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Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 121

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Latest comment: 9 years ago by Spartaz in topic Splitting up the MfD

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Permanent Semi Protect/pending changes protect

Latest comment: 9 years ago33 comments19 people in discussion
(non-admin closure) Consensus is clearly against this proposal. wctaiwan (talk) 17:42, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

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.

Wikipedia's problem is that if a page is semi protected , its mostly for a short period of time .Unfortunately even requests are made in protected page requests to remove the semi-protection . People like administrators don't think about the problems faced by us constantly dealing with IP vandal or some kids looking for fun. The user TheRedPenOfDoom is working so hard to keep WP safe , including Cyphoidbomb . Please relieve the work load from them , even if they don't complain.

Pages with high levels of vandalism should be permanently semi-protected and no requests should be made to remove the semi-protection but request can be made for permanently pending changes request .

Permanent Semi protection or permanent pending changes protection is very necessary right now for all those pages which faces constant vandalism .


All those pages related to biographies of living persons(popular politicians , Prime Ministers , Presidents , Popstars, actors) , latest political conflict , latest popular movies are constantly vandalized.

We must also make rules about IP edit policy . Opening a Wiki account is very easy . If any editor wants to contribute , I don't think opening an account will discouarge him to contribute positively. Right now 60 to 70% of IP edits are vandal edits. An account helps in identifying sock puppets , but IP socks are difficult to catch. Yes I agree that anybody can edit WP. But Everybody should have an account at least. I have seen sock puppet investigations case pages ,Check users block sock accounts but 90% of times they refuse to block IP socks for obvious reasons.

So either WP must ban IP edits or a semi protected page should never be unprotected. If any one of the rules is followed it would benefit WP--Cosmic Emperor (talk) 04:47, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

And also permanent pending changes review cam also be considered and talk pages be unprotected , so anyone can edit be followed along with page protection . But we must stop thiese IP edits . --Cosmic Emperor (talk) 05:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I am not going to discuss anymore . Al Last I will say create more bots which fights IP Vandals, The bots must have more AI . And there must be bots with high knowledge of Grammar and punctuation. Bots which easily identifies negative edits like this 19 September 2014 and this--Cosmic Emperor (talk) 09:13, 26 March 2015 (UTC)


  • Oppose Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This would fundamentally change that. See WP:FIVEPILLARS #3. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:00, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • 5 vandal edits per what? Hour? Day? Month? Ever? There are plenty of admins who still do anti-vandalism work and plenty of them who did it before they became admins. As someone who's been here for close to a decade now, I can say without hesitation that between rollback, Huggle, edit filters, and ClueBot NG, dealing with vandalism is easier than it has ever been. We're all volunteers. No one is forcing people to do things they don't want to do. Changing one of our core principles to reduce the workload on people not complaining about their workload doesn't really make any sense. Mr.Z-man 14:18, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose There are plenty of people that come on Wikipedia reading, notice a problem and, as an IP, fix it. Remember, most people want to help the project, making it harder (even if making an account is really easy) is just going to discourage the good faith editors. If you require accounts to edit Wikipedia I doubt that someone who wants to vandalize Wikipedia is going to hesitate to make an account and if that account is blocked I doubt they'll hesitate to make a sock. With an average of around 100 edits per minute on Wikipedia, putting even a small percentage of those changes into pending changes would result in a backlog. PhantomTech (talk) 16:28, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose. From WP:PROTECT, "Wikipedia is built around the principle that anyone can edit it, and it therefore aims to have as many of its pages as possible open for public editing so that anyone can add material and correct errors." I am against overuse of protection, and simply protecting a page after five instances of vandalism (regardless of the time period between them, I gather?) is almost unquestionably overuse. This is coming from a person who has done a good amount of anti-vandalism, and it is hard, even when you have convenient tools like Huggle. Our slogan, "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", is displayed prominently on the main page. And then, on our introduction page, we expressly say that "anyone can edit almost every page", and it further encourages the reader to do so. If a person who has just discovered Wikipedia reads this, and then finds out that he is unable to edit the better part of our pages, he'll probably imagine that our slogan is just a big lie. In fact, when I was looking at articles (before I registered my account), I was quite surprised to discover the amount of pages that could not be edited. We don't want to make that problem even worse by instituting some arbitrary threshold, thus making us even more government-like. --Biblioworm 14:38, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Considering your statement "And then, on our introduction page, we expressly say that "anyone can edit almost every page", and it further encourages the reader to do so. If a person who has just discovered Wikipedia reads this, and then finds out that he is unable to edit the better part of our pages, he'll probably imagine that our slogan is just a big lie."I can agree with the part that let everyone edit but please let them have an account , And I will put pressure on – NO IP EDIT– . If WP don't have such rules, then it has to change for good.Cosmic Emperor (talk) 16:10, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Maybe in USA there are large number of editors, but in other countries there are a few , so you don't know. I have seen lots of pages where articles are written without proper source still no correction for a long time . For example in this biography of a living person Kartik Tiwari its stated that Kartik Tiwari aka Kartik Kumar is an Indian actor who appears in Bollywood films. . Nowhere you will find any reliable reference that he is known as Kartik Kumar . I think the above example is best to prove my point. The edit was done 19 September 2014 . Now what were all those volunteers doing . So will you support the strange case "its better to have wrong info on Wikipage than have a registered user not just an IP editor"Cosmic Emperor (talk) 16:10, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

"If anyone can edit it" at least make sure that it's a registered account , not some IP address . Now allowing IP to edit is also WP fundamental principle? . Why can't you people make E-Mail verification compulsory . The current policy is an open invitation to IP socks and sock account. Opening an account is child's play. Its as if let people create socks and disruptive editing , we are here to revert and rollback .You said "I can say without hesitation that between rollback, Huggle, edit filters, and ClueBot NG, dealing with vandalism is easier than it has ever been." It sounds like a manager of a bank who says"We will allow thieves steal money by keeping the bank locker open , we have voluntary policemen who will catch the thief later on." Cosmic Emperor (talk) 15:59, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@PhantomTech: Till now i have seen more Ip vandals than IP contributers,Walter Görlitz (talk),@Mr.Z-man:I am not asking for every article , only those which have high rates of vandalism, maybe only 5 acts of vandalism as stated by me before is not enough for permanent semi protection . So I came up with this idea of four rules four permanent semi-protection

1)-50 acts of vandalism in one last 16 monthsor 5 vandal edit in a week

2)-The article is not a stub , and also the article is

3)-Properly sourced ,

4)-The article is minimum 5 years old(from the date of creation) and has gone through minimum 200 edits.(that means even if the article is 6 years old with 199 edits and 4 years old with 500 edits but still can't be permanently semi-protected)

@Biblioworm: If all the four above mentioned qualities are found in any article , then it should be permanently semi-protected or permanently pending changes review . Let the new users and Ips use talk page to discuss , I hope this time you will agree with me as I have changed my views Cosmic Emperor (talk) 16:10, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The concern raised by Cosmic Emperor is quite genuine. Even I have many a times felt that there are more editors here who just revert vandalism than editors who contribute content. But disallowing IP editing is not something for which consensus can be achieved by any simple discussion like this. I have to disagree with PhantomTech when he says that "most people want to help the project", as I feel that more IPs are here to vandalise than to make constructive edits. Remember, WP:AGF was written a decade ago, when Wikipedia was much less popular and hence the fun of vandalising it was much less.
P. S : User:Carrite is an old-time opposer of IP editing. SD0001 (talk) 17:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@SD0001 and CosmicEmperor: Even if there are more IP editors that do harm than good, it is quite easy to find most bad faith editors using IPs and I don't think there's much of a problem when it comes to finding and reverting that vandalism. Think about who would be stopped from editing if you were required to make an account, people who don't feel it's worth the time to pick a username and password. While this could stop many vandals that put little effort into their work, ClueBot deals with those without a problem. I highly doubt that a significant amount of people who come to Wikipedia to vandalize it would be stopped by having to make up a username and use "password" or something similar as their one time password. On the other hand, this would discourage readers who notice a small problem from trying to fix it. SD0001 is probably right about there being more editors that revert vandalism than those who contribute to articles but is there really a problem with that? I think most of the vandal fighters here do so by choice, not because even though they'd rather be contributing to articles they feel some obligation to fight vandalism. If all the vandals just disappeared one day I think a majority of the users who only fight vandalism would just become less active or leave, not start contributing to articles more than they would have before. PhantomTech (talk) 19:40, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@PhantomTech and Biblioworm: Phantom Tech believes that an IP vandal who wants disruptive editing will eventually open an account and will open sock account if the first account is blocked , so according to him blocking IP edit will discourage good faith editors who IP edits. Likewise , I believe that a good faith editor will open an account if he really wants to contribute. A new user with good knowledge will never let a page with wrong info. I don't think making account edit compulsory will discourage good faith editors. Its an assumption by Phantomtech that good faith editors are too lazy to open an account.

And I don't know how many times I will state that I am not asking this rule for every wiki page.Most people opposing are thinking that I am asking every wiki page to be permanently semi-protected. Please read the four rules mentioned above once againCosmic Emperor (talk) 04:35, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

@CosmicEmperor: To your 5 points, if every article that met those requirements in say the last year was permanently semi-protected a significant percentage of Wikipedia articles would be permanently semi-protected. I'm excluding the age requirement (but not the edit count requirement) there because I've never checked how old an article is so I don't know exactly how that would affect the number and because an article can be a good article and a target for vandals without being around for a few years, it doesn't make sense to me to involve age in protection. The reason I don't think as many good faith IPs will be willing to make accounts as bad faith IPs is because vandals come here with a purpose, to vandalize, and they seem to be quite persistent about achieving that goal, making up a password for one time use isn't a big deal. On the other hand, a good faith IP editor usually comes here to read, if they notice a problem they might try to fix it but if they get asked to make an account they might decide that it's not worth their time, especially if they're told they also have to wait a few days and make 10 other edits first because the page is semi-protected. To effectively remove IP vandals you would have to make getting an account harder and you can't do that without pushing away good faith editors in the process. PhantomTech (talk) 04:56, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

PhantomTech (talk) We can give them instructions to write on talk page , And I want talk pages should never be semi protected, only the artcle be permanently semi-protected.They will read the edit notice . And there is proof to your statement that IP vandals are more aggressive than good faith guest editors . One or two person don't speak for everybodyCosmic Emperor (talk) 05:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

@CosmicEmperor: Yes, there is proof that vandals are more aggressive than good faith editors. WP:LTA is great evidence of how persistent vandals are, and remember that the ones listed there are just the most extreme, there are plenty of vandals that act over a few days or weeks that don't make it to LTA. There are LTA cases where users have over 100 sockpuppets, think of how many well known good faith IP contributors there are and how many of them would be willing to go through the effort to make even a fraction of those accounts. (of course as good faith editors, they wouldn't actually make the accounts, this is just to try to put into perspective what each group is willing to do to edit) Vandals come back all the time but that isn't how good faith contributors work, they might only ever edit Wikipedia once or twice and the only reason it makes a difference if they're gone is because of how many people do that. If you want some data to support that look at IP edits in the recent changes feed, when you see a clear vandal look at their list of contributions, when you see a good faith edit look at those contributions, compare the number of different days each has contributed and you'll find that vandals come back more often than good faith contributors. You could say that this is inaccurate because IPs move from person to person but with a big enough sample size the only explanation would be that for some reason vandals are assigned IPs that were previously used for vandalism, but they're not, IPs are assigned without relation to Wikipedia activity. PhantomTech (talk) 06:27, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose on principle, but interested in seeing some expansion here. I would perhaps be willing to a well thought out ProtectBot that can minimize damage to articles without locking out valid modifications usually. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment. If we block IP editing, we'll move one step closer to being like Citizendium. With all due respect to Sanger's efforts, visit Citizendium's website and see how spotty their articles are. There are some very well-known topics that don't have articles there. That's what happens when you make it hard to edit a wiki. Do you want that to happen to us? --Biblioworm 17:55, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The most easiest option here is to ban IP editing altogether, I appreciate this is a "anyone can edit" website but at the end of the day the vandalism here is getting worse and worse and worse and IMHO... Something needs to be done about it, Sure some IPs edit constructively .... but most don't. –Davey2010Talk 03:31, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Yikes. Oppose. In my opinion, permanent semi-protection is already very much overused, and most articles that have been semiprotected for over a few years already should be unprotected in case the vandalism doesn't come back. Allowing everyone to edit is important, protection should be an absolute last resort. --Yair rand (talk) 07:22, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

This is funny , if a page is semi-protected how can it be vandalised by IP vandals. A semi protected page must be unprotected if not vandalised. They had the intention but couldn't do it due tos emi-protection. It can be done only for those pages which is under watchlist of minimum 10 editors with rollback rights

Unfortunately we can't see how many respectable editors have kept the page under watchlist. But those pages which are not under watchlist of 10 editors with rollback rights/administrators/auto patrollers should be protected. But still IP edits must be banned . Its a nuisance Cosmic Emperor (talk) 07:59, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Oppose - I think we're overusing semi-protection. Semi-protection isn't the main method for dealing with vandalism; RBI is (where, in the case of IPs, the "B" is as short as possible). In order for RBI to keep working, we need to keep up with recruiting more users - and semi-protection of the articles which they are most likely to want to use for their first edit is a good way to scare them away. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose - at one point or another every page gets semi-protected, so before you know it the whole project will be. This is clearly not what we want to do (scaring away IPs and preventing them from editing) and after a page gets removed from semi-protection under the current system often vandalism doesn't resume. Kharkiv07Talk 03:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment Wikipedia:IPs are human too#Common misconceptions says: 80.2% of vandalism was done by unregistered editors. But 81.9% of edits by unregistered users were not vandalism. --Fauzan✆ talk✉ mail 05:43, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per WP:ANYONE and WP:NOTFINISHED. This goes against the very spirit of the project. Just to note as well that pages highly susceptible to vandalism already can be permanently semi-protected by request at WP:RFPP. Ivanvector (talk) 12:01, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Prohibit anonymous users from editing. Ivanvector (talk) 19:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - No page should be permanently semi - protected, in the same way that IPs are not indefinitely blocked. Cosmic Emperor says 60 to 70% of IP edits are vandal edits. The study shows that 81.9% of IP edits are not vandalism. We should lift the bar on IPs starting articles. The traffic is not so great that new page patrollers could not comfortably vet all articles started by IPs. Why do you think that shop windows are largely glass? Because if they weren't nobody would go inside (because they like to see what they are getting into). All Wikipedia clones are largely deserted because they don't offer the facility to "try before you buy" which is what makes Wikipedia so successful. Pending changes should be done away with (it only hangs around because the developers couldn't be bothered to disable it after the community voted it down) - every article has watchers who will revert any vandalism within minutes. The time spent by pending changes reviewers would be better spent reviewing articles started by IPs. 87.81.147.76 (talk) 16:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose, there is no "unfortunately" in "not everybody can see which pages are unwatched", and the theory that administrators don't think about other abuse fighters is bizarre. –Be..anyone (talk) 17:05, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Semi-protection should be limited, because in any given period of time, either the IPs can be blocked, or the IP block can be blocked, or the vandals will go somewhere else. I disagree with proposals to make it easier for unregistered editors to edit, but that isn't the subject. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Strongest possible oppose - Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and having articles permanently protected is contrary to the spirit of that philosophy. Remember that "indefinite" and "permanent" are, at least in theory, not synonymous. Also, the section Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Protecting Today's Featured Article on the main page may be of interest, as both that proposal and this one have similar arguments. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 15:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose P-Permanent!!??? So you trying to kill the spirit of Wikipedia, that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone?--AldNonUcallin?☎ 10:12, 1 April 2015 (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.

History - UK & Europe Royal Family Tree Generator

Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hi Wikipedia,

I have just published a new free Royal Family Tree generator website that produces on-screen family trees for the major royal families in Europe - handling those tricky issues about formatting descendants and ancestors in what I hope is an easily viewable and attractive way.

Wikipedia appears to use many manually created trees to show the same type of information, with no ability to interact or navigate around.

I was wondering if you would consider the possibility of linking to my site from appropriate Wikipedia pages? Of course I would reciprocate.

If this is of interest to you, I would certainly be open to improving and enhancing my site in line with any recommendations you might make. The website works on generic display logic, so there is no problem adding further royal families and family members, as required. It could be extended, for example, to include noble families, additional European countries, etc. I must emphasise that this site will remain free, with no plans to raise revenue from it.

The site is www.royaltrees.co.uk.

Best regards,

Tony White

[email protected]

I don't see the problem with what we have. They link to the other articles on the subjects and work in MediaWiki. By definition we try to be neutral. If we promoted your generator, we'd be biased as a whole towards your website. It's the same reason that we don't have ads; by definition they violate neutrality. Besides, I looked at your website and it wasn't quite clear; what do the checkmarks do next to each name? Origamiteⓣⓒ 13:02, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I have tried to keep the screens uncluttered, with explanatory detail on the help screen. The checkboxes (in conjunction with the DEL button) allow the user to remove entries from the display and so taylor the tree as they wish. I haven't seen an equivalent facility in Wiki and thought it might be useful. I understand your principle about neutrality (although there is no commercial motive behind the site). I would just say that if it was thought to be a useful facility is there any feasible way or approach for it to become useable within Wiki? Regards, Tony White.

I know zero about the surrounding issues, but my guess is that this would be most useful to the project if it could be used as a tool whose end-product is an image that can be statically captured for use in articles. EEng (talk) 16:23, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Static capture of a screen is technically very easy: right click on a display and View Page Source. What you see is a fully rendered HTML Page which can be copied and re-used. Some work would be needed to fit it within a page rather than being a page on its own. I have no objection in principle to Wikipedia using these pages as you wish. As I said above I am also open to modifying what I have in line with your needs - in terms of how data is displayed and in terms of adding more people to the database. Regards, Tony White Further point - the copied HTML page would allow the viewer to continue to interact with it as now. However, I could program a 'display only' option which would take you to a non-interactive page which could be copied as-is.

I suggest you make a post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Royalty and Nobility. EEng (talk) 19:46, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

RefToolbar: Show parsed preview by default?

Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments1 person in discussion

I've had no response to this suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:RefToolbar#Show_parsed_preview_by_default.3F, so trying here - if this isn't the right place, please advise.

Originally posted at Wikipedia_talk:RefToolbar:

Every single time I click "Preview" I then need to click "Show parsed preview" to see what I really want to see, which is "What does this reference look like?". It's irritating. I'm sure I'm not alone. I prefer to check my refs before hitting "Insert", especially as when I'm editing a section I don't see them when I hit "Show preview" for the whole edit, and the system makes me click on what seems an unnecessary link every time.
Could I suggest one of the following:
  • Show the parsed reference by default (what problems would this cause, if any?)
  • Have two separate buttons: "Preview" and "Preview code", where the first one shows the Parsed version as well as the code, and the second shows the current setup
  • Have a preference or similar whereby I can opt to see the Parsed version automatically
  • Have a preference or similar whereby anyone who doesn't want to see the Parsed version automatically can switch it off and remain with the current version, but the editors who want to see the Parsed version (possibly the vast majority?) are shown it by default.
Any thoughts? PamD 12:09, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
No replies, so no objections (well, not many people watching this page, I guess). Is there anyone technical out there who could implement this change (by any one of the four routes suggested above, or any other means to the same end)? PamD 09:21, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Any thoughts here? PamD 23:10, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposed change for headers (allowing parenthesis texts to be used at reduced sized)

Latest comment: 9 years ago11 comments6 people in discussion
I have just converted this thread as an RfC. This is since my initial presentation of this thread here, and following notification of a route by which this proposal could be actioned which was requested here. GregKaye 17:52, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Examples of parenthesis at WP:PRECISION include Leeds North West (UK Parliament constituency) and M-185 (Michigan highway) with the parenthesis, in both cases, not being necessary for disambiguation.

An (outdated) example to disambiguation is Energy (physics) (which now redirects to energy).

Pages are currently presented as:

Leeds North West (UK Parliament constituency)
M-185 (Michigan highway)

Thanks to input from PrimeHunter below it seems that they can be presented as follows:

Leeds North West (UK Parliament constituency)
M-185 (Michigan highway)
Energy (physics)

Code formats:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Leeds North West <small>(UK Parliament constituency)</small>}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:M-185 <small>(Michigan highway)</small>}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Energy <small>(physics)</small>}}

Recently I've been making some regular reference to Britannica and have noticed that their articles make regular use of subtitles which are used more for the purpose of description than disambiguation. An example of their presentation is found at http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/528623/Arnold-Schwarzenegger which gives an approx appearance as follows:

Arnold Schwarzenegger
American politician, actor, and athlete
Written by: The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica [ I C O N S ] Last Updated 2-5-2015     READ EDIT VIEW HISTORY FEEDBACK
Arnold Schwarzenegger, in full Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947, Thal, near Graz, Austria), Austrian-born American bodybuilder, film actor, and politician who rose to fame through roles in blockbuster action movies and later served as governor of California (2003–11). ...

