User talk:Iridescent/Archive 48

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Question

Hiya, fairly sure User:Appleson88 is an autobiography. It also contains BLP violations such as the DOB. I understand that you as an admin must agf more then other folks but maybe this one was a good nom? I'd suggest making it into a draft personally. Unbroken Chain (talk) 18:56, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Contrary to what some of the more overzealous new page patrollers seem to think, Wikipedia does not have and never has had a policy against autobiographies even in article space (although we do discourage it, as it's difficult to write neutrally about yourself). We certainly don't have a policy against people writing about themselves on their own userpage given that the entire point of userpages is to tell other editors about oneself, provided it doesn't slip over the line into Inappropriate or excessive personal information unrelated to Wikipedia (my emphasis); nor do we have nor ever have had a policy against people using userspace as a place to draft articles. (There are occasionally circumstances in which it's appropriate to move something from article space to draftspace; I can't imagine any circumstances in which it would be appropriate to move someone's userpage to draftspace, which is what you appear to be suggesting.)

This was clearly an inappropriate use of WP:U5, which has an intentionally very narrowly defined and specific remit; if any admin had actually deleted it on such tenuous grounds, any other editor would have been entirely within their rights to haul them off to arbcom for admin abuse. Speedy deletion is only for material which unambiguously meets one of the categories listed at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion; if you feel a page ought to be deleted but you can't find an appropriate category, the answer is to send it to MfD/AfD as appropriate for discussion, not to try to shoehorn it into a category which doesn't apply. ‑ Iridescent 21:03, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Guess I caught you on a bad day. Thanks for the response, I still disagree but you are the boss. Hope the afternoon treats you better. Unbroken Chain (talk) 21:19, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

That's a pretty patronizing response. To be fair, I imagine "Guess I caught you on a bad day" was an escalation to "Contrary to what some of the more overzealous new page patrollers seem to think..." (which, if I thought was directed at me, would have annoyed me too). But everything Iri said after the first 14 words is spot on; I'd hate to see you write off the whole comment because Iri got your back up. FWIW, if I had seen that U5 tag, I'd have removed it too. Whether I was having a good or bad day. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:40, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

There is reasons you both are admin and I am not. I accept this, that was just my nice way of saying their response was a bit acerbic. Molehill in the scheme of things. Have a great day Floq. Unbroken Chain (talk) 21:43, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

@Unbroken Chain (Non-administrator comment) I agree with Floquenbeam above. Having run into the "You can't write autobiographies on Wikipedia" myth repeatedly, I entirely understand Iris' reponse and almost entirely agree with their response. Floquenbeam has already bought up my one critique about said response. The userspace is more or less blalantly designed for Wikipedia editors to talk about themselves.

You, on the other hand, are lacking in perspective, and are being hypersensitive to criticism to the point of bordering on being rude. You asked for advice, and Iri gave to you. The only entirely polite response to solicited advice, even if given a bit harshly, is "thank you."

I should follow my own advice about responding to advice more often. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:35, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Let me be explicitly clear, for me this issue is resolved. I appreciate the that you feel the need to protect an admin but my comment about Flow and Iri and admin was a genuine one. Consider Philippines 2:3 "Do nothing out of contentiousness or out of egotism, but with humility consider others superior to you" I'm open to being offbase and I recognize my failings in judgement at times. I didn't like the comment about over zealousness because it was acerbic and to me ABF. That being said, again I accept the rationale (don't agree but accept) and I acknowledge administrators have to balance more then just my perspective. Unbroken Chain (talk) 23:44, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

@Unbroken Chain I don't see any ABF at all. I do see you personalizing a statement directed at an anonymous group of people (the overzealous statement). I hope you realize that it wasn't likely directed at you personally. Like, I'm pretty sure that's why you're reacting the way you are; it could be entirely because you misinterpreted a comment. In fact, if the bible quote is there to imply that other participants in this discussion are acting out of contentious and egotism, that's an ABF on your own part.

As an aside, the Bible quote seems out of nowhere, so forgive me if I'm misinterpreting the context in which you're using it.

To be fair, I've done the same as you. Usually I do it when I'm enthusiastic and passionate about something. One might say that by some standards, I'm overzealous when I take things personally. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 00:07, 31 March 2022 (UTC) (edited at 00:08, 31 March 2022 (UTC) because of keyboard lag)

I'm done. I'm not going to pick a fight here. I disagree and that's all, feel free and view this however you want but I won't waste anymore energy. I've attempted to explain myself more in depth here [[1]], if 500 words is too much here's your forewarning. Unbroken Chain (talk) 00:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

You seem to have misinterpreted Contrary to what some of the more overzealous new page patrollers seem to think as being directed at you, which it really isn't—it was an expression of general exasperation at the fact that this situation keeps occurring. As any admin who's spent any time working CAT:CSD will testify, doing so means spending an inordinate amount of time removing misplaced deletion tags placed entirely in good faith by NPP-ers who've picked up the idea that Wikipedia has a rule against autobiographies. To pick up on your comments here (apologies in advance for the length):

• There were reasons to what I was saying what I did. I didn't explain them explicitly because admin should understand those, at least in my mind.

  If you're not going to give any kind of explanation, you can't then complain when people have to try to guess what you mean. This is particularly true in a case like this, where you're asking that another editor invoke WP:IAR and override policy to delete a page out-of-process.

• The page made was an autobiography and in my opinion an attempt to self publicize. Especially in Userspace I think this is a bad idea.

  Writing about oneself is literally the point of userpages. We routinely delete blatant promotion from userpages, but I don't think one could reasonably describe that page as such. In those circumstances, where it isn't immediately obvious that the page meets one of the criteria for speedy deletion (emphasis on 'immediately obvious'; speedy deletion only applies to unambiguous cases), if you feel a userpage is inappropriate the correct thing to do is take it to MfD.

• My ideas aren't always in line with the communities and I try and accept that where it happens

  This isn't a case of you having a different opinion either to me or to the community. This is a case of your opinions contradicting Wikipedia policy (and actual formal written policy, not the usual "guidelines and community standards" Wikispeak that allows wiggle room).

• Describing the work that I like to volunteer. as overzealous, and then kinda go hyperbolic with the straight to arbcom bit was theatrical, in my opinion.

  "Overzealous" wasn't directed at you. The 'straight to arbcom' bit wasn't hyperbole, theatrical etc; for an admin to delete a page out-of-process is admin abuse unless the admin in question can explain themselves, and while the big cases are the part of arbcom that gets the most notice, they're also the body to which allegations of admin abuse need to be directed. (Even if I deleted it and someone complained, all that would happen would be a one line "Iridescent is admonished for inappropriate deletions and advised to be more careful in future.}}" announcement at WP:ACN—or even just a quiet word by email—unless someone demonstrated that it was part of a pattern of conduct, but arbcom is where these things go. Dealing with the endless stream of "an admin did something that contravened policy!" complaints is one of the many arbcom functions that one doesn't appreciate how much time it wastes until one's actually been on the receiving end of the arbcom-l mailbox.)

• You can consider what I did ABF

  Nobody is saying this. I consider it a good-faith misunderstanding—or more likely, misremembering—of what Wikipedia's deletion policy says; it would only be ABF if I thought you knew that this page wasn't eligible for speedy deletion and deliberately tagged it anyway.

• That page would have been deleted by another admin

  No, it really wouldn't. Certainly different admins will have different responses to marginal cases as to whether something crosses the "unambiguous promotion" line, but this case wasn't marginal; the page in question doesn't contain any promotional language and is in a {{noindex}}-ed namespace so is essentially invisible.

• With a draft there is a time limit to how long it can sit without editing and then it gets deleted.

  But why would you want to put another user—against their will—into a position where their userpage gets deleted after six months? Either the userpage is non-problematic in which case keeping it indefinitely isn't a problem, or it's problematic in which case it should go to MfD?

As I said, apologies for the length of this but I thought it important to explain it in full, as I think your whole complaint is based on a misunderstanding. Nobody here is saying that this page should be immune from deletion; what every person here is saying (and what any other admin you choose to ask will say) is that this page is ineligible for speedy deletion which can only be used on userpages in a very few narrowly defined circumstances. (It's only been a couple of years since the RHaworth case. Admins being sloppy with out-of-process speedy deletions is something that's taken much more seriously now than it was in earlier times.) ‑ Iridescent 06:25, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your response Iri and I'm sorry this issue became more time, effort and drama then what it was worth. You make good points about RHaworth. I always thought R did a good job personally but there are plenty that come in to pile on when the time comes to it. Thank you for the time you invested writing the response and reading my own to this. Unbroken Chain (talk) 13:46, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I've updated some of the documentation.

What I think would be most helpful (long-term; documentation is always a long-term solution) is to get some examples of blatant promotionalism into CSD. "Buy this excellent widget for the lowest prices at our website now!" is the kind of thing that was meant to be covered. "Alice Expert is an award-winning cryptanalyst" is not. The first is something that never belongs on Wikipedia. The second is a plain statement of the facts – facts that happen to be extremely positive, but still just the facts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@Primefac reverted this change, because he understands WP:FAKEARTICLE as meaning that it is "not acceptable to have "article-like material" on a user page". Primefac, I think you could contribute significantly to this discussion (sorry that you're now going to have to read a couple thousand words here to catch up). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

While I can’t help but find Primefac an inherent contradiction, and we seem to rub each other wrong, he’s basically always right. In this case, no, drafts do not belong one one’s main Userpage, except for when your are a newcomer who’s created an account in the name of your desired article, and you draft it in the obvious place, and we try to not bite the newcomer. In these conflicting cases, policy should reflect ideal practice, not tolerated bad practice. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:33, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree with policy should reflect ideal practice, not tolerated bad practice. Wikipedia is essentially a common-law system; guildelines reflect "the way we usually do things" and if we always follow the guideline other than in rare IAR situations, it becomes a policy. That is, our practice dictates the policy, we don't write policies to prescribe a particular practice. I agree that using one's main user or user talk page as a drafting area should be strongly discouraged as it confuses anyone else visiting them, but given that we've tolerated both for 21 years and counting, we can't just unilaterally announce that it's no longer allowed without going through all the stages of a full community consultation. ‑ Iridescent 20:02, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

If you want it that way, then the explanation is convoluted. If you are a new user, or an SPA, writing a new article on Topic X, then under WP:BITE you will be allowed to register as User:Topic X and to draft on the main userpage. If the draft stays there, then experienced editors will WP:Move the draft to a user subpage. Some editors will move it to draftspace, although this is controversial.

If you are an experienced editor, and you want to draft, then you should draft in you user sandbox, or other subpages in userspace, or in draftspace.

WP:UP is a guideline page that is not about unilateral announcements. However, words written at WP:UP can be suddenly enforced via deletion at MfD. Personally, this motivates me to watch MfD, to watch out for weird bad stuff that might happen if no one is paying attention. WP:UP, like WP:N, is notionally a mere guideline, but it gets enforced under deletion policy. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:20, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Tell that to the 'established editors' who use their talk pages to write articles when they're blocked, then cut and paste or get one of their buddies to cut and paste. I don't see anyone lining up to delete their pages. U5 is just another way for the admins to make it harder for new members to join the club of editors who are immune from the rules. 2A04:4A43:407F:DEE8:0:0:1A34:416D (talk) 10:51, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

That would be block evasion. Dob them in at WP:SPI. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:32, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

To be pedantic, it's not as straightforward as that. 2A04 is correct in that in the past consensus has been to allow established editors serving short-term blocks to draft content on their talkpages, provided it's not a continuation of the activity that got them blocked. (If we banned the practice, the only effect would be that they'd just email the changes to a friend to post, which would have the exact same effect in terms of content but would be less transparent in terms of attribution.) Even outright "please make this edit for me" proxying is allowed provided the edits in question are constructive and they have a legitimate reason for making the edit—if you want a concrete example, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard was posted by me on behalf of a blocked editor, as it was an obvious improvement on a redlink and there was no suggestion that in writing it the editor was continuing the behaviour that got them blocked. Policies are there to try to improve Wikipedia or at least slow its deterioration, not to be a club with which we beat people who don't show absolute adherence to The Rules.

Where it veers into problem territory is with editors like Rich Farmbrough who post long lists of 'suggestions' while blocked, or when an account so obviously exists just to do the bidding of a blocked editor that it may as well be a sockpuppet even if there's a different person behind it. I don't think that's the case 2A04 is raising here—rather, people like TRM who use their talkpage as a jotter while they're temporarily unable to access their subpages. ‑ Iridescent 17:34, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Agree with the broad point, but unfortunately, a lot of absolutely-not-marginal bad-U5s do get deleted by other admins. (A good off-wiki friend of mine who I tried to get into editing made a userpage full of userboxes but never quite got into making content; the page popped up on my watchlist as U5ed a while back.) There are distinct geographic patterns to this; a nasty amount of CAT:U5 at any given point is "rule-abiding autobiographical userpage of South Asian editor". Vaticidalprophet 20:07, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Interesting concepts, the page I was speaking bad wasn't crazy bad, more of a borderline case IMO. I'm probably too far on the delete line then others may be. It really is a hard road to hoe because of the subjective nature of deletion. Probably better to err on the preserve side of things I suppose. I did now know that User pages weren't indexed for search either. You learn all sorts of stuff on this site. Unbroken Chain (talk) 21:09, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

U5 is grossly overused, yes. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:30, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

User:Jo-Jo Eumerus, is it grossly overused? As opposed to overused? I am interested, because I was a key proponent of U5, and am active at DRV where deletion complaints are reviewed. If there are gross misapplications, why do they not go to DRV? Is it because DRV requires that the deleted page should not be deleted, and the U5-ed page was worthless but not quite U5-eligible? SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:39, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Overused in the sense that I keep seeing drafts and brief description pages about oneself being tagged. I am willing to bet that most people won't realize that DRV exists. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:00, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree with I am willing to bet that most people won't realize that DRV exists, and I'd go a stage further and say that even when people are aware DRV exists, most people actively avoid it. DRV has a small enough group of regular participants that even though there are only a couple of crazies there, the odds of encountering one are quite high, and many people (including me) would take the view of "even though I fundamentally disagree with this outcome life's too short to get involved in a month-long argument with a gaggle of obsessives". It's the same reason people avoid other processes that have been hijacked by a clique, such as FAC. ‑ Iridescent 20:06, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Even though I don't like many recent trends at FAC, I don't think it's fair to say it has been "hijacked by a clique". It is desperate for more reviewers, and actually the 2021 total # of reviews was the highest since 2014, and well up on 2020 . 2018 was the low point. Somewhere there's a list of regular reviewers, & there are quite a lot, many of whom might form several cliques, but certainly not just one. Johnbod (talk) 20:19, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

These are the stats for last year (courtesy of Mike Christie):

Reviewers for 2021

# reviews Type of review Reviewer Content Source Image Accessibility Nikkimaria 19 112 156 Buidhe 38 20 192 Hog Farm 73 38 5 The Rambling Man 90 3 1 Gog the Mild 73 12 5 Z1720 70 10 Heartfox 16 11 1 41 Aoba47 58 2 5 Casliber 49 1 Lee Vilenski 46 2 1 Aza24 21 26 FunkMonk 46 Jo-Jo Eumerus 12 22 8 Wehwalt 37 2 3 Hawkeye7 23 10 6 Amakuru 24 9 SandyGeorgia 31 2 Tim riley 33 Mike Christie 30 1 SNUGGUMS 17 13 Nick-D 29 1 ChrisTheDude 30 Usernameunique 1 26 Edwininlondon 20 6 HJ Mitchell 26 Ceoil 23 2 Dudley Miles 24 Chidgk1 24 Iazyges 11 11 Jens Lallensack 21 1 HumanxAnthro 21 Moisejp 12 3 6 Jimfbleak 20 Ealdgyth 1 19 Peacemaker67 15 2 1 Graham Beards 17 1 ImaginesTigers 11 6 Kavyansh.Singh 8 4 4 Eddie891 15 1 Grapple X 8 6 1 A. Parrot 10 5 Femkemilene 11 3 1 Sturmvogel 66 8 7 HAL333 14 Kosack 14 Epicgenius 13 Panini! 13 DMT biscuit 11 2 Hurricane Noah 9 3 Gerald Waldo Luis 11 1 Guerillero 4 8 Sportsfan77777 11 1 Shooterwalker 12 Pendright 12 David Fuchs 8 2 1 Gerda Arendt 11 Johnbod 9 1 100cellsman 10 Dumelow 10 Pamzeis 10 Ovinus 5 3 1 JennyOz 9 Girth Summit 9 Vanamonde93 9 MaranoFan 9 Bilorv 4 4 Therapyisgood 8 Kyle Peake 8 BennyOnTheLoose 6 2 Sdkb 6 1 SatDis 7 Serial Number 54129 6 1 Spicy 6 1 Hurricanehink 7 Esculenta 7 Zawed 7 Kaiser matias 6 Ian Rose 5 1 HĐ 6 Harrias 2 4 Indopug 6 Parsecboy 6 Zmbro 6 Dunkleosteus77 5 1 Indy beetle 6 Willbb234 6 Vaticidalprophet 4 1 1 WA8MTWAYC 6 Dracophyllum 4 1 Chipmunkdavis 5 Cplakidas 5 J Milburn 4 1 Balon Greyjoy 5 Volcanoguy 5 5 Aa77zz 4 1 Laser brain 4 1 Kusma 5 Tintor2 4 1 Horsesizedduck 5 SnowFire 5 Tkbrett 5 KJP1 4 1 Modussiccandi 5 LightandDark2000 5 LOVI33 5 SusunW 3 2 CPA-5 4 Wretchskull 4 Noswall59 4 TheAmazingPeanuts 4 RetiredDuke 4 Neopeius 4 Urve 2 2 Dweller 4 Mirokado 4 Borsoka 4 Eewilson 3 1 Homeostasis07 4 CactiStaccingCrane 4 Link20XX 4 The Ultimate Boss 4 Mr rnddude 4 GhostRiver 3 GamerPro64 3 TheJoeBro64 3 Chiswick Chap 3 Double sharp 3 Spy-cicle 3 Ergo Sum 3 Truflip99 3 AviationFreak 3 Ajpolino 2 1 Valereee 3 Extraordinary Writ 3 Fowler&fowler 3 TheSandDoctor 1 2 Slate Weasel 3 Vami IV 1 2 LEvalyn 3 Andrzejbanas 3 Premeditated Chaos 3 Thryduulf 3 AhmadLX 3 Gen. Quon 2 1 Display name 99 3 SlimVirgin 3 CodingCyclone 2 Card Carrying Parrot 2 Wtfiv 2 Srnec 2 Jts1882 2 ProcrastinatingReader 2 Lawrencekhoo 2 Lirim.Z 2 Damian Vo 2 Some Dude From North Carolina 2 Tomica 2 Destroyeraa 2 Geraldo Waldo Luis 2 Sandbh 2 ProtoDrake 2 TheDoctorWho 2 Giants2008 2 Ippantekina 2 Realmaxxver 2 TarkusAB 2 Wikibenboy94 2 Mujinga 2 Shadowboxer2005 2 Johannes Schade 2 IceWelder 2 LouisAragon 2 Amitchell125 2 Guettarda 2 Go Phightins! 2 FeydHuxtable 2 SounderBruce 1 1 Richard Nevell 2 Oldelpaso 2 ZKang123 2 Wingwatchers 2 Shshshsh 2 Shoot for the Stars 2 Steve Smith 1 1 WereSpielChequers 2 HumanBodyPiloter5 2 Viridian Bovary 2 Trainsandotherthings 2 Lythronaxargestes 2 SilverTiger12 2 Eviolite 1 1 Ichthyovenator 2 Pawnkingthree 2 Super Dromaeosaurus 2 DanCherek 2 Elli 2 H? 2 Tomobe03 1 1 Cyclonebiskit 1 In actu 1 GraemeLeggett 1 ~riley 1 Vmavanti 1 Reywas92 1 Vahurzpu 1 ClaudineChionh 1 Danu Widjajanto 1 Dmacks 1 Curiocurio 1 Figureskatingfan 1 PresN 1 Francis Schonken 1 Kakofonous 1 Igordebraga 1 JKBrooks85 1 Hmlarson 1 Isento 1 Opabinia regalis 1 Dnllnd 1 The Land 1 Mgiganteus1 1 Hike395 1 Jaguar 1 AryKun 1 Pseud14 1 TrueHeartSusie3 1 Kailash29792 1 MAXIMOKAUSCH 1 MareBG 1 Alexandra IDV 1 Goldsztajn 1 Sparklism 1 Damien Linnane 1 Apaugasma 1 The Earwig 1 Maunus 1 61.205.249.123 1 Alexismata7 1 OakMapping 1 Imzadi1979 1 Pseud 14 1 Ceranthor 1 The Most Comfortable Chair 1 Editorofthewiki 1 DarthBotto 1 No Swan So Fine 1 KN2731 1 KGRAMR 1 Czar 1 Fourthords 1 Yashthepunisher 1 KyleJoan 1 Famous Hobo 1 LM150 1 Kevin Myers 1 GreenMeansGo 1 Games of the world 1 Coffeeandcrumbs 1 Magiciandude 1 Buffs 1 Armadillopteryx 1 Jarodalien 1 GeoWriter 1 Llywrch 1 FredModulars 1 Catlemur 1 Materialscientist 1 SchroCat 1 Shotgunscoop 1 Baffle gab1978 1 Ww2censor 1 Ffranc 1 JAYFAX 1 Scrooge200 1 Montanabw 1 YBG 1 Hemiauchenia 1 Theramin 1 Jeuno 1 MarioJump83 1 Qwertyxp2000 1 Blz 2049 1 Hobomok 1 MSG17 1 TheTechnician27 1 Mymis 1 97198 1 Sanfranciscogiants17 1 Gabriel Yuji 1 Wandalstouring 1 Schwede66 1 Patrickneil 1 RVeluv02 1 JusticeForDavidMiller 1 Bettydaisies 1 Mfb 1 Pfly 1 Sportslover31 1 Rhain 1 Twofingered Typist 1 From Hill To Shore 1 Wingedserif 1 Kwamikagami 1 Alexis Jazz 1 EdgeNavidad 1 Fyunck(click) 1 MilkyDefer 1 ImTheIP 1 Jonesey95 1 JG66 1 Jason Rees 1 Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI 1 Caddyshack01 1 Tbhotch 1 Popcornfud 1 Red Phoenix 1 Dugan Murphy 1 Encyclop?dius 1 DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered 1 Namcokid47 1 Randy Kryn 1 YellowMonkey 1 Clayoquot 1 Tylotriton 1 PeeJay 1 Kingsif 1 AustralianRupert 1 Dr Bowser 1 Vacant0 1 PoliticsIsExciting 1 3E1I5S8B9RF7 1 CaptainEek 1 BasedMises 1 John M Wolfson 1 EddieHugh 1 Mr.choppers 1 Ojorojo 1 Nrco0e 1 FormalDude 1 Erik 1 DrKay 1 Lingzhi.Random 1 Tzubiri 1 (CA)Giacobbe 1 Nishkid64 1 Taweektham 1 Darkwarriorblake 1 MONGO 1 NightWolf1223 1 ObserveOwl 1 RL0919 1 Hijiri88 1 Stuartyeates 1 Yann 1 Iry-Hor 1 Venicescapes 1 Chariosacha 1 Brandt Luke Zorn 1 Crispclear 1 Gpinkerton 1 Masem 1 Victoriaearle 1 ComplexRational 1 Teratix 1 Thrakkx 1 RunningTiger123 1 Totals 2006 441 421 43

Supports and opposes for 2021

# declarations Declaration Editor Support Oppose converted to support Struck oppose Struck support Oppose None Total Nikkimaria 1 3 12 271 287 Buidhe 4 1 18 227 250 Hog Farm 53 4 16 43 116 The Rambling Man 72 2 2 5 13 94 Gog the Mild 53 1 1 6 29 90 Z1720 64 2 15 81 Heartfox 7 1 2 59 69 Aoba47 50 5 10 65 Casliber 48 2 50 Lee Vilenski 46 3 49 Aza24 15 32 47 FunkMonk 36 10 46 Jo-Jo Eumerus 7 1 34 42 Wehwalt 36 6 42 Hawkeye7 23 16 39 Amakuru 20 2 11 33 Tim riley 31 1 1 33 SandyGeorgia 12 2 4 15 33 Mike Christie 25 1 5 31 ChrisTheDude 28 2 30 Nick-D 13 9 8 30 SNUGGUMS 14 1 15 30 Usernameunique 1 26 27 Edwininlondon 20 6 26 HJ Mitchell 22 1 2 1 26 Ceoil 16 1 1 7 25 Dudley Miles 24 24 Chidgk1 6 1 17 24 Iazyges 11 11 22 Jens Lallensack 18 4 22 Moisejp 10 1 10 21 HumanxAnthro 4 2 1 5 9 21 Jimfbleak 19 1 20 Ealdgyth 2 18 20 Peacemaker67 13 5 18 Graham Beards 9 1 8 18 ImaginesTigers 9 2 6 17 Eddie891 13 3 16 Kavyansh.Singh 6 2 8 16 Femkemilene 6 1 8 15 Sturmvogel 66 5 1 9 15 Grapple X 8 7 15 A. Parrot 9 6 15 Kosack 13 1 14 HAL333 9 5 14 Panini! 12 1 13 Epicgenius 10 1 2 13 DMT biscuit 10 1 2 13 Hurricane Noah 9 2 1 12 Pendright 12 12 Shooterwalker 12 12 Sportsfan77777 6 1 5 12 Guerillero 1 11 12 Gerald Waldo Luis 8 4 12 Gerda Arendt 11 11 David Fuchs 4 7 11 Dumelow 10 10 100cellsman 7 1 2 10 Johnbod 6 1 3 10 Pamzeis 8 2 10 Vanamonde93 7 2 9 Ovinus 4 5 9 Girth Summit 9 9 JennyOz 9 9 MaranoFan 9 9 Therapyisgood 2 6 8 Bilorv 4 1 3 8 BennyOnTheLoose 5 3 8 Kyle Peake 7 1 8 Serial Number 54129 4 1 2 7 Sdkb 2 5 7 Esculenta 2 1 4 7 Spicy 1 6 7 Hurricanehink 5 1 1 7 SatDis 6 1 7 Zawed 7 7 HĐ 3 3 6 Harrias 1 1 4 6 Ian Rose 4 2 6 WA8MTWAYC 6 6 Vaticidalprophet 3 3 6 Kaiser matias 5 1 6 Dunkleosteus77 4 2 6 Indy beetle 4 2 6 Parsecboy 5 1 6 Zmbro 4 2 6 Indopug 1 5 6 Willbb234 4 2 6 KJP1 4 1 5 Tkbrett 5 5 J Milburn 2 3 5 SnowFire 1 4 5 Cplakidas 3 2 5 Kusma 3 2 5 SusunW 3 2 5 Laser brain 1 1 1 2 5 LOVI33 4 1 5 Aa77zz 3 2 5 5 5 Tintor2 4 1 5 Horsesizedduck 4 1 5 LightandDark2000 4 1 5 Volcanoguy 5 5 Chipmunkdavis 4 1 5 Modussiccandi 5 5 Dracophyllum 2 3 5 Balon Greyjoy 5 5 Borsoka 3 1 4 CPA-5 1 3 4 Link20XX 4 4 Mirokado 4 4 Dweller 3 1 4 CactiStaccingCrane 1 1 2 4 Mr rnddude 3 1 4 Urve 2 2 4 The Ultimate Boss 4 4 Neopeius 3 1 4 RetiredDuke 4 4 Homeostasis07 4 4 Eewilson 2 1 1 4 TheAmazingPeanuts 3 1 4 Noswall59 2 2 4 Wretchskull 3 1 4 GamerPro64 2 1 3 TheJoeBro64 3 3 Andrzejbanas 2 1 3 GhostRiver 3 3 Vami IV 2 1 3 AviationFreak 1 2 3 Ajpolino 3 3 SlimVirgin 1 2 3 LEvalyn 1 2 3 Slate Weasel 2 1 3 Ergo Sum 3 3 Truflip99 3 3 Display name 99 2 1 3 TheSandDoctor 1 2 3 Gen. Quon 2 1 3 Spy-cicle 2 1 3 AhmadLX 2 1 3 Double sharp 1 2 3 Fowler&fowler 1 2 3 Extraordinary Writ 3 3 Thryduulf 3 3 Premeditated Chaos 3 3 Valereee 3 3 Chiswick Chap 3 3 ProcrastinatingReader 2 2 Ippantekina 2 2 Wtfiv 1 1 2 Card Carrying Parrot 2 2 Wingwatchers 2 2 ZKang123 2 2 TheDoctorWho 2 2 Giants2008 1 1 2 CodingCyclone 2 2 ProtoDrake 2 2 Oldelpaso 2 2 H? 2 2 Elli 2 2 SounderBruce 2 2 Richard Nevell 1 1 2 Super Dromaeosaurus 1 1 2 DanCherek 2 2 Pawnkingthree 1 1 2 Sandbh 1 1 2 Destroyeraa 1 1 2 FeydHuxtable 2 2 Go Phightins! 1 1 2 Ichthyovenator 2 2 Geraldo Waldo Luis 2 2 SilverTiger12 2 2 Some Dude From North Carolina 1 1 2 Eviolite 2 2 Guettarda 2 2 Tomica 2 2 Lythronaxargestes 1 1 2 Amitchell125 1 1 2 Trainsandotherthings 1 1 2 Lirim.Z 1 1 2 WereSpielChequers 2 2 HumanBodyPiloter5 1 1 2 Damian Vo 2 2 Tomobe03 1 1 2 Johannes Schade 1 1 2 Viridian Bovary 2 2 LouisAragon 1 1 2 Lawrencekhoo 2 2 IceWelder 2 2 Shadowboxer2005 2 2 Mujinga 1 1 2 Shoot for the Stars 2 2 Wikibenboy94 2 2 Shshshsh 2 2 Steve Smith 2 2 Srnec 2 2 Realmaxxver 2 2 Jts1882 2 2 TarkusAB 1 1 2 Kakofonous 1 1 Igordebraga 1 1 PeeJay 1 1 Shotgunscoop 1 1 Baffle gab1978 1 1 YellowMonkey 1 1 RL0919 1 1 Clayoquot 1 1 Alexismata7 1 1 Ffranc 1 1 Bettydaisies 1 1 Randy Kryn 1 1 Danu Widjajanto 1 1 Dmacks 1 1 Pfly 1 1 Encyclop?dius 1 1 Ww2censor 1 1 Figureskatingfan 1 1 OakMapping 1 1 SchroCat 1 1 Curiocurio 1 1 Pseud 14 1 1 Namcokid47 1 1 Catlemur 1 1 DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered 1 1 ClaudineChionh 1 1 Llywrch 1 1 Red Phoenix 1 1 Cyclonebiskit 1 1 Jason Rees 1 1 Vmavanti 1 1 Reywas92 1 1 Dugan Murphy 1 1 Materialscientist 1 1 In actu 1 1 Games of the world 1 1 ~riley 1 1 Tbhotch 1 1 Armadillopteryx 1 1 FredModulars 1 1 Vahurzpu 1 1 Coffeeandcrumbs 1 1 Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI 1 1 Masem 1 1 GraemeLeggett 1 1 Popcornfud 1 1 Victoriaearle 1 1 Magiciandude 1 1 MilkyDefer 1 1 Buffs 1 1 Jarodalien 1 1 Caddyshack01 1 1 ImTheIP 1 1 ComplexRational 1 1 Teratix 1 1 Thrakkx 1 1 Jonesey95 1 1 Brandt Luke Zorn 1 1 Crispclear 1 1 Kevin Myers 1 1 GreenMeansGo 1 1 Gpinkerton 1 1 EdgeNavidad 1 1 Fyunck(click) 1 1 Fourthords 1 1 Hike395 1 1 Yashthepunisher 1 1 Vacant0 1 1 KyleJoan 1 1 3E1I5S8B9RF7 1 1 Iry-Hor 1 1 LM150 1 1 Theramin 1 1 Alexis Jazz 1 1 Jeuno 1 1 Famous Hobo 1 1 KGRAMR 1 1 Yann 1 1 From Hill To Shore 1 1 Venicescapes 1 1 Czar 1 1 DarthBotto 1 1 Chariosacha 1 1 Hijiri88 1 1 Twofingered Typist 1 1 No Swan So Fine 1 1 Wingedserif 1 1 Stuartyeates 1 1 MONGO 1 1 Kwamikagami 1 1 Sportslover31 1 1 Ceranthor 1 1 Editorofthewiki 1 1 NightWolf1223 1 1 Rhain 1 1 KN2731 1 1 Darkwarriorblake 1 1 Patrickneil 1 1 ObserveOwl 1 1 The Most Comfortable Chair 1 1 Schwede66 1 1 The Earwig 1 1 Maunus 1 1 RVeluv02 1 1 Tzubiri 1 1 JusticeForDavidMiller 1 1 Mfb 1 1 (CA)Giacobbe 1 1 61.205.249.123 1 1 Imzadi1979 1 1 Nishkid64 1 1 Goldsztajn 1 1 Taweektham 1 1 Sparklism 1 1 Erik 1 1 Wandalstouring 1 1 Apaugasma 1 1 DrKay 1 1 Mymis 1 1 GeoWriter 1 1 Damien Linnane 1 1 Alexandra IDV 1 1 97198 1 1 RunningTiger123 1 1 TrueHeartSusie3 1 1 Lingzhi.Random 1 1 Gabriel Yuji 1 1 FormalDude 1 1 Kailash29792 1 1 JG66 1 1 Sanfranciscogiants17 1 1 MarioJump83 1 1 Pseud14 1 1 EddieHugh 1 1 Mr.choppers 1 1 MAXIMOKAUSCH 1 1 TheTechnician27 1 1 MareBG 1 1 CaptainEek 1 1 Jaguar 1 1 JKBrooks85 1 1 John M Wolfson 1 1 Opabinia regalis 1 1 Ojorojo 1 1 AryKun 1 1 Nrco0e 1 1 Qwertyxp2000 1 1 BasedMises 1 1 Hmlarson 1 1 Kingsif 1 1 Dnllnd 1 1 The Land 1 1 Hobomok 1 1 MSG17 1 1 JAYFAX 1 1 Isento 1 1 Scrooge200 1 1 Mgiganteus1 1 1 Blz 2049 1 1 AustralianRupert 1 1 Montanabw 1 1 PresN 1 1 Dr Bowser 1 1 Hemiauchenia 1 1 PoliticsIsExciting 1 1 Francis Schonken 1 1 YBG 1 1 Tylotriton 1 1 Totals 1444 13 23 0 137 1295 2912

As usual, while there's a long tail of people who've done a couple of reviews (including myself obviously) the process is still dominated by the same inner circle. While I don't agree with Sandy on everything by any means—I'd probably still take FAC 2022 over FAC 2008 if forced to choose—she's right that this is an issue. Because you've been observing it for so long, you've probably lost sight of just how peculiar—and how un-Wikipedia-like—the current process appears to people who aren't already familiar with it. ‑ Iridescent 20:36, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that's entirely true -- of the 11 people with more than 50 reviews for the year, Hog Farm, Buidhe, Aoba47 and Lee Vilenski, to pick just four, have only become heavily involved at FAC in the last three or four years. I could check with the facstats tool if I were not restricted to an iPad at the moment, but I think the same is true of Gog, Aza24, and perhaps Z1720. Of that list I'd say only Nikki and Cas are part of the long-time core of FAC participants. But I would agree that it's a part of Wikipedia that attracts long-term continued participation, I think because it also rewards continuity. The norms take a FAC or two to learn, and the norms for reviewing also take a bit of getting used to. So it has a higher barrier to entry and more reason to stick around then most areas of Wikipedia. Having acknowledged that, do you see any more that could be done to attract new reviewers and editors? Efforts at both are periodically made, and I feel confident most FAC participants would be delighted at more frequent newcomers. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:12, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't see it that way either - 25 people did more than 20 content reviews, & I'm sure they don't form a (single) clique. My main complaint has always been the lack of reviewing content (in any normal sense) in "content reviews", and that has got a good deal worse, but mainly because there are fewer reviewers at FAC & next to none at PR, as SG is always correctly complaing. Johnbod (talk) 00:45, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

ease of editing break

@Vaticidalprophet, to be honest while I wouldn't have tagged your friend's userpage for deletion had I randomly come across it, I would have accepted the deletion request had it appeared in CAT:CSD. The issue isn't that it was a userpage full of userboxes, it's that it was a userpage full of joke userboxes. Ultimately, the purpose of all pages on Wikipedia is at least nominally to be for material that potentially benefits Wikipedia. People writing about themselves in the context of what skills and languages they have: absolutely fine as that's obviously relevant; people writing about their interests and preferences: usually acceptable since it allows other people to get a sense both of their potential biases and of whether their opinions on a given topic are worth listening to; regular contributors writing about themselves more generally: acceptable within reason as it allows people to get a better sense of the Wikipedia community and the spectrum of people who participate; people using their userpage to draft articles: not great as they should ideally be using subpages rather than their userpage for drafting,* but getting an article right before releasing it into the mainspace is an obvious benefit to the project and we can't reasonably expect new editors to be aware of the confusing technicalities of userspace subpages. A page consisting entirely of jokes falls squarely into "substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia", since there's nothing any reader will learn about the editor in question by reading it. ‑ Iridescent 19:15, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
*There are often entirely legitimate reasons to draft in userspace rather than draftspace. While technically "anyone can edit" applies to all pages, there's a well-established convention that pages in userspace are left alone by others without good reason. Having a page in draftspace is saying "I've started this, anyone else jump in and add to it"; having a page in userspace is saying "this is a very rough beginning, leave it alone for the moment while I work on it",

That is the best explanation I've seen on this subject. That is more clear to me thanks. Unbroken Chain (talk) 22:28, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet There are distinct geographic patterns to this; a nasty amount of CAT:U5 at any given point is "rule-abiding autobiographical userpage of South Asian editor". I don't make a habit of watching CSD categories, but if this is true, it's unfortunate that literally everyone who writes with a South Asian "accent" gets suspicion because of many non-native English speakers we first encountered online during the 2000s' were spammers/scammers. The law of first impressions resulting in microaggressive racism. Ick. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 04:53, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

@I dream of horses, Ind/Pak/Bang has always brought a unique set of problems to Wikipedia. For historical reasons, all three—particularly India—have significant populations who prefer to work in English rather than their native language because it reaches a wider audience, but aren't as fluent as they think they are and consequently often have difficulty both in understanding all the rules and guidelines and in writing comprehensible English. (Head on over to Special:RandomInCategory/Villages in India by state or territory and see for yourself the sheer volume of "it is inhabited by a majority of Brahmin population and it is a quiet village with simple scenic beauty" and "The village has no gym and no playground, time to time youngster requests Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for gym and playground but every time he makes fool of them" type stuff that's accumulated.) It in turn means the majority of Indian editors here who do follow the rules get treated with suspicion because everyone has seen so many examples of Indian editors who don't.

