the crime or the execution of the crime is unusual—or has otherwise been considered noteworthy—" mean, exactly - and I'm not sure it copes with the passage of time: if we had it in 1963/4, would we still have the Lee Harvey Oswald article? Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 13:06, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

• I'm not sure Lee Harvey Oswald is a good example, he assassinated the president of the United States. I would think that is a prime example of someone who would have their own article. He had enduring coverage in the media at the time. The coverage of this subject will not last beyond maybe a week at most, which we have seen over and over with these attack. Unfortunately, much like school shootings, these run of the mill terror attacks have become routine, and no longer cause continued coverage or extended notability. 2016 Ohio State University attack and 2016 Berlin attack are very similar. Their names have had no real lasting notability. The one recent one of this nature where the suspect has his own article was the 2016 Nice attack which was perpetrated by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. It is quite arguable that he does not need his own article, as he has had no lasting notability, however, he kill nearly 90 of people and injured nearly 500. That's pretty extraordinary. I do however think he does not need his own article as the stand alone article does not really add much more than is covered in the article for the attack. You are right about the wording though, which is the same reason we are here talking about WP:BIO1E/WP:BLP1E. I've also had some rather large problems enforcing other parts of BLP, including WP:BLPCRIME. The wording in some of these policies are rather clumsy sometimes. A lot is left open to interpretation, which could be the intention.  {MordeKyle}  ☢ 19:36, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

• Comment – I think this is asking the wrong questions (since the underlying question is "when should there be a seperate article for a perp.?"). As implied by MordeKyle, the question should be, "what useful purpose is served by a seperate article?", "is the reader likely to ever search for the perp., independent from the event", and "is the volume of info sufficient to justify a seperate article". There are notable exceptions to the general answer of "no" to this question. No one would ever have heard of L. H. Oswald were it not for one event, but the level of coverage subsequent to the event has made him "of interest" in his own right. It is nearly impossible for editors to assess the historical importance of an event as it is unfolding, but excuse me for being cynical, as any event unfolds, it inevitably appears to be the most important thing to have happened "since sliced bread". I'm UK, and affected by the "Westminster" attack, it is easy for anyone to come up with "most important event since ...." analogies, but I'm also old enough to remember all the IRA "events", which equally seemed unprecedented at the time (and which neither I nor most others can any longer remember very well). Having been involved with some of the examples of inconsistency above, I have to say that the inconsistencies lie far more with level of "emotional response" to the event than rational application of WP principles. My response to this question therefore is that there needs to be demonstrable NEED for a seperate article, based on volume of info available, rather than any evaluation of the seeming importance of the event as perceived as the event is unfolding. We also aren't meant to ask such mundane, practical questions, but it is worth asking, "which is more practical for editors?", my experience of being involved with some of the more notorious events of the last 12-ish months is that 'perp' articles often become the home of careless, PoV, speculative editing, while more experienced editors focus on the 'event' article. If perp. articles simply become the 'reject shop' for unqualified speculation that would never find its way onto the main article, what useful purpose are they serving? IMO there is no need to change policy, simply to apply it more consistently. Pincrete (talk) 02:04, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Responding to these, I'm just addressing concerns that came up during the discussion. If you think those are more important, feel free to introduce them there. ansh666 02:34, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Responding directly to the policy questions 1) I have always presumed that ALL BLP guidelines exist not only for the cynical reason that WP might get sued, but also because we understand that getting things wrong with BLPs can do real harm. We extend those to 'recently deceased' for similar reasons. Therefore IMO, it matters not a hoot whether the recently deceased is a Nobel prize winner, or a mass-murderer, if we get something wrong about Genghis Khan, we simply get something wrong, but living (or recently deceased), are entitled to more care (even if they appear to be unworthy of it at the time). 2) It really is impossible to gauge a 'significant event' as the event is occurring. That policy was devised to cover people like L.H.Oswald, and Princeps, but I doubt that anyone at the time could possibly gauge the significance of the event, neither should we with 'unfolding events'. 3) IMO there should not be a seperate article, unless there is a demonstable need for one, based on size, or suitability of content within the event article. A trial, or substantial inquest, might justify an article, but the default should be coverage within the event.Pincrete (talk) 03:38, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• CommentFor perpetrators: It states that the perpetrator should have their own page if the crime is unusual—or has otherwise been considered noteworthy—such that it is a well-documented historic event. Masood was the main perpetrator and was especially unique in that he did not fit the typical profile of a terrorist due to his age, and the act was the largest terror attack in London in over a decade. Not every incident would warrant a perpetrator having their own entry, Masood does.MeropeRiddle (talk) 02:45, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Cynic's respone perhaps, but ...... There is always something unique about each event, each perp . 'Orlando' was the "biggest attack on gays since the Holocaust". But that still doesn't answer the basic question, "Why is the perp. noteworthy, independent of the event?" If there is not sufficient, reliable, non-trivial info about the perp., what useful purpose is served?. We may yet find an enormous amount about Masood, or (just as likely), there is nothing much more to know. The significance of the event is ultimately academic in relation to this if he himself is not the subject of study/research. Pincrete (talk) 03:07, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I think WP:RECENTISM needs to be kept in mind. After an attack like Westminster, emotions are high and people are looking for answers, so the dead culprit of the attack is going to be reported on heavily. But editors should be asking, in a few months after emotions have cooled down, is that person's detailed identity really separate from the incident itself? A lot of time, the answer is no. Hence, I would really suggest editors take caution with BLP1E, particularly related to terrorist attacks, and simply wait on creating the article on the perp until better rational analysis can be made if the person is really notable on their own. --MASEM (t) 16:53, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• Comment

1. I interpret both WP:BDP and WP:BLP1E as applying to recently deceased perpetrators. There is nothing to suggest that it does not apply so exemptions should not be implied unless explicitly mentioned.
2. I would interpret a significant event to be one that is more notable than the general notability guidelines. I'd consider a terror attack to be a significant event.
3. I'd agree with this. Most of the information relating to the perpetrator in the Westminster attack is going to be related to the investigation and aftermath of the attack, so would in my opinion be more appropriate in the article in question. If it becomes too big then a new article as usual would in my opinion be the step. Calvin (talk) 12:49, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - BLP stands for Biography of living persons, and should not generally apply to the recently deceased. If you want to make it apply to the recently deceased then we need more guidelines on what falls into that category versus what doesn't. This is far too broad...

• "Generally, this policy does not apply to material concerning people who are confirmed dead by reliable sources. The only exception would be for people who have recently died, in which case the policy can extend for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death—six months, one year, two years at the outside." (from: WP:BDP)

• Extensions are then included in the next paragraph but just use the wording "particularly" when it comes to the example of "contentious or questionable material about the dead". This I can agree with if it is the only exception used. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:58, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - User:Ansh666's third point is illustrative: "Even if a subject passes the barrier of WP:BIO1E/WP:BLP1E, would they possibly still be better off covered in the article on the event". Combined with that and the tone of the original points (Does it apply? If it does, can we redefine "significant" somehow? If we can't do that, can we just ignore it?) makes we think that we are actually talking about WP:PERPETRATOR, not WP:BIO1E/WP:BLP1E.

Given that, would it be more productive to put a reference to WP:PERPETRATOR into WP:BIO1E/WP:BLP1E as an exception and then talk about WP:PERPETRATOR here instead? It would be better than working out how to twist WP:BIO1E/WP:BLP1E.

Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 13:39, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Not redefining "significant" - we aren't even clear on what it means in the first place, which leads to the strange inconsistencies I mentioned. And yes, part of it is how WP:PERPETRATOR seems to contradict WP:BIO1E/WP:BLP1E, and what we should do about it. ansh666 18:44, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:PERPETRATOR cites an example of John Hinckley which would mean that the perpetrator of a notable incodent warranted having their own page. It also mentions that their own page is warranted if there are reliable secondary sources that devote significant attention to the individual's role. There are hundreds of news articles dedicated specifically to Khalid Masood which would further demonstrate that he warrants his own biography. The perpetrators of the London attack from 2005 all have their own biography page as well, and his was the largest attack since then. Masood also was unique in that his age was atypical and news reports are now saying that because of his, they need to adjust their profiling techniques, another reason why his biography should be seperate. I dont think every perpetrator warrants their own biography, but this attack was glibal news, and he was the main perpetrator, he clearly does. An example of people who currently don't would be any of the 8 people arrested following this incident, such as his girlfriend. 2602:30A:C0D3:4FA0:E4CD:DC03:3C8E:3F4F (talk) 20:06, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

• Some thoughts:

1. Both BDP and BLP1E apply to the recently deceased. BDP should apply because the recently dead would have friends, family and associates that could be harmed by harmful information even if it doesn't explicitly mention third parties (e.g. a mistaken claim that someone was raised as a Neo-Nazi would negatively hurt that person's family members, a false claim that someone was radicalized after attending a place of worship would have serious consequences for that institution, etc.) Real people can be harmed by these mistakes, which are commonly made even by reliable sources in the frenzied aftermath of terrorist attacks/mass killings. Invalidating BDP would get rid of protections for a class of persons who are actually at high risk of being defamed and/or harmed by Wikipedia. The line in BLP1E about it not applying to dead people should be removed as inconsistent with BDP, because even though BIO1E and BLP1E are essentially the same, it could be taken as meaning that the dead people notable for one event are not subject to BLP protections.
2. Significant event at least be defined as meeting WP:EVENT/WP:GNG. However, for some events that meet our notability guidelines, it would be inappropriate to have individual articles spun out. Each case should be evaluated by the community on a case by case basis, based on how extensive coverage from reliable sources is, and especially coverage focused on the individual whose details might be spun out, which is what BIO1E/BLP1E suggests.
3. They could be, and BIO1E/BLP1E both give a test for when that's the case. Generally the quality and depth of the coverage from reliable focused on the individual, lasting coverage that exists past the event (e.g. particulars of a trial) and the size of the parent article would be the two main factors to consider. I would suggest pages for perpetrators should generally be kept in the main article until the amount of RS coverage means that they meet GNG and that the content should be split off, but this is likely uneforceable in practice. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 23:48, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: Patar knight makes an excellent point about BDP. I would add, the subjects can be recently deceased, yes, but can also be long dead, and still their families can be affected. Grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. There is currently a grandson of Napoleon Hill who has contested some of the edits in Napoleon Hill, and I had an RfC to determine if the sourcing he was especially objecting to, was a reliable source. The RfC unanimously concluded it was not a reliable source. So when revising this section, please consider that there are generations out there reading Wikipedia to see what it says about their ancestors. I think any source, even if it is in a publication that is normally a given for us as being reliable, if it is based on opinion, has sarcasm in it, in any way denigrates the subject of the article, living or dead, it should be removed as a source. SW3 5DL (talk) 20:14, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

I could not agree with you more.  {MordeKyle}  ☢ 20:34, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear that. I've seen it affect a living relative on that article. The article said Hill was a scam artist and had been cheating people, been arrested, all sorts of reputation damaging claims. The grandson was very upset. The source was totally unacceptable. This is an encyclopedia and it seems a standard must be maintained. Dead people should not be fair game for exploitative articles on blogs that are clearly there for click bait. The claims can easily be projected onto their living relatives. Link to blog here. Link to RfC here. SW3 5DL (talk) 00:02, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

• I think our primary concern should be amount of material here. If there exists, outside of Wikipedia, enough source material to write a reasonable-length article, we should have an article about that person. If there does not exist such source material, we shouldn't write it. For example, Lee Harvey Oswald is only famous for the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. The reason to have an article about him is that we have enough source material to support it. If a different person didn't have enough source material to reference to create a reasonably-long biography, we shouldn't have the article. It always returns to WP:42: If the source material exists to make a good enough article, do that. If it doesn't exist, don't write the article. --Jayron32 13:56, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Jayron32, with respect, I don't think whether there is enough material is the only, or indeed the main consideration when talking about the key figure in a recent notable single-event (typically the perp of a violent act). No one would doubt the rightness of an Oswald article, the volume of info about LHW and the fact that it traces a long complicated story prior to Dealey Plaza, yet much of it possibly relevant to the assassination, not only justifies, it necessitates an article for him. Going further down the 'food chain', there is enough material on Abraham Zapruder, which would possibly not fit comfortably in 'his film' article and certainly not in the 'event' article itself.

What is a recurring situation in recent violent acts however, is that there appears to be enough material on the perp in the days/weeks following the event to qualify for an article, but IMO little purpose in having such an article, since the volume of info is insufficient to demand separation from the event, and little likelihood of it being added to if the perp is dead and there are no substantive official enquiries. My experience has been that the 'perp' article ends up a mess, while the 'event' article has the attention of experienced editors. Personally I would value the guidelines being stiffened, such that a need for an article about the individual, based on size or 'suitability of content' considerations be established, especially when we are talking about recent events, the 'significance' of which cannot possibly be gauged by WP editors in the days/weeks following the event. Pincrete (talk) 15:01, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

It's the length of the prospective Wikipedia article on the person's life story, that make the difference. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. If we have volumes of information about 3 days in a person's life, they don't deserve a Wikipedia article if that's all we have. If we have enough information to cover a person's life in reasonable detail, we write that article. It doesn't matter why that information exists in the world, that's not even a question we need ask. Just, do we have enough information to write a reasonably complete biography. You know, childhood, professional life, major life events, that sort of stuff. If we focus on that, we can avoid passing value judgments on people we thing are "worthy" based on whether or not they are criminals or nice people. --Jayron32 01:30, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Bureaucrat rights

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

---

I think bureaucrats should be allowed to remove administrator status in emergency abuse situations. The subject of the removal should have the right to a hearing by ArbCom if they please. In that event, ArbCom should have the choice whether or not to reinstate the administrator privileges. CLCStudent (talk) 02:56, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Seeing as "emergency abuse situations" would indicate a compromised account and the great compromises of 2016 had 'crats acting immediately to protect the project (along with stewards who did the locking) this is already in effect. --Majora (talk) 03:04, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

See WP:LEVEL1 and WP:LEVEL2. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:48, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

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

Who does article deletion for ToU violation of WP:PAID ?

An editor named Vipul created an extensive network of paid/sponsored editors using a pyramid scheme-style where he would give others a cut of the profits if they recruited more people. Discussion followed, eg. ANI discussion, Conflict of Interest noticeboard, Vipul Q&A, Jimbo's Talk discussions, "Conflict of Interest task force" discussions/planning, Talk page request.

I find that my inherent rights as a consumer and a reader of Wikipedia to be properly informed about my consumer choices, ie. prominently 'in article' about the paid/sponsored status of these articles, are not still being complied with despite considerable local community discussion.

WP:PAID read with the WMF FAQ is clear that edits on projects where additional mandatory disclosures are not possible in the article text itself are prohibited ab-initio.

Where legally-required disclosures cannot be made in a way that complies with community rules, the community rules take precedence. For example, if local laws require disclosure of sponsorship of an edit in the article text itself, and putting such a message in the article text violated community rules (as it likely does in most projects), then such edits would be prohibited.

My query is as follows:-

Is there any officer, body or authority for the English language Wikipedia who is presently empowered to speedily ensure WP:PAID compliance that either there is compliance with law applicable to WMF or the offending article(s) be deleted or an in-article PAID template be put on all such articles ? Inlinetext (talk) 22:13, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

The short answer is no, there is no specific person or persons who have to do this, but conversely, literaly any user can add the paid editing templates and/or nominate spammy articles for deletion, and any admin can perform those deletions and/or block persistent spammers. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:29, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

The criteria pf WP:NSPORT here are too inclusive

Why is a substub like Magdalena Zamolska encyclopedic? Because WP:NCYCLING. I don't agree that participating in some competitions, without winning, or generating any coverage but a mention in the list of participants should suffice. Who decided those and similar exceptions to WP:BIO? Current research shows that 30-40% of biographies in Wikiepdia are of sportspeople. Most of them are substubs like this, people who did nothing except participate in events. Participation should not be sufficient to be in an encyclopedia; we are turning into a sport stat site. I am hoping the discussion here would be more representative of our community's thoughts than one that could happen at the sports notability talk page (where I'll of course leave a ping). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

You didn't notify the cycling project about this (which I have done for you). The answer is that this individual represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport. It's a long established consensus for sporting individuals that it'll pass the threshold for inclusion, along with single appearances at the Olympics, in cricket matches, football matches, baseball games, etc, etc. There's a lot of areas on WP that you could say are "too inclusive". Such as all populated places. How is this stub any better? Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:06, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Leaving aside WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (you are welcome to start your own discussion about possible problem with WP:NCGN), the problem with claiming we have consensus is that it is difficult to prove (citation needed). And when traced, we often find it was a discussion of five users... Anyway, I see some merit in saying that a sportsperson who "represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport" is notable, but speaking as a someone who knows very little about sports - wouldn't that be Cycling at the Summer Olympics? Cycling, to stick to a single example (that is however representative of the problem with NSPORT) lists, in addition to Olympics, five more events: UCI World Championships, UCI World Cups, Grand Tour (cycling), UCI World Tour and Classic_cycle_races#The_.27Monuments.27, for most of those they are in fact several competitions, most of which occur each year. I repeat: it sands to logic to say that competitors at a single top level event are notable. When we get to a dozen of two top level events, we have a problem (of inclusionist creep). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:11, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