A similar method of presentation in Wikipedia might appear:

Leeds North West
UK Parliament constituency
M-185
Michigan highway
Energy
physics

At the moment parenthesis is used for little more than minimalist disambiguation with little emphasis on the provision of additional information. Perhaps one of the reasons for this may be the large size of presentation of the title texts in parenthesis.
GregKaye 11:31, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that this is possible; the only way to get part of the title to appear on a second line is to create a title that's so extremely long that it flows onto the next line, e.g. this redirect to Darwin's Origin of Species. Nyttend (talk) 12:32, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
It would be a terrible idea to abuse parenthesis text for that. But, note that the mobile team will be experimenting with using description labels from Wikidata as subtitles link. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:44, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
It's possible to change size or font of part of a DISPLAYTITLE. As a test I have added {{DISPLAYTITLE:Energy <small>(physics)</small>}} to the redirect at Energy (physics), but I don't support such a system. It's not possible to change characters so if the real pagename is "Leeds North West (UK Parliament constituency)" then it cannot display as "Leeds North West, UK Parliament constituency", but it could if the real pagename was changed to "Leeds North West, UK Parliament constituency". You could mess around with position to display part of a DISPLAYTITLE in another place (see Template:DISPLAYTITLE#Examples for placing it outside the screen), but I don't know whether there is a reliable and stable way to move it down a line, and I don't support it. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:38, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
PrimeHunter   Thank you. I personally think that the idea could have a lot of mileage and I'd encourage editors to take a look: [Energy (physics)].
My impression is that editors at WP:RM have a general dislike of parenthesis often on the basis of WP:NATURAL with the result of misrepresentations of central title content. I recently put a few "John Smith"s in for RM. In cases middle names had been used yet I didn't see reference to these references being in uses in the lifetimes of the people concerned. A reduction in the size of the parenthesis content might make other forms of disambiguation more palatable. I have changed the title of this thread to give an example of use. GregKaye 16:23, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
Looking at the Arnie example, I would even go one step further and allow <br/> in {DISPLAYTITLE} to accomodate dual-line rendering. W\|/haledad (Talk to me) 01:58, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
It's a TITLE, not a SUBTITLE. Stop using things for purposes that they were not intended to fulfill. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:03, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
TheDJ, granted. It is a title that is there to provide explanation. In the use of parenthesis some of that information, I think, can be regarded as clarification information and, in many cases, I think that this parallels the use of subtitles. I think that all we are doing is considering terminologies but I think that, if Britannica were to have an article on "Leeds North West" then something along the lines of "UK Parliament constituency" would act the subtitle. An example of a Britannica article is John Smith with subtitle "British Explorer". As you may guess Britannica has a number of articles entitled "John Smith" and in a related listing, produced by the query "John Smith", the "subtitle" (which is my description of this content) is presented as (British Explorer) in a very similar fashion to our format. I don't know if we are in disagreement.
The section title WP:PRECISION is really about precision and clarification but, in the context of talk of disambiguation, I think this can get lost. GregKaye 12:51, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't care about any of that. The only reason we use disambiguation parenthesis is because an article title needs to be unique. If that limitation was not there, parenthesis likely would not be in the title at all. A subtitle seems like a nice idea, but then you should change the software to separately register and keep track of a specific subtitle field. It is not a good idea to abuse one data field in a system for two totally separate purposes. This is why the mobile team's subtitles are good, because they are treated and handled as a separate datapoint, in this case from WikiData. So if you want to do this, I suggest the way forward is to first experiment with a Javascript gadget for the desktop site, that ueries wikidata and that hides whatever is in the parenthesis (or better suggest's it as an entry for wikidata). Do not plan new features from what you got, but primarily base it on where you need to go. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:28, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I think it would be nice, all other things being equal, if parentheticals in titles were typographically set off somehow. All else being equal. It's not a big deal, and in no event should it be achieved at the expense of adding any kind of hack to the machinery. Likely this should be added to the list of Things To Do Sometime In The Distant Future When The Opportunity Presents Itself To Do Them Absolutely Cleanly. EEng (talk) 00:42, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Read-only edit filter permissions

Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A proposal to create read-only access to private edit filters is taking place at Wikipedia_talk:Edit_filter#Edit_filter_helpers, input is welcome at that page. — xaosflux Talk 15:48, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Protected Page Editing Exceptions

Latest comment: 9 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

If a page is fully protected, some administrators* may grant to an autoconfirmed user the right to edit the page. Administrators may revoke that right at any time. Typically, a user who has made one or more successful protected edit request would be granted editing rights, although administrators would have discretion.

  • This could either be the administrator responsible for protecting the page, or any administrator.

Dingsuntil (talk) 04:21, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

@Dingsuntil:, how do you propose the mechanics of this work? Would these users be getting this permission per-page, or are you proposing a process for granting (editprotected) access to individual users? — xaosflux Talk 15:52, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
per-page. Presumably, I could be able to be reasonable and NPOV-ish about one subject, but a different one makes me so angry that I compulsively vandalize it. Dingsuntil (talk) 21:17, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm interested in this as well, as based on the discussions I've had with developers it is currently not possible to edit fully protected pages without the (protect) userright. I've done a lot of research and asking to try and figure out ways for Template editors to be able to edit PINKLOCK pages that happen to have cascading protection for whatever reason. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 15:59, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
    • Has this been test on tesiwiki or elsewhere? Is there a bug on this? (Something like "Protected pages are not editable by users with editprotected permissions unless they also have protect permissions") - Or have you only noticed it on cascade-protection? — xaosflux Talk 16:03, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Synonyms Available in Wikipedia

Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

[copied post removed] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shanus444 (talk • contribs)

This was also posted to Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Synonyms Available in Wikipedia. Please only start a discussion in one place. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:23, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Splitting up the MfD

Latest comment: 9 years ago56 comments26 people in discussion
The proposal to split up MFD fails. The proposal to merge TFD o aspects of TFD with MFD did not have sufficient participation to create the necessary super-majority required for implementation. DGGs comment's about needing to rationalise the number of deletion venues makes sense and I hope that further discussion will continue to how best to take that idea forward. Spartaz Humbug! 13:24, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

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.

It has often occurred to me that discussing the deletion of project pages requires to be a more intensive process than discussing user pages. The large number of pages being listed at the MfD are user pages, as a result of which project pages get lost in the mix and don't get adequate attention. Also, while proposing the deletion of abandoned user pages and stale drafts can be a simple process which are closed without too much of discussion, the same is not true for pages in the Wikipedia:, Help: and certain other namespaces. Deleting, or acting upon these pages in other ways, should ideally require community-wide consensus. As of now, there is no centralised place discussing the scope of project pages; any such discussion is carried out on their talk pages which obviously are not watched by many users. In this light, I propose splitting up the MfD into multiple components.

  • Project pages for discussion: This should include pages in the Wikipedia:, Help:, MediaWiki:, and Module: namespaces. Pages in these namespaces require more discussion before deletion, and this page can also be a forum for centralised discussions regarding help and policy documentation, and attempts to discuss the scope and imrove the quality of help pages. This is especially feasible because the quantity of project pages nominated for deletion is fairly low. This can also provide a boost to currently inactive WikiProject Manual of Style. As with the AfD and MfD currently, each entry should have a separate page.
  • User pages and drafts for deletion: As with the CfD and RfD, entries should not have a separate page. If deemed necessary, two different sections may be provided for listing pages in the two namespaces. Alternatively, we may have a Drafts for deletion for listing both pages in the Draft: namespace as well as userspace drafts. (In this case, user pages that are not drafts can be listed at MfD. If it is unclear as to whether a user page is a draft or not, it can still be posted here as reviewers at DfD would be competent enough to handle them.)
  • Miscellany for deletion: This page should be retained for discusing deletion of pages in other namespaces, such as Portal:, Book:, TimedText: and Topic:. (As per this requested move, calling this page Miscellany for Discussion is not necessary.)

Please be free to suggest variations to this proposal. SD0001 (talk) 06:46, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I see this as a lot of confusion for not much benefit. And when project pages do get nominated for deletion, they get plenty of attention, thanks to the big fat "we might delete this" message on top. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 08:41, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
I do not think this would make things any more confusing. These new pages are just like the existing AfD, RfD, CfD and TfD. Where is the confusion? Well, those banners are good enough. The problem arises when the pages are not popular enough. SD0001 (talk) 18:23, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
I suppose I could support splitting off the user space ones (due to the newish guidelines on drafts, etc. increasing the workload there), and leaving the rest at MFD. But make it ...for discussion. - jc37 08:50, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
But I don't think we would ever need to discuss user pages and drafts. Minimalistic discussion (such as whether a draft should be deleted or submitted to WikiProject Abandoned Drafts) can be carried or on the deletion page itself. SD0001 (talk) 18:23, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
Seeing as neither modules nor MediaWiki: pages are really project pages, I'm not sure about the "PfD" grouping. I think it would make a lot more sense if Lua modules were covered by the existing WP:TFD. I agree that only splitting out "UfD" would already help solve the described problem. SiBr4 (talk) 21:39, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
Covering modules at the existing TfD is a good idea. But I don't see any fault in including the MediaWiki: pages along with the project pages. SD0001 (talk) 18:23, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
I don't think project pages need to be separated out from MfD; as Oiyarbepsy said they get lots of attention anyway. I can see the benefit of splitting out user pages and drafts to a different process though, possibly managed by WikiProject Articles for Creation. But they have some serious backlog problems right now; best to wait for their input. Ivanvector (talk) 21:48, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
  • I think these should be grouped by subject matter rather than namespace. I may support creation of a draft for deletion page, for drafts and more generally pages whose predominant content is intended as forming (part of) an article, whether in Draft, User or Talk namespaces. TimedText, which are basically subtitles, should go to WP:FFD since this is multimedia-related. Module and mediawiki pages should go to WP:TFD since these are transcluded content, interfaces or technical-related. Topic is kind of like talk and can remain at MfD. The rest can be divided in two subject matters : project and help pages on one hand (concerning the project itself and its inner workings), and portals and books on the other hand (mainly about showcasing content). That being said, the volume for both of those twos if insufficient to justify a split, so they should stay together at MfD. Judging from the January 2015 archive, it's even debatable if we need a separate draft for deletion page since they form most of nominations and if these get removed, MfD would only get a few nominations per week. So at this time, I'd suggest only making the move of TimedText to FFD and Module/MediaWiki to TFD. Cenarium (talk) 00:35, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Sure, here is a list of which parts of it I would be opposed to:
  • The entire idea at its core.
  • End of list.
I hope that has clarified my position sufficiently. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:04, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
  • There are often suggestions for splitting this or that up. Of course, there are often also suggestions for merging this , that, or the other. However, most of these suggestions are solutions looking for a problem, and this is one of them. This idea would just create more bureaucracy and more picking of low hanging fruit leading longer backlogs in some areas. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:25, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
I've proposed moving "Drafts" of any sort to another forum (including Draft: and drafts in user: space) - thinking that these are content not misc. pages--and a different audience may be interested in the discussions. — xaosflux Talk 04:22, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I have created a failed proposal documentation page for WP:Project pages for discussion. It does not look too strong to me, though. SD0001 (talk) 18:40, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

  • If anything, we should have less deletion forums, not more. The more we break them up, the less people will participate in them. There's like literally 5-10 regulars at most of the smaller deletion forums that keep the things running. You really want to split that even more? It seems to me that when an MfD is contentious, it does just fine attracting additional attention, either through the page notice, or through appropriate canvassing. Gigs (talk) 19:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
  • As SD0001 says--what we need to think about is how to combine discussion forums , including those for deletion. Small lightly attended forms will make erratic decisions--there are a great many places at wp, and nobody can watch them all. DGG ( talk ) 00:44, 8 April 2015 (UTC)


Templates

I would absolutely put Modules with Templates, since they are templates, just templates programmed with a different language. I would also put MediaWiki: interface pages with templates, since they are also "back-of-the-house" code and just make more logical sense to be with other code than with userpages, etc. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 23:53, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
  • I agree, per my above comment.  Cenarium (talk) 00:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Support, as per my comment made above. SD0001 (talk) 14:05, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
  • It makes sense to keep computer code separate from content meant for humans. I don't think very many modules or MediaWiki pages are being discussed at MfD, so I'm not sure it matters, much. Note that changing the venue for modules has been discussed at TfD, before. I left a note at WT:TFD about this discussion. —PC-XT 14:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Modules have been MfD'd just 7 times. Out of these, while four were deleted as per CSD criteria, two (this and this) did not see any comments at all. Doesn't this show that MfD is unfit for modules? SD0001 (talk) 19:48, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
      • No, it shows that optimizing how modules are deleted would be a waste of time. Please describe the actual problem before proposing a solution. More pages means more confusion. Johnuniq (talk) 00:31, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
        • The problem is this: As demonstrated, in particular by this listing, deletion discussions of modules at the MfD fails to attract the relevant audience which might be available at the TfD. I agree that is not a major problem because modules are rarely nominated, but I see strong reasoning in Philosopher's comment that modules are templates and thereby support the proposal. SD0001 (talk) 17:27, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
          • That's a fair comment but people scan MfD and would be quick to raise the issue somewhere if a deletion proposal looked like it needed specialist attention, and modules that are needed can always be undeleted. The problem with TfD is that it has too much noise and drama (plus there are too many purists who would edit war to ensure it is renamed "WP:Templates and modules for discussion" or worse). While the example you linked looks bad, those familiar with the situation know that the nominator is one of a very small number of experts whose judgment can be relied on, and there is no reason to comment about an unused and pointless module. Johnuniq (talk) 01:54, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
            • The "noise and drama" at TfD is hardly relevant to the question of whether templates should be split between fora based on the coding language. I would further note many "modules" and "templates" are built together as one unit, so discussing them in different venues is quite odd. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 02:13, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
            • There is certainly no question of an edit war occurring over the page name since the page is move-protected, and will always be. If anybody wants to rename the page, they can begin an RfC RM. The question of the page name is not relevant to this discussion. Besides, I cannot agree with your observation that there was "no reason to comment about an unused and pointlless template" simply because the nominator was trustworthy. Wikipedia's deletion policy requires consensus for pages to be deleted. If any person with the expertise to tell if the page was pointless had seen the nomination, they could have added a simple "Delete, per nom" there. SD0001 (talk) 18:48, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
  • The audience for TfD is very small. Merging TfD to MfD for the wider audience seems preferable to me than moving modules from MfD to TfD, but what we do with deletion proposals for models is probably not worth the bytes of the conversation. Strong whatever. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:27, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

It won't be bad idea to have some more formal !voting to obtain input from more editors. The question is: Should modules be nominated at WP:TfD instead of at WP:MfD? Vote as 'Support', 'Oppose', or 'Neutral'.

@Cenarium, Philosopher, PC-XT, and Johnuniq: Just pinging users who participated in the discussion above but have not cast their bolded votes yet. SD0001 (talk) 12:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

  1. Support per above. SD0001 (talk) 11:16, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
  2. Support – modules do the same thing as templates (being invoked on other pages and returning some output), and moving them to TfD makes it easier to nominate modules together with the templates that wrap them. SiBr4 (talk) 11:33, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
  3. Support Modules are templates, just written in Lua rather than wikitext. Pathore (talk) 01:12, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
  4. Weak support, because it makes sense to discuss them together, but we don't really have enough MfD module discussions to determine if there is a problem, or how bad it is, if so. —PC-XT 21:12, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
  5. Oppose Mediawiki: moving to TFD, no real preference on Module (they are rarely XFD'd). — xaosflux Talk 04:20, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
  6. Support per above, since my John Hancock seems to be wanted here. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:42, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
  7. Support Mod's & Templates. Oppose Mediawiki Mlpearc (open channel) 22:48, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
  8. Support Moving modules to TfD makes sense to me, as TfD is more likely to attract technically-minded editors than MfD, and templates and modules are often related to each other. Although, as others have said above, it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem in practice. I would also support moving Mediawiki-namespace pages to TfD, as they also fall into the general category of "technical things". If a name change is desired, we can work that out later. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:10, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
  9. Support for reasons of similarities, mentioned passim. -DePiep (talk) 13:07, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Draft PROD?

One of the main problems with MFD is the large number of WP:STALEDRAFT deletion discussions, that nobody comments on clogging up the system. Searching for the words "STALEDRAFT" brings up 34 matches on the MFD page, and in almost all of these cases there is no actual discussion being had (and no discussion to be had) about the drafts up for deletion. I think a PROD system for drafts would be beneficial for clearing up MFD, speeding up overly slow processes and solving backlog issues.Bosstopher (talk) 21:39, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

These are some of the least commented on types of nominations, in closing it is hard to determine if there is "no consensus" or just "no one cares". — xaosflux Talk 00:52, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
Whether the scope of G13 (which is essentially a PROD with the timespans usually involved) could be expanded to cover this is another queston - if people want to keep drafts, one minor edit every 6 months is hardly onerous.... Mdann52 (talk) 12:11, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
That's never gained consensus before. Too many active editors like myself have some drafts hanging around in our "get to it someday" pile. Gigs (talk) 19:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
This is why I believe a PROD would be better than a speedy. Would allow active users to keep their drafts hanging, while drafts by people who haven't edited in 5 years can be gotten rid of if necessary. If I want to propose this do I have to draft up a page for it and everything?Bosstopher (talk) 19:30, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Probably a good idea to write up a proposal for discussion, if only to bring attention to the issue. I doubt there'd be anyone really against it, but at least if it comes as a surprise to somebody who doesn't pay attention to goings-on, you'd have something to point to if a dispute came from it. // coldacid (talk|contrib) 21:19, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Ok I have created a proposed page at Wikipedia:Proposed deletion (drafts). I would welcome any feedback/opinions/edits to make it less messy. Bosstopher (talk) 20:41, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
Other than a technical fix for the template links, I think it looks good. I'm certainly in support for that. // coldacid (talk|contrib) 02:21, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Looks good and seems like a sensible proposal. I think the second bullet point in "before nomination" should include semi-automated cleanup runs and things like deleted templates/categories being removed, but I can't think of a succinct way to word that so I'll leave it to someone better with words than myself. Sam Walton (talk) 10:46, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
Agreed. Bosstopher, maybe we could have an RFC on the same and propose the new page there? That seems like a reasonable approach to move forward with this matter, given this solution pretty much solves plenty of MFD issues. Soni (talk) (Previously TheOriginalSoni) 08:45, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Alternative

A better alternative to a Draft PROD would be a small policy tweak to the MfD. A Prod would only encourage the deletion of more and more drafts, which we do not want. Rather, we can have a new rule that administrators be allowed to delete stale drafts that have gone uncommented at MfD In 7 days. Of course, editors can still vote keep to stop the deletion. This combines the advantages of a prod system and an XfD system and solves the problem described by Xaosflux. I believe there are many who keep a watch at the MfD to pick up drafts for improvement. A draft prod would just result in many behind-the-curtains deletions. SD0001 (talk) 10:39, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I dont think it would necessarily create a behind-doors situation. If something similar to WP:PRODSUM is created for DraftPROD, there would still be a page for people to watch to save old drafts. Also while it would encourage the deletion of old drafts, the prospect of imminent deletion is exactly the sort of thing that would galvanize editors to work on these drafts and make them into actual articles.Bosstopher (talk) 18:21, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm opposed to allowing the deletion of drafts, aside from one that match the existing speedy criteria or that go through MFD. The whole point of drafts is that they can sit there, immune from un-discussed deletion unless they have major problems or unless they're demonstrably abandoned. However, I like SD0001's idea; we can simply treat the un-discussed draft MFD as a delete. Nyttend (talk) 18:26, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

RfC on Draft PROD policy proposal is now live

You can discuss this proposal on this page. Do policy change RfCs need to go into that centralised discussion box thingy? Bosstopher (talk) 12:18, 3 April 2015 (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.

