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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (idea lab).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

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Edit Quest!

A game created like me to promote counter-vandalism. It's like the Wikipedia RPG thing that was created a few years back, but different. It's a lot more like an RPG than a leaderboard. I've already got a few people who've signed up, and have 23 chapters to the full thing so far. If anyone wants to check it out, it's here! TF { Contribs } { Edit Quest! } 20:35, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Strengthen Simple English, or Split it

I often read the Simple English page instead of the Regular one. There are different reasons:

  • I'm too busy
  • The page is all Latin (for example anatomy and disease pages)
  • The page has become too comprehensive
  • The page explains at length, and I only need the quick big picture
  • The page assumes a reader level either below or above mine

Now, you guys might want to figure out, if these five points should become official targets for the Simple English pages, instead of just being for the challenged and those new to English.

While I think this is perfectly doable and would ultimately also sharpen and "kind of legitimize" the Simple pages, if you don't agree, then an English Light version could be created. You could even automate the priorities by monitoring how people behave on long or hard to read pages. That should not be too hard, given how much code even Google's main search page contains. (See xkcd 1605 )

Thank you for the second most important web site, after Google!!!!!!!91.155.195.65 (talk) 14:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

We could have more introduction to xxx pages. If the simple English Wikipedia is good we can import it here. I don't think we should split the whole Wikipedida though. It would be better to split the articles. Only the bigger topics would have to go this way. Shorter articles should have their lede rewritten to give an accessible introduction. I expect there is a template to tag pages that are too difficult. {{Technical}} seems to be one. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Alas, our larger and more technical articles tend to be written more by bright young practitioners than by stodgy, experienced ones. This is of course in some ways good, but it means the article tends to be written more for someone who wants to become a physician or network administrator or geochemist or whatever, than for someone who wants a rough idea what some topic of that trade is about, while remaining an outsider. That's where Simple English can help, but most readers are unaware of it as it's merely listed along with Sinhalese and Swahili in the list of foreign languages. But, yet another English WP? Good grief, how many do we have already? Jim.henderson (talk) 15:00, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Simple English is also not quite the same as what you're suggesting. It's not summarized English, it's English purposely modified to be understandable for people whose first language is not English. Compare the first paragraphs and rough word counts of our featured article Evolution with Simple English's featured article simple:Evolution:
  • English: Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules. (about 10,500 words)
  • Simple: Evolution is a scientific theory used by biologists. It explains how living things change over a long time, and how they have come to be the way they are. (about 8,400 words)
It's not that Simple is a summary, it's a complete and detailed recreation of the topic using very plain English. It's a translation, of sorts. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 19:01, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Bibliography

Hey guys,

I was wondering whether wikipedia could have a more uniform approach for certain recurring sections when dealing with writers, as it happens with musicians and other artists? When a page deals with a writer, I think it should have one fixed section dealing with that writer's bibliography. As it is now, one writer has a list of his books under the header "Bibliography", another under the header "List of works", yet another under the header "Writings", etc. Having one section called "Bibliography" looks less messy and much more clear. When a page deals with musicians, this is much more uniform; virtually all of the pages I have seen have a section called "Discography". Why can't this be uniform with writers? I hope I made my suggestion clear with this. If you have any questions, just let me know here.

Thanks!

J. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8084:D02:3C80:59B9:CC87:344D:1467 (talk) 21:14, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Well I'll have to oppose. To me there's far too much focus on layout and other peripheral factors on Wikipedia, and not enough on the core element: the body of text. Do you think a typical reader would be confused by a slightly different layout between two articles? Isn't it more useful to focus on improving the article content than enforcing another arbitrary cookie-cutter layout style requirement of little real benefit? Praemonitus (talk) 22:01, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
I can see the value of uniformity - we increasingly use computers to read documents - and these kinds of small inconsistencies make that unnecessarily harder.
However, this is a job that someone who actually gives a damn would have to undertake...and you may be one of the few who cares enough to do that. Before diving in and attacking it, you'd be wise to consult with the gurus of the WP:MOS as to which form is most officially sanctioned - then just dive in and start fixing it. You could probably find someone who's good at writing "bots" to help you out with the work. SteveBaker (talk) 04:00, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Lists of articles missing in English but found on many other Wikipedias?

Over at WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles there have been extensive attempts to improve Wikipedia's coverage by comparing it to other encyclopedias, dictionaries, lists of authors, etc. Have there been attempts to simply find articles that are already written on other language Wikipedias and to translate them to English? It seems like a no-brainer to me, but I can't find any "missing article" lists generated this way.

For example, Helia Bravo Hollis, a botanist from Mexico, has articles in five languages including German and Spanish, but not English. Has someone already made lists of such missing articles? And otherwise, would there be interest if I attempted to create some such lists. For example, a list of missing botanists, sorted by number of non-English Wikipedia articles over 500 words? I imagine there would be interest across a broad range of topics for such lists.

I discovered the missing Helia Bravo Hollis entry while editing Wiktionary, when researching the etymology of "hollisae", which is used as part of the scientific name of many plants. It seems odd that there aren't lists of similar missing-in-English topics. —Pengo 03:14, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

It seems kind of obvious to point this out, since you linked to the wikiproject page yourself, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles#Tools has "Missing Encyclopedic Articles - toolserver page which reports articles with many inter-language links that lack a corresponding article in a given language." It seems to be down, but if archives of its output seem like what you're looking for, maybe you can convince User:Topbanana to resurrect it. —Cryptic 03:37, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
Almost certain there'd be considerable interest in a list such as this being developed Pengo - I do quite a bit of work over on the toolservers, so if you need a hand from a programming point of view let me know -- samtar whisper 08:55, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Did you know

Have a look! --Atlasowa (talk) 20:18, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

@Topbanana, Samtar, and Atlasowa: Thank you for the great suggestions. The not-in-the-other-language tool seems to be the best fit, as it allows searching within categories. Unfortunately it can't [easily] rank the results by page views (as Articles Recommended for Translation does, or by number of non-English pages as the MEA tool did), and it's a little awkward to use the more advanced features, but I still managed to get a very good list of, for example, female botanists with German pages but not English. (Might be worth noting that restricting the search to male botanists exhausted its memory and caused it to fail, but they show up fine by removing the subquery). This tool fits my needs, but I should still try getting a toolserver account some time. Thanks again. —Pengo 00:44, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
A bit late to the party, but I have repaired the Missing Encyclopedic Articles tool. As noted above, it identifies groups of interlanguage-linked articles that do not include an article in a given language. It wouldn't be useful to calculate the cumulative number of page views over all members in a set - the list would be dominated by entries from popular Wikipediae. Weighting the results based in article popularity in a single language makes more sense - typically the language from which the editor wishes to translate. I'll add this to me todo list for the holiday season. - TB (talk) 10:27, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Magnus Manske: any way you can help out with the above request, either in the context of the not-in tool or otherwise? --Izno (talk) 15:31, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Anti-bullying task force

Hello community members,

I've been thinking for a few days now about the need to combat bullying and related abusive kinds of behaviors in Wikipedia editing. I've seen and been subjected to a lot of it myself.

I discovered that there is an essay about bullying at WP:BULLY which is a great starting place, but seems like it could be more fleshed out. And then there is implementing actions to curb bullying.

I've seen too much of it around here, and it often is in regard to content of articles. There is a big difference between reasonable and civil dialogue when there is a difference of opinions. Everyone has a different point of view. We are here to reconcile various points of view, and to decide on content in service of the reader. We want to get articles right and this comes out of such good dialogue.

But far too often, dialogue devolves into name-calling, pushy ways of speaking, condescension, insults, Wikilawyering, taking advantage of the naivete of new editors, and all this sort of thing. It tends to allow some people to swing false power around and to dominate articles, where there more subtle and nuanced voices who may be more polite and less aggressive then get drowned out by the dominators.

I know we have some mechanisms to work out issues about civility, and about people who are pushing content into articles against consensus or against good community judgment.

Often what happens is a long-term pattern where one or more editors will harass or hound another editor or group of editors. Often it works out along some ideological lines, as many topics in Wikipedia have some controversy around them. Some of the more experienced people know just how far they can push their behaviors without being too flagrantly in violation of a guideline and therefore able to be sanctioned. Some know how to insinuate insults, how to ignore another editor's fair points without it being so noticeable, how to change topics constantly or to use strawman arguments to try to make the other person seem wrong and foolish, and many other sorts of things. Some people cite guidelines like WP:IDHT and WP:DEADHORSE to try to get people to back off, especially newbies who can be intimidated by the alphabet soup. Sometimes there is a long-term pattern of one editor giving another editor so-called "friendly warnings" like "when people act like you are, they are often banned..." or "If you continue to act this way, you will go off a cliff" and these are not actually "friendly warnings" but more like understated threats intended to have a chilling effect on another editor. They even lead to a gaslighting effect where the victim can think "i must be wrong here" and clams up and backs off, not continuing to argue a point even though they may be right.

All these sorts of things are forms of intimidation that add up to bullying. I've been seeing it around in my year or so of editing, and now that i have some more experience, i recognize it as a major problem in Wikipedia. I don't think the system as it is, is good at dealing with this dynamic. I think the system as it stands sometimes even has the opposite effect -- it shoots the messenger. If someone does have the guts to stand up to a bully and bring it to a noticeboard, sometimes people come and gang up on that person and try to make them think they're wrong, and the bullying continues even in the forum where it's supposed to be addressed.

Is anyone with me on this? Do you see this going on? Do you have ideas for how to address it better?

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SageRad (talk • contribs) 11:08, 23 November 2015‎ (UTC)