There is no right answer. As with so much that's wrong with Wikipedia, it's an artefact of the editor/article ratio slipping beyond manageable limits. As such, those patrolling new pages and recent changes need to work in terms of probabilities and concentrate on changes likely to be problematic rather than fully check everything in detail. I can't really blame anyone at NPP who comes to the conclusion that because Indian topics and Indian editors are more likely to be problematic, that's where they should focus their attention, even if it potentially introduces a degree of institutional bias. ‑ Iridescent 07:35, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

@Iridescent I've observed this phenomenon myself with regards to India specifically, and agree with your statement. I'm unsurprised that Bangladesh and Pakistan, being nearby, is also somewhat of a problem area. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 08:00, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I dream of horses, I think one way we could resolve it is to get more admins from the Asian subcontinent who can recognise these patterns and manage them. Or, simply put, we need a bunch of Vanamonde93s. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:53, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Surprised to see your answer to bullet 4. I don't personally think U5ing that is admin abuse. It may be an error, and the admin may be misunderstanding policy, but for that there's DRV. I would hope ArbCom wouldn't accept a case on this kinda thing unless there's either a pattern showing generally poor judgement, or an error so egregious that no reasonable admin could've made it combined with a complete communications failure. RH is given as an example above, but the FoF (Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/RHaworth#RHaworth_and_deletion) cited 24 instances of deletion concerns, referencing evidence supplied by 6 editors, and 9 instances of communications failure. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 05:33, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Re-read what I actually wrote, particularly Even if I deleted it and someone complained, all that would happen would be a one line "Iridescent is admonished for inappropriate deletions and advised to be more careful in future." announcement at WP:ACN—or even just a quiet word by email—unless someone demonstrated that it was part of a pattern of conduct, but arbcom is where these things go.

Case requests are the visible part of arbcom's activity, but they're a tiny tip of a very big iceberg. For every situation where processes have failed and something either turns into a sprawling thread on a drama board or a he-said-she-said arb case, there are a dozen "I have concerns about what this editor is doing but I'm reluctant to make a big deal of it publicly" private requests (cue my traditional screenshot of what an arb inbox looks like) that are usually resolved with a discreet "stop doing what you're doing unless you can provide a good explanation" request. Contrary to popular belief the arbitrators may on occasion be incompetent but they're very rarely malicious, and when a problem is brought to their attention they do their best to stop it escalating—the nature of the system means the only part of their activity one generally sees is when the process fails and things blow up into a full case.

An admin who was unfmiliar with the deletion policy would unquestionably count as admin abuse and thus fall into the arbcom remit. We don't expect admins to be super-users familiar with every policy, but Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion is about as core as core knowledge gets for an admin. (If you want a real-world equivalent, if a beat cop was unfamiliar with the precise wording of corporate fraud law they'd be unlikely to get in trouble even if they got something wrong, but that same cop ignoring the posted speed limits and instead issuing tickets to cars because they "looked like they were driving fast" would be hauled in front of their superiors in fairly short order.) It's why every RFA has that daunting-looking barrage of "in which of these hypothetical situations would you block/delete?" trick questions; when it comes to the basic admin policies like blocking, deletion, civility etc we want admins who will apply what the policy actually says, not what they think it says.

As I say, "this would be admin abuse" doesn't equate to "this would warrant a full case", but if I deleted a page out of process anyone who wanted to would be quite within their rights to complain to arbcom about it given that they're currently the only body (other than the WMF itself in exceptional circumstances) with the authority to take action in such cases. I think it's a stupid setup and every arbitrator thinks it's a stupid set up—they signed up to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve, not to deal with an endless stream of low-level whining every time an admin does anything another editor doesn't like—but nobody's yet managed to come up with a viable "administrative actions review" process that doesn't degenerate into a "which side's friends can shout the loudest?" slapfight.  ‑ Iridescent 07:01, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

The idea I had behind Wikipedia:Administrative action review was to provide a venue for exactly that sort of mild complaints against administrative actions, to help get some more accountability into the place and reduce the workload that Arbcom have to face. However, it appears to have crashed and burned by the majority of people treating it as "ANI 2", which generates a self-fulfilling prophecy. I suspect XRV will be closed as a failure at some point in the not too distant future. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:00, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

It's a flaw that's so built into Wikipedia's design that not even do we tend not to notice it let alone discuss it, Wikipedia's critics tend not to notice it let alone discuss it. Everyone in any given area on the wiki is there because they either directly or indirectly choose to be. Thus those involved in that area are almost always going to be those who consider that area important, and the remainder will be those who just drifted into that area but have convinced themselves that it's important. (Only a crazy person would devote hours of their life to something they weren't being paid for if it wasn't important, and I'm not crazy…)

Thus, every process has a tendency to be dominated by people who think (whether or not people have a few relatively trivial extra permissions) / (the precise difference between dashes and hyphens) / (serial commas and when they should be used) / (where an article sits on a quality scale of whose existence literally no reader is even aware) / (whether the word 'dickhead' is sexist and if so whether it's offensive to men or to women) / (under which circumstances punctuation goes inside and outside of quotation marks) is Very Very Important, since involvement in most processes is quite time-consuming and people are quite naturally unlikely to invest their time in something if they don't care about the outcome. Thus the entire site ends up being a series of echo chambers dominated by the tiny minority who consider that particular niche area important.

TL;DR: the nature of Wikipedia means there's no such thing as "a mild complaint", since the only people who'll bother to comment in any given situation are those who think the issue is serious. (On the occasion someone does bring a mild complaint on Wikipedia, they'll invariably be chided for time-wasting precisely because the complaint is mild.) Thus, any proposal that aims to reduce the drama is doomed to fail since any given process becomes dominated by those with a vested interest in keeping the drama level high to justify their own participation in that process. (For expanded thoughts of mine on the phenomenon from a few years ago, see the "The parable of the shitty early-2000s website" thread.)

I can't see a way to resolve the issue without drastically changing the nature of the site. The usual way mass-participation sites get around it is paid moderators who are rewarded financially rather than via the warm fuzzies of convincing themselves they're doing something important (I assure you Facebook/Meta's moderation team doesn't actually give a shit whether your Instagram post is sourced to The Canary). That's not really an option here, even if the WMF were willing to release enough from its hoard to fund paid proofreaders and dispute resolution teams. ‑ Iridescent 11:05, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I have to admit that there is no minor complaints on Wiki is spot on. This very thread is an example of that, to me this was not something that should have ended up being a long long conversation. It's been interesting no doubt but I have to admit about the "hyperbolic" nature I may have been wrong. Unbroken Chain (talk) 15:44, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

It's nothing personal, threads on this page have a tendency to become long off-topic conversations. One of the side effects of being the most-read user talk page on the wiki (yes, including Jimmy's) is that no matter what the topic, there's a high likelihood that somebody's watching the page who has something useful to add about it. ‑ Iridescent 05:17, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

WOW! That's impressive! Unbroken Chain (talk) 01:38, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Another break

For what it's worth, I've been nominating hundreds of similar user pages for speedy deletion and they've nearly all been deleted. User:Jason Olaya is a random example. My understanding of CSD U5 is that it's intended exactly for pages like this. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:05, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I think this page is in keeping with the intentions for U5. This page not intended for the project, has some smell of self-promotion or some other fault, but most importantly, it is the product of a non-contributor. The stipulation in U5 that it is the product of a non-contributor is the justification for the generous scope allowed for the content being unsuitable. Many such pages were listed at MfD and SNOW deleted. There was discussion specifically on whether to wait awhile to see if the account went on to start editing, and the consensus was "no", NOTWEBHOST violations by non-contributors may be deleted immediately. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:46, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

The line is blurred. Potential editors clicking the "edit" button for the first time are repeatedly bludgeoned with links to the Wikipedia:Why create an account? page, which explicitly says If you create an account … you will have your own permanent user page where you can write a bit about yourself. While Wikipedia is not a homepage provider, you can use this to display a few free pictures, write about your hobbies, etc. so we can hardly blame new editors if the first thing they do is write a bit about themselves, display a few free pictures, or write about their hobbies. Likewise, some regular editors have userpages that are straightforward biographies—including the userpage which a new editor is both most likely to see, and most likely to reasonably assume is an example of good practice—so we can't really blame anyone for assuming "post a shortened version of your CV" is what we want.

What we probably need is a script that generates a list of all userpages that are more than (six months? a year?) old and were created by people who didn't subsequently go on to make more than one or two edits to article or file space, and have a mass cull. They'll need to be manually checked as some will be legitimate "I am only active on French Wikipedia but have put a brief description of myself here for the benefit of people who've come across my name" style pages, but mainly it will just be a case of working through the heap clicking "keep" or "delete". As I may have mentioned once or twice I think 55,554,091 pages is an unmanageable number, and anything that brings that down is to be encouraged. ‑ Iridescent 04:47, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

I think that's reasonable. I am gratified to know it's not a clear cut subject though and I'm not alone in some of my trains of thought. I think what you propose is reasonable in regards to a time frame. I personally think erring on the side of keeping is the right way whenever possible and path of least resistance. My only hesitation with the MFD route is not a clear understanding of those practices and coaching the language in the correct manner. I guess that might just be laziness. I'm curious to know how much of these actually show up so I think I may do more research in that area. I'm curious to know what people think is a reasonable time frame and rationale before MFD. Don't want to be bitey and also don't want to burn admin time uselessly. Unbroken Chain (talk) 06:25, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

User:Iridescent, I am speaking just from memory of being involved in these discussions at the time, so I might be a bit mistaken, but this is what I remember: I went through a lost of historical "NOTWEBHOST" MfD discussions, all SNOW deleted, looking at the very questions: How old was the User's CV userpage post, and: Did they later go on to being a genuine editor. The answer was Never. Drive by CV dumpers in their first edits never went on to become genuine contributors, usually they never edited again, sometimes they wrote a single promotional article, which was deleted. So, I dropped my push for U5 to require the page to be 6 months old.

I am not sure that IP editors get bludgeoned with encouragement to register. That is not consistent with my testing. I think IPs editing should be encouraged more, eg if they make ten edits in a week, given them an auto-welcome with the encouragement to register. What I do think is bad is that upon registering, they are over-encouraged to write a new article or draft, well ahead of them having gained much editing experience. That's a different issue I know, but I do know of Wikipedia enthusiasts being burned by being sent to draftspace where they encounter and interact with no one, and then six months later their work is deleted. They never return.

I think new editors should be encouraged to write a brief but meaningful userpage, probably by a posted template to that very userpage. However, on the other hand, I wouldn't want wide-eyed young newcomers to be encouraged to over-supply personal details.

The biggest problem with the MfD route, in my opinion, is that it filled MfD with worthless harmless userpages, all a small variation on the same theme as MZMcBride's example. For every such page, an MfD page is created, and ~ half a dozen editors review it, have write something, and then an admin closes. Busywork. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:53, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree with your viewpoint, you've stated a more eloquent one then I was. There is one benefit to leaving these pages in place. If they are nonindexed and not searchable it isn't really damaging the pedia. It's just annoying people like me. If they think they have accomplished their goal, it didn't meet the actual published site...I'm ok with that too. The threshold of editing mainspace is a lenient line that should encourage more to stay by not overly discouraging them and a clear indicator of why they are here at the same time. Unbroken Chain (talk) 07:01, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Regarding I am not sure that IP editors get bludgeoned with encouragement to register, it is literally impossible to open a Wikipedia edit window while logged out without having the

You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to a username, among other benefits.

box shoved in your face every single time—try it for yourself. (Via the website anyway. I don't know about the app, although the number of people using the app to edit is so low it will be statistically irrelevant.) Previewing a change before you save it will throw up a variation on the same warning and set of links every time, and of course every usertalk page for an IP has the non-removable MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext template complete with the same link to Wikipedia:Why create an account?.

This is shortly all going to be moot—I give it about a week between the WMF imposing IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation on en-wiki and either en-wiki switching to a registration-only model or en-wiki's admins resigning en masse, and even if it doesn't all those templates will need to be redesigned. For the moment however I'd say 'bludgeoning' is entirely the correct word to use for a message that's delivered every time one makes any edit of any kind. (Whether the IPs actually bother to click on the link is another matter.)

Regarding potential fake articles, for the marginal cases when it's not clear whether it's an attempt at spam, an attempted draft or a good faith attempt to follow the write a bit about yourself (which, to repeat myself, we instruct new users to do), I'd suggest using the much-underused {{user page}} / {{user page mini}} / {{this is a user page}} / {{userpage bar}} family of templates. (I wouldn't encourage anyone to use the ugly sibling of that group, {{userpageblue&round}}.) No legitimate editor is going to complain about having one of those templates on their userpage unless the page already makes it clear that it's not an article in which case it's not an issue. As well as lessening the risk of unintentional WP:BITE, it has the added benefit that if the userpage is picked up by a mirror, scraper or a search engine that doesn't respect {{noindex}}, the 'this is not an article' text will also be scraped reducing the risk of confusion down the re-user line.

Wikipedia's userpage setup is even more of a mess of contradictory rules, guidelines, and established practices than the rest of Wikipedia. Because we were much more easygoing back in the day, particularly when an editor was obviously primarily here to help, we allowed things like User:TonyTheTiger/Antonio Vernon. (To be clear, I'm not accusing TTT of any wrongdoing, just using it as an example of something that was unproblematic then but would be complained about if written now.) Since active users are by definition the other editors a new editor is most likely to encounter, and they're statistically more likely to be in the cohort who joined before the Userbox Wars when editors had more leeway when it came to what they had in their userspace, new editors are going to get a distorted picture of what is and isn't acceptable when it comes to userspace. It's a mess, but I don't propose to be the one trying to reverse 20 years of cultural inertia. ‑ Iridescent 17:44, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Iridescent. That template, I did not see it. I used a computer/connection that I noted had a long IP edit history, maybe that’s a factor. Maybe I have selective blindness. I did not see it. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:11, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I looked again. The banner is there, but less strongly coloured, and I simply didn't notice it. I put it down to being focused on the intended edit. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:31, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe I've gotten irritation from IPs when I welcomed them via huggle, which I only do with IPs if I'm certain it's not a brief, drive-by editing session (they've had five or more recent edits, or have been editing in the same subject area, etc.). Apparently, because some IP addresses change a lot, I've quite accidentally welcomed people more than once. The logical solution is to register instead of complaining, but to each their own, I guess.

Needless to say, I don't think autowelcoming is going to go over well. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:28, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

I find that a bit weird, but yes I am aware it happens, IP irritation at being invited to register. I wonder whether it’s because the welcome template is over-done. I’m not sure. I’ve tried talking to IPs who don’t want to register, or re-register, and the conversations are a bit weird. I suspect that IPs who complain about being encouraged to register have a history of editing registered that they didn’t enjoy. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:09, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I can kind of understand the irritation. If one is on a provider like BT where the IP addresses are hyperdynamic and it's not unusual for them to change every few minutes, or using a cellphone on a moving train, having each of the addresses welcomed would mean

You have new messages (last change).

constantly popping up. (Remember, the Echo interface which you and I see is currently only active for logged-in editors. IPs still get the old, intensively intrusive by deliberate design, setup.) If the editor in question is conscientious then every time it pops up they're going to have to suspend whatever they're doing and check their messages, just in case it's a warning that they've done something wrong. It would probably make more sense to make the welcome message be a MediaWiki encoded editnotice (replacing MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning) so IP editors get the benefits of the links it provides, without the issues raised by creating a gazillion user talk pages 99.9% of which will never be read.

I get the feeling that a lot of the IPs who actively refuse to register (as opposed to those who are just making a handful of edits and don't feel it's worth their while) are mostly blocked editors who don't want to go through a formal appeal and are aware that if they create a new account they'll be obliged to declare it, which is technically a policy breach but one we've always turned a blind eye to provided the IPs are non-disruptive. (I have a fair degree of confidence who the IP in Maidenhead which has commented here a couple of times is, for instance.) There will also be a small but relatively active constituency of those who've previously been the victims of stalking that's spilled over from Wikipedia into real life, and are intentionally remaining anonymous to avoid encouraging the crazies.

As I say, this is all going to be irrelevant once IP masking goes live, since we'll almost certainly end up banning IP editing; even if we don't it will completely shift the dynamic of how logged-in and logged-out editors interact if there are only 52 editors on the entire project—many of whom are largely or wholly inactive—with the ability to see who has made any given IP edit. ‑ Iridescent 06:38, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

My earliest memory of interacting with Wikipedia, before I became an editor and I was just using it as a reader, was getting those ugly orange banners whenever I went to use the site from my university computer. The entire university had great numbers of computers but just a few IP addresses, so I was constantly getting warnings for things that were probably done by undergrads, but certainly not done by me. So it can be annoying to more people than just the IP editor for whom the message was posted. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:04, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I hated, and was disturbed every time, by that orange bar of doom. It was so good when it went away. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:57, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I think everybody felt the same. I can understand the logic behind it—there are some situations where we want something that people can't possibly claim they haven't seen—but god it was annoying. I can only imagine how much worse it must be to be using a dynamic, shared IP and thus keep seeing it triggered by a piece of vandalism a previous user of that IP carried out in 2008. ‑ Iridescent 19:04, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Do you think that is constructive change? I have to admit as they impose more and more controls to me personally it seems less like a welcoming site. I don't mean the wild wild west but over-regulation in general here. Unbroken Chain (talk) 16:21, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Do I think IP masking is a constructive change, or switching to a registration-required model? I think IP masking is going to be a total trainwreck, although I understand why it's happening; governments around the world are starting to lose patience with Big Tech treating the internet as some kind of libertarian wild frontier, and the WMF rightly doesn't want to see editors hauled before the courts en masse without making at least a token effort to protect them. Personally, I think requiring registration to edit is about 15 years overdue; yes, IPs make a lot of valuable contributions, but anyone who genuinely has something useful to add is perfectly capable of clicking Special:CreateAccount. Defenders of IP editing have always predicted that the sky would fall, but when Portuguese Wikipedia banned IPs in October 2021 the number of active registered users immediately rose to compensate and remained at the new level and there's nothing to suggest the same wouldn't happen here. (I also don't buy the 'but IP editing is essential to protect anonymity!' argument that's invariably trotted out. A hypothetical libel lawyer or hostile intelligence agency is going to find out considerably less from User:JoeBlow than they are from 178.168.115.150.) ‑ Iridescent 17:08, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I still want research on whether IPs vandalize and do constructive editing at the same rates as years before, and what the constructive edit:revert needed edit ratio is. Otherwise, I can't be sure whether or not IP editing needs to blocked. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:40, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The reason that IP editing might be blocked in the wake of IP masking isn't really about whether IP editing is constructive or not. It would be because masking would create extremely burdensome administrative problems that would probably make it easier just to make everyone register, and accept the loss of whatever number of constructive IP editors who would decline to do so. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Having seen more socking through IP's that is literally ignored half of the time because it's whack a mole, if there is technical limitations set I"m ok with it. I dislike seeing the community governance usurped like when WMF acted unilaterally with Fram. I have to appreciate the simplicity of not having to worry about that too much. Unbroken Chain (talk) 22:23, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@Tryptofish I guess I want to know what the potential loss is, I guess. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:34, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

If pt-wiki's experience is a guide—and there's no reason to think it wouldn't be—very little of value will be lost. The number of people who fall into the intersection of "editing constructively as an IP" and "so ideologically opposed to the concept of registration that they're unwilling to create even a throwaway single-use account" is probably as close to zero as makes no difference. ‑ Iridescent 19:04, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Granted, I fear people might be confused as to how to register. Change isn't just anxiety inducing. It can also be baffling to the otherwise competent. Perhaps my fear is overstated, though.

Also, pt-wiki isn't en-wiki, in large part because of the IP situation they have. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 02:21, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not particularly familiar with pt-wiki, but what's the IP situation they have? "Brazil and Portugal" isn't particularly different in terms of connectivity to "North America and UK/IE". AFAIK their IP ban is purely an artefact of them deciding to be the first to take the plunge into registration, rather than of their having any more pressing vandalism problem than en-, de-, etc.

To be blunt, if someone is genuinely so confused they can't work out what the giant create an account button does (which, to reiterate, is displayed to IP editors with every single edit they make), they're fairly unlikely to be someone who has anything useful to contribute. The issue preventing requiring registration is almost wholly a cultural artefact of people distrusting change for the sake of distrusting change, not some kind of technical issue. ‑ Iridescent 18:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I think Brazil has a situation where either there's a small pool of IPs or an unusually dynamic pool. Forget which.

Agreed with the second paragraph, more than likely. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:05, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

That equally describes most countries. The US is unusual in that geography and the history of how the networks developed means that each geographic area tends to have its own dedicated internet provider(s). In most countries, all ISPs are nationwide and have their own pool of addresses which they just serve up to their users on an ad hoc basis—if you look at the CU results for editors in most of Europe, it's not uncommon for them to get through three or four different IP addresses each day.

For the UK (the largest market for en-wiki other than the US) the IPs are even more dynamic. BT, the largest ISP, operates a model by which all their subscribers' routers are communal (i.e., every household that's signed up acts as a public wifi hotspot for every other member) so one's IP address can change half a dozen times just walking down the street. Because the cellular phone infrastructure is much more advanced (the population density of England is 1,119/sq mi, the population density of the US is 87/sq mi so orders of magnitude fewer masts are needed to cover most of the population and the bills passed on to the customer are consequently hugely cheaper) it also makes it practical for even a heavy internet user to dispense with landlines or cabling altogether and just use mobile data so it's not unusual for CU results just to come back to the head office of a mobile phone company. And the UK isn't even the messiest country when it comes to CU; that would be places like Prague where instead of individual phone lines, the whole place is flooded with communal wifi hotspots on every street corner to which the whole population connect.

Checkuser isn't actually a particularly useful tool except in a few specific situations. Its primary purpose is more like that of Cluebot; to serve as a scarecrow against bad actors who aren't sure what its limitations are. ‑ Iridescent 05:05, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. I was genuinely naive of that fact. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 05:13, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Linking best practices

Hi Iridescent! Have there been any discussions here in the past about best practices for linking, and how to balance MOS:EGG/MOS:SEAOFBLUE/etc.? I recently opened a discussion at WT:LINK on how to handle potential seas of blue, and a while back I asked about weighing eggs vs. specific links, but I feel like both topics could potentially benefit from the type of extended conversation that happens here. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:35, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

There will have been, but they almost certainly would have been at WT:MOS or one of its subpages, and seeing as I'm on the subject of processes being hijacked by a gaggle of crazies the MOS talkpages are probably Exhibit A. I'd recommend holding the discussion at a page that doesn't have the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/ prefix if it's at all possible; most of those who aren't in the tiny clique which owns the MOS will take one look at those five words at the top of the page and swiftly move on, and any conclusion reached there will be roundly ignored by every other Wikipedia editor since the MOS is so discredited. SandyGeorgia might know of some discussions on the matter from earlier times. ‑ Iridescent 20:17, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty much with Iri on this; MOS is to be taken with a huge grain of salt, and common sense should apply. You will see everything from all dupe links have to be removed, to dupe links can be repeated in new sections wherever they help the reader, and everything in between. I would not expect any reasonable conversation about this to come out of any MOS talk discussion, and am not sure why one would even try :) Use common sense; if you can make those egg links work by spelling out the differences, do so; if not, live with the egg. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:14, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

The first problem with any discussion will be people who think that SEAOFBLUE means "more of the words in this paragraph are blue than you are accustomed to seeing" rather than "there's a practical problem if adjacent words lead to different pages". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed; and the second problem will be people who don't understand that 20 years ago both Wikipedia's default color scheme and the general public's familiarity with hypertext were different. All that 'minimize the number of links' guidance was written on the assumption that readers would interpret links as highlighting and thus both give undue weight to elements containing links, and be unable to skim-read Wikipedia articles easily. Neither is now the case. Plus, articles are typically considerably longer now than they were when that guidance was written; the stuff like 'don't repeat a link' may have made sense when a typical article was just a couple of paragraphs, but in an era when it's not unusual for articles to top 10,000 words it's just a vestigial guideline that survives because nobody can be bothered to engage in the argument with the MOS-ers that would ensue if it were removed.

My personal advice in these situations—and any other MOS situation—is to do whatever seems right provided you're confident you can justify having done it if challenged, and to ignore the MOS completely. There are some situations when having a style guideline is actually useful to avoid confusing readers or seriously compromising readability, but they're hugely outnumbered by the non-rules that are just the codifying of the personal preferences of whoever happened to shout loudest in an argument on the talk page. ‑ Iridescent 05:13, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Might as well chime in here with a note that (personally speaking) the MoS can also be plain "wrong", often as a side effect of it lagging behind modern language, or just language in general (see last paragraph for an aside on this). The first thing that comes to mind is that using "they" as a generic third person pronoun is not even mentioned on MOS:GNL, which seems quite surprising to put it gently. (I'm sure it's also not a coincidence it's that same section has been subject to yet another "she" versus "it" for ships discussion.)

Tangentially related is the fact that even opening discussions or questions on WT:MOS can be nothing less than hostile, as I've had non-wikipedian (but mediawiki-knowledgable) friends attest, but that really goes back to who exactly is in the MOS clique. Personally speaking, I've also felt this and have often avoided discussions on WT:MOS even when I felt like I had insight that could be helpful because I'd rather avoid the near-certain headache I'd get. </minirant>

As an aside, I do know that manuals of style aren't really "wrong"—it's more that they can just state things that are so obviously antithetical to anything based on reader-friendly choices, among other things. I don't really think there's much about enwiki's MOS that is "wrong", but there's definitely a lot of things that I think are either artifacts of the group of people that dominated the discussions when writing that bit of policy or just "outdated" due to the pace that language seems to develop on the internet. Perryprog (talk) 00:33, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the MoS can also be plain "wrong", often as a side effect of it lagging behind modern language, or just language in general, bear in mind that we have a unique set of issues that don't affect (say) the Chicago Manual of Style. Our MOS is trying to come up with a set of rules that are applicable across all national and regional varieties of English, and applicable for both very generalist writing aimed at the hypothetical bright 13-year-old, and very specialist writing aimed at people with a high degree of pre-existing expertise. Unlike other style guides, our MOS is largely a set of compromises which we know are unsatisfactory to everyone but which maintain the balance. Part of the problem is that the MOS-related pages don't really make that clear, so editors in turn don't understand that it's not supposed to reflect good practice in real-world writing but rather is an attempt to spread the 'this looks wrong' jarring effect broadly but shallow rather than complying with a particular set of cultural norms and alienating everyone else. ‑ Iridescent 04:56, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

In the real world, a given manual of style is written by a small set of people who can discuss and agree upon underlying goals and principles. Thus the work as a whole is more likely to be cohesive. English Wikipedia applies its consensus-based decision-making traditions for manual of style discussions, and so each decision is made through picking and choosing through the universe of style guides and writing in practice, arguing what guidance is more common. The process is counter to the reason for having a manual of style (codify arbitrary style decisions so writers don't have to argue), and since it's not anchored to any underlying principles, the result can't purposefully be cohesive. isaacl (talk) 22:35, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The purpose of our MOS is different from most. In general, a style guide is a set of arbitrary rules to allow a publication to have a consistent style. In our case, it's specifically a set of least-worst options created on the assumption that nobody will be happy with it, but to hopefully minimize the number of people who are seriously upset by it—thus it's a weird amalgam of various styles which nobody likes, but about which any given faction is able to claim a win of sorts. The alternative—of either a free-for-all or of sticking to a particular style—would either cause Wikipedia to descend into a Commons-style mess, or hugely alienate editors from whichever country's preferred style we chose not to go with. We have enough issues just with WP:ENGVAR without having to have WP:STYLEVAR to go with it. ‑ Iridescent 19:04, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Real world is much the same: arbitrary style choices so writers don't have to spend any more time thinking about it. The problem on English Wikipedia is that "consensus can change" motivates some editors to keep arguing. isaacl (talk) 21:53, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Also, real world guides—particularly printed ones—are of a manageable size and don't try to micromanage every given situation. I'd hazard a guess that The Times Style and Usage Guide or Garner's Modern American Usage don't have any equivalents to Where a cue sports match consists of a single frame, or a single round, it should be referred to as a match, regardless of colloquial use, Articles whose subject matter is a conceptual theory should be identified as such by wikilinks in its lead section and by its categories, The most common way to represent the string tunings of many instruments is by a chord with all strings open. For instruments with many closely tuned strings, this is impractical, and for those with reentrant tunings it is positively misleading, so an arpeggio style may be used instead, spreading the string tunings. or If a sportsperson has represented a nation or has declared for a nation, then the national flag as determined by the sport governing body should be used (all in the Wikipedia MOS at the time of writing). ‑ Iridescent 18:50, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

What those quotes show is that Wikipedia has no functional, dedicated task force for removing WP:CREEP, since if it did, low-hanging fruit like that would be among the first targets. It's a tricky issue, since my sense is that it's not a popular task, and that it'd be pretty thankless: when you propose to remove the string tuning sentence, you have to give a courtesy notice to WikiProject String tuning, which will draw out all the string tuning editors who will declare it essential, and they'll have status quo bias on their side. The only way to get it removed will be to start an RfC, at which point you'll get some "why are you wasting my time with this triviality" comments and even then it might not pass. How do we make creep removals/PAG merges an easier and more desirable wikitask? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:17, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb If that's a serious rather than a rhetorical question, then the way I'd go about attacking the bloat would be an RfC on "Only the main Wikipedia:Manual of Style page is to be treated as Wikipedia's style guidelines, and all the subpages which currently are considered a part of the MOS are from now on to be treated as personal essays of their authors". If the MOS were constrained to a single page rather than a book-size stack of bloat, it would force people to consider which principles are actually important and which are just a handful of people demanding Wikipedia follow their personal preferences. (I don't believe even that would have the slightest chance of passing, mind; there are too many vested interests who would insist that Wikipedia couldn't possibly survive without a set of specific rules on how to describe heraldic blazons even though that particular page averages less than half a pageview per day.) ‑ Iridescent 12:32, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

In the publishing world, authors are selected for their expertise in the domain in question or ability to learn about new domains and explain them well, and copy editors will ruthlessly edit the text, so there's no need to have hyper-domain-specific guidance. On English Wikipedia, there are some editors who think every misstep they witness is reason to create a new rule, so later on they can point to it and say, see, this rule was broken. Unfortunately, more written rules typically doesn't do a lot to help prevent problem edits, as they don't address the root causes. isaacl (talk) 21:00, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Notability and equity ideas

Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Equity considerations for notability might interest some of the folks here. So far, it's a pretty practical conversation, which makes me happy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:06, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

The comments by Jayron32 there pretty much reflect my position but more politely—if I get involved there there's too high a risk I'll just snap at someone. This just looks like yet another installment in the long long line of "but my pet topic is so damn important it should be exempt from the usual notability rules!" special pleading. Just because this time it's dressed up in the language of inclusivity, doesn't make it any different to the "it exists so it needs its own article" thinking that's let us get crapflooded with "$name competed for $country in the $year Olympics", "$name is a species of $animal in the family $family, first described in $year" and "$name is a village in $region, $country" microstubs. (We haven't even finished clearing up the Daniel Stacey–style cricket microstubs yet.)

The function of Wikipedia is to reflect sources, not to be an instrument to effect social change, and for better or worse some topice are the subject of more coverage in reliable sources than others. Complaining that English Wikipedia gives undue weight to topics where the sources are in English or that are likely to be of interest to an English-speaking audience is like complaining that too many of the programs on children's TV are made for children. ‑ Iridescent 13:39, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

A belated Thanks

For your AN closure of 9 April 2022. I've seen the closure and your subsequent explanation today and think you did the right thing. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:38, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks—my comments—whether they're on high-profile boards or just on obscure talkpages—may sometimes look throwaway, but I do try my best to always think them through. I don't often do closures; I tend to save myself for the ones that nobody else wants to touch, as most of the usual suspects know they won't get away with trying to bully and bluster at me so I can make the calls that are guaranteed to upset one side or the other. It has the unintended consequence of my looking more controversial than I really am. In that particular case, given the people who'd commented and the time it had sat unclosed, I was starting to get the impression that I was the only admin who hadn't ever had some kind of previous interaction with the editor, and thus INVOLVED. (As I didn't quite spell out as I didn't want to give a pretext for a pointless argument on AN and it wouldn't have been fair to have a pointless argument on the editor's talkpage, some of that editor's defenders were doing no favors at all. There were so many spurious arguments by the supporters, they were starting to obscure the legitimate ones—I could easily have imagined someone declining the appeal thinly disguised "if these are your friends you're obviously not the kind of person we want" grounds.) ‑ Iridescent 09:15, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

TFA for London Necropolis Company

Hi, I was going to start a nomination for London Necropolis Company at WP:TFA for June 30, as that is the 170th anniversary of its creation. However, I saw that in 2013 that there was a previous TFA nomination which you opposed for unspecified reasons. Would it be alright with you if I proceeded with a TFA nomination, or would you rather not? Sorry if this brings up unpleasant memories or emotions. Z1720 (talk) 22:40, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I can't stop you nominating it, but I'd advise @WP:TFA coordinators not to run it. The topic is a legal minefield (some of the cases arenow resolved but some are still ongoing) and by the nature of TFA it increases the volume of edits, which in turn increases the potential that someone unintentionally steps on a landmine. (WMF Legal have already issued an "edit at your own risk" warning, so I doubt they'd come to the aid of anyone getting in trouble.) My view would be that since there's zero benefit to running it ("the 170th anniversary of its creation" is obviously not a good reason), even the most minimal potential downside makes it not worth while.

Over time the article is gradually going to slip more and more out of date, both because few Wikipedia editors are willing to get involved so the page won't be updated, and because few real-world publishers would touch anything on the subject so the sources to update it don't exist. We should probably consider delisting it. ‑ Iridescent 04:28, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Z1720 There are a number of FAs that the TFA coordinators are ever likely to select, and this is one them. I suppose that if it's nominated at TFAR and gets unequivocal support, our hand may be forced, but I think it's likely to get a number of opposes Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:09, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Interesting, I learned something there. Hopefully by the time of the 200th or 250th anniversary the legal disputes will be moot or historic and a TFA would be appropriate, or much more so than for a 170th anniversary. ϢereSpielChequers 10:21, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

I feel the same way as Jim.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:43, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak and Wehwalt: Thanks for your replies. I know there are some FAs that the TFA co-ords won't select, but I did not know this article was on that list. @Iridescent: I'm not going to nominate this article at TFA. If you think that the article should be demoted, I suggest that you nominate it at WP:FAR. Clearly, there's a lot about the history of this article that I don't know about, so it would be better that questions and concerns in an FAR are first responded by you. Please ping me if there's any way that I can help. Z1720 (talk) 13:34, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers, at the rate things are going I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if it's only resolved when everyone involved is dead. This is a high-profile case involving high-profile families, taking place simultaneously in two separate jurisdictions neither of which recognizes the other—it's been going for 16 years by my count and is no nearer resolution than when it started. Had I known, I'd not have touched this topic with a barge pole; when I started it seemed a natural follow-up to Postman's Park and I thought it was going to be a whimsical story of early-Victorian attempts to use steam technology as a universal panacea for every problem, not the BLP minefield from hell. ‑ Iridescent 15:16, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

• Basically, the coordinators tend to respect the opinion of the principal authors when they feel the article should not run and give reasons.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:47, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

blue and yellow

April songs

Ukraine day today: Maks Levin DYK, expanding Kyiv Symphony Orchestra (have tickets), and creating Anthony Robin Schneider, the bass who could be heard opening the singing in Beethoven's Ninth twice on 10 March 2022, live in Frankfurt, Germany, and recorded in Auckland, New Zealand, singing "Freiheit!" (freedom) instead of "Freude" (joy), in a tradition started after the Fall of the Wall. In case of interest. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:16, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Userpage

Hi, regarding this, it was because of the edit summary. I would've put it in the details but I was told to use custom rationales as little as possible, since they have to be dealt with separately. Best, --Jan Myšák (talk) 14:45, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

That's not what speedy deletion is for. If you think something needs to be redacted for containing personally identifiable information, it should be oversighted not deleted as deletion would still leave it visible to admins. (In this case I'd say it's right on the borderline. It's technically disclosing personal information of a minor in some jurisdictions, but a 17 year old giving their own age is very different to the genuine risk cases for which WP:OSPOL was intended. In this case I have gone ahead and revdeleted it out-of-process, as now it's been linked on a high-traffic page it would create a Streisand effect otherwise.)

I know it sounds bureaucratic, but in the case of deletion the rules are there for a reason. Both speedy deletion and revision suppression have the potential to be controversial in even the most apparently clear-cut cases, so we tend not to invoke IAR unless there's a very clear reason to do so. (Invoking IAR also wastes a lot of admin time, as they need to understand your rationale.)

Whoever advised you to use custom rationales as little as possible was too soft; I can think of no circumstances when you should ever be using custom rationales for speedy deletions except maybe a very few specialist use cases regarding non-obvious copyright violations. If the reason you want the page deleted appears on Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#List of criteria then an appropriate template already exists so there's no need to use a custom rationale; if the reason you want the page deleted doesn't appear on Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#List of criteria, then the page isn't eligible for speedy deletion. ‑ Iridescent 16:11, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

You must get this question a lot. Unbroken Chain (talk) 17:07, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not going to wade through 14 megabytes of talk archives to double-check, but as far as I can recall this and #Question are the only occasions. When I decline requests for any admin action, I always try to explain why, so 'why didn't you fulfil my request?' doesn't generally arise. (People may not agree with me—if you want to make yourself really unpopular really quickly head on over to Wikipedia:Requests for permissions or Wikipedia:Requests for page protection and start declining good-faith requests from people who either don't understand the relevant policies or think that their request is So Damn Important that it warrants invoking IAR—but they know why I've made the decision I made.) Wikipedia administration is generally a lot less mysterious than it appears; in 99.9% of cases it's purely a case of "does this meet the applicaple policy for whatever's being requested?". It's just that the 0.1% is the part that gets noticed as everything else ticks along quietly in the background. ‑ Iridescent 17:26, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

I didn't agree about the subject overall at the start. You absolutely went above and beyond in your replies on the subject though which is all anyone can ask. I was actually making this comment in some sort of sympathy for you (in case it wasn't clear. Friendly banter not poking at a bear). Hope you enjoy your afternoon. Unbroken Chain (talk) 22:32, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

@Unbroken Chain (and everyone else who's reading this) There's a couple of things that could help people understand your tone on Wikipedia:

1. The use of tone indicators. This was originally designed for people with disabilities affecting social communication, but can be useful for everyone. There's even a template made by TheresNoTime called {{Tone indicator}}, but if you're talking with someone familiar with tone indicators, you can probably do it 'freehand.' More information can be found here.
2. Inline humor disclosure templates, which are listed at this navigation box: {{Humor disclosure templates}}. {{FBDB}}, standing for "friendly banter don't block," has been used often enough that I've seen in 'action'. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 02:20, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

That is helpful. Good way to not be misunderstood. Thanks for that. Unbroken Chain (talk) 04:36, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth I don't really agree with IDOH here—if the tone is so unclear that people can't tell if you're serious or not the solution is almost always going to be to rewrite the text. In my experience the usage statistic for the {{FBDB}} template (the only one that's in any kind of regular use) breaks down roughly:

• 2%: to alert others to a prior relationship between editors within which teasing would be acceptable, in the context of the friendly relationship between the two editors not only existing, but being apparent to a third party;
• 3%: people who think slapping ^[FBDB] at the end of a comment gives a license to be as offensive as they like;
• 95%: passive-aggressive signalling that the editor making the comment is so damn clever mere mortals won't possibly understand their higher intellect unless their wittiness is pointed out, in the hope of intimidating other participants out of the discussion.