The individual in question did compete in the 2008 women's road race, the very top level race for cyclists, organized by the UCI (the cycling governing body). The stub also addresses WP:BIAS, in this case a female athlete from Poland. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:40, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Agree, and not just for cycling. All of sports suffers from this junk. Many of these contentless microstubs are so meager that they'd barely fill out a few cells in an excel spreadsheet. The "sourcing" tends to come from websites that indiscriminately aggregate statistics, often with a dubious record of accuracy. Not a word of prose to be found anywhere. In fact, many of these so-called articles rest on sources so poor that it's hard to distinguish two similarly-named people from each other or to determine whether two stat entries with similar names are actually the same person. Of course, these terrible articles get inflated to large sizes with endless infoboxes and templates to mask the lack of content. Wikipedia readers would be better served if this extremely useless clutter was trimmed, or merged into list articles. But no, it's super duper mega important to erect a shiny little shrine to every farmer who once hit a cricket ball around a church backyard in 1834. Reyk _YO! 08:15, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Said the person who created this. And this. Chuckle. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:19, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Off-topic baiting and snapping collapsed
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I know better now. Fuckwit. Reyk YO! 08:24, 18 April 2017 (UTC) I strongly recommend you apologise and retract that last comment. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 08:25, 18 April 2017 (UTC) No and no. Reyk YO! 08:27, 18 April 2017 (UTC) Hi, got here from Special:RecentChanges. Please, not in front of the children.MikeTango (talk) 08:32, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I wrote a handful of articles that don't meet the standards I now consider important. So what? It dawned on me what gibberish I was writing back then, so I stopped. Same reason I don't participate at DYK anymore; it was encouraging me to write trash in exchange for baubles. This tactic of digging through ancient edits hunting for a "gotcha" is neither helpful nor particularly honest. And if in future you want to try that again in hopes of getting me to lose my temper, save your energy. I know what the game is now, and it won't work a second time. Reyk _YO! 09:09, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Everyone made mistakes in their early wiki career, I also created a lot of entries on non-notable fictional topic that I am not often nominating for deletion, because geek fancruft is not notable. If anything, this only drives home the point that sport geeks need to raise the threshold; currently it is really hard to be a non-notable sportsperson on Wikipedia. We should not be a catalog of sport stats. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:14, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Agree. "The answer is that this individual represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport. It's a long established consensus for sporting individuals that it'll pass the threshold for inclusion" simply isn't true. Many sports are so minor that even the world championships themselves don't get an article here (or much media attention), never mind every athlete appearing in them being notable enough for an enwiki article. For example, Inline speed skating. I have created articles on a few inline speed skaters, I'm not biased against the sport in any way, but most competitors at the world championships are not notable. And then we have sports where NSPORTS explicitly sets the bar lower than competing at world championships. This is in itself defensible, e.g. everyone who plays in the Premier League is notable, fine. But this has been taken to extremes in some cases, like cricket, or cycling (especially women's cycling, where the bar for inclusion is lower even though the sport gets less media attention now and used to get massively less media attention in the past), or soccer (playing for a few minutes in an official game with the national team of a micronation is sufficient to be notable according to WP:NFOOTY). Often the mistake has been made that because people in sport X here and now are notable, this should be included in the guideline for then and there as well. This ignores the massive changes in populatity / notability one can have per sport over periods, countries, and gender. Even for the Olympics, one can reasonably argue that competing in the first games (up to at least 1920) often was not important and has in some cases not even been registered. Fram (talk) 12:01, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Part of the problem is that many of the sport-specific guidelines were created by editors from sport-specific wikiprojects; and while not everybody is inclusionist about their favorite sport, very few editors are deletionist about their favorite sport. So instead of a nice balance between inclusionists and deletionists, there's just inclusionists and moderates, which tends to lead to an inclusionist bias.
  That said, many of the sports stubs (and substubs) are about genuinely notable people (as in, people who meet GNG); given that the number of articles about sportspeople is so huge, it's hardly surprising that sports editors simply haven't found the time to flesh all of them out; and NSPORT guidelines, as they're intended to do, discourage AfDs in cases like that.
  Part of the problem, too, is that many editors at AfD apply NSPORT overenthusiastically; as in "keep - meets NSPORT" without any thought as to whether the athlete actually meets GNG. "Keep - meets NSPORT" can be a good and valid argument, but AfD !voters often forget that GNG must also be met; and if the case is made that an athlete meets NSPORT but fails GNG, "keep - meets NSPORT" is too simplistic to be of any value as a !vote or a reply. Sideways713 (talk) 12:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Disagree. I think there is a problem with there being too many athlete articles as a proportion of all biographical articles on Wikipedia, for sure. But the problem is not that we're allowing too many articles on athletes, but rather we don't have enough articles on non-athletes. -- Earl Andrew - talk 13:26, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

It would be great if we could include more articles on other professions (academics for example are ones perennially under-represented) but then the issue is a matter of WP:V; it is very difficult to support articles on these other professions, whereas even for minor sports, websites with statistics exist allowing individual players to at least meet WP:V. --MASEM (t) 13:39, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Agree The ONLY principle for deciding if an article should exist is "could I fill it with enough well-referenced text to make it worthwhile". Any criteria that encourages the creation of articles which will never have enough text is simply ill-advised. --Jayron32 13:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Which is a much bigger project-wide issue that's not just related to sportspeople. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Note that NSPORT is, in theory, supposed to simply be a quick way to judge if it's likely that an article can be filled with enough well-referenced text to make it worthwhile; it's not supposed to create any backdoors whereby athletes who fail that basic criterion can be declared "notable", though admittedly that does sometimes happen in practice. Sideways713 (talk) 14:02, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Uploading certain government-created documents: copyright

The International Boundary Commission is not an agency of the federal government of either Canada or the United States, but is an international organization headed by two commissioners: an American and a Canadian. On its web site we find this:

Permission to reproduce Commission works, in part or in whole, and by any means, for personal or public non-commercial purposes, or for cost-recovery purposes, is not required, unless otherwise specified in the material you wish to reproduce.

Would photographs created and published by the Commission during or before the 1920s be usable in Wikipedia articles? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:31, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't it say right there that permission is not required? Furthermore, something from the 1920's would most certainly be out of copyright even if copyright exists. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 18:59, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

@Sir Joseph: Actually, it says permission is not required for non-commercial use. Wikipedia requires its content be licensed for all use including commercial, so we cannot rely on that permission. Things created prior to the 1920s are out of copyright in the United States, but may not be in all jurisdictions, so it's a little more complicated than you are letting on. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:26, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

@Michael Hardy: See Wikipedia:Public domain. Things published before 1923 are in the public domain in the U.S.; but the country where it was originally published might not consider it public domain, so if it was published in another country, take that country's laws into account too. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:30, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

@ONUnicorn: This is a report published in 1924. How did you arrive at "1923"? Is that the date of some particular statute? Michael Hardy (talk) 01:42, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

The Copyright Act of 1909 set an expiration of copyright of 28 years, extendable once to a total of 56 years. This was replaced by the Copyright Act of 1976 in 1978 (blame the people who named it), and did not apply retroactively to anything already in the public domain, but did apply retroactively to anything else already published. Thus, anything published before 1923 had entered the public domain by 1978, and is still in the public domain today, unless an even more esoteric law applies. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:47, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

The Copyright Act of 1976 was passed by Congress in 1976, and became effective in 1978. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:16, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Another wrinkle in this story arises: The 1924 Report of the Commission was (1) distributed to the public by the Commission (2) with no copyright notice. Is that sufficient to imply copyright is forfeited? There's a provision to that effect in the U.S. copyright statute of 1976, but maybe it has complications. I know nothing of Canadian copyright law. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:10, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Images of deceased discussed at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content

I invite you to discuss images of deceased persons at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content, where the idea of developing criteria is incubated. --George Ho (talk) 19:35, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

China/Taiwan issue at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)

(formerly "Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/China")

I invite you to discuss drafting the guideline update on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) regarding the China/Taiwan issue. The location is Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#China and Taiwan naming issue. --George Ho (talk) 22:42, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Update: the RfC discussion proposing the creation of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (China and Taiwan) is made. I invite you to comment there. --George Ho (talk) 11:49, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Another update: superseded by Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/China, which is recently created. You are invited to discuss the matter there. --George Ho (talk) 04:40, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Attribution when copying within Wikipedia

We're discussing this question over at WT:TFA#King_Kal.C4.81kaua.27s_world_tour. (Inserted: The thread was just moved to WT:TFA#Query regarding copyvio.) Let's start with the obvious: if we block everyone who has ever copied Wikipedia text to their sandbox without giving proper attribution, we won't have any Wikipedians left. The relevant policy page (WP:C) says "If you are copying text within Wikipedia, you must at least put a link to the source page in an edit summary at the destination page". Note that I just violated that policy by posting this ... just like everyone else does, because it's clear from my post where I got this text from. But other text, in WP:C, and the relevant guideline page (WP:Copying within Wikipedia), and the Terms of Service, refers merely to a hyperlink, and of course, a wikilink is a form of hyperlink. We have an editor over at WT:TFA who is upset because some of us have been copying parts of articles she worked on to a sandbox in preparation for the Today's Featured Article column of the Main Page (see WP:TFAA), despite two bolded, can't-possibly-miss-it links to the article in the quoted text. Is this a policy violation? Do we want to do something about the requirement for a link in the edit summary at WP:C? - Dank (push to talk) 13:56, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Attribution is usually only key for mainspace (eg quoting policy on talk pages is not an issue). And for that purpose, it usually is either a matter of including the URL with the oldid or last diff of the text content you used in the edit summary upon addition, or including a template ("copied from", I think) on the talk page. You certainly do not need to attribute by editor name directly.

As for attribution of the TFA blurb from the FA article it is based on - I really do think that it should be obvious that the attribution follows from linked FA page, but perhaps just added a null edit summary to the TFA blurb to indicate which oldid/diff that the text was taken from, which should resolve the issue cleanly. --MASEM (t) 14:04, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Do we want to edit WP:C? When a policy page says you have to do something that no one actually does, it can cause problems ... in this case, an editor felt that we were being very mean to her because we weren't following "policy", and I do see where she gets that from. - Dank (push to talk) 14:14, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Is a link in the edit summary to the source article, without an oldid, sufficient? The attribution can be determined unambiguously from that, after all. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:15, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Hopefully others will read the discussion in full but I feel a couple of points need clarification: I have not asked for anyone to be blocked so I'm unsure where that part of the above comment has come from; I have not asked for individual editors names to be included - I have simply requested that attribution is correctly given. The policy/guidelines are quite clear that it applies to everywhere - not just main space. Diannaa deals with copyright etc all the time and has commented that attribution is indeed required. "an editor felt we were being very mean to her ..." - really, what a snide comment to make. SagaciousPhil - Chat 14:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC) edit to strike part of comment as issue has been amicably resolved. SagaciousPhil - Chat 20:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to reply to this. - Dank (push to talk) 14:47, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Arguably yes, but imagine the case if the page is moved and a completely different topic put into that article's place (unlikely here in this case given the topic, but as a case). The article link, if no redirection was added, would no longer be sufficient, but the oldid/diff remains a valid point of reference since those are immutable. I really don't think it's too critical for a non-mainspace area, but if we have an editor asking for this, it can't hurt to add that. Alternatively, looking at the TFA approach where each day has its own page, you could use the talk page to include {{copied}} template to identify the oldid used as the basis for the text. --MASEM (t) 14:24, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

(E/C) Of course anti-plagiarism applies everywhere, it would simply make no sense for it not to. The only way to change anything, here, would be to expand the written licence allowing for unattributed copying (also known as plagiarism) within Wikipedia but I am certainly not in favor of that, at present. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:29, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I believe there's recognition of the need to distinguish between attribution on main article content (the type of stuff that is reused outside WP, and thus would include things in Draft: space), and the internals of WP, which include Wikipedia, WP Talk, article Talk, User/User Talk, and other spaces, which, while can be copied, are less likely to be reused externally. Attribution when copying wikitext (and more importantly, creative wikitext rather than things like references, template blocks, etc.) between articles is very important due to that high chance of reuse. --MASEM (t) 14:34, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

If you copy an article to your sand-box without attribution, the whole world now can take it from your sandbox. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

It seems to me that people are taking a simple question and trying to make it complicated. Alan, if I check your contribs, am I going to find that, every time you pasted text from any Wikipedia page to your sandbox or to a project page like this one, you added a link to the page you copied from in the edit summary? Does anyone do this? If no one does it, is it a good thing to have a policy page saying it's required? Doesn't that 1. make people think less of the usefulness of policy pages in general, and 2. create situations like the one we have here, where it creates problems for a user because people aren't doing what the policy page says they should be doing? - Dank (push to talk) 14:47, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Alanscottwalker the whole world can take all Wikipedia content if it wants, not just the sandbox. I had my first FA lifted verbatim and published and copyrighted in a newspaper under someone else's name.— Maile (talk) 14:55, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that bit of non-news, Maile66, unless you are trying to argue that was ethical and correct, it makes no sense for you to mention, though - people plagiarize, but there is no reason for our policies to encourage it. As for me, every-time, Dank, since you wish to make it personal, I certainly do attempt to comply with the requirement for attribution, it is what ethical people try to do - whether I have been perfect I doubt (especially before I read the policy) but feel free to trawl and I will do what I can to correct it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:42, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

You read too much into this. Don't be condescending. I personally don't care what you do about anything. — Maile (talk)

No need, for you to be condescending, and I have no idea why you are bringing-up what you care about. I was not addressing you, when I was talking about what I do, I was addressing someone else, who brought it up. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:53, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

• So since there are editors here who are familiar with the attribution rules, can someone explain the following to me. After a content dispute that did not end in an editors favour, they copied an article to their sandbox stating they wanted to preserve an unvandalised version. For more about the circumstances that led to this see here. Now as I understand it, this sandbox copy of a revision from a live article requires attribution to the specific revision it was copied from, otherwise the editor could cut and paste content back into the live article from their sandbox and no one would be the wiser as to where it originated from? The attribution chain is broken. Without a valid attribution to the (live) article revision, should it not be deleted as a copyright violation? Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:17, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
  • It technically is a problem, but one easily resolved by adding on the talk page the {{copied}} template with the oldid it was taken from. Then if the user should move content into mainspace, they should link the oldid or diff of their sandbox in the edit text or use the {{copied}} on the talk page. In that manner, the attribution chain is thus met; it may take a lot of work to trace down but it does exist. --MASEM (t) 15:29, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

You want to ask them to put the template in? :) As the only reason I am aware of it is after the editor showed up at ANI and didnt get the answer they wanted. I doubt a request from myself to track down the oldid would go down particularly smoothly. (I have actually made an attempt a few times to track down the revision myself with little luck.) Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:37, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

At first blush it would likely be [13] , the last version that editor edited on the day they copied to their sandbox. A quick check shows that identical to the sandbox, save for the hatnote. (It would be nice if there was an on-wiki tool to compare revisions of two separate pages for things like this). --MASEM (t) 16:05, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

A couple of things. The guideline page Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia states that for proper attribution, an edit summary offering a link to the source article page is mandatory. It gives a sample edit summary of "copied content from [[page name]]; see that page's history for attribution." Providing a link in the edit summary to the version being copied is not required. Use of the {{copied}} template on the article page's talk pages is also optional. I usually only use the template when the amount of material moved is extensive and is no longer present in the source article page. @Masem: to compare two Wikipedia articles, use Special:ComparePages. (You can also do it using https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/.) — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 20:23, 4 April 2017 (UTC) One more thing: It's possible to add the required attribution after the fact; I do it all the time in by copyvio work. Perform a tiny edit and use an edit summary such as "Attribution: content in this section was copied from Australian Overland Telegraph Line on April 3, 2017. Please see the history of that page for full attribution." — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 20:29, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I do wonder if just the link is sufficient, again taking the example of a moved paged. Let's say I've copied text from "Topic A", and used the "Topic A" edit summary when I did it. Now for some reason, "Topic A" is moved to "Topic B" (taking the history with it); normally that means "Topic A" should redirect to "Topic B" and the attribution chain can still be followed from my edit summary. But now someone comes along with a "New Topic A", and through consensus, determines that this should be at "Topic A". Normally, the redirect "Topic A" is then deleted and "New Topic A" is moved to "Topic A", bringing that edit history along. Now my edit summary is broken in terms of the attribution chain, since there is no requirement that anything at this new "Topic A" point to where "Topic B" (which was the Topic A when I copied things) now sits. This is why I think we should be more strongly encouraging the use of oldid or diffs, which are unaffected by changes in page names. --MASEM (t) 20:59, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I understand now that the argument is a little more subtle than I was making it; I hope whatever we wind up doing at TFA will work for everyone. - Dank (push to talk) 21:36, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

RfC to adopt a default gender neutral style for policy, guidelines and help pages

An RfC for a policy on gender neutral language to become a default for Wikipedia policies, help and guidelines is open for votes at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/RfC to adopt a default gender neutral style for policy, guidelines and help pages. The proposed policy is limited is scope and so excludes articles, talk pages or any discussion by individual contributors. --Fæ (talk) 19:57, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Page history

I think we may need a new policy or policy section to make it clear when, why and how page histories need to be preserved.

See Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 55#Importance of article history for the background to this, and in particular for a list of project, help and meta pages that perhaps should provide this guidance but don't seem to. Andrewa (talk) 21:04, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I think existing policies very much cover this already. As explained in that discussion, the when, why, and how are best explained by the guideline Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia (the policy governing it being Wikipedia:Copyrights). The real problem, as indicated in the discussion, is that for new users Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia is really hard to find and neither the edit window or page history makes notice of users' obligation to attribute content when copying within Wikipedia. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:08, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

It's a part of our policy that experienced editors and even a few admins don't know about. The easiest solution is to add wording to the edit screen about copyright where you agree to the terms of use and license. Not sure what it would take to do that, though. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:13, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Agree that neither the edit window or page history makes notice of users' obligation to attribute content when copying within Wikipedia is a problem. Suggestions?

Agree that for new users Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia is really hard to find is a problem. It's a bit hard for some admins too. Suggestions?

Disagree that the copying within Wikipedia (WP:CWW) guideline is adequate.

Firstly, this is important enough that it should be in a policy somewhere. And perhaps it is! I'm sure that when I first started editing Wikipedia, this requirement was very obvious to me, and quite simply explained somewhere, and I took it on right from the start. And I'm a bit surprised that when I became an admin, if the admin reading list was as deficient in explicit advice on the matter as it is now, that I didn't query it then. Perhaps it is just buried in subsequent instruction creep, or perhaps it somehow got deleted entirely. Or perhaps it was already lost and I didn't notice. But I am surprised.

Secondly, even if it were a policy, WP:CWW is wrong. It should not be permitted to do an enormous copy/paste from one article to another with only a link from an edit summary (which does not show on What links here, remember) to indicate that there's significant edit history left behind. The only templates available to use (optionally) on talk pages should not be those designed for article merges, unless other copy/paste operations are somehow controlled (or perhaps even prohibited).

Perhaps all of this is common sense, but I think there's a hole in our documentation which it would be good to patch. Andrewa (talk) 02:52, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Another angle on this... it's important enough IMO that wp:5P3 (Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute) should link to a clear explanation. Losing edit histories violates our copyleft obligations, and therefore puts this Pillar of Wikipedia at risk.

Template:Wikipedia policies and guidelines is another place that such an important policy should get some sort of mention. Currently the only helpful link that I can see is to Wikimedia:Resolution:Licensing policy.

The Wikimedia page is recommended reading as background to this discussion, but doesn't fill the gap IMO. Note particularly that any text for which we have lost the edit history is no longer content which is under a Free Content License. It's as black and white as that. Andrewa (talk) 03:25, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

At Draft talk:New York (overview)#Text copied from is an example of what I think needs to be on the target page at a minimum.