One thing is that bullying can traumatize people. I know it's "just" words on a screen, but these words mean real things. They carry real emotions. When someone directs aggression toward another, even through words to someone they've never met in person, it can do real damage. I have heard at least half a dozen people say things like "I don't even edit in this topic area anymore because of the toxic editing environment" or to that effect. I think that's largely from the bullying behaviors of some people that can traumatize people. Then the articles suffer because the more sensitive people, or often people with the less "mainstream" viewpoints, get intimidated, scared away. And people get hurt -- real people. It's not ok. SageRad (talk) 11:21, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
SageRad, I think we all see this going on all the time. I think you've summed up how I feel about this matter very well, so I'm definitely with you - I think the question is, what can we realistically do about it? I've been thinking, and I'm afraid I've drawn a blank - yes our current system doesn't work well, but places such as WP:TEAHOUSE, where almost every helper is kind and considerate to new users, does provide a safer environment for talking about bullying. I'm not sure if that even happens at the moment, but I could see a similar system being useful samtar {t} 11:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Also, yes, a Task Force would be good - members could address bullying on behalf of a new, intimidated user by means of talking it out, dispute resolution or bringing to AN/I. Maybe that would be an idea? samtar {t} 11:36, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes, what if there is a group of volunteer users who agree to learn about bullying behavior, and then look out for it, helping out editors who are subjected to it, and trying to get the bullying person(s) to see how they're acting badly. Hopefully they would agree, and learn from it, but in my experience some people don't want to look at themselves and change, so if they continue to bully then they would need to be excluded from editing to make the environment ok for the rest of the editors, and for the good of the articles and the readers. `SageRad (talk) 11:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
SageRad I get where you're coming from but if there are serious problems, then that is really what WP:ANI & WP:ARBCOM are for. I don't know how I feel about a group of editors who haven't been vetted by the community taking it upon themselves to chastise other editors. This seems a bit too much like organized vigilantism to me. It's foreseeable that people who are confronted by this task force may feel themselves the victims of bullying. Again, we already have a system in place to discipline bad behavior; I don't think we need a 'police force' seeking out 'crimes', victims can self report if they feel it is justified.  DiscantX 07:15, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
But the problem is that Arbitrators Noticeboard doesn't work to bring remedy for bullying behaviors. From my very recent experience, when i asked how i could remedy bullying behavior at AN, guess what i got? I got more bullying behaviors against me just for asking! I am not kidding! That is not inspiring of any confidence for someone to go there expecting any semblance of justice. And in the recent ArbCom case around GMOs where i've been editing for 8 months or so in a highly toxic environment, guess what happened? The more civil people got possible topic bans, whereas the more toxic people (except for one who was so bad nobody can let them slide through) didn't even get proposed sanctions, or even included in the case despite repeated petitions by many editors! It's been astounding. You seekl help against abusive behaviors, and what happens is you get punished. There's a bad bad culture going on here. I just looked into this incident reported on ANI by a user, seeking help, and guess what? The user who asked for help got blocked! There is no place where a person can go. The official channels do not work! SageRad (talk) 07:41, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
SageRad, I agree that there is a problem with the behavior and mentality of some people here, but I feel though that the problem won't be solved by a task force, for the same reasons that, as you say, ANI and ARBCOM don't work. The bottom line is that having a safe space or group of helpful and kind editors to turn to is not going to change the overall behavior of abusive editors on Wikipedia. What needs to occur is a cultural shift, and I don't think a task force can possibly force an attitude change upon problematic users. There's no easy solution to this other than for every person who thinks that civility is a virtue to act civil, and hopefully soon the civility will outweigh the hostility to the extent that it's negligible. A change of attitude can't be forced, it must be adopted.  DiscantX 09:40, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
DiscantX, i think that creating a task force could help to change the culture, by the very act of creating it, as well as the way in which volunteers could make dynamics of bullying more apparent. I have to say that ANI and ArbCom could work and sometimes do. It sort of depends on the awareness and sensibility of the individual arbitrators or admins who take up a particular question. If they are the sort of person who is sensitive to the dynamics of pushiness and bullying, then they can take action on them. I don't think everyone is able and willing to "play nice" though and sometimes sanctions are needed to curb bad behavior. The thing is that sometimes ANI or ArbCom can do nothing or even "boomerang" back upon the person who raises an issue with another editor, even if the issue is really the other editor, if the admin or the Arbs involved are more personally sympathetic to the one who is being more of the bully or the pushy person in a conflict. SageRad (talk) 09:48, 26 November 2015 (UTC)


One aspect of why i think this is needed, is that WP:CIVILITY is not just about "bad words" or one-time interactions. Many times it's a pattern, and a lot of bullying is done with no bad words at all. I seems innocuous enough to the casual observer, because they may not know the deeper meaning, or the history involved between two editors. That's part of how manipulative people work, and how they abuse people without other people noticing.

I would like to quote some good words from user Dennis Brown (who i hope will not mind being pinged) who said here:

We would all love a more civil Wikipedia, but blocking people for using bad words will only mean that the more passive aggressive types who hide their bullying and insults in saccharine laced words will be running the place. Some of the nicest people cuss sometimes. Personally, if I'm going to be insulted, I prefer the honesty of someone who just says it bluntly, not someone who hides it in clever language designed to intimidate and diminish me.

This is the same thing i have found. Repeated behaviors by a few people who have taken to hounding me and trying to grind down my self-esteem, using various turns of phrase and conceptual tricks to make it seem like i should just crawl under a rock and hide because obviously i'm too stupid to be editing at Wikipedia, and my point of view is just worthless, etc.... but using relatively innocuous-sounding words. It's tricky, and that's why i think we could use a volunteer corps of people focused on this. I'd volunteer. SageRad (talk) 13:22, 23 November 2015 (UTC)


Another aspect is that the person who is being bullied may sometimes react due to counterwill -- not wanting to be controlled for very good reason, feeling the sliminess of the interaction, and they might cuss in anger, justifiably, but then the bully will use that response to try to further characterize the victim as being unfit for Wikipedia ... and the cycle goes on and on, and the bullies get entrenched and develop gangs of mutual supporting "good old boys" who help each other out. SageRad (talk) 13:24, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

You might want to look over WP:WQA and WP:PAIN, and the discussions that led to them being shut down. --Ronz (talk) 17:36, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Maybe it's more powerful if a change is cultural rather than procedural, but i could see that those two examples are really focused on short-term interactions and more on manners/etiquette and probably one-off personal attacks, whereas a deeper understanding of bullying and controlling behaviors could be useful to unravel some other sorts of deeper conflicts that occur on Wikispace. SageRad (talk) 17:48, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia works through consensus. The consensus as I understand it is that bullying is too subjective a label to enforce, the label is used as a bullying tactic itself, and the actionable offenses are best addressed by enforcing existing policies and sanctions. --Ronz (talk) 18:45, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
(ec)I think you would first need to define what is bullying behavior. If you simply disagree with some people, they take it as aggressive intimidation. I asked another editor to stop dropping small insults towards me and they accused me of personally attacking them. In this situation, I don't think either of us was being a bully.
But I've seen this situation occur a number of times. Editor A posts their opinion. Editor B mocks their post. Editors C, D & E get angry at Editor B for his/her rudeness. Editor B says he/she is being ganged-up on. Who is the bully here? Editor B for being sarcastic and rude towards another editor? Or Editors C, D & E for bashing Editor B for being caustic?
I saw this happen a lot during the GamerGate fury, where one person would be abrasive & insulting, then get attacked for their attitude and then claimed that they were being harassed. I don't think that this world is black/white on who is being victimized and who is bullying. Liz Read! Talk! 18:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree there are some problems. However, I do have some problems with formalizing this for several reasons. (1) Some editors cannot take content based criticism and consider such criticism as a personal attack (and or bullying). I have repeatedly seen that after a polite exchange, editors who refuse to give up their fallacious reasoning and/or fringe theories are more bluntly put into their place. Who is to blame here? The people becoming harsh after been plagued with stubborn refusal to yield a ridiculous point (indeed WP:DEADHORSE is such a blunt discussion stopper but it is often justified), or the self-claimed bullied editor. (2) Harsh comments felt in one culture may not be intended by the poster from another cultures. Since EN.wikipedia is in practice the international Wikipedia this makes defining bullying tricky; and editors acting well within what is considered civil within their own social context may be seen as a bully by others. (3) Which leads to the next issue. If bullies are sanctioned - who decides. As many cases will be in the grey area all but the most black and white cases should be decided by "Wikisaints" who are in short supply. (4) Finally we should be extremely wary of more Wikilawyering. The original poster justifiably stated that the alphabet soup of wikirules and policies is confusing. I am afraid formalizing this proposal would add more of that soup. Arnoutf (talk) 19:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The above three statements are definitely good thoughts, in my opinion, but these are not reasons why it couldn't work. Of course there is a relativity among people of different viewpoints. People with more similar viewpoints tend to have better edit histories and to forgive each other more often, and also don't butt heads as often. And of course, if someone is trying to push content into an article that is not supported by reliable sources, then they are probably at fault for contention. Bullying, when it happens, is in the behavior, not in the point of view of an editor. For the content it comes back to sources and having good dialogue. Those who don't have good dialogue and continue to push (either to block content they don't like or to push content that they want) and in the process hurt other users and make the editing climate contentious, especially if they continue to target or to go after or harass a specific editor(s) who they tend to disagree with, then they could be given a kind of notice. "Here's what we see going on... we see you misrepresenting the other editors even after they've explained themselves quite well, and calling them names and being condescending to them, and posting templates on their talk pages that don't appear justified," for instance.

I'm also wary of formalizing this, but it could be an advocacy group of volunteer editors who know enough to advise someone who comes to them if they feel bullied. Then they could use their experience to help work it out, if possible, or advise where and how it could be brought to a noticeboard for the best and speediest resolution. It could use the already existing noticeboards, and simply be a group of advocates (sort of like public defenders in the court system) who volunteer to help out because they've been there before and know what it's like.

I assure you that my intention in suggesting this is not to enable POV pushing of any kind. In fact, quite the opposite. I advocate for integrity to the sources and articles that reflect reality as best known according to reliable sources. SageRad (talk) 20:42, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Here is an example of what happened when i asked what remedies are available for bullying behaviors, at the Administrators Noticeboard -- not good response -- continued bullying in fact. That to me is an argument in favor of needing people to advocate for those who are being attacked or ganged up on. SageRad (talk) 06:40, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

