Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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Fictional flag used in multiple places

This problem is not unique to the English-language Wikipedia, but I'm starting here because this is my native language. I'm bringing this to an explicit discussion here rather than just editing so that we can build an explicit consensus that I can then show the other Wikipedias.

Four en-wiki articles use File:Standard of the President of Syria.svg despite it being tagged on Commons as a fictional flag. I can think of no good reason it should remain in any of those articles, nor in any article in any Wikipedia. The articles are Flag of Syria, President of Syria, Gallery of head of state standards, and Battle of Darayya (November 2012–February 2013). It also shows up at Talk:Pan-Arab colors, which I presume is harmless. - Jmabel | Talk 01:23, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see a bot being viable that checks for flags (and maybe maps) tagged either as fictional (or frankly, with Commons:Template:Datasource needed) and strips them from articles. Remsense ‥ 论 01:26, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen this kind of thing in the past. I remember one user who created and uploaded to Commons dozens of fictional flags for provinces in various countries, and then added them to WP articles. Another user and I spent a fair amount of time documenting the flags were fictional and getting them deleted. (See Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Fictitious flags of municipalities of the Dominican Republic&diff=prev&oldid=353306231#Files in Category:Fictitious flags of municipalities of the Dominican Republic) fictional flags created for just one country.. Donald Albury 16:00, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a more general case of Commons is not a reliable source. I often see people take images in commons completely at face value, including them in articles without any real source. Commons has very different rules than enwiki. They are mostly concerned with copyright and licensing, and (intentionally) make no attempt to verify that images are "real" or that the descriptions are factually correct. That's just not their job. But it is our job when we use one of their images in an enwiki article. RoySmith (talk) 16:21, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not exactly fictitious, but there was also the case of Flag of Vatican City#Incorrect version where we had an inaccurate flag for years which spread across the internet and out into the real world. the wub "?!" 17:14, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I belong to an organization which has a flag. The design is described in exquisite detail in our charter ("white stripe, whose width is one-sixth of the hoist", that kind of thing). I sat down one day and carefully drew an example in a drawing app, taking pains to get the geometry exactly as described. The charter (long) predates things like Pantone, but I did consult with a commercial artist to get their input on the correct RGB values to use for the colors and attempted to get all the people who produce material for us to use these "official" versions. Eventually I gave up and accepted that people will just copy-paste from whatever is handy. Now I just amuse myself by tracing the lineage of various bits of marketing material by which version of the flag they've got. But, yeah, we should do better than that. RoySmith (talk) 17:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel, I suggest thinking about c:Commons:File renaming#Which files should be renamed?, particularly item 3, and seeing if they could get renamed to something like "Fictional standard of the President of Syria" (or "Fake" or whatever else you want). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:44, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: please feel more than free to pursue that.

I am glad to see there appears to be consensus to remove this from all articles. I will do so, or at least attempt to (some may be tricky because of templates). - Jmabel | Talk 17:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect there will be few objections to bold removal of any fictional flags. Commons has a real issue with their flag galleries, unfortunately. CMD (talk) 11:06, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That file is now called File:Unofficial standard of the President of Syria.svg. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:10, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What does the arbitration committee in Wikipedia do

What does it do? Saankhyareddipalli (talk) 08:55, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:16, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1) Deals with user behavior problems that our normal consensus process at WP:ANI can't handle. 2) Deals with administrator behavior problems. 3) Deals with anything related to private, off-wiki information. 4) Deals with certain unblock requests. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:56, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clearing my doubts Saankhyareddipalli (talk) 10:14, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Saankhyareddipalli: I encourage you to read the archives of the Arbitration report in The Signpost. Unfortunately, the report has been quiescent for a while. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:17, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clearing my doubts. Saankhyareddipalli (talk) 10:14, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects are cheap, but how many is too many?

I'm just wondering how others feel about this, without immediately starting an RfC or deletion discussion. @Hughbe98: as the one who created this example (but discussion is not about editor, but about edits).