Although it's used enough thet you've seen it in the wild, if you look at who is using it it tends to be the exclusive preserve of the same handful of self-appointed Wikipedia Court Jesters. It's usually a fairly safe rule of thumb when closing discussions that whichever side is the first to use a {{FBDB}} template is the side that's in the wrong; people who have confidence in their evidence tend not to resort either to bitching and belittling or to trying to distract from the issue with jokes. ‑ Iridescent 04:57, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

That's why I've been saying we need to establish a formal RfJ process to eliminate confusion. jp×g 05:47, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Request for judgement? Request for justice? Am I missing something obvious? WP:RFJ doesn't seem to relate to anything said in this thread. 92.40.197.22 (talk) 10:12, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

"Request for joke" I assume given the context. The idea of a panel to judge what is and isn't funny wouldn't even surprise me if the WMF proposed it. ‑ Iridescent 14:33, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

I thought it was "Request for Jestership". Or is it jesterhood? —Kusma (talk) 15:26, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Some people need to lighten up. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

@Tryptofish Okay, I laughed at this. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:11, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

It depends on context; like I said, tone indicators like /joke or /lighthearted was originally designed for neurodivergent folks who might need additional clarity above what's considered 'normal' by a majority of the internet. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:10, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

If Wikipedia has a single iron-hard rule, it's "anything intended as a joke will be taken seriously by someone". Disabilities aren't really the main issue (people with autism etc are by-and-large used to having to consciously second-guess intent); it's more that jokes tend to rely on shared assumptions to work, and when you have a collection of people of all ages and all backgrounds from all countries, it breaks down. The same goes even more so for quotations, especially pop-culture references that aren't explicitly flagged as pop-culture references; there have been occasions when I've been ready to block editors as apparently compromised accounts, before figuring out that the gibberish they're posting is a quote from some book/song/movie that everyone in their peer group will be familiar with so it genuinely hasn't occurred to them that to anyone who didn't grow up at the same time and in the same place as them, it just looks like nonsense. ‑ Iridescent 05:57, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm a bit late here, but I just wanted to thank you for the thorough reply. Best, Jan Myšák (talk) 19:05, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks—apologies for the fact this thread has meandered, threads on this talk page have a tendency to do so. My reply was definitiely not intended as any kind of dig at you. As far as most of the press and the assorted commentators on social media are concerned English Wikipedia is 'the' wiki so alleged abuses get more attention here than they do elsewhere; consequently the rules around both speedy deletion and revision deletion work differently and are adhered to more strictly on English Wikipedia than they do on most other WMF sites, so people who are admins on other projects regularly get confused by them. ‑ Iridescent 07:24, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

• Hi, and thanks for offering your services as an jester or nominator. Please read Jesters, the Guide to requests for jestership, and Advice for RfJ candidates before proceeding with a nomination. Jestership is not for new or inexperienced users. Candidates who are successful have usually made thousands of jokes on talk pages and user talk pages. Jesters need to know and understand how Wikipedia handles sarcasm and levity, and other policies, and they must be able to show that they can exercise sound judgment in funny situations. Applications from editors without considerable experience are usually quickly declined as premature or even deleted before they begin. If you are unsure if an RfJ nomination is reasonable, please ask a jester or an established user for advice. jp×g 18:54, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

  If you (or any TPW) is interested in the more serious thoughts of myself and others about 'jestership' on Wikipedia, head on over to this thread, do a ctrl-f for "Chief Gadfly" and read from that point down. Choess and Llywrch in particular make good points about how Wikipedia's origins and evolution have led to the situation where we essentially have Designated Assholes who are given something of a free rein to be obnoxious, on the tacit understanding that they'll do their best only to direct their scorn towards those deserving of it. (At one point Malleus and EEng both had this status; when they got in an argument with each other it was Wikipedia's equivalent of a proton-antiproton annihilation.) Beeblebrox's essay at Wikipedia:Unblockables is also worth reading for the opposing point of view, that by allowing these editors a degree of leeway it creates an unhealthy imbalance between different groups of editors. ‑ Iridescent 06:21, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

  So, you're gun-shy at least partially because of unblockables. That's actually understandable. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:27, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	For having the most awesome talk page on Wikipedia. Scorpions13256 (talk) 22:54, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, although I'm not sure 'awesome' is quite the word you're looking for. 'Verbose' is probably nearer the mark… ‑ Iridescent 12:31, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

New administrator activity requirement

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

1. Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
2. Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

FFS, for a group that collectively likes to parrot "no big deal", the peanut gallery certainly like acting as if sysop=y is Willy Wonka's golden ticket. It's the ability to perform a few maintenance functions on a website, not permission to perform open heart surgery. I haven't driven a car for about eight years but they don't take my license away even though if I haven't kept up to date with the changes to the driving rules it potentially kills people; this is because the authorities trust that people coming back to something after a long time away will generally have the sense to take it easy and ease themselves back in. (For the benefit of admin TPWs, here's a search for the appearance of "targetted" in mainspace, which (because so many people mistakenly think there are English variants that use double-t) is always the gift that keeps on giving if one needs to rack up a dozen mainspace edits in a hurry. Provided that each year you perform 10 mainspace search-and-replaces, manually archive your user talk page, and open up CAT:CSD and delete a couple of low-hanging drafts, that ought to be enough to vaccinate not just against this particular piece of security theater but even the most stringent variation on it that might be imposed in future. You're welcome.)

Yes "admins returning from long breaks and performing inappropriate administrative actions because they aren't aware a particular rule has changed" is a genuine concern in the sense that the concern exists, but in terms of importance it's at roughly the level of "Wikipedia's decision to use RDT as a standard mapping format means complex systems like {{Colorado River map}} and {{Berlin S-Bahn route diagram}} are misleading". If the 249 different editors who felt the need to say their piece at the RFC could devote the same attention to some of the actual issues like "the current rules on conflict of interest actively penalize people for being honest", "there are 80,000 edits made to mainspace every day^[2] but only 4000 active editors by even the weak 'five edits' definition^[3] so it's becoming impossible to meaningfully monitor recent changes", and "the nature of the relationship between English Wikipedia, other Wikipedias, and the WMF is unclear and is leading to increased tension over the strategic direction of all three", we might actually start making some progress. ‑ Iridescent 06:00, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I suspect that the bigger concern driving this change is the wikigeneration divide between the admins and the currently active editors. As long as we fail to recruit admins from among those editors who started in the last decade, and the admin cadre is dominated by people who started editing over ten years ago, the tension driving this remains (we currently have only 42 admins whose first edit was less than ten years ago, and only 13 of them started in the last five years) As for your bigger problems, I agree that the ratio of daily mainspace edits to active editors is important, I'm just not sure if it is changing at anything like the speed as our ratio of active admins to active Wikipedians. However, some obvious vandalisms currently get past both recent changes and the watchlisters without anyone noticing. I have drafted User:WereSpielChequers/Invisible flagged revisions as a proposal for when I have time for an RFC and we have an incident that focuses minds on the need for a better way to screen new edits. ϢereSpielChequers 10:49, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: Incidentally I drafted something to scrap FlaggedRevs (see User:ProcrastinatingReader/sandbox4), mostly due to the state of the extension and the failure in its current implementation, but if it could be used properly I think it'd be quite useful in preventing vandalism. With the edit filter it's pretty easy to come up with conditions that (in 75%+ cases) are vandalism, but this is too high FP to disallow and warning/logging tends to do little. If those could be sent for review instead, that would seem promising. There is the Wikipedia:Deferred changes proposal (RFC); it hasn't been technically implemented yet, but I think it'd be a big improvement and fundamental change in counter-vandalism since it would defer decisions from the immediate to the whenever, and lifts admin burden at WP:AIV etc. As well as that, I'd prefer a "not vandalism" button rather than "checked and approved", the latter of which seems to be the present assumption. It's much faster, and less burdensome, to check an edit for not being vandalism than it is to check it for being otherwise policy compliant. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:28, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

The problem will be edits where it isn't obvious whether they are vandalism or not (thanks to filters and bots, this is true for an increasing percentage of edits). Classic examples are people changing unsourced sports statistics into other unsourced sports statistics, or updates to the name of a town's mayor in some infobox. Determining whether these are vandalism is the same as checking them for accuracy. —Kusma (talk) 19:16, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I see more utility in this being a 'first line of defence'. Its purpose being to prevent blatant vandalism from going live and being seen by readers, or flagging things that may have escaped past whichever patrollers are active at a given time. Things like sneaky vandalism can be dealt with in the usual ways, as with content that fails verification or is otherwise problematic (page watchers, recent changes patrollers, people stumbling across the error, etc.) Even despite filters/bots, there's still a bunch of obvious vandalism that gets through, and if it gets past the patrollers active at a given time and is on a low-profile page then IME it often sticks around for a while. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:49, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I can see it potentially causing more issues than it solves. We know from past experience with filters and bots that if people have a false sense of security that Wikipedia is protected, they become less active at patrolling, so a partially effective filter can paradoxically cause the rate of vandalism going live to rise. Besides, the real issue isn't so much vandalism, as neutrality. Vandalism is usually fairly easy for readers to spot, but what's a lot harder is when an article is intentionally skewed, and no bot can spot that. (Facebook and Google have thrown literally billions of dollars at the problem without success; the likelihood that the WMF developers—who are the people rejected by Facebook and Google—will crack the problem is fairly low.)

I'll blow my own experiment and name one of the articles I periodically monitor to see how long it will take for the 'subtle disruption not quite rising to vandalism' to be addressed: Randox. This is one of the many "important enough that we should undoubtedly have an article, but not so important that it's on dozens of watchlists" topics that form the backbone of Wikipedia. However, the article was hijacked by an anonymous IP editor (presumably a disgruntled employee, given that they were stupid enough to edit from their work computer) in mid-2021 to become a laundry list of every negative claim ever made about the firm. No bot would spot this and even a conscientious recent changes patroller would be unlikely to spot it since every claim made does indeed have a source, but the net result is to make a relatively dull Irish medical diagnostics firm look like a full-on crime syndicate. There are a lot more articles just like this; bots can't spot undue weight issues, and because they need to actually be read and understood rather than fitting into the click-revert-warn-next Huggle cycle, they tend to slip through all the usual patrolling. ‑ Iridescent 14:50, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

I've responded on User talk:ProcrastinatingReader/sandbox4. As for unsourced changes to info on living people, I don't see a problem in simply reverting such edits as unsourced. Though I'd prefer it if like DE we prompred people for their source. ϢereSpielChequers 10:46, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

I've responded there as well. The TL;DR version would be that I don't think we're using PC enough to justify the time costs in keeping the whole infrastructure (technical and social) around it, and as currently used PC just confuses editors. ‑ Iridescent 04:51, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

There is a massive gap between pre-2010 editors and post-2010 editors in how adminship is perceived. Back in 2006, it was fairly straightforward to become an admin (do good work for a while, get nominated, pass RfA), with not too much bad feelings when RfAs failed. Nowadays I'm afraid of nominating good people for RfA because I don't want them to quit Wikipedia after a failed RfA. This change in RfA (whether real or just perceived) means that younger generations treat adminship as a Very Big Deal, and when they see a re-sysop of an inactive, there is usually moaning at WP:BN how this person with only 4000 edits does not deserve adminship. These controversial resysops (Yelyos was especially unpopular) together with recent desysoppings have created an atmosphere of general distrust of "legacy admins". While the distrust is exaggerated, I don't think asking people to do three days of active editing per five years is too much, and it might be better at getting people back into the game than the "one edit per year" thing.

I think the psychological basis for the whole issue is closely linked to the declining promotion rates at RfA. And RfA reform is a more or less hopeless endeavour, so current adminship reform is done on the other end, removing any hint that adminship used to be not a big deal. "No big deal" is a minority position now, and that won't change unless we promote massive numbers of people with reasonable tenure (six months is plenty) and editcount again. —Kusma (talk) 12:55, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm of the mind the requirement is a more nuanced one. From my perspective, admins were once considered an integral part of the editing community...as editors and collaborators...and one of the primary reasons the community trusted them with the tools – they were more aware of the whys and what-ifs of editing as a member of our editing community, not separate from it as some are seen today. If we get right down to it, isn't editing & content creation the main reason we're here? When the practice of editing and all the subtle reminders of how our PAGs apply is no longer part of one's thought process, it's easy to lose sight of purpose which tends to greenlight the transition to thought police guided by prejudice in lieu of what once was good judgment, inadvertent or otherwise. Admins focus on behavior, but that doesn't mean they should totally ignore the content that caused the behavior - such as noncompliance with NPOV, poor sourcing issues, TE, etc. all of which are actionable if it equates to disruption; however, determining whether it is a disruption or a consensus-building debate is dependent on the judgment of the acting admin. Yes, we have occasional issues with WP:POV creep and other prejudices – we're only human – but anonymity tends to embolden people, and so does a lifetime position of authority. Problems do tend to arise when the same few admins assume guardianship over the most controversial topic areas which shines a brighter light on those admins who are inactive - Car 54 where are you and why are the same few admins overseeing this area? I don't profess to have all the answers, and I will also admit to being one (among others) who proposed term limits, and a modified blocking proposal, but only because I'm looking to find a resolution to problems that actually exist. Atsme 💬 📧 14:42, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

admins were once considered an integral part of the editing community this is part of what I mean, although already in 2006 this was fading in the big "(mature) content editors versus teenage admins (who got their bit by vandal fighting and were voted in by their IRC friends)" debates. The "1FA/admins must be content creators" ideas came as a response to that. The question is whether it is possible to make being an admin more normal again; my naive idea of just promoting more admins seems unlikely to work, given the great resistance of the experienced non-admins against doing anything that might make adminship easier to get. —Kusma (talk) 15:18, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't disagree that the problem is genuine—at the time of my RFA I was held up as some kind of Stakhanovite ideal because I had (gasp!) over 10,000 edits. These days, that would be considered 'inexperienced', and I very much doubt What admin work do you intend to take part in? "To be honest, probably not a lot at first)" would go unpunished nowadays. The people who joined Wikipedia more recently have either grown up with it or been using it for years, and (particularly if they're in the US) have recently been subject to an 'information warfare' narrative in which way more importance is given to the perceived control of the sources of information. (FWIW, I consider the 'information warfare' narrative total bullshit, at least regarding all the major reader bases of English Wikipedia. The US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland etc are all free economies with a free press—if the media are pushing a particular narrative it's because they've made a conscious calculation that it's the narrative their readers want to pay for.)

The cause also hasn't been helped by the fact that certain admins like to act as if they're the Wikipedia Bureau of State Security and posture about How Damn Important they are. Unfortunately, although there are only a few like this they tend to be the admins most active on the noticeboards, so readers quite reasonably get the impression that admins are supposed to act like some kind of elite super-users.

Where I differ is that while I'm quite willing to accept that 'legacy admins' are a problem, I don't think that within the broader framework they're a remotely important part of the problem. If anything, I think this move will make matters worse, as by reducing the number of admins (even if it doesn't by definition affect the number of active admins) it will further increase the perception that admins are an elite force, and thus make people vet the candidates even more thoroughly at RFA. (By its nature RFAs are going to be more nitpicky nowadays—when the candidates had only been active for one or two years, they'd had fewer opportunities to make enemies and by dint of making fewer edits had made fewer mistakes for those enemies to triumphantly brandish.)

I know we're stuck with RFA as a process thanks to legal considerations, but it ought to be more along the lines of "can anyone demonstrate they have a reasonable concern that this person will potentially use the tools inappropriately?" not "has this person ever in their entire time here done something that you personally didn't agree with?". ‑ Iridescent 15:23, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Given that the eleven successful RFAs since the start of last year all had at least 95% support and some had zero opposes, My suspicion is that RFA is deterring candidates because it has a reputation of being overly nitpicky. While the reality is that very few people oppose unless they see something recent enough to be a reasonable concern. To my mind the problem is that few people run until they are arguably over qualified and could have passed long before. This isn't just me as a crat wanting to participate in a crat chat, we just don't seem to be getting RFAs in the 70-95% range these days. ϢereSpielChequers 17:15, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Iri + Kus, I agree with your sentiments. We need more admins, and I strongly believe we need to eliminate unilateral actions in the name of DS that ArbCom made nearly impossible to overturn – maybe create rotational schedules for admins in those areas? It may also be time to break open the admin toolbox and allow more extended rights to trusted, long-term users – perhaps create a pre-admin level to help with backlogged areas that require moves, authorization to close RfDs, RfCs, etc., and whatever else will help without giving those users authority to block or t-ban. For example, my extended user rights include autopatrolled, extended confirmed user, page mover, new page reviewer, pending changes reviewer, rollbacker, VRT (formerly OTRS). I think what gives editors pause about electing admins are the block & t-ban rights. I doubt too many editors will fear a user who has extended rights that pertain only to editing, unless they are abusing those rights. Perhaps with guidance and/or a trial period, it could work - and maybe consider having potential candidates who are shooting for level 1–admin starter take courses at NPPSchool, Vandalism training, and COI training. That will relieve admins of a big part of the burden, don'cha think? Atsme 💬 📧 17:34, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

There is little left of the admin toolbox to unbox, on a technical level. It's down to blocks/protections and tasks relevant to deletion. Closing discussions are mostly limited to admins only in cases where admins tools are needed (or might be in the case of topic bans), with only one exception (cases where "the outcome is a close call"). There's a cultural cachet to an admin close, but that's tricky to legislate away. I disagree on unilateral DS actions, given we are discussing the issue of low numbers of active admins, a tool that makes admin actions simpler is helpful for the maintenance of the project. WP:AE allows for such unilateral actions to receive wider review, and the new WP:AARV may shake out into some sort of useful oversight forum in time. CMD (talk) 17:55, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers, I've always tought that the "RFA is hell" meme is complete bullshit. (There have certainly been times when it must have been horrible for the candidate, but they're without exception cases where there were legitimate reasons to criticize the candidate.) I know you've seen it before, but to anyone who wants to defend the "RFA is hell" meme I'll repeat the challenge I issued to WAID in this thread last year:

Here's the list of every RFA in reverse-chronological order (and here's just the failed ones if that's easier—what's the most recent example you can find of an RFA failing unfairly? (By "unfairly" I don't mean "there were legitimate concerns which I don't think disqualified the candidate, but enough people disagreed", I mean "more people than a couple of the usual serial opposers opposed for an unfair reason".)

I do recommend reading that thread in full for anyone who's interested in RFA/desysop reform and didn't see it at the time, as there are quite a few people (not just me) crystalizing their thoughts on the issue.

I stand by what I said four years ago; the notion is a misconception based on a couple of high-profile very bad-tempered RFAs a decade ago, largely spread by a couple of very vocal people at the Signpost with no actual evidence to back it up, and qualified candidates tend to sail through RFA unless someone finds a skeleton in their closet. If anything, I think that's even more the case now than it was when I said it, as people who in the past wouldn't have participated now turn up to support.

@Atsme, I'd have no problem with unbundling most of the rights. The only one I'd have an issue with is block/unblock, and I suspect that's for a different reason to you. To get delete/undelete/viewdeleted the editor needs to have gone through RFA, and that's non-negotiable for legal reasons. As such, if we unbundled block/unblock we couldn't unbundle delete/undelete/viewdeleted with them, which opens some huge cans of worms regarding people handling unblock requests who are unable to see the editor in question's history, or blocking vandals but being unable to delete the pages they created and thus increasing the workload on what admins are left.

I'd vehemently oppose the take courses at NPPSchool, Vandalism training, and COI training part. One of Wikipedia's great strengths is that people do as much or as little as they feel comfortable with and we don't have compulsory training, induction or anything else. Indeed, the intent to have mandatory training is one of the primary reasons even people who support UCoC are threatening to resign over it. Besides, while I've never had any dealings with the groups you describe, given past experience cleaning up the fuckwittery coming from the Guild of Copy Editors my confidence in these self-appointed "Wikipedia training schools" is not high.

@Chipmunkdavis, If WP:AARV is still with us in six months I'll be shocked. It's already suffering the same WP:Requests for people to take up the time of someone with whom I'm in dispute in the hope they'll concede rather than spend a week dealing with it issue that sank WP:RFC/U. ‑ Iridescent 17:59, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not betting on its success, but it seems that having some place where admin actions can be specifically looked over is one way to help with a perception of admin power (adminship as a big deal). The most recent legacy admin kerfuffles that come to mind went to AN(I) (where it gets mixed in with everything else) and then to Arbcom. A pre-ARBCOM oversight layer that isn't AN/I is needed, especially as the maintenance burden increases and thus the need for unilateral admin action increases with it. CMD (talk) 18:17, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Without trying to be snarky, that's WP:AN. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:21, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

AN is not specifically tailored for review, it is a much more general forum. CMD (talk) 18:34, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Well that's the benefit, isn't it? You get a wide variety of people commenting rather than a self-selected appellate body that doesn't have any practical experience with how the policy is actually interpreted telling the people who do have experience with what the consensus on the policy is how they should be reading it (see WP:DRV.) Review forums that are not generalized on Wikipedia don't tend to be the best functioning forums, because they tend to attract letter of the law people on a project that is explicitly not letter of the law. Anyway, just looked at the page history and happy to see that no one is using it. Seems like that was the best possible outcome of that experiment... TonyBallioni (talk) 18:49, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

A general forum certainly has its benefits, but I'm not sure how that's relevant to adminship being a big deal and how that might be changed. CMD (talk) 19:13, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I think Tony's point (@TonyBallioni correct me if I'm wrong) is that a self-selecting committee would naturally self-select for the kind of people who think adminship is A Big Deal (because if you don't think something's important why would you spend time on it?) and as such would give distorted results, whereas discussion on more general boards would be far more likely to give "this issue is clearly not important enough to be concerned over" outcomes. We see this all the time on Wikipedia—witness the kind of reception Manual of Style debates or deletion discussions get when they get escalated to venues that are frequented by a broader audience rather than just the handful of people who happen to think the trivial issue at stake is Really Important. ‑ Iridescent 17:48, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Basically any self-selecting review board on Wikipedia fills itself with the people who are prone to see abuses/think [pet issue] is Really. Important. That doesn't mean they don't have their place, but when you combine it with the political minefield that RfA/things related to adminship/desysop have become, you add to the perception that it is a big deal just by the nature of what the comments there are going to be. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:11, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

• General reply to the above thread not particularly directed at anyone - one of the problems I think GorillaWarfare has pointed out about ArbCom is that it is populated primarily by people with time on their hands - students, the retired, those unemployed (by their choice or by others), recent graduates, people working in academic roles where there's flexibility in the day, etc. Not a hard and fast rule, but a stereotype that does have some grounding in reality.
  I think at this point in time, you could reasonably argue that passing RfA requires the same type of person. To be honest, it did 5 years ago when I passed as well, but that's become even more the case now. That excludes essentially the entire class of hobby editors from making it in the 1-2 years that used to be the norm. Given competing real life priorities, if I shifted my non-work activities to prioritize Wikipedia over some other things, I still wouldn't be able to pass RfA if I was a new editor who started editing today.
  How that relates to the activity requirements is this - I'm not opposed to stricter activity requirements like other wikis have, but if we have them, I'd prefer they be stronger than this. What a non-strict but hard to keep track of requirement like 100/5 does is make the oldtimers think people are out to get them and worry that they'll have to justify their ability to not blow up the site at RfA again in the case of a future change, which will lead to more gaming of the requirement. I understand why it was made this simple - easier to pass - but I also don't think it really does anything and if people really want to send the message activity is important, this wouldn't be the way to do it since its such a low standard that it doesn't convey much of anything. I don't really think you'd have that problem with a logged actions standard, because people would connect it with use rather than just the "we don't know you so get lost" vibe the 100/5 thing seems to give off. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:19, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

OK, I'll bite

A model that might work would be a desysop-lite model with a very high bar. Off the top of my head:

1. Every three or five years an admin's name is listed for enough time for people to comment (28 days?). The admin can defer the process for up to six months in case the time is inconvenient for them;
2. There's a "silence implies support" model so the only comments made are 'revoke';
3. Unless a relatively high number (say, 40 people) say 'revoke', it automatically defaults to 'keep';
4. Commenting is restricted only to editors with a significant activity level like 1000 edits in the past year, to stop it being hijacked by socks and trolls;
5. In the event of a win for "revoke" it wouldn't automatically lead to desysop but to the name being passed to Arbcom with a recommendation for desysop—that way we don't need to create a new 'desysopper' userright, and serve as a double-check against admins being maliciously revoked by sockfarms or the losing sides in content disputes. If arbcom don't want the job, the crats (voting as a group, not individual crats) would also suffice—in a way it might even be better by actually giving the crats something substantive to do.

I'm sure there's a good reason why it wouldn't work, but I can't immediately think of one. We could stagger the initial backlog by randomizing Special:Listadmins and posting three or four a day over the course of a year, to avoid a huge spike that would then keep repeating itself every anniversary.This would weed out all the cases where a legacy admin genuinely shouldn't keep the tools, without periodically plunging good-faith admins into a massive timesink against their wishes. Because everyone would be subject to it nobody should feel singled out, and everyone would have enough notice that it was coming that if they genuinely have a reason to keep advanced userrights, they have time to either write out a case or head on over to Category:Administrative backlog and demonstrate that they can still walk the walk. ‑ Iridescent 20:11, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

You know, maybe this idea would never take off, but it'll at least get the discussion to continue, which is worth it. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:29, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

On reflection, I'd add a caveat to #2: the only comments to be made by third parties are "revoke", but the admin in question is allowed to post a brief statement, to allow for "I've been inactive recently because I'm serving on a submarine" type statements. My intent would be to avoid or at least minimize any kind of the back-and-forth that plagues RFA, and make the whole process as dull and unheated as possible. (Think something like Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion.) ‑ Iridescent 05:38, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

First thoughts: Are there disputes where there are about 40+ participants that can be canvassed on one side or the other? Also, based on an issue I've seen in all desysop proposals so far, do these 40 recommenders open themselves up for investigation and possible sanctions if ArbCom decides that their conduct needs examination too? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:05, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but I'd have thought the patterns would be fairly obvious if a group of supporters of a particular country/party/ideology/religion tried to blackball admins of the opposite persuasion, or if a blocked editor's friends mobbed the admin that blocked their buddy. The number 40 was just plucked out of the air and doesn't have any particular significance, but I chose it as a number high enough that a block vote would be beyond the limits of AGF. Block votes can happen without coordination just because the group concerned are all likely to have similar things on their watchlists or see the same notification—it's the entire reason why we have that sprawling Wikipedia deletion sorting tree of topic-specific subpages—but not at the levels of this kind of number. I would think that if there were obvious attempts to distort the outcome, it would be dealt with under the WP:EEML#Off-wiki communication precedent in the same way we'd deal with attempts to rig any other process. ‑ Iridescent 17:19, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Even if you amend this proposal so that anyone, not just the admin, can respond to a revoke reason they think is unfounded, I see this becoming an unpleasant process. We already have people who have minority views at RFA - opposing candidates who haven't written an FA or worse for enforcing a policy that they disagree with. Strip out the support section and and how do you prevent this degenerating into a hazing ceremony? I see this proposal as much more toxic than simply making all admin bits expire five years after the admin's last RFA. And remember, our problem is a shortage of new admins, getting rid of many of the existing ones isn't going to be good for Wikipedia. ϢereSpielChequers 10:39, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

This situation reminds me of the difficulties Congress faces when they have to vote on an amendment for term limits, a limit to their authority, or a reduction in their paychecks – kind of an eyes wide shut without the eroticism – sooo...why not just go straight to the community with a well-balanced, fair and reasonable proposal they can either counter, add to, or reject? I think some good ideas have been presented here relative to RfA but we already know there's a need. We have not gotten down to the root cause of what makes RfA a hell-hole, and to fix it, we need more than just a bandaid. I've made some unpopular suggestions and I fully understand why good-intentioned admins would shy away from them, but it is not the good-intentioned admins who are causing our deeply rooted issues at RfA. If all admins were good-intentioned we wouldn't be having this discussion. Yes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and if anyone thinks it doesn't, especially in a community protected by anonymity, they're on a fool's errand. In fact, it goes beyond RfA which brings up the old adage, one bad apple can spoil the barrel. Considering the fact that we are voting for anonymous people who have access to the ban hammer, and can indef block or t-ban an editor on a whim at their sole discretion without a warning (DS), an action that cannot easily be overturned, the real question is why wouldn't RfA be a hell hole?

Suggestion: create a team (consisting of more non-admins than admins) who can put together a proposal that will include all substantial views, and submit it to the community to mull over, discuss, and make a decision? We all want protection from vandals or help with a round-robin move, or have a qualified, unbiased individual close a controversial RfC. It's time to finally admit that our community probably has more than its share of bad actors who are not here to help build an encyclopedia; rather, they are here as POV warriors, RGW warriors, bullies that enjoy bullying, CIR editors, and so forth. We have also acquired some thought police along the way, and that's just as bad. Truth can be ugly, but as we already know, turning a blind eye to it won't make it go away. The ugliness will not only perpetuate itself, but it will also grow, and if we allow that to happen, well...you be the judge. Atsme 💬 📧 14:43, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: Ultimately, we're simultaneously trying to square "we need more admins" and "we need fewer of the the wrong kind of admins"; there's no solution (including maintaining the status quo) that isn't going to annoy somebody. Nothing's going to be ideal; anything that involves a mechanism for removing anything from anybody against their will is by definition going to have an element of unpleasantness to it. What I'm aiming for is to make it as routine as possible, to at least reduce the ill-feeling that stems from complaints against editors (admin or not) at the moment even when those complaints don't go anywhere.

If it works, it might stem the "but it is a big deal!" opposers; since RFA would no longer be handing out jobs-for-life people might be more inclined to support marginal candidates on the grounds that even if they proved incompetent there would be a clear mechanism to remove them relatively painlessly. Recertification isn't an alien concept—we may not currently do it on Wikipedia, but plenty of real-world professions do it routinely.

@Atsme: Again, I disagree with the basic assumption behind we have not gotten down to the root cause of what makes RfA a hell-hole. People constantly repeat this but invariably go quiet when asked to provide any evidence. I'll repeat yet again:

Here's the list of every RFA in reverse-chronological order (and here's just the failed ones if that's easier—what's the most recent example you can find of an RFA failing unfairly? (By "unfairly" I don't mean "there were legitimate concerns which I don't think disqualified the candidate, but enough people disagreed", I mean "more people than a couple of the usual serial opposers opposed for an unfair reason".)

There's a fundamental difference between "RFA is hell" and "RFA sometimes doesn't give the results I want". (Even if RFA is hell, that in itself could be argued to be a point in its favor. If a prospetive admin breaks down because half-a-dozen people say some mildly rude things about mistakes they've made in the past, they're sure as hell in for a nasty shock when their RFA passes and they have to go toe-to-toe with Fram, TenPoundHammer or the ARSholes at ANI or DRV.)::::

Nominating a committee to draft things rarely works well on Wikipedia—the debate pretty much inevitably becomes focised on the membership of the committee rather than on the proposals, and those who weren't invited to join the committee have a tendency to oppose anything suggested out of pique. Probably better to have an open "post your suggestions here!" page, weed out the obvious crazies and the proposals Legal wouldn't approve, and then have a monster RFC with support/oppose tallies for each, to see if we can come up with anything that the community could largely live with even if not everybody's first choice. ‑ Iridescent 15:17, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

It isn't just that we probably can't get a solution that will please everyone, we can't get agreement as to whether getting rid of more admins when their number is declining would make the problem better or worse. FWIW I'm very much in the camp that culling the active and semi active admin cadre would make things worse, and as a volunteer community it would be more sensible to make returning members of the community more welcome not less. But if you did want to flesh out your proposal, I'd make it an ordinary RFA closed by crats in the usual way, and I'd spread things out by creating a random list and putting people in from the top of the list, one a day as and when the number of live RFAs drops below ten. At least for the first few months that system would be dominated by active admins volunteering for an uncontentious run. Then loads of semi active admins would retire or lose the mop. Once that was over we'd still have the problem of persuading more candidates to come forward, either that or go to the WMF and ask them to hire some people to do the bits of adminning that we can no longer get volunteers for. My preferred solution is still firstly to solve the problem by persuading more Wikipedians to run, if that fails, when it is clear that we don't have enough admins to go out and recruit a huge batch of poorly vetted admins, most of whom will do just fine, and lastly my least favourite solution is for the WMF to do what most sites do and hire some moderators. I'll miss this era if we fail to solve the problem and have to hand it to the WMF, but I'm fairly sure that Wikipedia will survive. ϢereSpielChequers 20:33, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

(I just noticed that the section header for the widely posted message says it's a new administrator requirement, although it's actually about old administrators. Anyway...) Back a very long time ago in wiki-years, when I was relatively new here, I was the naive creature behind WP:CDARFC. It was one of the more prominent in a long series of Admin Removal Proposals that Failed, which are some of the community's most predictable features. Remarkably, the new administrator requirement about old administrators is something that actually got a very solid consensus in favor (if not here at this talk page). I'll stare into my crystal ball (got it cheap, from a guy on the corner who also has Rolex watches), and predict that Iri's idea will never happen. The just-passed requirement says that inactive admins will be notified before anything happens to them. Not a whole lot is gained by notifying them that they had better come back and defend themselves against a bunch of people with gripes. Or a bunch of people who say "Who on earth is that? I've never seen them around." --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: This thread has sprawled so quickly the start is some distance from the current editing point, but note that the comment of mine that actually started it is my pointing out how much of a non-issue I think 'legacy admins' is. On current trends the existing structure of the Wikipedia internal hierarchy is due to end in 2033 (see right) and will become unworkable long before that; when the obituaries for Wikipedia come to be written, the "what went wrong?" editorials are unlikely to go with "the project failed because they weren't zealous enough in stripping userrights from people who weren't using them regularly".

However the fact that this notification has dropped on my talk page implies that enough people think it is a problem to push a proposal through RFC, and we have to accept that. What I'm trying to do is suggest variations on it that will actually work—the proposal as enacted will generate a one-off rerun of July 2011 and see a couple of hundred apostates purged from the cult, but other than that will probably have zero impact other than making the people who turn up once a year to archive their talkpage now do so thread-by-thread to ensure they hit their 20 edits per year quota. I'm trying to think of a compromise that would have a chance of being accepted, not what I want; if I were in charge the software would auto-expire every advanced permission after a couple of years (even the trivial ones like rollback and file renamer) and people would need to re-apply. ‑ Iridescent 04:58, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

A year or so before lockdown I went to the Great British Beer festival with some friends. For most of the event I was one of the oldest people around, and then at chucking out time there were some organisers who all looked old enough to have been members when CAMRA was in its heyday. Which is a convoluted way of saying that volunteer communities can take a long time to shuffle off the mortal coil, especially if their founding generation has a youthful profile. In Wikipedia's case if you extrapolate a decline of fifty admins a year till 2033 you still have half the admins we have now, and with the editing community still above the 2014 minima, I'm not 100% convinced that if we haven't solved RFA by then there won't be enough admins to keep the site running. Another way to look at this is in terms of life expectancy. If I make it to 2033 I would be quite a bit older than my father was when he died, but some of our youngest admins from the early years of the project won't reach retirement age until after 2050. Provided we can be welcoming to returning editors, and be a hobby you can resume in retirement, I think we could still have some of our founding generation around half a century from now. I can't believe we won't have persuaded more people to run for admin by then. ϢereSpielChequers 11:05, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

If that were the case, the number of active admins wouldn't be dropping so precipitately. It's less than three years since the wailing and gnashing of teeth when we dropped below 500 active admins for the first time; at the moment we're hovering around the 450 mark and still steadily dropping (In that Signpost editorial, the author was—rightly—horrified that the ratio of pages to active admins was approaching 100,000. As I write this, it's currently 123,565, and that's despite the covid-induced bump in participation which is presumably going to fade as people get back to their real life work and studies.) ‑ Iridescent 15:04, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not concerned about the ratio of pages to admins. Aside from everything else, those ratios would be very different if we took a view of expanding lists out to stubs on each list member. I am concerned about the size of the editing community and the ratio between newbie, badfaith and spammy edits to edits by established members (newbies are great, but we have a certain capacity to welcome them and deal with any early mistakes). To I think our mutual surprise, the latest update to Wikipedia:Time Between Edits was only 52 days after the previous one. I'm keeping an eye on gross editing levels, and I don't understand how we could have a post lockdown rally. I'm confident that we have enough activity to continue covering the new topics of each year and make a nett improvement to older content. As for active admins, there are seasonal fluctuations, so I've gone back several years looking at April 18th. The trend is in the wrong direction, but very gradual. In some ways it is like Climate crisis, the sort of long term problem that short term thinkers are not good at handling. ϢereSpielChequers 10:11, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

The number of admins defined as "active" (30 or more edits during the last two months)
as of the 17th of each month since the data began to be collected in August 2007

Having nothing better to do, I've manually recreated the 'active admins' dataset to make sure there weren't any data-scraping glitches, and brought it up to date. I haven't taken every single day's measurement—I'm not crazy—but taken the 'active admins' figure as of the 17th of each month (or on the rare occasions when the bot failed to take a count that day, the closest date to the 17th on which the bot ran).

There appears to be a very regular pattern of a gradual downward drift, punctuated by the occasional precipitate drop with each of those drops followed by a rise to a level lower than that preceding the drop. Despite the occasional upwards blip—and the temporary rise between early 2020 and late 2021 for reasons I assume are obvious, and which now seems to have come to an end—the trend is clearly in just one direction. Unlike the equivalent data over the same period for active editors, the numbers don't start to recover once Sue Gardner's reign of error came to an end. ‑ Iridescent 15:42, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, to me this looks like an asymptotic curve i.e one with a bottom point? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:29, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

That the decline is slowing does not mean the asymptote is not just a straight line at zero. For example, y=1010*exp(-0.2*sqrt(x-2008)) gives us roughly the right shape (I'm sure there is a better fit than 0.2 and the exponent 0.5) and 450 admins now, only dropping down to 100 in 2142 ... but all that this tells you is that extrapolating for more than a few years isn't a great idea. —Kusma (talk) 16:51, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Whatever happens in future, it's not going to be either a straight line or a smooth curve. If the number continues to drop, at whatever speed, then at some point the admin workload will become unmanageable and either there will be burn-out among the remaining admins and a consequent sudden crash, a mass recruitment campaign, or unbundling and a redefinition of "admin". (It also occurs to me that the new inactivity provision is going to create a small but steady downward pressure on activity numbers down the line, as admins who've drifted away are now no longer going to be able to drift back. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's there.)