I confess I do not remember placing similar notices on the source pages, and I now think they should be there too. But there is currently no guideline to indicate this, AFAIK. Andrewa (talk) 23:03, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

A simple edit summary (even if it is a dummy edit) should suffice for copyright purposes. The reason for the talk page notices is because we don't want pages deleted after copying has been done. We have Template:Copied for that (you can see it in action at Talk:Foreign policy of the Donald Trump administration. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:16, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

From a licensing point of view, a simple edit summary is sufficient. Attribution on Wikipedia is done on the page history pages (the very pages whose continuity this thread is concerned about), and not on talk pages or via the what links here feature. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:06, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Our existing policies and templates are adequate if followed/used. Some copy/paste moves do get caught by the various efforts to identify copyright violations. But a lot less effort goes into making sure copying is properly attributed, and that the templates are used properly. As far as I know, there are also no checks in place to identify breaks in the chain of attribution caused by deletion. Hopefully the templates catch someone's attention and its dealt with, if the templates aren't there, there is nothing. Say I had a reason to delete Province of New York, I would have no idea that this would cause an attribution problem at Draft:New York (overview), even if I checked the talk page of the page I'm deleting, there is no indication. I don't see a good way to make sure the templates are being used when needed, but we probably should have a bot that tracks removals of the templates, or deletion of the pages they point at. Basically if a copied from template is removed before the copied to page is deleted, it should trigger alerts, same if the copied from page is deleted while copied to is still there. Monty₈₄₅ 03:35, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

• Another interesting scenario is what happens when you apply our copying rules to a site we don't control. So, suppose someone follows our standard, they copy content from Wikipedia, and provide a link to the page or page history for attribution. Some time later, we delete the page. To someone who is not an admin here, there is no way to see the authors, and so it violates the attribution requirement of the license. We can brush it off as not being our problem, but its certainly not respecting the spirit of CC BY-SA to disregard the share alike problem we contributed to. But what happens if I follow our attribution standard when copying something to Wikipedia, say from another Wikimedia site, like Simple, or even from some other CC BY-SA source. In theory, Simple should would probably restore an article for attribution purposes if asked but what would we do if a site refused? Would we need to treat the text as a copyright violation and purge it from the article? Basically a link isn't a reliable way to attribute, but it only manifests itself as obviously when we don't control both the source and destination. Monty₈₄₅ 04:16, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

RFC: Religion as a nationality in Template:Infobox Person

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

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In light of the Religion in biographical infoboxes RFC and the Ethnicity in infoboxes RFC, should religions such as "Jewish" be allowed in the nationality= field of {{infobox person}} as has been done at Barbara Elefant-Raiskin? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:50, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. The religion RFC made it clear that there is a strong consensus not to include a religion field in {{Infobox person}} (with obvious exceptions for sub-templates like {{Infobox clergy}}), and the ethnicity RFC made it clear that there was also a strong consensus to not include an ethnicity field. Furthermore, there was a sub-discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_127#Ethnicity_as_.22nationality.22 where it seemed like there was a consensus not to include religion in these fields. Placing it in the Nationality field seems like an attempt to do an end run about the consensus not to include religion in the infobox by claiming that "Jewish" is neither a religion nor an ethnicity, but is a nationality. Wikipedia's own article on nationality defines it as the "legal relationship between a person and a state", which does not seem to me to describe a religious or ethnic classification. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 18:50, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose And this has gotten tiresome with editors not quite understanding that self-proclaimed religion is allowed in the body of an article, self-proclaimed nationality is allowed, but using "nationality" as a parameter to which a religion is attached makes for a poor addition to an infobox. Collect (talk) 20:22, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose The reason we chose not to include ethnicity was endless, unproductive and often inconclusive discussion. If implemented, this would most likely head in that direction too. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:22, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - Religion is not a nationality, and shouldn't be used as one. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 21:23, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. What do you mean by "religions such as 'Jewish'? Do you mean "Religions such as Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, etc."? Then then answer is not just "no", but "why are you even asking if 'nationality=Lutheran' would be an appropriate?". If the question is "Should 'Jewish' be treated as a nationality (for the purposes of the 'nationality=' field)" that's a completely different and much more complicated question.

It's a question to which I don't know the answer. Its a plain fact that "being Jewish" is sometimes treated differently than "being Methodist", in history and in the real world at large (and there are big and complicated reasons for this). The unadorned term "Ukrainian" puts the reader in the mind of a person who is probably Caucasian Slavic and even if not a believing Eastern Orthodox adherent, is from that general mileu and culture -- the dominant culture of the Ukraine; the term "Ukrainian Jewish" paints a different picture.

So it's an interesting question. One oblique way to approach it might be to ask another: Should African-American be a valid entry in the 'nationality=' field? If yes, than maybe "Ukranian Jewish" should be too; and if not, maybe not. For my part, I think that "Jewish Ukranian" and "African-American" are both opening a can of worms, so I voted Oppose. The article text, not the infobox, is where we want to delve into details like this. Herostratus (talk) 21:35, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose: I will echo Collect's reasoning entirely. Just absolutely wrong to even be entertaining this. Religions are not national under any good circumstances and I do not wish to glorify such a bifurcated equation. Fylbecatulous talk 23:01, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - I believe that use of the nationality field in {{infobox person}} should be reserved for unambiguous cases such as "French", "Dutch", "British", etc. where a state such as France, Netherlands or Great Britain is clearly identifiable. Nationality is a relationship between a person and a state; and in the case of |nationality=Jewish could only make sense in defining the relationship of an individual to a Jewish state, in which case I suggest that |nationality=Israeli would be more precise. The moment that a piece of data needs further explanation, it is no longer suitable for use in an infobox. --RexxS (talk) 23:14, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose a rather odd attempt to reinsert info which consensus removed into a different field. The edit warring that would ensue over this scarcely bears thinking about. MarnetteD|Talk 23:40, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

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

Village notability

Are all villages notable? I've been seeing a lot of random villages with <500 people that don't seem notable to me(ex Niemojew). Elliot321 (talk) 21:16, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Generally, yes. See WP:NPLACE. --Majora (talk) 21:25, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy

The handling of articles about current and future events is discussed at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy. Join in to comment. --George Ho (talk) 04:40, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Implementation of File PROD

The WP:Proposed deletion policy now applies to "File:" namespace. The implementation of File PROD is still under development, but the template is already updated to apply to files. Feel free to tag any file with {{subst:prod}}. --George Ho (talk) 19:21, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

RfC on the WP:ANDOR guideline

Hi, all. Opinions are needed on the following: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: Should the WP:ANDOR guideline be softened to begin with "Avoid unless" wording or similar?. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:16, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Are amazon links spam?

The matter is currently debated at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#amazon.com. Please participate. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:55, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

It depends on the context in which we link to Amazon. It is quite likely that some links could be considered spam, but I don't think all are spam. Blueboar (talk) 22:17, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

One of Jimbo's recent article space edits was a link to Amazon as a reference [14]. It was eventually removed as unneeded in that article. My objections there were that it is a bit spammy, and generally if the subject is notable you can find an independent reliable source that will confirm it better than Amazon. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:22, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Links to Amazon are both spammy (like all links to sites where merchandise is being sold) and unnecessary. Commercial websites such as that exist to sell stuff, not to provide vetted, impartial third-party commentary. Jimbo was just being lazy. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:33, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Amazon links are not spam, and that is not what is being asserted. Amazon links are being spammed/abused by people who write a book that is available on Amazon.com and that provide a link to that book here; the situation is akin notable (in Wikipedia terms) porn sites, the larger publishing houses, and examiner.com - none of them are 'spam' themselves, nor 'spammed' by the site-owners (well, generally), but abused by random editors, wrongly used by other users, and spammed by people who want to promote their own work. That is then being combined with the plain fact that most of the Amazon.com links are not needed but better replaced with neutral sources (especially the ISBN). Comparing again with porn sites, the larger publishing houses and examiner.com, only for the larger publishing houses there are no proper replacements (even for the really spammed items on those). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:23, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

The RFC called for blacklisting Amazon as spam. That's what's being debated there. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:29, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: the initial post by user:DuncanHill does not say that amazon is spam, none of the support !votes calls it spam. No-one asserts that amazon is spam. It is spammed sometimes, it is abused sometimes, it is often misused. Your question here was a wrong interpretation of what was asserted in any of the diiscussion at WT:SBL. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:01, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't see much of a difference between calling for something to be blacklisted as spam, and calling it spam. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:03, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: But it was not called to "be blacklisted as spam", it was called to be blacklisted, full stop. There is not much on the blacklist that is spam, what is on the blacklist is what is abused/spammed to Wikipedia, and sometimes stuff that is so massively misused that the community decides to use technical means to stop it. The only person who asserts the suggestion to blacklist amazon as spam is you. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

It's on WikiProject Spam, which features a big red button to report spam, and is proposed for the spam blacklist. Keep splitting hair you want, I'm bowing out of this pointless discussion.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:51, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but again, most of what is discussed there is not spam, it is spammed/abused. Pointless for sure. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

what happened to Content Translation form the Contributions menu item

What happened to Content Translation from the Contributions menu item? It's not there anymore.

Endo999 (talk) 22:39, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Why are you asking here? See WP:VPT#Database problem affecting ContentTranslation, Flow, and Notifications. Max Semenik (talk) 00:13, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Tenure

What does tenure mean on Wikipedia? I'm asking particularly about the 30 day tenure to become extended confirmed. Does this mean I must not make any edits for thirty days? Elliot321 (talk) 18:32, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Elliot321. It means your account must be at least thirty days old (starting from your registration date) before you can become extended confirmed. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:36, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Elliot321 we have over 5 million articles that are open for anyone to edit, including yourself. We have a few thousand articles where because of problems we limit editing to more experienced editors. One level of that is extended confirmed - you certainly aren't prevented from making any edits until you have been here 30 days, you actually need 500 edits and at least 30 days before you can edit any of the fairly small number of articles protected against editing by those who aren't extended confirmed. ϢereSpielChequers 07:59, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

It would be better for Wiki to merge with either Google or FB.

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

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As Jimmy Wales said that he "assembled a ragtag band of volunteers" when he originated wiki, it is unfortunate that wiki continues to be that 'ragtag band' even years later... Many volunteers (with whom I communicated) have not learnt the disciplines needed for the trade...!

I had a very bad user experience as a new contributor to wiki... As I understand now, my account got Vandalized which resulted in heated debates with some of the wiki volunteers... But it also led me gauge the values that these individuals hold, and values that wiki holds as a community... Really not much.. as against my initial expectations.

One of your admins said that he could publish his grocery list on Amazon books, and went on to block my account... The conversation that I had with him in my Talk page; reveals the undeserved authority that he would be prepared to execute, without giving a second thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jayabalan.joseph#You.27re_confusing_the_publisher_.28you.29_with_the_seller_.28Amazon.29._Amazon_would_sell_my_weekly_grocery_lists_if_I_published_them._--NeilN_talk_to_me_02:32.2C_17_April_2017_.28UTC.29

People like these don’t merely have the capacity to defend their views, but are a clear disgrace to your community as a whole... It doesn't matter if those people stay from dawn to dusk in their mom's basement working for wiki... If they are not receptive to the values others hold and the Good causes they stand for... these people amount to No more than dedicated Prison Guards...

And 72 hrs later my block got released... the same admin would try to intimidate me, over me discussing matters related to my draft with SMEs on tea house...! When ask for, he is NOt capable of providing any apt reasons; as to why would he prevent me from doing so... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jayabalan.joseph#Your_block_has_expired Without their ability to provide due reason for their act, people like him easily identify themselves as "Faceless Cowards"...

People don’t seem to understand that their technical Wizardry and Super user privileges that they hold are not going to amount much in the end... These things have been tried before in history; at least a century ago in the middle of Europe... And only resulted in those people badly failing at it, faking their death and exiting continental Europe to South America... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KolkCUXuQHU http://sharkhunters.com/

@NeilN Go ahead and try to tame the freedom of people who live for Good causes... I bet you can't... even in your wildest dreams...

But I also find among the wiki community volunteers who were willing to help... IMO: But for those experts who hold multiple barn stars, much of your volunteers like the experienced admin that I has a problem with; just tend to bring more disgrace to your community...

It would be good if either Google or FB takesover Wikipedia; for given their expertise with handling technocrats and channeling them rightfully, so as to add value to their organisation... as against a 'ragtag band' that wiki continues to exist to this very day.

Also I think that as of now Google gives undeserved weight-age to Wikipedia in its search results...

Jayabalan.joseph (talk) 07:10, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

I see you've been advised many times on this. I don't really know what to add, aside from, first, the people who are trying to give you advice are right and you should listen to them; second, being disallowed from publishing your OR is a silly thing to compare to Hitler (and we've in fact got an article on that), and finally, hell will win a bid for the Winter Olympics before we'd even develop too close of ties with a for-profit company. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:32, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

There's nothing relating to policy here. Also, "It would be good if either Google or FB takesover Wikipedia". No thanks -- they would commercialise the content and manipulate it. These are powerful and infuential organisations that could make Wikipedia follow political agendas, liberal, left-wing, right-wing, whatever... the minute Wiki was sold to any of these neutrality and unbiased ideals would die. The site would be flooded with paid editors, advertising, promotional content, celebrity gossip, and everything else, science, history, geography, would be lost under the weight of the kind of trivial crap which fills people's small brains these days instead of really educational information. They'd also start gathering the data of editors and visitors to sell. As a volunteer editor I won't use a site that wants me to contribute for free AND allow them to sell my Wiki habits for ad placing or some other capitalist venture. — Marcus^(talk) 07:36, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

For him to give FB any kind of positive status destroyed his credibility even before I looked at his editing history. Have you seen this link? It shows exactly what Google knows. I can't speak to what FB knows. - Denimadept (talk) 08:08, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

I set the "Web & App Activity" option to "Paused" years ago, so my activity log is blank. — Marcus^(talk) 08:43, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

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

Effectiveness of Wikipedia:Notability (events)

Re-reading Wikipedia:Notability (events), I wonder how effective the guideline is for current events and past events that were "current" events at the time. WP:RAPID mentions that AfD nominations are inevitable and recommends holding off AfD noms, but it's not very effective after seeing so many AfD noms lately. Also, Wikipedia talk:Notability (events) is last visited in 2015, excluding one discussion that I started. What to do with the guideline? --George Ho (talk) 06:00, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Leave it alone and go work on some articles.--Jayron32 06:10, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The Next Evolution of Wikipedia: Becoming the Premier Resource of Information Reference AND Development

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

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Note Regarding Deletion of my Previous Post

After reviewing my previous edit it looks like my use of top level headers were incorrect and caused damage to the page, I can only assume that was the reason for deletion and not the content, since there is a request for "Merging Wikipedia with FB or Google" that is just absolutely ludicrous and has been allowed to remain (albeit closed). This is a serious subject, and deserves debate. My team will actively respond/participate in this discussion in accordance with Wikipedia TOS, however removing this proposal after only 10 minutes is unacceptable and if happens again we will be forced to work outside of normal accept behavior. Before deleting or closing this proposal I request I request you contact me at lind{at}yahoo{dot}com, join ##fringescience, or just leave a message here (although that will take longer for me to respond). I am completely willing to make modifications to proposal if it does not meet Wikipedia standards; I accept the fact that this proposal violates some core founding principals of Wikipedia however I believe this to be a natural evolution that is consistent with Wikipedia's underlying values.

Author

I am Lt. Cmdr. Jason Wesley Crusher Lind, "Star Fleet" and the Commanding General of Fringe Science (##fringescience on Freenode).

Preamble

Wikipedia has remarkably become one of the most powerful information references on the Internet and this is thanks to its community which is unmatched in its combination of dedication, size and skill in the history of the Information Age. In 2010 I attempted to publish my article "Ideal Organization Theory" on Wikipedia. For several hours users, without my coordination, were making updates to what I had published to make it better conform with Wikipedia standards and aesthetics, and even some discussion on the points I made in the article. Of course eventually it was pulled down by administrators for violating the "original content" policy.

At the time I made my case to Jimmy Wales, and I came to the agreement that Wikipedia was not ready for original research. That was almost 7 years ago and I think its time to take a serious look at the potential of Wikipedia becoming not just an Encyclopedia but also a research hub. The problem facing researchers not from a traditional academic background, let alone a member of an academic institution, is that their work while novel and potentially interesting often does not conform mainstream stream standards and therefore traditional peer-review processes, that might eventually become notorious enough to land them on Wikipedia and be accessible to the masses, are not available.

Introduction to Fringe Science

Case in point would be Christopher Langan's CTMU theory which could be nicely expressed in a way that is accessible on Wikipedia, as many people would be interested in doing so, but citing his work isn't considered credible under Wikipedia guidelines since he is self-published and over 200 pages of complex research have been reduced to a 1 paragraph blurb on his Wikipedia profile which only exists because he happens to have the highest recorded IQ in history. CTMU is quintessential Fringe science.

Another example would be Heim Theory which during a serious research inquiry into it, which was hampered by the fact the author had re-invented calculus and was written in German, someone was updating the Wikipedia page to reflect their understanding of Heim's work, in great detail. At some point they came to the conclusion that Heim was wrong, or possibly even fraudulent, and the entire page was reduced to what amounts to a little more than a stub. Even if Heim was wrong his concept was interesting, and someone had put significant work into conveying that concept through Wikipedia, so why tear it down and lose information? It's possible that someone would be inspired by his work, and not be able to read German, nor want to deal with the translation of his calculus to standard calculus (which was never published anywhere else) and use it to advance their own branch of thought.

The Implications of Original in Wikipedia

The first objection I expect is that Original Research/Content will decrease the credibility of Wikipedia as an Encyclopedia. This obviously is a real concern that must be thoroughly addressed. I propose that while original articles can be linked from encyclopedic they must be flagged as such both on the link and at the top of the original content page. Beyond that possibly even a side bar background change between Encyclopedic and Original might be needed.

Eventually there should be some enhancement of discussion to make them more integrated with original pages to demonstrate the differing view points over the content; going to a whole different view to see the discussion is probably not going to be acceptable in the long term.

Conclusion

Wikipedia is the only community and platform capable of performing cross-disciplinary research outside of traditional academic institutions. Limiting the platform to authoritative/encyclopedic information is hindering the development of the kind of ideas that will take humanity to places we have yet to comprehend. I understand the radical nature of this proposal in many of your minds, however I believe it is absolutely necessary to the world that Wikipedia adopts this policy and that as human beings you have a responsibility to embrace positive change such as this.

Zefram Cochrane isn't at MIT, he's in his mom's basement and if we're going to find him and touch the stars we must act now.

WesCrusher (talk) 15:01, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

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

He's my first LinkedIn block. He's made it clear that nothing he says will make sense — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs) 06:58, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Draft articles should be protected from this

I returned from a block recently only to discover than a lengthy draft article in my userspace Sandbox had been copied and pasted in its entirely into a livespace article. This action was performed by an editor who was eventually blocked as a sock along with 25 other socks belonging to them.

I took this matter to a project seeking to have the stolen material reverted and removed from the article's edit history to prevent it being readded until I have completed the draft and had it reviewed and made suitable for publishing.

Whilst all editors recognise that copy/pasting drafts constitues a copy violation, there is insufficent policy to revert the action in favour of the draft owner. All that can be done at present is a history merge or attributing the material in retrospect.

I do not believe this is a fair or civil practice. It sets a bad precedent. The way it stands at present, any editor or IP, whatever their standing, can go into other people's drafts, copy the material into an article and so long as they have attributed their theft to the original draft it remains in the live article's history. Theoretically, I or any anonymous dope could go round Wikipedia copy/pasting drafts into livespace – and anyone reading that and considering the effect it would have should instantly be concerned by how disruptive such behaviour could be, yet there is no policy saying anyone can't actually do it freely.