We have a very small section of a page on ancient law, List of acts of the Parliament of England, 1275–1307#25 Edw. 1. Stat. 2 which is the target for no less than 24 redirects:

Is this excessive, and if so how to reduce this? Removing the uppercase / lowercase variations would halve this already... Do we have guidance on a best approach for redirect creators? In total we now have already 448 redirects to this one article[1]. Fram (talk) 17:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh. This is what search engines are for. In the deep dark old days, we used to create these kinds of redirects because search wasn't very good. It's much better now (where "now" means the better part of 20 years) so we should just let it do its job. RoySmith (talk) 17:59, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do these redirects actually prevent anything desirable happening? DuncanHill (talk) 18:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see no problem here to be addressed. None of these individual redirects is so wrong as to merit deletion, so I don't see how the quantity much matters. BD2412 T 19:07, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

448 redirects would occupy the same storage space as a single .jpg Doug butler (talk) 19:32, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, storage space wasn't my concern. More things like issues with "what links here" being harder to navigate, more redirects to watchlist for vandalism, more work when the target gets changed (e.g. in the list above, the target is a potential article apparently, so when it gets created all the redirects need updating), more potential "wrong" results in searches (to take the most recent creation, is 13 W. 3 significantly different from 13W3, which has a different target), ...? But if people see no issue, then my question is answered and no action is needed. Fram (talk) 20:00, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are right to question this. The problems you mention are small but not zero. Exhaustively redirecting variations of words is not something I would want to catch on as a normal practice. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 14:58, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would be something to look at if a non-EC editor were adding a lot of such low-priority redirects, but otherwise, meh. Donald Albury 17:59, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects are cheap and usually uncontentious. Just occasionally an unambiguous redirect can become ambiguous as a new meaning arises for it. I suspect that only fixing redirects when they have become ambiguous would save a lot of unnecessary distraction and pointless make work. I used to spend quite a lot of time resolving multiple redlinks, and yes some of the redirects set up to do this would now be resolved by search. But improved search doesn't on its own resolve redlinks. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:04, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is one of those situations where WP:CHEAP conflicts with a desire not to keep/hoard useless things. The question is: are these redirects actually useless? For most cases, I would suggest waiting at least six months, better a year, as long as the redirect is not linked from anywhere, and see if it gets any pageviews. If it doesn't, it can probably be deleted. Cremastra ‹ u — c › 13:31, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another way of thinking about it is, is the effort to check whether anyone uses a redirect worth less than the value of the resources freed up by deleting the redirect? My understanding was that the overhead of holding a redirect was so low that it meant any review of redirects, however cursory, was going to waste more effort than it could possibly save. Ϣere SpielChequers 22:27, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with RoySmith that would should let search engines do their job, and I don't feel it's necessary to have a redirect for every variation that someone might write in an article. I don't think that does our readers any favours; having a common style helps them become familiar with it and thus more quickly recognize a citation. I agree with Fram that there are maintenance costs, and an increased risk of overlapping topics. For this particular case, is there a standard style that is generally used? isaacl (talk) 18:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With legal citations, standards change over time. Any of the above variations for the particularly ancient statute in question may have been the most correct at a particular time. Even the ones that were never the most correct may have been used enough to show up in legal writings, such that a reader might see and want to look up the specific variation they have come across. Again, this is an unusually old statute. I don't see the case for deleting any specific one of these variations, and I doubt it's worth the effort to investigate whether there are some particularly low-value variations in the group. BD2412 T 02:39, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but as Wikipedia's prose is being written now, I feel it's reasonable to standardize on something in common use today. Plus removing some of the variations wouldn't stop them from being used; it would just would mean that a wikilink target would have to be specified. I'll agree that there are more important maintenance tasks that could be done, but if someone wants to do it, I have no objection to it. isaacl (talk) 04:56, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From the reader/searcher POV, I don't see a need for someone to spend time creating redirects from slight variations on modern names, but:

From the editor POV, if we're going to link to this in a variety of different articles (or, in this case, the refs therein), each of which might have its own WP:STYLEVAR or WP:CITEVAR, then any of these might actually be wanted.
Once the time has already been spent making the redirects, I agree with what WSC said: The cost of debating it is likely higher than the cost of ignoring it. If and when any given instance ever becomes an actual problem, we should address it at that point, but not before.
When the redirect isn't merely a matter of capitalization, punctuation, and spacing, then I think it's generally helpful to have more redirects. In this instance, we ought to consider not only 25. Edw. Stat. 2, but also Sententia lata super Confirmatione Cartarum, Sentence of the Clergy given on the Confirmation of the Charters, and/or Sententia Domino R. Archiepiscopi super premissis.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:06, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Real Clear Politics

Why was Real Clear Politics deleted prior to the election and then put back in to 2024 Poll averages afterward? It turns out they were the most accurate of the aggregaters. Ticketmand (talk) 23:05, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ticketmand, which article(s) are you talking about? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:07, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nationwide opinion polling for the 2024 United States presidential election 72.241.148.122 (talk) 05:42, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@https://open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/how-americas-accurate-election-polls?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=j0rzu Ticketmand (talk) 05:46, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia, @Ticketmand. Have you figured out how to read the article's history page yet? If not, then Help:Page history might be useful. Looking through the history of the page, it looks like several different editors added or removed that particular poll multiple times, so whether it was in the article or not depends on when you were looking.

There are also multiple discussions at Talk:Nationwide opinion polling for the 2024 United States presidential election about the expected standards for included poll aggregators, and specifically whether to include RCP. As you can see, different people had different ideas about what's best. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:15, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it is a reliable source. See WP:RSNP which has it yellow, "There is no consensus as to RealClearPolitics's reliability. They appear to have the trappings of a reliable source, but their tactics in news reporting suggest they may be publishing non-factual or misleading information. Use as a source in a Wikipedia article should probably only be done with caution, and better yet should be avoided." Doug Weller talk 16:45, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My personal take: the goal of any poll is to statistically reflect opinion. As such, reliability is the wrong metric to use when deciding whether to mention a specific poll. Instead, we should judge it based on DUE/UNDUE weight (as we would other forms of opinion reporting). How often is the specific poll cited in sources? Is it “noteworthy” or not? Blueboar (talk) 17:17, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Blueboar. In that article, they're all being used as primary sources. They are reliable for the claim being supported (which is "This poll said this on this date", not "This candidate is going to win" or "This poll is correct"). Editors should use their judgment about which ones to include, and they should take into account factors such as how much attention this or that poll is getting in independent sources. Overall, I think a certain amount of back-and-forth is just to be expected, as different polls will get more or less attention over time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Donation season again

“The internet we were promised. 21 November: An important update for readers in Australia. You deserve an explanation, so please don't skip this 1-minute read. It's Thursday, 21 November, and this message will be up for only a few hours.”

The same damn message I saw 2 weeks ago. Seriously, do they put it up for a few hours the turn it off for a few hours in alternation?

Or is there a timestamp such that each cookie-bearing individual only sees the message for a few hours (or until the Cookie Monster visits and clears their tokens)?

I deserve an explanation.

At least now it is “we ask you, sincerely” instead of “we ask you, humbly”. The fake humility used to grind my gears.

. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 19:17, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pre-GivingTuesday, I understand that the main US-focused campaign often runs for a few hours here and there, or perhaps a whole day, depending on what they need to test.

That said, the timing varies by country, though, so I'm not sure whether you're seeing testing at the moment or if this is the 'normal' campaign for your location. US donors often prefer to make their donations towards the end of the calendar year, but other places have other patterns. (I've heard that US editors, who are a minority of donors, tend to donate quite early in the campaign.)

If you don't want to see these banners, then go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-centralnotice-banners (or Special:GlobalPreferences#mw-prefsection-centralnotice-banners) and turn them off. There are cookies to suppress it for non-logged-in people (if you click the button to make it go away), but as of more than a decade ago, that only worked for a week at a time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]