Statement of the obvious perhaps, but regardless of whether the curve is levelling, it's temporarily going to nosedive once the oath of fealty provisions of UCOC kick in. Either the existing admins are going to be forced to sign up, or Wikipedia will have a two-tier admin structure split between pre-UCOC admins following Wikipedia policy and post-UCOC admins following WMF policy, and either option will both prompt at least some people to resign in disgust and act as yet another disincentive to any potential future RFA candidate. ‑ Iridescent 17:14, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

(adding) Looking more closely, I don't think it is actually a curve. I think in fact that from the 2007 peak it's two virtually straight lines, with a discontinuity in 2014. You see that same "straight lines with a sharp inflection in 2014" pattern in other Wikipedia metrics like human-made edits. ‑ Iridescent 17:26, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

... or Wikipedia will have a two-tier admin structure split between pre-UCOC admins following Wikipedia policy and post-UCOC admins following WMF policy. I understand that we may soon be facing a significant wiki-political dispute as to how we deal with the UCOC enforcement guidelnes — but in reality, how do "Wikipedia policy" and "WMF policy" meaningfully differ as to any substantive on-wiki issue, other than semantically? Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:13, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Putting this comment at the bottom though it belongs somewhere in the middle of this discussion, looking at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship by year, what stands out to me is not just the declining number of RfAs but the fact that in 2017, for the first time, the number of successful RfAs was larger than the number of unsuccessful RfAs when it had always been the reverse. I get frustrated by those who think the harshness of RfAs is exaggerated, but here we don't just have fewer RfAs but fewer cases of unsuccessful RfAs where questionable or iffy candidates will even put themselves in the position of facing that level of scrutiny and critique for 7 long days. Whether or not that intense scrutiny is warranted, RfAs now are not seen a rite of passage for experienced editors but something to actively avoid unless you have the assurance of your nominators that you are likely to succeed. I think that has greatly changed from the time when an editor would just "give it a go" to see if they would succeed. Now many RfAs aren't initiated unless there is an almost certain likelihood of success, even though, as we know, RfAs can still go off track with a few unexpected Opposes that carry a lot of weight. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:09, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Given that a request for administrative privileges is a request for many editors to invest effort into evaluating the candidate, I think it's reasonable and considerate for someone to wait until they feel their chances of being approved are high. If the process were changed to reduce the aggregate time investment, then there would be less pressure on potential admins to wait before requesting privileges. (For example, there could be a community-approved nominating committee that would do the heavy lifting for vetting. Another proposal sort of along these lines that has been floated is essentially to swamp the process with requests, so there's just less time to vet each candidate. This wouldn't reduce the aggregate time investment, though, so I don't think would have the same pressure-relieving effect.) isaacl (talk) 20:48, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad: some areas of difference between the WMF's UCOC and Wikipedia policy that I've tried to resolve are Deletionism; Ageism, I suspect that RFA opposes for lack of maturity will still be allowed, but opposing an RFA because you think that admins should legally be adults would be a clear breach of the UCOC. As would WMF employment practices and anywhere else such as Arbcom and checkuser where the WMF requires that holders be legally adult. One of the general problems of the UCOC is that it comes from a very corporate viewpoint - if you are only recruiting graduates you don't need the more nuanced policy on ageism that a volunteer community needs when some of its volunteers are very young indeed. Then there's the issue of language fluency Personally I'd be very happy if meta, commons and other multilingual parts of the project rejected discrimination by language fluency. But as we've seen with the Scots Wikipedia, sometimes a language focussed project like an individual language version of Wikipedia or Wiktionary needs to reserve certain roles for people who are at least conversant with the language that project is in. My assumption is that people will troll the WMF with its various breaches of a pedantic interpretation of the UCOC until the thing is canned or rewritten to resolve such obvious problems, then as with the Visual Editor, they'll blame the volunteers who have been highlighting those problems for not pointing out the very problems we've been complaining about. ϢereSpielChequers 21:00, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

My position, which I might as well put out here before the situation goes nuclear, is that I'm willing to abide by the Code of Conduct as long as it's interpreted and enforced here in accordance with the norms of English Wikipedia and of common sense, and that as so interpreted, I don't foresee any situations in which I would take an administrator action differently in accordance with the Code than I otherwise would without it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:28, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm fairly confident that enough common sense will be applied that much of the obviously silly anomalies in the UCOC won't cause the problems it would cause if the code was taken literally. I don't believe that the WMF will accept that the norms of the English language Wikipedia will override the bits of the code that they want taken literally, and they show no sign of telling us which parts of the code should be taken literally and which not. My fear is that we will have more Framban type situations. ϢereSpielChequers 22:43, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad, see #In case you're wondering what's ahead... for a foretaste of what's in store—this is actual enforcement of UCoC by an actual Enforcement Committee, not speculation and whatiffery. If taken literally rather than as a vague guide to good practice, some of Wikipedia's most basic internal operations will fall foul of it (use of knowledge at the disposal of designated functionaries to threaten others was obviously intended as an anti-stalking measure but as written would shut down Checkuser, for instance.) There's no indication that all those involved don't intend UCoC to be taken literally. ‑ Iridescent 04:27, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Intermediate positions

@@Iridescent: Thanks for the reply. I agree it's quite possible that the Code will be enforced problematically on other projects and in other contexts. I was speaking more narrowly to the increasing suggestion that sooner or later, all en-WP admins are going to be faced with a binary choice between "I hereby promise to enforce the Code" (which you describe as a promise incompatible with adminship here), and "I hereby publicly announce that I'll refuse to enforce the Code" (which pursued to a conclusion could lead to a wikipolitical meltdown threatening the viability of the project). What I'm saying is that if I were required at gunpoint tomorrow to take sides in such a fight, I would instead take the intermediate position I describe, which is to say "I'm not going to make a big deal out of this; I'm simply not interpreting the Code to require, or even authorize, me to do so anything important that I wouldn't do anyway." That attitude may not be the inevitable or most logical interpretation of the various documents, but if it attains consensus on this wiki it might save everyone a lot of unnecessary bickering or worse. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:20, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Such an intermediate position will be impossible under the wording they've just pushed through. If instead of All advanced rights holders are required to affirm they will acknowledge and adhere to the Universal Code of Conduct [and] will be required to attend training to ensure a common understanding of implementation they used language like "I acknowledge the existence of UCoC and will take it into account when making decisions", we wouldn't be where we are. As worded, anyone applying for 'advanced permissions' (which isn't defined but presumably includes all admins, and arguably even rights as innocuous as rollback) will be obliged to enforce even the most perverse decision of the WMF provided they dress it up as being covered by UCoC.

It's worth belaboring the point that this will be the first time ever that editors in any role have been obliged to carry out particular actions even when they disagree with them. Under these new rules, the right to say "I don't feel comfortable doing that even if technically it's what policy specifies" has been explicitly removed. The specter of wheel-wars between post-UCOC admins ordered to carry out WMF diktat and pre-UCOC admins who disagree with the decision and aren't obliged to follow it is a genuine risk; imagine reruns of Floquenbeam vs T&S every time we catch another problematic editor with a friend in high places. ‑ Iridescent 19:21, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I fully understand the point you are making and the risk you describe. I'm trying to figure out how to try to defuse that risk without a major blow-up and without the en-WP being perceived as giving a big F-U to the WMF or vice versa or both. I think that if my wording became commonly accepted, it would allow everyone to de-escalate the potential mess that is otherwise likely to evolve here. Admittedly it could credibly be called a halfway-pregnant weasel-wording, but it's possible it just might work, if only in the way some people say Wikipedia itself works: "it doesn't work in theory, only in practice."

This talkpage isn't necessarily the place to develop my point, but when I figure out a better place to make it, I hope it will be taken seriously, not least by the folks in or reporting to San Francisco. My style has always been to try to resolve things, as I unsuccessfully sought to do during the Fram unpleasantness among other things, hence my search here for a middle way. I'm not willing to be taken over, but I'm also not looking to quit or be driven out over semantics. That said, if I'm ever told point-blank I have to do something I consider untenable or inappropriate, I'm not going to do it any more than a lot of other people are; and perhaps I flatter myself, but I don't think the WMF would push the point. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:57, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad I, too, hope common sense and a reasonable amount of flexibility/reasonability will prevail, but my faith in humanity in general is a bit lacking. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:40, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Brad, I'm not an admin, but I think it's easy to agree with an intermediate position that one will be able to reconcile the UCoC with one's own sense of right and wrong. And I'll allow that, on paper, there will probably be a lot of points on which there won't be too much of a conflict between the two. But that's only the easy part. It will (probably inevitably) be a problem when an admin here makes a reasonable decision, an aggrieved user files a spurious complaint about it with the WMF, and a person at the WMF, acting as real people with real shortcomings do, will make a subjective decision that the UCoC forbids that admin's approach. Given that anything that can happen eventually does happen on-wiki, I think that some bad outcomes are certain to take place. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:05, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Adding as an afterthought: I agree with, and like, the general concept of trying to lower the temperature and find a way to make things work, so I'm not trying to rain on that. It's just that it would be too easy for some WMF types to adopt the posture of you must obey us, at least until there emerges some dramatic pushback. And past history tells us that this is quite likely to happen. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:12, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Long aside about UCoC

The only way I can realistically see an intermediate position working is if the "required" language could somehow be softened. (I don't think anyone would reasonably complain about a "obliged to take UCoC into account" wording, and if anyone did I can't see the complaint being taken seriously.) The trouble boils down to "universal"; this is an attempt to write something that will be applicable both on small hobbyist sites that are vulnerable to being taken over by cliques, and simultaneously applicable to major sites with 20+ years of accrued custom and practice. Such things don't work in any other context—having the same rules for Croatian Wikiquote and English Wikipedia is like having the same driving test for an 125cc moped and for a passenger airliner. Either the big wikis negotiate some kind of exemption which will (rightly) cause the smaller wikis to feel aggrieved; or the WMF try to force everybody to comply which will fracture the communities on en-, de- etc; or the whole thing gets ignored until the next change of CEO and the ritual blaming of everything that didn't work on the departing management. Whichever of the three ultimately happens, nobody is going to emerge with much credit. ‑ Iridescent 20:26, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Come to think of it, the word "universal" does indeed carry some connotations that are at the heart of the problem. It includes the indifference to which large or small project is involved, but it also includes a sense of "this applies to everyone in any kind of context". And that's terribly reductionist. IAR has its own shortcomings, but IAR and universal can be polar opposites. (And IAR was originally Jimbo's idea.) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Have you never flown to Russia? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:37, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

From the Board of Trustees meeting just now, it appears parts of the enforcement text is being revised, following which a new vote will be held. Four areas were highlighted for revision, 1) the enforcement mechanisms, 2) creating simpler language overall, 3) exploring the use of "affirmation", and 4) conflicts between privacy and the right to be heard. The text on race and ethnicity was also specifically brought up as an item that will undergo revision. CMD (talk) 11:45, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

I came over here to check out the Necropolis discussion, but this discussion is more interesting :) The UCoC stuff ... scary. If the Board does soften the edges on so-called "affirmations", that's very good news. Some of the folks who are pushing affirmations are being completely reasonable; others want admins to do something that it would be arrogant and inappropriate to do (well, it would be arrogant for some of us, including me, since I haven't been keeping up on some of these issues and don't plan to start). - Dank (push to talk) 14:51, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Ruminating ... I think it's a bad idea to ask permissions-holders to "affirm" anything ... the tone is wrong. But if for some reason we reach a day when people are being requested to take a stand one way or another, it wouldn't offend me if a person says: I can't think of any actions I've taken that are in violation of the UCoC, but if some kind of edge-case does arise that might conflict with the UCoC and I'm not sure what to do, I'll talk it over first on some en-wiki page. (Maybe we could set up a page for this?) - Dank (push to talk) 17:50, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

@Dank, my point is that the middle position envisaged by you and NYB, where the uncontentious parts are enforced as part of day-to-day routine but the edge cases are discussed by the community, is going to be expressly forbidden. Decisions on when UCoC will be enforced and how ambiguities will be interpreted will be the preserve of a single Central Committee whose rulings will overturn even Arbcom decisions or the most overwhelming community votes.

When people complain that this is a WMF power-grab, it isn't just the usual malcontents whining for the sake of whining. This is probably the single biggest change since the establishment of the WMF itself, and the absolutism written into its language is going to affect whole chunks of how the wikis operate. (How are all the processes which include some element of prose review going to work when it's explicitly grounds for banning to treat someone differently based on language fluency? How are elections, RFAs etc going to work when it's expressly forbidden to judge somebody "based on standing, skills or accomplishments in the Wikimedia projects or movement"? How is recent changes patrol going to operate when it becomes a compulsory duty to "help newcomers to find their way and acquire essential skills"? How are we going to handle conflicts of interest when it's grounds for immediate banning to mention another editor's employer? Once "sharing information concerning other contributors' Wikimedia activity outside the projects" is banned, how is any kind of outreach or meetup going to work, since as worded it would ban even the most anodyne "John Doe has been an editor on Wikipedia for 11 years" introduction? How do we issue warnings to vandals when "use of authority, knowledge, or resources at the disposal of designated functionaries to intimidate or threaten others" is forbidden? All of these are taken straight from the wording of UCoC, not just my speculating on what it might contain.) ‑ Iridescent 19:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

If I wanted to (which I don't), I could devise lawyerly anodyne answers to each of those questions, arguing that, oh, it really won't be that bad. There are ways to rationalize that reverting everything a newcomer has done can still be helping them "to find their way and acquire essential skills". (Although I cannot think of a way to reconcile blocking with that, without a lot of looking the other way.) But I think it's very likely that the Central Committee will apply readings of the Code that come from a complete ignorance about how things really work, and instead are corporate and virtue-signaling. There will be tipping points when they, as Iri just said, overturn ArbCom and overwhelming community consensus. I would guess that the community reaction to that will look similar to what happened in Framgate, and there will be significant pressure on the Central Committee to back down. But they might not. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

The Central Committee will be a single committee over the entire WMF ecosystem. If anyone can imagine a single approach that would be valid simultaneously on Pashto Wikivoyage (629 editors of whom 3 are currently active) and English Wikipedia (43,434,873 editors of whom 126,798 are currently active), do feel free. One size is never going to fit all; this is inevitably going to end up burdening someone with a set of rules that are totally inappropriate for their particular project.

One needs to look at where this came from to understand why we've ended up on a route leading to this particular destination. The back stories are firstly a relatively high-profile WMF project being allegedly hijacked by extremists who drove the regular editors out, and secondly some people with very high-level connections being caught behaving badly and subsequently discussed mercilessly in public. The entire point of this exercise is to create the power to impose diplock courts and direct rule on people or groups that are deemed Not Of The Body even if the actual community in question disagrees; it's not some unintended theoretical consequence which will never actually happen. ‑ Iridescent 21:21, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Re: "whining", I definitely don't think you're whining. This is potentially huge. I think I'd like to wait and see what the Board members have to say, and see what develops on Signpost talk pages ... I see they'll be covering the story in a few days. - Dank (push to talk) 22:10, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Other than Jimmy Wales (who is more of a ceremonial figure at this point), the trustees don't generally address the serfs; as far as I'm aware even at Peak Fram they never said anything publicly other than their single statement. I'd imagine that unless things go seriously off the rails to the extent that one of the big wikis starts seriously talking about secession, the statement that's already been issued by the board's Wormtongue is all we're going to get. (I see a certain irony that the person who's apparently now in charge of lecturing everyone else on good behavior is the same person who spent literally years actively protecting and sheltering a spectacularly disruptive crank who inter alia was responsible for the set of edits I routinely use as my go-to example of just how bad things can get when someone who's routinely fabricating or misreading sources isn't spotted in time. I cleaned that one up, but the editor in question made over 40,000 edits and I wouldn't be surprised if a significant number of them are still in place.)

I'd draw attention to what that statement doesn't say. It says that now it's passed they're going to rewrite the whole thing; nowhere does it say that there will be any kind of public vote on the rewritten rules, or whether the line is now "you voted to accept something, whatever we add to it now will still be something so we'll just assume you voted to accept that as well". ‑ Iridescent 16:47, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Good point about the Board ... I won't wait that long, but I do want to see the Signpost discussion. - Dank (push to talk) 18:33, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I haven't followed it closely, but I get the impression the Signpost is fairly moribund these days and that both the articles themselves and the talk pages tend just to be the same handful of people talking to each other. In general if you want to see what the people who have the power to actually influence strategic decisions are saying, wikimedia-l is usually the place to go. (It's also the only venue in which an editor who doesn't have friends on the inside can raise an issue and have a reasonable chance that it will be seen by someone who actually has the ability to do something about it.) Unfortunately the general experience of browsing wikimedia-l is fairly similar to reading the Twitter feeds of a bunch of complete strangers earnestly discussing topics in which you have no interest, but at least skimming the headers is generally a good indication of where the incoming storms are headed. ‑ Iridescent 19:29, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Of course, technically wikimedia-l constitutes sharing information concerning other contributors' Wikimedia activity outside the projects. Maybe I should start blocking (WMF) accounts citing UCoC and see what they have to say. ‑ Iridescent 19:38, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Speaking of the WMF ... any thoughts on the new selection system being trialled this year for the "community-and-affiliate-selected" WMF board seats? It involves the affiliates establishing a shortlist of 6 candidates, with the community then voting to recommend two from that shortlist to the existing board. In other words, you can only vote for people the affiliates have pre-approved. The WMF have been asked several times to say whether this new system might become permanent for the "community-and-affiliate-selected" WMF board seats – as they suggested might happen on the mailing list – but so far there has been no reply.

Note that this "shortlist" idea seems to have been proposed by a current board member. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#No_more_direct_community_election_of_WMF_trustees? for further links. Andreas JN466 18:03, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

(With the proviso that it's not something I've followed closely.) My initial reaction was instinctively that this is the WMF trying to create more grifting opportunities for the next generation of Faes and LauraHales, but that probably says more about my lack of AGF in the WMF.

I can't get too excited about it. This kind of "the affiliate groups or their represenatives select the candidates and then the individual members vote on those candidates" arrangement is fairly common among broad umbrella groups. More obviously, the existing BoT is a bad joke so it's not as if some vital and cherished process is being undermined—pne could at least make the argument that by pre-winnowing the crazies out, this new process will increase accountability since it will be possible for voters to make informed choices between a reasonable number of candidates rather than as currently happens trying to pan for the non-loons in a flood of statements from people one's never heard of before ultimately either not voting at all or voting for the incumbents just because they're the only ones you've heard of. ‑ Iridescent 11:47, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't know that much about the affiliates process and structure (other than what I just looked up on Meta), but if this is just a matter of some editors who are particularly active in governance issues doing some pre-vetting of candidates before community-wide voting, I'm not too worked up about it either. What is far more concerning is the trend (criticized by Jimmy in comments quoted at the Village Pump link above) for a shift in control away from the editing community, towards non-editing or minimally-editing professional busybody types. The latter is what gives rise to the concerns about the UCoC. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:44, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, to my mind, this will do more to drive developments going in the same direction, with control shifting to affiliates.

Bear in mind that this financial year alone, the grant budget went up from $14.3M to $36.7M – a 157% increase. So you will have more and more affiliates, beholden to the WMF for greater and greater amounts of money, for whom communicating with the WMF on a regular basis will be absolutely vital, as their livelihoods depend on it. Keeping good relations with the WMF will literally be part of their jobs, and as professionals they'll also have time to attend the ever increasing number of Zoom calls etc. This will enable the WMF to establish their way of thinking as the norm.

So if you accept the idea that new – or newly well-funded – affiliates will largely echo WMF thinking, then this new voting process, whereby the affiliates screen who the community can vote for, will make sure that people who would upset this particular apple cart won't even make it onto the ballot.

Think e.g. about how James Heilman was thrown off the board in 2015 – because he was calling out the board's and CEO's lack of transparency – and, frankly, lying – about the Knight Foundation grant, and then was re-elected to the board a year or two later. I thought that was important. How likely would that be to happen again under similar circumstances, if affiliates financially dependent on the board filter the candidate pool?

In my view, this kind of arrangement just helps to insulate the board even further from the will of the editor community. (As for the present board being pretty anodyne, I agree, but this arrangement will make it worse, not better.) Andreas JN466 12:51, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree with everything you're saying, but I can see the WMF's side on this one even if I don't agree with it. The unfocused expansionism of the Sue & Lila era has put the WMF in the position where it's simultaneously a narrow-scope body aimed at protecting Wikipedia and related projects, the de facto trade union for Wikipedia/media volunteers, the public face of Wikipedia, and an EFF-wannabe "information wants to be free!" lobby group. The various jobs are getting less and less compatiable as time goes on; in particular Wikipedia editing, which is largely about deciding what shouldn't be repeated, doesn't really tally with the collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally dogma, even if collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and try to establish a workable standard to determine which of that content should be disseminated and what should be suppressed doesn't have quite the same level of warm fuzzy. As I've said before, I think we're ultimately headed for the point when "Wikipedia" and "Wikimedia" become two distinct entities—the internal contradictions are tearing us apart and it's better we control the process in an orderly way than have a mess of disaffiliations and infighting. ‑ Iridescent 12:30, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, the WMF has never done a very good job of being the volunteers' trade union – mainly because the volunteer-selected board members were always in a small minority on the board, and for the most part, with James' exception, just seem to have gone along with everything. They might as well not have been there, for all the good they did. :/

Wikipedia and Wikimedia becoming two distinct entities is an interesting concept – and bearing in mind the community response to the "Wikipedia Foundation" rebranding idea, one that already exists in most volunteers' heads – but in practice I can't see how it would happen. Wikipedia is the WMF's cash cow and as such the last thing the WMF would ever give up; the WMF owns all the trademarks; and forks wouldn't get search engine juice – firstly because the WMF has built mutually beneficial relationships with Big Tech, and secondly because of the internet's inertia: all the existing links to Wikipedia will be to wikipedia.org.

Nor is there anyone other than the WMF who can claim to speak for Wikipedia, or for the volunteer community. Any attempt to create a union or association now, twenty years on, would probably stand even less chance than WP:Esperanza. The only thing that people seem to coalesce around is money.

So I see things becoming more and more corporate, with Wikipedia as a whole getting absorbed by and aligned with Wikimedia's economic and political background in the US – Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party. It's not like I'd like the Republicans (or Russia or China ...) better, but it all seems somehow a far cry from neutrality and the wisdom of the crowds, whatever that was supposed to mean. Andreas JN466 14:54, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

@Jayen466 [...]and secondly because of the internet's inertia: all the existing links to Wikipedia will be to wikipedia.org. To reinforce how slow the internet is, people barely know that you can actually edit Wikipedia with some amount of freedom. For example, when I say "I edit Wikipedia," people hear "I read Wikipedia," which is just as well, I suppose.

To get somewhat back on topic, it's likely that any fork will simply into the ether, and inertia will likely play a bigger part than people in the Wikimedian community realize. Of course, those mutually beneficial relationships that the WMF has built up with other Big Tech organizations wouldn't help at all; I acknowledge that. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:02, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

The success or failure of any fork or any Wikipedia-killer would be wholly dependent on which way Google jumped—a single line of redirect code added to PageRank could cause Wikipedia to start withering on the vine within days, which in turn would have the funders jumping ship. The issue is that most of the people who have high enough contacts at Google and the social media sites to get them to consider switching their default search result, are the same people who have a vested interest in keeping Wikipedia on artificial life support no matter how bad things get. I'd argue that the strongest argument for retaining Jimmy Wales despite the obvious issues his continued presence causes is that he's the only person who'd be able to perform an Old Yeller on the WMF should it ever become necessary. ‑ Iridescent 23:43, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia 2.0

The flip side of Wikipedia withering away on the vine: A fork would have a non-zero chance of actually succeeding, and maybe that fork would be a healthier environment. Then again, inertia might prevent even that from getting off the ground. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 06:03, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Speaking of forks, WMF say on Meta that they can find no record in their donations database of Wikiwand ever having donated money to them. Wikiwand isn't a fork, of course, merely a mirror with a prettier interface and ads, but they did (and do) tell readers that they would donate 30 per cent of their profits to Wikimedia. Perhaps they've arranged their investments, salaries and bonuses in such a way that there is never any profit left. I agree re Jimbo, by the way. Five years ago I would have thought it unlikely that I would ever say so, but life has a way of confounding expectations ... --Andreas JN466 11:27, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

@Jayen466 [...]but they did (and do) tell readers that they would donate 30 per cent of their profits to Wikimedia. Perhaps they've arranged their investments, salaries and bonuses in such a way that there is never any profit left. Well, that'd still be dishonest even if they rearrange money like that. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 18:35, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

@I dream of horses, if you're confused by the rather cryptic allusions Jayen466 and I are making, (it was a routine staple in the US when TV channels had a couple of hours to fill back in the days when there were only a handful of TV stations and as such probably approaching 100% of the US population of a certain age have seen it, but I don't think it's particularly well known outside that demographic), Old Yeller was a Disney movie which for the first 75% was a heartwarming story about a young boy befriending a stray dog, before the decidedly non-Disney twist that the dog starts acting out of character, and the boy becomes concerned that it might be rabid and thus shoots it dead.

This all relates to A fork would have a non-zero chance of actually succeeding, and maybe that fork would be a healthier environment. Then again, inertia might prevent even that from getting off the ground. There are a lot of key flaws with the Wikipedia model (we're not good at assessing neutrality; we have a high proportion of badly-written material with no quality filter that's visible to non-logged-in readers so people don't know which parts to trust; because we insist of following sources, we by design end up reflecting the prevailing bias among those parts of academia that are good at getting papers published, rather than necessarily reflecting current thinking; cryptic markup in which even relatively simple tasks generate chunks of code like {{multiple image| align = right | direction = horizontal| footer = William Huskisson's grave, based on the [[Choragic Monument of Lysicrates]].<ref>{{NHLE |num=1209902 |access-date=29 November 2010}}</ref> The cylindrical structure above the grave once housed a statue of Huskisson, relocated to the [[Walker Art Gallery]] in 1968.<ref name="Walker statue" /> The grave is now overshadowed by nearby [[Liverpool Cathedral]].| footer_align = left| image1 = Huskisson Monument, St James's Gardens 1.jpg| width1 = {{#expr: (200 * 893 / 1384) round 0}}| alt1 = Small circular stone building| image2 = Geograph-375156-by-Sue-Adair.jpg| width2 = {{#expr: (200 * 480 / 640) round 0}}| alt2 = Small circular stone building, with a large brick cathedral building immediately behind it}} in the edit window which acts as a barrier against casual editors who don't want to learn a coding language, particularly one that isn't used by any other site so is of no real-world use; there's an elaborate and poorly-documented ecosystem of behind-the-scenes networking and discussion and of apparently-arbitrary links to other sites like Commons and Wikidata, which have their own different social norms, policies, and markup; the administration and enforcement mechanisms—both Wikipedia's internal administration and WMF T&S—are vanishingly opaque to anyone who isn't deeply involved).

The history of Wikipedia is littered with people who rightly identify these flaws, and try to set up forks that preserve the best of Wikipedia while mitigating the worst of the issues. A lot of these contenders for Wikipedia 2.0 had quite heavyweight backing—Veropedia was run by the former WMF co-ordinator and recruited a good number of Wikipedia's most experienced editors; h2g2 was run by the cultural behemoth of the BBC, was founded by Douglas Adams who possibly was the single most respected person in the world amongst the "polite, thoughtful, smart, geeky people, trying only to do something which is undoubtedly good in the world" crowd who built Wikipedia, and was fully up-and-running back when Wikipedia was still a bolt-on addition to a porn site; Citizendium and Digital Universe were run by Larry Sanger who back then was very highly regarded and wasn't yet the grubby self-parody he later became; Knol had the full weight of Google behind it. All of them disappeared without trace or limp on as ghost projects for a couple of dozen enthusiasts.

The point I'm trying to make is that the only way in which I can see a fork being successful in the current climate is if Jimmy Wales publicly denounced the WMF and gave his backing to the fork. He has enough loyal supporters that he'd bring sufficient of the current editor base with him to get the dull-but-necessary stuff on the fork (and conversely, increase the likelihood that the dull-but-necessary stuff on legacy Wikipedia isn't done, as it would hugely increase the fork's chances of success if what was left of Wikipedia publicly descended into chaos); he's a public enough figure that his defection would be widely reported, thus drawing the readership's attention to the existence of the fork; and most crucially he has the contact book and can both speak to people like Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk directly to convince them to stop giving Wikipedia the artificial boost to readership it currently gets from search traffic, and speak to funders to convince them to back the new project without making so many demands that it compromises the project's integrity. ‑ Iridescent 18:56, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Good points. However, in spite of all that, I will always have a modicum of blind faith that the movement behind Wikipedia will continue beyond the existence of the website/foundation. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:02, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

The ethos will, but it's by no means a foregone conclusion that either the WMF or Wikipedia will be the ones to take it forward; tech consumers are incredibly fickle and tend to jump ship en masse when something better comes along. (It's not that long since AOL was valued at $360 billion.) What we did to Britannica and Encarta, someone will almost certainly one day do to us; the important thing isn't to try to defend the WMF at all costs, but to ensure that whoever one day takes our data and builds something better with it, does so in a way that preserves neutrality and accountability of the product rather than getting sidetracked in political campaigning. lobbying, and grant-making. ‑ Iridescent 19:19, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

[...]the important thing isn't to try to defend the WMF at all costs, but to ensure that whoever one day takes our data and builds something better with it Yes, exactly! I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:37, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Notability guideline

You previously participated in a discussion about an editor adding something to the Notability guideline. Despite consensus being against it, they put it back in anyway. I am contacting all those who discussed it previously.Wikipedia_talk:Notability#pointless_essay_linked_to_by_its_creator Dream Focus 02:08, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you—while it's generally a good thing there are certainly circumstances in which multiple sources are neither necessary nor appropriate, and linking to that essay risks confusing editors into thinking it's policy and consequently trying to enforce it—but I don't think I have anything particularly useful to add to the discussion. ‑ Iridescent 19:22, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

On reflection I've commented there as I think this is significant enough that it's important as many people as possible comment, to reduce the potential for "but there weren't enough participants to constitute a consensus!" arguments further down the line. ‑ Iridescent 02:59, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

My mistake!

My apologies, I didn't realize that was a meaningful formatting change; I assumed (incorrectly) that it would be non-controversial. My mistake! —Ganesha811 (talk) 16:54, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@Ganesha811 (talk page stalker) I'm not sure of the context, but I have a few more years of consistent editing on you and I still make mistakes. At least you're willing to apologize, and seem to be willing to learn. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:35, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@Ganesha811 No need to worry about it; WP:TALKGAP is so poorly documented and so poorly adhered to that a lot of even very experienced editors are unaware of it. The (fairly trivial) issue here is that I am someone who should be aware of WP:TALKGAP as I've been involved in quite a few discussions about it, so by editing my initial comment you made it look like I'd failed to follow Wikipedia's accessability guidelines and the subsequent replies had in good faith copied me, whereas what had actually happened was that every participant had formatted their comments correctly prior to you and you went back and edited our comments to make it look like we'd made the mistake and you'd just copied us.

In 99.999% of cases this would be totally irrelevant, but this was in the context of my proposing a sanction against an editor who was failing to follow Wikipedia guidelines. As such, it's actually an issue if that editor's defenders are then able to say "Look, Wikipedia's guidelines are so confusing that even the person proposing the sanction isn't able to follow them!". ‑ Iridescent 04:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Looking at the edit in question, I will stick my neck out and say I don't see how it falls afoul of TALKGAP as written. The top comment had no indentation, and I'm not seeing a note that accessibility prefers colons over bullets so long as there is consistency (and asterixes are even listed first within TALKGAP, which feels potentially misleading). Am I missing something? Deferring to your experience in discussions about TALKGAP, is there a way it could be clarified further? CMD (talk) 04:47, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

"Normally colons are used, not bullet points". 2A04:4A43:46AF:D272:0:0:357:3796 (talk) 08:36, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

What about it? No suggestion of an accessibility problem there. CMD (talk) 09:30, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

The ultra TL;DR version, if you want to avoid reading the following wall of text, is "if your comment follows a comment beginning : or * in the edit window, always begin it with the same symbol the comment above you used, and never leave a blank line in the edit window.

Most of our accessability documentation is fairly crappy because RexxS was hassled off Wikipedia (I'm not getting into the rights and wrongs of whether the chasing was justified) and he was probably the person keenest on keeping it up to date, while because this is a MediaWiki problem rather than specifically an English Wikipedia problem the documentation is scattered around Phabricator and mediawiki.org which are two of the most incomprehensible websites on the planet for anyone who doesn't speak their internal jargon.

The TL;DR technical explanation is that for reasons lost in the earliest days of the software MediaWiki's list markup system is incompatible with MediaWiki's paragraph markup system, so we rely on various fudges and workrounds. (As far as the software is concerned, any line or set of lines beginning : or * in the edit window constitutes a list). This in turn means that unless the format of every post in a list consistently follows that of the first comment, and a list has no line spacing between any items, it plays havoc with screen-reader software. For bulleted lists on articles or for processes which are one-editor-one-comment like AfD or RFA, bulleting works, but in a venue like ANI where there's back-and-forth replies, multi-level indenting and multiple-paragraph comments, the use of bullets or switching from colon-indentation to bullet-indentation means the software has a high likelihood of mistakenly thinking the list has come to an end early, which in turn means that e.g. a discussion with ten support/oppose comments some of which have indented replies, which should be read as "List of 10 items. Item 1: [reads first comment], Item 2: [reads second comment]" etcetera followed by "List ends", will potentially be interpreted as a whole bunch of multiple lists causing the screen reader to keep barking "List of 1 item, list ends".

(There are also documented problems with indenting in MediaWiki even when everyone is consistent in their use of colons or bullets. MW is an antiquated and poorly maintained piece of software that was never designed to cope with what we consider normal talkpage behavior. In particular, it does not play well when multi-level indentation and multiple paragraphs are combined. Because the developers for years assumed that talkpages were a temporary measure that would soon be replaced—first by LiquidThreads, then by Flow—fixing the definition list bugs hasn't been a high priority. However because colon-to-indent is so ubiquitous a practice, I imagine any screen reader user on Wikipedia by now just accepts the garbled output.)

If Redrose64 or Graham87 are around, they can almost certainly explain all this more coherently than me; this is much more their area than mine. User:Whatamidoing (WMF) currently doubles up as 'Wikipedia editor with an interest in web accessibility issues' and 'WMF employee on the Talk pages project', so might be able to say whether there are any current plans to fix the glitches. (Don't hold your breath; developing an update that can address all the current issues, but will still be able to parse the literally hundreds of millions of existing pages across not just the entire WMF ecosystem but across every other site that uses MediaWiki software, all without outputting any unexpected results, isn't going to be a case of just inserting a few lines of updated code.)

If you have a few spare minutes I'd recommend experiencing how Wikipedia appears via a screen reader. If you're using Windows install the free NVDA software; if you're using a Chromebook open the default browser and press ctrl-alt-z; if you're on a Mac just press command-F5. It's eye-opening to see (or rather, hear) just how incomprehensible Wikipedia's back-office pages can be for the visually impaired. ‑ Iridescent 18:11, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I've heard of no plans to change the list formatting systems. The closest we've come to getting any changes there the possibility of being able to replace this:

* Hi, Iridescent. I wanted you to see my new photo. {{pb}} [[File.Example.jpg|thumb]] {{pb}} What do you think?

with something like this:

* <<<Hi, Iridescent. I wanted you to see my new photo.

[[File.Example.jpg|thumb]]

What do you think?>>>

without screwing up the list formatting, or having to type a dozen colons at the start of every single line. Imagine someone adding a multi-paragraph response inside the middle of the numbered lists at RFA, and having the list numbering keep working. Also, imagine templates and other things being enabled in the Reply tool's visual mode.

Theoretically, the colon is for the second part of a definition list. Look at Disease#Terminology to see how it's meant to be used. There have been suggestions that MediaWiki should automagically close up all of the list-breaking blank lines, but if that were done, it would basically become impossible for the ordinary editor to make two consecutive separate lists. I'm not convinced that this would be a problem in the mainspace itself (should you ever have two separate lists, one after the other, with no intervening text to explain that you're done with the "groceries" list and now moving onto the "books to read" list?), but it might be a problem for some purposes, and you know how people are about wanting to maintain bug-for-bug compatibility eternally. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:38, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

I can think of a few hyper-niche use cases for should you ever have two separate lists, one after the other, with no intervening text to explain?, mainly to do with situations where a column break needs to appear at a specific point. They're all very specialist situations where I'd assume the editor in question would either use a table instead, use appropriate hidden comments in the edit window, or be experienced to use whatever "hidden list break" template we introduced in any new system.

On a more general note I wouldn't be in the least heartbroken if we deprecated * and # based bullets and numbering altogether. There may well be articles on which they're used where either a straightforward ; and : based list or a table wouldn't be more appropriate, but I'm not sure I've ever seen one. "Consensus" on Wikipedia has a nasty habit of turning "we've always done it this way" into untouchable orthodoxy that what we currently do is the best way of doing it, even if the only reason we started doing it that way in the first place was as a workround to a bug c. 2003 or because some long-departed editor insisted we follow their own eccentric preferences and nobody could be bothered to waste their time arguing. (Go find anyone who's worked in literally any form of publishing other than Wikipedia and ask if this page looks like something a sane person would read, let alone write.) ‑ Iridescent 15:31, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

The usual page editors link to for details is Wikipedia:Colons and asterisks, created by RexxS. (I have my own version, User:isaacl/On wikitext list markup, where I explain the effect on screen readers as well as the visual diff feature.) isaacl (talk) 20:19, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

It's true, I'd certainly never heard of it before! I understand your concerns about the edit and appreciate the explanation. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:37, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Move request

Hello Iridescent, would you mind helping me move Majorana → what I assume is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC Ettore Majorana, with a hatnote added to direct readers to either MAJORANA (physics experiment) or Majorana (surname) please? (the other entries are partial title matches or misplaced). -- Aislinncostello (talk) 08:31, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

If you're asking me to move current contents of Majorana to Majorana (disambiguation) and replace it with a redirect to Ettore Majorana—which I think is what you're asking—then I'm definitely not doing that unilaterally. I can't see anything to suggest that people entering "Majorana" in the search bar are looking for Ettore Majorana to the extent that we should direct people to a page they're likely not looking for. If anything, there's fairly convincing data over a long period that as far as our readers are concerned Majorana fermion is a more likely target.

If you do think you can provide a convincing case for the change, follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Requested moves#Requesting controversial and potentially controversial moves as I can't imagine this one being uncontested. ‑ Iridescent 17:50, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

How to write about the 'same thing', five times?

After working on Barbad, in the future, I want to expand the article on Sasanian music. In considering this, though, I came to some uncertainty. That is, I was planning on trying to improve the general coverage of Sasanian music if I did indeed tackle the article at some point. So how does one properly differentiate the content of Sasanian music, from a section on Sasanian music in the Sasanian Empire, History of music, the Music of Iran, and the Persian traditional music articles? Certainly the most obvious factor would be amount of content; the Sasanian music article would have the most and the history of music one the least but otherwise I am uncertain. I am concerned about questions of copying content between articles, and thus perhaps not respecting the individual scopes. Any thoughts would be most welcome. Aza24 (talk) 00:22, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

(Taking "any thoughts" as broadly interpreted enough to horn in ) I'd treat each as the context, as the point of view from which to describe the subject. The Sasanian Empire article would cover the status of Sasanian musicians within the empire: did nobles sponsor musicians for fame? Did the emperor organize contests? Order or forbid types of music? Were musicians treated with respect, or scorn, were they wealthy artists or poor slaves? Did the expansion of the Empire or other interaction with neighboring countries affect the music? The History of music in general would treat, well, History: relations to other music especially over time: how did Sasanian music change over time? Did Sasanian music evolve from other kinds? Did other kinds evolve from it? The Persian traditional - how is Sasanian music related to other Persian traditional music, and how is it different? All the articles will have a few sentences in common, but the rest will differ; it's like a less extreme version of the Blind men and the elephant - if you look at it from a different point of view, you get a different picture. --GRuban (talk) 00:53, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

When I was doing the {{William Etty}} series, they unavoidably meant writing what was essentially the same first and last section fourteen times, as each of the articles on his individual works needed enough of a biography that a reader coming to the topic 'cold' would know the background. The least-worst solution I found to avoiding the "this means someone interested enough to read the entire series is going to be forced to read the same thing 14 times" problem was to write the section each time from scratch, so at least the wording wasn't identical even if the content was. Repetition is sometimes unavoidable especially when it comes to more technical topics (some of the contents of Category:Brill Tramway are literally the same page half-a-dozen times with a few of the words changed); this is one of the main reasons I bang the "we should be more willing to merge articles" drum so often.