And the very fact that you consider those responses "bullying" is why your proposal will remain dead in the water, because what you got there wasn't "bullying" by any reasonable definition, it was simply disagreement and rejection of your ideas, which is not the same thing. AGF doesn't mean that we hold your hand and pet it and tell you what a wonderful person you are as we lovingly lull you to sleep with soft words that tell you why what you did or asked for was wrong. Wikipedia is - strangely enough - part of the real world, and sometimes blunt answers are needed, and sometimes diplomacy is better, but being told "No" is not "bullying". Grow a thicker skin, please, or get off the bus, but don't saddle us with an unnecessary piece of nanny-ist bureaucracy. BMK (talk) 08:32, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
You, BMK, would say this, as you are one who engages in this sort of behavior as far as i have seen. When someone drops by just to drop an insult (e.g. "Dunning-Kruger" in that AN discussion) that insinuates that i am stupid for speaking my opinion, that's essentially the same flavor and direction as bullying. So please leave your judgments here at the door and listen to people who feel the bullying pressure, please. It's a thing that is subjectively directed, as it has to do with the perception and effect on the recipient. Bullies, abusive people, know that they are doing it for that reason, to cause pain or intimidation within the recipient, and then they would want to minimize it afterward and say "oh no, lighten up, it wasn't bullying". It's NOT simply disagreeing with someone. That can be done respectfully. It's making someone feel like they ought to feel stupid or ashamed for speaking their mind. That's very different from simply disagreeing. So no, just no. I do not welcome this energy directed at me. SageRad (talk) 12:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I suppose you think that your being one of the subjects of an ArbCom case is an example of "bullying" as well. BMK (talk) 14:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
No I don't. Please cease off topic 'ad hominem' sort of comments here. This is to discuss an idea I think would be useful. If you're not here to talk about that then what are you here for? SageRad (talk) 14:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm here to point out that (1) Your definition of "bullying" is so broad and generalized that it, in effect, does a disservice to people who in real life are actually physically bullied; (2) that your "idea" is less of a viable concept than it is a whining complaint that things aren't going your way in your Wikilife; and (3) that therefore, there is nothing here worthy of consideration by the community. BMK (talk) 15:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm at the point where i don't feel like you're here to be productive at all. But to counter your claims, it's clear that cyber-bullying is a real thing, and that bullying works on an emotional level even more than a physical level many times (and physical threat is also emotional, by the way). My "idea" is an idea, not an "idea" and the quotes are derogatory. It is not a "whining complaint" and that is derogatory. And lastly, your constant projection of your opinion as the last word is really arrogant. So all in all, you're here to denigrate me, the whole idea, and to pronounce the last word for the community. I don't think this is a cooperative mode of dialogue. You are here in a sense to be an example of the problem that needs addressing, in my view. SageRad (talk) 15:52, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
"I'm at the point"? Please re-read your first response to me - you were already "at that point" back then. And in the future, could you please include a magic decoder ring with your comments, since your lexicon is decidedly skewed: "bullying" = "someone disagrees with me"; "productive" = "someone agrees with me"; "arrogant" = "someone aside from me has an opinion, and it's different than mine". It's getting to be hard to keep things straight. BMK (talk) 16:38, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not have very good methods and systems in place to deal with any kind of conflict resolution, but I am pretty sure that a squad of people running around calling others "BULLY!" is unlikely to help the situation. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:35, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
The mode of action would probably not be to run around yelling "bully!" I envision it quite differently, as being a site of advocacy for those who are feeling bullied to get advice and help. It could also involve confronting a party or parties who appear to be bullying, but the main thing is to care for the bullied person. SageRad (talk) 15:52, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
What exactly do you see as being the "help" that would be given? And what type of advocacy? And what part of "confronting parties who appear to be bullying" is different than " run around yelling 'bully!'" -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:22, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Good point. If only enough of the community supported them instead of assuming they are the aggressors and the ones causing disruption, we would not have the problem. Telling which is which takes skill and judgement, which unfortunately won't appear overnight. The best proposal I've seen so far is m:Harassment_consultation_2015/Ideas/Hire_a_harassment_expert. Burninthruthesky (talk) 17:19, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
SarahSV, perhaps good intentions, but there's no way I would trust SageRad in any kind of leadership role. Why? Their own words. "I actually brought a case to ANI today that had aspects that i would call bullying or otherwise an abusive flavor of another editor's action." It was a nonsensical complaint followed by a semi-apology. "Of course there will always be some wrong accusations, and there are false accusations of bullying, but that's the rarity, not the norm." Completely incorrect. I look at wide array of situations every day:
  • Preventing fringe material from added -> bullying
  • Preventing someone's right to "free speech" and to use Wikipedia as a soapbox -> bullying
  • Admins blocking -> bullying
  • Disagreeing with someone -> bullying
  • Telling someone that article talk pages are not forums -> bullying
Multiple people telling someone to follow Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (in an increasingly severe tone if it seems they're not listening) is not bullying. --NeilN talk to me 21:50, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
It was not a semi-apology. I did not think the other users actions were good and the other user made no effort to make peace. I was making an effort to reach peace there. Please don't twist my words to use against me in this way, NeilN. I seriously reject all the strawmen examples you put here. Not going into detail on any of them, but simply say you're making false arguments here. Please have a bit more generosity of spirit. SageRad (talk) 09:51, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Your generosity of spirit? The fact that you reject my "strawmen examples" without going into detail on any of them (very convenient) while still clinging to "false accusations of bullying, but that's the rarity, not the norm" makes me more convinced than ever that you are unqualified to play any kind of leadership role in this initiative. --NeilN talk to me 10:04, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
You're being extremely hostile here and trying to turn this into a witch hunt about me. It's predictable that when a person suggests an anti-bullying initiative, those more aligned with bullying behaviors are going to oppose it vehemently. Anyway, i'm not going into your links, nor responding any more. Your energy in the dialogue feels extreely hostile to me and i do not welcome it or wish to engage in it. SageRad (talk) 10:10, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
NeilN, a big part of the work of an anti-bullying task force would be to examine when people feel they are being bullied and why, and whether dispute resolution mechanisms can be changed to make people feel better about it. If SageRad wants to set up this up, I'd encourage him to do so. Other people can join too, and I hope everyone would work collaboratively, even if they disagree about particular examples. SarahSV (talk) 23:30, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree with User:NeilN. Unjustified complaints of bullying are common. For that reason, if there is to be an anti-bullying task force, it will be important to be very careful that it distinguishes between unjustified claims of bullying and actual bullying. Otherwise it could be used by disruptive editors to game the system. Also, as User:Guy Macon has implied, actual bullying may often not be reported, because editors who are actually bullied are likely simply to leave Wikipedia. Therefore, I think that there is relatively little overlap between claims of bullying and actual cases of bullying. I personally do not think that bullying is such a widespread pervasive problem that it requires a special task force, but, if there is a special task force, its work will be difficult because unjustified claims of bullying are very common. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:37, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Robert McClenon's logic, presented here, "editors who are actually bullied are likely simply to leave Wikipedia. Therefore, I think that there is relatively little overlap between claims of bullying and actual cases of bullying." reminds me somewhat of Cucking stool#Use in identifying witches; if she sank, she was innocent, if she survived, she was a witch. I know exactly how it feels to be subjected to that treatment having asked for help, and it isn't at all pleasant. Burninthruthesky (talk) 08:01, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Background

For the benefit of those editors at this idea lab who are not familiar with the background, the original poster, User:SageRad, has been editing in the area of genetically modified organisms, a contentious subject, and is, in my opinion, a combative editor who does not accept advice. In June 2015, multiple editors, myself included, advised SageRad to be less combative and more collaborative. The advice was discounted as "punches in the face", "threats", and "bullying". So SageRad has been seeing bullying for months. A case is now pending at ArbCom concerning genetically modified organisms. SageRad is named as a party to the case. ArbCom would have been and is an appropriate venue to discuss bullying and similar conduct issues. SageRad did not present any evidence, which could have included evidence of bullying, and did not present a workshop proposal. Now, as ArbCom is about to finalize the case, SageRad is facing a topic-ban from genetically modified organisms. A few days ago, SageRad, as noted, came to WP:AN to discuss bullying, after never having addressed it to ArbCom. SageRad again claims to have been a victim of bullying, but has not presented any diffs or other evidence to the community either. After SageRad opened this thread here, the AN thread, which wasn’t in the right venue because it wasn’t asking for admin action, was closed. At this point, it isn’t clear whether SageRad is in particular saying that they have been bullied, and that new measures are needed to deal with bullying, or just that Wikipedia has too much bullying, and that new measures are needed to deal with bullying. In any case, the original poster has not presented and has not made an effective effort to present a case either that they have been bullied, or that bullying is such a pervasive problem in Wikipedia that it needs new measures. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I am not going to try to counter every mischaracterization in the above comment, but suffice it to say that i have had a contentious relationship toward Robert McClenon, so please take his comments about me with a large grain of salt. I will counter one error in the above, though, since Robert continues to repeat the error that i didn't present evidence at the ArbCom case.
Hopefully Robert will see this and cease to repeat at least this one particular error that he seems to have about me. That one was easy. It's more of the matters of opinion and reckoning that are harder to refute, but i assure you his words about me need a large grain of salt. Preferably Himalayan salt. SageRad (talk) 08:56, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
SageRad did fill out the evidence section at at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Genetically modified organisms/Evidence, and proposed a finding of fact at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Genetically modified organisms/Workshop so "did not present any evidence, which could have included evidence of bullying, and did not present a workshop proposal" if taken literally is a factual error. I looked at what was presented and saw no actual evidence of bullying, just a normal, somewhat heated content dispute. This is, of course a judgement call, and no doubt SageRad is of the opinion that he presented evidence of bullying, but he did not make a case for that at AE. So the slightly modified statement that SageRad did not present any evidHence of bullying, and did not present a workshop proposal addressing bullying would seem to be accurate, and may have been what Robert McClenon was trying to convey. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:24, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
Maybe. Thanks for working toward the facts, Guy Macon. One of the subheadings of my evidence submission there was "JzG being generally onerous, bullying, strong-arming" so i did at least mention the term, and one of the links i provided in the evidence was to this discussion in which Robert McClenon took part and says a lot of things that i would take issue with of course, like "SageRad has taken all cautions as threats and as bullying, and is unable to accept advice." I take goodwilled cautions as such and i take chilling "advice" as such. I think i can largely discern between the two. Robert and i have a long contentious history, it seems. I'd forgotten about that interaction about re-closing the RfC. Wow, so much water under the bridge. I could go down a rabbit hole, but i'd prefer to live in the present. Thanks, Guy Macon. SageRad (talk) 09:34, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
I was mistaken about SageRad not having provided an evidence section. (The evidence section is very long, and apparently I scrolled past their section.) I do see the evidence, and there was a mention in passing that Guy/JzG had engaged in bullying behavior. What we see is that SageRad really doesn't like editor Guy/JzG. I was mistaken. However, the real question is whether to take any next steps to address bullying. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:45, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Observations

My own observations are that many claims of bullying are not justified, and are made by editors who persist in editing against consensus, and are sometimes associated with claims that articles are controlled by cabals. Most of the cases that I have been where there really has been bullying have been cases of article ownership, where one or two editors enforce their article ownership by bullying. I don’t see bullying as the pervasive toxic problem that the original poster sees, but the original poster is, in my opinion, an editor who sees disagreement as bullying. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes the claimed "consensus" is not a real consensus, but one trying to be forced by one or more editors against the protests of some other editors who have good reasons. Sometimes the charge of WP:IDHT is a rhetorical device, when the other editor does hear and yet actually disagrees. I've seen and been subject to bullying tactics in many dynamics, most of them not really about WP:OWN but usually about trying to force an agenda into an article. Sometimes just seemingly for the shadenfreude or sadistic pleasure that the bully seems to get from making another person suffer. SageRad (talk) 09:01, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • The best I can tellya is take a trip (along with 2 or 3 other editors) over to WP:UKNAT & see about getting the usage British adopted for British bio articles, in place of Welsh, Scottish, English & Northern Irish/Irish. After about a month, let us know how the experience was. GoodDay (talk) 21:39, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
Hahahahaha, I did that, just for a minute, skimming the Talk page. Head, meet wall... --Tsavage (talk) 21:18, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
I got an even better one. Suggest replacing country with constituent country or combning the two consituent country at the articles of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Then, tells us what kinda reception you get, after pushing those proposals for over a week. GoodDay (talk) 03:33, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Next steps

Although I disagree with almost everything that User;SageRad says, I agree that WP:ANI is not an effective forum for dealing with bullying. "The community" at the noticeboards does not deal effectively with issues that divide or polarize the community. Bullies divide and polarize the community, because any bully always has a few followers as well as a few victims. ArbCom and Arbitration Enforcement are the only forums that are able to deal with issues that divide or polarize the community. Perhaps the English Wikipedia needs sanctions reform, such as some sort of jury system below the ArbCom for dealing with conduct issues. This idea lab is an appropriate place to discuss sanctions reform. I don’t see evidence that bullying is such a pervasive problem that it requires a task force. (The gender gap is identified as a pervasive problem that requires a task force.) It isn’t clear whether a task force would try to mediate, when mediation usually does not work with conduct issues, or whether the task force would impose sanctions on the bullies. If the latter, then the proposal should be for sanctions reform. While I don’t see bullying as the pervasive problem that SageRad does, I do see bullying as a problem that isn’t dealt with effectively at WP:ANI (or WP:AN). Robert McClenon (talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

One possible step, short of sanctions reform, not involving a task force, would be to ask admins to identify themselves as admins willing to look into bullying. Maybe the current group of administrators who are willing to make difficult blocks are already the appropriate people to deal with bullying. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I don’t see bullying as a pervasive problem, or Wikipedia as a toxic environment due to bullying. However, bullying is a problem that is not being dealt with effectively below ArbCom and AE. Maybe sanctions reform is needed; I think that it is, because the English Wikipedia is too large and fractious to be self-governing by direct democracy, but others may disagree. Maybe editors who view themselves as being bullied need to know what admins to turn to. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

  • SageRad, I appreciate what you are trying to do, but I see a problem which can be seen in comments like "...a site of advocacy for those who are feeling bullied to get advice and help" and "the main thing is to care for the bullied person". The problem is the assumption that "feeling bullied" is evidence of actual bullying. Sometimes there is real bullying, and sometimes the accusations are false.
Furthermore, those who complain about being bullied are not necessarily representative of those who are actually being bullied, The real victims often stay silent out of fear of further bullying, and you often see bullies escalate the abuse when someone complains. On the other hand, those who are most vocal about feeling bullied are often themselves doing some bullying, and using accusations of bullying as a tool to that end. And of course there are cases where two fighters are going at each other tooth and nail when suddenly one plays the bully card.
In my view, the place to start is having someone uninvolved evaluate the evidence in an attempt to see who is bullying who, rather than relying on what people self-report. Otherwise, we end up in a classic "Ready, Fire, Aim" situation. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:52, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I have trouble with "the main thing is to care for the bullied person". Wikipedia is WP:NOTTHERAPY and the "care" cannot be "allow the person being bullied to have the content version that they like". The purpose would need to be something like "the main thing is to help all people contribute to Wikipedia to their potential".-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:09, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree with User:Guy Macon and User talk:TheRedPenOfDoom. What on earth is meant by "the main thing is to care for the bullied person"? How? Does that mean that editors who think that they are being bullied should be given some sort of easy preferential treatment? What on earth does that mean? I really don't understand. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:00, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think you are getting the spirit of what i'm suggesting. It's not therapy sessions. It's to address a problem by being in solidarity of sorts with the person who is being beaten down wrongly by another, in Wikispace. Often there is ganging up. The help of a single other person who sees and affirms the reality of what the victim of bullying techniques is saying, can make all the difference. To affirm that something is wrong when it feels wrong can negate the gaslighting aspects of bullying techniques.