Random article

Latest comment: 9 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion

The 'Random article' button should not direct to DABs. 86.190.99.149 (talk) 16:49, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Why? Why shouldn't readers be randomly directed to, say, Barbara Hutton? EEng (talk) 19:00, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Oh! You said DABs. I thought you said debs. Carry on. EEng (talk) 19:01, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Ah, Debs is part of the problem EEng... You see, Debs itself is a DAB, so because deb is dab, dab should not be random. Thanks, 86.190.99.149 (talk) 19:08, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
But Debs isn't a DAB, which is weird because there's also D.E.B.S. and D.E.B.S., so maybe there should be a Debs DAB? EEng (talk) 19:14, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Ah, my mistake there was that although Debs isn't dab, debs is dab. Speaking of which, FAB is a dab, but F.A.B. isn't (well, it shouldn't be). 86.190.99.149 (talk) 19:24, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
But it is. KonveyorBelt 21:33, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
It would require a software change. phab:T9937 is "Exclude disambiguation pages from random page feature". It's listed at mw:Extension:Disambiguator#Possible future plans. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:44, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't understand. What are five entries doing in the phab Four DAB for? EEng (talk) 22:33, 11 April 2015 (UTC) Martinevans123, can you enlighten us?
You need to consult your Preston dab page. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:41, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

WP:USSTATION naming conventions

Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

This convention and some of its friends and enemies have been the subject of a bit of a ruckus. At the RFC at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (US stations)#Summary / conclusions, RGloucester has suggested that I bring that problem here, and get a whole lot more people to weigh in on it. I might do that if the move review at Wikipedia:Move_review/Log/2015_April#Greenbelt Station doesn't reach a conclusion about the mess that came about in trying to start implementing this recent convention. Dicklyon (talk) 03:34, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for info, please remove the ambitious "guideline" while at it, as there was no confirmed consensus (= somebody putting his signature on a summary fully aware of the consequences if they get this wrong) for a promotion of this former user page. –Be..anyone (talk) 06:03, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
You should do that. I'm in enough trouble with that lot. Dicklyon (talk) 01:17, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

New cite template proposal

Latest comment: 9 years ago21 comments9 people in discussion
See also: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 April 11 § Template:Cite_tweet

I know I am new here, but I have been looking at the various cite templates that we have and realized that an important one is missing: cite social media. Virtually everyone, including heads of States and other government officials, has a Twitter account nowadays, and Facebook is also increasingly used for official statements. Interesting random fact I read the other day: social media has surpassed porn as the #1 online activity. Does anyone agree with the template proposal? EauZenCashHaveIt (I'm All Ears) 10:19, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

@EauZenCashHaveIt: We do have {{cite tweet}}, but you should be very careful when using Twitter and other social websites as sources, see WP:SPS among others. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:26, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Where T:Cite tweet does not work, {{cite web}} should. --Izno (talk) 13:41, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Thank you for your answer. The template only covers Twitter, what about the rest of the social media phenomenon? My proposal deals with a template wide enough to "compete" with cite web. It also goes without saying that I am fully aware of the extra amount of care that should be applied when dealing with such sources.
@Izno: Thank you for your answer as well, but I was looking for a worthy alternative to cite web, see my reply above. EauZenCashHaveIt (I'm All Ears) 13:52, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
What information do you think you need to present which cannot be presented (efficiently?) in {{cite web}}? --Izno (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Given how likely information is to disappear from Twitter, and I'm sure from other social networks, you would need to archive. I don't see how it would be any more efficient than web. There is also always a question of WP:RS for social media (especially given the password cracking issues). I'm also a bit questioning about social media passing porn without a citation on that claim. Especially given the darknet. Jerod Lycett (talk) 17:43, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
@Jerodlycett: Valid concerns. In general a tweet's reliability appears at present to by tied to the credence that news media put on that tweet. If a news outlet has said (correctly or not) "notable person X announced Y via twitter -- and here's the tweet", that seems to be the gold standard in terms of "vetting" a tweet as a reliable source. However, consider the case of Blogs. Blogs in general are not considered to be reliable sources; but blogs which have as their author a notable person (like Bill Clinton or Bill Gates .. to draw a couple of Bills from the deck), then we increase the credence, the reliability-index, of that blog accordingly. I think there is a passage in the RS-related material which touches on this, but I don't have a handle on that at this moment. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:44, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
@EauZenCashHaveIt: I think that for general use, {{cite web}} would be appropriate. There are a couple of seldom used parameters which would be useful here. One is "type"; one could use the construct "type=tweet" or "type=Twitter post" as a replacement for the {{cite tweet}} template (albeit not a perfect one), and could use "type=Facebook post" for that source. Another is "website", which could be designated as, for instance, Twitter or Facebook. There are pros and cons to template proliferation, and I'm on the fence about which is better as an aspiration: a "universal" template which can serve all citation needs through appropriate use of parameters vs. "use case specific" templates which address sources individually or by classes. One advantage of the Visual Editor is that it could potentially support selection from an array of templates without the editor being an expert in all things WP-Citation. Not quite there yet, but moving in that direction. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:35, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
No, it's not. About the only worse source imaginable is graffiti on the men's room wall in the Tobolsk bus station. EEng (talk) 12:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

We don't have cite social media because social media should pretty much never be cited. I someone does something on social media worth mentioning, the news will cover it. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 13:30, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

You people are funny. As I said, The Pope uses Twitter, CIA uses Twitter, presidents and prime ministers use Twitter - not sure how you reached the comparison to graffiti in a men's room. Social media is a perfectly acceptable primary source, it's HOW we use it that makes the difference. EauZenCashHaveIt (I'm All Ears) 13:55, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
The Pope, the CIA, and presidents and prime ministers are, obviously, exceptional cases. And even then, as someone just pointed out, secondary sources will cover any tweets (I hate that fucking stupid word) worth mentioning. EEng (talk) 04:08, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
The exceptions are far too many, they have become the rule. And you have just admitted, in your own words, to "hate that fucking stupid word". That is a clear personal agenda, and I believe it is covered in WP:Conflict of interest. Secondary source are here to reinforce primary sources, not replace them. Again, it is HOW we use it that makes the difference. EauZenCashHaveIt (I'm All Ears) 11:29, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
I've seen some idiotic assertions of "conflist of interest" before, but this takes the cake. Once again, in almost all cases a secondary source is needed to authenticate and contextualize these tiny mindless fragments. Sometimes it's useful to link to a primary source along with the secondary, so that the reader can see the fuller context if he wishes; but of course, with twits there is no fuller context, because the stupid things require all human thought to be shoehorned into 140 characters. As a result there's almost no call to cite Twitter itself. EEng (talk) 13:13, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
Again, you keep proving your conflict of interest with juvenile remarks like "tiny mindless fragments" or "the stupid things require all human thought to be shoehorned into 140 characters". If you cannot approach the subject as a neutral editor, you should probably stay away from this particular subject. EauZenCashHaveIt (I'm All Ears) 03:56, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
@EauZenCashHaveIt: Your comments about COI are totally incorrect, and any suggestion that a tweet should be a reliable source is extremely misguided and will not be accepted. Johnuniq (talk) 06:58, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: You are more than welcome to argue this point, for example: why is a statement posted on The White House's official Twitter account not a reliable primary source? Also, I am not sure by whom this will not be accepted, especially if you do not have a clear answer to my first question. EauZenCashHaveIt (I'm All Ears) 10:57, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Also, about the COI comment: an editor that consistently uses phrases like "I hate that stupid fucking word" (which is a direct quote by EEng) to describe a subject matter should probably keep clear of editing anything related to said subject matter. I know that I'm not as "salted" as some of you here, but I know what an encyclopedia is, and I know that editorial approach must be as neutral as humanly possible. EauZenCashHaveIt (I'm All Ears) 11:02, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Default-enabled confirmation for rollback on touch devices

Latest comment: 9 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

There was a similar discussion recently that was for an opt-in script to ask for confirmation on both desktop and mobile. That's fine as an opt-in, but for mobile I think we need an opt-out. The issue is accidentally rolling back changes on a touch device is common, and easily addressable by adding a default-enabled script that will ask for confirmation. An example script is confirmationRollback-mobile.js, which prompts you before performing rollback, stating the user you're about to revert and the number of edits. The script is very tiny, considering. We may need some user-agent tweaking, but in its current state this should cover most touch devices and shouldn't catch any desktop browsers. The script would be listed as a gadget at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets so that users could turn it off if desired. Thoughts? — MusikAnimal talk 21:25, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Sounds like a good idea to me. I generally edit from an iPad and I run a script that just supresses rollback links in watchlists and so forth because I was tired of accidentaly hitting it and having to undo myself. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Make Article Wizard button more prominent for new editors

Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I stumbled across the Wikipedia article wizard and immediately used it to write an article. This was a big step for me because I've been around for years, but I found the process too difficult to attempt on my own. My partner is a prolific Wikipedia editor and he helped me with my one and only other article in 4 years! Today, I followed the Wiki Wizard and submitted something to draft review. I think the Article Wizard should be prominently displayed for all Wiki editors who have fewer than 10 articles submitted. It should be the only option for anyone that's never submitted an article before. This would be a standard induction procedure for the entire community and might help stem some of the hurt, anger and confusion people feel when they're in an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard The big blue button guiding newbies into Wiki could be a valuable tool if it was more prominent on newbie pages. Rhondamerrick (talk) 08:05, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

@Rhondamerrick: I split your proposal into a new section, and it seemed somewhat off-topic in my proposal above. I support it, in principle, through it may need some refinement. And by posting in my section you might have limited it visibility, not sure how many people will join this discussion now... You could try to move this section to the bottom of this page where new proposals go, if you'd like. Or ask someone to do it for you. Cheers! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:51, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Template:Volunteer (Recreation of Template:Maintained)

Latest comment: 9 years ago34 comments12 people in discussion

Since ATinySliver seems to have forgotten that the closure of Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2015_March_16#Template:Maintained specifically said discussion needed to take place first, and that a bold recreation could be seen as disruptive, I have decided to come here to get community input on the "new" template. for those who didn't see or don't remember the original template (Maintained), it can be viewed on Speedy Deletion Wikia (without the formatting but it's close enough). EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 20:33, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Yup, damn, forgot. Disruption not intended. I'll keep an eye on what happens here for my own future reference. (Edit: In my defense, I was probably under the impression that sufficient discussion already had occurred [both at the direct link and elsewhere within the TfD]. While indeed some editors questioned whether the new wording sufficiently addresses the issues raised: one, the only actual !votes were in support; and two, anyone else can be bold and "fix" its wording.) —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:36, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
    • Yes, you put this rewording up for discussion in the TfD. Surely you noticed that none of those in favour of deletion were swayed by it, with several saying rewording was not the solution. Kanguole 08:20, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
I noticed that some of those in favor/favour of deletion were not to be swayed by literally anything else. And don't call me Shirley.   —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 08:31, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Someone please create a simple template that explains how to look at the article's history and contact the actually active editors by using the link to their talk pages. Include a short explanation on how to create an edit request, and/or how to use the {{help me}} template. Problem solved. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 20:40, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
  • It looks from memory exactly like the previous template. Absent any previous discussion as just a copy of a previously deleted template it should be speedily deleted, like e.g. User:Seppi333/Maintenance that was similarly speedied. Accept it was not intentionally disruptive but boldly recreating something deleted after a deletion discussion is not the way to do it.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 20:47, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
For the record, this is not (admittedly in my view) a re-creation; there were (admittedly in my view) significant changes. I would not presume to merely recreate something deleted. Ever. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:51, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
I see only minor wording changes – the meaning and how it works are exactly the same, and so it suffers from the same problems. But even if were significantly different it should not be recreated without prior discussion, the community having determined there is no need for such a template.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 21:27, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
John, every respect, but no need for that template and no need for such a template are markedly different animals, especially per the animated discussion and numerous calls to "fix" that template. My not-a-re-creation was a decision made with reason and respect to helping the encyclopedia and, as such, its community. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 21:37, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
@John: User:Seppi333/Maintenance was a remake of the template because it broke my old signature (Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained)), which is now irreparably borked because the associated link leads to a confusing/ambiguous page which now lists random links from pages like this one. Had anyone actually read the old text on that page, they would have realized that speedy deleting it would create this issue, so I now hold a grudge against three editors as a result of their assholish behavior that caused this problem for me.   Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 07:11, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
Edit: Just to be clear, I frankly don't give a shit about whether or not a maintenance template exists in some form or another (e.g., this proposal). I care that my signature isn't broken. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 07:18, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, glad this discussion has finally been started.

I have been thinking about this (understandably), for a while now. I think, per the TfD, that if we deleted {{maintained}}, it is a sign that a template substantially similar to it is probably not what the community wants. In other words, we ought to forget everything about that and start over. So, along those lines ...

  • I think one point that might not have been successfully communicated during the TfD by those uncomfortable with the old template was the seemingly "official" character of its language. The use of the impersonal passive seems to make it appear as if the designation of the named user had been made by some competent authority, not acknowledging that, in fact, the user whose name appeared had selected themselves. This is a valid point of criticism, and one equally so for the proposed replacement. So ...
    • ... what if it used the first person instead, sort of restoring what we used to call when I was in graduate school the "marks of enunciation", making it clear that this was sideways, not top-down, that it was initiated in the interest of fostering better editor-to-editor interaction rather than as if some unseen but supposedly infallible authority had designated this user for some unquestionable reason.

      Recall what the new-user team at the Foundation did a couple of years back because the community didn't step up when it had the chance. It changed the standard first-level warning templates so that, instead of beginning with a polite impersonal "Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia", they started with the user placing the template introducing themselves in the first person: "Hello, I'm Daniel Case, and ...". The community heartily endorsed it, and the general consensus has been that this has helped make users who might become real editors feel more at home and start actually doing so.

    • And, further along those lines, perhaps we should abandon the whole banner concept entirely. Instead, maybe the template should be designed to look like a talk page section (someone, I can't remember who, suggested as much during the TfD). That would be gentler.

Does anyone want to take a crack at doing something along these lines? Daniel Case (talk) 02:44, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I have to say, this sounds more like a step in the right direction, instead of slight wording changes. I would take a crack at it but A. I'm not entirely sure how to implement the first person thing, and B. I'm swamped with work at the moment. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 02:59, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Not that I have that capability, either (I don't  ), but I agree this is moving in the right direction. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 03:11, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm thinking I could start something in my user space, but maybe we should try to come to some agreement on what, exactly, the purpose of this !replacement template should be. What do we want to accomplish? Daniel Case (talk) 03:53, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Strictly from my own standpoint, I see something article-specific that answers, "I'd like to contribute but [I'm new/I'm not sure how/this article has proven contentious/etc.]; to whom should I turn for assistance?" —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 04:02, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
I believe the primary aim should be to encourage the new editor to ask their question on the article talk page. That way any interested editor can answer, and the conversation will be available to the next new (or not) editor to come along. If interested editors find watchlists unworkable, then perhaps we need a super-watchlist, or the use of {{ping}} might be suggested to increase the likelihood of a response. But we should not be directing these queries to user talk pages. Kanguole 08:20, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Now that I see it in print, Kanguole makes perhaps the paramount point: that article discussions should as rarely as possible be directed away from article space—it would all but demand that an editor move a substantive discussion from his/her talk space back to article talk (which in theory should be done anyway, given the scenario). Perhaps something can be built into {{talk header}} that creates a new section on the talk page of anyone who lists him/herself as a volunteer (in an otherwise invisible list)? —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 08:42, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
@ATinySliver: Tip, instead of typing out that mess when trying to put a template link inside brackets, it is easier to use Template:tl, for example {{Talk header}}. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 08:48, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
"Kanguole makes perhaps the paramount point: that article discussions should as rarely as possible be directed away from article space". 1 to that. However, to me the point of listing an individual user as a contact person is for people (not all of them editors—I always saw "non-editing readers who may have an idea for how an article can be improved, or have a question about something it says" as the primary people I was hoping would see the {{maintained}} on the talk page) who may, for whatever reasons they have, prefer to make contact by email, if the user who were to list themselves as a volunteer has that enabled from their user page (I don't know if it can be linked from another page, and even if it can I'm not sure that's a good idea). Daniel Case (talk) 19:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, EoRdE6, I will almost certainly forget that.  
Meantime, to be more specific, {{talk header}} includes a parameter that renders:
I presume one could build the code that, if one or more editors identifies as a {{|volunteer=}}, changes that line to (as an example):
  • Questions about this article? Ask a volunteer.
... that both creates a new section within article talk and a notice thereof on the user talk page of said volunteer(s). —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 09:02, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
That's a good idea. We should make sure, perhaps, that the text stands out by color or size (or both) And I think we could clarify what sort of questions a volunteer may be able to answer about the article. And make the text something like "Questions about this article, or suggestions for how it could be improved?" Daniel Case (talk) 19:40, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Could be done, I suppose. I was thinking something brief that would fit into {{talk header}} as is, without making it any longer/taller. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:00, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Has any consideration into modifying the {{talk header}} template to mention that "The following users actively maintain this article and may be available to quickly answer questions and concerns" been made? This would be a good place to mention it without adding new boxes. - Floydian τ ¢ 19:43, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Specific to the potential issues that were raised in the TfD, that's precisely why I suggested immediately above that any volunteers' names be kept invisible (they would be seen when editing, of course—assuming this idea were implemented, the first thing a person would see when editing an article talk page would be {{talk header|volunteer1=[User name]}}). —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:00, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Bad idea. I vaguely recall that one problem with the old template were uses deeply nested in other templates. The new template is apparently a variant of the known project templates, with the known small=yes and image=yes features, but an ad hoc list of "owners" (volunteers, maintainers, whatever) instead of a project. All problems with dead project spam on talk pages also affect this template. Additionally it's worse, if a project is confirmed dead the corresponding talk page templates can be removed easily. With this template thousands of pages with "owner" X once X retired will still show X as "owner", who is going to clean-up, a bot? –Be..anyone (talk) 21:22, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
  • The fundamental problem with the old template is the tagging of an article talk page with the names of users taking responsibility for it. No amount of wording change will fix the fundamental problem. Instead, this new template should be speedy deleted per WP:CSD#G4. Any template which announces a list of users who are claiming any relationship to an article should be likewise squashed. The very concept is flawed. --Jayron32 22:07, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
How, then, would you propose that either new users, or non-editing readers who have a question about an article, or a suggestion for how to improve it (they matter, too) be more readily put in contact with someone who can help them and is willing to do so? I do not think it is a great idea to just tell them, in some arrogant RTFM-ish type of way, to just go read the article history and go figure it out. Most of them will give up without even trying, and become one more of those people complaining about elitist obfuscatory Wikipedia editors.

OK, we can tell them to leave a message on the talk page. But that's like summoning spirits from the vasty deep. Sometimes you get someone (like me) who cares about doing this, and cares enough to answer. But there's no guarantee. Oh, everyone says, it'll show up on the editor's watchlist. But will the editor who's watchlisted it notice? I have been at first surprised, then rather dismayed, to learn that many editors have watchlists that run to thousands of articles—and, worse, seem to think this is normal (FWIW, mine currently has less than 350). It's easy to imagine a reader's cry in the digital wilderness fall silently to the ground like the proverbial tree.

If we are to go this far in order to discourage ownership, we might as well be discouraging stewardship as well. Daniel Case (talk) 05:20, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

The point is to find a solution in something more closely resembling perpetuity ... —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:08, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Wow, very long and drawn out discussion (here and back at the TfD that I honestly would have closed as No consensus). I've copied the template from that wikia page to my personal sandbox (and would appreciate if an admin would be willing to   Template editor/Edit Full/Move protect it so I can develop it per discussions and no-one can move it until it is relatively satisfactory). That said, I'm not sure I buy the claim that the template indicates that any editor(s) OWNs any article who's talk page it is placed on any more than {{WP:TPS/stalked}} or {{WP:TPS/watched}} does. I don't see anyone claiming that talk page stalkers (or watchers depending on your preference of what they are called) own the talk pages they stalk, just that they are keeping tabs on the page and vandalism is much more likely to quickly be reverted and the page is actively being developed by a group of editors and is more likely to be a higher quality than a page with no watchers. I find most of this discussion silly that people think it is a bad thing to discourage vandals from messin around wit a page that is in active development. Just my initial thoughts on the matter. How can we move forward and develop this template to be productive? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 03:38, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Given recent experience, I don't expect any stand-alone template would survive, if only because of what it might foment. I really think a {{|volunteer(x)=}} parameter within the existing {{talk header}} is the way to go. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 05:39, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Discouraging biting the newbies

Latest comment: 9 years ago205 comments50 people in discussion
See also: Relevant previous discussion

Background

We are short of new editors, particularly women. If a new editor is "bitten" as soon as they start their first article, they may give up on Wikipedia in disgust. Often a newbie is uncertain that they are allowed to start an article, so their first save may be little more than a placeholder. Once they see that has worked, they start to flesh out the details. A "bite" may range from hastily tagging the article with a minor cleanup template such as {{tone}} to a speedy deletion nomination. Although technically the tag or nomination may be justified, it will be very disconcerting to a newbie who does not understand how Wikipedia works. A note on their talk page, with follow-up only if they ignore it, would be much more welcoming.

I first became very aware of the problem a few years ago when my wife started her first article, Calton weavers, which was rapidly nominated for speedy deletion as "a blatant and obvious hoax ... where the deception is so obvious as to constitute pure vandalism." She would have given up, but I encouraged her to try again, and it got into DYK. Still, the experience soured her on Wikipedia and she has not done much more. Recently she pointed out a speedy deletion request on Natalie Smith Henry that managed to get attention from the New York Times and BBC News, and a year later from Huffington Port. We do not need this sort of publicity, which may discourage potential new editors from even starting.

To confirm that these were not isolated incidents, I registered an alternative account (User:Bymatth2) and started four articles that were on my "to do" list, in each case saving a first version that I thought might be typical of a newbie's first tentative version of an article. They were Ralph Biasi, John Payne Jackson, Colonne Fabien and Jean Troisier (the last is very similar to Natalie Smith Henry). Each had some context and some indication of significance, but weak. A web search would have shown that each topic was backed up by many sources, but all were quickly nominated for deletion. There is no requirement for the nominator to undertake a search. The nominators did nothing wrong – but if User:Bymatth2 really had been a newbie, he would have been profoundly discouraged.

Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers gives some general behavioral guidelines. Wikipedia:New pages patrol#Be nice to the newbies advises editors not to be too hasty. Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Alternatives to deletion explains some other options. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion offers some cautions. But none of these policies or guidelines defines persistently biting the newbies as Wikipedia:Disruptive editing: "a pattern of editing that may extend over a long time or many articles, and disrupts progress towards improving an article or building the encyclopedia."

Some of the editors who do a lot of new page patrolling maintain logs of the articles they have nominated for speedy deletion. Typically 5–10% of these articles show as blue links, meaning the CSD submission was declined, or the article was recreated and survived. A spot check shows that the author of the blue link article often does not do much more, as was the case with my wife, user:jomillsjo. Presumably some of the redlink articles could in fact have been expanded into valid articles, as with the four test User:Bymatth2 articles, but the newbies turned away in disgust. We are short of new editors, particularly women. Hasty CSD nomination may be causing great damage in turning away new editors, with questionable benefits.

Aymatth2 (talk) 15:57, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal

Various possibilities suggest themselves, such as imposing a delay between article creation and tagging (assuming the article is not an attack or otherwise immediately damaging to Wikipedia), using the newbie's talk page rather than clean-up templates to suggest improvements, and sanctioning editors who are consistently very aggressive to newbies. This is to propose that we first agree on a general statement of principle, to be added to Wikipedia:Disruptive editing and to Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers, saying,

Actions that tend to discourage newcomers, such as hastily nominating new articles for deletion or tagging new articles with clean-up templates, may be considered disruptive editing if constantly repeated without first exploring alternatives on the article creators' talk pages.