On the specific Sasanian music example, I'd try to concentrate on one page as much as possible—so Music of Iran would mention its existence and the key ways in which it differed from what came before and after, but leave out as much detail as possible. One needs to assume that anyone who's interested in Sasanian music is going to read Sasanian music, and to anyone who's not interested it will just be a distraction if it goes into detail. (History of the United States is a good example of "brief summaries and the extensive use of {{main}}" done well.) ‑ Iridescent 23:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I forgot to respond, but thank you both for these tremendous insights. Aza24 (talk) 18:41, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Not to argue with a support

... but I also wouldn't want anyone supporting under false pretenses. To be clear, if fortunate enough to be sysopped, I do intend to be involved in a pretty broad array of admin work, including conduct and content disputes. (I don't anticipate seeking out work in content disputes particularly, but in many cases they're inseparable from conduct ones, or one just stumbles upon them.) At the moment, SPI takes up the plurality of my projectspace efforts, but not the majority, and, as I address in my A4, there's times I avoid it entirely for a while. So I don't think I'd be just an SPI admin (nor just an SPI and RfD admin).

To hopefully prevent turning a support into an oppose, though: If you'd like to ask a question about your normal boilerplate, I'm happy to discuss what I've learned from my recent experiences in writing articles from the ground up and how it has changed how I view editors who get heated in content disputes. In particular I can empathize with the experience of putting large amounts of work into an article, and/or defending their work against well-intentioned but wrong "improvements", although I wouldn't put the latter clause in quite as stark terms, at least not if giving specific examples. But I respect that "reasonable amount" and "large amounts" are subjective, and if I don't meet your definitions of those terms, then I shan't argue with that.

Just wanted to clarify this so that, if this request does succeed, there's no impression that I've gone back on any commitment. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 20:54, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

That seems fair, and feel free to point people here if they accuse you of going back on a promise. Any admin deals with matters that they come across and that's not a problem. My objection is to the people who see the job as being Wikipedia's police force, and set out to try to actively enforce their view of good conduct with minimal experience in whatever that area of conflict happens to be. A hugely disproportionate number of the nastiest disputes on Wikipedia ultimately derive from someone self-appointing themself either Civility Cop or Supreme Arbiter of Reliable Sourcing. ‑ Iridescent 11:56, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

"Supreme Arbiter of Reliable Sourcing" heh. I don't THINK I've ever thought that about myself... Ealdgyth (talk) 13:04, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, if what you said is true and you do have something like multiple personalities, each one can choose a different adnin task to specialize in! :-) 173.71.200.195 (talk) 23:24, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

About User:Shravangodaraosian

User:Shravangodaraosian is a self spamming page containing spam links and all their edits are vandalism, which got reverted. PAVLOV (talk) 11:43, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

No it isn't. Other than a link to the user's Instagram page (which I don't particularly like, but we consistently allow editors to link to their accounts on Insta, Twitter etc on their userpages if they want to do so) the other 'links' are malformatted markup where the editor has used 'create link' for highlighting by mistake, not working links. If it were a young child posting this I'd consider speedying it for giving too much personal information, but "this is my name, this is where I went to school, this is where I went to college"—which is all this page is—is not "unambiguous advertising or promotion" by any conceivable definition of the term. This userpage is considerably less promotional—and certainly contains fewer spam links—than User:Jimbo Wales. ‑ Iridescent 11:54, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

After checking the "links", I found they were malformed links instead of linking to his social media. Sorry. PAVLOV (talk) 11:58, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

A Gest of Robyn Hode and the volcano

So, I've already parked a request for comments on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/TRAPPIST-1/archive1 but in the meantime got another issue with A Gest of Robyn Hode which may be familiar/of interest to readers of this page. Long story short, A Gest of Robyn Hode#Abrupt climate change draws a link between volcanic eruptions and this text, but I can vouch only for a link between Samalas and the Little Ice Age. You can see the main editor's comments and mine at Talk:A Gest of Robyn Hode#Climate. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:31, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

"Outside my area" doesn't begin to cover it, but I find idea that a volcanic eruption would have a drastic effect on the climate for the next 600 years but at the same time not render the surrounding area uninhabitable to be singularly unconvincing. Constructing long environmental just-so stories for the collapse of administrations in Western Europe in the late-medieval period seems a fairly stupid exercise given that between the Great Schism and the Crusades there was a de facto world war taking place, the simultaneous disintegration of Byzantium and the Carolingian Empire took away any semblance of central authority, the crises of succession in both France and England set off civil wars in both, the Mongols were a true existential threat, and the period coincides with the most destructive pandemic in recorded history. ‑ Iridescent 19:35, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Draft:Surack_Enterprises

This article should probably be deleted -- if you look at the name of the user "bertehrmann", you can find that he is a contributor for one of the websites listed in the article (https://www.sweetcars.com/blog/author/bertehrmann). Not to mention the external link spamming, all of the companies listed on the article are already listed under the article for Chuck Surack. In my opinion it's clear this guy was just trying to promote the various websites/companies that Chuck owns by trying to make an article, but it was automatically a draft cause he had no previous contributions. ~XyNq^t_c 02:42, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• I realized I placed this on the wrong person's user page at first. ~XyNq^t_c 04:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

MFD is thataway. Unless one of the speedy deletion criteria applies, I couldn't unilaterally delete it even if I wanted to. It's obviously not suitable for mainspace in this condition, but we give much more leeway for drafts. We have no policy against either citing material one's written oneself or about editing with a conflict of interest (although we do our best to discourage both) so that's not an issue. ‑ Iridescent 04:11, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Very well - if you don't consider it as G11 after the concerns noted I guess it will just rot in draftspace until G13 applies. ~XyNq^t_c 04:46, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@XyNq Actually, Iridescent suggested MfD because CSD can't apply here. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 04:47, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Right, I see that now, apologies. Y done. ~XyNq^t_c 04:54, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

G11 (unambiguous advertisements and promotions) sounds a lot more like "Buy Sweet Cars, because we offer the sweetest deals on the internet". It does not sound like "Beginning in 2010, Surack acquired and founded several other businesses". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:10, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

TBO, I've rarely seen anything more spammy and blatantly promotional without being 100% G11. I'd even go so far as to demand a UPE declaration. Obviously the WMF which is a money making (and spending) machine itself, has a different view of what is and isn't promotional. Five more years and adverts will be allowed on Wikipedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:33, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I wonder how you would communicate the same facts as that sentence, but in a way that you believe is non-promotional. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

This draft isn't G11 material, really - a listing of subbusinesses of a given business isn't really promotion and the excessive external links can be trimmed without deleting the entire draft. As an article it would probably qualify as A7 though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:06, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. The speedy deletion criteria for drafts are intentionally very specific, and the fact that a ton of crap languishes for six months until it gets auto-deleted because nobody's brought it up to standard is a feature, not a bug. We have no way of knowing in advance which of these low quality stubs are going to be improved—plenty of pages we now consider core high-importance articles were atrocious in their early versions, and companies in particular are a topic on which it's notoriously difficuly to start articles. ‑ Iridescent 19:42, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Depends what kind of a company it is. Many medium sized towns have a company with couple of near-toy helicopters they rent out for aerial reconnaissance or news reporters. That does not make the companies notable, nor if the owner also owns a couple of small new and use car showrooms. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:49, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

No, and we have deletion processes that pick those up and delete them. The issue here is that unless one is an expert in the field it's virtually impossible to spot which of these companies are actually getting enough coverage to make them worth writing about so we don't delete them unless and until it's obvious they're inappropriate. The wording of [G11] applies to pages that are exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to serve as encyclopedia articles, rather than advertisements. If a subject is notable and the content could plausibly be replaced with text written from a neutral point of view, this is preferable to deletion. Note: Any article that describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion. However, "promotion" does not necessarily mean commercial promotion: anything can be promoted, including a person, a non-commercial organization, a point of view, etc. wasn't just written on-the-fly, but is the cumulative result of 20 years of learning from our mistakes. ‑ Iridescent 19:03, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't often feel this way, but Kudpung, your description of the company in your 05:49 comment just feels irrelevant. It does not matter what kind of a company it is. It does not matter if they do or don't have helicopters. It does not matter if they do or don't sell cars.

What actually matters is: Did any independent sources write about them? If there are enough sources to write a decent encyclopedia article, then the subject is notable. If there aren't, then it isn't. If the most boring, bog-standard small-town business gets written up at length in multiple independent sources – even if it's written up precisely because it's the most boring, typical small business – then it's notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

That, although I'd caveat it with the nature of the independent sources. Local newspapers will quite often carry profiles of local residents, businesses, bands etc just to have something to fill space on slow news days, and they don't necessarily confer notability. One of Wikipedia's most tiresome long-term abuse cases (and incidentally the first person ever to complain about me at ANI) was a guy who made a career of creating Wikipedia biogrphies of everyone who got an obituary in his local newspaper, and I don't doubt that he started off in good faith even if he later turned into an obsessive crank.

There's also the issue I've raised before that although "Notability is not temporary" is as close as Wikipedia ever gets to immutable dogma, it's not and never has been the case. There are millions of topics that are genuinely important for a short time but of absolutely no interest after that. I can provide absolutely impeccable Reliable Sources (including BBC News, which for reasons I've never quite understood Wikipedia editors generally seem to treat as some kind of gold standard) that the M4 motorway was closed for maintenance on the night of the 14th of May 2022; it doesn't mean if I created an article on it (or even added a paragraph to an existing article) it wouldn't be deleted. What the existence of those sources means is that if I created an article on it, it wouldn't be speedily deleted. ‑ Iridescent 03:48, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Small-town newspapers tend to be indiscriminate, which does not meet our goal of (selective) "attention from the world at large" (which isn't part of the GNG). We added a non-local requirement to CORP a few years ago to discourage Wikipedia articles about small businesses in small towns. We thought that getting profiled in the "Local Business of the Week" column (which goes in alphabetical order, turn and turn about, fair to everyone) was missing the point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:34, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

You're thinking of local newspapers in the US; what goes for the US doesn't really translate to the rest of the world as the media setup there evolved differently owing to geography. Local newspapers in most countries are just as respectable as the nationals, they just focus on local rather than national news.

For somewhere like London, a prosaic story like "the police temporarily increased patrols in a park in response to concerns raised over some Tik-Tok videos by people purporting to be gangsters threatening a 'gang war' in the park" gets covered by BBC News, by the national press if it's a slow news day or it supports that paper's particular agenda (for example), by the regional media like the Evening Standard, and Metro, and if you check back in a week it will be in the weekly locals like the South London Press and Southwark News. These are all unquestionably Reliable Sources by the definitions we use, but it doesn't mean Burgess Park police reassurance patrols of 2 June 2022 ought ever to be a link that turns blue. ‑ Iridescent 02:46, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I just wrote Joy Baking Group. I couldn't shake the feeling that if I were a new editor, someone would be accusing me of promotionalism and undisclosed paid editing, because the options are (1) write positive things or (2) massively violate NPOV and WP:V by making up negative information. Joy Baking is the world's largest manufacturer of ice cream cones and the long-time holder of the dominant market position in the US, but if a newbie provides that encyclopedic context, then some editor is going to claim shenanigans instead of using his brains. When the subject is one presented favorably in the press (The subject is ice cream cones. What publisher in its right mind is going to write an attack article about ice cream cones?), it feels like you have to decide whether to risk G11 (promotionalism) or A7 (not explaining why the company is important). It shouldn't be this way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:54, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

<page stalker> User:WhatamIdoing: Lol; you obviously haven't read what was written about Ben & Jerry's, after they withdrew from the West Bank ...Huldra (talk) 21:37, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I think you make a lot of good points there. But one difference, and I think it's meaningful, is that this particular newbie editor had a username that suggests a COI in favor of promotion. (So don't change your username to Joy!) --Tryptofish (talk) 01:14, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Just because we can identify a COI doesn't make someone a spammer. "Promotion" and "I want to tell you about where I work" aren't necessarily synonyms; when every writing guide on the planet contains some variant of "when starting out, focus on writing about what you know" it's not surprising that a significant proportion of new editors begin by writing about their employer, their family or their friends. ‑ Iridescent 04:25, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Of course, discouraging people from creating articles so they can instead do something easier is a herculean task. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 06:29, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I'm not even convinced we should be discouraging them. I know dogma is Creating an article is one of the more difficult tasks on Wikipedia, and you'll have a higher chance of success if you help us out with other tasks first to learn more about how Wikipedia works. You can always come back to create an article later; there is no rush!, but for new editors, jumping in at the deep end, fucking up completely, and having work deleted is arguably one of the most efficient sorting mechanisms for filtering those people who are willing and able to learn from their mistakes and who are able to accept that things aren't always going to go their way and sometimes one has to conform to a community's rules if one wants to be part of it—that is, it filters the handful of people who will likely fit in here from those who'll have tantrums when things don't go their way and just end up getting themselves blocked. ‑ Iridescent 19:34, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Back in the day, the first edit for about a quarter of newly registered accounts was to create a new article in the mainspace. It is a highly desired activity. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

That's a legit viewpoint, particularly if someone can't be talked out of writing an article. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:42, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

It's absolutely not the "dogma" at new editor training sessions, which afaik still encourages/assumes that all participants will want to create a new article. At least one thing you can say about the Wiki-ed US student courses is that they don't do that. I'm in favour of the "dogma" anyway - new articles bring the whole question of notabilty to bear, which just improving one of our millions of crap articles doesn't. Nor do I agree with Iri's commando course approach. Johnbod (talk) 02:21, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, if someone really wants to write an article, there's a lot of stubs that basically could be replaced with a "new" article, and it's probably more useful to improve them while less likely to run into issues. Galobtter (pingó mió) 02:30, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I wonder how much of the popularity of creating new articles is due to people believing that it's the easiest way to start. If you don't have someone telling you what the dynamics of this project actually are, you might presume changing what other people have written is more hazardous than writing something brand new. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:43, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@Clayoquot, @Galobtter, @Johnbod: It would be the 'dogma' of the wikipedia-en-help IRC channel, but for the fact that a lot of people are paid editors or else too upset over a declined draft to change course. Any redirection is met with defiance. Instead, we have to use an adapted 'commando course;' "If you don't add sources it's going to get declined again." I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 07:49, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that (altruistically motivated) newbies actually set out to become Wikipedia editors. I think they set out to provide information that is not currently in the English Wikipedia and they believe (rightly or wrongly) is appropriate for the English Wikipedia. If the thing you want to have on wiki is obviously part of another article (e.g., you heard that seaweed is a good source of B12 for vegans), then you start editing existing articles; if the thing you want to have on wiki is typically handled in a separate article (e.g., a new music album), then you start a new article.

I started editing because there were typos on the internet, and this site let me fix them. Eventually I created an account. Later I discovered that there was a community. I don't think I'm unusual in this respect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Fair enough, particularly if the article actually doesn't exist. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 06:48, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

That's not really how it works with training courses. People are recruited on the basis of "being interested in editing Wikipedia", often with a clarion call to redress gender imbalance. Some have specific articles, existing or not, they want to edit, but most don't, & its the job of the organizers to have a list of possibilities ready. Typically these are redlink bios. Look at the Art & Feminism and similar pages. Johnbod (talk) 13:02, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

@Johnbod A list of redlinked articles to guide newcomers is different (and better!) from newcomers coming up with ideas to write articles on on their own. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 17:33, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing New editors are under extra scrutiny because they near-universally don't write articles well. That fact can quite quickly overtake common sense. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 02:30, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

And any new editor who seems to write well will immediately be suspected of plagiarism and copyvios. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Plenty of capable PR and SEO people can, and will, do exactly that. It's what they're paid for, but if you are not a professional of the métier yourself and can recognise the signs, you first need to AGF. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:49, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung, @WhatamIdoing Noticing COI patterns doesn't always mean one is assuming bad faith. I tend to assume (and want to always assume) they're not following the rules, not out of malice but out of ignorance. It tends to be correct, to a degree, even if they're reluctant to disclose COI. That's a form of COI.AGF. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 06:28, 28 May 2022 (UTC) (note to User:Kudpung, I fixed the acronym to the one I meant above. Whoops. Time for bed.) I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 07:14, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

In the days when I was active on Wikipedia, I did a lot of 'assuming' and smoked out a lot of spammers, socks and UPE. Even one nasty piece of work, an extortionist who was creating derogatory but 'notable' articles about under-age females, then from another account contacting the fraught parents and saying he could get the article removed but there would be a 'small fee' for his use of 'special' editing tools and his time. Believe it or not, some editors here accused me of making it up, but the fact is, like a police detective, if you don't have a nasty suspicious mind and do a lot of digging, you won't catch these people, or the admins who are abusing their user rights to get away with writing sub standard articles, or socking away to their heart's content, or offering their skill on Upwork. I met one well known editor once at a Wikimania who was not aware that I knew he was using several socks to engineer the results of RfCs, and even having dialogues with himself on them. The only place he's allowed to engineer today is WO, but it took a couple of years for others to find out. There's a lot I could teach our NPPers (and WMF employees), but it would have to be in an off-Wiki workshop and at the end of the day, why should I anyway? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:59, 28 May 2022 (UTC).

@Kudpung There's a lot I could teach our NPPers (and WMF employees), but it would have to be in an off-Wiki workshop and at the end of the day, why should I anyway? I can think of one reason: The Wikipedia movement would benefit. I understand your cynicism, though. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 07:12, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@I dream of horses yeah, I know you do, but for one thing I would want my UK home region pal RexxS to work with me... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:37, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

He chose to leave Wikipedia, we didn't kick him out. He's obviously entirely within his rights to leave whenever he chose on his own terms, but there's an array of people ranging from Fram to TRM to me who can testify that being stripped of advanced permissions involuntarily isn't the end of the world. ‑ Iridescent 19:06, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

It's not that simple. It's true that some editors can readily get over sanctions and move on, and it's also true that some editors feel very hurt and don't have an easy time getting over it. This includes desysopping, but it also includes a lot of other stuff. I remember dueling essays, one of which says that editors should not regard having been blocked as a big deal, and the other saying that it's perfectly reasonable to feel like it was a big deal. (I looked for them, but somehow didn't find them). I don't think the attitude of just get over it and keep on editing does Wikipedia any good. In fact, I think it contributes to the coarsening of culture in the editing community. Editors are real people, and people are a varied group. We would be a better community if editors would remember that everyone has feelings, and those feelings deserve, at a minimum, some understanding. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:09, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

If we had established a culture of blocking early, often, and briefly ("Come back after you've slept on it, okay?"), then people would probably feel like it was no big deal. But since it is really an unusual event for non-vandals and non-spammers, and since we spend hours discussing it, and since we jump on admins who block established editors, and since we judge editors for being blocked and boast about our clean block logs, it feels like a Very Big Deal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Same for removing permissions, albeit to a varyingly lower degree. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:10, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing If we had established a culture of blocking early, often, and briefly... - think this demonstrates a misunderstanding of what it's like to be blocked or sanctioned. Many editors who are (or were) as prolific as you (I was also a very prolific user once upon a time) can end up sooner or later being the target for someone's axe to grind or pure vindictive spite and react to it, especially when it is full of gaslighting, playing victim, and taking issues totally out of context to provide added effect and pull the wool over Arbcom's eyes. Having a clean block log is nothing to boast about - it should be the default and as such, hardly worth mention. Most blocks are still handed out for very good reasons and even in the rare cases they may be dubious, a block log might well hamper a user's bid for additional rights or ascendancy to higher office (if they haven't been acquired already). Strangely enough, being fired from the WMF for serious breaches of editing policy is not followed up by sanctions from the respective community, and if a WMF employees is blocked or desysoped for serious reasons, it is considered by the Foundation to be a Kavaliersdelikt. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:28, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Or maybe it should be considered abnormal if you didn't earn a brief block as a newbie. Some editors already say that if you haven't created featured content, then you shouldn't have the delete button. The same logic can apply with blocks: if you haven't suffered through some difficult conversations and made the occasional mistake and survived the consequences, then why should you be given the block button?

If everyone expects a swift, certain, public – but minimal – punishment for small transgressions, then they will try to avoid small transgressions. You stop thinking "Nobody will ever haul me to ArbCom over this, so I'll be able to get away with this" and starting thinking "Hmm, I could post this, but then I wouldn't be able to edit tomorrow. Is this situation really worth being off wiki tomorrow?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:51, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I didn't mention RexxS because he left under a cloud. Not at all. I mentioned him simply because like me, we're (very roughly) the same age, he was a career teacher until his retirement in RL, we had collaborated on and off Wiki for over 10 years and delivered Wikipedia workshops together, he's a damn good teacher, we speak (if code-switching) the same dialect, and he comes from just 30 minutes up the M5 from my home town in the UK. That said, you could count me in with ...Fram to TRM to me who can testify that being stripped of advanced permissions involuntarily isn't the end of the world - but it certainly can leave one somewhat jaded and losing a lot of zest for helping out on Wikipedia where they could still be extremely useful with or without blocks, bans, or other technical sanctions. Per Tryptofish: Editors are real people, and people are a varied group. We would be a better community if editors would remember that everyone has feelings, and those feelings deserve, at a minimum, some understanding. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:30, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Flip Editors are real people, and people are a varied group. We would be a better community if editors would remember that everyone has feelings, and those feelings deserve, at a minimum, some understanding. around. The same is equally true of every good faith new editor who isn't familiar with Wikipedia's arcane rules and gets labeled a spammer, sockpuppet, or intentionally disruptive (just gonna put this here). ‑ Iridescent 17:55, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

TIL I learned people use "clueless" as an euphemism for "stupid" on Wikipedia. Geez, can't we not call people names? Like, wouldn't that make life easier? /rhetorical

I have nothing to add, I just agree with multiple people with nuance. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 19:28, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

What I will add is that some members of the community (administrators) as well as some members of the community (good-faith newbies) are all members of the community. And they are all real people. It's not a zero-sum game, and not a choice between one and another. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Is there a deliberate use of the word 'some', Tryptofish? You're right though. The only real difference between RexxS and me, retired teachers both, is that he disappeared completely from Wikipedia while I am still around (well, sort of). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:05, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

All I meant by "some" is that some members of the community are admins, and some are newbies. I didn't mean to imply that I was only talking about, for example, a subset of administrators. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:43, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Am I crazy?

My userpage was described today as having "strongly expressed opinions" (very true), but in a rather negative manner. I wrote it realtively quickly, but decided to keep it, as I feel it sums up my thoughts about WP content creation nowadays (I'm chiefly referring to the first paragraph). Does it seem crazy and manifesto-like, or is there any sense there? Having doubts now. Aza24 (talk) 18:48, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, if you are, that would make two of us. You are expressing opinions about Wikipedia content (and to some degree, Wikipedia culture), which is entirely appropriate within the project. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:26, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@Aza24 Honestly, your userpage has less information about your off-wiki beliefs than mine do. I have my political beliefs in collapsed userboxen; I couldn't tell what your political beliefs are at all. So, given that, who cares if you have strong opinions about Wikipedia, so long as you are civil towards specific people? I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@Aza24 Not only are you not crazy, you sum up some essential aspects of Wikipedia culture quite well indeed. :) (If you really want to see dismality and swampiness, try running for admin. I've heard some people actually enjoy being one.) Antandrus (talk) 20:42, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I think the difficulty is the audience. If you are a typical Wikipedian (i.e., one of the people who has not thought to improve the article Music), then you might read that and think something like "Oh, yes, there's an article that one might wish was well done, but which is naturally kind of a mess. Difficult subject, much too big for anyone to do right. Now, didn't I have something far more obscure and trivial to work on? Ah, yes, my list of space anomalies. I'd gotten up to F: Fingertips of photographers accidentally showing in photographs" – and never think of the article again, much less try to fix it up.

But if you're one of the few who have tried to improve the article, then that view goes a bit beyond the usual level of "improving articles is a thankless task" (which we're mostly accustomed to) into "I do all this work, and then some joker who has done little except tag bomb the article (like adding a 'more refs' tag to an article that already cited 102 sources and adding, in the same edit, tags to complain both that non-Western music isn't adequately represented and also that the role of women in music overall is being overstated relative to the male-dominated pre-Romantic Western music) holds it up as an example of the worst article in Wikipedia" range.

The usual approach is to add an acknowledgement of how much worse it could be, e.g., "Despite the efforts of some dedicated editors off and on over the years..." and/or a proposed solution (e.g., "I commit to finding good sources and solving the following problems myself:" or "I realize paid editing isn't the done thing around here, but we really could use a grant program that paid an established academic to develop these key articles", or whatever you think might help). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Also, for these older articles, you need to look at the Special:PageInfo, for the number of people who put the article on their watchlists and are still active. The answer in this case is 92. The other 1,428 are inactive editors – people who don't edit at all, or at least people who haven't visited Special:Watchlist during the last 30 days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't usually tag articles like that, but in this case I was forced to make an exception. Part of the problem with the music article is that is not obviously clear how bad it is—there are indeed 100 refs, loads of text, images and was rated as B before I moved it down to C. This is all deception though, almost every section is only about the Western world—the history being the most egregious by perpetuating the narrative that by the Middle Ages, the only music which existed was that of Europe until the 20th-century (this becomes more obvious when compared to an article like Sculpture, where the global diversity and presence is immediately clear). As far as 'a proposed solution', surely my final line about being bold is something of one?—though perhaps it is too vague. Aza24 (talk) 05:14, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

That sounds like it needs a {{Globalize}} tag. Refimprove is for articles where there is unreferenced or poorly referenced content, not for articles where the existing content is referenced but something is missing. ϢereSpielChequers 09:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

There is an existing Globalize tag, and both tags apply. Whole swathes of the Music article are unsourced. 100 citations is not a lot for 89kb of text, there is possibly more unsourced content in the article then there is sourced content. CMD (talk) 10:08, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliments for Sculpture which I did some years back for Wikipedia:The Core Contest, which gave me the extra motivation needed; I probably wouldn't ever have got round to it otherwise. Quite a lot of it is adapted or just lifted from existing more detailed articles, which reduced the work considerably. That might well work for music. I agree with your comments generally; I've been complaining for over a decade that our coverage of the biggest topics is often much worse than that of microtopics, the reverse of the way it should be. I think that's especially true of the arts. The Core Contest is running currently, btw - 2 weeks left. I'm entering Italian Renaissance sculpture, which we didn't have a topic article on at all. Johnbod (talk) 14:42, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I've noticed this too. The articles on the senses, for instance (sense of smell being the one I noticed first) are pretty terrible despite being so foundational to the human experience. Another noticeably lacking article is The Sun in culture, which is laughably short. I think the problem is partially that these broad, hugely important topics would be difficult for anyone to write about at a highly summarized, encyclopedic level, and the issue is only magnified when 100 editors try to collaborate over a period of years. —Ganesha811 (talk) 21:26, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that an important topic equates to an important article. Very few people are going to learn anything from an encyclopedia article about "Music" that they don't already know. We're already familiar with the broad-strokes summary of that topic. It's kind of like nobody is going to learn about music by looking up the word "music" in the dictionary: we already know what it means. People will want to learn about things that they don't already know about, which is why the smaller-topic articles, more granular, more obscure, get more attention. I don't think that's a problem, I think it's the encyclopedia fulfilling its purpose, which is to educate people about things they don't already know about. That's why "climate change" is a more important article--more readers, more editors--than "Earth", even though the latter is a more important topic.

Also, not for nothing, but complaining that no one is doing something (improving the Music article), when you are also not doing that thing, might come across as a touch hypocritical :-) Levivich 15:38, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

To your second point, I should not that my recent efforts are focused on the History of music article, which was in even worse shape than the music article before I got to it. Aza24 (talk) 17:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

It's not the case that our readers share our editors' interests or priorities at all - big general articles get high views, no matter how terrible they are (Avg 13 k per day for music, with 47k a few days back). And frankly most of the remaining text-writing effort on WP is dedicated to subjects that get hardly any views. Music is actually rather a long article, & the claim that "Very few people are going to learn anything from an encyclopedia article about "Music" that they don't already know" seems utterly fantastic to me. I'm entirely sure I would - why don't you try reading it & letting us know if you did? Johnbod (talk) 21:47, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

I think you both have a point. Music does get substantial pageviews, but I doubt there are many people at all who ever read through a high-level article like that from beginning to end.

I remember that the article Desert, a top-3,000 article at the time, happily told readers for the best part of a year – during which time it received around a million pageviews – that winter temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic averaged between –2 and +4 °C. It seems quite unlikely that this sentence was read by many people, or at least many adults, over that time. (Indeed I wondered whether many of those pageviews were schoolchildren doing research for an essay, which would make errors like that particularly unfortunate.)

So while I agree that high-level articles are important, it's also true that there are many articles on current pop icons like Harry Styles or Jack Harlow that are viewed far more often (and probably read more diligently ...) than Music. As a percentage of pageviews in the general topic area of music, pageviews for a high-level article like that represent a very small fraction of the total. Andreas JN466 14:41, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

That's especially true for music (and the main article hardly deals with pop music at all), but eg for sculpture will be much less true, given the lack of really well-known modern sculptors. Jeff Koons, the Britney Spears of modern sculpture, only gets some 640 views a day, while "sculpture" gets 829. As for the Arctic, most readers, even if they spot a glaring mistake, just think "Oh, that's Wikipedia being crap again" and move on. Or they are American and don't really get °C. Johnbod (talk) 14:50, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Yayoi Kusama is doing alright, btw. --Andreas JN466 17:24, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Taylor Swift maybe? Johnbod (talk) 00:09, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

My opinion—which I'm aware is a minority view—you probably all know by now, but for benefit of anyone pasing by I'll be lazy and copy-paste Wikipedia's strength is the breadth of its coverage, and the fact that people can find out about Little Thetford as easily as they can find out about France. IMO the measure of the importance of a Wikipedia article is "if we shut Wikipedia down, how easy would it be for someone to find out about the topic from a Google search?". To me, Apororhynchus is a more important article than Ant. from a couple of threads up.

I strongly suspect the high pageviews for Music are largely an artefact of (a) it having so many incoming links that a statistically significant number of people click on it by chance, and (b) people who think they're entering it in their browser searchbar and enter it in Wikipedia's searchbar by mistake (Music gets fewer pageviews than Pornhub and hugely fewer pageviews than Google). Realistically I can't imagine there are many readers who actually think "I've heard about this thing called 'music', I'd be interested to find out what it is". (I know the WMF have software that can analyze how long readers remain on a page and how much of it they read if you ask nicely, and I do suspect a significant number of those 6000+ readers per day immediately think "oops" and go type "music" in their browser searchbar right away. Articulation (music), which is linked near the beginning of Music, gets fairly minimal page views even though it's a term with which people genuinely wanting to learn about the topic are unlikely to be familiar so you'd expect the clickthrough rate to be quite high.) Even though they don't get as many readers I would think History of music and the articles on individual genres, instruments, musicians and works are a higher priority than the main article. ‑ Iridescent 13:01, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

The most common internal destination from Music is The arts, followed by Music genre, Popular music, Rapping, and Cultural universal, in that order.[4] I wouldn't be too surprised if some traffic is students looking for something to say in a writing assignment, and there are probably people who are using it for navigation (what's that called again? Hang on, I'm sure I can find it...) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The important metric in this context is the number of readers who think "hang on, this isn't what I was looking for" and immediately close it down. I suspect for something like Music that will be an overwhelming proportion. ‑ Iridescent 19:35, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that an important topic equates to an important article. Very few people are going to learn anything from an encyclopedia article about "Music" that they don't already know., For a major topic like music, the Music page should be a dab page that lists all the articles on music - history of; all the genres; composers; etc., etc., etc. It's something I always wished for, although as a musician, I usually know what to look for and stand a good chance of finding a relevant article if I make a calculated guess what its page title is likely to be, especially when I want to link to it from another article I'm editing. It doesn't always work though. I have the same problem when writing about wine (although it does have a reasonably developed portal), or Malvern. I'm not sure that the mauve collapsed nav templates right at the bottom of articles get seen or used by the average reader. Frust! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:01, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Way back before the dawn of time there was a half-hearted effort to do something like this—the ones for Music still exist at Outline of music and Index of music articles. In practice, they degenerated into unusable content-forks. In general, I think "high-level" topics should be very brief summaries that aren't pure index or outline pages, but make it clear that they're just brief summaries and that readers wanting information on a particular aspect of the topic need to click the links. In one of the other threads on this page, I use History of the United States as an example of this approach done well. ‑ Iridescent 17:48, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I'll go along with that, of course, except that the almost tome weight of the sprawling History of the United States article needs a lot of reading before one comes across a blue link to the specific topic one is looking for. Perhaps a suggestion for such articles of a general nature could be to begin with a Hatnote on the lines of: Readers would then be aware that they only need to scan for relevant links. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:24, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I would suggest a better solution would be a more rigorous application of WP:SIZE, noting that the tome weight is explained by History of the United States being 2-3x longer than the guideline suggests it should be. For blue link access, given many readers come from mobile, the main/see also/further information links under the lv2 headers are probably the most important navigation tool. (Although sometimes these send readers to worse articles with less coverage, which is regrettable.) CMD (talk) 02:26, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis and @Kudpung: As someone who occasionally does throw a gnome sized bomb into articles, turning them into stubs after, I have to say...why not both? After all, it can be difficult to shrink a large, broad-scope article down to size, and it might take time to do so. If someone is sitting on the article and wants certain verbiage to stick around, it can be next to impossible, but I doubt that's happening to the articles we're speaking of. What I'm saying is the "page in a nutshell" template can be a temporary solution. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 02:33, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

It is also difficult to maintain multiple articles, and partitioning information between the main article and the subarticle can be problematic. That's why I am generally in favour of having a big article instead of several. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:30, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

With a just-too-big (but still rather superficial) article like History of the United States, I think the solution is just to chop it into 4 or more periods. Myself, I wouldn't mind a style of titles like "History of the United States, part 1: prehistory", but that might take some arguing for. Johnbod (talk) 18:21, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

It appears to have already been chopped into 12 periods as it stands, if the sidebar is anything to go by. I happen to agree with Jo-Jo's point that a single article is much easier to manage, but that argument is applicable to a series of stubs or smaller pieces in a way that it is not to gargantuan topic like the history of the United States. Re the points on a on page in a nutshell template, this does hit on a crucial part of current access mostly through mobile, in that the most prominent links for more specific navigation are the Main/See also/Furthers under level two headers specifically. They serve a similar role to that template proposal already, in a way that links elsewhere (including under lower header levels) do not. CMD (talk) 18:36, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

It's worth bearing in mind that WP:SIZE is totally outdated, and one of those things that we only hang on to because it's almost impossible to get anything MOS-related changed owing to the clique who treat the MOS as holy writ and obstruct any effort to update it. Back in the mid-2000s significant proportions of the readership were using heavily-metered connections, there were still browsers in common use that couldn't handle large documents, and desktop view was the only view. Today, browser load is determined pretty much exclusively by the size of images (for some perspective, File:Poster for Quo Vadis (1913 silent film) - Lygia Bound to the Wild Bull.jpg which is currently on the Main Page comes in at 15.71 MB which is roughly four times the file size of the entire text of the King James Bible, the Main Page is one of the most visited pages on the entire internet but we're not being deluged by complaints that we're crashing people's browsers); there are no browsers in common use that have a text size limit; WAP is thankfully no longer something with which we need to be concerned; and crucially the majority of readers see Wikipedia in Minerva in which only the section in which they're interested is uncollapsed.

To me the idea that there's some kind of magic limit after which an article becomes "too long" and needs to be split is antiquated and irrelevant; the only point at which an article needs to be split is "is this starting to diverge into areas that are unlikely to be of interest to the majority of people wanting to know about the topic?", and that can happen after five paragraphs or five hundred depending on the topic. ‑ Iridescent 04:45, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

The technical aspects are outdated, but I disagree that the concept as a whole is irrelevant. Word limits are quite common for good reasons, and judging when an article states to diverge is an intractable question. Having an expected standard (however arbitrary, and the current one has a lot of flex) helps guide editor expectations and provides a basis on which the "starting to diverge" question can be better assessed (ie. within a 10,000ish word coverage of this topic, is this piece of information crucial?). CMD (talk) 09:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

"Always think 'is this necessary'" is good advice, but I disagree on hard limits, and the trouble with including (for example) a 10,000-word limit is that we know from weary experience that no matter how much we plaster it with "this is only a guideline" limit, people tend to treat the MOS as being enforceable policy.

To use one of my standard examples, take Taylor Swift. This breaches every current potential size limit (word count, wikitext size, server load). However, there's virtually nothing in there that's obviously trimmable, and despite her current success Swift is ultimately a fairly marginal character, so it would look ridiculous splitting it up and having separate articles on her childhood, different periods of her career, her personal life and so on. People rightly point out that Wikipedia's model leads to an unhealthy tilt towards current popular culture, but the fact that we have a more detailed biography of Sonic the Hedgehog than we do of Auguste Beernaert is just a reflection that we serve a different audience to Britannica, not that we should split up the longer articles just for the sake of splitting them. As long as the TOC of the article is clear and comprehensible, it doesn't particularly matter if the article is a million words long—readers will just uncollapse or navigate to the appropriate section and ignore the rest. ‑ Iridescent 14:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

There must still be some people who have difficulty loading big articles (think of the African children). That's what we were always told was the reason for the length limits, although personally I think they are a good thing anyway, for all but a few subjects. Johnbod (talk) 02:53, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

@Johnbod Oh, no doubt about people still having slow internet. I actually live sort of close to a mountain range; if I were to move up such a mountain, I'd probably have a difficult time getting decent internet. The thing is, people who do live in such places are becoming further and farther in between, but we should still think of them. If you wanted to communicate less figuratively, it's less "Think of the African children" and more "Think of the rural elderly."

The problem is creating a length limit that's flexibly enforced by both humans and technology. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 03:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Technological limitations regarding loading time for articles are often about media rather than prose size, so the easiest way to handle that would be a simple way to load an article without any images. There is a more obscure limitation regarding templates, described at WP:PEIS, which happens at all internet speeds. This is most notorious for messing with WP:FAC, but I've seen it pop up on actual articles before. On the Taylor Swift point, that is an article that fits into what I called smaller pieces above (Levivich's term "smaller-topic articles" is a better one). Having no obvious splits is a good sign of that. Writing those will necessarily be significantly different for much higher-level articles like Music or History of the United States, where it becomes much more useful for readers to have a shorter summary with specific detailed links than a longer tome. CMD (talk) 03:52, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Huge pages with lots of text/links can be harder to process for screen readers, because they have to virtualise the pages (i.e. process the page's HTML) so screen readers can navigate them. However, I've never had any problems with the size of articles ... and if an article became big enough to cause problems for screen readers, it'd probably be nudging the template limits. I've had minor problems with the odd non-article page but they can be worked around. Graham87 10:59, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis I think the phenomenon Iridescent describes above could possibly be due to a combination of Wikipedia being a honeypot for people with subclinical-to-clinical autism or OCD (that is, they are rigid), and difficulty communication of what MoS even is to most of the community (it's a recommendation, not enforceable policy, etc.). I've been on Wikipedia for more than a decade and a half, I haven't memorized the MoS. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 02:39, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Which would have been a waste of time as, even now, it keeps changing. Johnbod (talk) 02:53, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes and no. The exact rules/guidelines/suggestions keep changing, but the basic assumptions like size limits, scope & notability, primacy to desktop view when the interests of desktop and mobile readers clash, and so forth, have remained fairly constant for years.