As a victim of this type of abuse I consider it a violation of an editor's rights. We should all be able to prepare drafts and have them published in our own time, not be forced to accept that our work was stolen and have to tolerate a parallel copy being used live because policy is weak or non-existent and doesn't give admins the ability to revdel such edits that are not only morally wrong, but reckless and prejudices hard-working content creators. Creating an article can be a long-term affair; it's a marathon, not a relay race or for someone to push you aside and get to the finish line instead.

The insult is greater if the account that does this kind of thing is an IP or sock. The draft may have taken hours, weeks, even months to develop. The draft may have required the editor to purchase books or material to read and use to source their references, making drafing a financial affair as well as a time-consuming comittment to Wikipedia. The editor may take their draft very seriously, it may even be a Featured Article in the making. The genuine efforts of editors creating new material in their userspace for Wikipedia should take priority over everything. No editor should have to tolerate having their efforts intruded on and stolen by another person for any reason.

I note that even WP:STALE only allows unfinished drafts to be copied or moved from a userspace into draftspace, not directly into livespace. But I also stress that whilst a user is blocked or even banned their drafts cannot be considered willingly "unfinished" or "abandoned" compared with a user who has openly retired or ceased editing for a long period and shows no signs of wanting to continue their work. WP:ABANDON appears to be a project that seeks to move unfinished drafts into livespace for others to complete, but their guidelines are also very short and don't detail a proper procedure to follow to determine if a draft is actually dead and that the editor is willing to surrender it.

Policy needs to be introduced that allows editors to defend their right to control the movement drafts, regardless of attribution. I would like to see admins being able to revert and scrub such violations as explained. Since policy needs solid grounds, I propose the following:

Since all edits must accept the CC BY-SA Licence, even in drafts, it states "In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license: ... the author's moral rights;". Moral rights are defined as: "The preserving of the integrity of the work allows the author to object to alteration, distortion, or mutilation of the work that is 'prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation.'"

I believe that when an editor's drafts are taken and published without their permission, and they choose to object to the move, that it is a direct violation of their moral rights, since the intention of drafting is to create material which is gradually perfected, referenced and posible reviewed to determine its quality for publication. An editor may genuinely feel that that their honor or reputation is being violated when incomplete drafts are put into live space and are accessible to all readers, editors, mirrors, etc. In my experience, having unfinished material stolen and no process available to undo it, even when the action was taken by a sock-puppet, is detrimental. It is disconcerting that an editor acting badly and with a bad account can trump anyone because policy doesn't cover this.

Wikipedia was and is created by volunteers. If policy doesn't protect those volunteers from being violated then we alienate them. There are many copyright laws, and Wikipedia reverts thousands of copyvios each day to protect itself from claims from outside sources. But those sources aren't building Wikipedia. Editors can be copy-violated too. Attributing a stolen draft is not enough... it's like saying "you're a victim, live with it".

• The undesirable behaviour is simple: Editor X copies editor Y's draft without permission, and if he doesn't attribute it someone else has to.
• The complaint is simple: Editor X objects to having their draft taken because it's a work-in-progress and they need time to finish it, perhaps have it reviewed and verified.
• The lack of admin action is simple: WP:CWW only allows an admin to attribute the published material to the draft or histmerge. Revdel doesn't cover it.
• The solution is is obvious: Extend revdel or some other admin tool to allow stolen draft material to be removed and revdel's to preven it being reverted.

It is not hard to see why policy needs to developed. The bevaviour I have described is a form of abuse that could be disruptive to content creators and the quality of ther work, and the lack of policy is a loophole that needs better coverage in favour of editors and their efforts. Editors who wilfully steal drafts should be sanctioned. Wikipedia should not let articles be developed based on theft, this sets a bad example... and in my experience, because admins are unable to stop it they're as good as complicit in it, since they're currently required to accept rather than reverse such violations.

— Marcus^(talk) 04:03, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

This is not a loophole in policy, but rather deliberate. WP:OWN is written pretty clearly to say that though you have wide latitude over your userspace, you don't even own that. No, what you're proposing here is a totally new police that runs contrary to how the licence agreement has always been interpreted. For what it's worth, I would support deleting the type of article creation that happened here if there is a decent argument its creation was part of a trolling or harassment effort. It wouldn't be the first time pages were deleted that passed muster under every content policy and guideline, and looked fine in isolation, but were created as part of some trolling/harassment/advertising campaign. As a general rule though to cover all userspace drafts, I'm not so sure. The only perfect way to safeguard your content is to not post it to Wikipedia at all, until you're ready. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:17, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

The CC-BY-SA license specifically permits copying and remixing work so long as attribution is given. I suspect (and the Creative Commons FAQ seems to agree) that even if not having your work copied is generally protected by moral rights in your jurisdiction, the fact that you specifically waive that right by licensing it under the creative commons license means that this is no longer a right you have as the author of the work.

So long as attribution is correctly done, copying work done within wikipedia is a feature, not a bug. Wikipedia is "the Free Encyclopedia", after all. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto: – See: Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. In the box describing CC-SA see where it says that certain "above conditions can be waived". The morals rights of an author are stated below that clause, under "Other rights". Ergo, they cannot be waived. Moral rights are not affected by the CC-SA 3.0 licence, the deed specifically states that. The FAQ you linked to deals with more recent CC-SA 4.0 licence which slightly differs from the CC-SA 3.0 licence used by Wikipedia. Only under CC-SA 4.0 are moral rights waived. Under CC-SA 3.0 they are asserted. This can be confirmed in the first sentence here: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/License_Versions#Treatment_of_moral_rights. Nice try though. — Marcus^(talk) 09:42, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@MarcusBritish: the actually text of our license (rather than the non-binding human-readable summary) says in part Licensor agrees that in those jurisdictions (e.g. Japan), in which any exercise of the right granted in Section 3(b) of this License (the right to make Adaptations) would be deemed to be a distortion, mutilation, modification or other derogatory action prejudicial to the Original Author's honor and reputation, the Licensor will waive or not assert, as appropriate, this Section, to the fullest extent permitted by the applicable national law, to enable You to reasonably exercise Your right under Section 3(b) of this License (right to make Adaptations) but not otherwise. IANAL, and TINLA, but that seems fairly clear to me. (Additionally, wikipedia is hosted in the US, and the document you link to explicitly says that the US has very limited protection for authors' moral rights. There may be other good reasons to revdel the diffs containing your work, but arguing a legal right based on the CC-BY-SA looks like a non-starter to me. If you want proper legal analysis of this, though, you will need to ask WMF Legal. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:58, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto: – I can't make sense of that legal gibberish terminology. Regardless, WP:Copyrights#Governing copyright law states "The Wikimedia Foundation is based in the United States and accordingly governed by United States copyright law. Regardless, according to Jimbo Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors should respect the copyright law of other nations, even if these do not have official copyright relations with the United States." As a British citizen I would expect to have my nation's copyright laws respected in terms of moral rights. To be honest, I don't give a shit what the law or policy says. The material I created will become part of Wikipedia one day anyway, this is a matter of choice. I may not WP:OWN the online page, but the time and effort IS mine, ant I feel just as violated as if someone had burgled my home. I just want to finish the fucking this first, in my own time, without an incomplete and partly-inaccurate parallel copy running live, even in the article's history. The fact that a mass-sock-puppet violated my draft is more annoying than anything. There is no justice when a moron of that level of abuse of socking that can get away with this and everyone still say "policy is normal". — Marcus^(talk) 12:11, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how your suggested policy is workable. Firstly, everything contributed to Wikipedia is licensed under the CC-BY-SA, and so it would be impossible to prevent people off-wiki from basing work off of your draft, even if Wikipedia were to implement your suggested policy. Secondly, this would set up a situation in which unlike anything else anywhere in Wikipedia, it would be possible to own articles in draftspace. Wikipedia is meant to be free (libre) as much as possible; I find it hard to believe that restricting that is going to get buy-in without a very compelling reason.

Another issue is that it's not at all clear where this policy should end. If this goes through, what is to stop me saying that an article I have contributed to in article-space is not yet ready, and I want an admin to revdel every revision which I have contributed to? A Wikipedia where my work can be deleted because a prior contributor to the article has decided that they don't like it any more is not a Wikipedia I would want to put my energy into working on, and I suspect I wouldn't be alone in that.

If you don't want your work to be distributed until you feel it is ready, the simplest and best solution is not to put it on Wikipedia until it is ready. No amount of Wikipedia policy-making is going to prevent others from using your work if you publish it on one of the most visited websites in the world under a free license. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:12, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto: – Sorry, but your "what if" scenario doesn't make sense. It reads as a bit of a Strawman to me. How can an editor claim any article they contributed to is "not ready" and have it deleted? I'm talking about specific cases of an editor taking someone's draft in-progress and using it in or as an article. That would be evidenced in the diffs, an admin would be able to compare a draft and article and the edit dates and see that someone took someone elses work, then revdel it. It ends there. What you're talking about doesn't relate to my proposal a tall, it just obfuscates it by creating alternative scenarios that are off-tangent. And still you push the "ownership" argument which I did not make; I've already said this is not about granting anyone full ownership of content, but the right to choose when their draft is suitable for live publishing. It's a different concept altogether. There's a difference between atempting to own an article in live-space and awarding editors the right to have their efforts respected so that anonymous trolls or thieving socks don't go round undermining the hard work people do here. So whatever nonsense you're suggesting you "wouldn't be alone in here" wasn't the issue being discussed, please don't introduce alternative problems to cloud the issue and drive a circular argument. I'm not sure that you're grasping the human-side of Wikipedia and the efforts people go to to produce content, since you're more focused on the cold legal text which doesn't have the ability to recognise all situations or that Wikipedia can't work if legalities prevent editors from working on material without being "raped" and forced to deal with it rather than complain. I would even go so far as to say that your dismissal of any form of draft-protection creates a more obvious "ownership" agenda. When someone steals a draft and it cannot be revdel that's as good as Wikipedia saying "we own it now, your former efforts mean nothing to us". A very one-sided and ugly affair. You act like my proposal is a threat to people, when it would simply offer those working on drafts a stronger copyright, moral rights. Since those already exist in the CC-SA 3.0 text then it is simply Wiki putting it into policy instead of ignoring it all together in favour of something less productive. The policy doesn't exist yet because it turns a blind eye, and that's disgusting considering how many hours all of us at the bottom here put into creating articles for a free site. Moral rights are a fundamental concern, not a trivial irritation. When you don't give volunteers basic rights and respect their work you lose those volunteers, it's simple maths... — Marcus^(talk) 21:03, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

• I would suggest a compromise.... allow draft articles to be copied from a user's userspace... but only from userspace into draftspace (not into mainspace). This will ensure that drafts originating in userspace undergo the same review and approval process as drafts that originate in draftspace, and that proper attribution is given to the original author. It would also give the original author time to state objections and concerns. Blueboar (talk) 10:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps, but some thought should be given to contacting an editor first to make sure there are no objections. They may be blocked, on a hiatus from Wikipedia, working on the draft offline, suffering a long-term illness, or simply pre-occupied with other things in life like their job, studies, health or family issues. They may even have lost internet access. To simply snatch a draft from anyone without consideration for the editor is unwarranted behaviour and might even discourage people from wanting to bother anymore, it is anti-social and anti-community which is what Wiki is based on since no one can create articles and attain GA/FA standards alone. Trust me, it is a very discouraging experience to have hard work swiped by some socking twat that you can't even contact and give some deserved abuse because they're long since blocked... I know there are editors who often work on several drafts at once. Imagine if some shit copied all of them to livespace without warning... how pissed would you be? — Marcus^(talk) 11:48, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

MarcusBritish if you're legitimately concerned that the article may contain numerous errors due to it being an unfinished draft, surely that alone should be grounds for any administrator with sense to delete it, especially if you're planning to complete a more accurate version. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 10:32, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Trust me, I've tried... no admin seems to have the balls to apply a revdel. They're too bureaucratic. All those admins who claim to have tools for the community and not themselves... don't believe it. When an admit prefers to wiki-lawyer and cite CC-licensing crap in favour of some cheeky bastard with 26 blocked socks who steals people's work it's s shit state of affairs and defies all logic. WP:REVERTBAN probably should have instantly applied here, without even worrying about the copyvio issues, but my complaint falls on conveniently deaf ears. The "politics" of Wikipedia has never been good to editors, which is why so few of the original breed remains, since policy has been so over-developed and is too often used a nuclear option over logic and fairness. I legitimately do not feel that anyone will give a shit about the situation until it happens to them or someone with a high profile. Hard work should be rewarded. Bad faith behaviour should be investigated and action taken. When hard work is prematurely stolen it's hard to focus since those who allowed the material to be stolen can only do one of two things when the work is complete: ignore it altogether or be patronising, knowing they should have acted earlier to make the end result more rewarding for the editor. It's hard to appreciate admins who can't think or act for themselves... policy isn't gospel. — Marcus^(talk) 11:48, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

• This is a classic example of Hard cases make bad law. Make no mistake, what happened to Marcus and the text he wrote is wrong. It is also, as far as I can tell, a sui generis form of trolling, and as such, I'm not sure what policy we need to fix it. Creating general policy to deal with one-off or exceedingly rare behaviors is bad. So yeah, we can all agree that this shouldn't have happened. "Shouldn't have happened" is not a synonym for "We need a rule." --Jayron32 16:49, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
• Agreed with Jayron. Trolls gonna troll. No need to make a policy to address that, since trolling is already discouraged. More harm would be done than good if anything were changed. Marcus's block was indefinite, and very little attempt had been made to appeal, so there was no reason to assume he was ever coming back (indeed he was gone for a full three years). I don't know the stats, but I'd imagine close to 99% of users in that situation never return. Most drafts that are taken out of the user spaces of blocked users are likely being moved in good faith, especially if/when those drafts are already of publishable quality. Making a policy to ban this kind of activity but only when the drafts don't look complete seems pointless, especially when good faith users can tell the difference, and trolls ... gonna troll. And I say this as a past victim of essentially the same thing as Marcus.[15][16] Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

A7 and educational institutions

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Educational institutions and A7. Thanks! RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 23:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia)

Since this page's creation and community elevation to guideline status eight years ago, it's said of itself "this guideline is meant to be binding and enforceable for the time being". It's been long enough that we're really past "time being" — this sounds temporary, but the guideline's definitely been used for more than just a little while. Should it no longer be considered binding and enforceable, because its time has passed, or should we simply remove "for the time being" because it deserves to be considered binding and enforceable on a permanent basis? None of the closing admins is active, so no point in notifying them. I don't particularly care, as I've never even heard of this page before; I'm just trying to resolve what looks like an outdated situation one way or the other, and I don't even know whether it's the guideline or the wording that's outdated. Nyttend (talk) 11:30, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

"For the time being" to me does not imply "will expire at a random future date" but rather "unless and until we come up with something different" If we have not yet come up with anything different, we are still in the time being. --Jayron32 12:36, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Remove or modify speedy deletion criteria A7 and A9

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

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Proposal

Speedy deletion criteria A7 and A9 should be removed.

Rationale

Wikipedia encourages us to don't bite the newbies. However, when some new users attempt to create an article, it is tagged for an A7 or A9 deletion within minutes, before they can add appropriate sources. Although some users create an article in draftspace, where 'A' criteria do not apply, those who publish in articlespace find their submissions deleted in minutes.

A7 and A9 should be removed because:

• Other deletion criteria address urgent concerns. G3 covers hoaxes, G11 covers advertising, G12 covers copyvios, etc.
• A true discussion of notability should take place at Articles for deletion. This gives users time to prove notability.
• Tagging an article as A7 or A9 can make Wikipedia's promise of "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" seem like a lie.
• If an article is an unsourced BLP, it can be PRODed. Indeed, it can be PRODed even if it isn't a BLP. At least this allows users to add sources, then contest the PROD.
• "Contesting a speedy deletion" is rarely useful - if a user goes away for even an hour they can find their article deleted without being able to contest.

ProgrammingGeek ^talktome 14:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Support

• Support unless they get a significant re-write. I think that the whole idea of an article having to make a "claim of importance" should go, and it is embedded in both of these criteria. The text in an article should cover and inform readers on a topic, not make "claims of importance". I'm not sure myself how to handle that conflict much less expect newbies to know how to do so. North8000 (talk) 14:25, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Moral support but what's really needed isn't a removal of these criteria, but rather a reeducation of admins to apply them correctly. That is, the criteria as written are fine, but as implemented... I understand the proposer's frustration. Jclemens (talk) 02:37, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support in the interest of a fundamental rewrite of these criteria. Yeah, we need something to eliminate the constant flood of articles about insignificant topics, but the application of these criteria is frequently completely incorrect, and a few overzealous editors who overuse these criteria to club the newbies has the effect of discouraging new editors from contributing at all. We want and need people to contribute. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:57, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose There is a subtle but key different between outright promotions, and articles that are written in earnest for the cases of A7 and A9 that are not meant to be promotional but do not establish importance, only so that the name of the people/groups are searchable terms within WP (and subsequently Google, etc.). A7/A9 are needed to cover those cases. --MASEM (t) 14:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Letting articles remain for 7 days or more (Prod / Afd length) will only encourage more people to add "Sick Vaccines is a gragae band established in March 2017. They have played in the local youth club and plan to become the next big thing!" articles, and is a waste of time if they clutter prod or afd lists. Fram (talk) 14:30, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

  The problem is collateral damage. These articles, while a problem, will be sent to AfD or PROD, neither of which have a problem with backlog. There's no reason to expect AFD or PROD not to work. ProgrammingGeek ^talktome 14:40, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

  The problem of collateral damage is one of misapplying existing policy, not a problem of the policy itself. I have to disagree with your other point. Within the last 500 deletions (as of now), spanning a mere 4.5 hours, 42 were A7 and A9. Assuming this is a normal number (seems low to me) 250 such articles are deleted each day. I don't see how AfD or PROD can handle another 1.750 articles each week. Regards SoWhy 14:52, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