Aymatth2 (talk) 15:57, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Comments?

  • A better solution would be to nominate all of WP:UWT for deletion. The worst thing we do to bite newcomers is slap some arcane template on their talk page. No one reads form letters. If we want to keep them around, we should be talking with them, not yelling at them. --Jayron32 16:09, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Just trying to get agreement on a first principle: persistent biting is disruptive. If that is accepted, we can discuss what other changes would naturally follow. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:22, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I disagree about there being no requirement to check; see WP:BEFORE for steps that editors are expected to carry out before nominating an article for deletion. I feel that editors who consistently fail to carry out these steps, and/or who badly misinterpret the speedy deletion criteria, should be restricted from nominating articles for deletion, because while we can undo the frivolous nominations, we can't undo biting a new user. The second and third of your articles were badly tagged: A7 doesn't apply when an article makes a clear claim of significance, and the patroller clearly didn't understand what that means. The patroller's misjudgement was disruptive to the project, despite being in good faith, and if it is a pattern then we should not allow it to continue. Ivanvector (talk) 16:49, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I think WP:BEFORE just applies to AfD, for some reason. I would certainly check the web before proposing deletion, but the CSD rules do not seem to require it. The article is just judged on its own merits, and may be deleted if it does not make a credible claim of significance. Of course "Speedy deletion is meant to remove pages that are so obviously inappropriate for Wikipedia that they have no chance of surviving a deletion discussion." This could imply that WP:BEFORE applies, but I don't think so. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:28, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Read WP:POINT lately, and considered how it might apply to your actions here? Breaching experiments are frowned upon, no matter how noble the goal. WP:ILLEGIT would appear to apply to your use of the Bymatth2 account, as well. Any justification for the second account that would conform to policy?—Kww(talk) 16:53, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Oh get off of your high horse Kww. This sort of thing badly needs to be reviewed and he's done this to try to bring about a genuine improvement to wikipedia and new editors in the long term.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:04, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Hear, hear.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:14, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Actually, Blofeld, I had you in mind as precisely the kind of editor that would view a policy like this as an endorsement of his behaviour. Took a quick look at your comments below and at your recent contribution history and it's apparent that after all these years, you still are in the habit of creating unacceptable stubs as opposed to articles. While reining you in has proven to be impossible over the years, one of my goals in viewing these proposals is always the need to make it clear to new editors that creating the inadequately sourced stubs that you do is completely unacceptable.—Kww(talk) 14:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Inadequately sourced stubs, as long as they do not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, can be created in the Draft namespace and moved to main when they have been brought up to an acceptable quality.--greenrd (talk) 09:57, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
When was the last time I created an unacceptable stub? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:18, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
I'll offer an WP:IAR on this one. This is an obvious good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, and added four decent articles in the process without really harming anything (that wasn't going to be harmed anyway). Ivanvector (talk) 17:12, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Support that nothing was harmed and a good point was made. I think IAR applies.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  17:39, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • As stated in Wikipedia:Sock puppetry#Legitimate uses, "long-term users might create a new account to experience how the community functions for new users." That is why I did not use my main account. The main and alternative accounts are linked and categorized as such on their pages, have very similar names and have the same email, so there is no attempt to conceal the connection. The alternative account Bymatth2 did not contribute to any discussions. There was no Wikipedia:Sock puppetry. The alternative account did nothing disruptive and made no point. It just started four routine articles. If it had indeed been a newbie, it would have been an unusually productive newbie, stubbornly focused on adding new content. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:40, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • You intentionally created four articles that you knew did not comply with WP:V and one that did not comply with WP:BLP. You knew that the articles were unacceptable when you created them, and that they would consume other editors' time and effort in getting rid of them or cleaning them up. That's a WP:POINT violation.—Kww(talk) 18:23, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I can't believe you're making a fuss over this. What a fucking bureaucracy WP has become. EEng (talk) 22:42, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Reading the news shows that it's all bureaucracy. That's part of the reason there are no new editors, we're intruding on the sandbox, and no one wants to share. Jerod Lycett (talk) 22:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't see that this little "experiment" revealed any new knowledge, and it did wind up consuming part of a half-dozen editors' time. I don't object to this discussion, I do object to these tests.—Kww(talk) 23:20, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
OK, so it didn't show much. Big deal. At least he cared enough to try something. Stop fretting about it. It makes you look like a sour-puss. EEng (talk) 03:03, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
The experiment may not have "revealed new knowledge", assuming we treat Aymatth2's suspicions as "knowledge". However, it certainly provided better evidence for something where we only had anecdotes (which could perhaps have been dismissed as the media spinning a narrative) before. The consistency of the response to Bymatth2's attempts is striking. To me, there's a strong suggestion that a social solution (having people volunteer as new page watchers, jumping on new content typically within minutes) is being applied to a fundamentally technical problem (keeping possibly problematic content out of public view until it can be brought up to a minimum standard, which we are supposed to expect new editors to at least try to do if they're going to the effort of creating a new article in the first place).
Really, it's amazing how new editors get treated around here. The only antidote to being put through this wringer of page deletion nominations, talk page warnings etc. is to learn enough up front about how Wikipedia works that, in turn, people get suspicious of you. It's why I've never created an account.
As for "consuming editors' time", this thread of discussion has probably already had more of an effect than was required to put up a few speedy deletion templates. The pages are for notable subjects that deserve articles. Fixing a bad stub hardly requires any more effort than writing the article from scratch - arguably less - and it isn't specifically the job of those who notice the bad stub. So the argument that this created a disruptive mess requiring cleanup is not one I can justify. 70.24.4.51 (talk) 04:06, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Maybe we should be concerned not just with newbies getting bitten, but more experienced editors, too. Don't act as if new editors never violate verifiability and BLP policies when creating new articles, or that their articles never have to be cleaned up. What Aymatth2 did was useful and necessary if we're to improve the treatment of new editors and bring in more fresh blood; what you're doing is material support for keeping the newbies out. // coldacid (talk|contrib) 20:54, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • This is a good idea. It's very difficult to "unbite" a new user and they are a precious resource. I'm also sure it is difficult to deal with the rapid flow of bad new articles that sweep in every day. This idea swings in the right direction though. I have notified Wikipedia:New pages patrol to get their input.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  17:39, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes newbie biting is a problem, and there are lots of incorrect tags done at speedy deletion. But I'm not sure we need a rerun of WP:NEWT to tell us that. My suggestions would include, more eyes at CAT:SPEEDY declining the minority of incorrect tags that come there. Dealing with some of the bitey stuff that we can all agree is worth resolving, such as tweaking the software so that adding a template or category doesn't cause an edit conflict to the newbie trying to add their second sentence. More controversially, those templates that we don't need to use to warn the reader should be replaced with hidden categories, uncategorised and dead end being prime examples; Yes we need to find them, but no we don't need to disfigure the article with them. Ideally I'd like to see us resolve the divide between those who consider we have moved from a policy of verifiable to one of verified, and those who don't; Either we need to change the software and instructions to tell all new page creators that every article needs at least one source and widen BLPprod to all new unsourced articles, or we reaffirm current policy and stop people reverting edits and deleting articles simply for being unsourced. Perhaps we can compromise by introducing BizProd for all new articles on commercial operations that don't have an independent neutral reliable cite. In my ideal world we'd replace most speedy deletion categories apart from the G ones with a system whereby only logged in editors could see new unpatrolled articles, and only people with the autopatroller right could create articles that were instantly published, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. We do insist on a delay before A1 and A3 tags are applied, but historically it has been difficult to get consensus to widen that to other tags - there is a limit to the number of patrollers we have and in order to screen out G10s we do need to look at articles as fast as they come in. ϢereSpielChequers 18:17, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • As always, I pretty much reject the concept that an unacceptable article is anything but an unacceptable article. I will support the concept that templating anyone is disruptive, and offer my old essay WP:Don't template anyone as my solution.—Kww(talk) 18:19, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I would say all articles, and in fact all content, should be sourced. Newbies are unlikely to understand that, and will often start articles that are poor quality, particularly their first save. It they are welcomed and given guidance, they may become productive. If they are slapped in the face after their first save, they are likely to walk away. This proposal is simply to ask that we agree on the principle that persistent biting is disruptive. If that is accepted, we can move on to more specific remedies. This is just asking for the first baby step. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:37, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't think that anyone would disagree that biting, let alone persistent biting, is disruptive. But in my experience we disagree as to what constitutes biting. Just look at WP:NEWT to see an argument as to whether those of us who did that were biting the newpage patrollers or whether we were demonstrating that new page patrol was biting newbies. I would consider that we are biting newbies by having a defacto standard of sourcing that is stricter than the system warns them of, others disagree. If we are to make progress we don't need to reaffirm that which we all already agree on, we need to hammer out some compromises so we can change things. ϢereSpielChequers 19:00, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • The idea is to get the broad principle that persistent biting is disruptive spelled out in the policy, without being too specific. If we can get that agreed, we can move forward to next steps: to clarify what is unambiguously considered biting, and how to apply sanctions against biters. A key issue is that the bitten newbie is very unlikely to complain, other than in the press or external blogs, and that an experienced editor is unlikely to be bitten and very unlikely to make the effort to build a case against a particular biter. I think there are ways to handle that, but first we need the basic principle to be defined. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:09, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • You have proposed an unacceptable solution as your first step, by proposing that unacceptable content be retained for some specified period of time.—Kww(talk) 19:49, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • It is not reasonable to expect that all articles must be immediately "acceptable" in the sense of fully complying with all policies and guidelines. Articles can always be improved. This proposal simply says that persistent actions that discourage newcomers may be considered disruptive.Aymatth2 (talk) 00:42, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • It's quite reasonable to expect every article to be immediately acceptable. If a new editor tries to create an article from scratch before having sufficient experience to do so, it's unlikely that he will succeed, but that's a reason to encourage new editors to edit before they create.—Kww(talk) 14:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Since we already have consensus that biting newbies is disruptive, changing that to "only persistent biting is disruptive" would not be a great move in my opinion. However I doubt that's your intention, and I'd reiterate that the difficult thing is to identify a way to make the site less bitey that has both consensus here and if necessary resource from the WMF. For example I doubt if anyone here would object to some of the bugs being implemented that would reduce the edit conflicts that bite newbies. But good luck in getting the WMF to focus on that. ϢereSpielChequers 20:23, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I do not see any policy that says biting newbies is disruptive. Probably accidental "bites" are unavoidable. I am sure I have now and then upset new editors by a sharp response to a change they made on one of "my" articles. This is to propose just a small step forward by saying persistent biting is disruptive. I suspect that just a small number of serial biters are largely responsible for the massive decline in new editors. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:42, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Bite is the relevant guideline, it does allow for occasional exceptions and requires common sense in application. But it is a guideline, up there with AGF, COI and Canvassing. If you amended any of them to say that breaching them was only disruptive if done persistently, then it would become more like reversion, OK once as in the BRD cycle but beyond a point it becomes edit warring which isn't allowed. Amending that guideline to say that breaching it was OK as long as you weren't persistent would legitimise biting people but create a new offence of chewing them. Our problem is that we don't always agree as to what constitutes biting, those things that we do agree are biting are clearly not allowed. ϢereSpielChequers 06:38, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers is rather vague, mostly giving advice on the tone to adopt in discussion with newcomers. It does not say that biting is considered disruptive and says nothing about hasty addition of cleanup templates. Way down the bottom in How to avoid being a "biter" it says "14. Avoid deleting newly created articles, as unexperienced authors might still be working on them or trying to figure something out." This proposal is simply to make this guideline a little bit more explicit, saying persistent biting may be consider disruptive. Remember that Disruptive editing is a pattern of editing that may extend over a long time or many articles. One error of judgement is not disruptive. Repeatedly ignoring warnings and repeating this behavior is. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I agree that we shouldn't bite newbies, but we must be reasonable and strike a balance. We can't allow poor content to stick around just because we're afraid of biting new users. I'll tell a story from my own personal experience. When I edited wikiHow (I'm actually not active there any more, for rather complex reasons), I saw a very poor new article on "How to Use NutriBullet" come through RCP. I had vaguely heard of the product before, so I did a bit of research and improved the article. It's in rather good shape now. So, not too long after, when I started editing Wikipedia, I was trying to find an article to create. I decided to create an article on the product. From what I recall, the article was tagged for speedy deletion almost instantaneously. It was definitely frustrating that the patroller just slapped some tag on my talk page and didn't explain anything. The tag was declined, however, and the article was sent to AfD, where the discussion was relisted multiple times. It's very difficult having to endure such a drawn-out AfD. In a sense, I was almost relieved when it was finally deleted. It was a rather mixed experience. I was inevitably upset over the instantaneous CSD tag and what seemed to be an endless AfD discussion. On the other hand, I now understand why it was deleted, and it was a learning experience. After almost eight months, I'm still here with no plans to quit, and I feel that I've become a rather productive editor, although I've certainly made my fair share of blunders. ;)
However, this isn't the case with all newbies. Some just decide that Wikipedia must be a hostile place and quit immediately. So, I think we should find a way to control the inflow of poor content without biting too much. For example, we could promote personalized messages rather than templates (that takes much longer, though), or could try to make the templates more friendly, etc. --Biblioworm 20:03, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
    • CSDs and instantaneous accusations of sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry are probably the two biggest ways that newbies get bitten and decide that Wikipedia isn't for them. Without some heavy guns (figuratively speaking) I don't think there's much that can be done right now about the latter, but for the former we could probably at least change policy so that barring WP:BLP issues, a new article must be at least x hours old (say, 48-72) before they can be CSD-flagged. AfDs would be more difficult, but perhaps making it clearer that an article could be moved to userspace for reworking could relieve some of the pain around those, too. Steps like those would probably go a long way in keeping new editors around longer, until they're more comfortable with our Byzantine ways. // coldacid (talk|contrib) 20:48, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Leaving spam and self-promotion sitting around on the servers for days is unlikely to be a good or widely accepted solution. It's also bitey in a different way to let a newbie create an article and walk away thinking they're finished, and then silently delete it days later. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:28, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I'd say at least 24 hours. I doubt any but the most dedicated editors actually stick around for 6 hour editing sprints, and we'd at least want to give the newbies a chance to respond to a CSD, PROD, or AfD for their shiny new articles. That, or on successful deletion, move the article to the editor's userspace instead of actually deleting it, with a comment about what happened on their talk. // coldacid (talk|contrib) 21:39, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I think that approach may actually be the wrong way around. I propose it's better to have new pages in userspace by default, or better yet, in some kind of explicit staging area that's visible only to those who sign up for it (or e.g. to logged-in editors, plus the original creator if an IP). This solves the problem of not allowing Wikipedia to be used as a spam/self-promotion vehicle, while reducing the pressure on the new page watchers to bite the newbies. I'm picturing a system where the software also takes steps to direct the new editor to the Talk page for the article to discuss the subject's notability, necessary steps to meet WP guidelines etc. - without the looming threat of a deletion template.
  • For what it's worth, I've noticed two red herrings brought up here. The first is the idea that unacceptable content cannot be tolerated for any period of time. Enforcing this is obviously impossible even in theory, and laughably so in practice. The second is that the problem is with spam etc. actually being on the server. What are we concerned about here? Impressionable members of the WMF accidentally buying into a scam while randomly browsing the drives? It's certainly not a question of disk space; even the entire history of Wikipedia is estimated at "multiple terabytes", i.e. a few consumer hard drives - and any given new article costs a fraction of a cent to store indefinitely. 70.24.4.51 (talk) 04:31, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Does anyone have any data on what kinds of edits newbies who stick around are most likely to make? One way of refocusing the question of what constitutes biting is to identify where a bite is likely to do the most damage. I try to catch newbie-created articles in my areas of interest, clean them up, and then leave the creator a message explaining the changes - but I probably intend to do this three times as often as I actually get around to doing it. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:28, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • NPP is an extremely important process, it’s our only firewall against unwanted new pages. An unacceptable parqdox however, is that unlike its little sister AfC which is more of a project than an essential function, NPP requires no qualifications, no proven knowledge of policies and guidelines, and no demonstrated sense of tact and communication skills. A couple of years ago in an attempt to streamline the process, make it less bitey, and reduce the monumental backlog, we gave them the new feed and curation system and a nifty little messagebox to communicate with the creators, and rewrote the texts of most of the templates. It didn’t work - articles still get tagged too quickly, hardly anyone makes use of the message box, and the backlog though somewhat reduced is still outrageously long. Nothing’s going to change much until either the Foundation creates the new welcome page (promised now for nearly 5 years) or we get AfC disbanded and all those nice people there who do the reviewing migrated to NPP. And on that note, I’ll ping DGG. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
    • Having run into this issue while trying to reduce the NPP backlog I can talk a bit on this. One thing is that speedy delete doesn't mention anywhere that you have to research the subject to determine if the subject may be indicated to be notable. The content of the article itself doesn't seem to matter on that, only if it's pure vandalism. I got told off for tagging too many too quickly, though none of the pages I tagged had been touched in >30 days. So more experienced editors probably take the time to fully research a subject's possible notability before tagging. When I started reviewing there were 51xx pages needing reviewed, when I finished it was at 53xx. I think that speedy delete needs updated to make it clearer that a subject needs to be researched before tagging for not being notable. That or it needs to be made clearer to newer editors that they should establish notability in the article, not just let others find it off site once they've come across the article. Jerod Lycett (talk) 22:32, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
      • Yup but speedy deletion is not about notability. The test for A7 is deliberately much lower, no plausible assertion of importance or significance. a lower standard than notability. The plus side of that is that you don't need to check for sources for speedy deletion tags other than hoaxes. ϢereSpielChequers 23:10, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment. I just created User:Biblioworm/DeletionWelcome. It could be placed on new user's talk pages to let them know about concerns with their article before the page is CSDed. I might take it for a test drive soon. --Biblioworm 01:45, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment - I would love to see a proposal that balances the perceived problem of new editors being discouraged by biting, and the need to address near-constant stream of spam, vandalism, and incomprehensible nonsense that makes it's way into article space. How about any editor with less than 500 general edits can't create a new article? Or, how about new articles from new users are embargoed for 24 hours before being published to article space? Or, how about all new articles from new users must contain at least three sources before being visible to everyone but the article creator? - MrX 02:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I have done a fair bit of NPP, helped create a (largely disused) noticeboard for reviewing patrollers, and have pursued topic bans for NPPers that unrepentantly bite newbies. I am skeptical of the claim that tagging an article for improvement is a bitey action. @Aymatth2: I see your claim that a template at the top of the page will cause consternation in a new editor, but can you provide any support that this is a real problem? It seems like more of a distraction from the much more serious issue of hasty speedy deletion tagging. I would also be curious about where you got your "5-10% rejected speedy" statistic. Regarding deletion, we already have multiple processes in place to counsel and if necessary sanction bad patrollers. They could be better employed and enforced, but I do not think more rules are the solution. VQuakr (talk) 02:57, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
When the tag placed on an article is one which questions its notability, when there might be hundreds of his in google books, that is bitey and unwarranted. It is annoying and irritating to create an article and somebody slop tags on it within a minute. I'm not buying that the tags help wikipedia in the long term. If it's in a bad state then a cleanup tag marker is OK, but those notability tags added to short new entries which really are notable is a big problem.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:11, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
    • Where the 5-10% figure in the proposal comes from is clear "Typically 5–10% of these articles show as blue links, meaning the CSD submission was declined, or the article was recreated and survived". The difficulty is in the assumptions, as an admin I can look at the deleted contributions in a blue link and spot the occasions where the deleted article was about a different person of the same name as the current article. I can also look at the deleted edits behind a red link and see when an A3 tag was applied after one minute, and hours later an admin deleted it and we will never know whether the creator would have added a second sentence if they hadn't been bitten by an overhasty tag. If you aren't an admin you can look to see if the edit history of a blue link shows that the speedy tag was removed as incorrect, or if the deletion log shows that an article tagged as A7 was eventually deleted by AFD because while its claim of importance was credible it failed the notability threshold. Simply counting the red and blue links in a CSD log is too simplistic an approach to give a useful idea about CSD tagging accuracy. ϢereSpielChequers 08:10, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @VQuakr: I cannot prove that cleanup tags cause consternation in new editors, but they certainly cause consternation in me. I lash back, but a newbie would not know they could do that. The 5-10% figure comes from CSD logs kept by two editors who launched CSDs mentioned in the background to this proposal. These editors may not be typical. If the blue link's edit history shows it was created soon after the CSD log entry was created, it is probably a recreation of the deleted article. If the editor recreated the deleted article, got it accepted, and then stopped, they could have been like user:Jomillsjo with Calton weavers. She would have contributed much more, but now just wanted to prove it was a valid topic before quitting in disgust. Or they could have just wanted to start that one article. There is no way to tell. Someone could sample redlinks and search the web to see if they had promise, but even if a CSD article was about a non-notable topic, the editor who started it might become a valuable contributor once they understand the criteria. It is impossible to get hard facts: "How would newbies respond if they were treated differently?" But it seems plausible to assume they would be more likely to stay if they got a friendlier reception. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:47, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
@Aymatth2: it sounds to me like the tagging problem is with you and your "lashing back." It makes no sense to be discussing two very different actions, cleanup tagging and CSD, in the same thread. It makes even less sense to imply that the same solution to both issues could possibly be appropriate. VQuakr (talk) 19:25, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @VQuakr: The proposal is deliberately broad, referring to "actions that tend to discourage newcomers", presumably anything described in the do-not-bite guideline. As it happens, I just saw a tag on a stub I started 6 years ago, Seme Border. I have no idea what I am expected to do about it. Would a newbie be more likely to understand it? Would their reaction be a) positive b) neutral c) negative? Aymatth2 (talk) 22:47, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
@Aymatth2: b) neutral. I contest your assumption that a maintenance template is bitey (the guideline certainly does not say so). WP:BITE says not to be hostile to newcomers. It does not say to avoid actions that could merely be discouraging to a newbie - more so if the action would only be considered discouraging to a minority of individuals. VQuakr (talk) 03:02, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Case in point: this edit. Poor article, in the wrong space (obviously! well, to us at least), and even if it were in the right place it would be tagged for speedy deletion as A7 or as spam. And it's on the user's talk page as well. I'll leave a note of sorts, but it's pretty clear that this is someone's resume. Is reverting the edit biting? I suppose not. Is slapping a warning template on the user talk page "biting"? Maybe. But if the user were treated with kid gloves, are they likely to become the kind of editor we're looking for? Who can tell. Drmies (talk) 04:41, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes some good points Aymatth. I think unless an article is blatant vandalism or very obvious COI/vanity, we should allow 24 hours for an article to improve without placing tags on them. I also think that it should be compulsory for new page patrollers to look in google books before putting something up for speedy or adding notability. Most confuse lack of content with lack of notability.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:02, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Part of the problem is that A7 nominations often occur on articles where a technical reading of the criteria would mean it doesn't apply, but where the article doesn't stand a snowflakes chance in hell of surviving the notability guidelines in current form. When I'm active, I often patrol the A7 nominations as much to remove inappropriate tags as to delete anything, yet I often leave cases where there is an arguable claim of importance, but where it is also obvious that there is no notability, for others to decide. Wiki-lawyering a with a broad definition as to what a claim of importance means, and blocking as many A7 nominations as possible seems like it would be interpreted as pointy, and not in line with community expectations. By way of example, Searunners contains a claim of importance, that its the world's "largest service" for a particular thing, there is no way its going to meet notability, maybe it should be deleted G11 instead, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it go A7 just because its so clear it will end up deleted one way or another, but it would feel pointy to reject the deletion. (Obviously I wont delete it myself in such circumstances, but I can and will just leave it for someone else to decide on) Maybe it would be useful for there to be a discussion on just how technically the community really wants to A7 criteria applied. If we really cracked down on the criteria, rejecting more A7 (and A3) nominations, it might reduce the eagerness to nominate quickly and on borderline cases, but it would also just shift more nominations to other deletion mechanisms. Monty845 12:47, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
my advice here is that when in doubt which applies most, nominate using both criteria. I find it decreases subsequent arguments. (I think the page curation script does not provide for listing more than one, but Twinkle does) DGG ( talk ) 23:26, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment - While I agree wholeheartedly that we need more new Editors, how they are treated quite frankly just depends on which veteran they come in contact with first or early on. I wrote about this situation in an essay called WP:Don't be a WikiBigot in the section that addresses Newbies. We have some very veteran and experienced Editors that are (to put it nicely) EXTREMELY jaded when it comes to their tolerance of new Users, their edits, and choice of content to add especially when it comes to an article that the veteran might favor. As a daily Special:PendingChanges list Reviewer, I see sincere edits, edits done out of ignorance, and clear vandalism on a regular basis. As a result I use the Talk page templates daily as well. I can't imagine being a Reviewer without them. So unless we can change human nature or plan to start "showing the door" to numerous veteran, but still valuable "curmudgeon" Editors, I don't know how this will change. --Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 15:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
All through the past 8 years at least, half of all submitted WP articles have been rejected. * years ago the rejected ones contained more utter junk than they do now, but the number of promotional articles has increased to compensate. We need to differentiate between keeping and improving articles that can be improved, and making sure we reject those which obviously can't, and it's a difficult balance. Similarly, we need to differentiate between encouraging and helping editors who may learn how to contribute productively (even if those productive contribution do not necessarily include writing new articles), and discouraging and if necessary removing those who come here with fixed other purposes; thus is an even more difficult balance, because it's extremely difficult to judge intentions.
The main thing that helps all new editors, is a full personal explanation, not a template. (with the exception of trolls, &c., who can best be handled without explanation , as they know perfectly well what they are doing). II admit that I often do not give a full explanation at the first instance, but only if an explanation is requested--purely for lack of time, because the articles need to be dealt with promptly while the contributor is still around (which is also the reason for not waiting a day), and there are not enough people to do this properly. The problem is the same as what Scalhotrod mentions just above in a different context.
It would be easier to do this properly if there were not so many people doing it wrong, and I think Kudpung is completely right that the requirement for NPP needs to be raised--its basically the same job as Afc, except that at this point most of the articles are usable, the questionable one going preferentially into AfC. The best way to do this might be to have all articles follow the same route and be reviewed in the same manner.But this is only advisable if we a/require competence, and b/follow up the problems where people do this wrong. DGG ( talk ) 23:26, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment I agree that too-hasty deletion nominations (not just speedy, but prod and afd), can and do bite. Clean-up templates are something else all together. For a good example of what I consider to be biting, take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allie X and the other two related AFDs. All three articles were created by a newbie; one of them was created via WP:AFC, and accepted there. They are sourced to WP:RS, and assert notability. The talk page of their creator indicates an invitation to the teahouse, a notice accepting the AFC creation, some bot edits complaining about improperly tagged images, AFD notices for all three articles they created, and sinebot complaining about them not signing talk page notices. Basically, this person came along, wrote an article, was told "This is good, you're doing it right," wrote 2 more articles, and was subsequently told "YOU'RE DOING EVERYTHING WRONG! YOU SUCK! GO AWAY!" (Not in those words - but that's the message that's being sent). Every message on that talk page until mine is a template message. Now the person is fighting tooth and nail at AFD when they shouldn't have to. You can't say this isn't biting. At the same time; I don't know what to do about it. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:35, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't have time to read the entire discussion right now, so it may well be that someone has previously pointed this out, but for the grace period proposal to work, there's some technical work required first. Patrolling would need to be done with "time capsule" templates that only become publicly visible after the grace period. Patrollers therefore would need a special view mode that shows these templates before their time has come, so that they don't double-tag things (aka duplicated effort). Some patrolling templates would not have the time-dependent feature, e.g. those to do with BLP or copyright violations or publishing of personal information. Any other implementation that I can imagne would exactly double the patrolling effort required, and I suspect the community would reject this. Samsara 03:27, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