On the specific issue of size limits, I'm not saying pages should be encouraged to accumulate every piece of information in which anyone could vaguely be interested. I'm saying firstly that the idea of hard limits is fairly pointless (a 9,999-word article doesn't magically become unacceptable if I add two extra words to it); secondly that the idea of 'page size' is based on a misconception since a single image will be a larger download than even the largest page (if you're interested, this tool will break down any web page both by server load and by what the actual cost will be to the Kid In Africa to view it); and thirdly, that for more niche topics it's pointless to break up long articles even if the articles are unaccepptably long (to stick with Little Thetford, the article is the length of a pipe roll but it would be a disservice to readers to split it up; it's such a niche topic that any reader actually looking for it probably does want to read the whole thing). ‑ Iridescent 12:21, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Reverting Edit

Hi, I realized you reverted my changes to the article on GlennSamm and would like to know why? Heatrave (talk) 18:52, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

@Heatrave, I think you're either misreading the edit history or confused about how Wikipedia works. The only edit I've ever made to that article was an ultra-minor edit correcting the date formatting. ‑ Iridescent 03:38, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

(adding) Looking more closely at the history, I think that what you're complaining about is this set of edits made by User:Bbb23, who you'd need to ask if you want the exact reasoning. In general when you see material being removed from a biography of a living person it's either because it's material that doesn't meet Wikipedia's very strict rules on what constitutes an acceptable source for a biography of a living person, or because it doesn't meet Wikipedia's equally strict rules on neutrality. Biographies are one of the most difficult topics to write on Wikipedia, particularly biographies of people with marginal notability since they're the people less likely to be the subject of neutral third-party coverage. ‑ Iridescent 04:41, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Reputable reliable accurate sources

Forever ago, @SmokeyJoe suggested that WP:N refer to "reputable" sources rather than "reliable" ones, and he recently reminded me of this in one of our ongoing arguments. After noticing that there are at least 30 references to accuracy on this page, I've decided to (surprise him by) bring this idea here, with the hope that you all could tell me whether this makes any sense. The idea is that we (re)define a few bits of wikijargon to separate some concepts:

• reputable – has a favorable reputation as a purveyor of information (e.g., due to using peer-review, being a typical daily newspaper).
  • Good editors will have no trouble turning reputable sources into reliable ones by writing suitable content. Reputable sources will generally be accurate, to the extent that they deal with facts instead of opinions. Reputable sources may or may not be independent.
  • Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources (RSP) gets renamed to "Reputable sources".
• reliable – is a source editors believe is sufficient to support the specific content in question.
  • Reliable sources might be disreputable (e.g., social media posts), inaccurate (denials issued by who were caught red-handed and convicted of their crimes) and/or non-independent (every autobiography ever).
  • People trying to claim that a source is reliable without comparing that source to a specific bit of content will be encouraged to use the word reputable instead.
• accurate – gets the facts correct. Does not require being unbiased, but it does require not lying (so, e.g., it might write "Lee Liar says ____" but not "Lee Liar tells the truth when he says ____").
  • May or may not be reputable; may or may not be reliable; may or may not be independent.
• independent – not getting paid by the subject (directly or indirectly). An independent source that gets information from a non-independent source is still producing an independent source.
  • May or may not be reputable; may or may not be reliable; may or may not be accurate.

My questions: What have I missed? ("Unbiased", maybe?) Would this distinction be helpful, assuming that it could be accomplished (which is doubtful)?

As for implications, if you follow it all the way to the end, I think that the scariest scenario is this: If the source can manage to reprint part of a corporate press release and still remain reputable (doubtful), then that reprinted content, even though it was originally authored by a non-independent person, becomes an independent reputable source which could be used to demonstrate notability and be cited as a reliable source in articles. Essentially, the source is transformed into an independent source through the decision of an independent editor at an independent publication to make that content available to the public.

What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to say this with respect, and I don't want you to think I'm trying to say that making definitions clear isn't important, but this strikes me a classic "policy-wonkery-for-the-sake-of-policy-wonkery". And it really does appear to be designed by someone a bit too captured by corporate-US-process-over-substance behavior. Those of us out in the trenches dealing with writing articles aren't going to be helped by this (unless it's a side benefit of having the people who enjoy bickering over this sort of thing out of our hair). I can't see how this makes any improvement in the actual ability to write articles with good sourcing easier. But ... what do I know? I'm just out there writing and reviewing content... heh. Ealdgyth (talk) 21:34, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Harsh, Ealdgyth. I think it helps everyone, especially newcomers, to use words according to their standard meanings.

To be more specific, I suggest that “reputable” is the appropriate adjective for secondary sources, and “reliable” for primary sources. While a good secondary source contains primary source material, the secondary source content includes things like the authors opinions, which are not really well described as “reliable”. SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:46, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

The problem is... you can come to some sort of agreement with the people who might edit some policy page, and that's fine. It's not going to have much effect on the folks who don't bother reading policy pages or discussions. And the ones pushing a POV will just use whatever you come up with to try to win their battles. I'm not saying don't try - but I don't see that it's going to be a great help. Yes, I'm cynical these days. Ealdgyth (talk) 21:51, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate that I'm being somewhat inconsistent given that I regularly plug WP:Cite Unseen, but I've always had problems with any attempt to draw "good source/bad source" lines. There are sources that are inherently unreliable, but even the most reputable of sources can make glaring mistakes (this is my usual example), and particularly when you get into politically contested areas sources are always going to have an inherent bias.

On the whole I'd lean slightly more towards Ealdgyth here. Discussions over the difference between "reliable" and "reputable" are something of an angels-on-pinheads exercise—ultimately editors are going to use the source that says what they want it to say. (On at least one occasion I've caught a well-established editor citing a 'fact' to a novel when their Google Books search obviously didn't come up with a legitimate RS to support their point of view.

Regarding your specific example of the reprinting of a press release by a source considered reliable, I'm not sure I see that as as problematic as you. Provided we trust the source doing the re-publication, to me it's essentially just a variant of the kind of "I've reviewed this for myself and concluded that I'm happy to have my reputation attached to it" calculation that goes on in every academic peer review. ‑ Iridescent 05:20, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

"Essentially, the source is transformed…"

Essentially, the source is transformed into an independent source through the decision of an independent editor at an independent publication to make that content available to the public. Isn't that a feature of our policies rather than a bug!? The point of reporting what Independent Reliable Sources say is that you have some indication that the claim is likely to be both true and important; if Independent Reliable Sources are quoting a press release uncritically, that seems to me to be an obvious indication both that they consider the press release important enough for their readers to know about, and true enough to stake their reputation on quoting it uncritically. If a "press release->notability" pipeline became a major issue, it would probably be easier to simply add a clause to WP:N noting that a press release doesn't count towards notability, even when reproduced in what would normally be considered an Independent Reliable Source.
TBH, if someone were to want to spend the substantial effort required to redefine a well-established Wikipedian term of art, I think their time would be better spent coming up with a better word than "notability". I don't think our use of the term "reliable source" is all that confusing, and if we need to distinguish between "generally has a reputation for reliability" and "reliable for a particular claim", then "generally reliable" and "reliable for foo" are already part of the Wikipedian idiom. On the other hand, people who are encountering how the sausage is made for the first time are often confused by what we mean when we say someone is notable. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:28, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I basically agree with you (that this is a feature, not a bug), but this appears to be a point of dispute among editors. Other editors will look at a bog-standard source (e.g., typical article in the local daily newspaper) and say "Ah, ha! The reporter wrote in the sixth paragraph that this local business has 250 employees, and the only way to find out how many employees they have is to get that information straight from the company, so I hereby declare the entire newspaper article to be non-independent, and the entire source is completely unsuitable for demonstrating notability". (See also variations like "uses some of the same words as the 'About us' page on the corporate website" or "presents a completely positive view of the subject".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:14, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I think part of it is a disconnect between "notability" and "reliability", and the difficulty some people have in distinguishing between the concepts. If I start a business in a city big enough to have multiple local media outlets and send out a press release to each of those outlets, I'll immediately have the independent coverage in multiple non-trivial sources, and provided we're satisfied that each of those sources has fact-checked the press release before reprinting (or paraphrasing) it those sources will also be reliable in Wikipedia's terms. However, they won't have any particular bearing on notability. (Two decades of efforts to clean up the "but it was mentioned in the newspaper so it must be notable!" problem have definitely not been helped by the number of people who should know better—reaching right to the very top—who don't appear to grasp the difference between "I can prove it exists" and "this topic is appropriate for Wikipedia".)

This disconnect has always been an issue, and it's surprisingly difficult to articulate just what the difference is between "trivial or ephemeral topic that happens to have been mentioned in multiple sources because their PR department has a knack for catchy press releases" , "potentially notable topic but there's actually only a single source because a bunch of different papers cribbed from the same article on a wire service" and "actual repeated non-trivial coverage in multiple independent reliable sources demonstrating that the topic is actually potentially significant". The brief paragraph at Wikipedia:Existence ≠ Notability#Don't create an article on a news story covered in 109 newspapers is probably the least-worst attempt at it I've seen.

The elephant in the room is that the significant coverage of the topic directly and in detail, in reliable sources that are independent of the subject mantra, which supposedly forms the bedrock of Wikipedia's notability policy, doesn't actually describe how we determine notability. I could find Wikipedia-compliant sources for articles on 2021 water leak in Oxford Road, Manchester^[5], Cancellation of flights from Billings Airport owing to weather conditions^[6] or List of children bitten by Yorkshire terriers^[7] with no difficulty, but if I were actually to turn any of those redlinks blue I'd rightfully be pilloried. In reality, "notability" and "reliability" both consist of a series of judgement calls based on precedent, and precedent is notoriously difficult to codify particularly in a context like Wikipedia where so many decisions are based on "this feels right" rather than on written policy.

(For what it's worth and to unify the threads on this page somewhat, I also think this is why UCoC isn't going to work unless it's watered down to such a vague "try to be nice to each other" set of platitudes that we may as well not have it at all. Trying to codify cultural norms is virtually impossible—I'd challenge anyone to explain clearly exactly where the line between "telling someone to stop repeatedly disrupting Wikipedia by inserting extremist propaganda" and "critiquing someone's political affiliations in such a way that upsetting them would reasonably be considered the most likely outcome" lies, or to define what politeness in behaviour and speech amongst people, including strangers actually means. Upsetting and annoying other people is a fundamental part of editing—either on Wikipedia or anyone else—since by its nature 'editing' means telling other people that they're wrong and saying things other people don't want to hear. It doesn't even need to be contentious topics; as I write this the latest instalment of an eight year argument is currently playing out over the weighty matter of whether commas should go before or after quotation marks.) ‑ Iridescent 07:32, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Iridescent wrote If I start a business … and send out a press release to each of those outlets, I'll immediately have the independent coverage in multiple non-trivial sources

Absolutely not. Nonsense. Repetition of the information from press releases is not independent. The GNG requires an independent person to create commentary (or analysis etc) on the content of the press release. Consider the information. Who made it? Wikipedia works with information, not who pressed the photocopier button. SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:58, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with that. It won't necessarily be neutral, but neutrality isn't a synonym for reliability. Provided the re-user is someone we collectively trust to fact-check rather than blindly re-use, then in their re-use they've created a reliable source in Wikipedia's terms. This happens all the time for some topics—for instance, when it comes to sporting transfers our sole source for "Carlos Kickaball has been signed by Fulchester United from Midtable Town for a transfer fee of €3,000,000" will be assorted newspapers citing press releases from the two teams' PR departments or the player's agent, but we still treat them as reliable sources because we trust the newspapers not to be printing it unless they'd verified that the press releases were genuine. ‑ Iridescent 08:37, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

The example assumes that five press releases = five newspaper articles, but this is likely optimistic. The more likely outcome is a couple of sentences in one paper. But let's imagine that your business is the sort that is especially well-suited to the publications' different editorial goals (perhaps a Water park). Any newly opened business would still have a problem with Notability's WP:SUSTAINED rules, but presumably the business hopes that both coverage and the business will continue over time.

The act of "creating commentary" is transforming information into a secondary source. It would be very easy for the independent source to turn a basic press release full of boring factual things like "Iri's Waterful Wonder Park will open next week" into a secondary source by adding something like "and it will be a welcome addition to the city's entertainment options, especially for families with teenagers".

As for what editors actually do, rather than the theory from more than a decade ago, I offer these quotations from recent AFDs:

• "a single source which is not much more than a recycled press release" (I wonder how this editor knows that?)
• "That is a routine annoucement of the man leaving his job. How is that notable and it is a press-release."  (The source in question is an article in Bloomberg News.)
• "The apnews ref is yet another copy of the same press release."  (I assume that's a reference to the Associated Press's website, which is https://www.apnews.com Apparently we don't all know the difference between one of the most respected wire services in the world and a company-generated press release.)
• "just rehashed press releases (e.g. the Interesting Engineering article copies whole bits straight from the Cnick Teslaring homepage), not actual independent, journalistic bits"  (I guess you can always tell it's a press release when you can prove word-for-word copying of "whole bits" from something that's not a press release.)
• "articles derived heavily from press releases...are not considered independent" Straight-up claim about what the rules are, and it matches with SmokeyJoe says.
• "press release regurgitated by The Toronto Star ("are thrilled to announce")" The parenthetical leads me to believe that this is declared to be a press release because the editor doesn't think the style is proper for a newspaper, rather than because the editor has seen the alleged press release and compared its contents. The Toronto Star is the biggest daily newspaper in Canada, which is not generally the type of publication that I'd expect to see moonlighting as a press release aggregator.

OTOH, I would not be surprised if we have a double-standard here. Self-promotion efforts by athletes and certain other kinds of celebrities are welcomed by editors. Identical self-promotion efforts by businesses are not. It might well by the case that a rehashed press release in the sports section of a newspaper would be accepted as highly reliable and indicating notability, while the same situation in the business section of the same newspaper would be rejected as dubious, unreliable, tainted, and never contributing to notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing, I'm feeling the need for the historiographical, information-focused, primary/secondary source typing and matching information-independence classification approach to be written into an essay. I am completely confident that it is the right approach as a theoretical basis, and cannot deny that many good editors reject it while mismatching it to other concepts like reliability and bias/POV.

The starting explanation is that Wikipedia is (meant to be) an encyclopedia, and an encyclopedia is a tertiary source, meaning it is concerned with information and knowledge above data. Accordingly, "Wikipedia as an encyclopedia" belongs squarely in the field of historiography, not science, not journalism, and then, for the sake of sensible communication, let's adopt the language of historiography (as is largely the case in Wikipedia policy, WP:PSTS especially, if not always in practice (eg NSPORT)).

The consequence of the above is that it is essential to consider the provenance of the information. Who wrote it, and why, and to what audience? Note that "information" is "secondary sourced", as distinct from data, which is pure, testable, or provable. Information and knowledge is interpretive, subjective, depends on perspective, and not necessarily subject to being tested or proved. If an interpretation of the data becomes testable and reliable and provable, that interpretation becomes data.

The association of the word "reputable" with unprovable secondary source interpretations, contextualisations and opinions is logical, but will not in itself fix any simple problem. "Reliable" is not a bad word, indeed, quality secondary sources are expected to be published in publications, by publishers, and editors, with a reputation for reliability. Never discard "reliable", Wikipedia does not want to open a door to analysis of unreliable data. -- SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:08, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Is this blue or green?. Answer: No. We have a terminology definition problem. SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:27, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
#008888

I don't think that it's so simple to separate pure, testable, provable data from interpretive, subjective, perspective-based information. If it were, the entire world would agree on whether the color here was blue or green – or even agree on whether blue and green are separate colors, which they don't. The color itself is absolutely "pure, testable, provable data". You can get out a spectrometer and measure the wavelength to the exact nanometer, if you want to. But when you decide to call that wavelength "blue" or "green", you are already interpreting that "pure, testable, provable data". And yet I don't think that you would be satisfied if a source said "They sell a blue-green widget" that you were looking at a subjective interpretation and therefore a secondary source that demonstrated notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:43, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

The blue-green transition can be subjected to an agreed criteria. The subjectivity of a person's blue-green distinction is different to subjectivity on the widget. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:27, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Even if the color is the most important fact about the widget? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:16, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

The importance of a fact does not remove the importance of using a common language to talk about it. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:03, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

People can have genuine disagreements about which "common language" applies. Remember The dress? You're not wrong if you happen to perceive a color different from the color I perceive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:06, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely I know The dress, and see also one of my favourite images. There is a difference between “it is blue” the asserted fact, and “I perceive that as blue”, a personal account. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02 (UTC)

But when the source says "It's blue", in your model of evaluating sources, an editor can say "Oh, I've personally decided that this statement is just his personal perception of the color – primary, no evidence of notability". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

The colour of a widget is trivial information. I thought we agreed that a separate condition was that the coverage required is 100 to 500 words. I think it is pointless to try to explain source typing, independent vs non-independent, on a trivial mention. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:02, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

The color of this particular subject is not trivial, and hundreds of words were expended on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:26, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing, I’d need to see the hundreds of words to meaningfully comment. Hundreds of words on a perception would be a non-trivial secondary source. SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe, the test to which I assume WAID is referring is fairly well documented. You can see the hundreds of words in question just by googling blue or green. (We have a truly appalling article at Blue-green, but it's literally one of the worst articles I've ever seen on Wikipedia and I've seen some stinkers.) ‑ Iridescent 13:10, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I am not appalled, but delighted to discover stuff I’d not encountered before. Blue-green is technical, but useful and not offensively to me. Blue–green distinction in language is more interesting, new to me but aligns with something I already knew: When people have words for something, it affects how they think about about it. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:41, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm orange, you know.

'Orange' is the most interesting example of that particular phenomenon. Until the Portuguese reached India and brought back orange trees, the concept of 'orange' as something other than a shade of red literally didn't exist in Europe—thus European languages have things like 'redhead' and 'red deer' that are clearly orange rather than red, because at the time they were named the concept of 'orange' didn't exist. ‑ Iridescent 07:11, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

• Essentially, the source is transformed into an independent source through the decision of an independent editor at an independent publication to make that content available to the public is scholarly bastardisation. It’s technobabble, like Star Trek science, like YouTube COVID misinformation. It’s using scholarly words foolishly. “Transformation” is something that happens to information, by a new author’s creative addition and the creation of a new secondary source. Independence of an original source is inherent in its origin. An independent editor who decides to publish something has not created anything beyond their judgement that something is to be published, and if that editor’s criteria for publishing is something other than the independence of the source, then this new information has zero relevance if you want to reevaluate the question of the ordinal source’s independence. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:58, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

  "Independence" is not a scholarly word. The non-independence of the original text is inherent, but the true independence of my decision to share this original text with the world at large is also equally inherent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

  In context, “independence” is absolutely scholarly. Whether you perceive Wikipedia to be of the field of historiography, or journalism, or science, “independence” is a scholarly meaningful term. To the extent that “independence” can be used non-scholarly, it’s use is not appropriate anywhere on Wikipedia, because Wikipedia seeks to be of scholarly reputation.

  The non-independence of an original document is inherent. No buts. The “true independence”(?) of your decision is a matter for you, and does not change the nature of the original document. A press release does not transform an independent source by re-publication. “Transform” is a scholarly term that does not apply to a source, but to information and knowledge. You could publish your decision to republish a press release, but is that decision “significance coverage”?

  We know that collaboration and mutual back scratching is common in journalism. You cannot be independent of your collaborator An editors’ decision to publish is not an indicator of independence. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:41, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

  A term can have meaning in scholarly circles without being a scholarly term.

  If the goal of notability is to identify subjects that "gained sufficiently significant attention by the world at large and over a period of time", then me freely choosing to re-print someone else's work, of my own volition (and possibly without even the knowledge of the original author) is a signal of attention from the world at large.

  We don't know that "mutual back scratching is common in journalism". On the contrary, we know that journalistic independence is highly prized in that field, and the collaboration normally takes the form of collaborating with other journalists. Bylines with multiple journalists' names, or a footnote that says "additional reporting by..." are fairly common. Bylines that say "Jo Journalist and Sam Subjectmatter" are not at all common. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:54, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

  The goal of notability on borderline notable topics is to ensure that Wikipedia only hosts content that others have previously written about. “Others” implies independent. “Written about” implies the generation of a secondary source and excludes mere repetition.

  Republishing another’s work is not writing.

  An editor choosing to re-publish a company PR release is an indicator of attention from the world at large, maybe, but it is not sufficient to meet the WP:GNG. No independent person has written about the topic. You also make the extremely dubious assumption that the editor is independent of the company when choosing to republish their PR release.

  You may not know mutual back scratching is common in journalism, but I know personally that it happens. Not the NYTimes, but a national newspaper. “You write the story, I’ll visit and then publish the story”. Do you actually doubt that it is not commonplace?

  Trivial mentions are below the threshold for being worth consideration. Consider the example you previously offered me: The AVA Mediterranian, Winter Park, Florida [8]. There is enough material in that to analyse writing styles and information content. The indicators are overwhelming (not “proof” but overwhelming indication) that the content from the 3rd paragraph on was written by a different person to the author of paragraphs 1 and 2. Commonplace, I say. Maybe not commonplace in NYT journalism, but commonplace is single-product review articles. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:17, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  "Independent" = "free from conflict of interest" and that is highly relevant, and much argued about, in medical scholarship, and no doubt many other fields. Johnbod (talk) 03:31, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

  I agree.

  One potentially resolvable question: If the author has a COI, but the publisher does not, does the resulting document ("A") always have a disabling COI for notability purposes? I think – despite my argument to the contrary above – that it might be so.

  If it does, then the next question is: If an author without any such COI reads this document ("A"), and a Wikipedia editor believes that this author without any such COI used information from that document ("A") to write another document ("B"), then does the resulting new document ("B") ever have a disabling COI for notability purposes? My initial thought is that this never happens. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

  I also agree, that a lack of COI is a necessary condition of independence. But it is not a sufficient condition. The collaborating source may have no conflict, but if the source sources all information, comment analysis and option from the subject, then the source is not independent of the subject. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:23, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  Nah, this is far too tough on intermediary sources like journalists - they have to get their initial information from somewhere, and very often the subject is the only feasible place. Johnbod (talk) 05:16, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  Johnbod, I inserted some necessary words. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:50, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  It’s perfectly fine to get initial information from the subject, but they have to do something with it. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:52, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  If the *only* information is the subjects’ creation, if the journalist does not even add their own opinion, then it does not meet the GNG. I am not saying that the information from the subject poisons the journalists contribution, but what counts, for the GNG, is what the journalist contributed.

  If the journalist did create and add their own secondary source content, the question then is whether the amount of content created by the journalist amounts to significant coverage. Look at [9]. The journalist wrote the first 121 words, and was given the rest (happy to explain the deduction, but if you just accept it for now). Does the source meet the GNG? SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:45, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  However: when (you believe that) some of the information comes from the subject, then you disqualify all of the information that you believe came from the subject, and then the independently-written source doesn't meet the GNG either, due to a lack of SIGCOV. To use the restaurant review, the source has more than 1,000 words, but you throw out all except the first 121 words. Many editors do not agree than Wikipedia:One hundred words is significant coverage; almost everyone agrees that 1,000 words normally is.

  A very few editors take an even more extreme approach. I have seen two editors claim at AFD that when they believe that any information in the source came from the subject (e.g., a quotation from the CEO, a sentence about their earnings report), then the entire source is unusable for notability purposes, which is a standard that would basically mean never having any articles about people, governments, or organizations of any type, because even when whole books exist on the subject, because there are very few books written about, e.g., US Presidents without including at least one quotation from the subject. I have also seen editors argue that newspaper articles are unreliable (for facts) if any information in the source came from the subject. (This latter argument appears only when the news article has the "wrong" POV, however.)

  I don't think this is correct. If the independent author is selecting which of the subject-supplied facts to present, then the source is still independent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  Indeed - what I meant above, more clearly and fully expressed! Fortunately, no one tries to apply these nonsense arguments to say paintings in museums, where basic information such as the size, pigments, underdrawings shown by x-rays etc, is only available from the museum itself, since even the most distinguished art historians are not allowed to bring ladders and tape measures, nor take samples for analysis. The same in essence apples to almost all government and business financial numbers and statistics, not to mention census details and election results, all of which come exclusively from the "subject". Johnbod (talk) 16:41, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  I disagree that “selection” is a creative input that makes a secondary source. To make a secondary source, information must be transformed. If there is not creative processing of the information, then it is just repetition. Repetition is never enough. Repetition of selected things is not enough.

  You have to distinguish between facts and comment. Dealing in facts, primary source material, that came directly or indirectly from the subject, is never a problem per se. Repeating the subject’s comments as your own comment, that is the problem.

  I have consistently been saying that I only reject the non-independent information. Clarify now, that “non-independent information” means unprocessed information, although I take a very dim view of paraphrasing of quotes.

  Rejection of the entire source can occur, if it is judged that the “journalist” is being secretly paid to write an advertorial.

  The sort of topic matters. This borderline paranoid approach to source independence applies to actively advertising companies, their products, and their CEOs. It does not apply to distant history, or natural sciences, because these subjects do not pay journalists to fake an interest.

  Does it apply to art? Co-incidentally I was looking at AfD’s longest open discussion, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Itzchak Tarkay. Is this art? I’ve searched out and read reviews. It’s been described as “decorative art”. The prints are for sale. It sounds like art, and it sounds like a product for sale. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:25, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

  Unless I'm misreading this, you're veering from the point. I think most reasonable people would agree that material originating from the subject is rarely if ever valid to demonstrate notability, but what myself, Johnbod and WAID are saying is that this shouldn't necessarily affect its usability as a source for non-contentious facts.

  If Delta Air Lines sends out a press release announcing that they're going to start direct flights to Sumburgh from August 2022, then it's not a breach of Wikipedia policy to add "Sumburgh commencing August 2022" to List of Delta Air Lines destinations, even though (a) any third-party coverage of it will almost certainly just be reprinting of the press release (since it's a routine announcement that isn't worth a journalist's time to rewrite), and (b) there's a potential benefit to Delta in our mentioning it since it might encourage people who weren't aware of the direct flight to choose them. However, what we couldn't include is anything along the lines of "their flight is more convenient and their aircraft is more comfortable" unless it was from a genuinely independent source and attributed as opinion rather than fact.

  (I don't really get the point you're trying to make with It sounds like art, and it sounds like a product for sale. The tortured artist in a garret making art for art's sake is a myth; aside from a handful of dilettantes and an even smaller handful of religious devotees, virtually every piece of art ever created and certainly virtually every piece of art created in modern times was created either because the artist was commissioned to create it or because the artist hoped to sell it. Plus, as Johnbod says the overwhelming majority of individual artworks that would be considered notable in Wikipedia terms are in museums and much of the information about them will come from those museums—not just the basic facts like measurements, but books published by that museum's publishing arm, exhibition catalogs etc. Even in countries like the UK where museum entry is free, the museum still has an obvious financial benefit from Wikipedia covering items in their collection—if our The Sirens and Ulysses article prompts even one person to visit the Manchester Art Gallery to see it for themselves, that person will potentially eat in their canteen, buy something in their gift shop, or just count towards the visitor numbers next time MAG is applying for a grant and needs to show that they're providing a public service. It doesn't mean we can't use statements originating from MAG as sources in the article, just that they don't count towards notability.) ‑ Iridescent 03:44, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

  I'm sorry if veering or distracting from the point. I certainly agree that material originating from the subject is rarely if ever valid to demonstrate notability, but that this shouldn't affect its usability as a source for non-contentious facts.

  The point of discussion on "independent" with WAID is about the two GNG-complaint sources, a critical question at AfD.

  My further tangential point in "It sounds like art, and it sounds like a product for sale" reflects my perception of a community low threshold for inclusion for art, and high threshold for inclusion for commercial products, and it's interesting to see what happens when these come into conflict. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:53, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

  You really mean "for artists" (like your example), and I have some sympathy with your "perception of a community low threshold for inclusion for art, and high threshold for inclusion for commercial products", but the great majority of relevant articles are for artist bios on the one hand, and companies on the other. I'd imagine we have many more Afd removals of artists than products, but ones for specific artworks are rather less common. I do think industrial designers are hard done by in WP notability terms, but this mostly reflects RS coverage and perhaps editors' interests. Johnbod (talk) 12:54, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

  SmokeyJoe, I think you veered from the point when you said "I disagree that “selection” is a creative input that makes a secondary source." We're only talking about whether the source is INDY, not what makes it SECONDARY.

  Also, if "selection" is never a creative input, then Collage can't be an art form, SYNTH can't involve creating material that isn't present in the cited sources, and the polished-up half-truths of advertising copy represent a purely mechanical, uncreative endeavor. We'd even have to reconsider whether a Literature review is a secondary source, because selecting what to highlight and what to omit is the creative, transformative action that makes them such valuable sources.

  Using the Delta Air Lines example, SmokeyJoe has been arguing that if Delta says there will be a price increase, and Aviation Week & Space Technology adds an article saying that Delta said there will be a price increase, then no information in that article that SmokeyJoe (and/or any other editor) believes originated from Delta can count as "attention from the world at large" in Wikipedia:Independent sources for notability purposes. Even though "the world at large" decided to pay "attention" to whatever Delta said, and even though AWST has been considered an independent source by editors every time I've seen it discussed, SmokeyJoe seems to be arguing that every fact they obtain from Delta and freely choose repeat is evidence of their non-independence.

  Actually, looking more closely, it seems to me that SmokeyJoe is trying to argue that facts are irrelevant, and that only opinions/judgments confer notability. In that situation, a long source reporting only objective facts ("This film was created in 2021, starred these people, and has won the following 12 awards") doesn't matter, but a short one sharing an unimportant opinion ("This is an exciting film") does. We'd still running into the problem of Wikipedia editors deciding that the author's opinion is fake on the basis of the Wikipedian's personal beliefs about what the opinions ought to be (because it's just impossible for a truly independent author to share the same opinion as the subject, right?), but the idea that "attention from the world" at large must ignore all the attention that the world gives to objective facts is strange. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Looooong aside about reviews

• I am defending WP:SIRS. A WP:CORP notability-attesting source has to be simultaneously all of: Significant, Independent; Reliable; and Secondary. It’s pointless to examine cases of Independent where it is a clear failure of another criteria.

  A collage and a literature review are secondary sources if the author has injected any creative input. Mere selection not being a creative input does not poison creative input. To “highlight” is to make creative input. A tag cloud, as a collage example, if a computer generated with no creative input, would not be a secondary source.

  “SmokeyJoe seems to be arguing that every fact they obtain from Delta and freely choose repeat is evidence of their non-independence.” That would be very poorly stated. Facts obtained from Delta are irrelevant to the notability question. “Delta airlines March 22nd airfare increases” is unlikely to meet WP:N WP:CORP or WP:SIRS. This is about standalone articles, not article content. A Seattle-based webpage that lists every Delta fare increase that involves Seattle is not a secondary source. A lengthy introduction discussing the appearance that Delta appears to no longer consider the Seattle market as a priority, that would be a good secondary source, significant independent and reliable, with it being irrelevant that every fact came from Delta published airfares.

  Facts are sort of irrelevant to deciding whether a source is a notability-attesting SIRS-compliant source. Facts obscure the question more than they help. The facts may be used to show that the source is unreliable and not worthy for that reason, but this is where it would be better for WP:N to speak to the reputation of the author of the new secondary source content.

  ”This is an exciting film” is unworthy of consideration because it is not significant, below the absolute-minimum never-disputed 100-words or two-running-sentences. A worthy example is >100 words (500 words?) expanding on how, who, found it exciting. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:48, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

  It’s pointless to examine cases of Independent where it is a clear failure of another criteria.

  When the primary goal is to figure out what contsitutes "independent", then it's pointless to even consider any other criteria. I'm still trying to figure out how you know that 90% of the restaurant review was written by someone whose name does not appear in the byline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

  Exactly. If sources which we agree are neutral and independent deem something worthy of repetition and we trust them to have verified its accuracy, then those constitute reliable sources in Wikipedia terms even if they aren't using their own words. ‑ Iridescent 11:10, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

  The Wikipedia-notability standalone article inclusion criteria is not about verified accuracy. It is about whether others have taken the trouble to write about it before, as opposed to a Wikipedian writing original material. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:17, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

  Are we talking about reliability in the sense that they can be used as sources, or about independence in the sense that they can be used as a demonstration of notability? While we often use the same citations for both, the two purposes are essentially independent of each other. Someone talking about themselves is useless for establishing notability, but it can be among the most important things when it comes to writing about what something or someone's purpose is. ‑ Iridescent 15:00, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  Independent, as applied to the information itself, requires that there is non trivial information. To address clues of independence of the information, more material is needed. 100 words minimum, 500 words good.

  The restaurant review? Seriously? Really? You can read it through without noticing the abrupt change of voice at paragraph 3? Writing style, tone, cadence, voice, perspective. Paragraphs 1-2 are innocent, tentative, simple-observational. Paragraphs 3 onwards are confident, assertive, value-laden, and the cadence is almost poetry. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:15, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

  I believe it's supposed to be an independent source, not independent information.

  The first sentence includes phrases like "rainbow of fresh, vibrant ingredients" and "sunshine on a plate". That's not my idea of tentative tone or simple observations. Compare it to some other reviews Ayling has written for the same magazine (e.g., [10][11][12]). Are you finding the same confident, assertive, value-laden, poetical qualities in those? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:25, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

  The information in the source is a pretty important part of the source to consider. A source needs: An author; a publisher; content. For a primary source, the content is facts. For a secondary source, the content is information. The question is: How can the author be judged non-independent? Non-independence will flow from any of the following: Being paid by the subject or the company; being personally close, eg 20-years friend; being a close family relative. These are easy. Where it gets hard is when "paid" is not true, but there is quid quo pro.

  Information-independence is complicated. In an extreme example of quid quo pro, if the subject has supplied all of the information as a ghost author for the journalist to publish under their name, then the source is not independent. I assert again that I personally know about this happening, in cash-strapped national newspapers. I give you interesting content, you give me publicity.

  In the more nuanced case, like these reviews, I ask: how much of the secondary source information came from the subject, and how much from the journalist. All of the facts can come from the subject, the question is who processes and comments on the facts? If all of the secondary source material is explicit quotations from the subject, that's not independent. If some of the secondary source material is from the journalist, that part of the material is independent of the subject (assuming not paid to comment, etc). The quotations don't poison the journalists comments, but I don't think the quotations contribute to the word count measure of "significant". Ayling's reviews are very heavy in quotations, and on eliminating the quotes and facts, what's left is a small fraction. In the case of AVA, I say "yes", just.

  In that article, I read "Taking over the site of what was previously the Luma on Park restaurant, AVA is the latest dining destination from the celebrated Riviera Dining Group, which is also responsible for Miami’s much-loved MILA" as simple journalist-sourced comment. Reading Ayling's other works gives me more appreciation of what she does. She writes compelling reviews that tempt me to visit the restaurant. Confident, assertive, value-laden, poetical qualities, yes, indeed. I've changed my opinion from Ayling having been supplied this content, to Ayling must be working hard to extract information from the subjects, and then she works it beautifully in her confident, assertive, value-laden, poetic style. This does not speak to WP:N issues. I'm having trouble justifying why I don't think these reviews are good sources for demonstrating Wikipedia-notability. If she has processed the information received from the subject, that makes it hers, not the subject's. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:08, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

  I think you just don't trust positive reviews, and since you don't trust them, you don't want Wikipedia to use them. It's easy enough to not use them yourself – just use a little Wikipedia:Editorial discretion – but if you want to stop other editors from using them, then our system says that you have to find a rule-based excuse for excluding them.

  To give an example from another subject area, the only policy-based reason for removing a photo/image from an article is: it isn't educational. It's not enough for it to be disgusting or frightening or enraging, because WP:NOTCENSORED. You usually need to be able to say that it's has no (or worse) educational value, which generally means that you claim that it's decorative, misleading, redundant, or off topic. This means that if you dislike an image for any reason, you can replace it with one of equal or better educational value, or you can argue that the image contributes no educational value, but you can't argue that you don't like it because it's disgusting to have photos of severe disease in articles, or inappropriate to have porn stills in Wikipedia, etc. You have to make up a "policy-based" reason to remove it, even though your real purpose is just to remove it for non-policy-based reasons.

  Going back to notability: You don't trust positive reviews, and you don't trust any business or product that has received such reviews. Wikipedia says that this distrust doesn't matter. To get Wikipedia to act in congruence with your gut-level distrust, you have to be able to claim that the source is non-independent ("I'm convinced it was ghost-written, even though I have no proof"), not secondary ("everything was supplied by the business, so it's not comment from the journalist"), or not significant coverage ("I only count the first two sentences, and exclude 90% of the article").

  I think this focus on being rule-compliant makes it harder for us to talk about the things that matter. For example: should restaurant reviews be used as notability-conferring sources at all? Even if you have several thousand-word reviews from sources of unimpeachable credibility, is it even possible to write a decent, non-stub encyclopedia article on the basis of a few restaurant reviews? Will the result actually be an encyclopedia article, or will the result be an impartial summary of restaurant reviews – something that might be good for the world, but which isn't an encyclopedia article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

  Regarding your last point, this comes up all the time on arts articles. When writing about a long-forgotten short film, a 1980s videogame that was a complete flop, or a painting that's languished in an obscure provincial gallery for the past century, contemporary reviews are highly relevant when it comes to establishing notability. It hardly matters whether the reviews are positive or negative; their very existence signals "although this topic seems completely trivial to modern eyes, people at the time though it was important enough to write about". (The World Before the Flood is a good example of this.) How well this translates to the modern media landscape where reviews are ten-a-penny and their existence doesn't necessarily convey the same "the fact that a reputable publication thinks its readers are interested in this is prima facie evidence of its significance" impact is open to debate, but I'd argue that if the publication in question is genuinely well-regarded when it comes to restaurant reviews, then a restaurant review in that publication is the direct equivalent of "The Lancet has chosen to write about this apparently fringe treatment" or "Nature is writing seriously about this theory even though it sounds obviously crackpot". ‑ Iridescent 18:46, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

  The Lancet and Nature have a backlog of articles in press. They don’t have slow news days. Newspapers do. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:19, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

  Newspapers reduce the number of pages being printed when there isn't much to publish, or they can pull a few pieces off a wire service to fill pages. Restaurant reviews in a newspaper tend to be scheduled well in advance (often on a predictable cadence), so they're not likely to appear as a hastily assembled bit of filler. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

  I feel you misleadingly keep paraphrasing me. Probably I didn’t write it properly. It’s not true that I don’t trust positive reviews. What I don’t trust, and don’t think anyone should trust, is all-positive single product reviews. And even then, this for the purpose of testing against meeting the GNG, not for the sourcing of facts.

  “ and you don't trust any business or product that has received such reviews.” That is also so badly put that I have to call it wrong. There is some truth to all businesses encouraging all positive reviews. If I give the restaurant a glowing review, and they know me, I will likely get even better service next time. This is why independence, longer than arms length, is better. A review of reviews is much better than a fist hand review.

  Following our many recent discussions, I am leaning to favouring the following rule: Single-product reviews, meaning no cross-product comparisons, are not good for demonstrating notability. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

  That sounds like a defensible rule. Do you think it would be accepted? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:31, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

  It’s hard to get anything new accepted, but a good indicator is not having someone criticise it immediately.

  It has simplicity as an advantage. It would be easy for a new editor to read guidance on not starting a new topic if there are only single-product reviews of it.

  I think it would have a good chance of acceptance if it didn’t change the exist boundary for inclusion, as is in practice at AfD. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:49, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

  Again, I don't see how it would be workable. For something like a videogame from the era before gaming became mainstream entertainment, the reviews are quite often the only significant sources we have, and it doesn't mean the game in question is non-notable in either Wikipedia or real-world terms. I'm usually the first to champion anything that reduces the number of articles to a more manageable level—and am a steadfast and vocal opponent of the "but it was in the newspaper so it must be notable" school of thought—but a "reviews don't indicate notability" policy would wipe out entire areas like Category:Commodore 64 games and Category:Post-punk albums. You'd never get consensus for something that would essentially be a declaration of war against coverage of popular culture. ‑ Iridescent 19:04, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

  I am not out to reduce the number of articles, but to make decision making easier.