  It would almost certainly be AfD, because PROD can be removed by anyone (including the creator), and there is no reason to think that the creators of such articles wouldn't remove PROD tags on sight. Even if only half of those PROD tags were removed, that's still an absurd burden for AfD to absorb. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose As one of those regularly working in this category, I regretfully have to oppose this. While A7 and A9 are often used in a BITEy way and we definitely need to have clearer and binding rules for when to apply them as BrightR says below, there are - as Fram points out - unfortunately far too many people who believe Wikipedia is the place to promote themselves, their Facebook band, their 50 subscribers YouTube channel etc. and PROD and AFD cannot handle all those articles considering that a usual cleanup of only A7/A9 tagged articles will yield a 10:1 delete to decline ratio and I myself, an inclusionist at heart, will delete 20-30 such articles in a single review session. Btw, if you write "This gives users time to prove notability.", you demonstrate the problem with your proposal: A7/A9 is not about notability but uses are far lower standard. If users apply notability criteria to such articles, it's a misapplication of policy, not a problem with the policy itself. Regards SoWhy 14:41, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose: We don't our project to turn into Facebook, LinkedIn or any kind of social network. Also, getting article into the AFD process would be a waste of time with articles with no claim of significance. KGirlTrucker81 ^{huh? what I've been doing} 14:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Strong oppose. Is it April Fool's Day again? Those criteria were created to stem the tide of "John Smith is a real cool dude" articles that still manage to sneak through the gates even today, and considering we still get those "submissions" in this day and age, it's clear that we still need A7 and A9. Given that PROD is a one-time-only tag that can (and will) be removed by the article creator for no reason, we cannot expect that the majority of such "articles" will actually be deleted via PROD if we remove A7 and A9. This forces us to take these articles to AfD and hold a full deletion discussion, which is just absurd for clear-cut cases of garage bands, teenagers on YouTube, and similar. A7 and A9 were explicitly created to prevent us from having to have a full AfD debate for every one of these cases. They were clogging up the works even in 2003 when Wikipedia was still tiny, can you imagine the logjam they would cause at AfD now that we're a top-10 website? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:59, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose I don't think it's the fact that they aren't notable, but the fact if the text asserts notability, and if that part fails, it gets tagged with one of those criteria. Out of this understanding, I believe it's essential in deleting non-notable articles. —JJBers 15:09, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose still needed as PMC noted above. Note my comment below in the discussion that I do think A7 reform is needed and that it needs to be more objective. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:12, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose For all the many reasons listed above. Wikipedia is not a web host or a playground or a social media outlet. Long ago it was recognized that articles which no one would question deletion would turn up. We could use some better education on difference between "assertion of importance (I prefer old term "significance.") and lack of notability. And if CSD does not apply, anyone but the article creator can untag. I agree CSD's are applied to soon. Change the criterion to establish a minimal time limit between creation and tagging. Dlohcierekim 15:17, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

  And this is an encyclopedia. IMHO anyone with an article should have notability. Dlohcierekim 15:20, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• Strongest possible oppose Maintaining some semblance of encyclopedic standards is difficult enough without removing two of the main criteria that allow us to nuke blatant cruft on sight. Yunshui ^雲_水 15:26, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. When used properly, these save massive amounts of time by allowing obviously worthless articles to be deleted without discussion. A7 does get misused, but the problem is the editors concerned, not the speedy deletion criterion. Perhaps we should start blocking people who keep adding A7 tags inappropriately instead. --Michig (talk) 15:33, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

"Oh. Thanks for the reminder. We need an AfC on hasty tagging. Dlohcierekim 16:59, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Dlohcierekim: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 136#Delay for A7 and G11 CSD Tags and WP:PERENNIAL. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 22:47, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose in addition to the above reasons I strongly suspect this is impossible on logistical grounds alone. Some years ago I generated some statistics about the frequency of various reasons for deleting mainspace pages. I found that A7 is the most popular reason for deleting mainspace pages by a huge margin - more popular than the next two most popular criteria combined and much more than the combined totals for AfD and PROD. I don't have statistics that are more than a few years old, but I doubt it's changed that much. This means abolishing A7 in favour of PROD and AfD would massively expand the workload of those processes. AfD is sufficiently understaffed that plenty of nominations keep getting relisted in the hope that someone will comment on them, this problem will get a lot worse. The articles newly sent through these processes will be poor quality and unlikely to survive, but the need to deal with them will prevent other articles from getting the scrutiny they deserve. Hut 8.5 18:40, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, this proposal would result in a tremendous waste of volunteer time if implemented. Max Semenik (talk) 18:49, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Editors who are new are strongly encouraged by Wikipedia:Your first article to create articles in Draft space and to check notability guidelines. Editors who ignore these basic recommendations are subject to having their stubs deleted; the ones who are able and willing to learn from that experience will do so. The pros outweigh the cons. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:04, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

  One more thought: the OP suggests that Tagging an article as A7 or A9 can make Wikipedia's promise of "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" seem like a lie. Let's try that with Chess is a game that anyone can play: there are rules in chess, and you have to follow them in order to play and to be part of a chess-playing community. Excluding someone for not following the rules does not make the "anyone can play" statement a lie. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. No objection to the OP proposing changes to remove the WP:BITEy nature of speedy deletion etc. Nick (talk) 20:12, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strongest possible oppose This, as others have said, is logistically impossible and not only that the total failure of PROD as an efficient way to remove non-encyclopedic content makes A7 and A9 completely necessary. Removing them will result in significant backlogs all over the place as well as at AfD. I'm also curious what would be the proposed way to deal with totally unencyclopedic content, like Aaron J Christopher which has(d) no CCS. Do we really need to go through AfD every time an average Joe decides he wants a Wikipedia article? CHRISSYMAD ❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 20:17, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose 'Wikipedia's promise of "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" seem like a lie"' It is, for good reason. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:56, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Call them necessary evils if you must, but these criteria are still necessary for the many reasons previously outlined. The suggestion that AfD and PROD have no backlog problems shows that this proposal is well out of touch. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:06, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strongest possible oppose - I'm surprised this is even being discussed. Having been a new page patroller for almost nine years (albeit with breaks), A7 and A9 exist for a reason: most articles that end up tagged with these two criteria don't have a snowball's chance of being kept through PROD and AfD. Not tagging them under A7 would only raise the already-large burden at our other deletion processes. In addition, I think Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Grace period for deletion says it best: "our criteria are carefully written so that articles can be speedily deleted only if no Wikipedia-compliant article is possible at this time". I'm aware that it feels BITEy at times and it affects newcomers, but I think what needs to be done is to change the environment of NPP (i.e. a more "friendly" attitude with an emphasis on teaching), not changing the criteria. As a side note, I never really understood A9 anyway: it's a criterion that's so specific, in my years on Wikipedia, I think I've only ever tagged articles under it less than 20 times. I always thought it should either be merged to A7, or expanded to include things other than music, but that's a topic for another discussion. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 22:47, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - Speedy deletion of obviously non-notable content, trivia, and trash is a very necessary relief valve for the project. AfD would never be able to keep up and valuable time would be robbed from people who are actually trying to build an encyclopedia.- MrX 23:15, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - My impression is that those pertain to notability and are important. It may perhaps be better to make userfication more common or systematic. Many new editors indeed start articles in main space, but should ideally not, and moving their page to the sandbox does not seem difficult, perhaps that it should be more systematic (which might then be the object of another proposal if necessary)... —░]PaleoNeonate█ ⏎ ?ERROR░ 04:39, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose 'but we need a better way of dealing with good faith contributors who have written articles on impossibly non-encyclopedic subjects. The current notice are a cross between unhelpful and insulting. IN earlier years I tried to never place one or to delete without a n hand-written explanation addressing the subject, but the increase in the proportion of useless material and the shortage of competent reviewing has made it impossible for me to continue except in a few selected cases. I would not encourage people to keep unencyclopedic material around in user space, where it does no good for any purpose, and anything potentially usable really should gho into article or at least draft space, where others will see it and perhaps improve it. But there is no way of doing this without every competent experienced person here taking a share of the work. DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose because all those deletion discussions would probably end with a lot of snow. —MRD2014 📞 contribs 14:04, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. The CSD criteria is specific for a reason, it's to weed out articles that wouldn't stand a chance at AfD. Removing these criteria will not cut down on biting, instead they'll just see a different template. Anarchyte (work | talk) 14:13, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strongest Possible Oppose The problem isn't the existence of these criteria. It's that editors simply don't wait long enough for others (the creators of the articles, usually) to flesh out the subject. It pops to the top of the new articles list and, BAM!, tagged. I know at least some of them (including me) have been told to wait a few minutes until the editor has added more. We'd have a lot more junk on here of non-notable stuff without these criteria, and AfD would be flooded with what would've been A7 and A9 articles if they didn't exist. PROD is fine and all, but many new editors simply remove the notice and keep going, and they're allowed to do that if the article isn't BLP-related. Then someone puts the article up at AfD because PROD can't be put back up once removed, and we're back to AfD being flooded. One more thing: We should probably unblock all the vandals and LTAs since "The free encyclopedia anyone can edit" isn't a lie. (That's sarcasm, by the way.) — Gestrid (talk) 17:50, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Like others have said, these criteria exist for a very good reason - so we can speedily delete junk articles about totally non-notable subjects. If all A7/A9 articles had to be deleted through AfD, it would be flooded for no good reason and editors would have to do completely unnecessary extra work; and nothing good would come of vanity pages staying up longer before deletion. Sideways713 (talk) 22:09, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose Simply untenable without a significant reworking of the deletion process. Stikkyy (talk) (contributions) 23:48, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. These are necessary criteria for wiki housekeeping and would overwhelm the already lightly participated in AfD process. James (^talk/_contribs) 00:22, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Absolutely not. These are extremely useful speedy deletion tags. As someone who spends a great deal of time at Afd, sending more manifestly non-notable articles there for full discussion would only put more strain on the system, which is short-staffed and already sees arguably notable articles not getting the attention they deserve, in some cases. This is an enormously useful tool for weeding out obvious junk, and the project would in my view suffer greatly if this ill-considered proposal were to be adopted. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:23, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. This rule was implemented about 12 years ago. Prior to that, AFD was flooded with obviously non-notable articles and the discussion with unanimous "delete" comments, sometimes combined with snarky comments, was far more brutal to a newcomer than a speedy deletion of obvious cases is. Occasionally there is a false positive, and an article is speedy deleted when it shouldn't be, but the benefits of the rule outweigh the costs considerably. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:31, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Regardless of whether these are kept or removed, WP:SIGNIFICANCE (edit: not necessarily this one essay, I mention it because it appears in the policy 15:42, 26 April 2017 (UTC)) needs to be improved and incorporated into policy since it's the deciding factor in these cases. Deletion decisions shouldn't be made according to a non-policy essay. Bright☀ 14:25, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Fully agree although I think it would be better suited as a guideline. On a related note, I was planning to start an RfC to upgrade WP:CCSI, an essay that strives to compile common claims of significance or importance based on consensus. Regards SoWhy 14:46, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I think a recent RfA made it pretty clear that there is disagreement within the admin corps as to what a claim to significance is, and dissatisfaction in the community with the fact that the only guidance we have here are essays. As can be seen at Wikipedia talk:Common claims of significance or importance, even some of our most respect admins can't come to agreement on the content of arguably the most influential on this topic. I don't think the solution is upgrading any of the essays that exist now, because I don't think any of them as they currently exist could gain the consensus to promote to a guideline, which means we'd have an RfC that has the potential to create more confusion rather than clarify things. I think the best way going forward would be to change the A7 language to be more objective. This would help everyone: less biting of newbies, clearer instructions for admins, higher quality control at NPP, and less flack for non-admins who patrol A7 when they decline them. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:10, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, upgrading requires broad consensus, so if it happens, it should clarify things for sure. As for clarifying the language, do you have any suggestions? Regards SoWhy 15:19, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I suppose my suspicion here is that it would be a repeat of SCHOOLOUTCOMES, where the RfC muddied the waters rather than clarifying consensus. I think none of the essays currently have the support needed and you'd get a no consensus close that would lead to more bad A7 tagging, which we all want to avoid. My suggestion would be to add some sort of sourcing requirement as exists in the article at the time of tag placement. I don't know what the specifics would be, but I would suspect somewhere between the requirements of BLPPROD and GNG would be best. Edit: note I'm suggesting sourcing language to help clarify the current criteria, not changing it to be sourcing only. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:51, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Whoops I didn't mean that any particular essay needs to be made into policy, only that deletion decisions should be made according to policies and guideline, not essays. WP:CCSI is a far better candidate. Bright☀ 15:45, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

There are many essays that are frequently cited in AfD discussions, and can be come the basis for a deletion decision in particualr cases. While this particular essay might be worth promoting to a guideline, I don't agree that essays can or should never be consulted in making deletion decisions, nor is that our practice. DES ^(talk) 20:28, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@BrightR: WP:SIGNIFICANCE needs to be improved and incorporated into policy. I tried to do that a while back, but it was rejected. Adam9007 (talk) 21:52, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that essay is not particularly well-written. WP:CCSI is a better candidate. Bright☀ 22:01, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree that WP:CCSI is a better candidate. On a related note, significance/importance is far too subjective (and also too easily confused with notability), and I think that we should perhaps do away with that terminology and instead say does not credibly indicate the subject's potential worthiness of inclusion in an encyclopaedia or something along those lines? Adam9007 (talk) 22:11, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) CCSI is a well written essay that I agree with for the most part. The reason I think an RfC about promotion would be ill-advised is because it gets too into the weeds to make an effective guideline for usage. It lists by my count over 50 claims. There are two issues with this: first, I'm sure there are credible claims of significance that are not listed. People will try to wikilawyer on this and say if it is not listed it isn't a claim to significance, even if the language says it is not all inclusive. Second, for every specific claim that is made, the odds of it passing go down, because you increase the chances of someone finding one point that they strongly disagree with. IMO, the best way to decrease the ambiguity is to deal with the language of the criterion itself, whether it be by including a sourcing standard like I floated above or language like Adam9007 suggested. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:20, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

First of all, thanks. Then: Many guidelines get "too into the weed". The WP:NSPORT guideline lists up to 10 indicators of notability for 29 different kinds of athletes and no one complains that it's too long (although there are complaints, see above, that it's too inclusive). My idea would be this: Elevate WP:SIGNIFICANCE to an analogue of WP:GNG and elevate WP:CCSI to an analogue of WP:SNG (once can also consider combining WP:SIGNIFICANCE and WP:CCSI into one page); after all, no one really argues that a topic failing a SNG but meeting GNG should be deleted, do they? Then we can just point users to these guidelines when dealing with such articles. I understand the risk of opposition based on specific parts of the essay but a sufficiently complex RfC (with multiple sections and sub-sections) should be able to allow us to have a per-claim discussion that still allows consensus to be found for those parts that are not controversial. If this is successful, it would also allow us to sanction users who consistently misapply the policy which is, as was also mentioned in this discussion, the main problem. In the end, there is no way to know for sure without trying. I'll see if I can create some kind of basic RfC page this weekend and then I'd be happy for all input on how to proceed. I'll post it to WT:CCSI, so anyone interested can watchlist this page. Regards SoWhy 15:56, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy in response to your "no one really argues that a topic failing a SNG but meeting GNG should be deleted, do they?" question. I am not saying it happens a lot or even more than once, but I have seen the argument made that a SNG overrides GNG. In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alice Powell if you look at the conversation under my keep vote and the delete vote right under it, an admin (at the time) argued that failing all 7 criteria at Wikipedia:ATHLETE#Motorsports means that significant coverage in independent reliable sources means nothing. The argument goes on to say "Most wineries meet the general notability requirements, but we don't have articles on most wineries because the more specific criteria apply." That implies that in that topic area the SNG trumps GNG. ~ GB fan 23:47, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

• I find myself of two minds on this proposal. I remember when A7 was first introduced -- there had been a veritable flood of new articles about garage bands and other pretty obviously non-notable musical groups. They significantly obstructed VFD, as it was then. In fact, the first version of the template was called db-band. Such efforts at self-promotion and WP:ILIKEIT pages still lie in wait. That said, i find this one of the more frequently misused CSD criteria. Consider this newly created page. If this were promptly tagged with A7, how many admins would delete without further checking? (As it happened, it was tagged with A3, no content which was clearly incorrect.) The speedy was declined, and look at the article now: 500 Miles High. How many 1-liners could have been transformed similarly had they not been speedy deleted with little checking? Who knows? How can we modify A7/A9, or educate patrollers and admins, so that this kind of thing doesn't happen, while still keeping the floods out? DES ^(talk) 22:25, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Second Proposal

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Modify the criteria so that they may only be applied after a reasonable amount of time has passed before tagging with A7 or A9, as suggested by Dlohcierekim. ProgrammingGeek ^talktome 15:27, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• Your (plural) proposal is perennial. --Izno (talk) 15:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

If wishes were fishes. Even so, a better idea than eliminating A7. Dlohcierekim 17:00, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Support (Modify)

• Support. I think my views are roughly the same now as it was in this discussion a while back. Adam9007 (talk) 22:06, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Oppose (Modify)

• Oppose we just went through this a few months ago. There is no support for an objective time limit on A7 and we already have enough unclear wording as is. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:30, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose It is fundamentally not a difficult exercise to create a basic stub article that establishes (or at least claims) notability - with the existence of the Draft namespace, it's even simpler. Letting rubbish clutter up the encyclopedia for a week just because the user who created it couldn't be bothered to do some basic, elementary research before posting about the grindcore band they started with their best mate is ridiculous. If an article is a genuine candidate for A7/A9 when it is created, the chances of it being improved to a suitable standard within a given timeframe are slim to none. Far better to permit its prompt removal. Yunshui ^雲_水 15:33, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as the same comment I entered previously. KGirlTrucker81 ^{huh? what I've been doing} 15:57, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose When someone creates a joke article about nothing in particular, I'm not entirely sure why we should be forced to keep it around. --Jayron32 18:22, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I strongly disagree with Yunshui's statement above since our editing policy clearly states that "[e]ven poor articles, if they can be improved, are welcome" and "[a]s long as any facts or ideas would belong in an encyclopedia, they should be retained in Wikipedia." That being said, (struck after explanation on my talk page) the oftentimes displayed disregard for both the editing and deletion policy alike by some users and admins is not a good reason to clutter the project with articles that definitely have no place here. Even a week won't be long enough to add any claims of significance or importance to many A7 candidates simply because it's clear from the start that such claims don't exist. And if they do exist, a quick Google search will oftentimes find them as well - but then WP:PRESERVE tells you to fix the problem, not tag it for deletion anyway. I myself have brought a couple of such articles to DYK, about subjects I had never heard of before but which I could research on GNews and GBooks within a short time. After all, the policy is already strict enough since it states only clear-cut cases should be speedy deleted. So, as previously stated, don't try to fix the problem by changing the policy, try to fix it by forcing users - oftentimes much more experienced than those creating the articles - to adhere to the policy. Considering the number of admins who will delete basically anything tagged A7, no amount of changing the policy can fix the problem anyway. Regards SoWhy 18:31, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose For many of the same reasons above but there are many times in which no amount of waiting (see my earlier example) which change an editors ability to create a CCS and will likely result in several more backlogs. CHRISSYMAD ❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 20:22, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per my comments on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 136#Delay for A7 and G11 CSD Tags, as well as Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Grace period for deletion. A7 (and most of the article-applicable CSD criteria in general) are designed in such a way that a suitable article is not acceptable at this time, and no length of grace period can change that. If the article makes any credible claim of notability, the solution is to simply not tag it for CSD at all, or to decline such a tag if there's already a tag on the article. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 22:51, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Many articles that are A7/A9d aren't "in progress", they're created relatively "complete", with multiple links, decent formatting, etc, and are there for promotion. If they haven't managed to make a claim of significance, there's probably none to be made, so waiting won't help. At the other end of the scale would be a new editor who is slowly putting together a non-promotional article, and I'd hope people would be able to recognize that the article was incomplete and not just tag it. There's also a case to be made for partially-made or newbie articles not being in mainspace at all, but that's a different question... NOTE: I hope we are all discussing the specific modification suggested in the proposal, rather than modifications in general, which I think many people would support for many different reasons. Yeryry (talk) 23:01, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - There is no foreseeable benefit from such an approach. The downside is that new page patrollers would be bear the burden of keeping track of when articles were created, this more undesirable articles would slip through the cracks. This is indeed a perennial proposal, and the arguments in its favor are very weak and based on unfounded assumptions.- MrX 23:24, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I know it sucks for a new editor that may think they're crafting an article in earnest to see it deleted under a7/a9 if they walk away for a few hours, but we've got so many instructions available to draft space this to avoid that problem; the rest that don't follow this are, as Yeryry documents, are looking for a quick way to drop their name into WP to boost SEO. --MASEM (t) 23:38, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per SoWhy, as well as Chrissymad. The problem of backlogs being created as a result has still be has not been addressed. Boomer Vial^{Holla! We gonna ball!} 02:31, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose because I don't understand how this can be enforced properly. —MRD2014 📞 contribs 14:11, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose At first, I was going to mention this in my !vote above, saying I'd be in favor of it. Then I remembered that there are some A7s/A9s that would fail the notability test even if the author did flesh out the article more. Leaving them up for however long would simply be postponing the inevitable. While some subjects may actually be notable, most of them simply aren't, and many of those ones simply need to be deleted. — Gestrid (talk) 18:12, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Can't realistically be implemented. Stikkyy (talk) (contributions) 23:48, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion (Modify)