More comments (Arbitrary break)

Some of the following was moved from below the Votes? section so comments are not split.

As the newbie responsible for the development of this I feel it is time for me to add my 2-cents worth to the discussion.

Encouraged to do an article for Wikipedia I chose a topic which tied in with my interests. The “Calton Weavers” was drafted to the best of my ability (wiki writing is not easy to learn) and I proudly added it to Wikipedia. I knew I had a bit more to do to develop the article but getting this far was a big achievement.

The next morning I logged in only to find a ‘speedy delete’. No message from the editor; no valid reason for speedy delete (the article had enough there, with references to be accepted). And no volunteering to offer help or direct me to a source where I could save my article.

I was extremely upset - devastated that someone could do this without any consideration for what I was writing about or for the fact that this was a first article.

Obviously the editor was ignorant and biased; the presumption that his ‘knowledge’ would give him a sense of what is good or not good for Wikipedia is entirely misplaced.

In grade school through University students are given encouragement to learn from their mistakes and develop the skills necessary to write. ENCOURAGED. Not so for Wikipedia!

The immediate ‘speedy delete’ by someone making these decisions without knowledge or research is akin to censorship or bullying. Censorship by a decision to delete something which that one person has no understanding; bullying by constant deletions without consideration for the people writing articles. You can’t police Wikipedia. But you can use common sense and judgement; you can nurture and advise; and then, only then, can you make a sound decision to delete. Jomillsjo

Someone made a mistake five years ago. It seem a bit anecdotal to be basing a proposal on. Is this a common issue now? How often does it happen? FWIW, one of my first articles was wrongly tagged for speedy deletion (even though it had refs), so I do know how it feels and I'm sympathetic to what happened to you.- MrX 01:40, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • The four Bymatth2 test articles indicate that it may happen very often, even when an article provides context, credibly claims significance and is not an attack or promotion. Despite the tiny test sample, four CSDs for four valid new articles is indicative. This proposal is that we discuss issues with the newbie before zapping a new article. I have no idea why anyone would object. We are seriously short of new editors and obviously have a lot of new page patrollers with time on their hands. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Perhaps you mentioned it somewhere else, but in one of the tests the nominator self reverted a minute later. This page which I nominated, made no claim of significance and only had an infobox, so it was eligible. Is there some reason why we cant expect users to write at least a couple of sentences and at least attempt to add a source or two? After all, doesn't it say right above the new page edit window: "Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article.... When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references, especially a biography of a living person, may be deleted.... You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/______. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready."? - MrX 03:03, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I have put a more complete description of the test process at User:Bymatth2/New article test. Should have done that sooner. Yes, we provide clear instructions above the new page edit window, but people tend to ignore instructions. Or at least I do. The point is not that anyone did anything wrong, but that somehow four articles in a row on subjects that a quick search would show are clearly notable got nominated for deletion without any prior discussion. There is a process problem. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:44, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Do you have any proof that the editor who tagged your article attempt was "ignorant and biased"? If not, that's a rather egregious personal attack, not to mention a nonsensical one as bias against Scottish weavers who lived centuries ago is... uncommon, to say the least. It's also utterly unnecessary to insult the editor as they haven't edited since 2012 and are unlikely to attempt to defend their actions here. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:43, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I saw the reaction of a new editor at a recent edit-a-thon. Her infant article about Catherine Corrigan was PRODed shortly after she hit the save button. Upset isn't strong enough to describe what she felt. I called out RichardOSmith on it (you may need to look in his archive). Richard's reply was reasonable and definitely correct based on the state of the stub that he saw when he saw it. Look at his talk page and you'll see that Richard helps lots of new editors. I definitely don't want to see him accused of disruption. Retaining productive editors is as important as attracting new ones. Finding one who frequently and consistently bite newcomers would be difficult at best. I would never have discovered it if not for researching old contrib's and talk pages before commenting in an RfA last year. Quick reverts of good faith edits can be as discouraging as seeing a banner atop a new article. Good arguments on both sides of this discussion but I don't see the proposed wording making a difference in a positive direction. DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) WER 16:19, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • The proposal is meant to just be a start, but does imply that a talk page message should be the first step when a problem is found, not a tag. The tag can be added after. This would, I think, be a significant process improvement, and should be no problem for a productive and helpful editor. The main thing is to make it clear that persistent newbie biting is disruptive. With this agreed, if an admin sees an editor making a bad CSD call he can warn the editor and log the warning. If the behavior keeps on getting repeated, the editor gets hauled up at ANI. Ditto with AfD. There are other types of biting. Wikipedia:Articles for creation is a very forbidding place, for example. This change would give a basis for improving that process too. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Can we please stop talking about speedy deletion and article maintenance tags as if they were the same thing? They are different actions with completely different effects on the article and the newbie editor. VQuakr (talk) 17:27, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

MrX and others, this is not "one anecdote". There was an experiment in 2009 on the subject: Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at Criteria for speedy deletion. The situation has not changed. Everybody who spends time working in this area knows that the story is the same in 2015 as it was in 2009. That's why we keep getting proposals like the one last month to restrict access to the Page Curation tools: people are trying to find ways to stop CSDs on made-up grounds like "you didn't add a citation in the first version of the page, so it fails WP:V (really? An article that contains only verifiable information fails the very policy that says only certain things require inline citations?) and WP:N because it doesn't have citations on the page yet (Funny, but I wrote that section of WP:N myself, and it says exactly the opposite)".

Furthermore, we have solid research (i.e., done by people with PhDs and formally published) that says the #1 predictor of whether a new editor keeps editing is whether you delete their first contributions. If you want new editors (and almost all of the loss in the number of active editors comes from our failure to retain newbies), then we need to fix this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I can't comment much on your last paragraph having not seen the data or the conclusions, but I wonder if it takes into account editors who only intend to create one article (about themselves, their company, church, band, YouTuber). I do believe that some level of competence should be required for reviewing articles. There is a learning curve and feedback from other editors is valuable. I would support making NPP a bit that can be given or taken away based on performance.- MrX 17:26, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going to pretend I have read the rest of the comments, but I have a rather simple solution I use. If I come across an article likes those you created,and they were done by a new user, I move them to the Draft: namespace under the same name, leave a message on the creators talk page about where it is and why, and maybe add an WP:WPAFC template on top. I also keep it on my watchlist to see if any significant improvements happen, if so I move it back to the mainspace simple as that. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 21:18, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Well like every discussion, I come across it days after everyone and their pet dog has said most of the things I want to say. I do an awful lot of "second-pass" NPP where I check articles other people have tagged (primarily A7 and G11), and see if I can save any of them. For the majority of occasions, I can't, and for every Stanley Hotel, Narobi there are hundreds and hundreds of WP:GARAGE bands, or insignificant corporations or businesspeople (frequently from India), none of which really need an article on Wikipedia. So I have to conclude that the majority of CSDs are called well.
Everybody makes mistakes at NPP - Kudpung won't thank me for mentioning this and DGG won't thank me for this either, but it's pretty obvious to everyone that those two are extremely experienced Wikipedians, especially with NPP, and if they make mistakes, who doesn't? I think the best solution is to try and recover and salvage any CSD tagged article if you can, but always AGF on the tagger. Most NPP taggers are generally amenable to criticism or feedback, and will happily accept a mistake. In the case of Naomi Sager, for instance, the editor who tagged it for A7 released their mistake and subsequently nominated it for DYK instead.
The problem isn't really with any specific editor, but it's the way the entire system is set up to deliver poor communication and feedback. As well as potentially biting newbies, I've seen an "us and them" hostility and aggression between NPP taggers and content writers (and yes, I admit in the past I've done it too). I can't really support any hard and fast rule, as there are always occasions where an article (such as a blatant copyvio or attack page) must be got rid of ASAP, so all I can really add is just try and get everyone working together, and if you have to delete something, see if you can take something good away from it (such as suggesting an alternative website or teaching them WP policies). Horses for courses, really. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:16, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

So, I was checking my email and saw that "Aymatth2" mentioned me for an issue from 5 years ago! That's a really long time ago and yeah, I was only a 10 year old child at that time. I guess I thought, for some reason, that "Calton weavers" looked like a somewhat bad article so I just tagged it for speedy deletion. Nowadays, if I would still do the new page patrol, I would look closely at the articles and check for online sources before either leaving it alone or tagging it. I guess I didn't know better back then, and since this was 5 years ago, it's a little weird how you guys are discussing an issue I did back then! Also, Starblind, I haven't edited since 2012 on my old account (Steve2011), but this newer StevenD99 account I've edited from August 2013 until I retired in November of last year, so really, November 2014 was my last edit. "Ignorant and biased" is also a personal attack to me, but it was just that I was 10 back then and didn't know better! No wonder Wikipedia has become so boring, it's because there's many harsh people here, many of which might be 50 years of age! (But don't take this as a personal attack, please) When I retired, I thought I would never edit this site under my account again, but I guess not. Also, Jomillsjo, I'm really sorry I did that back then, since I was only 10. How harsh of me to do that back then, but nowadays, I'm 15 and a lot more mature and careful. Again, I'm so sorry Jomillsjo, I didn't mean to do that :( StevenD99 19:46, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

@StevenD99: You aren't the problem. Who in their right mind would put a ten year old on a customer service helpdesk? I suspect you have found Wikipedia "boring" because you've grown up and are discovering more fun things to do in life than routine maintenance tasks. You understand that you made a mistake, so we should not dwell on that any further. Meanwhile, there is plenty of writing work you could have a look at - any article in Category:All unreferenced BLPs could do with improvement, and that may be a refreshing alternative to endless NPP tasks. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 09:05, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment. I don't want to sound pollyannaish but we should not be biting anybody. Yes, especially we should not be harsh to newbies. But the rough and tumble environment some revel in should be altered—clearly turned down a notch. Templating is ugly and even the shorthand of policy abbreviations has its toxic side. We should primarily be speaking English with links to policies, guidelines, and essays. Not to seem pollyannaish but we should be practicing this all the time. We can be mindful of how we speak to "newbies" but we should polish our act in all communications on Wikipedia. Bus stop (talk) 11:29, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
I just went to CAT:CSD, thinking "I bet I can find a CSD that's been called incorrectly", and sure enough, here's an A7 that cites a New York Times article on its subject! I despair. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:56, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Votes?

There are some excellent points above. The general feeling is that biting the newbies is wrong, but many different approaches could be followed to prevent, discourage or respond to biting. It may clarify whether there is any consensus on the original proposal to see some votes. Again, the proposal is for a baby step, to add a statement to Wikipedia:Disruptive editing and to Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers, saying,

Actions that tend to discourage newcomers, such as hastily nominating new articles for deletion or tagging new articles with clean-up templates, may be considered disruptive editing if constantly repeated without first exploring alternatives on the article creators' talk pages.