From what i have seen lately, when one person is being railroaded by another editor or a group of editors, when someone comes along and sees the situation, witnesses it, and calls it what it is, the person who is being railroaded gets a desperately-needed breath of fresh air. It's the solidarity of being seen -- affirming their own gut feeling that they're being railroaded or bullied, that they're not crazy, that they actually have dignity and as much claim to knowing as the others who are trying to make them feel stupid, wrong, or otherwise bad for speaking their mind. Gaslighting is serious stuff and it happens here on Wikipedia. There are all sorts of rhetorical tropes that effectively are forms of gaslighting -- undercutting the other's sense of even having a worthy voice. Making them start to think they're crazy or stupid or something, when in fact it's a power dynamic of domination.

Of course there will always be some wrong accusations, and there are false accusations of bullying, but that's the rarity, not the norm. As i would say in a cautious analogy to the subject of rape. Few accusations of rape are made up. Are some? Sure, some percent are, but not many, and the fact that a few accusations are made ingenuinely in no way means that people should not listen very intently when someone says that they have been raped. Or otherwise abused. These things are about power dynamics, and abusive behavior also tries to shut down the victim from speaking out. There is a silencing that occurs that it would be good to provide some assistance, a friendly and trustworthy person to listen and advocate on behalf of the person so they're not so alone. SageRad (talk) 09:08, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

SageRad, what you say about gaslighting is important. I raised the same issue here with Phillipe when he worked for the Foundation. SarahSV (talk) 23:54, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
SarahSV, thank you for this. Your quote here really describes a reality i've experienced and seen in others: "So much time is wasted arguing about what it is. It's almost always left to the person at the centre of it to explain, and by then they're drowning in it and not at all coherent. Editors radically underestimate the emotional effect harassment has on the target. The latter's increasingly poor behaviour is used as evidence that there is no harassment, and that the problem was the target all along."
That is part of the dynamic that i have seen. Others do this subtle but very powerful thing, a sort of psychological manipulation, with boundary violations and gaslighting aspects, and then the recipient at some point lashes out and their "bad behavior" is cited agains them just at the very moment when they finally stand up to the bully. It's really a bad dynamic and it ends up getting rid of the people who are not bullying, leaving a more and more concentrated group of bullying people in Wikipedia. SageRad (talk) 10:17, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
More likely it gets rid of the very civil POV-pushers whom the community is fed up with. --NeilN talk to me 10:33, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

A categorization

I will comment that, in my experience, editors who complain of being bullied fall into at least four classes. First, there are aggressive editors who edit against consensus, because they know that they are right. They then complain of being bullied. These editors may or may not themselves be engaged in attempted bullying, but have been pushed back because they are against consensus. Second, there are passive-aggressive editors who edit against consensus, because they know that they are right. They then complain of being bullied. When their own behavior is discussed, they typically say that they need to take a Wikibreak of a few months to recover from their hurts from the personal attacks and bullying. They do not themselves engage in bullying, but are disruptive in a different way. Third, there are editors who run into article ownership, and complain about it, and about the bullying by the article owners. Fourth, there are editors who run into article ownership, and complain about it, but are otherwise disruptive, by flaming or soapboxing. Only the third class of editors who complain of bullying deserve real assistance. The original poster falls into the first class, in my own opinion. However, I would like the original poster to explain what sort of care should be given to bullied editors. I don't think that editors who are actually bullied need care. I think that they need administrative action, to block the bullies, but only if they really are innocent victims of bullying, and most editors who complain of being bullied are not innocent, although some are. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:09, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

  • Right off the bat, Robert, i have a problem with your phrase "who complain of being bullied" -- that very wording is denigrating the act of anyone saying "I am being bullied" and denying the validity of it. The word "complain" is very telling here. There is always going to be a need for complex judgments in situations. Sure. But please don't deny that bullying dynamics occur. I think they occur rather commonly within Wikispace.
  • Secondly, you classify me above as an "aggressive editor who edits against consensus, because they know that they are right". Well, what can i say? You're wrong about that. You have a chip on your shoulder against me, it's clear from this and many other venues where you've chosen to engage where i have spoken, and to write bad notions about me. You seem to be following me around a bit lately, daresay hounding. You don't like me, it's clear. But i've edited with reason and logic and sources, and i've spoken to other editors to express real thoughts. I've not edited against consensus, but tried to use dialogue to build consensus. In the process i have come up against many editors who are not engaged in good dialogue practices, who use rhetoric far too much to try to force points, and who ironically use alphabet soup like IDHT and DTS when they are really the ones who don't hear that, and who beat the dead horse.
  • Thirdly, sometimes ANI works and sometimes it doesn't. It can be luck of the draw. I actually brought a case to ANI today that had aspects that i would call bullying or otherwise an abusive flavor of another editor's action. Thankfully a good admin showed up and resolved it well. The articles were improved and nobody got hurt, and i felt vindicated that ANI does work sometimes. However, if you showed up first, i don't feel confident that it would have been resolved as well. I feel it's more likely that you would have dismissed my concern and said "The other editor made those edits according to guidelines, so what's your problem?" How it did get resolved also used the guidelines, though. It's about how the guidelines are applied, and the spirit behind it. If there is generosity of spirit an willingness to see the human dynamics behind the interactions, then there is the possibility of resolving it in a way that follows guidelines and yet is more humane and also more positive to the outcome of the content. SageRad (talk) 09:17, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
  • I am going to have to see some actual evidence showing that false accusations of bullying are rare. I am going to ignore your rape analogy and suggest that others do so as well. Nothing good will come from changing the subject in this way. Could we just stick with the traditional Nazi Germany analogies, please? --Guy Macon (talk) 09:32, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
User:Guy Macon - Not everyone here has been on the Usenet or otherwise knows Godwin's Law in either its original form or in Tim Skirvin's restatement of it. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:48, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
I can only tell that reporting someone to ANI [1] without even trying to resolve the issue on article talk page is an excellent example of wiki-bulling. Having that in mind, this thread looks to me as an exercise in casting aspersion. My very best wishes (talk) 02:27, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
You distort the nature of what happened there. It was a very specific kind of incident. Please stop. This is not about me and your representation of the incident is wrong, but this is not the topic of this section. Your doing this here is wrong. This is what happens when i bring up an idea for the community? I do NOT want to get into the specifics of the incident or to discuss it here, but apparently other agreed with me and helped to resolve it, so your opinion is not the only one. You are an involved person here, with a chip on your shoulder against me, as a few other people here are. Can't i please bring up an idea without people with grudges against me coming here and misrepresenting things about me? This is not about me. Please speak on the topic or cease. Bad energy. SageRad (talk) 09:58, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
All right. We are talking about comments that you or someone else may perceive as wiki-bullying. There are different cases. (a) clear "personal attacks - those are already covered by NPA; (b) battleground requests on AE/ANI (those which resulted in no action - as the ANI just noted above) - covered by "what WP is not"; (c) legitimate comments - one can actually make a lot of legitimate comments on an appropriate noticeboard, such as ANI, about another contributor, which will be just fine - this is not wikibullying. Your proposal is not needed. My very best wishes (talk) 16:34, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Points of fact: This discussion here is not about me. But, the above comment refers to the ANI case linked above, and i have to point out several problems with how it's characterized: It had nothing to do with "battleground behavior". It did result in action. This thread is nothing about casting aspersions. SageRad (talk) 13:11, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Cliques and clique behaviour

I think it may be useful to recast the issue in different terms, with regards to the feeling of being outnumbered. There is a certain degree of cliquish behaviour that arises in all communities, and Wikipedia is not immune. It's only human nature to feel a greater connection with those whom you've collaborated with before, and to harbour some doubt about newcomers. This can lead to a new editor feeling ignored by an inner circle, which I think underlies some of the emotions described above.

To combat this, experienced editors need to be more self-aware of how their responses may be perceived and make persistent efforts to be inclusive. Conversely, new editors need to be more understanding that other editors may not always craft the perfect response to them. It is, though, a very hard problem. In schools, students can be required to participate in sessions outlining the problems with cliques and techniques to minimize their impact, but in a volunteer environment like Wikipedia, it's hard to target the appropriate persons.