This proposal and the one above it both appear to be heading towards WP:SNOW. How long should the discussion remain open? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:33, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

• @Knowledgekid87: I was wondering the same thing. However, these proposals have only been open a day. I would give it a week at least to make sure it's noticed before it's closed. That way, whoever closed it couldn't be accused of closing it too early. We don't want the closer having to deal with WP:CLOSECHALLENGE. — Gestrid (talk) 18:44, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

  I'm willing to close this. Both proposals lack a consideration of the many discussions long held in many places (WT:CSD, here, and elsewhere, probably) that would be necessary prior to the proposal. --Izno (talk) 15:03, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

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

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

RfC: Labeling people correctly

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I propose amending the biographies of living persons policy to avoid misrepresenting people. I think that there should be a rule prohibiting editors from labeling a person differently than they describe themselves. In other words, we shouldn't say that Caitlyn Jenner is a man even though she describes herself as a woman, we shouldn't say that Richard Spencer is a white supremacist even though he rejects that label, we shouldn't say that Donald Trump is a liberal even though he obviously is not. (Those are all just hypothetical scenarios). Even if sources describe a person differently, I think that their own self-description should outweigh everything else. That way, we can avoid controversy and accusations of defamation (NOT a legal threat). In a nutshell, I think that if someone rejects a certain label, we shouldn't call them by that label on Wikipedia, no matter what. My proposal is flexible and I'm all ears to anyone willing to comment. Let me know what you guys think. THE DIAZ 00:18, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Survey: Labeling people correctly

• Oppose whatever this is trying to do outside of MOS:IDENTITY. The header and first two sentences are a form of circular reasoning. "Labeling people correctly" does not mean "labeling a person differently than they describe themselves" is "misrepresenting people". Examples noted above and Doublespeak Award is worth a read. Bluntly, Wikipedia is not another social media platform subjects can use to burnish/soften/shape their public image. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:26, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - NielN stated it succintely enough. Just, oppose  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  15:43, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
• Comment - @The Diaz, Samwalton9, RileyBugz, Blueboar, Herostratus, Masem, and DGG: Pinging participants in discussion to date. Please !vote here after restructure. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:57, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per my other comments. It is fine how it is. I think that some things such as gender identity are particularly sensitive, but IIRC we have a special rule for that already. Self-description is a factor to consider, but not more than that. Or to put it more simply: [17]. Herostratus (talk) 02:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose but principally because the issues with labeling by religion/gender orientation/etc. and by contentious labels are two very different approaches that need separate considerations. --MASEM (t) 04:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - Although we should take some factors into consideration, people should not be able to control their own biographies here. Sorry, but we aren't the PR department. We just give labels to others based on their actions and words. This is why we have the gender policy, as gender isn't so much based on people's actions, but what they call themselves. Thus, that policy. Most other things, though, are just incorrect. If multiple reliable sources label a specific action as something, then going contrary to that is just giving in to those trying to control their image and language. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 15:19, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: People may choose to represent themselves in a light that is at odds with reality - should an article on Charles Manson not mention that he is a convicted murderer? People's self-identification should be mentioned and discussed in the article, particularly where it DOES differ from reality, but that is only one of many factors to consider. Also, WP is not a PR promotional ad service for LPs. Montanabw^(talk) 17:40, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose except for gender and religion. Those are things the person gets to define for him/herself, within reason. In all other areas we rely on reliable sources, not the person him/herself, to define what they are. It's not uncommon for a public person to deny being what it is obvious to the rest of the world they are, or to claim a status they are not entitled to in reality. --MelanieN (talk) 17:59, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion: Labeling people correctly

This is partly already the case; see MOS:IDENTITY, and particularly the subsection on gender, which covers the first example. But as for the second and third: If Richard Spencer is described as a white supremacist by reliable sources, that's what we have to go with, it would be original research to claim otherwise; same for Donald Trump. We can't just change Wikipedia articles because the subject doesn't like some terms we use. Sam Walton (talk) 00:25, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I concur here with Sam Walton above. Otherwise, we are pretty much promoting blatant lies. If I were to say that I have blue hair, for example, and I don't, then I should not be described as having blue hair. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 00:47, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

While we should respect self-identification, and mention it where appropriate, we should also respect what reliable sources say about a person and mention that. Blueboar (talk) 01:33, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Concur with all the above. Self-description is a factor to weigh, certainly. But naturally people tend to self-describe in a positive light that is not always accurate. Re Richard B. Spencer for instance, after some discussion and checking of sources, it was decided that it was accurate to describe him as a white supremacist ("promotion of the belief, that white people are superior...to people of other racial backgrounds"). As a practical remedy, if he doesn't like being described that way here or generally, IMO he should first think twice about doing stuff like tweeting "For the White race, it's never over" after the Patriots Super Bowl comeback. And so forth. Herostratus (talk) 02:15, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

While we do need to concern ourselves with inflated self-assessment, we should also be fully aware that labels like "white supremacist" are very very subjective and show not be used as a "factual" identification no matter how many sources label the BLP as such, particularly in today's current political enviornment. It is one thing that years after a person has died, that the broad consensus of sources agree that a person is a white supremacist, at which point that would be reasonable (avoiding RECENTISM issues), but while they are alive, and particularly if they contest the label, that's a different matter. Addressing that sources call that person a "white supremacist" (eg in-line attribution) along with any counterclaims made by the person if they exist, that's fine, but BLP and LABEL is very clear about avoiding saying these as fact while they are alive. --MASEM (t) 03:14, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:LABEL actually says "and are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject". Thus, you are correct in some cases, but in others, where consensus in reliable sources is clear, you are incorrect. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits|

I'm not saying that labels can't be used when there are a lot of sources using that label towards a BLP, but we should still avoid using that as a term of fact in WP's voice, and at least ascribe it as popular opinion of the person, particularly if the person or other RSes have denied/countered the claim. Labels are contentious (moreso if they are contested), and per WP:YESPOV, they should be presented as attributed claims. There is far less harm for WP to take this middle-ground approach than stating a label as fact if the person is still alive. --MASEM (t) 03:38, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Another issue I take with the Richard B. Spencer page is the fact that it says Richard B. Spencer is a white supremacist, but it later acknowledges that he rejects that label. Calling him that and then acknowledging that he doesn't like that term just doesn't seem very encyclopedia-like. THE DIAZ 05:11, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Sam Walton, maybe their statement of self-identification should be required to be backed up by a reliable source? It doesn't seem like it'd be original research if that were the case. THE DIAZ ^{talk • contribs} 02:33, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

No. That is equally stupid. Just because a reliable source says that I say that my hair is blue does not mean that my hair is blue. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 03:09, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

In general, using self-description in most cases is POV. We do not write anything, not even BLPs, in the subjects POV. Nor to we take for granted what they say about themselves. As an example, if they describe themselves as a famous writer in their website, it doesn't settle the matter. We could probably report that they say this about themselves, but whether it is an accurate description depends on the 3rd party evidence. There are exceptions, and this proposal would properly limit itself to those exceptions. For a living person, we do not describe the sexuality or religion or national identification differently from the way they do it. These are areas where courtesy does over-ride NPOV to a limited extent, for the period of their lives. I say "courtesy" but I mean much more than that: doing otherwise offends our fundamental sense of human integrity. For famous people where such matters are discussed by truly reliable objective sources we can discuss it carefully and sensitively in the article, but our basic description for such things as lede paragraphs while they are alive must be what they self-identify with. But that's already policy. It did take a longer to establish it as accepted policy than it should have, but is's been done--I think it was the discussions about the article on Manning which finally clarified it, and I think all responsible publications now do similarly. If there are cases where it hasn't been followed, the BLP noticeboard is the place to correct it. Policy is clear about this. DGG ( talk ) 04:44, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

@ DGG Maybe we could add political views to those exceptions? THE DIAZ ^{talk • contribs} 19:51, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. What if Hitler, say, were still alive and rejected the label Nazi, then should we not describe him as a Nazi? No, that would be incorrect. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 19:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Well he was a member of the Nazi party. That really doesn't fall into his political views per se. Still I don't believe anyone knows their political views other than themselves. THE DIAZ ^{talk • contribs} 17:27, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

We aren't contesting who knows who's beliefs better, we (or supporters of this) are contesting if labels, names applied to those who perform specific behaviours, should be used when the subject disagrees with them. And I mentioned Hitler just as a random example, even though it wasn't a very good one. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 19:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I actually dealt with just this many years ago, when I commented there was no point labeling Stalin as a tyrant, because the article would make it clear enough. DGG ( talk ) 05:26, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

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Fake news

Given the amount of false information around these days, and talk from Jimbo Wales about combating it, I was wondering if there would be any support for an RfC elevating WP:FALSE to the status of a policy? Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:34, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

No, it's a nice bit of guidance, I rather like it, but it doesn't serve the purpose of a policy. The policy is WP:V and the support guideline is WP:RS, and that's sufficient. --Jayron32 13:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

No... agree with what Jayron says, and will add that WP:NPOV plays a huge role in all this. Blueboar (talk) 17:35, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Very true. WP:V is the threshold of acceptability. Material in an article still has to pass WP:NOTFALSE, WP:BLP and WP:NPOV. The problem is that WP:V is sometimes seen as an explicit endorsement of alternative facts. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:30, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

How can I discuss change in existing policy?

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I want to make a change in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Child_protection policy, but I was rejected from discussion on such change in a talk page. I propose to remove sentence "(e.g. by expressing the view that inappropriate relationships are not harmful to children), or who identify themselves as pedophiles", under this reason: Any views, opinions, advocacy etc. are already prohibited by different policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not and I see no no reason why certain views must be prohibited more than others, unless we make a moral assessment that such views are bad or more bad than others, which we not, because Wikipedia is not a moral guidance, and must not make moral assessments.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Biaswatch (talk • contribs) 12:56, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

As I said on the IRC help channel, it would help if you clearly lay out what that "certain change" is, (for example, in a "change A to B, remove C, add D between X and Y" style). You haven't done so either here or at WT:Child protection. I'll also note that the community will likely be reluctant to change policy based on the comments of someone who has no record of improving the encyclopedia. So explaining how your proposed changes will improve the encyclopedia may also help. Huon (talk) 13:19, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I would also point you to our WP:CONSENSUS policy... no individual editor can unilaterally make a change to policy. Policy is changed by the entire community acting in consensus. In other words, the most any individual editor can do is propose a change, and then wait to see whether the community agrees with the proposal (or not). If the community agrees with your rational for the change, the change will be made... but if not, the change will not be made. Please accept consensus what ever it may be. That said... Given the extremely sensitive nature of the policy in question, I strongly suspect that the community will not agree to any change in our policy. In other words, be prepared for rejection. Blueboar (talk) 14:39, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

As to "I see no no reason why certain views [e.g. 'expressing the view that inappropriate relationships are not harmful to children'] must be prohibited more than others" because then "we make a moral assessment that such views are bad [but we]... must not make moral assessments" Well where'd you get that idea? No human ceases being a moral player on this planet, for one instant, and certainly not by sitting down at a keyboard (and "To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment" (H. L. Mencken) so you're trapped in the moral universe regardless).

And The Wikipedia makes many moral stands -- for instance, that argument from observable phenomena trumps argument from authority (a contentious minority viewpoint in human history and possibly still today) and so forth.

Another moral stand we make is "persons should not be harmed without just cause". We have WP:HARASSMENT (regarding editors) to this end and also WP:BLP (regarding article subjects).

By the same token, we have the rule and emphasize that particular point because we have children editing here and there's an obvious moral (and probably legal) obligation to keep children separated from people "expressing the view that inappropriate relationships are not harmful to children" to the extent possible. If you can't see that and why it should be so, I can't help you. Just take my word for it.

(Besides that, experience has taught us that editors who come here "expressing the view that inappropriate relationships are not harmful to children, or who identify themselves as pedophiles" are trouble with a capital T on a number of practical levels. A lot of them are trolls for one thing, and it's a waste of time. The ones that aren't annoyingly given to endlessly advocating for changes to articles that are frankly not going to happen and its a waste of time. Then there's the political liability angle and so forth. We don't need the headache.)

As far as people who just "identify themselves as pedophiles" without "expressing the view that inappropriate relationships are not harmful to children", yes we understand about gold star pedophiles. What can I say? Keep it to yourself. We are a project to make an encyclopedia not a self-actualization group. You also can't edit here if you identify yourself as a nazi (I'm sure we have nazis here -- nazis enjoy fixing spelling errors etc. as much as the next person -- but they keep their identification as such to themselves).) Herostratus (talk) 15:53, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Moral views are always rely on personal believes, religion, culture etc. And for this reason are not neutral by it's nature. Wikipedia policies you mentioned, which we can represent as it's moral stands, are completely relevant to it's encyclopedic purpose - they help to make articles.

[we have children editing here] - Far more children are using Wikipedia but not editing it, for this reason it's much more likely for them to come across article like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Man/Boy_Love_Association and be acquainted with such point of view rather than meet a particular man on a talk page, expressing this same view.

[Besides that, experience has taught us that editors who... are trouble with a capital T on a number of practical levels] - I don't think it's a good point because of generalization based on personal experience.

[We don't need the headache] - Sometimes we need a headache to make something better. Do you think it's a good way to make certain topic less controversial by simply excluding certain group of people from the discussion? They can participate anyway, by simply not revealing their identification. Then what's the point?

[You also can't edit here if you identify yourself as a nazi] - Is this a real policy? Can I see it?Biaswatch (talk) 17:39, 30 April 2017 (UTC)Biaswatch (talk) 17:54, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Well of course figuring out correct action, what is morally just and so forth, is complicated. And of course it is based on human experience. So? Everything is. That doesn't invalidate it, nor imply that we can't answer these question by careful reasoning based on first principles. I don't really have a grounding in the area, these questions in the general sense are perhaps best addressed at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities; maybe someone there can recommend a good Introduction to Moral Philosophy type book.

Anyway, sure our articles are neutral. That does not mean the Wikipedia is neutral or its policies need be. If someone told you different they gave you a bum steer. Again, our policy WP:HARASSMENT basically prohibits you from (among other things) finding out the real-life identity of a user you are in a dispute with causing him some harm in real life. It is partly prohibited because it is evil.

evil \'e--v*l\, (from Old English yfel, from Indo-European "exceeding due limits") adj.: bad; having qualities which tend to injury, or to produce mischief; producing sorrow, distress, injury or calamity; morally bad or wrong; wicked; deliberately causing great harm, pain, or upset; infamous; malicious; characterized by a desire to cause hurt or harm; arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct; that which produces pain, distress, loss, or calamity, or which impairs the happiness of natural beings; depravity, corruption of heart, or disposition to commit wickedness. n.: malignity; the quality of being profoundly immoral or wrong; mischief; a situation or thing that is very unpleasant, harmful, or morally wrong; something that is a cause or source of suffering, injury, or destruction.

It also would probably be poor business practice to allow this sort of thing. But its definitely cast mainly or at least partly as a moral issue. WP:BLP, enacted at least partly on moral grounds.

WP:HARASSMENT certainly does not say "Well, if you dig up the real identity of an editor here and get him fired from his job -- well who are we to say whether this is 'wrong' or 'right'? Maybe you should do this and maybe you shouldn't, but we're not going to take a stand on it either way". That to my mind would be a poor policy. Again -- to decide we are not going to take a stand on this (on the grounds that to do so would be making a moral decision) is itself a moral decision. You can't escape the moral world I'm afraid.

As to the nazi thing, its a de facto policy based on common sense -- we can't ask editors to accept a nazi as a colleague, leaving aside the matter that allowing a user to put "This user is Nazi" on their userpage, 90 % of time it would be trolling. Any proper administrator will require them to remove it at once and kick them out if he won't. Herostratus (talk) 18:32, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Also, if we were to even consider changing this policy, we would likely have to contact the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Team to even see if we could change the policy (making sure to be specific about what we would like to change it to) before we could even have a discussion about if we should change the policy, and they would likely need to be involved throughout the whole process. The WMF is based in the US, too, which requires it to follow, in this case, US laws regarding child protection. — Gestrid (talk) 19:27, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Hell, whether we should build an encyclopedia or not is a moral issue. I mean, is it ok for us to cause trauma because of what people see or read? An encyclopedia like Wikipedia says yes, to an extent. Thus, everything is a moral issue. This means that we just have to choose the morals to follow. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 19:30, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

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

Edit summaries

I've been editing on WP since around 2005, with spats of inactivity sprinkled in here and there. One thing I noticed recently, and maybe it's just the articles I happen to edit, but edit summaries seem to have fallen out of favor. I'll go look at the history for an article, and other than reversions (scripted or automatic) that have default language followed up by maybe 3-4 words explaining why, the edit summaries are blank. Is this actually a thing now? Edit summaries are really useful when you're looking at months of edits trying to find when a change was made and by whom. I'm not certain if we want to start prescribing this in a guideline or policy, but I felt like this might be the best place to ask about it in the event others feel as I do. Thoughts? —Locke Cole • t • c 17:05, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if they've gotten less common across the board (maybe they have with mobile devices), but I think edit summaries are really useful, too. It blows my mind that some of our most prolific contributors can't be bothered to use them. Rivertorch^FIRE_WATER 17:13, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The article history that prompted this was Avengers: Infinity War (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I'm tempted to download a data dump (assuming there's one that has the history, but omits the actual diffs), write a script or something and see how bad it is project-wide. I'm sure there will be trends, my suspicion is that usernames with redlinks, folks editing from an IP address and mobile edits are more likely to omit an edit summary. Like I said originally, I'm not sure if this is something that needs solving (though you seem to also feel summaries are useful) via policy/guideline. Maybe something built-in to MediaWiki, like requiring an edit summary (excluding section links)? Or at least warning the user when they attempt to submit a change without a summary (unless it's marked as minor)? Rollbacks would be excluded as they're conceivably for vandalism or situations where a rollback is obviously appropriate.