Any additional suggestions for discouraging biting or sanctioning biters can then refer to this statement. Oppose? Support Aymatth2 (talk) 12:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Oppose - 'Hastily' is a matter of interpretation, and discretion. Adding cleanup tags to articles is a necessary function of maintaining the encyclopedia. If new users view cleanup tags as bitey, then the new users probably are not ready to edit and would be candidates for the teahouse or mentoring, although I have no idea how to address that. I strongly oppose associating good-faith new page curation with disruptive editing.- MrX 12:29, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
"If new users view cleanup tags as bitey, then the new users probably are not ready to edit and would be candidates for the teahouse or mentoring, " I view cleanup tags as bitey and annoying when immediately slopped on articles two minutes old. I'm one of the most experienced editors here. Am I not ready to edit?♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:01, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Most editors figure out pretty quickly how to create a sufficiently substantial article with adequate demonstration of notability on the first pass. If you are still having problems with this, perhaps you should reconsider the content of the articles you create—Kww(talk) 14:57, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Did I say I was still having problems with this Kww? Have you even bothered to look at my user page and contributions in the last 3 years? I see mindless tagging all the time on new pages.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:23, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I did. I was surprised your last few articles survived.—Kww(talk) 15:46, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
You mean like The Tower House?♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:12, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
No, Ajaloo ilu and Ahasveeruse uni.—Kww(talk) 17:30, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Those are perfectly acceptable stubs and constructive ones. If I could speak Estonian fluently they'd have been a lot better. That you think they should have been deleted just shows your level of ignorance and lack of understanding of what being a contributor to wikipedia actually entails. When was the last time you bothered to create an article let alone a featured quality one?♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:35, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
No, nothing with zero or one source is an acceptable stub. WP:N and WP:V both refer to sources, not source. It is impossible to have a balanced POV when using only one source.—Kww(talk) 17:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
I agree that unsourced and devoid of any content at all is unacceptable, which I might have created five years back, but so long as there's some content and at least one sourced fact it's acceptable. When the sources are in Estonian and you're uncertain of what is being said I'd say it's safer to keep it a stub with what you can decipher. And yes, things like Estonian novels are things English wikipedia badly need to tackle systemic bias and editors should be encouraged not discouraged from creating such stubs. Unacceptable would be xxx is an Estonian novel. End, Unsourced.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:56, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
You need to raise your standards until each and every stub you create meets WP:V and WP:N from the instant of creation. The only excuse for not meeting those critical policies and guidelines is inexperience, and you've been around too long for that to apply to you.—Kww(talk) 20:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
No, I don't need to raise my standards. And I don't have to create bugger all on here period. Ahasveeruse uni clearly meets GNG and the fact I've cited it as voted a top novel in the post independence period also asserts its notability. Get off of your high horse and work on content instead of attacking others. You're a bully.♦ Dr. Blofeld 07:15, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Not at all, I just think you are an example of one of our worst problems: an established editor that refuses to follow guidelines and policies, and thus encourages other editors to ignore guidelines and polices. No article with a single source can meet WP:N. It's mathematically impossible.—Kww(talk) 15:32, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Except that articles don't meet or not meet WP:N, rather topics/subjects do -- WP:N is a requirement for a topic or subject to have its own article. Yes, it's almost inconceivable that N could be satisfied with a single source, but it's not a requirement that all notability-lending sources be in the article from the get-go, or even according to some timeline. (I actually don't like that approach, but it's the approach we use.) Thus talking about whether "article X meets WP:N" is really nonsense; it's the topic that does or doesn't meet WP:N. EEng (talk) 17:30, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Exactly. A notable subject will always be notable, even if the subject is an unsourced stub. It is up to new page patrollers to look beyond unsourced or poorly sourced new articles and check for notability externally before trying to tag and delete something. Amusing for somebody with some 200 FAs and GAs combined to be told I ignore all rules and set a bad example with my content contribution. And coming from somebody who created just one stub in seven years. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:23, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
No, it's up to the article creator to create them in an acceptable state, not to create thousands of little tiny messes for others to clean up. The reason our policies don't forbid such things isn't because it's good to have them, but to avoid the very issue we are discussing here: biting newbies who create non-compliant material because they have good intentions and low experience. Last I looked, you had created upwards of 10,000 articles. It's not too surprising that a small percentage of them have risen to FA. Where we seem to fundamentally disagree is that you seem to feel that my contributions don't count because I exclusively remove material. The removal of material is the foundation of editing, and at least as valuable as the initial content creation.—Kww(talk) 00:27, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, no, it is not up to new page patrollers to look beyond unsourced or poorly sourced new articles and check for notability externally before trying to tag and delete something. See WP:BURDEN and WP:CHOICE.- MrX 00:39, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
@Dr. Blofeld: I don't think your editing experience makes your opinion about cleanup tags any more valid than mine. Different strokes, I suppose.- MrX 15:27, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • So if a newbie is not tough enough to handle direct feedback in the form of rapid addition of cleanup tags to their new article, Wikipedia is not the place for them. But we are seriously short of new editors. Maybe there are not enough editors of the thick-skinned variety, or maybe there are too many attractive alternatives. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:48, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Yeah. " Its reportedly unpleasant internal culture and unwelcoming atmosphere for new editors has long been blamed for an overwhelmingly masculine make-up." Not what we want the papers to say about the project. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:26, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't think lowering the bar is the solution to any of our problems. Is the issue that we are seriously short of new editors, or is it that we are seriously short of editors who edit a variety of articles, as opposed to users who come to Wikipedia to promote their pet cause. We can certainly do a better job of educating users before they can create new articles, and encourage them to edit other articles and read our tutorials before jumping into the deep end. I wish we would stop parroting the media's sensationalistic trope that men are somehow unwelcoming.- MrX 14:05, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
MrX wrote, "If new users view cleanup tags as bitey, then the new users probably are not ready to edit and would be candidates for the teahouse or mentoring" or both. I agree. Directing newcomers to a place to get help should be the norm for NPP as long as the article or edits aren't obvious trolling. Although rare, we occasionally manage to reform even a vandal into a productive editor. The COI noob trying to promote his company usually knows a lot about a product or service; a few of them can become productive editors while waiting for (or paying) someone to publish about the company in reliable sources. A few stick around afterward. Bots and concerned editors help direct newcomers and some not-so-new to the Teahouse and Mentoring co-op. The traditional Help desk and #wikipedia-en-help are great, too. Never biting isn't possible but we can sometimes sooth the wound. Take care, all. DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) WER 22:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Editors do not read all the rules, obviously. It is meant as a first step. Then we can discuss what follows. One idea I had was to change {{Uw-csd}} into a multi-level template for disruptive editing so if an editor keeps on making inappropriate CSDs they would get escalating warnings leading to a block. But maybe that is a bad idea. There are a lot of other possibilities. The broad principle should be spelled out first, in general terms. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:11, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support Good idea. Will help editor retention. TheMagikCow (talk) 16:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose, terrible idea. Would complicate normal maintenence tasks with no clear benefit. "Editor retention" is unlikely: editors who show up just to create an article promoting their garage band or shaming the kid they hate in school aren't going to stay around after the article is inevitably deleted, as they weren't seriously trying to contribute in the first place. If anything, one could easily make the argument that prolonging that process is far more cruel than it is kind. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 17:51, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @Starblind: You surely assume good faith with new editors and want to welcome and encourage them. Are you objecting to any statement that implies persistent biting of newbies is disruptive, or just to the precise wording proposed here? Aymatth2 (talk) 23:42, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • You're relying very heavily, and I think deliberately, on non-sequiturs here. "Biting newbies is bad, therefore we should complicate NPP tagging" simply doesn't follow in any logical sense, and I think you're well aware of that. Politicians use similar nonsense tactics to push silly legislation that they know would never fly on its own merits: "We all agree domestic violence is a serious issue. Therefore it is vital that we heavily tax imports of tropical fish. Anyone who disagrees with me hates America and may as well be a terrorist." I'm actually surprised you got otherwise intelligent editors to fall for it. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:04, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @Starblind: How about instead of "Biting newbies is bad, therefore we should complicate NPP tagging" something like "Biting newbies is bad, therefore we should do things that decrease the biting of newbies." That's as good as motherhood and apple pie, but might help move the discussion forward. What would decrease the biting of newbies who might become productive editors? - An otherwise intelligent editor  SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:36, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • That's exactly the problem, this proposal is all about complicating NPP tagging, not helping newbies. In fact, I think if implimented it would do the opposite of its supposed intention. You're free to disagree with me if you wish, of course, but please don't try to badger me into changing my vote. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 02:28, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • It will help newbies decide to stay if they get friendly advice and an offer of help on their talk pages rather than having the first cut of their first article swiftly tagged or flagged for deletion. Complicating NPP tagging is not an issue. Judging by the speed with which the test Bymatth2 articles were tagged for CSD, there is clearly no shortage of new page patrollers. The shortage is of new editors. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:28, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support, we badly need something like this, seems the most viable idea so far to actually make a bit of progress on this front, even though it doesn't go remotely far enough. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:35, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose – There is nothing "biting" about delivering rubbish to the dustbin. In fact, rubbish must be disposed of. As it is, Wikipedia is forced to maintain many disgusting articles that fly in the face of WP:NOTNEWS and WP:EVENT. We must work harder to delete more rubbish, lest our encylopaedia become a blog. I fear it is already too far down that road. This proposal is misguided. Rubbish is rubbish, no matter who creates it. It must be deleted. RGloucester — ☎ 18:58, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - no support given for the claim that tagging articles for improvement is disruptive. VQuakr (talk) 19:21, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment - I think a good solution is to put a courteous message on newbie's talk pages encouraging them to read the tutorial on creating a new article; if the article is obvious vandalism, we should message them accordingly. It should be clear that a clean-up template wouldn't necessarily discourage the editors from editing again, but a friendly message on their talk page should be fine, as some editors suggested above. Sam.gov (talk) 21:55, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support - Having read all of the above, I am especially moved by Aymatth2's story regarding his wife, a newbie who was bitten unnecessarily. While I emphatically agree with RGloucester that Wikipedia has retained more rubbish than it should, and that the bar is possibly already too low, I do not want to exclude potential new sincere editors and I think a template warning biters might be a very good idea. I myself was bitten by a CSD of my own first article. I became incensed, even overwrought by the business. I felt judged, humiliated, dejected, and lost. "Speedy delete" has a certain assonance that stung deeply. What saved me that time was the gentle intervention of someone who could walk me through the process. I remain to this day (seven years later) extremely grateful for that. Would this template have kept me from feeling bitten? Dunno. But maybe. KDS4444Talk 23:27, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
@KDS4444: why do you feel that adding language to WP:BITE about article maintenance tags will improve our speedy deletion process? VQuakr (talk) 03:06, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose Kafkaesque. We should not have to tip-toe around newbies to perform basic maintenance tasks. The rules and policies of Wikipedia apply to them the same as they apply to someone with thousands of edits. KonveyorBelt 16:44, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
    • I only wish that your assertion that the rules are applied equally to everyone were even half true. It is not. If I screw up (e.g., the formatting), the result is a quick fix or a personal note. If a newbie makes the same mistake, s/he gets reverted, templated, or even blocked. If I add a citation to a weak source, or if I put something in the wrong article, I'm given the benefit of the doubt. If a newbie does the same thing, it just gets removed. Or, if you want to hear it in a different form, there is a statistically significant difference in how IPs and brand-new accounts are treated vs admins and power users like me. Reputation matters. Anyone who edits while logged-out can attest to this, and the research agrees with it. User:HostBot's algorithm depends upon it: our consistently poor treatment of good-faith newbies is how it identifies people who are likely to benefit from an invitation to the Tea House. We have all kinds of biases in operation here, e.g., American high schools are rarely sent to AFD, but historic Indian ones often make a trip there; bios of female authors are sent to AFD at a much higher rate than comparable bios for male authors), and this is just one of them. This particular anti-newbie bias happens to work in "my" favor, but it doesn't work in "our" favor in the long-run. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support As another fresh example, I nursed an article created by a new editor through to DYK and it took 4 months of trial and tribulation to get it done. The article was speedily deleted at one point and the A7 and G11 tags were both incorrect. I was able to turn this around but I'm a hard-bitten veteran and there's no way that the new editor could have managed this by themselves. The patroller is still active as I happened on an AFD nomination of his just today. My impression is that that patroller is somewhat careless and not following WP:BEFORE but so it goes. Such aggressive deletionism is rewarded in the current setup and Kww is a good example of this. He hasn't created an article for 7 years and that was a weak stub. But he's an admin and so in a position to hassle outstanding content creators like Dr. Blofeld and Aymatth2, as we see above. The trouble is that there's no pain or price for being relentlessly hostile and negative. It's the content creators that get all the grief and so it's no surprise that they burn out so quickly. See Encyclopedia Frown for more on this:

    “The encyclopedia that anyone can edit” is at risk of becoming, in computer scientist Aaron Halfaker’s words, “the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes him or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semiautomated rejection and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit.” An entrenched, stubborn elite of old-timers, a high bar to entry, and a persistent 90/10 gender gap among editors all point to the possibility that Wikipedia is going adrift.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrew Davidson (talk • contribs)
I don't hassle anyone that adds material directly traced to multiple reliable sources, doesn't misrepresent the contents of sources, and doesn't use multiple accounts illegitimately. The remainder should be a very small percentage of our editors.—Kww(talk) 19:46, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
You're hassling me. And my article work "directly traced to multiple reliable sources" these days represents about 90% of what I actually do on here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:33, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
It's not like I've chased you around, and, given that my spot check of your recent creations when this discussion started came up with two single-sourced stubs, I have to question that "90%" figure. Even if it is 90%, what's the purpose of the remaining 10%?—Kww(talk) 20:45, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
I think it's important for growth to start articles from other wikipedias. And that includes stubs with a few facts and a source from languages I'm not fluent in and couldn't possibly translate the whole thing comfortably. Better to have a smaller stub with one source which is likely accurate than a start class one with poorly translated phrases and errors.♦ Dr. Blofeld 07:20, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose but a very weak oppose. I support the concept but I can't support the statement as written. What constitutes hastily? Wikilawyer defenses like "It wasn't constantly repeated. I only CSDed a few today." will waste lots of editor time and effort. Let's encourage NPP folks to be more helpful, directing new editors to places to learn norms and get help along with the tags. Maybe another change or addition to tags? I want to thank Aymatth2 for the idea and effort put into this discussion. We need to be less bitey but I don't think this statement is the way to go. DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) WER 22:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support Does not go far enough, but still better than than the current guidelines.--Snaevar (talk) 14:51, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support A new editor is more valuable than a well intentioned but poorly executed article. --GRuban (talk) 17:43, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal with teeth

So, what about:

Before placing a speedy-deletion tag on any article for lack of notability, a basic web search must first be performed. This helps prevent us from unnecessarily tagging an article that may very well be notable. Administrators likewise are to perform a perfunctory web search to double-check that there is no realistic possibility of notability for the subject. If there is any reasonable chance that an article's subject may be notable, the speedy deletion must be scrapped and the article should be nominated at WP:AFD instead, or simply kept. Failure to perform this check may result in topic bans.

as a way of making sure that NPPers have a quick, clear way to avoid biting newbies? Red Slash 02:48, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Oppose, as it's not possible to define a "basic web search". Every search engine will produce different results. Additionally, just because a subject might not have web-based references, other valid references may be available. This, to me, feels like bureaucracy creep. Nakon 02:52, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I would not be opposed to that. The more information that NPP editors have, the better. Nakon 00:11, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support - Speedy deletion should be apply only to blatantly non-relevant articles, not on poorly written articles about obscure topics. --NaBUru38 (talk) 11:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
    • By the way, the article on Natalie Smith Henry was tagged for speedy deletion because it "did not credibly indicate the importance or significance of the subject". That is ridiculous! Of course articles should do that, but missing that shouldn't be a reason for speedy deletion. That kind of articles should be encouraged to be expanded. --NaBUru38 (talk) 11:42, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support. This would help eliminate some bad calls. The point by User:Nakon that some subjects may not have web-based references, or that some search engines may not be as good at finding references as others, does not mean we just delete without trying at all. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support I believe it should be compulsory for patrollers to do a google/g book search before assessing notability/deletion.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Question: How do you propose to enforce this proposal? I can't think of a way to do it technically, so it will come down to people claiming that others didn't do a search and the one being accused saying they did. Can you prove they didn't? I'm more curious than anything how well you thought this through. I have more, but I will wait for a response for these questions first as I wouldn't want to "spoil the pot". — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 12:30, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • There may be a few marginal cases but usually results pop up in all major search engines, if present online. If the closing admin did a search and found results, they could tag the nominator with a link to the search results page, and a L1/L2/L3 warning. The nominator could challenge this, but would have to give a link showing their search engine did not show any results. Editors in countries that censor search engine results should find more useful ways to spend their time. Sometimes an article may be saved by the admin while the nominator is not sanctioned. That is better than letting all deletions through without any checking. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:53, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Oh great, just what we need -- a sequence of steps added to CSD involving a requirement for web searches, escalating warnings, and counter challenges containing links to prior searches. Meanwhile, we'll need to have debates over whether Country X does or does not censor search results, and "Sometimes an article may be saved by the admin while the nominator is not sanctioned" -- oh boy, I'm really looking forward to those discussions! EEng (talk) 11:51, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:BURDEN and WP:CHOICE. The onus should be on the article creator to do a web search and at least add a link or two. This proposal would undermine the community-adopted speedy deletion process by making NPP even more of a chore than it is now.- MrX 13:58, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Per WP:CHOICE, if you find NPP is a chore you do not have to do it. The proposal is to add a small and easy extra step to reduce bad nominations, which would help reduce the number of new editors turned away by a hostile reception to a new article on a valid topic. Perhaps the NPP tool could do the search automatically. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:23, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I patrol new pages because I'm trying to improve the encyclopedia, even though it is a chore. Adding additional hurdles based on what I believe are faulty premises is what I'm opposed to.- MrX 22:04, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose An article that doesn't tell you why the subject is important, even if they are, is totally useless to the encyclopedia. Basically, this standard would allow an article that is less useful to the reader than a link to http://lmgtfy.com/?q=let me google that for you to survive speedy deletion... A low minimum standard like indication of importance is fine, but there needs to be some minimum standard for what is in the article itself. Monty845 16:50, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • See User:Bymatth2/New article test. The first version of an article by a newbie may be a bit skeletal, with plans to expand it once they are confident they can create an article at all. Deleting the first version immediately, without discussion with the newbie or a check for notability of the subject, may be one of the main reasons we are so short of new editors. Articles usually expand after the first version. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:05, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - terrible proposed edit. There is no CSD criterion for "lack of notability." The closest we have is A7, which is for articles, on specific topics, that contain no credible claim of significance. An article either contains some indication of why the subject is significant or it does not; a web search is not necessary to assess whether an article should be nominated for CSD under A7. More broadly, the community already has the ability to topic ban editors who lack the competence for NPP and refuse to quit voluntarily. VQuakr (talk) 18:31, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
But a notable subject will always be a notable subject. It is our duty here to identify this. Too many people confuse lack of initial content as lack of notability. It's wrong. Many speedy deletions and AFDs would be avoided if reviewers took just 20 seconds to do a quick search before making decision. And article like the weavers one should never have been deleted. This happens all of the time on here and no doubt has caused thousands of potential greater editors to give up over the years. Wake up!♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:29, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
A7 does not attempt to assess notability. It looks at the article, not the subject. Feel free to propose a change to our practice, but let's make that change and assess whether specific enforcement of the new system is needed before adding language to WP:BITE encouraging topic bans. VQuakr (talk) 20:48, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @VQuakr: The proposal with teeth is to change CSD, not just A7, so it does assess notability. This could be made easier through adding an automatic web search to the NPP tool. Would you also oppose adding a web search to the tool? Aymatth2 (talk) 22:32, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I vehemently disagree with this. Notability always requires some level of investigation, and CSDs aren't supposed to do that. Questions of notability should always be handled via AFD. A7 is designed for articles that say "Jim Smith is my best friend and he's super cool!" Anything with any reasonable claim to importance should always go through AFD, and we don't need to expand the scope of A7. We need to educate people that it is not OK to tag and/or speedily delete articles where claims of importance (even spurious or unreferenced ones) are made. --Jayron32 00:22, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • If that's not the way someone is using it, we need to educate that person on the proper ways to use it. I don't oppose adding a link to a web search to anything, but we should NOT be increasing the scope of A7 or any CSD, we should be reminding people to kindly stop doing just that. --Jayron32 00:39, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • The proposal is not to kindly remind patrollers to stop doing that, but to bluntly threaten them that if they do not stop doing that they will be topic banned. We have no shortage of highly aggressive new page patrollers, and a severe shortage of new editors. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:53, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Topic bans are always a last resort. If coaching a new page patroller gets them to improve their patrols, everyone wins. It seems to me that your motivation is not so much pro-newbie as it is anti-NPP. What makes you think that "bluntly threatening" good faith editors is ever going to be accepted by this community? The queue of pages to be patrolled is two months long, and we at NPP would love additional qualified volunteers. VQuakr (talk) 03:01, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • If the queue is so long, how come the four test articles at User:Bymatth2/New article test were each put up for deletion within two hours? A web search on the article subject only takes a few seconds. If a patroller cannot be bothered to do that, the closing admin does take that step, and it turns out the topic is notable, the patroller should be warned. If they persist, they should be sanctioned. The cost of the web search is trivial compared to the cost of the bad call if it results in losing a new editor. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:15, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
If the queue is so long, how come the four test articles at User:Bymatth2/New article test were each put up for deletion within two hours? Non-sequitur. Just because some articles get reviewed quickly does not mean that all articles are. Right now the NPP queue is 5472 pages long (better than it has been in a long time, IIRC). What is the relevance of the CSD category contents? Obviously that list will rot quickly as articles are speedied or nominations declined. VQuakr (talk) 17:07, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Since four out of four in User:Bymatth2/New article test got reviewed very quickly, that seems to indicate plenty of available reviewers, or else that short new articles get reviewed quicker, or something. The question on the category list was genuine. I am interested in tracking a sample of CSD nominations to see what percentage "fail" in the sense of being rejected or challenged, and was not sure if this is the only place they would be found. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:41, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Or that four is too small of sample from which to draw conclusions regarding a population of many thousands, or that there is a bias in the sample (for example, two of the four articles were curated by the same editor, probably because the articles shared the same author). If you are looking for a "snapshot" of nominations then your method seems fine; not sure if there is a better place to track CSD nominations in general. The page curation log lists all curation activities including speedy deletion nominations, but only those that are added using the page curation toolbar (a minority even among NPPers, who often use Twinkle). VQuakr (talk) 18:45, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
I cannot but interject here that the adequacy of a sample has (essentially) nothing to do with the size of the population from which it is drawn. A sample of four is indeed just a "probe" (as mentioned above), but for any yes-no question for which you're willing to accept an error of up to about ±10%, a sample of 25 is completely adequate, and this is true whether the population is 1000, 100 000, or 10 000 000. EEng (talk) 13:22, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
  • On the NPP queue size, 5,472 does not seem anything to worry about. Since articles are being nominated for speedy deletion without even checking the web, and this is the most serious type of decision, I assume that a typical article review just takes a minute or two to glance to the article and to select which tags to check. A generous estimate would be 8,000 minutes outstanding review time, or perhaps a day if 100 reviewers each spent a bit more than an hour. Apparently the queue is shrinking, so it is hard to see this as an issue. If we could attract more new editors, it would be even less of an issue. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • The tiny sample in User:Bymatth2/New article test can scarcely be considered statistically significant, and may have been biased in many ways. It was just a probe. A sample of Category:Candidates for speedy deletion seems more meaningful.There are a few pink links in the list above that I think may be valid and have saved, but will wait to see the outcome and then perhaps recreate. After this one has flushed, I may repeat in a few days. Successful organizations treat frequency of process failures as a critical measure. Denying existence of a measurable process problem guarantees failure in the face of competition. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
@Aymatth2: WP could do a lot of things with 100 extra hours of experienced editor time (though not clear the NPP queue, which I estimate would be more like 300-400 experienced editor hours). More new editors, while welcome, would increase not decrease the workload on NPP. Out of curiosity, have you read this Signpost or the report it summarizes? You might find it interesting for background. No one (AFAIK) is claiming that our process is perfect re "denying existence." VQuakr (talk) 06:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
  • The signpost report is very interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. It does indicate a 1-minute average on the delete decision. Maybe tagging takes a bit longer, although I cannot see why it would. That was three years ago. I suspect the demographics have changed significantly. When Wikipedia began it was unique. Now there are many other sites or apps competing for attention. To me there are four broad categories of editor: authors, copy editors, police and other. It should be possible to define measures that roughly sort editors into those categories. It would be interesting to see shifts in the percentages over time, as well as shifts in experience levels over time in each group.
Anyway, my main concern is that tagging will demoralize new editors, even when justified, if there is no accompanying talk page note, and every bad call on a deletion risks making a potential new editor give up. My count on the 42-candidate list above is Blue–9, Pink–9, Red–23. That will change. Two of the pinks are at AfD, which will take a few days to resolve. Fuckin' Backstabber (Single) may not survive long. ITraveller and ITravellers were basically the same article. A less peacock-like version might have survived.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] I can't be bothered recreating it. Dynamic routing was a technical deletion to allow for a move, and so on. Some of the blues still look a bit promotional, so the creators may not do much more. But there are a few blues that seem entirely well-meaning, where the nomination will have seemed like a slap in the face even though it failed. How many should we accept for the sake of skipping a quick web search? Aymatth2 (talk) 13:06, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose, because stating that contributors 'must' perform a 'basic web search' without providing any means of determining that they have or have not done so is unenforceable, because notability (or the lack of it) isn't a speedy deletion criteria, and because this proposal looks to me very much like an attempt to 'encourage new contributors' by lowering the acceptability standards for article content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:10, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose as unenforceable and a misunderstanding of CSD A7, which is about whether the article gives a claim of significance, not whether the subject is notable. BethNaught (talk) 07:51, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • The wording in User:Red Slash's proposal could be improved. The intent is to require a web search as part of the CSD process in A7 cases, perhaps in others (Calton weavers was incorrectly nominated and deleted as G3.) That is, to change the CSD rules to require a bit of due diligence before nominating an article for deletion. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:15, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Then propose a change to WP:CSD and WP:DELETE. So far we have a proposed change on enforcement of a nonexistent rule. VQuakr (talk) 17:07, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose Although I do think the current practice of communication with newbies is inadequate, I do think that newbies should create articles with enough information that the article does not violate the speedy deletion criteria. On top of that, an research, Deletion notifications to new users states that receiving a deletion notification does not have an statistical effect on whether the editor is retained.--Snaevar (talk) 14:54, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - (a) misunderstands the nature of A7 which is not about notability, {b) unenforceable, (c) for many of the the hopeless articles that are put in, a mandatory web-search would be a ridiculous waste of time - e.g. one from my today's experience, that said its subject is 8 years old and "is a Technologyst that knows all about computers smartphone device tablets and more technology related staff". JohnCD (talk) 21:52, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Honey

 
A page from a 19th century copybook. The homily is paraphrased from a 17th century sermon of Isaac Barrow, Against Detraction — "Good nature like a bee, collects honey from every herb. Ill nature, like a spider, sucks poison from the flowers." (from Gods of the Copybook Headings)

A problem with Aymatth2's proposal is that its implementation might result in more negative waves. When the biters are bit, they might bite back or others might add yet more levels of biting. Perhaps we should look for a more positive way forward as "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar". But how? As discussed above, Dr. Blofeld has created stubs such as Al Abr recently. This example is just a start on an interesting topic. At first sight, it doesn't have any obnoxious cleanup tags but please notice that, at the foot, there is a {{Yemen-stub}} template. As with all such stub templates, this starts with an attractive icon and then some gentle text, "This Yemen-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it."