To anyone interested in forming a task force: I suggest you go ahead and just do it. Create a page in Wikipedia project space, and start brainstorming on its talk page about how you can put something into effect that is achievable with your current membership, bearing in mind that people tend to drift away from Wikipedia groups after a few days or weeks. If you are able to make some procedures work, then you can build upon that. If your first attempts fail, it's not a big deal; try something else, instead. In the spirit of wikis, be willing to boldly start a new initiative, evaluate it, and then try again! isaacl (talk) 04:10, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Isaacl. A lot of (what is perceived as) bullying is inadvertent, a product of large numbers of people who may know each somewhat commenting on someone who is not so well known. Sometimes the editor in question is being disruptive, but justified criticism can morph into bullying without anyone really noticing, except of course the target. So how do we handle that? That would be an excellent issue for a task force to explore. SarahSV (talk) 06:27, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
And sometimes justified criticism can mount up and morph into a consensus – the device we supposedly use to settle disputes – which will on occasion be interpreted as "ganging up" or "bullying". We even have the relatively non-pejorative term "piling on". (One aspect of which I've never understood: "I agree with the oppose votes, but I don't want to pile on", as a result of which someone passes an RfA, or "I don't want to pile on here", so a topic ban doesn't reach consensus. C'mon folks, "piling on" is not a bad thing', it's part of the methodology of achieving a consensus.)
As long as "bullying" is intrinsically tied to subjective feelings on the part of the reporting editor, there's never going to be an effective way of controlling it (if it even is an endemic problem, which I am not sure it is), because there's never going to be an effective way of proving that the charge of bullying isn't simply a tactical method of counter-acting opponents without dealing with their arguments.
Further, Editor A feels "bullied" when a couple of people politely point them to relevant policies, rules and guidelines, while Editor B, with a much thicker skin, can take on an orcish army and still not feel personally attacked. So -- are we expected to read the riot act to the polite editors trying to help because they (supposedly) engendered a feeling of "bullying", while allowing the orcs to run free? Without a way to get inside the head of the editor and confirm that a report of "bullying" is a real response to what happened, and without a scale to objectively grade what they were actually subjected to, there's just not going to be any kind of effective way of dealing with what may or may not be a real problem -- which is why the answer to "bullying" is going to be to deal with it on a case-by-case basis, sometimes telling the antagonists to dial it down, sometimes telling the subject to grow a thicker skin if they want to edit here. BMK (talk) 08:58, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
To address User:Beyond My Ken, I would suggest that an unwillingness to "pile on" may be misplaced sportsmanship, probably by Americans. "Piling on" has a very specific meaning in American football, in which it is a form of unnecessary roughness consisting of dumping on the opponent's ball carrier when he is already down. It shouldn't apply in Wikipedia because the rule in American football only applies when the ball carrier has already been downed, and, in the cases mentioned by BMK, the RFA or RFC or AFD is still open, when the referee hasn't yet blown the whistle or the closer hasn't yet closed the discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:47, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
BMK, there is a very real difference between being the minority opinion in an otherwise consensus, versus bullying behaviors, so i would call the above perhaps a dynamic to be aware of but not really helpful because of the way you continue to put "bullying" in quotes as if it could not possibly be real, and you seem to use the dynamic you describe as a way to explain that there is not bullying, just people who are wrong and can't take others saying so... so... there is some polemic exaggeration there, too. I see that some people don't have a problem with bullying and don't even want the subject talked about or anything done to address it, and say it's not really happening, or it's all subjective weakness of those who think it's happening to them. SageRad (talk) 10:29, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't quite know what anyone hopes to achieve with this thread which is now TL;DR. The best I can do is repost the same answer I gave to SageRad on my Arbcom Election Q&A page:
Bullying is a delicate issue. It's a bit of a Catch-22 because on one hand there are editors like yourself who feel that more should be done about it, while on the other hand admins who block the bullies are often accused of being the bullies, or even end up being bullied themselves. Due to our WP:INVOLVED policy, admins are not allowed to defend themselves against gratuitous PA, incivility, and bullying and this may possibly be a reason why it could eventually be perceived that they are reluctant to intervene (this is however pure conjecture on my part and I personally have no evidence for it - as an admin I am not afraid of the flak I get for my work, and there are in fact a few others who are prepared to work in the trenches). There are others who would suggest that the creation of a special group of vigilantes would not only create more bureaucracy but would also increase the abuse of power - mind you, it might finally let the admins off the hook. So I'm afraid I do not have a silver bullet for you..
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:17, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
I see. Your position seems clear on this. I hope to at least talk about some real problems within Wikipedia that make it a hostile environment for some people, for very real reasons (not just overly sensitive people "crying bully" but real things going on). If it is tl;dr; for you then that's for you. For me, and some others, it seems that at least we're talking about something that is long overdue (even if it keeps being derailed by hostile energies). I would have to disagree with the role of admins. Sometimes admins can be bullies. Other times they are very effective at curbing bullying. It's just inconsistent. I've been subject to bullying behavior of at least one admin and was unable to even get any remedy for that from ArbCom so the admin is still doing his thing to others. I see it happening. Railroading a good editor into a block recently, in a McCarthy style inquisition. I went back and looked at the blocked editor's record and it was pretty darn clean and their edits were pretty darn good. I also don't see WP:INVOLVED being observed by admins who just don't want to observe it. There was a blatant case of this in the last months in a closing of an RfC that i set up at Monsanto legal cases where an admin who had become involved closed the RfC and then refused to recuse or re-open it when asked, and AN refused to do anything about it. So the remedies that should exist do not always work because they depend on the character and judgments of he people who come to the case, and often those are the ones who are attracted to it because they have a bone to pick. I think it may be matter of critical mass, a culture of Wikipedia matter. If we get enough people aware of the dynamics of bullying and gaslighting and this sort of thing, then maybe there would be a critical mass and it could be addressed. I don't think we're there yet. That's why i proposed this task force -- to have some people who are aware of the dynamics, recognize them, and know how to intervene appropriately and help people who are being ganged up on. SageRad (talk) 10:29, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Or it could be that the problem is you. Do you have any theory as to why it is that in multiple interactions with others who don't know each other you somehow wind up feeling bullied every time, and yet others here (me, for example) find Wikipedia to be mostly full of helpful and friendly people, plus a few easily-ignored jerks? Could the difference be in our respective behavior towards others? I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:53, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Ok, enough of this. The problem is not me. I am not perfect but i recognize bullying behavior when i see it. Enough of this blaming the victim thing. It's the very nature of the gaslighting dynamic that is a serious issue. I do not claim perfection of judgment, but the continual use of this trope that if someone brings up the subject of bullying behaviors then that person is the problem is really a problem in itself. I find a lot of friendly people here and i also do find a minority, but a powerfully vocal and bullying minority, of people who are abusive to others, who follow others around to be mean to them, who seem to take pleasure in being emotionally abusive, who like to call others "stupid" in so many words (like the somehow-acceptable constant use of the stupid term "Dunning-Kruger effect" for instance) and then get no consequences from doing so, because of alliances with some very similar admins, a "good old boys" network. So no, it's not me. I assure you it's not me. There's a problem of abusive behavior here. Others see it. Some wish to deny it. That's predictable. SageRad (talk) 11:09, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
SageRad, I agree that this is not about you. Regardless of previous conflicts you may have been in, you brought this to the idea lab as something that should be judged by its own merits, and that's how it should be discussed, not on judgments of the editor who brought it forth. It is unfortunate that the issue has been sidetracked by previous disagreements. If a different editor had brought this idea here, then the discussion would be much different. If we were to omit all discussion regarding you personally, this section would be much shorter.  DiscantX 12:28, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
By and large, the idea has been discussed on its own merits, and it has been found wanting. SageRad, however, has rejected any and all criticisms of his idea as being "unproductive" or "unhelful" - clearly they are not really open to discussion at all, what they want is simply validation. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes "God answers all prayers; sometimes the answer is 'no'" BMK (talk) 19:27, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Let's remain polite. I think that most people here would agree that bullying (real or perceived) is a problem from time to time. However, the dominant sentiment in this (indeed overly long) thread seems to be that the proposed cures are worse than the disease, due to the subjective nature of (perceived) bullying. I agree with that sentiment and would suggest to close this with the conclusion that there is no consensus to take actions at this moment in time. Arnoutf (talk) 20:41, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
SageRad, I deliberately tried to recast the problem because the term "bullying" implies intent on the part of the critic. I think it's easier to look for solutions that don't require assuming this intent. Nonetheless, you've posted your concerns in a number of places now, so hopefully you've been able to find some like-minded persons. I suggest you move onto the next phase: start a project page and get everyone interested in doing something regarding this issue to discuss what to do next. isaacl (talk) 23:37, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
isaacl, thank you for your comment. I do focus on intent because i think it's really the thing that matters the most. If someone is just really blunt and ruffles a few people, but when they are made aware, they say "Hey, i'm sorry, i didn't mean to ruffle you," then that's okay with me. On the other hand, if someone is intentionally muddying dialogue, casting aspersions, being consecending to project a hierarchy, and being generally abusive to knock another person down -- even if they deny it, since plausible deniability is a big part of bullying -- that the intent matters.
How do i start a project page? I would like to move forward and see what happens. There is a good amount of interest, despite the criticism that is here. It seems to split in correlation to other aspects of a person's personality, whether they think this project is a good idea or a bad one. SageRad (talk) 16:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
I apologize if I was unclear; I didn't mean to imply that you should ignore what people reply. But if you start out telling people that they are bullying others, you've already assumed they have deliberately set out to act in bad faith. This makes it harder to get people to respond constructively, since you've placed them on the defensive. Additionally, it deflects the conversation to "were you assuming bad faith?" rather than "can you provide the same commentary but in a different manner that reduces conflict?" In practice, very few people are going to say, yes, I was assuming bad faith, and you'll end up in a long debate that is beside the point: regardless of intent, experienced editors need to be aware of ways to de-escalate conversations, and new editors need to be aware that many editors are trying to do what's best for the project, and are not acting out of personal bias but Wikipedia guidelines and policies. isaacl (talk) 16:47, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
"Good faith" is a more flexible concept than your brief comment here suggests. An editor could act in good faith towards Wikipedia by trying to drive away an editor that he believes is harmful to the overall project. The result could be described as "bullying in good faith" – bullying you, to protect Wikipedia from your involvement.
IMO most bullying will stop when bullying stops being one of the most efficient methods for resolving disputes (especially one-on-one or one-on-two disputes that the larger community is neglecting despite requests for help – which is most of them). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
I apologize for being unclear. To clarify, it would be best if one didn't assume that editor A is choosing to deliberately drive away editor B who is conforming to community standards for engaging collaboratively.
Personally, I think binding arbitration of content disputes would help resolve problems more swiftly. As far as I can tell, though, the community isn't willing, at present, to deviate from its current consensus approach. isaacl (talk) 20:22, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
We do have an essay on WP:Bullying. It states that it expands on the civility policy and the policy on article ownership. That is consistent with my observation that, when there actually is bullying (and the OP and I disagree on how often there actually is bullying), it is usually associated with article ownership behavior. As noted, we also have the harassment policy. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

What the world needs now is...Guides

Tossing this in at the tail end, maybe all that's needed to resolve a lot of real and perceived bullying, lone editors being swarmed, and various ownership issues - not every one, but some, maybe even the majority - is an informal but defined volunteer role of Guide, to step in with a few words of orientation and context for individual editors (usually new editors, or editors new to more intense editing environments) who may be getting in over their heads in a particular discussion.

  • A Guide would offer a brief, blunt and practical explanation, advice and some context in a contentious or potentially adversarial situation, and provide a couple of links to examples and resources. A generic example of a Guide comment might be:
"You may be absolutely correct, and other editors out there may agree with you, but the way things are going right here and now, arguing the way you are, you only open yourself up to [a world of frustration/an argument that you will never win/getting blocked for edit warring/whatever fits]. Better to step back, maybe take a day to read these examples of how similar discussions can go. Also, thoroughly examine these [specific policies and guidelines relevant to the discussion], because most Wikipedia rules are open to case-by-case interpretation, and are at times entirely misused. Content discussion on Wikipedia can get pretty intense, so it's best to be familiar with the territory before diving in. :)"
  • Guide comments could be inserted in a Talk page or noticeboard discussion, or in User talk (selected for the situation, both ways have advantages).
  • If Guides gain traction, a simple Guide Resource page would develop, with handy links and boilerplate for common situations. (Kept clear and straightforward, the page itself would likely become a useful resource its own.)
  • The Guide concept relies on simplicity and the intuitive participation of each volunteer - it's not mentoring of any sort, only a quick word of advice in passing. Probably just a couple of basic rules like "one Guide comment, one Guide reply" or "get in, say your piece, get out," and, "you're helping to level the playing field, not taking sides," are all the starting rules it needs.
  • Guides provides a bit of structure to what at times happens anyway, to see if a culture and best practices emerge. As with everything else around here, certain types of editors will gravitate to this role, and if they are the right types, this should be a relatively easy bootstrap startup.