I'm going to go link this in a few places, see if we can get a consensus here that it's an issue, and go from there. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 17:57, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

FYI: Forcing edit summaries is a perenial proposal, meaning it has been repeatedly rejected in the past.

Edit summary usage becomes relevant when a user applies for advanced permisssions, in particular adminship, but it is not and never has been required of anyone. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:12, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't see a trend. Since I joined (back in 2006 if I remember correctly) I have worked on some articles where leaving edit summaries has been the exception rather than the norm, and other articles where almost everyone leaves edit summaries. It really depends on the specific article and the editors involved. It also depends on what the edit is... Some edits (especially admin actions) should be highlighted by an edit summary... but other edits are fine without one. Blueboar (talk) 22:33, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Comment. There is {{Uw-editsummary}} which you can place on the talk page of a user who does not give edit summaries. Unfortunately, there's no followup template that escalates this. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:10, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Followup Found {{Summary2}} and {{Uw-subtle2}}, which I hadn't known about before. (All these templates should be substituted, by the way, just like normal.) Jason Quinn (talk) 05:02, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Interesting finds, though the whole thing about not templating the regulars comes in here. For new editors, sure, these might be a way to steer them towards using edit summaries though. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 15:00, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I haven't a noticed any trend in the 4 years I've been around. Good editsums remain one of many, many little details that make a good editor, and in my opinion are fairly low on the list. One thing is certain, if they were required by the software most of the now-missing editsums would become x. People will expend the effort to do what they feel is important, and all we can do is continue to try to sell the idea of their importance, along with all the other things competing for their attention. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:31, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Even worse, requiring an edit summary might provoke mischief in providing it, and now we're dealing with how to detect edit summary vandalism. A better solution is to automatically substitute sectional designations for edits to lead and infobox, as well as diffs in the edit summaries, where they're not already being provided (and that is the trend that I'm seeing). That is the solution for how to spot, in the revision history, the idiocy among a spate of helpful edits, which is where edit summaries are particularly helpful (and where they're least apt to be provided). Dhtwiki (talk) 00:50, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd say you're right, at least up to a point, when it comes to spotting blatantly unconstructive edits from revision history, but it's a different story when it comes to identifying well-meaning but misguided edits or subtle vandalism, especially working from one's watchlist and mostly using popups. And that's how I usually work; if I opened every suspect edit or revised page in a new tab, I don't think I could get through my watchlist in under two hours.

I wouldn't support edit summaries being required. In some cases, the reason behind an edit is quite obvious, and while I'd rather see a summary even in such cases, it's not a big deal if there isn't one. But there are an awful lot of cases where I'm left scratching my head, wondering what the other user was thinking. Sometimes I can figure it out by looking at the full diff page. Sometimes I also need to look at the page history or (if I'm feeling especially hopeful) check the talk page. And sometimes none of that works. Either way, it's a colossal waste of time. So I guess I see it as a matter of courtesy, above all else. It isn't exactly considerate to waste other people's time, after all. Of course, it's to any editor's advantage to explain what they're up to—otherwise there's always the risk of getting needlessly reverted—but trying to persuade people to act in their own self-interest is often a fruitless exercise. Rivertorch^FIRE_WATER 07:05, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Re: "waste of time." ... have you considered that other editors may feel that leaving an edit summary is a waste of their time. It's a two way street. Blueboar (talk) 14:52, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Actually, yes, I considered that exact point. I also considered that writing an edit summary takes mere seconds, while trying to discern the reason for a baffling edit in the absence of such a summary can take minutes. And I concluded that the traffic on one side of the street zips along, while the other side is an endless traffic jam. Rivertorch^FIRE_WATER 18:24, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Any user doing a significant edit should use an edit summary; if they don't, there's a decent chance of the edit being reverted as "vandalism", a "test edit" or a "mistake", even when it isn't. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:44, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

"Edit summaries are really useful when you're looking at months of edits trying to find when a change was made and by whom". Locke Cole, have you tried Wikipedia:WikiBlame? That tool is designed for your issue. Fences&Windows 10:58, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I was not aware of that tool. And I'm sure I'll use that going forward, but edit summaries would still be nice for those times I just want to quickly look through the (recent) history. —Locke Cole • t • c 15:00, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Date links on portal date-specific pages

Colonies Chris has been unlinking date links on portal pages (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for examples). He does this under WP:UNLINKDATES (which refers you to WP:DATELINK) and WP:OVERLINKING (which actually refers you to WP:UNLINKDATES, so is irrelevant). I disagree with his interpretation of these guidelines when it comes to portal date pages. Because they are pages specifically about that date, the links to the general date (say, July 27) and to the years for each entry are germane to the subject at hand (what happened on that date or in that year). I agree that linking to dates anywhere else is overlinking, but portal date pages are a special case, IMHO. Chris stated his opinion here. He also is starting to edit war to keep his preferred version rather than discussing the issue (see here and here).

So, I'm bringing it to everyone. What do you think? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:24, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I've made my case on my talk page. Reinstating my changes (in two cases) while we discuss the matter is not edit warring. Colonies Chris (talk) 17:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

It actually is, since you're trying to force your preferred version. A rose is a rose is a rose, and all that. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:45, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:BRD and all that, you've been reverted Chris, so now stop. Full stop. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:47, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Chris has been asked myriad times by numerous editors to stop this wholesale AWB crusade approach too many times. It did stop for a while but I see he's back up and running with the tool and not really helping matters again. I agree with Nihonjoe's summary and the edits should stop, and any existing edits be reverted until we can address the issues that Chris believes he's solving via some more formal route, e.g. RFC. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:47, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

The Rambling Man really ought to check his facts before posting; none of these edits were made with AWB. Not one. I suggest you check out of this discussion. Colonies Chris (talk) 20:12, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Suggest away. How many times have you been asked to stop your unilateral editing approach? And yet today you're even edit warring over it. I suggest you stop this behaviour right now. Paradoxically, that you actively made these edits, with incomplete edit summaries and errors is even worse. So now, at least for the time being, desist. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:36, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I would argue the unlinking of dates is fine and year numbers is required. The change of date format is not. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:07, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Any change of date format was entirely unintentional - let me know which pages, and I'll correct them. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:07, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Already corrected (twice). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:35, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Introducing the Community health initiative on Wikipedia

Community health initiative

Helping the Wikimedia volunteer community to reduce the level of harassment and disruptive behavior on our projects.

Hello! Today we'd like to introduce the new Community health initiative, the people who will be working on it, and most importantly how you can get involved. See the post at Village pump (miscellaneous), Cheers, Caroline, Sydney, & Trevor of the Anti-Harassment Tools team. (delivered by SPoore (WMF) (talk) , Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 02:24, 3 May 2017 (UTC) 23:58, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Renaming to emojis in global rename policy

Hey, There is an ongoing discussion in m:Talk:Global rename policy about disallowing renaming to emojis. I thought you should know it. Ladsgroup^overleg 08:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing dispute re duplication in child and parent categories (WP:SUBCAT)

Opinions are sought at WT:CATP#Ongoing dispute re duplication in child and parent categories, regarding the use of WP:SUBCAT. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:57, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

ELNEVER, LINKVIO; where do they apply?

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

---

I made a change to WP:ELNEVER, which was reverted by Herostratus: [18]. I am currentlly dealing with an editor who has posted hundreds of links to copyvio youtube pages in user talk pages, article talk pages, ... across many years, without being aware that this is not allowed. I thought the "with no exceptions" rule of ELNEVER, and the text at WP:LINKVIO, would be sufficient, but considering the trouble I have in convincing people that, no, knowingly linking to copyright violations is not allowed anywhere on Wikipedia, I thuoght it better to make it more explicit there.

Should this be readded there, and/or be made more explicit at WP:LINKVIO, or be added somewhere else? Fram (talk) 12:24, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Its at WP:PRJC--Moxy (talk) 12:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Not really, that's specifically about the Wikipedia namespace, but not about e.g. user (talk) pages. Fram (talk) 12:37, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

"Editors may not violate copyrights or harass anywhere on Wikipedia."......linking to Wikipedia:List of policies#Legal "Wikipedia has no tolerance for copyright violations in our encyclopedia, and we actively strive to find and remove any violations."--Moxy (talk) 12:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

But that starts with "Relates to material copied from sources ", and people are wikilawyering that linking to copyvio's is not the same as copying copyrighted material, and that such linking is only prohibited in article space. This seems to me a willful piece of wikilawyering, but to prevent this type of thing it is sometimes better to make the obvious explicit anyway. I agree with you that any reasonable reading of our policies like the one you link to make it obvious that deliberately linking to copyvios is not acceptable anywhere on enwiki, but some long-term editors seem to need to have this spelled out literally. Fram (talk) 12:51, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

This should apply throughout all namespaces. Whether it is in mainspace or outside, you basically still say "here, read this material that is violating copyright", and WP:LINKVIO does not make any distinction as to the location where the link is placed. Though, to get a proper answer, we'd probably want WMF legal to assert this --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:01, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

They already have RE copyright issues in general. The problem is that the written wording of ENWP specific policies does not cross the t's and dot the i's for the .1% of editors who are willfully trying to circumvent it. As far as I am concerned LINKVIO applies everywhere like BLP - with the exceptions being for the purposes of discussion of 'is this a violation?' which likewise with BLP, you have to actually provide some detail to have the discussion. Obviously linking to youtube videos for no purpose other than humour or social networking falls way outside this. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:11, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Oh, of course editors may still post a link with "is this acceptable" without problems, although (as happens now with BLP) if it is found to be a blatant violation, the link may then be removed (though not revdeled in this case, unlike some blatant BLP violations). The purpose is not to open a witchhunt, but to have some easy-to-point to page or link to give to those few editors who would argue against this. Fram (talk) 13:22, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Lede of WP:CV "Copyright infringing material should also not be linked to.". --MASEM (t) 13:30, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

This is basically what I considered on WT:EL as well. The good faith question 'is [this link] a copyvio' can still be asked, and should in the worst case result in a revert with 'yes, this is a copyvio'. Also a good faith question 'is [this] a suitable link for the page' would in the worst case be reverted with 'no, because it is a copyvio, please take care'. Those situations are not dissimilar from mainspace, where people may unknowingly post links that are copyvio, which will then be reverted by someone who has a second look at it (and none of them should be reverted back in, obviously). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:25, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there's another discussion about exactly this bold change at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#ELNEVER:_where_does_it_apply?, and the discussions may be trending in slightly different directions. Would you all like to go there, or should we invite everyone over there to come here? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

While WP:EL applies to article space, WP:COPYLINK applies everywhere. —Farix (t | c) 01:17, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

And that is exactly what I expect to become more clear with this change. Clarify that for this part WP:EL applies everywhere on Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:17, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Editor's may not violate our copyright policies anywhere as per WP:NOTPART. --Moxy (talk) 18:08, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

• The guideline is about articles (article-space). That is abundantly clear. It says absolutely nothing about usertalk pages or other talk pages. Wikipedians may not upload unpermitted copyrighted material, but there is no stricture on linking to a YouTube or other music/text/art-hosting site (copyrighted or not) for informational purposes on a talk page. That is well within fair use and always has been. It is also well within fair use to link to a very short segment of a much longer video/movie, whether on YouTube or elsewhere; that is fair use even by YouTube's upload standards -- educational or informational posting of a small segment is fair-use. I think people's time is much better spent hunting down and rooting out actual article-space copyright violations than policing talk-page discussions. Softlavender (talk) 10:45, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

This comment makes no sense whatsoever, User:Softlavender. There is a clear restriction to link to material that is hosted in violation of copyright, see WP:LINKVIO. Using 'Fair use' material on talkpages (or anywhere outside of content namespace for that matter) is also not allowed, per WP:NFCC #9. Thirdly, there is a clear difference between material that is hosted under fair use, and material that is a plain copyright violation. Do you really want to argue that linking to material that is hosted in violation of the creator's copyright can be linked outside of content namespaces under a fair use rationale? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:20, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I believe they already have ;) Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:22, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Twice. --~~

Looking at some first principles

Well, it seems like the main action is over at Wikipedia talk:External links#ELNEVER: where does it apply?, and that's probably the going to be the source of the decision if decision there is. So, let me use this discussion to bring up a philosophical point. It's useful sometimes to examine first principles, as you may find that, over time, your rule has become encrusted with barnacles such that it no longer serves the intended core principle. Or else maybe your core principle is not good.

So anyway, in the philosophical mode of thinking of "why do we have such-and-such rule"... it seems that for article space I can think of four good reasons to have a rule "never link to copyvio":

1. Practical reasons -- this project is, for good or ill, dedicated to the proposition that our work should be available for downstream users. Copyvio links pollute the material for such use, mainly because of...
2. Legal reasons. Copyvio links are possibly -- maybe even probably -- illegal. (And if we had a policy "Copyvio links are fine" and we had very many of them, I would upgrade that to quite likely illegal.) Illegal is bad, mainly because it pollutes the downstream use. (It could also get us in trouble, theoretically.)
3. Moral reasons -- we're very high-traffic, and if we have a link to a popular media in a high-traffic article, and it's to a copyvio, and the copyright holder also hosts the media on his site, where he has ads that produce revenue, so he's able to feed his family and afford new crutches for Little Timmy... some percentage of his revue stream is going to be lost. This would be a moral fault on our part. Sure most copyvio links won't rise to this level, but it's reasonable to ban them rather than having to try to adjudicate the morality of each case.
4. Organizational or maybe call it "hygiene" reasons. We are constantly (and properly) patrolling for copyrighted material (different issue from copyvio links) -- people pasting in swaths of text from somewhere, etc. It's a constant patrol and a constant headache, and constantly explaining "no, you can't paste in stuff from your website, even though you wrote it and hold the copyright (without an OTRS ticket)" and so on.

So we are copyright hard guys, and bringing in an exception... it'd be contrary to our normal mode, our sense of stuff as an organization... It'd be like having a law for firemen: "Well, put out fires, but if the homeowner is behind on his taxes you don't have to, and if she has multiple felonies you mustn't". It's just much simpler and keeping with the I-am-a-firefighter ethos to be: "Put out all fires".

OK. Any of the first three taken alone is sufficient reason to forbid copyvio in articles (the fourth by itself, though a valid consideration, isn't). All three (or four) put together -- well of course we're gonna ban copyvio in articles. It's clear cut and incontrovertible.

But then two things about this. All of these apply to non-article pages much, much more weakly:

1. Practical -- it is not a WMF goal that talk pages and so forth be widely distributed downstream (you can, but its not our goal for anyone to do so).
2. Legal -- all judgements against copyvio links have been against commercial linkfarms. A person cannot and will not be prosecuted for an occasional copyvio link on their low-traffic, not-for-profit website (which non-article pages are low-traffic and not for profit). Trust me on this, prosecutors and judges are not morons or robots. Our legal exposure is this statistically zero. And we're not concerned about polluting for downstream use.
3. Moral -- non-article pages are low traffic. There's never remotely been a case where this has been a problem in 15 years that I know of. If a case comes up every 30 years or so we can handle that. It's just much more of a potential issue for our high-traffic articles which are explicitly offered to the public.
4. Organizational is the one that remains in play. And I believe that's why we are here. I understand this, it is human nature and a positive aspect of human nature. "A main interest for me here is quashing copyright vio, that's a chosen volunteer role. I seek out copyright violations, and when I see one I am the Hammer of Hell, and in this way protect and defend the Wikipedia". And this is great and necessary and thank God for editors like that. And if course it is hard to ask someone to turn that off just for links when they flip over to a non-article page (where patrol for cut-and-paste copyright violations is still on, of course).

At the same time, whoa. Anything can be taken too far. Firemen don't put out campfires. Cops don't shoot innoce... well, firemen don't put out campfires. So you do have to know when to quit and consider nuances, in this case the difference between cut-and-paste copyright violations (bad everywhere) and copyvio link violations (different on article and non-article pages).

And there's another thing in play here which hasn't been mentioned: copyright is changing and is itself becoming evil. Did you know that? It's true! Now completely unmoored from the concept of encouraging the creation of works for the public good, it is now considered to exist for the protection of "intellectual property", which is very different. From being a "property right" issue, it is then easily used to put public discourse more under state and corporate control, constrain the intellectual life of the people, cast all intellectual activity as from a market perspective, and allow the camel's nose of state interest intrude into all creative activity.

A recent post here asserts "in the European Union, the Parliament is debating copyright rules that would create new ancillary copyrights for press publishers and would create a mandatory censorship machine, affecting Wikipedia, which MEP Julia Reda says that Wikipedia could be required to employ robots to filter copyrighted content, and it won't even recognise fair use... The new EU copyright reform could remove safe harbours" and so forth. Not really up on all this, but it's something that you do hear.

I'm confident that within 50 years copyrights will be infinite, and moreover the concept of "public domain" will be gone and all works now in the public domain will again be under someone's copyright (privatized in some manner, probably similar to how Soviet property was privatized). If you insist on electing a mix of extreme rightists and moderate-left corporate toadys to your national legislatures (and apparently you do), eventually enough of them are going to look around and say "Whoa, there's this huge body of popular work, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, etc, and it's not being monetarized, which is crazy -- it goes against everything market theory has taught us, and we're leaving money on the table, money that my publishing-industry donors could be raking in and passing some to me". Mark my words: meet me back at this thread in 50 years and we'll see if I was right.

OK, </rant>. My point "protecting the right of copyright, in all seasons and for all causes" was a noble thing 50 years ago but now it is much less so (at least arguably) and this trend looks to continue. Of course we have to be vigilant against copyright violations (of which copyvio links is a subset) for the 3 (or 4) good reasons given above. That doesn't mean we have to like it, or extend it one inch further than we need to. Herostratus (talk) 16:20, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Nice rant. See WP:NOTPART - our legal policies (guess what, WP:COPYRIGHT is a legal policy) apply all over Wikipedia, not just in content space. So there you have it. You should not link to copyvio material anywhere on Wikipedia. We are not extending it one inch further than we need to, eh, we are not extending it one inch further because all of Wikipedia is already encompassed (wait, is there a world beyond Wikipedia?). Now just lets make that clear in policy and guideline, shall we? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:49, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Your "Moral" part of the non-mainspace links has nothing to do with morality, but again only discusses legality. It is still morally wrong (if you agree with copyright in the first place) to link to copyvios for entertainment purposes. Your rant on changing copyright is hardly relevant (we should allow links to current copyright violations, infringing on the income of artists, because perhaps, in the future, in some countries, everything may be copyrighted and censured? Right...). And it is, as Beetstra says, most importantly simply not allowed by WMF legal policy, which goes much further than what is possibly legally necessary, but which is not for us to overrule. Fram (talk) 06:47, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

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

In disputes/debates, whose burden of proof is it to show that they're right?