  You make a good point about the need to worry about unintended consequences. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:02, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

To be honest I think anything that tries to create firm rules about notability is doomed to fail. Both in real-world terms and in Wikipedia terms, 'notability' is inherently subjective. Even WP:GNG, the closest thing we have to an actual rule, doesn't in the least describe the way we actually do things. (I can demonstrate significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject) for the fact that the A12 road was closed on 11 April 2022 between Witham and Hatfield Peverel for 75 minutes.^[13][14][15] It doesn't mean that if I turned 11 April 2022 A12 road closure blue it wouldn't be immediately deleted.)

Ultimately, the distinction between "notable topic' and 'trivial cruft' is like the distinction between obscenity and art. It can't be defined, so the best one can do is try to apply a 'what would a reasonable observer think?' test. ‑ Iridescent 12:16, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

It doesn't mean that if I turned 11 April 2022 A12 road closure blue it wouldn't be immediately deleted. There are a lot of insanely niche things that obviously received coverage in multiple news sources, but are obviously better covered as part of a broader article (A12 road (England) in this case), but AfD tends to be hit-or-miss in these cases. Sometimes people will actually respond to the 'better covered as part of another article' argument (either agreeing or disagreeing), other times they'll completely ignore it and you'll just see "Keep meets GNG". ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:24, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

”significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject” is missing the part about secondary sources. Missing the part about secondary sources is to miss the purpose of an enclopedia and shows a need to read WP:PSTS seriously. Without an explicit requirement for secondary sources, database content is invited. The tolerance for database information varies widely by field, from high tolerance for natural science and ancient history, to low tolerance for trading companies and bus routes. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

This varied tolerance, and the contortions editors go to to claim that their WP:PRIMARYNEWS is actually a secondary source, is what makes me think that we aren't serious about requiring secondary sources. We don't accept true secondary sources ("Local Hospital announced revenue of $23M, which was down 2.6% YoY after pandemic-related restrictions on lucrative elective surgeries") when we don't want the subject to have an article, and we accept fake secondary sources ("According to Scandal Magazine, Joe Film once tweeted that he is vegetarian") when we do. And, of course, PROF basically rejects this idea, and doesn't mention secondary sources outside the nutshell. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Also, our own rules don't really tally with the way Wikipedia actually works, which discredits them. In many circumstances primary sources aren't only acceptable, they're preferable over secondary sources that just add a second potential fail point for errors to creep in ("Acme Corporation has moved its head office to St Louis", "The book was published in December 2020", "The Minister for Paperclips said [direct quotation from the formal record]". As with most of Wikipedia's P&Gs Wikipedia:Notability was written on the assumption that editors will use a modicum of common sense rather than follow the rules slavishly. ‑ Iridescent 16:53, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Reputability/reliability/trustworthiness

I think the comment 'I suggest that “reputable” is the appropriate adjective for secondary sources, and “reliable” for primary sources"' summarises the problem right there. This project is too mature, with guidelines like Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine). This is attempting to redefine words in a way that makes two decades of discussion confusing to the point of being "wrong, if you use the 2022 definition of 'reliable'". One problem we have in medicine is that many would say primary research papers are reliable (leaving aside the problem that the peer review process seems broken and fraud rampant). And they are reliable (we hope) but only for what they say they did and found. We instead rely on secondary literature, not really because we think it's reputation is higher, but because in medicine it is actually far more likely to "to support the specific content in question" without engaging in OR and supported by WEIGHT and more likely to reflect the NPOV. Any attempt to narrow down some novel definition of "reliable" that contradicts longstanding editor usage is a battle nobody needs.

I don't think the above redefinitions are going to help us educate newbies that, yes, Nature and The Lancet are "reliable" but not all their articles are equally reliable for any kind of claim we might write. -- Colin°^Talk 10:23, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I think I sometimes say "weighty" or "sufficient" or their negations to differentiate between reliability and due weight. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:51, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I like the idea of replacing "reliable sources" with "reputable sources." "Reliable" is an exaggerated claim of accuracy, in my opinion. "Reputable" means only that the source has a good reputation for accuracy."Smallchief (talk) 14:46, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

"Reputable" still has the same problem as "reliable", in that there's no such thing as a truly trustworthy source—even the most reputable sources get things wrong all the time, particularly (but not exclusively) when they mention in passing something that isn't relevant to the point being made. (If for instance an eminent medical journal mentions an experiment that was conducted in Strasbourg, France in 1910, it has no bearing on the validity of the medical data so the fact-checkers won't necessarily spot it, but it doesn't make it a reliable source for the fact that what was then the German city of Strassburg was a part of France at the time.) Even when it is directly related to the subject matter, highly reputable sources make mistakes all the time—it's now more than a decade since I first pointed out that the ODNB entry on William Huskisson describes him as "the first fatality of the railway age" while in fact he wasn't even the first railway fatality in Eccles.

I also agree that trying to change the language would be a mission doomed to fail. We've been using "reliable source" for so long, and it's so ingrained in the wording of so many pages, unless we started blocking people for using the term (which is obviously not going to happen) I doubt it would be any earlier than a decade before it dropped out of common usage. ‑ Iridescent 20:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I have a mental image of editors discussing sources of ill repute. (Maybe Bomis?) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:09, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

What about calling Congress a house of ill repute?Smallchief (talk) 15:32, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Of course there's a truly trustworthy source; it's this talk page. ;-)

The thing that appeals to me about dividing reliability and reputability is that we could separate the task of "figure out whether this is relevant for notability" from the task of "figure out whether this supports a specific claim". The GNG requires reliable sources. Okay, but how do you figure out whether a source is reliable when there's no content to compare it to? Donald Trump's tweets are cited in several articles. Are they reliable sources? Well, um, I guess. Kind of. Sometimes. Yes. But they're only "reliable" when we're talking about the WP:V kind of reliable and not at all when we're talking about the WP:N kind of reliable. Since those two things are different, why not use different words for them? (Aside from the impossibility of getting editors to change their terminology.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:49, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

we could separate the task of "figure out whether this is relevant for notability" from the task of "figure out whether this supports a specific claim": don't we already at least try to do this? I don't think it's controversial that e.g. a source which is reliable for a statement of fact about the source itself doesn't count towards notability. Which goes into your Donald Trump tweet example: Trump's tweets are reliable for claims that Trump tweeted them, and essentially nothing else – I suspect in the case of Trump, you might even get pushback if you tried to use a tweet as a source that he believes the thing he tweeted! They don't count towards the notability of Donald Trump's Twitter or Donald Trump's statements on $Topic not because they're not reliable for claims made in those articles, but because they are neither independent nor secondary. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:32, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Trumps tweets were not reliable for claiming that Trump tweeted. It was conjectured that Trump was tweeting only very late when his daughter was likely asleep, and the grammar and tone descended quite a notch. SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:36, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, whatever they're reliable for (call it "reliable for claims that Donald Trump's twitter account tweeted X" if you prefer) it doesn't alter the fact that they don't count towards notability for perfectly good reasons unrelated to what they are reliable for, and I can't see that anyone who believes that they do or should count towards notability is going to be persuaded otherwise by introducing a distinction between a reliable source and a reputable one. Those people are already way outside the mainstream consensus our policies and guidelines mean; fiddling about with those policies and guidelines isn't going to affect them in the slightest. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:16, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Since we use the term reliable source in both cases, we could have someone write that "Keep this statement, which is sourced only to Trump's tweets. His tweets are reliable sources" in a discussion on a talk page and also write "Delete this article, which is sourced only to Trump's tweets. His tweets are not reliable sources" in an AFD – with no actual conflict in meaning. You just have to know that the first refers to reliable-for-WP:V and the second refers to reliable-for-WP:N. Maybe if we fiddled with the policies and guidelines enough to change the wording (but not the underlying concepts), it would not appear that my hypothetical editor was contradicting himself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

More on reliability vs reputability

I prefer Reliable over Reputable. To my mind "reliable" focuses on the objective issue, is this a source that tries to be accurate and issues corrections when mistakes seep through? Reputable is more subjective, and even in the era of "alernative facts" is way more variable, one person's reputable site is another's disreputable one. And not even necessarily for the same reasons. Here in the UK the BBC has been castigated as the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation" for years by some rightwingers, as the Brexit Broadcasting Company by some Remainers and as obsequiously pro monarchy by anti monarchists. Also as long as our focus is on the facts rather than the spin they are given, "Reliable" fits the judgment calls we make better than reputable. ϢereSpielChequers 16:43, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Do you differentiate conceptually between the kind of source that is useful for supporting a specific statement (e.g., "Big Corp announced that they had hired Bob as their new CEO") and the kind of source that is useful for demonstrating that Wikipedia should have a separate article about that subject? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm aware that the latter is a big deal in deletion debates. I tend to steer away from such discussions, partly because we put so much emphasis on people who represent a country, especially in sport and politics despite countries varying in population by at least four orders of magnitude. The Borough I live in is a bit on the small side, but it has a larger population than several countries that have their own teams at the Olympics and Paralympics. ϢereSpielChequers 11:22, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the notability/deletion concept needs a different word from the verifiability/source–text integrity concept. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes of course. They are two different spectra. One where we have few problems, outside some areas such as fringe theories and alternative medicine. The vast majority of us want our content to be true. Though many, perhaps most of us, have looser standards for truth in areas where we know certain things to be true. Where we have huge disagreements is over where to draw the line as to what merits inclusion in a global encyclopaedia. We can probably all agree that if we decide that a particular topic merits an article we can include details that wouldn't merit their own article. But that does mean that the test for whether a fact is notable varies according to whether it can be fitted into an article. ϢereSpielChequers 23:46, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Re does mean that the test for whether a fact is notable varies according to whether it can be fitted into an article: yes, absolutely, although 'notable' probably isn't the best term to use as it means something else on Wikipedia ("worthy of a stand-alone article"). ‑ Iridescent 03:55, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

No, "notable" certainly isn't the best term for facts on WP. WP:UNDUE is the policy governing the inclusion of facts, so I suppose "due" is the word. Though it's not "facts" that cause the most trouble in my neck of the woods, but analysis/assessment/RS opinions. Johnbod (talk) 04:04, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

To expand slightly on the notability/due weight distinction with an example, "A new footbridge was installed in 2016 at Brigg railway station, replacing an earlier footbridge from the 1890s" is a perfectly legitimate thing to include on Brigg railway station. If for some reason nobody had gotten around to creating that article it wouldn't mean Footbridges of Brigg railway station or 2016 Brigg station bridge replacement would become legitimate topics in their own right even though it is actually possible to provide evidence of coverage of the bridge in multiple independent reliable sources (ref 2, 3 & 4 in the current article). If gray areas were clear, they wouldn't be gray areas. ‑ Iridescent 03:55, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Context and reliability

I think @WhatamIdoing: has hit the nail on the head here. We are writing articles based on what "reliable" sources state as if such sources are complete monoliths and they are either reliable or unreliable. The fact is, most sources are on a continuum. The suppression of Hunter Biden laptop is probably one of the more recent scandals against the right that comes to mind when WP:RS outright ignored/suppressed/minimized the story in order to push a political agenda.

We SHOULD be evaluating whether a source verifies the claim in question. Apologies for US-centric analogy and leaving WP:N out of the discussion, but it illustrates a point...If we stated that "<a Republican or Democrat> stated 'XYZ'" in their speech to ____ and then cited that to the video of the speech, there should be little in question that the statement is accurate and is therefore verifiable. This lends zero weight to the accuracy of the claim, merely that the statement was made. It is neutral and accurate. People can verify by the link that it indeed happened. Instead of such a myopic focus on WP:RS, we need to focus on verifiability. Trump's tweets are an excellent example, though it could just as easily be Obama or Biden's tweets too. Indeed Trump/Biden/Obama made such a statement. That fact is completely verifiable. We should also encourage first-party sources so people can see original statements within context (where possible); currently, it is discouraged. Buffs (talk) 18:53, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Trump is much more famous for tweeting than any other president, so he makes a fine example. The thing is, I think those kinds of sources (e.g., Trump's tweets, the video of the politician making a speech) are reliable in the WP:V sense for claims that "<Person> said <this> on <date>", but they aren't useful at all for determining notability, and they are only barely useful for DUE purposes. But we use the same word for all of them: We just say "The source is (or isn't) reliable", when reality is more like "Trump's tweets are relia-verifiable for the purpose of writing a sentence about what he tweeted that day but not relia-notable for the purpose of deciding whether to have an article on what he tweeted that day." WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:29, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

But we already have words for why Trump's tweets don't count towards notability: they are primary sources, and they aren't independent of the subject. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:01, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I think what WAID is saying is, how do we resolve the blurred line that arises when one of those tweets is quoted; what degree of independent analysis is necessary before it they count towards "received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject"?

If you want a less recentist example, consider if a previously-lost work by Shakespeare or Aristophanes were found. Would it be notable in Wikipedia terms:

1. the moment the announcement of its discovery was made;
2. the moment of its authentication;
3. the point at which it is reproduced;
4. the point at which the first academic articles are published on it?

And then, repeat the same exercise with something that's potentially notable—e.g. instead of a lost Shakespeare play, it's a previously-unreleased Prince song or an unpublished Roald Dahl short story. Does the answer change, and if so why/why not?

And then, repeat the same exercise again with something more ephemeral like a routine political speech which doesn't contain anything of particular note, but is dutifully covered in newspapers at the time because that's what newspapers do, and is eventually included in The Collected Speeches of President Foo. Are those newspaper reports primary or secondary sources, and when if ever does notability kick in?

There are excellent reasons why Wikipedia has so few bright line rules—"do what works, not what the letter of the law says" is in large part why we've survived (and why attempts to impose bright line rules tend to get such a frosty reception regardless of their validity). However it does have the unfortunate drawback of making it virtually impossible to codify even the most fundamental of our basic concepts like "notability" and "civility". ‑ Iridescent 03:49, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I'll have a go: in the case of the Aristophanes/Shakespeare play, assuming they aren't already notable (hello Cardenio), technically the point at which two reliable independent sources have covered them in depth - so not the announcement, but probably within the days after. (Authentication is somewhat irrelevant: if an academic, especially a well-regarded one, announces a newly discovered play as being by Aristophanes or Shakespeare, it's going to get a bunch of commentary whether or not it is ever authenticated. The serious doubts over the authenticity of Salvator Mundi don't stop it from being notable). If an Eminent Scholar announced the discovery and someone immediately created an article, we should keep it anyway as IAR, though; even if the Eminent Scholar turns out to be wrong, there will almost certainly be significant coverage. If for whatever reason nobody has written about it in say a year, then we could consider merging to a broader article or deleting. With Prince or Dahl, the threshold is the same but my tolerance for IAR immediate article creation is not - not every song by a popular musician, even by a major artist such as Prince, gets sufficient coverage to write an article about. Nonetheless, under current rules the amount of press coverage this would get would likely technically make it notable, even if I agree with your comments elsewhere that we should be stricter about news reporting counting towards notability. (As for the politician's speech, the relevant question is whether the news coverage is anything other than routine. Something like Zelenskyy's much-reported on address to the UK house of commons the other day might have gained enough non-routine coverage to count as notable, but a random MP's or Congressperson's stump speeches don't, even if the local news reports on them. I think the threshold for what is non-routine coverage is probably another one of those "I know it when I see it" situations, however.) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 07:15, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

WP:N isn't exactly a factor. Let's say WP:N is established for the subject at hand about Trump/Biden/Obama (doesn't really matter who). Including his twitter reply on the subject should clearly meet the criteria for inclusion as an official statement. Some are arguing that the source of the statement (twitter, facebook, personal website) makes the statement unreliable because it isn't a "reliable source". I think it's reliable enough for what was stated; it doesn't make any assessment for the accuracy of any claims. While I think the general subject should be restricted by WP:N, public statements should be simply verified to be from official accounts and presented without bias or prejudice. Buffs (talk) 15:29, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I think you may have meant to reply somewhere else?

I don't know that I agree that either twitter comments by a politician should be considered or treated in the same way as official statements, or that simply because a politician (even the US president) makes an official statement we should assume that it's worthy of inclusion. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:57, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto, I think (if I'm parsing it correctly) that the point being made isn't that we should always cover politicians' statements, but that statements that have verifiably been made by a particular politician are a reliable source for that particular politician having made that statement, and as such are legitimate to use as sources even if the statement in question hasn't received significant coverage, if there's a legitimate reason to do so. (I can see a few cases where it could arise. A politician issuing a routine statement welcoming the decision of Universal Widgets to build their new factory in Fooville might not get any significant coverage, but could legitimately be used for "the local congressman supported the decision to build the factory" should the factory ever warrant an article of its own.) ‑ Iridescent 16:21, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

About "two reliable independent sources have covered them in depth": My question is how you can determine whether an independent source is actually "reliable" before you know what sentence/content the source is supposed to support. I don't think it can be done.

Examples:

• Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine is the sort of thing that editors will say is a "reliable source". But it is an "unreliable source" for nearly all of Wikipedia's contents.
• Trump's Twitter account is the sort of thing that editors will say is an "unreliable source". But it is a "reliable source" for certain content.

We don't have (AFAICT have never had) an actual definition of reliable source. One of the realistic definitions is that a source is reliable if experienced editors accept it for the specific content in question. Harrison's is reliable (=accepted by editors) for disease symptoms but unreliable for what a politician said; Trump's tweets are unreliable for disease symptoms but reliable for what that politician said.

The problem with this definition is that WP:N says "reliable sources". If this is the definition of reliable source, then we have a problem. Under this definition, it is not actually possible to determine whether a source is reliable before you have content to compare that source against.

There are ways around this problem, but they all involve using different language in WP:N and WP:V (e.g., changing to WP:GNG from "reliable sources" to "sources that are likely to be reliable for the expected content in the proposed article" or "reputable sources" or any number of other options). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

See I use "sources with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy for a given statement". I don't think we need to discuss secondaryness or due weight in the definition of "reliableness". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:29, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus, technically, you don't. You cite too many peer-reviewed articles for that to be true. Fact checking is a different process. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

The official word is Source reliability falls on a spectrum: No source is 'always reliable' or 'always unreliable' for everything. However, some sources provide stronger or weaker support for a given statement. Editors must use their judgment to draw the line between usable and inappropriate sources for each statement., and it can't really be any other way. Any attempt to draw up a formal rule would have so many exceptions, the policy page would look like a pipe roll.

If I ruled the world we'd apply the is generally unreliable, and its use as a reference is generally prohibited, especially when other sources exist that are more reliable. As a result, it should not be used for determining notability, nor should it be used as a source in articles. It may be used in rare cases in an about-self fashion. ruling from the Daily Mail RFC to all newspapers and all social media—except in a few cases about genuine current events when the books have yet to be written, I can't imagine any circumstances when news articles written by journalists who are unlikely to have access to all the information in question, or social media comments taken out of context, are ever going to be more reliable for our purposes than sources that aren't written to a deadline and where the authors have the benefit of hindsight. Plus, if once the books and the academic papers are written none of them see fit to mention the fact in question, that's a massive red flag either that the newspaper in question got it wrong, or that nobody considers it important and there's no reason for us to mention it. Unfortunately (a) I don't rule the world, and (b) this would be such a huge cultural change there would never be consensus for it. ‑ Iridescent 18:05, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

To the extent that the rule is about using your judgment "to draw the line between usable and inappropriate sources for each statement", then WP:GNG's requirement for reliable sources cannot be met in advance of writing "each statement".

The other day, I was wondering whether we could have an article about a journalist. Her name is Livia Albeck-Ripka, and here's a link to her website. Her work is cited in about 50 articles, and we sometimes find it convenient to have articles about people and books that we cite a lot. She seems to do film/documentaries as well as print. I've no idea what WP:NJOURNALIST says, so I poked around for GNG-style sources for about five minutes. I came up empty, because search engines can't differentiate between "article she wrote" and "article about her".

What does the GNG want? Reliable sources. What's a reliable source? One that's evaluated for each statement. What doesn't exist yet? Any statements to evaluate the source's reliability against.

Now, I know how we do this. I've written more than a couple of articles (though none about journalists, as far as I know). But from a theoretical standpoint, it is suboptimal to say that reliability depends on the statement, and yet we need to make sure that the sources are reliable ones before we have the thing that's necessary to evaluate their reliability against. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:15, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

If you really have a blinding urge to dive into the history from the Wild West days that created the precedents that in turn gave us the tangle of policies and guidelines that determine 'notability' and 'reliability', take a deep breath and start following links from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cold fusion. That was the closest we ever came to trying to resolve the "how do we deal with the scenario where the preponderance of sources on a particular topic are sources which any sane person would consider prima facie unreliable by their very nature?" question. (We never really did resolve it; the question arose again in equally fun forms at such places as Historicity of Jesus and Shakespeare authorship question.) There's no right answer; on a lot of topics by far the most trustworthy sources are technically self-published sources, for instance  ‑ Iridescent 16:47, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

[ECx3] Nope, I meant to reply here.

I would also say that this would apply to everyone, not just politicians. I would not say that every statement warrants inclusion. The subject at hand (WP:N) is what would make such statements inclusive (WP:N wouldn't be a factor and the only criteria in question would be WP:V...the assertion is that twitter, et al are reliable enough for the statements at hand. Direct links would be appropriate and credibility should not be assigned).

Example: In response, Trump/Biden/etc stated on Twitter/Facebook/their website "<insert verbatim quote>".<references go here>. That alone is a statement of fact that is easily verifiable. Saying that it shouldn't be included because no WP:RS reported on that specific quote is unnecessary. Buffs (talk) 16:32, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

WAID, spot on. Buffs (talk) 16:32, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Recentism and reliability

The news cycle is not a great source (even the best quality news sources don't have all the info). Avoid Google News and instead rely on Google Scholar. Wait 50 years and we'll have a much more balanced assessment of all current events :) (t · c) buidhe 23:31, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I totally agree about the news cycle. It's too late now, but if I were founding Wikipedia I'd make it explicit from that start that newspapers (and their equivalents) can be used when appropriate as sources but don't count at all towards notability, and that the notability standard should from the start have been "A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in published books or academic papers that are independent of the subject, or in the case of current events when any reasonable observer would agree that the topic will in future receive significant coverage in published books or academic papers".

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to use newspapers as a source for content—they're a very good resource for illustrating how people perceived something at the time. However, the "it's been covered by a newspaper so that makes it notable!" fallacy that arises from the ambiguousness inherent in Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources is the reason Wikipedia is now filled with ephemera like We not only saved the world which becomes undeletable because it was mentioned in more than one newspaper at the time (hence "multiple reliable sources") so just sits around forever. ‑ Iridescent 03:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Buidhe, I don't think that we can realistically delete (nearly) all of the popular articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:36, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

No, but I could certainly make a case for a two-tier system in which those articles based on actual academic sources are flagged as such (or even in which those articles not based on actual academic sources are {{noindex}}ed, although that would cause wailing and gnashing of teeth). At the moment the binary "RS/non-RS" distinction means that unless readers check the reference sections carefully, there's no easy way for readers to tell how seriously they should take any given statement, or even any given article. (See my comments in the other thread musing on how to flag potentially questionable content; they apply just as much here.) ‑ Iridescent 04:44, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

One of the things we know for certain is that readers do not check the reference sections carefully. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Some do, some don't, you can't generalise. If I doubt a particular claim I check the reference, and I'm sure I'm not alone.2A04:4A43:46CF:BE44:0:0:10A4:D349 (talk) 10:18, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Most don't though. We have actual genuine data rather than anecdotes as to how many people actually click both the ^[1] links to the reference section, and the external links within it, and both figures are so low they may as well be zero. ‑ Iridescent 16:37, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Huh - we do? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:44, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, the WMF forked out for some actual research on which links get clicked and how far down long articles people scroll. Don't ask me to find it, although if you're interested I imagine a (WMF) account will pop up here within the next few days with a link to it. ‑ Iridescent 16:50, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I think this (and the studies linked from it) is what I was thinking of. Readers consistently ignore the ==References== section, regardless of the topic. ‑ Iridescent 16:55, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

That's been a draft since 2016 - way to go, WMF! I don't think you are quite representing the findings fairly. For a start this appears to be on Android app users only, & a visual read of some of the graphs suggests ~5% opened the refs section (on Obama was it?), which I'd think pretty high. Vast numbers never look at anything beyond the lead, which is expected (by anyone who has ever had anything to do with the dead tree press anyway). Plus they can access the refs via the text links; the research mentions that, but doesn't seem able to capture it. The Wikimania presentation (first image) is rather clearer, if not very clear. Both highlight that almost no one looks at "External links", rather than mentioning "references". For the vast majority of readers, knowing the refs are there is a comfort, but they very reasonably don't actually want to check them out. Johnbod (talk) 19:54, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

What Johnbod said; those who are busy trying to create and improve content need to stop being affected by this kind of spin. I click on way too many references when I'm looking for information outside of my level of knowledge (that is, when I am in consumer mode rather than editor mode) to ever believe this sort of thing from the WMF, particularly given its track record.

RE reliable v. reputable, I am in the camp with Ealdgyth 21:34, 15 March 2022; Iridescent 05:20, 16 March 2022; Colin°Talk 10:23, 16 March 2022; most particularly Iridescent 20:04, 16 March 2022 (I can always find plenty wrong in anything from The New York Times, as but one example); and ϢereSpielChequers 16:43, 20 March 2022 (sums up the NYT issue, as it is reliable but not reputable in everyone's opinion). Ealdgyth, you are not sounding like a cranky old woman :) :) This sort of thing, when there is so much that needs attention, destroys one's will to edit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:13, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence. To repeat myself, We've been using "reliable source" for so long, and it's so ingrained in the wording of so many pages, unless we started blocking people for using the term (which is obviously not going to happen) I doubt it would be any earlier than a decade before it dropped out of common usage. Since (1) the fact that reliability is context-specific means that while we can on rare occasions declare a source always unreliable (those websites that have a reputation for going back and retrospectively editing their content rather than issuing corrections spring to mind) and (2) 'reliable' and 'notable' are both so embedded in Wikipedia culture that we'd never get consensus to deprecate the language, the only way this is ever going to be addressed is if we were to start over from scratch. In situations like that, the discussion to be having is how we work around the problematic structures and mitigate the problems they cause, not how to enact a 'solution' that would inevitably boil down to "dismiss the community and recruit a new one". Making some less-incomprehensible guidelines on "what constitutes a reliable source in given situations" (a handful of attempts have been made, but they're few and far between) would be the obvious place to start. ‑ Iridescent 16:22, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't want to have editors stop using the word reliable. I want them to use it to mean just one thing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:43, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately that's probably not possible unless the just one thing is "a reasonable observer would conclude that this particular source is usable to support this particular statement in this particular article". The whole concept of 'reliable' is too dependent on circumstances to start writing broader rules. ‑ Iridescent 03:45, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

That is exactly what I would like to see: A reliable source supports a particular statement in a particular article. The other things (e.g., publications that have qualities that suggest they are highly likely to be usable to support particular statements in articles about the subjects most relevant to their subject matter) need different names. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I'm with you, I thought you meant trying to codify when a given source is or isn't reliable in a given situation.. Yes, I agree that "Reliable source" should only mean "supports this particular statement in this particular instance".

The point I'm trying to make is that because English Wikipedia is so culturally dominant and English Wikipedia has collectively been using a different meaning, we've literally altered the language; in the context of online information curation. "reliable" has been redefined to mean "not wholly discredited, and of a relatively consistent standard which allows one to assess the probability that a given statement will be accurate". This in turn leads to problems because some people are using the "able to be trusted; in which reliance or confidence may be placed; trustworthy, safe, sure" definition while others are using "probably trustworthy in a particular area", which leads to endless "but this source is reliable, why can't I use it?" confusion.

In an ideal world it ought never to have happened—when the English language and our policies clash, it's certainly not our place to start redefining the English language. Unfortunately reversing this will be like doing a three-point turn in a 737, as our warped definition of 'reliable' has escaped into broader online culture (when Facebook, Twitter et al put warnings on content, it's our definition of 'reliable source' they're using, not the dictionary's). Short of deprecating the use of "reliable source" altogether, replacing it with something like "appropriate source", and using an edit filter to actively suppress the phrase "reliable source"—none of which is going to happen—we're not going to get this particular toothpaste back in its tube.

The discussion to be had is how we come up with and enforce a new "source appropriate for a particular fact on a particular page" label, and make the WP:RS definition irrelevant. Given the unpleasantness surrounding WP:MEDRS—which only deals with a tiny subset of articles on which there's a general understanding both that there's a need for Wikipedia to be accurate, and that even normally trustworthy sources can sometimes be inappropriate in particular contexts—I would not want to be the one trying to roll out a similar "don't use any source unless you're willing to justify if challenged why this source is appropriate for this statement" into topics like pop culture or sports. Just look at how many people at FAC—where by definition everyone has at least some degree of experience with both writing and sourcing on Wikipedia—take exception to the routine "what makes [$website] a reliable source for this statement?" question. ‑ Iridescent 05:43, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Clickthrough rates

I don't see anything in the article you referenced regarding the reference sections, Iri (how many bothered to read it?). Have any other research? Buffs (talk) 16:21, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Clickthrough rate vs. (a) source-page out-degree and (b) position on source page

Pinging @Whatamidoing (WMF) with her official hat on, who should either know or know who to ask. Meta:Research:Improving link coverage (the original study on which the draft I linked was based) is the dataset showing that the clickthrough rate for links at the bottom of the page (i.e. notes, references and See Also) drops sharply. (To belabor the point perhaps, but even with no research this is exactly what I would expect. On the mobile interface a reader would need to manually open the collapsed-by-default reference section and in most cases will have no reason to, and on the desktop interface the reader always starts at the top of the article and likely has found the fact they were looking for before they've scrolled that far, so never even has the chance to see that the reference section exists.) ‑ Iridescent 16:29, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

That particular statistic comes from mw:Wikimedia Research/Showcase#June 2020. (Also, @HaeB is usually the right person to ask.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. We find that overall engagement with citations is low: about one in 300 page views results in a reference click (0.29% overall; 0.56% on desktop; 0.13% on mobile). Matched observational studies of the factors associated with reference clicking reveal that clicks occur more frequently on shorter pages and on pages of lower quality, suggesting that references are consulted more commonly when Wikipedia itself does not contain the information sought by the user. is the line in question, given that we've now established that statistically only 1.91 of this page's watchers will bother to click the link. ‑ Iridescent 17:48, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

For clarity, that means clicking on one of the little blue clicky numbers, not clicking on a link within the ref. AIUI this count includes actions like accidentally clicking on a ref number and clicking on a ref that doesn't have a URL, but excludes actions like scrolling down to read the entire ref list or hovering over it with NAVPOPS enabled.

There might be some information elsewhere about how many external URLs are clicked on (it seems like an obvious thing to study), but offhand I don't recall having seen it before. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. Buffs (talk) 15:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Buffs and WhatamIdoing: This just caught my eye and I had a look at the actual paper ... I think clicking on links within the refs was included. Quoting from the paper: "In order to answer these questions, we collect a large dataset comprising all citation-related events (96M) on the English Wikipedia for two months (October 2018, April 2019), including reference clicks, reference hovers, and downwards and upwards footnote click, as visualized in Fig. 1. By analyzing this dataset,3 we make the following main contributions:

• We quantify users’ engagement with citations and find that it is a relatively rare event (RQ1, Sec. 4): 93% of the links in citations are never clicked over a one-month period, and the fraction of page views that involve a click on a citation link is 0.29%"

The graphic referred to is useful. Later on (3.1), they list the types of events they captured:

refClick: a click on a hyperlink in an article’s reference section.

extClick: a click on an external link outside the reference section.

fnHover: a hover over a footnote number in the text, logged when the reference tooltip is visible for more than 1 second.

fnClick: a click on a footnote number, which takes the user to the reference section at the bottom of the page.

upClick: the inverse of fnClick: a click on a reference’s up arrow icon that takes the reader back to the part of text where the reference is cited. Andreas JN466 13:40, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I know there are good reasons why it's not possible, but I would absolutely love a "you can run this tool yourself" script that could activate a similar analysis on other pages. If nothing else, a "which links are being clicked?" test would provide a very rough-and-ready indicator of which parts of the article people actually read; I've long contended that most readers either only read the lead or only read one specific section, and that we don't take this into account when writing articles and write on the assumption that most people are reading top-to-bottom. ‑ Iridescent 04:42, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

We can do some of that, for internal links to other articles. https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Little_Thetford says that the only link that gets much attention from Little Thetford is the link to Thetford, Cambridgeshire in the first sentence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Now that I genuinely am surprised at. I could see people accidentally ending up at the article on the district when they're looking for the specific village, but not the other way. I wonded if it's just that the readership numbers are so low that even a small handful of people (a class at the village school doing a particular project, say) distorts the figures. ‑ Iridescent 16:07, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

(adding) Thetford, Cambridgeshire is also a good example of why I think these "civil parish" articles are an absolutely pointless waste of time and space. They're all completely uninformative, and of no interest to readers—civil parishes and townlands are an archaism that only exist because nobody's bothered to formally abolish them, and I doubt 99 readers in 100 could even name the civil parish/townland in which they live. ‑ Iridescent 16:12, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

One thing I would be very interested in is figures on how many people use the links in nav-box templates, though I believe these don't show to mobile viewers. They have been proliferating for years, mostly created by serial templaters who enjoy doing this, with little or no thought of their utility to readers. Johnbod (talk) 15:58, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I've never seen any research on that, and I agree that it should be done.

The only thing I can tell you is this: Navboxes are hidden to all readers on mobile, and nobody complains about their absence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:56, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I can also tell you that when we remove navboxes, I've never seen anyone other than the creator of that navbox complain about its removal. I do think that navboxes with a very specific and well-defined "if you're interested in this topic you're very likely to be interested in these topics as well" remit, like {{Acne agents}} or {{Walter Scott}}, serve a useful purpose to readers even if they're not widely used. The only purpose of bloated nonsense like {{History of Retail in Southern California}} and {{Tourism in the United Kingdom}} is to act as a fuckwittery heatsink to divert the editwarriors and POV-pushers into a ghetto where they can slug it out in a venue that's essentially invisible to readers. ‑ Iridescent 04:04, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I've been chatting up Seddon about this, and I think we could actually measure this. It's a bit of work (each link has to be re-written), but the wikitech:Provenance system would let us count the number of clicks on specific links. You would have to change each affected [[Link]] to a full URL with the ?wpov=nnn bit at the end. The link would also need to be a Template:Plain link so that it looks the same as usual.

Once it's done, it's just a matter of waiting to see if people click the links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

One could also do a quick-and-dirty experiment by replacing the direct links with unique redirects (e.g. Sheriffdom redirect from Template:Administrative geography of the United Kingdom → Sheriffdom), and then just looking at the pageviews. I strongly suspect that for all but the most-widely-read articles, the outgoing clicks from the navboxes, infoboxes and reference sections would be very close to zero. ‑ Iridescent 16:37, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

But if you do that, then there's a risk that it will end up at RFD before you get much data. Even if nobody notices/objects, the redirects will need to be deleted eventually. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:39, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I did say "quick and dirty"—one would only need to leave the experiment live for a week or so to get a reasonably clear snapshot, after which the navbox could be rolled back to how it was before and the redirects deleted. (It would need to be at least a few days, as on day 1 the results would be corrupted by people checking that the links were working as intended.) Provided the experimenter explained what was going on beforehand and consulted with the authors of the navbox as appropriate, I wouldn't envisage any significant objections, other than that it would have a very slight potential to confuse readers as to why they were getting the (Redirected from …) message at the top of the page when they followed the navbox links.

If there were to be a navbox experiment, then the one I think would yield more useful data would be taking a batch of similar articles, randomly splitting them into A & B groups, temporarily deleting the navboxes from all the articles in the B group, and seeing what the readers' responses (if any) are. My instinct is that the situation would be similar to that with infoboxes—that is, while Wikipedia editors might have strong opinions pro or anti on aesthetic grounds, readers wouldn't even notice except on the relatively small subset of articles where the infobox/navbox serves a clearly defined useful purpose. ‑ Iridescent 05:13, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

This experiment might already exist for navboxes. Articles that uses an adaptation of a template in the continent topic series (eg. Template:Europe topic) sometimes generate reasonably unique redirects (eg. Name of the United Kingdom). CMD (talk) 05:33, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I think that someone at the French Wikipedia did something similar to your experiment, only using page views instead of reader responses. We can't easily collect reader responses (for anything) because phab:T89970 hasn't been fully built. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

QED ‑ Iridescent 04:55, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

What do you conclude from that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:00, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

That Name of the United Kingdom appears on a navbox transcluded onto 34 articles—and as the one about the UK, is presumably the entry in that navbox most likely to be of interest to the readers of English Wikipedia—but it quite literally averages one click per day. That is to say, even though the navbox in question appears on pages like Name of Ukraine (which for obvious reasons has had an artifically inflated readership recently), this is empirical evidence that nobody is paying the slightest attention to the navbox, which I assume is the point Chipmunkdavis was making.

You can obtain similar anecdata by looking at those TFAs that contain a navbox, and seeing if the pages linked in the navbox have a noticeable rise in readership on TFA day when 50,000+ extra people are at least theoretically seeing that navbox. (Here's a selection from yesterday's TFA that are linked in the navbox but not mentioned in the text. Compare those to the effect on pageviews of things that are actually linked in the article text, and you can see clearly that a significant proportion of article readers get sufficiently engaged with the text to click at least some of the links in the wikitext to find out more, but absolutely none of the readers pay the slightest attention to the navboxes.)  ‑ Iridescent 17:43, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Not a realistic proposal, just a consideration of how to write high-quality articles on at least some topics. (t · c) buidhe 04:45, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Always precious

Nine years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:06, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Did not use page as webhost

did not use page as webhost https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Surplusoid/sandbox&action=edit&redlink=1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Surplusoid (talk • contribs) 10:59, 14 June 2022 (UTC)  ‑ Iridescent 19:26, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Surplusoid, I've restored the original post (although not your subsequent obnoxiousness) in case it actually is a legitimate question.

Wikipedia pages—including pages in your userspace—belong to Wikipedia, and exist only for the benefit of Wikipedia. Sandboxes for testing are legitimate when they're genuinely being used by editors to test things out so they can use them to improve Wikipedia, and off-topic material in userspace is legitimate when being used to allow editors to get to know one another and thus 'improve' Wikipedia by making the complicated social dynamics of Wikipedia editing work more smoothly by allowing editors to get a better idea of each others' points of view.

If you can give a convincing explanation as to how 297,052 bytes of Chinese characters mixed with random unicode makes things better for either Wikipedia's readers or Wikipedia's editors, I'll both unblock you and restore the page myself. Unless and until you can do so, the most good-faith explanation possible is that you've completely misunderstood what Wikipedia is, and in light of your comment that was removed from this page I'm not feeling particularly inclined to jump to the conclusion that the most good-faith explanation is the most likely explanation. ‑ Iridescent 19:27, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I doubt this person was here to improve Wikipedia. Of course, I could be a bit biased; however, I doubt anyone, knowing the full context, would disagree with my previous sentence.