I don't like the cleanup tags which cause a banner to be placed at the head of the article, along with some scolding text, and so like to remove them when possible. But my attitude towards stub tags is quite different. I go out of my way to add them to the articles that I create and am sorry to see them go when the article is expanded and goes through the DYK process. I am always interested to see the topical icon which accompanies the text and find the text to be encouraging and helpful. This seems to be a good example of a honey-coated message which we might copy in the more poisonous cases.

So, what I'm suggesting is that we go through the cleanup templates which are left by the NPP and see what we can do to restyle and reword them so that they are as friendly and as encouraging as the stub templates. The same approach might be taken with the deletion templates though it would be harder to sugar-coat the message there. Perhaps some process change might be needed for this – many editors have suggested that AFD should become a more general clearing house for cleanup and alternatives to deletion. Jayron32 suggests deleting all the user warning templates so perhaps these should be in scope too. This activity of making our communications more friendly and welcoming would be the natural basis for a project or task force similar to AfC and the Teahouse. This would provide the clout and manpower to get things done. But is there a consensus...?

Andrew D. (talk) 11:20, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Al Abr is not great, but I saw a map and it seemed to indicate it was a notable town. As the centre of district we should have an article on it and identify it as a notable subject. That's more important than not bothering to start it I think.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:23, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Comment: It would be nice to make the cleanup templates nicer, but they are fairly nice already, to the extent that a large critical notice at the top of a new article could ever be seen as nice. Does this mean that to avoid upsetting anyone (except of course the newbies) we forget about advising taggers to talk to the newbies first, forget about discouraging instant deletion nominations with no notability checks, forget about any sanctions on persistent biting, and just tweak the wording of a few templates? Does this include honey-coating the CSD template? Aymatth2 (talk) 00:23, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 
Dear newbie, this is a friendly note to say I have asked that your new article on .example be deleted from Wikipedia. In fact, it is probably gone already! I did not check that the subject belonged in Wikipedia, because as you can imagine I am a very busy person, but my impression of the first version you saved was that it was worthless. I do hope you decide to try again. We always enjoy new editors. Thank you and have a nice day. Aymatth2 (talk)
 
Come closer, new editor, that you may learn from these WP policies conveniently arrayed about me!
 
A newbie (brown) offers his stub to a New Page Patroller (green). If it fails to satisfy her she'll bite his head off.

Support a general process to review the language in NPP templates (as my frequently quoted essay shows, to some extent the specific wording is irrelevant). I like the idea of sending all the templates to the bottom, something I know Beyond My Ken has been complaining about for years. PS: I confess to laughing out loud at this. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:25, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: move rather than delete

Just few hours ago I posed to VPM; not realizing there is a relevant discussion. So here's my related proposal: rather than delete, how about moving problematic newbie articles into their userspace, combined with leaving them a friendly version of the delete template. Instead of "your contribution will be deleted", "your contribution needs more polishing" kind of approach. It would reinforce the draft system - pushing not ready content to a similar space, but in one's userspace (so we could even preserve newbies sandbox-like stuff there). Userspace is mostly immune to search engines, so even spam is much of an issue; after all we are not paper. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:59, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Support I would definitely like to encourage moving to draftspace anything that does not urgently need to be deleted and might be salvagable. With a message like "Hi, thanks for creating the article 'Bringers of Darkness', I've moved into draft so you can add sources and tart things up a bit yada yada yada". I can hear wailings and gnashings of teeth at people worried how our server space will cope with all those non-notable garage bands and companies, but if new users go via the article wizard, they end up there as AfC drafts anyway, whereupon they sit until they expire per WP:CSD#G13 some time later. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:53, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I would support a change to the new page patrol process to allow for moves to userspace with a friendly talk page message. Two minor concerns are that a) articles in userspace are unlikely to get improved by anyone other than the author and b) Wikipedia:Articles for creation has extraordinarily tough barriers to promotion into mainspace. It is much easier for an article to survive AfD than AfC. Maybe the message should just tell them to say in the lead why the subject is important, add a few independent sources, then move directly back to mainspace rather than bother with AfC. Aymatth2 (talk) 11:11, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
The problem here is that people are confusing "userspace", "draftspace" and "AfC" when they're all different things. The way I see it, you can move an article from Bringers of Darkness to Draft:Bringers of Darkness and while most people won't come across it, it's not tied into a specific user. You can request a review (which is where the AfC bit comes in), but you don't have to (eg: The customer is not a moron, comprised of). I think we need to reorganise the whole way AfC works, and reinvent it as a "draft review" process. I've heard anecdotal evidence that declining an AfC submission is as bad as an A7 tag (it's not designed to be, but that's what newcomers have suggested), and would like some more evidence of that. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:22, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
@Aymatth2: I dislike userspace drafts because they are places that, as you note, get too little attention and good drafts can languish there forever. However, in this case, we are not talking about good drafts - but content that would otherwise be deleted. Whether to move it there or to draft/AfC space, I don't have much of an opinion. I'll, however, say that I've seen a number of AfC-approved articles nominated for deletion (by myself, for example). The criteria are only as good as editors who choose to respect them (or, sadly, not). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:47, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
I think the whole "move rather than delete" is good and I have done that on occasion. Template:Userspace draft is a good template to prevent search engine indexing. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support This idea. Unless the article is a blatant BLP violation, copyvio or otherwise incomprehensible gobbledigook, we should be more explicit in our guidance to move the article rather than delete. Stuff that has tone/advertising issues, has claims of importance (but lacks refs) or otherwise needs possible polishing should be moved to the article space. --Jayron32 16:17, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose Experienc suggests this would just create piles and piles of neglected drafts. Even most userfications by request don't go anywhere, doing it without a request is a waste of effort and there is no evidence it would help with editor retention. I'm fairly sure this idea or one very similar to it has been repeatedly rejected by the community. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:53, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
I think you've misunderstood - drafting is not the same as userfying (see comprised of for an out-of-control example) and there is no mention of the draft namespace in WP:PERENNIAL. I think, not least from the above thread, there is evidence that changing nothing does affect editor retention. Even deleted articles take up disk space, so admins can view and restore them, and neglected drafts are deleted after six months per G13 anyway. Bow cinema murder is an example from yesterday where drafting might have been a suitable alternative to speedy deletion. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:40, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
Draft, userfy, whichever, I don'tbelieve this would accomplish much other than create lots of drafts to be reviewed, most of which would not be imporoved and would just be deleted later on, which is why they were nominated for CSD in the first place. We already have a severe backlog of AFC and other draft material, I can't see how deliberately, severely increasing the backlog could possibly be a good idea and i don't believe it would help with editr retention. The simple fact is that most things that are speedy deleted were written by people who charge in to WP without bothering to even try and learn how it works. What we should be doing is finding better ways to educate new users about what is allowed and what is not, not giving hopeless articles an extra six months before being re-reviewed and deleted when there is no chance of them ever being acceptable for mainspace. Coddling clueless people is not the way to help them become productive editors. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:15, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
Remember that 10% – 20% (see below) of CSD nominations for mainspace articles are rejected as invalid. A decision to userify would presumably only be made for articles that seem to maybe have potential, and would be accompanied by an explanatory note. If the user does nothing, the article just sits harmlessly in their user space. If they heed the note, fix the article and move it back to mainspace, that is good. Time wasting only happens if they ignore the note but move it back to mainspace anyway, where it cycles back into the new article queue. That would probably be infrequent. The benefit in new editor retention seems to outweigh the very small cost. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:37, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Take a snapshot of all mainspace articles in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion (drop files, user space pages etc.)
  • Eliminate G4 same as deleted article, G5 blocked user, G6 uncontroversial, G7 author requested, G10 attack, G12 copyright violations
  • Watch the rest to see which turn red (deleted) or green (redirect) and which turn blue (no longer tagged for deletion).
The three samples have not yet settled. Some in each set are still pink (in my color scheme) meaning still tagged for CSD or up for AfD. Some could be challenged again. But at this stage the results are 41 total – 7 blue; 33 total – 6 blue; 30 total – 4 blue. This is not particularly scientific, but shows that a significant number of CSD nominations get rejected as invalid. There is a spectrum with legitimate articles that should never have been nominated at one end, borderline cases in the middle and hopeless ones at the other end, typically blatant corporate promotion. I would assume that only the borderline ones should go to user space. I would allow a lot of slack in this group, of the garage band variety, since they do no harm in user space and a talk page note can help educate and encourage a new user to start articles on more notable topics. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:25, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
@Beeblebrox: You say there is no evidence that implementing such a proposal will help with editor retention. Setting aside that we won't have evidence for this until we do that (you cannot gather evidence for things that were not done), we do have plenty of evidence that templating newbies and deleting their content results in them not sticking around. See [12]: "pecifically, the restrictiveness of the encyclopedia’s primary quality control mechanism and the algorithmic tools used to reject contributions are implicated as key causes of decreased newcomer retention." Is this evidence enough? And yes, "Coddling clueless people" works better than hitting them with a stick. It's the internet, if we hit them, it's easy for them to take their toys and go find a more friendly place; that's what most do these days. And we won't have too many drafts to review; if you don't want to swamp AfC, that's why I suggested userspace - their bad drafts can languish there, but we won't lose editors due to their anger over deletions. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:01, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
To be fair to Beeblebrox, he does make a valid point - most of what gets tagged as CSD is junk, and I see it with my own eyes from looking at CAT:CSD day in day out. But Aymatth2 is also right that a significant (but not majority) of CSDs are called wrong, and just educating people to try and draft if there's any doubt is worth considering. As well as educating new users, we also need to educate taggers and patrollers - again, from my experience, NPPers tend to be perfectly amenable to listening about mistakes as long as you don't belittle them and assume bad faith. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:23, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support I already do this on new articles that may prove to be notable but are not yet ready for the main space. When I do move the article I leave a personal note on the creators talk page to let them know what happened along with a welcome message(Most of the time I am looking through new users contribs). Then mark the original page, which now is simply a redirect, for CSD#R2. There has been concern about this in the past as being a version of soft deletion but as long as the creators is made aware anyone else editing it should see the page move on their watchlist.- McMatter (talk)/(contrib) 13:31, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I wonder about the timing. Should a new page patroller move an article to userspace before discussion with the creator? The creator may have first saved an outline. The move could confuse them if it gives them an edit conflict when they try to save the next and more substantial version of the article. 10% – 20%[citation needed] of CSD nominations for mainspace articles are rejected as invalid. Most of the remainder clearly are valid. There are a few in the grey area in between. These could perhaps be moved to userspace by the closing admin rather than deleted, with a user talk page message. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I think it is beneficial to move some articles to draft space, especially if there are indications that the subject might merit inclusion but that the article creator is still learning how to edit. I routinely do this, although it is a four step process, even with Twinkle. The reason I oppose this is that it should not be mandatory, and per the reasons give by Beeblebrox, it create more work with little real benefit.- MrX 14:28, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Support w/Modifications I like the idea (I actually proposed it in one of the above subsections awhile back), but with a few modifications. The pages first should be checked to see if their topic has a shot at notability (a quick GNews search should do it for most), and then should be moved to the Draft: space not userspace. However for this to be implemented, non-admins need to be given the option to move pages and not leave redirects, so we don't have to go back and nominate each one for R2. I'm not sure whether that should be a given right though as new users might not leave redirects where they should, so maybe a requested right like Reviewer. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 20:56, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
    • @EoRdE6: I see what you are getting to, but the reason I suggested userspace was that we could even try to preserve one's clearly failed experiments by moving them to where they should be (sandboxes). Some newbies don't realize they have sandboxes and try to experiment in main space. The deletion of those experiments can confuse/frighten/annoy some. It's virtual space, we can move their toys to the sandbox easily rather than burn it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:05, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Evil example

Here's a fresh example which is rich in irony: structural evil. Note that this good faith but half-baked stub was first proposed for speedy deletion as WP:A11, "the subject was invented/coined/discovered by the article's creator". The structural problem here seems to be Twinkle which facilitates such bizarre nominations. Andrew D. (talk) 18:28, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Some speedies are just called wrong, Andrew - that's the way it is. I've logged loads of them here. In this case, the AfD nominator has withdrawn after you improved the article, so problem solved. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 20:18, 17 April 2015 (UTC) ch
  • No, the problem under discussion is the biting of newbies and that has not been solved. In this case, the new editor seems to have created another page first which was removed on the grounds that it was a "neogolism" (sic). I'll have to try the refund process to get that back and see what it was about but I'm already quite sure that it's not a neologism as there are no new words in the title. This editor seems to have enough stamina to try us more than once but their treatment seems quite unsatisfactory. Andrew D. (talk) 21:43, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Saving an editor is far more important than saving an article. An article may be rejected from CSD, moved to AfD, then discussed at length in jargon-ridden terms before closing as "no consensus". The sane and intelligent person who started it looks on and thinks "what a bunch of ignorant and aggressive idiots." The article survives but the editor is lost. The problem is not solved at all. (http://speedydeletion.wikia.com/ has an old version of Solution chain, and of most but not all CSD articles). Aymatth2 (talk) 22:43, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
I must say you seem to have a knack for keeping the eye on the ball in this discussion. EEng (talk) 22:58, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to "recreate" the automated version of WP:HOLICTEST

Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

While I was about to do the Wikipediholic Test (the automated version), I was instead redirected to a link saying "No redirect found". I am wondering if it is possible to "recreate" the automated version of that Wikipediholism Test to keep up with the current version. The Snowager-is awake 00:31, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Snowager, this is an unfortunate side effect of the toolserver shutdown. I've emailed the person that wrote the previous version to see if the source is available someplace so I can fork a copy to toollabs and bring it back online. I'm not holding my breath too much since the user hasn't edited here since 2010. If that doesn't happen, does anyone happen to have a webcite link to the old test so I can attempt to reverse engineer it and make something similar? :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:51, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Great news Snowager, Merphant got right back to me and emailed me the source code. Tool is now online at toollabs:wikiholic/wikiholic.pl although that may change at some point in the near future. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 02:30, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Hiding Embarrassing Pictures

Latest comment: 9 years ago9 comments7 people in discussion

I found that there are pictures which make people uncomfortable. For example, the pictures of genitals (male and female human sex organ), and pictures of diseases and some particular animals (especially some in Arthropoda). While there are needs for showing the scientific facts, we humans are genetically evolved to be uncomfortable to some facts. When a children is curious about human reproduction, he/she may found facts which is beyond his/her afford in the age. (Even I am a adult, I found I never want to contact with someone and reproduce when accidentally see the pictures of sex organs. I also want to know facts about some skin diseases, and an animal called slug. But I don't have that courage.) I suggest there can be 3 new functions planted into Wikipedia: 1. Hide/Show Pictures function, with some particular picture closed. Medical students can help to decide which kind of pictures are "not suitable for abruptly appearance to readers" 2. No-picture mode. While it can help data users on wireless services further (the data saving functions can often disrupt reading), some readers want to just look at words to make them more concentrated. 3. Safe Mode. This can be a further mode to protect violence and sex contents to children (and those who don't like them). I don't know where to send the suggestions. They may seem ridiculous, when being from a undergraduate student. Please tolerate me.Amy Xu 01:27, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

  • If you want to disable all images you can add .image { display:none !important; } to your custom.css. Trying to censor individual images for everyone runs smack in to WP:Not Censored. There is no way to help individuals selectively censor what they don't want to see without risking the tools we provide them being used for involuntary censorship, even if we could agree on how things should be classified. There has been talk of a user script or add on that was going allow censorship by classification, and we can't really stop that, but I don't know if the plans to make it ever came to anything. Monty845 01:41, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
Also, see Help:Options_to_hide_an_image#Hide_all_images_until_click_to_view for another option. Monty845 01:43, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
FWIW, the idea of content-tagging images so that they can be hidden/etc. has been long discussed before but otherwise generally rejected, in favor of a policy of "principle of least surprise". The issue is that what content is considered shocking or a problem will change from person to person, so there would be no universally good system. Instead, we rely on editors to use intelligent decisions on selecting images so that topics where shocking images would not be appropriate stay devoid of them. --MASEM (t) 02:01, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
The problem with "tagging" images as problematic is that there is no objective list of images which should be hidable. For example, many types of arthropods (mainly insects and arachnids) would be likely to be on such a list, but not butterflies (a type of insect). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:02, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
I think there was some sort of initiative to tag images and allow an outside opt-in service to block images. I don't know what happened to that. -- Gadget850 talk 21:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
WP:PERENNIAL point 2, everything on WP:NOTCENSORED, and WP:NOTHERE might be also applicable. –Be..anyone (talk) 13:16, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
The proposal is hopeless for a number of reasons, but...
  • If there were some practical way for users to selectively hide certain types of images from their own view, that would not be censorship, so NOTCENSORED is irrelevant;
  • PERENNIAL point 2 is about blocking certain images from everyone's view, which really would be censorship, so PERENNIAL doesn't apply;
  • where in hell do you get off hurling NOTHERE at someone for making a naive suggestion in obvious good faith? Think twice next time.
EEng (talk) 11:59, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

An other issue: Let's say we tag all images of spiders under some tag for allowing opt-in exclusion. User:X decides to opt-in to exclude these. Months later, some user unaware of these tags uploads a new image of a spider. Chances are that this image would remain untagged for a long time, and that User:X, knowing that (s)he won't see any pictures of spiders, will happen to run into it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:28, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for all the discussion. I've tried to use Chrome to disable all pictures in order to approach some pages without shock. Adding codes sounds not practical for me -- I use multiple devices and not sure whether I'm logged in. Most of the contributors talked about the ambiguous boundary of "What is censorship, and what is not." But as we all overemphasizing Freedom, we also can't grantee that children, people with vascular and psychological problems will be safe from the pictures. I will never forget the ugly sex organ pictures. Still, I think there can be a simple "non-picture mode" , or even just a friendly reminder at the top of all the pages will work fine.Amy Xu 08:46, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

For Amy Xu, and anyone else, I wanted to point out that there was an Image_filter_referendum involving over 24,000 people in 2011. There was a complicated range of views, with many people showing up at the extremes (many strongly against filtering in all respects, many strongly pro-filtering in all respects). People were more flexible on some issues than others. But a coherent picture emerges if you look at it piece by piece:

  1. In principal, there is a sufficient level of support to establish a filter.
  2. That filter must be OPT-IN.
  3. That filter must be trivial to disable. Clicking the empty image-box would display the image. (It would not offer any level of "parent control" enforcement at all).
  4. The filter must be CULTURE NEUTRAL. The community is not willing to get bogged down in hopeless opinion-arguments over "how much skin or anatomy" equals "pornography". Nor is the community willing to make up arbitrary categories (porn, violence, gore, offensive religious imagery etc.) It would have to be a block-all or block-none filter.

The people who strongly opposed a filter still opposed a filter, and the people who strongly wanted to block the "naughty bits" had zero interest in a toothless block-everything filter which no one would use. At that point virtually all support for the project collapsed.

That sort of filter is a viable option, but there just isn't any significant active support for it. Alsee (talk) 12:38, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: Exploring Editor Characteristics

Latest comment: 9 years ago10 comments6 people in discussion

I'd greatly appreciate feedback from this Wikipedia community on the following proposal:

While there are advantages stemming from the anonymity of Wikipedia editors’ profiles, the Wikipedia community might benefit (and further expand) by accurately describing the traits and characteristics of its editors. The paramount identification of gender trouble on Wikipedia inspired a conversation about gender inequality in online communities and the 2011 survey begins to document this problem. However, it remains unknown how gender might be a precursor or influencing factor in the degree and frequency by which someone edits. In addition, we don’t know what other user attributes are more predominately represented on Wikipedia and how these attributes might influence editing.