We are continually encouraged to focus on content, however, when editing gets intense, comments of one sort or another on behavior are always in the mix, so why not cut to the bottom line and have someone say plainly what needs to be said about a discussion reality, before it turns into a capital case? --Tsavage (talk) 01:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate this greatly, Tsavage. In fact, this is quite a bit like what i was envisioning, and in fact what i've been doing in a few cases recently where i noticed a bewildered new user up against the culture of Wikipedia old timers who can cite the alphabet soup and use the various tropes that i am now familiar with after 8 or 10 months of editing, and now i can understand and not be shocked or daze by. I've helped out in a couple of recent cases where an editor seemed to be railroaded or up against a group of people saying how bad they were, when in fact their edits looked actually like the better ones in the mix, and thereby gave them a bit of solidarity. So i agree wholeheartedly with the idea of guides, roving guides you might say, with a nose to the dynamics of power and domination that can go on. Though i may not always say "just step back and back off" as my advice, i may also weigh in, in the editor's defense, and say against the crowdthink, that the editor actually appears to be doing good work and to be misrepresented here, in other words, to be their momentary advocate, which can give them a feeling that they're not actually crazy to think that reason and dialogue ought to win the day rather than mobbing. Or maybe the new user may just be mistaken about sourcing requirements, or trying to insert original research, or something else where they are actually in the wrong but it's not been explained in a simple and friendly way yet, so they got oppositional. Could be very situational. I very much appreciate your phrasing it in this way, as guides, or i would also say "advocates" perhaps, which may be less troubling to others than the term "task force" which sounds like it wields authority, which is not what i intended to convey. More like a group of helpful and knowledgeable people with an understanding of the power dynamics that occur on Wikipedia, hard-won wisdom coming from time spent here, not always apparent to a newbie. SageRad (talk) 14:49, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Practical matters

  • As a practical matter, if user A feels bullyied by user M, he must simply tell user M: "please do not comment about me anywhere", and the chances are user M. will do exactly that. During my editing here I received such request only once (from a user I actually liked) and respected it. However, it often happens that user A "pings" user M., makes comments about user M., starts and continues discussions with user M., and so on. If that happens, none of the users has been actually bullied or harassed. My very best wishes (talk) 17:02, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

How to start a project page?

It's been suggested that i start a project page for this. How do i do that? Thank you for any help.

I feel this idea may shape up to be a group of volunteers who discuss bullying behaviors, keep an eye out for them, discuss and try out some basic ways to help people who are subject to bullying behaviors, and to have a place where people can go to ask for help. Not really a task force in the sense of having authority, but rather a hub of volunteers who can advocate for people being bullied or railroaded or ganged up on, and try to untangle conflicts more productively. SageRad (talk) 16:14, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:How to create a page for ways to create a page. You can look at existing WikiProject pages to see how they organize things. I suggest at this point you can start with something very simple on the project page, like a paragraph stating an intent, and start using the associated talk page to work through ideas with other interested parties. isaacl (talk) 16:35, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Isaacl. I will create this soon, once i am ready to do it well. In the meantime, i have found workplace bullying, which appears to be more helpful than bullying in terms of defining overt versus covert bullying, and may be very helpful in discussing such dynamics on Wikipedia, as it's somewhat like a workplace more than a domestic or social situation. I've also found a very helpful essay by the name of Wikipedia:POV railroad. I wish i'd known about this before. SageRad (talk) 19:04, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't want to be too involved in this discussion and get into any debate, but I think any anti-bullying or bullying prevention committee should take complaints anonymously or off-wiki. The problem is that many wiki bullies have good reputations and passing judgement/sanctions against a user usually ends in an election-style popularity debate. A person reporting bullying will usually get no support or even worse face community condemnation against a user with multiple recognitions. That's why I think if such a group is formed, it should take complaints and supporting evidence through a private messaging system and then investigate the allegations. Public complaints against any bully will only make such a working group's work harder when facing the wrath of his admirers and usually tag-team. My two cents.--Nadirali نادرالی (talk) 08:05, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
User:Nadirali makes an interesting point which illustrates the complexity of the problem. While I disagree with the original poster's insistence that bullying is a widespread prevalent problem in Wikipedia, Nadirali makes a valid point about cliques and article ownership. The English Wikipedia community is not able by community action to deal with editors who divide or polarize the community, who have both supporters and opponents. Some of these editors are seen by part of the community as bullies, but by other parts of the community as excellent content creators. I am hesitant however to create a task force that acts behind the scenes, which could become another clique or even a cabal. Can those who want to create an anti-bullying task force explain how it will be able to act effectively without acting secretly but without dividing the community? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:03, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
From what I have seen, the reason said bullies have supporters is merely because they share the same POV. They bully to get the results they want, through aggressive ownership and edit-warring, and thus, people who also take that viewpoint are pleased when the person with the other view gives up or loses their temper and gets blocked. Thus the bullies get the results they wanted and nothing happens to them. I think this is a good proposal because ANI has totally failed in dealing with a few notorious bullies because their supporters jump in to defend them and thus consensus is unclear. I think an anti-bullying task force would be a forum to address this long-term behavior. I don't see why it needs to be done in secret when we're talking about on-wiki actions. Wikipedia needs to attract more editors, and many good ones are being chased off. I was an infrequent contributor for many years because people were nasty and I didn't want to deal with it. People who are chronically uncivil (and especially those who are proudly so) need to be dealt with for the betterment of the project. Think of how many people they are driving off Wikipedia. —МандичкаYO 😜 14:36, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
You know if editors holding fringe views ever get on this proposed task force, it's going to be a disaster. For example, a group of editors monitor the featured article Evolution, preventing attempts to portray it as "just another theory" or preventing the addition of Creation science material. This includes hatting or removing talk page posts that regurgitate the same points that have been brought up a thousand times before. All we need is someone to cry, "bullying!", a couple of fellow travellers on the task force, and all of a sudden coddling fringe-pushing editors becomes more important than WP:FRINGE. The same situation can occur in many different areas - GMO, vaccines, alt-health, birthers, truthers, etc., etc. --NeilN talk to me 15:07, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
The effectiveness of any group will depend on its ability to figure out procedures that will work in practice. This includes dealing with issues such as group members who don't follow policy, as well as the considerable amount of time it takes to mediate discussions. It's a daunting chore, and I am appreciative of anyone who is willing to take it on. isaacl (talk) 16:29, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
We already have this kind of community involved in dispute resolution, and as far as I know it's not used to POV push. This project should be made up of experienced users who can spot reasonable behavior and attempts to insert fringe material. We're talking long-term abuse here in behavior and treatment of other editors. There are a few notorious people who have lengthy block logs for abusive behavior yet are still editing away because the system as it exists is not set up to deal with them. —МандичкаYO 😜 09:59, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I was thinking of the current groups that are often involved in various content disputes, and how they've had to deal with members who, for various reasons, act contrary to policy. Often it's with good intentions on their part, which makes it a delicate balance to handle. If the group does a good job overall, it garners trust and becomes more effective; otherwise it fades. Working out a practical operating procedure for appropriate intervention that can work for the persons who are willing to assume these proposed tasks for a significant portion of time will be a challenge. isaacl (talk) 12:49, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • In response to the ping, I don't support that they stay private forever. I just think the complaints and investigations should be conducted anonymously. Once they have found validity in them, the anti-bullying committee should inform the accused and ask them for anything in their defense. If the one accused of bullying can counter these accusations privately, the case can be continued. If the bully has nothing to say or no reasonable defense, the anti-bullying committee can consult the arbcom about sanctions. It should not be made public until all steps have been taken to avoid further escalation and controversy. You know, there are many anti-bullying hotlines that take complaints privately to protect the possible victim from harm. I don't see why wiki couldn't do without one. The less publicity, the better.--Nadirali نادرالی (talk) 04:51, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I do not agree with NeilN. I agree with his list of actions that "are bullying" on Wikipedia, and for that, he is obviously expert. On his page you can see that he regularly puts notches, for each his edit/delete action and he is obviously boasts with that. Of course he has a good excuse for his actions, and that is "Wikipedia's policies and guidelines". Now we can see, which's actually causing the problem. We can just imagine the number of people which the NeilN deprive the right to information, which is the number of people he is deprive the right to freedom of opinion and expression in the media, which is advertised as "free". Wikipedia policy: that this is not a forum, it is not important truth, and that is important verifiability is complete nonsense. Wikipedia, ruled by self-appointed, editors and administrators, who have their own purpose, and which are hidden behind their hooligan nicknames = bullying. So who is this "Big Brother" or "Great Leader" or "The great administrator" ever brought the benefit to mankind? Wikipedia has to change policy! Wikipedia has to be a serious forum! On the Wikipedia in the first place, must be the truth, and the right to creative freedom of opinion and expression! Hopefully, that Wikipedia, as soon as possible, change its policy and that the work of the administrator like NeilN, will no longer be needed, in fact it will be banned. Otherwise, we should forget the Wikipedia! Your initiative SageRad is a praiseworthy and I congratulate you on it. I am a few days ago at the same place, raised the question: "What is with the truth on Wikipedia?" and look where it is now this question? Vjekoslav Brkić, Osijek.213.202.80.195 (talk) 09:34, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for providing a great example of how many accusations of bullying can be dismissed out of hand and how this proposed task force could be misused. "[F]alse accusations of bullying, but that's the rarity, not the norm", indeed. --NeilN talk to me 18:18, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I fully agree, as a result of painful experience, that bullying is a problem in Wikipedia, specifically the form of bullying known as Mobbing. But it is difficult to see how it can be fixed from within Wikipedia (as opposed to outsiders bringing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against both individual editors and Wikipedia demanding punitive damages if and when, for example, somebody kills themselves leaving a suicide note saying it was due to Wikipedia's failure to adequately protect them from bullying). The trouble is that Mobbing is all too often an integral part of the way 'consensus' is reached, though it is called 'piling on' by those editors who think it's a good thing precisely because it can achieve 'consensus' (and who say so - see some comments above). And since 'piling on' is not seen as bullying, Arbcom couldn't protect its victims even if they wanted to (and many of its members probably don't want to). Within Wikipedia, this requirement for 'consensus' can only be got rid of by 'consensus', which won't be forthcoming given that many Wikipedians support it - indeed there'll presumably be no consensus for banning 'piling on' either, given how many Wikipedians use it - indeed anybody proposing such a ban risks being mobbed by the supporters of 'piling on'. I've been 'piled on' myself when I made what I thought (and still think) was a perfectly sensible suggestion (arguably unrelated to mobbing, a term unknown to me at the time) to reduce what I saw as a bullying risk, but I was far too traumatized by that experience to have any wish to risk pointlessly going through it again. But I wish you, SageRad, the best of luck with your proposed task force, even if I suspect it can't succeed without the sort of outside lawsuits I mentioned above, but hopefully I'll turn out to be wrong about that - indeed if you do ever succeed in getting your task force started, please let me know, as I just might then want to think about joining it. Tlhslobus (talk) 01:35, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Of course one approach might be for somebody (possibly but not necessarily your proposed task force, SageRad) to try to persuade the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) that they are at serious risk of being successfully sued (with punitive damages) for psychological trauma caused by their lack of an adequate anti-mobbing policy. (Note: I'm NOT suggesting you or anybody else threaten to sue them, which our rules don't allow, but that you or some expert warns them that currently unknown others might successfully sue them.) But persuading them would require a legal expert from a jurisdiction that allows punitive damages for such things (I'm no legal expert, and my country doesn't allow any punitive damages, without which WMF almost certainly have no need to worry except in the seemingly unlikely event that there's an actual suicide, and one that can be convincingly blamed on WMF failures), and I'd expect their own legal experts have made sure that WMF (but perhaps not mobbing editors and/or mob-tolerating admins and/or mob-tolerating arbcom members) have nothing to worry about. My own experience was that WMF (unlike Arbcom, who were rude and 100% dismissive, telling me I was simply wrong without saying why, and warning me not to waste their time like that again) responded in a polite but non-committal way to my above-mentioned anti-bullying suggestion, saying their lawyers would look into the matter and might get back to me but probably wouldn't. They never did get back to me, but a few months later my most serious complaint got fixed, though not as a result of any public action by WMF (private action by them may have played some part, but I don't know whether there was any). Please let me know if you'd like more details and copies of related documents (some of which might be helpful to your cause), which I could then supply to you, perhaps by private message. Tlhslobus (talk) 04:27, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I fully support the idea of such a task-force. Wikipedia is a place to come together and even work together because we care about a certain topic and want it to be presented well. Which means there should be even "less" room for Wikipedia to put down editors in any way. I don't believe this taskforce should just address Bulllying, but also find ways to prevent it. And this is one of the things i believe is important.
Regardless of my history, i do have good intentions, and i do believe this task force is a good idea. It just needs a strong support, rules, and goals (real ones). If anyone feels that this is too one-sided, then all one needs to do is join and make sure its properly balanced. Lucia Black (talk) 08:20, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Using "like" as a preposition