I notice that Wikipedia:Expert retention/Burden of proof failed. So, when there's a debate about whether to include content in Wikipedia, on whom is the burden is proof? Let's suppose we're in the WP:BRD cycle. When it gets to the discussion part, and the bold user says, "I propose that we include x in this article," can the reverting user, by simply saying "I disagree; see WP:XYZ" effectively stall the process? Because if the bold user comes back and says, "I read it but don't see anything that backs up your point," the reverting user can always say, "Re-read it more carefully, then. You need to learn the rules thoroughly before interfering in potentially contentious matters."

As I was pointing out at Wikipedia:Don't just cite a page of rules; cite the relevant part of the rule and explain how it applies to the specific situation‎, we see a lot of non-arguments like "See WP:XYZ" these days. St. claires fire (talk) 14:58, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

In reality it almost never comes down to a 1v1 situation. There are always options to get a third (4th or 5th) opinion. But in the event it comes down to editor A saying 'I think the article should include this' and editor B saying 'no it shouldnt', absent a tie-breaker of some sort, the status quo reigns. The changes to the article have not gained consensus amongst those editing the article. If you find yourself in a dispute with someone who wont explain their use of a particular policy/guideline/essay to you, then seek a third opinion. I *most* of the time explain when I cite a policy - depending on the experience of the user on the recieving end. Some editors however should know better, there is a minimum intelligence level to be expected of long-term editors who are *expected* to be familiar with the main policies and guidelines. They tend to get less of an explanation. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:21, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I concur fully with what Only says (and I also generally explain application of policy — though, ironically, I'm not going to do so this time), but would also point you to this section of the Consensus policy which sets the burden of proof you're asking about though, perhaps, not absolutely. It's also important to remember that under wiki practice "no consensus" is a perfectly acceptable result. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:43, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

As far as including material, it is up to the person including it to cite it properly: uncited material can always be removed, so in practice, although it would be nice if people may some effort to find those citations, it's obviously detrimental to protect material from criticism by those who don't have the time or the means to do the work the inserter should already have done. As to whether the material is appropriate, or whether the authorities provided are accurate: that, as they say above, would tend to involve appeal to others for a larger discussion. Mangoe (talk) 16:58, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Hypothetically, if it were to come to this kind of situation, my opinion is that the burden of proof should be on the reverting user to cite the specific sections of Wikipedia rules that the edit doesn't meet and then (if necessary) explain why an edit doesn't meet the rules. If you show why an edit doesn't meet the rules then you would avoid the whole 'read the rules more carefully' problem. I guess the bold user could still dispute this, but they wouldn't be able to reflexively dismiss the points made by the reverting user without looking disingenuous. I think in the real world usually other users are able to lend their opinions to something like this, making it easier to reach a consensus. Any thoughts on this? Asm20 (talk) 21:30, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

There's no short answer to this because there are so many different situations, and different factors/policies/practices that may apply. I'll address just come of them. Dispute resolution requests lists many options, such as requesting a Third opinion, there are valuable various specialized boards like Reliable Source Noticeboard, or an RFC can be started.

When it comes to contentious content about Living persons, the burden is upon the person wanting to include the content. The default/no_consensus result is removal. If content is unsourced, then the person wanting to include it generally has burden of sourcing it or otherwise justifying inclusion. In many other cases the no_consensus expectation is to default back to the pre-existing status quo.

If someone cites a large "See WP:XYZ", it's perfectly appropriate to ask them to be more specific what part of XYZ they believe applies.

In an intractable situation, an RFC is pretty much the ultimate way to drive things to an enforceable resolution. But don't frivolously open RFCs on routine 1v1 disagreements. There should be significant effort to resolve things before you drag in lots of random people to sink time into the dispute. If you do open an RFC, you really need to accept the result if it goes against you. It will likely be considered disruptive for either side to persist in unconstructive battle against an RFC result. If you're dealing with an unreasonable/disruptive individual, continued fighting could get them blocked. If you turn out to be the unreasonable/disruptive individual, continued fighting could get you blocked. Chuckle. Alsee (talk) 23:39, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:BURDEN/WP:ONUS is always on including disputed material. Burden for WP:IGNORE is always on the person ignoring the relevant policies, guidelines, discussion, and consensus. Bright☀ 15:39, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

RfC discussion at WT:NFC

I started the discussion about uploading acceptable non-free images of deceased persons at WT:NFC. I invite you to comment. --George Ho (talk) 19:21, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:NOTBROKEN

WP:NOTBROKEN doesn't apply to nav templates. What about lists? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 12:20, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

The reason for nav templates is that the change in question isn't cosmetic on the linked page; for a list, there is no such issue. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:31, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

This is in relation to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Lists cleanup. See also WP:OTHERPARENT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:48, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Are we now a Yellow Pages for U.K. Realty?

Does this yellow pages of the biggest developers, realtors and other realty services in the U.K. comport with our rules about templates? Template:Real_estate_in_the_United_Kingdom. Just curious. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:45, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

(I asked the same question here: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Are_we_now_a_Yellow_Pages_for_U.K._Realty.3F) --David Tornheim (talk) 23:54, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I've said it before - if we want to address COI/spam issues we need to methodically go through templates like this, and categories such as "Businessess in State X", "Organisations founded in Y", to weed out the obvious crap. It will have the knock on effect of removing the "but my competitor has a crappy article here, why can't I?" aspect of COI editing. They're a goldmine for puffery, spam, and non-notable topics. Sam Walton (talk) 23:55, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

If you think individual pages are non-notable, then nominate them for deletion. The template as a whole is a perfectly standard navbox of related pages. -mattbuck (Talk) 03:02, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, the first page I see the above template transcluded is estate agent. Although the article is somewhat UK focussed, it's first image is a picture of an office of a Belgian real estate agent. As long as everything in that template is linking to notable articles, it has it's place here and there (though not on estate agent). Such templates do need to be carefully monitored and pruned and de-transcluded where necessary, similar to the 'list of' articles regarding products, schools, companies. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:01, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

In the meantime, I'm willing to entertain semi-protect requests for the most frequently targeted articles, lists, category pages and templates. MER-C 02:17, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

CSD tag for WP:NOT violations

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I should make this short, I was checking the spanish wikipedia CSD and they have a criteria that we don't: A1 "Lo que Wikipedia no es", translated as "What Wikipedia is not", I think that we should include this criteria here too for two reasons:

1. I know that you can already PROD an article for that, but why to keep the article for 7 days? if the article violates WP:NOT shouldn't we speedy delete that article?

• I know that some WP:NOT can be rescued, that's why I want to clarify that this criteria should only be applied to non-rescuable articles, like "how to..." "essay by...".

• That being said, I comment that some WP:NOT violations actually apply to CSD like:

a)WP:NOTDICTIONARY qualifies A5.

b)WP:FORUM may qualify A11

c)WP:SOAP qualifies G11

d)WP:NOTLINK may qualify A3 or A5

e)WP:NOTWEBHOST may qualify A7

etc...

But what of the ones that do not qualify?

2. Some people just create WP:NOT violations in bad faith, this should also be speedily deleted

The new CSD would be A12: Not rescuable violation of What Wikipedia is not (Or maybe G14, I don't know if General would apply...) or something like that, 189.153.33.74 (talk) 05:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

What do you think

• Support per nom (Oh I edited while logged out...)Note: can someone please make this look better? I don't know how to organize this. Feel free to fix my grammar and/or wording.

189.153.33.74 (talk) 05:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

• Strong oppose per WP:NOTCSD. This is a perennial proposal that does not meet any of the requirements for new criteria listed at WT:CSD:
  1. Not objective: Editors oftentimes cannot agree what qualifies under WP:NOT and especially will not be able to agree whether a page can be rescued
  2. Not uncontestable: Oftentimes pages meeting WP:NOT can be handled another way per WP:ATD
  3. Not frequent: WP:NOT violations that are not already covered by existing speedy criteria are rare enough for PROD and AFD to handle them
  4. Not nonredundant: As you mention yourself, a number of WP:NOT violations are already - if explicit enough - covered under existing criteria. Bad-faith creations that only serve to disrupt usually meet G3.

  Regards SoWhy 06:56, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Header for the criteria for a new criterion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:21, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose exactly per SoWhy. I suggest you review some past proposals for criteria based on WP:NOT in that archives of WT:CSD before continuing further with this proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 13:59, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - Although this has the possibility of sounding like a good idea when one first hears it, I do not think that it is. My reasoning is that CSD criteria are literally meant to be a quick way to delete something that would have almost certain consensus to delete if it went through the channels of AfD. But, one can interpret WP:NOT in a lot of ways, so there would likely not be certain consensus for any deletion made under it. Thus, this should not be a CSD criteria. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 21:25, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. "If it isn't immediately obvious that it's irredeemable, CSD isn't appropriate" is an absolutely fundamental principle of Wikipedia's deletion policies. ‑ Iridescent 21:37, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per SoWhy. WP:NOT really can't be interpreted objectively. —MRD2014 📞 contribs 23:22, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose - Whether something meets WP:NOT is too subjective and not explicit enough. This would loosen the restraints we have on deletion way too much. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 23:52, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - WP:NOT is not unambiguous enough; additionally, what to one user is "not rescuable", an other user may decide s a perfectly good title to redirect to a related topic. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:09, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

  ...which is what WP:ATD is about and which is already being ignored on a large scale for the existing criteria. Regards SoWhy 14:16, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose if it is a uncontroversial NOT case that isn't covered under the current CSD, PROD will almost always work. If not, AfD will normally solve it, and if it is kept after AfD, then CSD wouldn't have been appropriate to begin with. No need for this. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:23, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

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

How to advise about page moves -- be bold, or be cautious?

At Wikipedia:Requested moves there were basically two contradictory recommendations in two different places:

1. One said to move pages in the spirit and manner of WP:BOLD/WP:BRD: move a page if you think an improvement, anyone can revert, at which point don't restore the move but open a contested-move discussion (an RfC-like procedure).
2. One said not to move pages if you think that "someone could reasonably disagree with the move", but instead go right to the contested-move discussion.

So we're clearing this up. Local consensus seems to tend to #2, but with low attendance, so just wanting to hear a few outside voices and see if we're missing anything. So, #1 or #2? Or something else? Herostratus (talk) 15:35, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

The two recommendations are talking about different scenarios. 1 assumes the mover thinks no one will disagree, and 2 assumes the mover thinks someone will disagree.

The potential conflict stems from situations where the mover thinks no one will disagree (and so boldly moves the page) ... but it turns out he was wrong in thinking that no one would disagree... i.e. someone disagrees after all. 99% of the time, the mover acted in good faith... he simply made a mistake. The best solution is to NOT make a big drama over the mistake... and to simply undo the move and discuss. Blueboar (talk) 16:05, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

If there's any chance of the page staying at the current title, and it's been there for more than a few minutes, then please don't undo the move before discussing it. I'm not sure that the double-redirect bots will cope gracefully with the back-and-forth. "A" on Monday, "B" on Tuesday, reverted back to "A" on Wednesday, and then moved back to "B" on Thursday is not ideal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

• An editor shut this down as illegitimate, because there's also a discussion (not a formal RfC or anything) over at the WP:RM talk page. But the problem with that is, there are a small number of people who watch that page, and some of them have fixed opinions. I'm asking for the general public to give me a quick reality check. It doesn't have to be deep, just some quick opinions, and I'm not thinking in terms of a vote. And I'm not forum shopping as the pump has no particular bias, and anyway I'm of two minds about the matter myself.

As to the merits, no I don't think WP:BOLD means "the mover thinks no one will disagree (and so boldly moves the page)"... Its more like this: sometimes you make an edit on the grounds "Well, I'll change this passage. There's a fair chance that someone won't agree with it, and it'll get rolled back and then I'll go to talk, or maybe just let it go. But maybe not, and you never know til you try. Sure, I could ask on talk first, and sometimes that's appropriate. But lots of times, per WP:BOLD, just give it try and see how it goes".

Should that kind of thinking apply to page moves, or not? That's the question. Herostratus (talk) 01:11, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

IMO you should be a little more cautious with bold page moves than with bold edits, but bold page moves are sometimes completely appropriate. Consider putting it into the same mental category as a possible bold edit to a template that's used on a few dozen pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Mnmh, that's an interesting and possibly useful angle to approach the question. Herostratus (talk) 01:58, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Perennial proposal:Delete unreferenced articles

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I propose that we speedily delete unreferenced articles that are old enough so that the deletion isn't biting any newbies. Like... more than one month ago. The reasons for that are these:

1. The unsourced articles aren't reliable, at all. They have no sources. Readers have no chance to check the reliability of the info. The info might be true, or partially false, or a complete hoax.
2. The issue will not fix itself.Category:All articles lacking sources has 206335 entries, and a backlog of 11 years. There are roughly 50 articles per day that are tagged as completely unsourced. It is unreasonable to assume that the current editor base has enough time and motivation to improve these 50 articles per day with reliable sources, especially with a 11 years old backlog.Burning Pillar (talk) 00:11, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose You know, the reason we have WP:PEREN is so you can see why an idea has been repeatedly rejected. The assumption that a user is no longer a newbie after one month is deeply flawed. Us "power users" may make hundred of edits every month, but a great many others don't edit at anywhere near that volume and may take a year or more to be even partially aware of how to properly write a new article. We don't even delete abandonded drafts until they've sat for at least six months. This also assumes that anything without sources can't be fixed so we might as well delete it. That's very poor reasoning. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:20, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
  • 1. If they take too long, then they can ask for undeletion if they have sources.
    2. A well worded message that tells the reader that the article was deleted because there were no sources given to verify, and that states the reasons for doing so, as well as the possibility of undeletion if they provide sources should not be overly biting.
    3. This does not assume that anything without sources "can't" be fixed, it assumes that it "won't get fixed". Which is generally true, if you look at the backlog.
    4. Abadonded article drafts are not in article space. They are less accessible by our readers. Unsourced articles will generally be found by readers, and they don't help the reader at all(you cannot rely on unsourced article because they can be completely wrong and you have no sources to check against) .Burning Pillar (talk) 00:33, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
• No. I'm a pretty staunch deletionist but even this strikes me as insane. You have a pretty serious bee in your bonnet about wanting to delete tons of articles at once, and I think you need to take a step back and really consider why there's virtually no support for anything you've proposed recently.

As an example, check out this expansion of Zahava Burack I did recently - that article was old and terribly sourced, but as it turns out, there were a boatload of sources once I looked. But I never would have found that article to improve if it had been deleted in the first place. It's one thing if there's a fair case (notability, etc) to be made for an individual article, but to just decide "hey let's delete everything instead of trying to fix anything" seems destructively counter-productive.♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:35, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

• • What's wrong with deleting 100000 articles if they don't meet basic criteria like WP:Verifiability? What harm is done by deleting those 100000 articles that do not help our readers most anyways? And what harm is done by NOT deleting those articles, lots of them probably including incorrect information?Burning Pillar (talk) 00:53, 13 May 2017

(UTC)

• • @Premeditiated Chaos:: Yes, improvement is preferable to deletion. But deletion is preferable to keeping an ever-growing pile of trash that has some potential articles in it. The improvement route has been tried for many years, and at the current state you can only say, spectacularly failed. We do our readers a disservice by sticking the head into the sand and pretending that there is no problem.Burning Pillar (talk) 01:00, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

→

• Oppose Perhaps the OP can go and find references for these articles. MarnetteD|Talk 00:41, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
  • @MarnetteD: I certainly could do it for some of them. But more than 50 articles per day? Not going to happen. Do you have an alternative proposal that adresses these problems or not? Burning Pillar (talk) 00:53, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

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

New Essay (WP:TNTTNT)

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

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I see there is a new essay WP:TNTTNT by Doncram. I think deletionists might take umbrage at its existence in mainspace. I'm more of an inclusionist and prefer to userfy over deleting (except for clearly promo/commercial stuff of undisputed lack of notability), but I still think it needs some work. --David Tornheim (talk) 00:25, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, I guess. You're just trying to make trouble? --doncram 00:31, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

@Doncram: Judging from your remarks here and in your essay, I can only assume you have not read WP:Assume good faith. I recommend you go do that right now, it's a fundamental site policy. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:50, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for saying that, Ian. --David Tornheim (talk) 12:15, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

@Doncram: I do see why it might appear that way, since we recently disagreed about something at AfD. I wasn't looking through your edits. I found your essay when I was citing to TNT here 00:18, 14 May, and I decided to click through all the See also links of WP:TNT to see if any of them were relevant (like WP:JUNK which I added 00:30, 14 May). While I was clicking through them, I saw your essay, and was a bit floored--even for an inclusionist. It just doesn't comport with my knowledge of WP:AfD, etc. Although, I'm not a big fan of TNT for articles that have anything salvageable, but I think your essay needs work before it has any hope of getting to mainspace and I don't want to see anyone citing it in its current form. So I posed here at at 00:25, 14 May and at the talk page of WP:TNT, and then went back to adding reference to WP:JUNK. I just think I was the first one to notice it, besides the one edit at the talk page. I'm sure it would have come to this sooner or later, probably sooner. --David Tornheim (talk) 12:15, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

• Poor essay, full of inclusionist claptrap. Consider userfication. Reyk _YO! 01:12, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
• Second userification. The biggest problems I'm seeing with it are:

The bit accusing TNT of calling for violation of Wikipedia's fundamental contract with contributors, that they are credited with their contributions would only be true if the article continued to contain any of their work. If an article is worth deleting at all (especially if one is an inclusionist), then it's because none of the material from that version needs to ever return.

The bit about calling for other editors to review every past version of the article for merit, that's true for any deletion discussion whether or not TNT comes up. Usually the one calling "TNT" is not trying to salvage anything of merit completely fails WP:AGF, it is deliberately provocative and insensitive to all of the contributors to users who have searched article histories and found nothing worth keeping.

As for the part It can hide a history of COI editors working to get some topic into Wikipedia, or POV editors striving for some particular slant, which other editors deserve to know about, rather than having to reason with less evidence about the same behavior in a new article. -- This conspiracy theory doesn't make any sense at all and assumes that all the admins are too stupid to spot a promotional article when they delete it and too stupid to use Special:Undelete and Special:DeletedContributions to see check deleted contributions for problematic editing. By this reasoning, we should leave up all the advertisements and POV-forks up because clearly the admins are useless.

Overall, it reeks of the sort of extremism ("anyone who does this thing is bad even if many editors see a good-faith reason for it") that it ceases to matter what point the essay is trying to make -- not something we need in Wikipedia space. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:48, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

This isn't really the place to discuss userfication or not. If you want to go down that route there is always MfD. --Majora (talk) 01:52, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I support an MfD. I'm not sure how to do that and hope someone else does it. --David Tornheim (talk) 11:58, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:TNTTNT - Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:34, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

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