Thanks for the support, though. I appreciate it. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:50, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I really enjoyed the flavour of:

"You are swine you vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As we say in California, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. A zit on the butt of society. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you." etc., etc. Am surprised folks (e.g. User:EEng) would not want to salt a few of those insults away for future use. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:57, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Believe it or not, it's already in my storehouse of stuff reserved for special occasions [16] (though somehow Texas has become California). BTW, this is a good opportunity to plug the Shakespearean insult generator. EEng 01:33, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Sincere apologies for doubting you even for a moment, thou lumpish crook-pated varlot. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:31, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

That You are swine you vulgar little maggot… speech is one of the earliest internet memes, and probably goes right back to Usenet days (I can't be bothered to look, but I'm sure someone has researched it somewhere). Here it is on Ars Technica back in 2001, for instance. ‑ Iridescent 18:52, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Ah thanks, I betray my ignorance of insulting people over the internet in clever ways. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:05, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

You betray your ignorance in unclever ways, too. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:27, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

How very Thomas Gray dare you! Well, knock me down wiv a fevver. ClevorTrever123 (talk) 20:04, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

That's an awfully shady thing to say, Slim! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:19, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

About a decade ago when the copypasta fad was getting off the ground, that "ultimate flame" text underwent a resurgence in popularity. Those of us who were admins at the time are wearily familiar with both "ultimate flame" and its close cousin "Navy Seal", as every wannabe troll who wandered in from Reddit thought they were being hilarious in posting them. (Our own Guy Macon used to—and I assume still does—take credit as being the one who standardized and popularized the You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas… wording and formatting back in the 90s. He used to maintain a periodically-updated version of it on his website, but it no longer appears to be live.) ‑ Iridescent 07:55, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll inform English Heritage. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:23, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Re recent G4

When I saw it while on NPP, it gave me déjà vu, but I couldn't find previous mentions of it except for the 2010 AfD. It now appears that it was a recreation of Western Imperium from a few days ago; apologies for the misunderstanding. Iseult ^Δx parlez moi 19:10, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

@Iseult (talk page watcher) Gosh, that "tip of the tongue" sensation is quite irritating, isn't it? I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:56, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

No problem at all. There's potentially a valid article there—it's a theory so fringe that even other white supremacists tend to dismiss it as racist crankery but it's nonetheless a concept which has at least some academic coverage—but ultimately I think it would be virtually impossible to find anything to say about it that wouldn't be better placed at either Francis Parker Yockey or Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics since it's ultimately the theory of a single whacko expressed in a single book. (Personally I'd get rid of the article on the book as well—given that it's the only thing the author is known for, I would think any reader interested in the topic would be better served by one long article rather than two short ones. Looking at the history of the article on the book, as far as I can see there's literally never been a substantive addition to it that wasn't made by a sock of a banned editor.) ‑ Iridescent 13:24, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

User:Nikthymakis

Please urgently restore User:Nikthymakis's user page - they are a trainee on one of my courses, and I asked them to create the page as an exercise. The content is not "Unambiguous advertising or promotion". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:55, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, it was advertising but all of its content was advert-like - I personally would tend to decline such a deletion. I see the user has restored the page already, without the problematic content, though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:17, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Looks like they've already re-created it. FWIW, I see no way any admin would interpret

Nikos Thymakis is a worldwide garden designer. Working 25 years in Landscape Sector-Botanic Gardens and Parks. Participate in 2 EXPOs with Hellenic Garden. Live in Thessaloniki Greece. Main intersts are table soccer, piano and travelling. Start his PhD in POLIMI in Landscape Architectue and Cultural Heritage. More focused on Monastic Landscapes and Byzantine Gardens.

Useful Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thymakisnikolaos/

as anything other than a userpage being used only for promotion or publicity, with a username that promotes or implies affiliation with the entity being promoted. ‑ Iridescent 13:18, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy ping to Serols, in case you're wondering why the page in question keeps disappearing and reappearing in your watchlist. ‑ Iridescent 13:21, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Totally agree with Iridescent. --Serols (talk) 13:27, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I understand why you made the mistake. I was asking you to reverse it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:32, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I am working off [G11] applies to pages that are exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to serve as encyclopedia articles, rather than advertisements and since some sentences in that userpage weren't promotional it wouldn't have hit the "exclusively" qualifier. Now, when I see articles tagged for G11 they could often have all the promotional content removed without blanking the article ... only that the leftover article would now qualify as A7 or another A criterium. Imagine an article saying ACME solutions is a company. It has for over a decade provided unique solutions to worldwide customers - if you cut the promotional sentence, you end up with an A7-worthy article. There I generally delete. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:39, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Hello Andy Mabbett, if you want to continue the discussion, do it here and not on my talk page. I also disagree that you removed my template from the Nikthymakis user page. This user page does not comply with the rules of Wikipedia. User Iridescent already explained it. --Serols (talk) 14:07, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

The post I made on your talk page was not a continuation of this discussion, but a reminder of WP:BITE. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:11, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Andy Mabbett ,the Template:Db-spamuser is not WP:BITE, but the indication that the page does not comply with the rules of Wikipedia user page. It would also be very polite if you ping me when you answer, otherwise it could become a self-talk. --Serols (talk) 14:23, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I dunno if it meets G11. What's "exclusively promotional" about "Live in Thessaloniki Greece. Main intersts are table soccer, piano and travelling"? If that's exclusively promotional, then a lot of pages containing only userboxen will need deleting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I suppose it depends how you interpret a userpage being used only for promotion or publicity, with a username that promotes or implies affiliation with the entity being promoted. If one takes a literalist interpretation of "used only for promotion or publicity", then there's no such thing as an inappropriate userpage since anything could theoretically be stripped down to basics. By this argument the page I recently deleted that read in full

[Name] is the leader of Best SEO Expert in Comilla. He is connected to over 20+ countries over the world. Every client loves him because he uses the white hat SEO technique. It is the first leading Search Engine Optimization expert agency at Comilla in Bangladesh because it has a dedicated team who are really doing great work. They have been working in this industry since 2017. I have many years experienced team with 8 members in the field of Digital Marketing. We are providing Digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), and Affiliate Marketing. We are a team of 5 people, we are experts at Adsense websites, affiliate, drop shipping, and eCommerce websites. We provide the best digital marketing solutions with WHITE HAT techniques.

wouldn't constitute an inappropriate page, since instead of deleting it I could hypothetically have stubbed it down to "[Name] lives in Comilla". In reality Wikipedia policy rarely if ever does operate on strict constructionist lines, and to the best of my knowledge even the most hardline "keep everything" WP:ARS types don't argue for the deprecation of {{db-spamuser}}.

I do think there's an argument to be made that the line between WP:G11 and WP:U5 is blurred and the definitions could be written more clearly. In practice, we tend to apply the Pages in userspace consisting of writings, information, discussions, or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals, where the owner has made few or no edits outside of user pages, except for plausible drafts and pages adhering to Wikipedia:User pages#What may I have in my user pages? test to userpages tagged as promotional, even though it theoretically relates to a different deletion criterion. That's definitely a discussion for a centrally advertised RFC at either WT:What Wikipedia is not, WT:Deletion policy or WT:Criteria for speedy deletion and not for my talk page, though; any clarification of whether there's a difference between "activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals" and "use of Wikipedia as a vehicle for showcasing", and if so how that difference is interpreted, would mean amending some of Wikipedia's most core-y core policies. ‑ Iridescent 03:50, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I tend to look at "[Name] is the leader of Best SEO Expert in Comilla" as a COI declaration. But the bigger point is that CSD is supposed to be used for uncontroversial "no reasonable editor would object" kinds of pages, and I might object to deleting pages like Nik's. I might be briefly tempted to re-write the white-hat page as "[Name] is in Comilla, Bangladesh and has conflicts of interest for articles about digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), affiliate marketing, Adsense, drop shipping, and eCommerce websites", but I think our idea of "promotional" might be overly broad. I could imagine someone saying these kinds of things casually. "Hey, I'm your new neighbor. Tell me about yourself – Oh, I'm a garden designer. I've been working for 25 years in the landscape sector, mostly botanic gardens and parks. I even got to participate in 2 EXPOs with Hellenic Garden, but don't worry: I don't judge the neighbors' gardens, and my own isn't always perfect. I'm also into table soccer, piano and travelling, and I just started a PhD at POLIMI. What are you into these days?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

The problem I'm having is that we ask people to "tell us a little bit about yourself", and then we're irritated if the thing they want to share is that they're proud of their accomplishments at work. It feels snobby, like the Edwardian mothers telling their sons that they shouldn't use the word weekend because their class shouldn't be paying any attention to the weekly schedules that affect office and factory workers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

That's not a fair analogy. The important part here from the point of view of an admin working the deletion queue isn't so much Pages in userspace consisting of writings, information, discussions, or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals, it's when that intersects with where the owner has made few or no edits outside of user pages. We have absolutely no problem with very lengthy userspace autobiographies when they're by active Wikipedia editors; that's an obvious benefit to Wikipedia in that it allows other editors to get a feel for who they're talking to and what their skill profile is.

Admins aren't psychic; when an editor's only edits have been either to their own userpage or to an autobiography created in draftspace, we have no way of predicting which is going to be the one editor in a thousand who will go on to make substantive edits somewhere else, so we need to go on the balance of probabilities. Yes, it's cutting corners, but as of today there are 461 active admins and 56,371,304 pages on en-wiki; corners are going to be cut.

I can imagine potential resolutions, such as a sticky prod style system for userpages in which new userpages are reviewed a week or a month after creation. However, that's not where we are right now, and introducing them would need an RFC since changing the deletion policy is always controversial. I suspect there would be very little enthusiasm for it—we wouldn't be able to fully automate it by getting an adminbot to auto-delete all userpages over a month old where the editor had fewer than (arbitrary number) of non-userspace edits since some of those userpages will be legitimate, and those 461 admins are unlikely to embrace the prospect of having a million or so pages dumped in the deletion queue to be manually reviewed. ‑ Iridescent 04:22, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

I've actually used {{db-multi|G11|U5}} in situations where the username isn't promotional, but the userpage is. I'd say {{db-spamuser}} would, in fact, qualify as being under both, and I'm not sure there's anything worth fixing about it, unless we're going to form a consensus that U5 is, in fact, G11 for userspace. Such a consensus-generating discussion would probably end up being a timesink. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 04:44, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/TRAPPIST-1/archive1

Greetings, noting here that I went ahead with the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/TRAPPIST-1/archive1 FAC nomination since we discussed this article a few months ago. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:30, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, sorry about that, it got lost in the general morass into which that thread descended. I'll have a look when I can. ‑ Iridescent 12:32, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

keeping this live as a reminder to me ‑ Iridescent 12:08, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

That star is described as being ultra-cool, and now I wonder how an automated anti-puffery script could cope with that. (Super Shiro#Premise is the only article I found that uses the word outside of a quotation, source title, or astronomy context.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd be very surprised if it doesn't turn up in a lot of brand names and advertising slogans as well. An automated anti-puffery script is a pipe-dream at current technology levels—as any admin who's ever worked the Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as spam queue can testify, even actual humans have extreme difficulty differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate use of buzzwords and non-neutral language, particularly on a site like Wikipedia where we actively encourage 'Reception' and 'Critical reaction' sections. An AI that can reliably differentiate between "Rolling Stone named Aerosmith one of the greatest bands of all time" and "The Aerosmith Fan Club Magazine named Aerosmith one of the greatest bands of all time" is still well beyond the limits of current technology; there's a reason Facebook/Meta still needs to employ 15,000 paid human content moderators. ‑ Iridescent 05:33, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Looks like this needs another trip to peer review. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:30, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Just to say I've not forgotten this—it's just that these big reviews need a solid chunk of time as they're best done in one pass, and solid chunks of time have been in short supply at the moment. ‑ Iridescent 19:15, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus, apologies for the delay, finally got the time to actually do this. I'll put my reply here so as not to clog either the peer review or the article talk page, but feel free to copy and paste it anywhere else.

TRAPPIST-1 review
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This is the version on which I'm commenting. Disclaimer that this is a topic on which I have no knowledge, so this is explicitly purely a 'does this make sense to me' prose review with no checks for accuracy or source quality. As usual, I've intentionally not read anyone else's comments at either the FAC or the PR, to try to come at it without preconceptions, so some of these may already have been discussed. Lead I know I'm not the target market, but The orbital periods – the time it takes for each planet to orbit the star – have precise numerical ratios of 8:5, 5:3, 3:2, 3:2, 4:3, and 3:2 seems to lack context. I can see the significance in them have matching ratios, but I imagine most readers would want some kind of baseline as to what the orbital periods are. There is no clear evidence that any of the planets has an atmosphere—does this mean 'there's nothing to suggest it', 'there probably is but we're not sure' or 'nobody's checked'? I appreciate this is all explained in detail in the body text, but probably 99% of this article's readers are reading it because they've seen a "potential site for the first interstellar colony" piece somewhere, so I'd make this as explicit as possible from the start. Something in between the first two - we have some weak hints for and against but nothing concrete. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Star Dwarf stars like TRAPPIST-1 are over ten times more common than Sun-like stars and are more likely to host small planets.— does this mean "any given dwarf star is more likely to have a small planet than any given Sun-like star", or "because dwarf stars are more common, any given planet is statictically more likely to be attached to a dwarf star"? (Also,a vague grumble from me about making such a sweeping statement based on such an incomplete data set. By definition, most of the stars checked are in our stellar neighborhood; saying unequivocally "dwarf stars are more likely to host small planets" seems to me to be the astronomical equivalent of surveying the population of Amarillo and confidently saying "most people on Earth drive pickup trucks".) The first. Regarding the parenthetical, I think scientists point to the Copernican principle and call it a day, somewhat sloppy true. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) This is the devs' fault rather than yours, but the {{val}} template's documented issues mean that densities being underestimated by 8+20 −7 percent is goofing up the line spacing around it in desktop view. (I'd also wager that 99% of readers will have no idea what "underestimated by 8+20 −7 percent" means. To be honest I'm not sure I do.) TBH, that's the same for me really. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Planetary system TRAPPIST-1's seven planets—TRAPPIST-1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f, 1g, and 1h—I'm sure there's a very obvious explanation, but what happened to 1a? The "a" refers to the star. Added a note to explain. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) The sizes of the planets have been constrained by observations to range from between Mars-sized to slightly larger than Earth reads very oddly to me. This may well be the correct astronomical terminology, but to me it reads as if the act of observation has changed the size of the planets. Rewritten. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) This is very much an 'it would be nice to have' and I appreciate the sources may not exist, but if the solar system is so much older than our own, and if the planets are believed to have such high levels of internal activity, outgassing, tidal fracturing of the crust, melted mantles etc etc etc why have have they not long since been ground to balls of rubble and their atmospheres blown away? Whether they hold an atmosphere still is actually the billion-dollar question here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Because TRAPPIST-1 radiates mostly infrared radiation, its planets would be dark to the human eye—does this mean "if I stood on the surface, I'd have difficulty finding my way around" or "astronauts visiting the solar systen would just see a series of black circles"? The former; admittedly I am a bit uncertain on how to formulate that. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) "There is likely to be very little visible light on the planets' surfaces?" ‑ Iridescent 14:02, 12 July 2022 (UTC) That works, I think. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:18, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Potential atmospheres of the planets The statement that impact events can both add and remove volatiles from the planets; in the outermost planets addition is likely dominant doesn't make sense to me—two paragraphs before we've just said the planets cleared the neighbourhood[ of any additional material, so where are these impactors coming from? The impactors do not necessarily come from the neighbourhood, I think. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) I'm uncomfortable with 'visualised' in the atmospheres of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets could be visualised in the future without further context. It's a term with two very different meanings, and it's not clear whether you mean it in the sense of "we could directly observe it if we wanted to" or "we could assemble enough data to imagine what it might look like". Changed to "detected". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) The emission of extreme ultraviolet radiation by a star is important for the stability of the atmospheres of its planets, their composition and the habitability of their surface to me reads as "you can't have stability without extreme ultraviolet radiation" (think "handwashing is important for preventing the transmission of disease"). However from the context I don't think that's what you mean here—it could probably do with clarification. Rewrote this. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) List of planets Image:TRAPPIST-1_system_to_scale.svg makes absolutely no sense to me. It indicates to me both that the Moon is about 50 times the size of the Earth, and that the TRAPPIST-1 planets orbit their star at a much greater distance than the Earth does the Sun. Yeah, that one is bad. Changed the caption so that it reflects that we are talking about distances. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Who am I to argue with NASA, but I find Image:PIA21428-TRAPPIST-1-Comparison-SolarSystem&JovianMoons-20180205.jpg fairly misleading. I presume that in reality there's nothing to indicae that this is actually what any of these planets look like and the NASA artist has just used a bunch of different 'generic planet' templates to give it some variety, but most reasonable observers seeing that will assume "B is an iceball, C is a solid lump of rock, D is like Earth, E is like Mars" etc. One can make educated guesses but their depiction is simply wrong; I've put in a half-clarification. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Life In less than two millennia (from the viewpoint of TRAPPIST-1) Earth will be transiting in front of the Sun, which would make it possible to detect life on Earth from TRAPPIST-1—I don't understand this at all. If the system is only 40.7 light years away, then The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island is reaching the aliens right about now; if they're advanced enough to have their own SETI program, why do they need to wait 2000 years for a transit to detect our signals? I think the logic is that it's much easier to detect evidence of life through transit phenomena; how would the aliens know the English language? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) They wouldn't, but presumably if they have the technology to monitor transit phenomena at a distance of 380,000,000,000,000 km they also have the technology to detect artificial radio signals and realize that something is going on in the vicinity of that big yellow star (that presumably is one of the brightest objects in their sky so is already a top focus for their astronomers). ‑ Iridescent 14:11, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Research history and reception The planets have been used as settings for science education competitions—I somehow doubt this. "The planets have been used as the basis of science education competitions", maybe. Yeah, that's better; it's in. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Its planets are the most easily studied habitable planets outside of the Solar System—"potentially habitable planets" or "planets within the habitable zone", surely? You've just spent upwards of 10,000 words explaining in detail why they're probably not habitable. That's in. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) the involvement of a Moroccan observatory [has been cited] as an indication of the role of the Arab world in science—I don't really understand this. The Oukaïmeden Observatory is operated by the University of Liege in Belgium; citing it as an example of "the role of the Arab world in science" is like saying that drmrs makes Wikipedia a French website. Good question. I'd imagine that folks will claim credit even if the observatory merely happens to be in their country. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) a theoretical interstellar probe travelling at the speed of light would need almost 40 years to reach the star—if it's 40.7 light years away, surely it would take more than 40 years, even if it didnt need time to accelerate and decelerate? They were using a different distance estimate, so I've changed the text to be more generic. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC) References Reading this article with WP:Cite Unseen switched on (something I recommend every serous editor keep switched on as a matter of course) turns the bibliography into something of a sea of red warning notices. It appears to be mainly due to the extensive use of arXiv which longstanding Wikipedia consensus is to treat as an automatic red flag (chapter and verse is There is consensus that arXiv is a self-published source, and is generally unreliable with the exception of papers authored by established subject-matter experts. Verify whether a paper on arXiv is also published in a peer-reviewed academic journal; in these cases, cite the more reliable journal and provide an open access link to the paper (which may be hosted on arXiv)). This does appear to be what's been done here—the citations are all to legitimate journals with arXiv as backup convenience links—but be aware that this particularly if we ever make Cite Unseen opt-out instead of opt-in, you'll have an endless stream of well-intentioned editors trying to 'fix' it. Ah yes, that's one of the Citation bot things that I tolerate because Verify whether a paper on arXiv is also published in a peer-reviewed academic journal; in these cases, cite the more reliable journal and provide an open access link to the paper (which may be hosted on arXiv) - seems like it's a problem with Cite Unseen not realizing that the citation is not solely to Arxiv. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Hope that helps, and sorry it took so long. These are all minor quibbles; speaking purely from a prose perspective and not from a sourcing-and-accuracy angle, I can't see any obvious issues with this. ‑ Iridescent 07:59, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. And sorry for bringing up that Prohibited Topic from before, I am not up yet on all the things that need to be left asleep. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:32, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Not a problem at all and you've done nothing wrong—it's just that there are unresolved legal issues around that particular case, and given the current political situation in the UK it's a particularly sensitive topic at the moment. ‑ Iridescent 09:03, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

In the box

I've been thinking about AGF and our difficulties with separating bad intentions ("bad faith") from bad results. My question for the folks here is: What goes in the empty box? Bad intent+bad edit is obviously vandalism, but what's an example of a decent edit that was intended to harm an article?

Combinatorics

	Good edit	Bad edit
Good intention	success	mistakes, incompetence, POV pushing...
Bad intention		vandalism

Any ideas? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I can certainly imagine the creation of Old person smell being bad intended but a good edit; if only I knew for certain whether it was good or bad faith. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 00:17, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by "bad intentions", but a few off the top of my head:

1. There are plenty of edits made by promotional SPAs that are legitimate—we obviously revert and block for the "widely considered the best" promotional edits, but a significant chunk of COI editing consists of fixing errors because the PR department wants us to have the correct specifications.
2. The 'can't stay away' types, who get bans or long-term blocks but come back as IPs or under a new name but don't continue with whatever problematic conduct got them blocked. (I'd argue that they don't have 'bad intentions' as such, since there's no intent on their part to be disruptive, but if you consider "wilfully defying consensus" to be a crime—as some do—they're guilty.)
3. People lying about their credentials who nonetheless happen to get it correct. This doesn't come up so much now, as the rules on sourcing are enforced more firmly so "I am an expert and I know this" no longer usually works as an argument.
4. Bad actors playing a long game with the aim of gaining trust. The spammers and 'poop' vandals doing a search-and-replace and fixing ten instances of "targetted" or "doe snot" to get themselves autoconfirmed are the ones you see most often, but some of the more obsessive nuts (Archtransit, Ecoleetage, Icewhiz…) will literally invest years in writing and researching articles, complicated technical tasks, resolving difficult disputes and so on, with the aim either of getting themselves trusted enough that their promotional or biased edits will stick, or of getting themselves admin (or even arb) status so they can do some real damage.

I'd say 4 is the one that comes closest to 'unquestionably good edit with unquestionably bad intent'. If you want a concrete example, St. Gabriel's Roman Catholic Church (Bronx), Abigail Merwin and Koror Jail were all written by a sock of a long-term-abuse editor trying to create evidence of article creation which he could use in the (successful) RFA for the sock, but we still keep the articles because despite the bad intent there's nothing actually wrong with them. (That example is a decade old, but it still goes on. I'd lay money that hundreds if not thousands of Eostrix's edits are still live, for instance.) ‑ Iridescent 04:50, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Number 4 is my first thought too. Good edits can be used to game autoconfirmed (even ECP), and to hide malicious edits. We provide helpful tools like Twinkle to make such actions easier. CMD (talk) 05:50, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Every pov pusher knows that before and after your bad edit, you make 50 non controversial ones with the same edit summary, to hide the disruptive edit. 94.118.39.104 (talk) 07:21, 23 June 2022 (UTC) — 94.118.39.104 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

@Tryptofish, there's no point slapping "has made few or no other edits outside this topic" templates on IPs if they come back to The Cloud. The Cloud is Comcast/Sky's network of free public wi-fi hotspots that blanket city centres in the UK—someone connected using it will literally change their IP address every few seconds if they're on the move, while upwards of 10,000 people will probably connect via any given hotspot on any given day. Given what the IP is saying, I'm not exactly going to blame them for not wanting to disclose their account. ‑ Iridescent 18:15, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

It's your talk page, so I've struck it. I wasn't really trying to label it as an alert. Instead, I was noting (failed)-humorously that it's ironic, in a discussion of ways that vandals try to outwit the system, that a single-edit IP (I didn't check from where) would show up with a how-to, in a manner used by experienced editors logged-out (even if not in this case). --Tryptofish (talk) 18:25, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis, if you want to hide malicious edits AWB is the way to go. Only the most dedicated patroller is going to spot the bad edit buried in a run of 2000+ edits with a generic "formatting fixes" edit summaries. Your professional paid editor will also know to include a deliberate spelling mistake in their addition and then use another sock immediately afterwards to fix the spelling, to ensure the spam edit isn't the most recent edit in the history and thus doesn't show up on most people's watchlist. ‑ Iridescent 14:34, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

I think that "bad intentions" means something pretty close to "intentionally trying to hurt Wikipedia". Reckless disregard probably counts, so posting spam would count, but genuinely, albeit mistakenly, believing that Wikipedia wants to have an article about your book/business/whatever doesn't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

There are probably a handful of WP:HTD cases in which people are intentionally making valid-but-ridiculous articles in an effort to discredit Wikipedia, but I imagine they're few and far between (although this certainly did happen back in Wild West days). If you're looking for cases where people acting for explicitly malign motives end up improving Wikipedia, I expect most of them will fall into my #4 above—that is, "I want to become an admin so I can block anyone who disagrees with my agenda, so I'll need to create a bunch of legitimate articles to boost my chances at passing RFA". ‑ Iridescent 18:30, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

If you mean editor X intended edit Y to specifically hurt Wikipedia (thus not falling under the case of helping editor X's reputation) but it ended up helping Wikipedia instead, I can only think of cases where editor X misunderstood the consequences of their edit. Perhaps an editor removes a statement from an article that they think is true, but is actually false. So... "uninformed about their edits". Is there something you're planning on doing based on this combination of characteristics? isaacl (talk) 20:39, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

I keep hoping that, through ever-clearer explanations, we will stop equating editorial disagreements with ABF, and well-intentioned bad edits with vandalism. So it's obviously a two-by-two matrix, but what goes in the fourth box? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Probably the most useful approach then is to soften the definition a bit, to an editor who has bad intentions but makes occasional good edits. Then I think there are editors who aren't only focused on achieving their bad intentions, and so sometimes make good edits (roughly overlapping with Iridescent's category 2) and those who are trying to build up their reputation (category 4). The edits could be labelled something like "reputation building" and "outside of problem area". I think this seems to fit in with the other labels in the grid. isaacl (talk) 23:29, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Vandalism is (theoretically) defined per-action, rather than per-human. I have read Rebecca Solnit on "Why Did We Stop Believing That People Can Change? and her pessimism about American culture (it's probably warranted, more's the pity), but I'm not sure that it's fair to say that a bad person making a good edit is a person who is trying to do something harmful in that edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:47, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

People have multiple motivations. They can have bad intentions in one aspect but benign ones in others. I think it might be missing the forest for the trees to focus specifically on "had bad intentions for this specific edit but it turned out the opposite as intended" for that spot in the matrix. I think it's very rare (I can't think of any actual examples), and thus I'm not sure it's very revealing to label it with something like "misunderstood effect of edit"—unless the editor does it repeatedly, the most likely explanation is an errant click on their input device. isaacl (talk) 05:58, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl, it depends on what one means by 'bad intentions'. If one files promotional accounts and paid editors under 'bad intentions', then it's not particularly unusual; the situation where we block the editor but leave the edit in place arises fairly often. If by 'bad intentions' we only mean 'actively trying to cause damage' as opposed to 'deliberately flouting policy', I agree there are going to be limited circumstances in which it ever arises. (That's specifically on Wikipedia. On Commons, 'I think we should keep this image because even though it was clearly only uploaded to be disruptive, I can imagine a hypothetical use for it' is practically a cliche.) ‑ Iridescent 03:58, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I was responding to WhatamIdoing's definition, "intentionally trying to hurt Wikipedia", and based on their reply, with that intent for the specific edit in question (thus not counting reputation-building edits or edits that were intended to provide accurate information). isaacl (talk) 04:19, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree that a decent edit that was intended to harm an article is much rarer than "a decent edit made by someone intending to harm Wikipedia". There have been the occasional situations where someone intentionally setting out to make an article non-neutral (either a spammer or a hardline POV-pusher) ends up either adding something that's worth keeping, or removing something that should rightly have been removed. Depending on what one means by "intended to harm an article", there are also a reasonable number of cases where someone is creating a Wikipedia article for the 'wrong' reasons—either because they think wrongly it will help with SEO, or because they rightly think it will help with social media verification—but ends up creating something usable. ‑ Iridescent 11:53, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

While I can imagine rare-to-nonexistent situations, such as someone removing bad (e.g., hoax) content while under the mistaken impression that they're blanking good content, I think this distinction between "hurting the edited article" and "hurting the community/overall project" is probably the right the category for the box. Perhaps factual corrections by COI/UPE folks could fall into that category. Imagine, a BLP's angry ex providing well-sourced and appropriate but disparaging content (e.g., the complete list of charges resulting from last week's arrest), while pretending to be a person with no COI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't really agree that "hurting the community/overall project" and "factual corrections by COI/UPE folks" have much overlap. We only notice the problematic cases so we come away with a distorted impression—it's always worth bearing in mind that the overwhelming majority of COI edits are completely non-controversial and consist of press officers quietly correcting release dates or product specifications in the background. ‑ Iridescent 04:44, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

I was thinking about this in the sense of some editors being extremely upset about those press officers quietly making edits that would be completely unobjectionable, and even highly desirable, except for the editors' fears about COI/UPE editing. Upsetting editors is a type of harm, even if the basis for their emotional response does not feel appropriate to everyone else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:59, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that really fits the box you're trying to label, though. The editor making the unobjectionable edit had good intentions and did not want to harm the project. If you're considering any upset editors to be a harm, and that they'll always be some editors upset at paid edits, then all paid edits will fall into one box ("bad edit: community harmed"). isaacl (talk) 15:34, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you're basically right. At minimum, whatever could go in this box is not really significant, especially if you think of bad intentions as "trying to hurt an article" instead of "knowingly breaking some rule". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

"Upsetting editors is a type of harm" may technically be true, but I don't see how you can avoid it. I just deleted a page that read All entrepreneurs face many challenges when they begin their business. That is because the market is competitive, and many people lack the right skills and knowledge to thrive in this intense competition. That is where [name] comes in to help entrepreneurs apply the right strategies in their business for growth. If you are an entrepreneur or trying to open a business, you are in the right place. Here is everything you must know about client acquisition coach [name] and how you can use his knowledge to grow your business.; I'm sure the creator and the article subject (in the unlikely event they're not the same person) both feel hurt and upset that Wikipedia doesn't want their efforts, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong to do so. Every time we remove someone's good-faith claim that covid is spread by eating cheese, we're potentially hurting that editor's feelings; the driving force behind almost everything anyone ever does on Wikipedia is ultimately people telling other people either that they're wrong or that their previous work was inadequate. ‑ Iridescent 15:42, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

If you broaden your definition of "bad intention" to include intending to hurt the subject/supporters of the subject, rather than intending harm to the edited article as you put it, then your example about an editor seeking to publicize negative events fits. It might not exactly parallel the box on the bottom right, but probably good enough. isaacl (talk) 15:51, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl, @WhatamIdoing, @Chipmunkdavis, Iri: so, to summarizes Iris' point and also the following discussion

1. Promo-only accounts, sometimes
2. Lying about credentials, sometimes
3. Bad actors hiding bad faith

• The one above might be the most problematic of all.

• (I'm not going to count good faith sockpuppets of blocked users, they're good faith.)

I'm visualizing those being put in the box above in my head, hence the briefness of my summary. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 21:02, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Placeholder: I have a response written in my head to this section, which I'll post when I get home to a real computer on Monday. If I forget, please feel free to remind me. Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:17, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Fixing ping, @WhatamIdoing:. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:18, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad, this is your friendly reminder.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

WP:URFA/2020

You are invited to WP:URFA/2020, a working group reviewing featured articles promoted between 2004 and 2015. Specifically, we need your help to review articles that you nominated to determine if they still meet the featured article criteria. If you have any questions, please ask on the working group’s talk page. Hope to see you there! Z1720 (talk) 17:00, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I've always been a strong supporter of the principle of periodic sweeps, but surely there's an issue with we need your help to review articles that you nominated to determine if they still meet the featured article criteria? It takes industrial levels of AGF to allow editors to mark their own homework. Sure, there are going to be a few people honest enough to say "this hasn't deteriorated but the standards have risen over the years and it no longer meets them", and quite a few people honest enough to say "I haven't had either the time or the inclination to monitor changes to this and I no longer feel it balanced and reliable", but you're still effectively telling people to voluntarily hand back what a lot of editors consider the closest thing Wikipedia has to a formal award. ‑ Iridescent 05:21, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I'll state the obvious. It's better to check each others GAs' than to check your own. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 05:53, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

That's what I'm saying, but that's not what's being requested here—Specifically, we need your help to review articles that you nominated is unequivocal that they're asking me to review the articles I nominated, not those nominated by other people. ‑ Iridescent 06:01, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Right, I agree with you. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 06:04, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Ideally you wouldn't review your own work, but as the link suggests WP:URFA/2020 began a couple of years ago and is still far from complete, so it's not an ideal situation. Involved editors will likely have the best grasp of broadness and sourcing. Asking editors to review their own work may also stimulate them to improve older FAs they may have not touched for awhile. Lastly, articles are removed from URFA only when they have 3 approvals, so theoretically there are still 2 uninvolved reviewers. CMD (talk) 06:34, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Iri, look at the overall picture. We have to start somewhere. Marking your "own" article "Satisfactory" only indicates to other editors that the article is at least watchlisted (which is better than the alternative-- those that are not watchlisted are more likely to have deteriorated) and triggers other editors to comb through it. I don't think any of the regular reviewers think that means the article gets a pass, and I've only seen one article on the URFA list get three Satisfactory marks that it didn't deserve. It's mostly working exactly like CMD says: it has prompted many of the prolific FA nominators to put their houses in order, because they know once they mark it still watched, others are more likely to look in. It's working; articles are being improved short of sending them to FAR. Marking your own articles is only a first pass at finding out what articles are watchlisted, and triggering other editors to check them. Also, URFA is not FAR; if an article is found to be deficient, nothing that is stated at URFA prevents anyone from sending an article to FAR; it's not the final word. Further info at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-01-30/WikiProject report. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:11, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi Iri, I am sorry if I caused any offense. I am going to put these messages on pause for now. Then, I'll read (and re-read, probably a couple times) the comments posted above, anything that is posted after this, and other feedback that URFA/2020 receives to reflect on the wording. Hopefully, a better approach will be found (if this approach continues) so that this can have the best outcome possible. I don't want to propose solutions now, because rushing into things is always a bad idea, but let me know if you want me to keep you updated on my and other thoughts at URFA/2020. Z1720 (talk) 22:55, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

[tangent]

For the FAC-enhanced talk page stalkers, is the use of MOS:NUMLIST in James VI and I#Issue (promoted in 2004) a common practice? I'm not wild about the bullet list in Charles II of England#Issue but that feels more typical of a Wikipedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

It's not the only article on a monarch of England to do that: cf. William the Conqueror, John, King of England, and Edward II of England. My non-exhaustive survey of monarchs of England with the bronze star suggests that in fact by far the most common way of including this information is in the form of a table, however, as at e.g. Charles I of England#Issue. (In many of these cases, I suspect that the table adds nothing to the article except a bunch of confusing markup for editors to deal with...) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:46, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Please restore the following articles

Hi @Iridescent. Please restore the articles Mausoleum of Rabiga Sultan Begim and Sacred Rocks Adam And Eve (Turkestan region) that you deleted as copyright violation. The text has been released under a compatible license per Ticket:2022052510001544. Please ping me once you do it and I'll update these articles with relevant VRTS permissions. ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 21:31, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

In this case I'm not going to. Since the articles weren't just cut-and-pastes, they were cut-and-pastes from the Turkistan Tourism Centre, the content is inappropriate for Wikipedia regardless of copyright status, since the articles had zero reliable sources. (The pages in question were just cut-and-pastes of the advertising blurb from [17] and [18] respectively.) It just wastes everyone's time restoring content that will promptly be re-deleted under a different criterion. ‑ Iridescent 04:10, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

In this case, I agree with you. I'm making a note about these two articles that they have been completely advertising and promotional in nature, even if the content was released under a compatible license. ─ The Aafī on Mobile ^(talk) 06:06, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Hello Iridescent, as you predicted this has become a bit of a time waster; see Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2022 July 11. I'm of the opinion that not all content under a compatible license/in public domain should be dumped into article space (for example, all the articles copied from the 1911 Britannica), especially if it's essentially spam, but I'll hear what others have to say about the articles before I do anything. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 21:25, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that these are properly licensed or released after reviewing the tickets. PRAXIDICAE🌈 21:28, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Praxidicae, The ticket was created by an email associated with the Turkistan Tourism Center [19], and thereafter the associated editor began sending emails on the same ticket. The first email of the ticket contains a signed and stamped document from Turkistan Tourism Center releasing about 55 article under a compatible license. Nonetheless, I need to agree with Iridescent as well that there's no use in restoring articles under one criteria when they're going to be deleted under a different criteria. But I thought, this editor could be guided to do well and we should give them a chance, and processed the ticket subsequently. All the articles should be checked for notability/advertisements and appropriate actions should be taken, along with giving this user a chance to improve their contributions. ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 05:13, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

This isn't really equivalent to 1911 Britannica. Those (along with the all the other things listed here) are relics of the early days, when there were whole swathes of topics with no corresponding articles and it was thought that having pages like this was preferable to having a sea of redlinks.

(With hindsight it was probably a mistake as it's left us with a big pile of outdated statements on which we don't make it as clear as we should that we're incorporating potentially problematic text; it also,to this day, means new editors (and quite a few old editors who should know better) have the impression that we consider it acceptable to go through public domain works and dump them en masse into Wikipedia. However you need to bear in mind that nobody knew Wikipedia was going to become the world's go-to place for facts. The site was still nominally working to Larry's model in which Wikipedia was essentially a giant scratchpad, and once an article was of adequate quality it was moved across to Nupedia which was meant to be the public-facing site. Plus, the public hadn't discovered either Nupedia or Wikipedia and the readership for both consisted largely of techie types who understood all the issues with accuracy and source limitation, so it didn't matter so much that we had biographies cited entirely to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.)

This isn't an equivalent situation. 1911 Britannica, the Nordisk familjebok, the 1878 Compendium of Irish Biography etc etc etc are all legitimate reference works, even if they're now outdated. I can't imagine any circumstance, even in Wikipedia's earliest days, when it would have been defensible to incorporate text en masse from an advertising website. As such, treating this as a copyright situation is a distraction; this is just a straightforward promotional account, even if we take the AGF approach that they're genuinely trying to help and are copy-pasting promotional material in good faith. ‑ Iridescent 05:13, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

"The site was still nominally working to Larry's model in which Wikipedia was essentially a giant scratchpad" -- Uh, not exactly, if you trust my memory of that time. I started editing a month or so after LMS departed Wikipedia in anger (I have this impression he left because he lost one too many arguments to The Cunctator where Jimmy Wales refused to get involved), yet articles were still imported en masse from public domain sources. The reasoning for this was (in a sentence) no one knew how to correctly write an encyclopedia article, so why not steal import all the existing text we could find to create content. Since we were going to rewrite everything eventually, importing 100+ year-old text was as good a place to start as any, & some experts believe it's easier to rewrite existing text into something acceptable than to create it from a blank sheet. (Admittedly, one could argue in favor or either approach.) Or, to put the situation another way, because we had no instructions about how to create an encyclopedia, people threw stuff against the wall to see what stuck, & proceeded from the results.

My historical lesson may simply be stating a distinction where there is no difference -- just because reliable sources have been strip-mined & dropped into Wikipedia at some point doesn't mean it should be done -- but I want to make an important point that needs to be remembered: while some things back in the Stone Age of Wikipedia were better than now, many others were worse. We didn't know what we were doing then in many cases -- & not just concerning article content. -- llywrch (talk) 18:27, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd only say that people involved at the time had a pretty good idea of what we were doing, though there were sincere debates about what kind of encyclopedia Wikipedia should be- i.e. authoritative and selective vs. universally comprehensive. And in some form those debates continue today, as well they should. The "scratchpad for Nupedia" plan was well gone by fall 2001. --The Cunctator (talk) 15:39, 22 July 2022 (UTC)