MOS:CT and WP:NCCAPS say lowercase "like" if it is used as a preposition. However, consensus at Talk:People Like Us (film), Talk:Hurts Like Heaven, and Talk:Love You like a Love Song contradict each other. This matter has been discussed elsewhere, like Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters and WT:AT. However, every time a discussion led to nowhere. Shall I do another discussion or the proposal? If the latter, what kind? --George Ho (talk) 16:14, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

By common sense (which is definitely not MOS), that wouldn't apply when it's part of a proper name (e.g. a film or song title) - it would default to the capitalization that whoever made the title gave it, eh? So if the sources referred to "People Like Us" as such, we shouldn't title it "People like Us". But I guess that's not what MOS says. ansh666 04:25, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
I was hoping your idea, so what is your suggestion? --George Ho (talk) 04:27, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I thought our article title policy was to use sentence case rather than title case, regardless of how the work capitalizes it. Am i wrong? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:30, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Lower case, as short preposition. The objection "By common sense (which is definitely not MOS), that wouldn't apply when it's part of a proper name (e.g. a film or song title)" doesn't make sense; we would never consider capitalizing any such thing if it was not a proper name, so this argument would amount to an argument for writing The Lord Of The Rings, not The Lord of the Rings, since "of" and "the" are both "part of a proper name". While various people do that in their crappy blogs, WP is not a crappy blog, and uses standard English orthography to the extent there is a standard. Style guides generally all agree that short prepositions are not capitalized, though exactly how they define this varies. MoS is entirely common sense on this, going with this flow, and setting a baseline definition of what "short" means for WP purposes, absent any universal standard on the question.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:50, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
[citation needed] Calidum T|C 02:31, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
No, a citation is not needed. This is a discussion, not an article. You're perfectly capable to looking in published style guides yourself, many of which are available online. Cf. WP:JUSTSEARCH. PS: {{cn}} is not used outside mainspace, because it categorizes things into article maintenance categories; the template for smart-aleck "citation needed" one-liners on discussion pages is {{talkfact}}.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:30, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Assuming we are only discussing "like/Like" inside proper nouns, not where we (Wikipedia) have added it in a descriptive title. For each article, use the case which is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources). Weight for the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies, and notable scientific journals. I would suggest "academic" in preference to "scientific", to better cover the arts. I do realise that this approach has its own drawbacks when compared to a fixed, firm standard; but seeing as we're brainstorming. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
@Ryk72: The principle of the policy doesn't go that far. It says, "Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used..." It does not say case as a name might not require uppercasing per WP:NCCAPS unless the name is a proper noun. As for sources, it discusses "which of several alternative names is most frequently used[.]" We can't twist and misinterpret the words and the principle. --George Ho (talk) 03:35, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi George Ho, Please accept my sincere apologies if the comments above are unclear. I am suggesting that we use the same principle to also apply to case of proper nouns; in addition to, and as an aspect of, naming. Doing so would require that we amend MOS, but would also enable us to align with usage in sources. Thoughts? - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 03:51, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
We can't force all prepositions to be uppercased, like "of", "at", "as", "into", "down", etc. We already have WP:NCCAPS, but isn't it enough? If not, we can amend NCCAPS instead, right? Or we can discuss just "like". Every time I discuss just one word, we go too general. We should avoid that. --George Ho (talk) 03:57, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME generally fails to help, because most of the sources are not independent of the subject in most of the cases in which this sort of question arises. It's almost always about pop songs/albums, and most of the sources cited fail WP:INDY because they're music-industry publications, which are tied directly to music industry publishers for advertising revenue and other forms of monetary and munerary compensation, often owned by the same media entities to begin with. (When it's not about pop songs, it's usually about movie or TV show titles, produced by largely the same commercial entities [see overlap between RIAA and MPAA membership], and reported on by media outlets with the same lack of independence; a film magazine or even a newspaper owned ultimately by a media conglomerate that also owns movie studios and music labels is not independent of the output of those other subsidiaries of the same corporate entity.) The valid and reliable sources would be those that determine how prepositions are handled in titles in English, i.e. style guides. MoS does not defer to any specific style guide, but is based on WP-internal editorial consensus about which conflicting "rule" (if any) in various style guides WP should settle on for its own purposes and audience. Most style questions are essentially arbitrary and subjective, and not matters for external sourcing, which will never be uniform on much of any style question, ever. We also have a long-standing principle (see MOS:TM) against, in particular, aping the stylistic shenanigans of logos and other trademarks, which applies equally to non-standard styles in the titles of public works. Some of the examples provided in that guideline are such titles, e.g. we use Alien 3 not the stylized "Alien3", and Seven (film) not Se7en.

Short version: Do what MoS says. When a conflict arises despite what MoS says, do what the majority of the most respected off-WP works on English-language usage do. Ignore biased (music magazines, etc.) and other low-quality (blogs, e-commerce sites, etc.) source material. Allow exceptions (iPod, Deadmau5, "A Boy was Born") only when virtually all actually independent reliable sources on the topic, writing about it as a notable topic, consistently use the non-standard stylization. Basically, every RfC and other debate on this kind of question ends up reinforcing that decision-making flowchart.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:47, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

What if the Queen dies?

I know this sounds crystal-ballish, but one day Her Majesty the Queen of the UK of GB and I is going to be succeeded by, well, a successor. Now, the first in line to succession is Charles, Prince of Wales then Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, then Prince George of Cambridge. In short, the British succession to the throne is topped by males. The obvious problem arises. There are loads and loads of articles using words like Her Majesty's Government. Once the Queen dies, she will likely be succeeded by a King. The problem is that most mentions of the words "Her Majesty" and "the Queen's _____" would have to be replaced by the masculine versions of these phrases. I'm not sure if there's a protocol to handle this, but the job will be spectacularly difficult. Any thoughts? The Average Wikipedian (talk) 00:56, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Any thoughts? Well, my first thought was that one change can be made straight away by you, The Average Wikipedian, by changing your above expression 'the Queen of the UK of GB and I' to 'the Queen of the UK of GB and NI' - anybody can slip up, so no offence taken, but I come from the part of 'I' that stopped being part of the UK rather a long time ago, so I decided to be a wicked pedant and let you know about your slip-up :) Tlhslobus (talk) 01:54, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
We've been doing it for many hundreds of years - hasn't been a problem yet! SteveBaker (talk) 03:48, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
It'll be even more interesting if Hillary Clinton winds up as the next US president - there are 29 instances of the word "he" and zero of "she" in the The Constitution of the United States, Bill of Rights and Amendments. I'm pretty sure some of those will be problematic. SteveBaker (talk) 03:53, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
@SteveBaker and Oiyarbepsy: I kind of meant the appearances of those phrase in Wikipedia articles. The Queen has been reigning all along as Wikipedia developed so we have never actually encountered such a massive change in gender. Other Wikipedias may have the same worries too. There must be thousands of articles talking about government departments, politicians, et cetera that may have to be altered. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 05:13, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
AWB will be able to assist in these situations, identifying and changing the occurrences, but an operator should check before saving. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:12, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
@Graeme Bartlett: I am an AWB user myself, but still not all cases are that straightforward, such as for deceased politicians. AWB is pretty convenient and I know you can just double click on the edited line to undo the automatic edit, but still the process is largely manual. I guess I should post it as a task as soon as the Queen dies. But how many other cases are there, for example as mentioned above, Hillary Clinton becoming President? The Average Wikipedian (talk) 08:49, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

We recently went through such a change in the Netherlands when Willem-Alexander succeeded his mother in 2013. I guess this was solved by "grinding thru it". I have neither noticed problems, nor heard any editor complaining about the workload. After all, it is a fairly minor edit (albeit at many articles). So let's not put a lot of effort in solving a problem that is probably fairly minor. Arnoutf (talk) 11:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Arnoutf: It's not like I think that is an extremely tedious task, but coordination is needed. The case of the Netherlands is, I believe, less severe compared to the UK as the English language often uses "Her Majesty's ____" and "the Queen's ____" to refer specifically to the monarch of the UK. I think there are many more articles that have to be fixed, and the grinding will be quite an effort, though technically possible and not too difficult. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 12:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
I am not sure much coordination is needed; at least not for the majority of articles. I think most articles will be adjusted by editors involved in these articles fairly quickly; the more so as there are many more UK interested than Netherlands interested editors. For more obscure articles it may take a while, and there some effort may be needed. I do however think that is a task that can be dealt with, and if coordination is needed this can be done through the UK-project. I really think this is not something big enough to create a project wide protocol. Arnoutf (talk) 12:48, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Just the other day I stub-sorted Papua New Guinea–United Kingdom relations, noticed the phrase Papua New Guinea and the United Kingdom share Queen Elizabeth as their head of state., and wondered whether that's her personally or rather the Head of the Commonwealth, which is not precisely the same (in theory) as the Monarch of the UK. One of these days there'll be a lot of editing needed. PamD 13:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Neither personally nor as Head of the Commonwealth, but as the current head of state of the UK, who is also head of state of some (but not all) Commonwealth countries, by their choice. Any country of which the UK monarch is head of state (including the UK itself) can choose at any time to have a different head of state, and some have done so. The Queen is head of state of all these countries and also, as it happens, head of the Commonwealth, but the roles don't coincide. Stanning (talk) 14:50, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the comments above: this isn't a big deal. We'll sort it out when the need arises. The UK has done this before, and so has the Netherlands. Note however that not all occurrences of "Her Majesty['s]" throughout Wikipedia will necessarily become "His Majesty['s]" – it'll depend on the context – so it'll need intelligent reading of each article, not 10-seconds-per-article AWB-bashing. Similarly, not all occurrences of QC will automatically become KC, and so on. Stanning (talk) 15:00, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm a little puzzled: Why have we written any articles to be time-dependent? Most such instances can be rewritten now to be independent of "who's" government it is, no? --Izno (talk) 15:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

The formal name of the government of the UK is itself time-dependent. It is "Her Majesty's Government", the full name of the tax office is "Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs", and so on. A lot of paperwork and websites will have to be changed, come the day. There are a couple of things we could do to ease the problem. A template similar to {{they}} could be established and brought into use before the Queen's death. {{theyMonarch|UK}} would currently resolve to "Her Majesty" and could quickly be changed to "His Majesty". A more far-reaching measure, which would save Wikipedia editors and denizens of the UK from going through all this again when King Charles III dies, would be to abolish the monarchy right away; then we could just make the changes once and for all. I gather our US editors may share some institutional memory as to how this may be accomplished. NebY (talk) 16:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
Izno: Many, many WP articles are time-dependent. Every BLP is time-dependent. That's how it is in real life.
NebY: The template's a good idea. For the rest, the US didn't abolish the monarchy – they just escaped from it! The UK monarchy continued without the US. There is a "republican" movement in the UK, just as there's a monarchist movement in the US, but neither gets much support AFAIK. I'd bet money on the UK monarchy continuing after Elizabeth II. Stanning (talk) 16:40, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
A template like "theyMonarch" sounds like it would make editing more difficult. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't bother to use such a template (well, set of templates, because there are multiple relevant phrases here) for what is quite literally a once-per-lifetime change: someone actually has to die before any of this becomes relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:00, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the above comments. Although we might not need a thoroughly planned procedure for dealing with the situation, I think there should be some sort of guideline to specify what has to be changed and what doesn't. Not everything is exactly that straightforward. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 01:46, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