This grant would explore the gender gap through an intersectionality approach that may further contextualize how group membership (i.e. identifying as female and an ethnic minority) and enactment of one's identity contribute to this gender disparity. Are there user characteristics that make individuals more likely to edit on Wikipedia or edit more frequently and at higher volumes on Wikipedia?

In order to accurately explore the main goals of the Inspire Campaign, we must be able to effectively characterize our community. Any interventions that we develop should reflect and match the needs of the target population, requiring a thorough understanding of the traits and behaviors of our editor community. As a direct extension of the recent gender gap research on Wikipedia, we’d like to conduct another study that uses a Talk Page posted survey to compare the traits of the super-editor, the active editor (moderate editing), and the inactive editor (infrequent edits). A more thorough description of the project can be found on the proposal page.Cshanesimpson (talk) 13:25, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

A couple of questions we've already run into:

  1. How accurate are the Wikipedia editor rankings?
  2. We'd like to explore beyond the English Wikipedia. Are there suggestions about other Wikipedia's that have more robust activity?
  3. As Wikipedians vary in demographic characteristics, any ideas about appropriate incentives for such a diverse community? We've identified iPad's in the grant, but an online incentive would be much simpler to distribute (i.e. Amazon gift cards).Cshanesimpson (talk) 13:25, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • So basically you want to see if the editors who are willing to out themselves as something other than Old White Male edit differently, and if it's even worth recruiting these people? Jerod Lycett (talk) 19:32, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Edit counts can tell you very roughly how active an editor has been, but I really dislike that you call them "editor rankings", which plays into an unfortunately simplistic metric of an editor's value to the project. (To answer your question there are likely numerous technical reasons these counts are wrong in large and small ways, but that probably has little effect on what you should be using them for -- sorting editors qualitatively by level of "activity".)
  • I hope the incentives you're contemplating are to reward participation in your project, not for getting people to edit. The latter would very much attract not-the-kind-of-editor-we-want.
  • I think you'll have your hands full with the English WP -- why don't you move on to others after success here?
EEng (talk) 20:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
I appreciate your feedback Jerodlycett and EEng and I hope I can clarify a few of your concerns. The reference to "editor ranking" was only in the context of the article's name. I agree with you that it would be incredibly difficult to qualitatively rank editors based on their edits. The Editor Ranking would serve as a sampling method by which I could identify some of our high-volume editors. However, I'm very open to suggestions about other methods by which this could be done.
Yes, you're correct that incentives/compensation are only provided in my studies for participation in the study; they are not given for editing. This would be a huge ethical issue and would not be granted approval from an ethics board such as the one I'll be using. However, we are constantly bombarded with surveys and I feel a small incentive often effectively shows appreciation for participation.
Good point regarding the English Wikipedia! I'd received feedback from other wiki communities recommending that I should expand beyond the English Wikipedia to capture a larger and more diverse group of editors. In short, I'm not entirely sure how effective my recruitment efforts will be. I'd like to think of this proposal as an exploratory study, which could eventually lead to other studies. However, I need to acquire a decent sample size to capture relationships in the data (hence the "beyond English Wikipedia statement"). Cshanesimpson (talk) 12:40, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
I think it is important to survey editors again to see what might have changed since 2011, I'm not sure if an open-ended talk page survey is the right way to go. Some people won't be comfortable answering those types of questions on their talk page, but might be more amenable to doing so via a survey where the individual results aren't posted to Wikipedia. Also, I hope that the sampling technique you'll use to choose who to invite to take the survey takes into account the difference between content creators and gnomes or new page patrollers. A gnome or new page patroller may have hundreds of edits in one day reverting vandalism or tagging articles or fixing misspellings. A content creator might have only 3 edits that day, but they may have created a 5,000-word article. Depending on how you classify super-editors vs active-editors, you may end up with a disproportional look at what is going on. Karanacs (talk) 19:10, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Agreed. We have many different types of editors here, doing very different things. More research identifying these types would be very useful, but I'm not sure this proposal addresses that. Johnbod (talk) 17:25, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
Thank you Karanacs for your feedback! We'd only post the survey to Talk Pages without posting the actual results on such a public space. I think you're completely correct that Wikipedians wouldn't want to publicly post that information and my academic IRB definitely wouldn't approve such a study due to the lack of confidentiality. You have a really interesting point regarding the "gnomes" and this is likely our biggest obstacle for the project. It's incredibly difficult to "judge" the number of edits an editor makes based on volume and frequency. Besides the Wikipedia Editor Rankings, do you have any suggestions for a more accurate classification? I've heard there are significant problems with the recent Wikipedia editor rankings and am very open to exploring different recruitment methods.Cshanesimpson (talk) 14:00, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't know of any more "accurate" classification - there are as many ways to classify editors as there are reasons for being here. WP:WBFAN lists out the most prolific featured article writers, although it doesn't show whether they are still active editors. Still, this ought to get you some ideas for a few editors who are heavy into content creation. I couldn't find a corresponding list for frequent GA collaborators. It might be worth randomly sampling people who have nominated articles at WP:GAN and/or at WP:DYK - that should get editors who are involved more in content than gnoming work. Karanacs (talk) 17:11, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
Cshanesimpson, how much of User:EpochFail's work have you looked into? He's worked on this before. There are all sorts of problems, but you could probably build on what he has done. Two examples: If you count "bytes added" as a means of adding content, then a RecentChanges patroller who reverts vandal-blanking will be reported as "writing" the most content. If you count number of edits (regardless of size), then you will systematically underestimate women's contributions, since women (on average) save less frequently than men (when contributing the same amount of content). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:33, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

More options in Wikilove

Latest comment: 9 years ago12 comments4 people in discussion

Those who develop WP software , can create more attractive and sleek Barstar pictures. Almost every Barnstar looks like made of wood . There is only Kitten , but even colourful birds and aquarium fishes should be available instead of only one option "A Kitten for you" . I agree "Make your own" is available where we can create our own design ourselves . But it would be better to have Wikilove pictures to get updated now.--CosmicEmperor (talk) 05:35, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I was wondering whether it is time for new barnstars that get rid of the skeuomorphic design in favour of the newer style of the internet. Note, thus isn't the job of "those who develop WP software", its up to whoever edits the barnstar templates. I like what the teahouse has going, simple flat and colourful modern looking ones. Ill link one in a second. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 13:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
  Teahouse Barnstar
See how simple and colourful this barnstar is? EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 13:34, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Feel free to ping me or post to my talk page with specific ideas as I've done a lot of barnstars (specifically the Teahouse ones)/welcomes/custom wikiLove scripts (such as the Teahouse one and my ACC one). I'd be happy to offer technical assistance with development. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 14:00, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
    • @Technical 13: Can you create barnstars which is like glass , crystal , with colourful back ground. After that it has to be approved by administrators which will replace the old-school designs.@EoRdE6: Now only Teahouse is looking good.CosmicEmperor (talk) 10:03, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
      • I'm not a very visual person, if you can draw me a picture or give me a link so I can have an idea of what you mean by "like glass/crystal" then I can turn it into a real barnstar. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 10:41, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

@Technical 13: . Okay these might help. But will administrators accept you hard work?

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120405195837/creepypasta/images/7/7a/Crystal_star.png
http://copperpyramids.net/images/DSCN2245.JPG
https://fb0c68d2a86204ac4d87-d5263dbb6817347ef00a6d0c2777828c.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/m_products_products_photo/2000x2000/glass-star-achievement-awards-engraved-4-124113.jpg
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/campanula-star-flower-mandala-rene-crystal.jpg
http://art.ngfiles.com/images/45000/45800_chronamut_cosmic-star-flower.png
http://cdn.vectorstock.com/i/composite/20,22/spring-flower-star-vector-572022.jpg
http://th09.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2013/343/a/6/my_angel_winged_star_tattoo_design___3_by_shannonxnaruto-d6xclzg.jpg
C E (talk) 07:05, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
  • There is actually... let me find it... WP:AWARDS for the discussion of creating new barnstars. That said, since we've already started the discussion here, the steps to do this would be to decide what you want each barnstar to say, and which graphic to use for each one. For example, Media:Cosmic-star-flower.png could be used to create a new "Cosmic Contributor" barnstar. I'm not sure what good wording would be, and that's where you guys will have to come in. Once there is a set of new barnstars that you want to package up and add to WikiLove, then I can create a custom WikiLove userscript that you can use. No administrator "acceptance" is required up to this point. Once the user script is created and we have beta tested it and no bugs or issues have been found, we can hold a public forum to see if they are interesting enough and useful enough to the general enwp community and what level of inclusion the community wants - be it a gadget (on/off by default), integrated into MediaWiki:Common.js, or some other level of community acceptance (admin acceptance still not required). I'll also note that the image I've already added to Commons is the only one from your list that is not assumed copyrighted, so that will certainly be a factor in developing barns starts. There can be absolutely NO unfree images for barnstars. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 12:51, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Quick plausibiliy check, you are both aware of c:category:Wikimedia barnstars, aren't you? Barnstars almost trump certain male body parts on commons.  –Be..anyone (talk) 13:50, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I was aware it existed despite the fact I did not know the exact location. Does not exclude the ability to add more free images to the category and create new barnstars if these editors wish to do so. I'll happily assist with my template and javascript abilities as needed. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 14:20, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
@Be..anyone: Those barnstars are not as attractive as the Teahouse barnstar. C E (talk) 15:00, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
@Technical 13: I don't want to copy the exact images as i don't have any copyright. I just showed those pictures to answer your question about what i meant about barnstars which looked like glass and crystal. I thought you can draw like an artist. Are you alone or there are others also. And we can also add those colourful aquarium fishes along with kittens. C E (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Flaw in page Redirects - page histories are deleted

Latest comment: 9 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Hi all. I noticed that people cannot now see the page history of Redirected pages. Information is lost, as well as allowing for potential abuse.

For example, here's a recent page redirect - just WHAT was on this page?

ATadConcerned (talk) 03:26, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi ATadConcerned. There never *was* anything on that page. The page was created as a redirect. Other pages, for example Public housing precincts in Singapore had content before they were redirected, and that content is still visible in the page history. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 03:31, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Howicus for explaining the situation. It took a minute to figure out (ok, many minutes), but I now realise that edit was about creating a shortcut, and not removing content. I thought pages were getting wiped out and people's work lost! ATadConcerned (talk) 04:02, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Also, when a page is moved, the history goes with it and (unless admins intervene) a new redirect is created in the former page's place, which has no history other than a single entry which will say something like "[user] moved page [old page] to [new page]". You might have been seeing that. Ivanvector (talk) 00:48, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Tolerate unused list-defined references

Latest comment: 9 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

The use of list-defined references has both an upside and a downside. The upside includes the vast reduction of clutter in the body wikitext, which is of greatest benefit during the initial period of high editing activity; if there's little editing activity, clutter in the wikitext doesn't matter much.

During this high activity, it's a hassle keeping the References section in sync with the body's use of those refs. Content gets removed, the associated <ref name=refname/> tag is also removed, leaving an unused reference. The software responds to this situation in two ways:

  • At the bottom of the References section, it issues the big red cite error, Cite error: A list-defined reference named "refname" is not used in the content (see the help page).
  • It adds the article to the tracking category, Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting, which is regularly processed by cleanup editors.

The article's editors monitor the References section for this error. If they see one, they comment out the unused ref, thereby eliminating the message and removing the article from the tracking cat.

The preceding alone is extra work involved with LDRs. But sometimes, the content removal is reverted, restoring the content along with the <ref name=refname/> tag. Since the ref has been commented out, this creates an undefined reference and the big red error message, Cite error: The named reference refname was invoked but never defined (see the help page). When the error is noticed, which in some cases is some time later, the reference must be un-commented back in, which is yet more work. Rinse, repeat.

This added hassle is, I think, a significant part of why LDRs are not more widely used. I propose to reduce the downside of LDRs by tolerating unused references; i.e., don't issue a message, and don't add the article to a tracking cat. As far as I can tell, this would have no cost except some wasted space in the References section when a ref is unused. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:12, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

We could blank or modify MediaWiki:Cite error references missing key. But, as the help page shows, we have found editors stuffing templates into LDRs that break things. Need to do some testing before implementation. -- Gadget850 talk 12:25, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
Does this break things in a way that creates unused references, or undefined ones? ―Mandruss ☎ 12:41, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
BTW, I left out an added complication involving a bot "rescuing" an undefined ref before the LDR can be un-commented. This results in two identical copies of the ref: the commented-out LDR and another copy in the body. This eliminates the "undefined" error, so the problem is easy to miss. This has to be understood, watched for, and fixed when it happens. I have just fixed seven of these in Shooting of Michael Brown, which occurred while I was away from the article for an extended period. Fixing them reduced the article's size by over 3,000 bytes by eliminating the duplication, and I doubt I have fixed all of them yet. This problem would not exist if there were no need to comment out LDRs. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:48, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
Excellent suggestion, Mandruss! The huge advantage of LDR is that you can pick up the refs from one article and copy them to another; the disadvantage is that you then have to use them all to avoid errors. It'd be good if this could be implemented.
Vaguely related: would it possible to make (or do we already have) a template that would accept a list of references with ref tags (as for example, refs copied from an LDR-formatted page) and display them as a bulleted list, say in a Further reading section? They could then be easily moved to the ref section as needed, without any need to reformat them. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:07, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
I can't see any way to do that. Anything in a <ref> tag will be immediately parsed by Cite. -- Gadget850 talk 20:42, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
Probably unnecessary, but I'll clarify that you're referring only to the preceding comment (I think), lest anyone think this proposal is dead. Frankly I'm surprised by the low interest. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:52, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Template:Talk header and resolving the issues raised in the Template:Maintained TfD

Latest comment: 9 years ago23 comments7 people in discussion

Now that {{maintained}} and its attempt at a successor are gone, and given the spirited discussions thereon (see related, above), I'd like to make a direct proposal that I believe will fix the issue that the templates attempted to resolve: the newbie asking for some direction.

{{Talk header}} currently includes a parameter that renders:

I presume a knowledgeable someone could build the code that, only if one or more editors identifies as a {{|volunteer(x)=}}, changes that line to (as an example):

  • Questions about how to improve this article? Ask a volunteer.

"Ask a volunteer" would link to the creation of a new topic in the article talk, which would leave simultaneous notice(s) on the talk page of any listed volunteer(s).

The names of any volunteers would not appear within the template; they would appear when editing article talk (as an example):

{{talk header|volunteer1=User1|volunteer2=User2}}

Naturally, the specifics are open for discussion; one could, for instance, use steward rather than volunteer—though I personally find "volunteer" more likely to find appeal among any newbies inclined to ask for help.

So, let's see if this ball rolls.   —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 05:27, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I have a simple idea on what the link could do. It could create a new section of the talk page that was preloaded with {{ping|<volunteer 1>|<volunteer 2>...}}. Then the various volunteers would be pinged through notifications. If it's decided that the volunteers' names shouldn't be visible, then it could be pre-loaded with a variation on {{@FAC}} or {{@TFA}} that would ping the supplied volunteers' names without displaying them. The downside is that the editor would have to sign the initial edit or the notification will not go through, so maybe we need to pre-load the signature code too along with a few comments to let the person know to leave the ping template and signature intact. Imzadi 1979 → 07:09, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Per {{talk header}}: "This template should only be placed where it's needed. Don't visit talk pages just to add this template, and don't place it on the talk pages of new articles. Talk pages that are frequently misused, that attract frequent or perpetual debate, articles often subject to controversy, and highly-visible or popular topics may be appropriate for this template." -- Gadget850 talk 10:33, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
... and I'm guessing that someone going to the trouble of identifying as a volunteer to assist other editors would do so all but exclusively on such "needed" articles. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 19:32, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
The problem with the pings is that a) half the time they still don't seem to work and b) unless somebody removes them, they'll stay there forever and deteriorate. It's like WikiProjects which have a "list of members", many of which haven't edited since 2008. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:00, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Nature of the beast, I think ...   —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 20:29, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
I would have to oppose the proposal on its face. I've already seen {{Talk header}} itself abused too much by being applied to talk pages that are otherwise blank—or just containing WikiProject tags—or to inactive talk pages that has archives. I would genuinely like to see the use of that template scaled back to just active, high-profile talk pages. Also, the original problems with such a feature appearing to encourage article ownership are still there. If a person is going to "volunteer" to help other editors on a particular article, they would have the page on their watch list anyways. —Farix (t | c) 11:07, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that is what the watchlist is for. Post your message on the talk page and it will usually be noticed by someone. Or if not – if you don’t get a reply quickly or if you notice the talk page is little trafficked and visited – post also, even at the same time, to a project talk page or other noticeboard. Sensible project headers on a talk page facilitate this, and are generally the first place to look for help if it cannot be found on a talk page. Or use a {{help me}} template. Or check the page history for those editors most active in the area your query relates to. All of these are far better than a 'volunteer' link which may link to an editor who hasn't edited the article for a long time, if at all (with some editors thinking the best way of helping the project is by 'volunteering' to help out on pages they have never edited before).--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 12:19, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
The late templates were often, as I read it, for editors with hundreds if not thousands of pages on their watchlists. Plus, in some cases, a new editor may not know how to utilize {{help me}} or the article-talk history (especially if archived), which I thought was the whole point of the late templates, abused or otherwise. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 19:44, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
If you are really at a loss what to do there’s a 'help' link on the left hand side of every page that leads you to many useful sources of information and places of help. Or just hit 'edit', type something, hit 'save'. Even if you ask your question in the wrong place someone will usually be along to answer, perhaps moving it or replying on your talk page if necessary. Having a 'volunteer' link/pinging a 'volunteer' doesn’t make this any easier.
BTW I have over five thousand pages on my Watchlist, and have no problem watching things. Most of the pages are dead: user [talk] pages, old AfDs. I remove very active pages such as ANI once any discussion I'm interested in is archived. I also look at my own Contributions, from which I can see changes to any pages I recently edited which are most likely to be ones with active threads like this, and look at various other pages which can’t be watched for updates and changes to them.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 20:54, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
As do I; but an awful lot of editors don't have the experience either of us has, and the whole point—in theory, anyway—was to increase access to help for those who need it. I believe the proposed changes help facilitate this. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 21:04, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

how ? If you link to an editors talk page it can be a far worse place for a new user to go: maybe too long as archiving’s not set up, maybe backed up with abuse that some editors (admins e.g.) attract, maybe blank as the user clears everything they’ve read. Maybe decorated with strange colours and styles that some editors like. No instructions or indication it’s ever read. Which it might not be immediately – the editor might be on holiday, too busy, have retired from editing, even been blocked.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 21:20, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

It would not link to an editor's talk page; it would leave a notice on the editor's/s' talk page(s) that a question/comment was left on the article's talk page. It would increase the potential for a faster response by a person familiar with the article and/or policy. The question/comment would be in article space regardless. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 22:13, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
How exactly would that work? An editor asks a question on the talk page and the 'volunteer' is automatically notified on their talk page? That would get rather tedious if it were a busy talk page, worse if they volunteered on many – that’s what Watchlists are for. Or the editor making a query has to do something different, and if so what?--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 22:20, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes, the volunteer would be automatically notified, but only if the "Ask a volunteer" link is used. There would not be any such notification for any other edits to such an article talk page. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 22:25, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes but how? They click on the link and it opens up the edit window as normal, but silently sends notifications to the 'volunteers'? It would not know at that point what the question was, or what the topic was, or even who the editor was (as they had not signed). Often they will not even finish their question; they will just close the window, or leave the computer for someone else, or lose their internet connection, or whatever. But it will have still sent the notification. It sounds entirely unworkable and likely to annoy everyone involved. And that's on top of the other issues identified with such templates.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 23:09, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
That's up to an actual coder to figure out.   —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 23:27, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
Almost anything can be coded, it just has to be designed first. And certainly this must work like other things on the web or on WP – click on a link it takes you somewhere etc. – as to do anything radically different would just confuse people. So, in the design you are thinking of, you click on the link and what happens?--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 00:06, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

The idea would be that it creates a new section and notifies any volunteer(s) only after Save page is clicked. There wouldn't be a point in anything further if the new section is not actually created. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 00:18, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

In theory possible but it would require features adding to the Mediawiki software. You would need to e.g. store some state information in a cookie which when the user hit 'save' it checked and if the state was set fired off the notification(s) to the volunteer(s). But I can't see that happening: it would be a major undertaking and perhaps have performance or privacy implications. It would not be possible with just a template.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 00:38, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
How is this any different from a watch list? Yes, some editors may watch hundreds of articles, but if it is too much of them, they need to trim their watchlists down. Doesn't this encourage page ownership, like the old maintenance template did? This makes the "volunteers" appear as gatekeepers for the article. Is there actually a problems that need this type of solution? Honestly, I don't see where there is a problem. —Farix (t | c) 01:07, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't see where templates promote an attitude; in other words, ownership promotes "ownership". The idea, if nothing else, is to promote stewardship and a spirit of helpfulness in a more targeted manner, as opposed to, say, a general help page. —ATinySliver/ATalkPage 01:18, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I dunno, if I were a first-day newbie and I saw a link like that, I'd expect a response instantly or within a few minutes. The possibility that they might be pinging someone who's on a long trip (or left altogether) would probably cause some unintentional anger. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 23:10, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
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