"Panic button"

A lot of times I have seen articles where e.g. the infobox is broken because of some good faith edits. I think some of the editors knew they messed up the article (how could they not see it), but didnt knew how to fix it (they have to figure out that they should press the "history" button). Therefore, I suggest to add some kind of a "panic button" (revert button) for IP users. (I know its a MediaWiki feature request, but I want to hear if anybody support the idea). Christian75 (talk) 14:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)And what would the proposed panic button do? Just revert the previous edit? What would stop a malicious IP/editor using it to revert a bunch of articles? -- samtar whisper 15:16, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
It happens to all of us. Are anonymous IP users unable to press revert? If not, then maybe the panic button can be used as a way to help gain some help on how to fix the issue, not just revert it. Lucia Black (talk) 15:16, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
IPs can use "undo", but users have to be approved for rollback and Twinkle so those are off-limits for IPs. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:39, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Something like "Undo my edit" button next to the edit link perhaps? — xaosflux Talk 15:20, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps an undo option in the "Your edit was saved" dialog? — xaosflux Talk 15:22, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Dropping these links here for reference MediaWiki:Postedit-confirmation-saved, MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-editor-success. — xaosflux Talk 15:25, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: "Undo my edit" would work, displayed to everyone or only (say) unconfirmed editors? -- samtar whisper 15:27, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
If the broken article has high enough reader traffic for the break to have a significant impact, the bad edit will very likely be fixed fairly soon by someone who knows how to find and use the undo button. And many types of breaks put the article in a tracking category, so even the the low-traffic articles are likely to get fixed eventually by someone working that cat. I don't see it as a big enough problem to justify development time. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:01, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion: reduce the size of the village pumps

For background, please see Wikipedia talk:Village pump (policy)#The page is impossible to load or edit

I'd like to get ideas on ways that we could better manage the size of the village pump pages. For reference, the current sizes (as of/not including this edit) of the village pumps are:

For reference, WP:TOOBIG suggests that pages larger than 100kb are likely to be difficult to load to the point of being unusable, especially for users on slower connections. It seems at the moment that this is only a problem for the policy and idea lab pages, but it means that the pages meant for centralized discussion can't be easily loaded by a number of users, so conversations meant for broad community input are exposed to a systemic bias for users with faster connections and/or faster computers. This doesn't seem like a lot at the moment, but the policy page is routinely over half a megabyte when there is a busy discussion (here it's 608,591), and that means that some users probably can't load the page at all nor participate in those important discussions.

One idea I have is to suggest that large threads be moved to subpages, with a link left on the pump page to the subpage, so that the page size is kept manageable. Or a derivative of this: have every thread on a subpage and transclude them onto the pump page, like we do with WP:AFD and some others. That way users (especially those with slow connections) could watch and/or load only the threads that interest them, and very large discussions would not clutter the page. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 16:41, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I would agree with that idea. The detractor for many people for it is that the off-pump pages don't have a large quantity of people to frequent the page, so the discussion dies premanturely. --Izno (talk) 18:42, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
  • What we need to do is make some upgrades on the software end. For very high traffic discussion pages like these, every topic (aka level 2 heading) should be a separate wiki page, transcluded from the main discussion page. This means a big performance boost is required for transclusions, as well as improvements to the edit section links. Watchlisting then needs to give the option to watchlist just one page or every transcluded page. Many of our editors are only looking to discuss a single topic within these pages and have no need or interest in loading the whole thing. Finally, archiving would no longer break links to discussions or break links between the content and its history. WP:Flow was an ill-advised attempt to fix these problems, but these problems absolutely can be fixed without flow. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:53, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Demurrer: The size of these pages isn't an issue except on mobile devices, so the tech fix is to limit their size in the mobile version only. A common problem with the VP pages is that discussions get archived away before they're resolved, necessitating an unseemily and inefficient amount of rehashing of the same things over and over again. This is arguably a more serious problem than the pages being too long for some people's cell phones.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:50, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • It's worth remembering that the sizes of these pages can vary widely. For example, this page (VPIL) is pretty big at the moment, but it was less than a third of the current size six weeks ago.
    It's not at all unusual for large threads to get split to subpages. There are sometimes complaints (usually from editors who feel like they're "losing" the discussion), but it's not an unusual decision to make. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:15, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • How much complaint are we seeing from people saying they can't make effective use of these pages due to their slow connection? Can someone please provide links to some of that?
    I see one user complaint in the above-linked VPP thread. There was no attempt to get the specifics of that user's environment, to see if their problem can be fixed with low-cost or no-cost changes on their end, or to consider how common their situation is.
    Considering that connections are always getting generally faster, it wouldn't seem prudent to change our infrastructure to accommodate a shrinking 5% minority. It's worth noting that the 100KB rule of thumb has been in place since Feb 2007. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:03, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Reformatting AfDs

When closing some AfDs today, I observed that many AfDs become disorderly and confusing because of their disorderly format. Controversial AfDs, in particular, become sprawling messes of text that are almost impossible to follow. (For examples, just look at any day's AfD page.) I think it would be a good idea to reformat AfDs so that there are sections for different opinions. We could have the basic "Delete" and "Keep" sections, and an "Other" section for opinions such as merge, redirect, userfy, etc. There could also be a "Comments" section for those who wish to comment without !voting. Biblioworm 20:29, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

You mean like have a structured straw poll, like how RfA looks but with "keep" and "delete" sections instead of "support" and "oppose"? I could see it working. Why not go ahead and try it with one or two AfDs? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:46, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
Agreed. I'm not sure I could say whether this would be a good or bad change, so a few test cases seems a sensible idea. Sam Walton (talk) 20:55, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
Here's an example of the new format. Biblioworm 21:19, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
@Biblioworm: I've reformatted one of my recent (yet to be commented on) AfDs - how does it look? -- samtar whisper 12:32, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Scratch that, it was reverted - appears it's contrary to WP:AFDEQ "Do not reorder comments on the deletion page to group them by keep/delete/other. Such reordering can disrupt the flow of discussion, polarize an issue, and emphasize vote count or word count." -- samtar whisper 13:15, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
That's why we have to propose it. The whole point is to change existing practice; we'll never change anything if we give up because of existing practice. While the goals listed at AFDEQ are noble, in practice they just cause confusion, poor formatting, and disorder. We admins are the ones who have to wade through all that, and therefore I stay away from closing AfDs that become heaps of scattered text. It would be much easier if we had a more orderly format. Biblioworm 19:44, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Being able to see the trend over time in voting is important at AfD, and less so at RFA. The article being discussed can change substantially while the discussion is ongoing. If the discussion starts with a bunch of delete !votes, but the article is then edited to improve it, and a steady stream of keep !votes begins, it will often be appropriate to relist or even keep an article that may not have been kept based only on the numbers. While you could see the shift by carefully examining time stamps, the chronological ordering makes it far easier. !Voters often also respond to points made previous !votes, and following that is also easier when they are in chronological order. Chronological order only really becomes the less desirable format when there are 30+ !votes, which is not the vast majority of AfD discussions. (But nearly certain at RFA) Monty845 19:52, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose It's nice and all when it's simply but for a very complicated case, the more complicated the set-up, the more likely it will be chaos. People often make their views in the support/oppose sections of RFCs with them branching out into discussions regardless of whether there should be a separate discussion section. If you want to see the importance of reviewing a trend, see how difficult closing this CFD discussion would have been for me if it was organized some other way. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't know about separate support and oppose sections - many AfDs involve discussion about other options beyond polling about deletion - but I've long thought that the delsort notes, relisting templates, and other such things should be moved to a sidebar (as with the links to prior nominations) to reduce the amount of visual clutter on the page. Chronological order is relevant for the !votes, not so much for when the AfD was entered in a particular deletion-sorting list. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:53, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Some years ago, I proposed an addition to AfD of collaboratively edited summaries of the reasons for the different proposed outcomes - we are using a wiki, after all. This would be similar to the present proposal, but would retain threaded conversation in chronological order. Fences&Windows 13:07, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Unlike RfAs that have a binary outcome, AfDs are essentially open-ended discussions with many possible outcomes: keep, delete with or without salting, merge, redirect, with or without protection. Compromises are sometimes possible. Structuring this debate like a vote stifles creative discussion, and the only advantage is that it becomes easier to close AfDs by numbers. AfDs usually don't have many (in fact, not enough) participants -- and the few large contentious ones are also going to be messy and will require a close reading no matter how they are structured. —Kusma (t·c) 13:21, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Where else to discuss non-free SVG vs PNG debate again?

This matter has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Somehow, no one there agreed to downgrade non-free SVG files to PNG. Where else can I discuss it? --George Ho (talk) 06:27, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Then how do we else limit the use of SVG files without downgrading to PNG besides reducing details? George Ho (talk) 05:07, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Reviewing the discussions linked above, there does not appear to be a consensus that such a limitation is required. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 13:01, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Do we truly need ArbCom?

I've heard nothing but bad things when it comes to ArbCom, and admins have all told me to stay away from it. So the question is: Do we need arbcom? If we do need it, does it need to be reformed? Also who is in control of Arbcom and how does one join Arbcom? This is important for a lot of reasons. I think right now, just based on how others have spoken about ARbcom, its the almighty word, and yet not the word people want to go for. Lucia Black (talk) 08:25, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee covers the basics on ARBCOM. I don't see any particular problems with it, no one is going to comment if they agree with a decision. Lucia, people told you to quit arguing and fighting your topic ban and not to bring the arguments to Arbcom. If you want to bring it up there again, there's nothing to stop you. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:08, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with my ban. This was a reaction based on what i hear around Wikipedia. There's no arguing, there's no fighting. Assume good faith please. Lucia Black (talk) 10:33, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Can you elaborate what kind of reactions? I did use ArbCom, and I see nothing wrong with the system. Of course, Gamergate controversy is very complicated to handle, but I wasn't involved with it. George Ho (talk) 11:00, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
For instance, one of the most apparent ones is one above. Another is what others have told me about Arbcom, and i've asked why and i was told they would see it too simple. But if others feel its necessary and a good place to work, then i wont press on the matter. I just wanted to know if everyone else is in complete agreement that Arbcom is where it should be. if they are, then no problem. Lucia Black (talk) 11:08, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
I think it highly unlikely that many people are "in complete agreement that Arbcom is where it should be" just look at the last Arbcom election where only one sitting Arb was reelected. But regarding something as imperfect, even in need of reform, is a long way from regarding it as unneeded. If you want to question the existence of Arbcom then first try to come up with a better way to handle cases that involve private off wiki information in a way that respects that privacy but has community confidence. ϢereSpielChequers 12:20, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
There are a lot of things wrong with Arbcom, its system, its stifling bureaucracy, and particularly its electoral system. But while I can easily think of a better way of (s)electing its members, and ways of cutting out the red tape, I can't really envisage a better alternative basic system. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:32, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
@Kudpung: Can you specify the flaws of Arbcom? I am not persuaded by general comments. My experience with ArbCom is different from yours. George Ho (talk) 18:44, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
George Ho, I think WSC above said in different words, but probably better than I did. We're answering the OP's question, not proposing an RfC with details for reform. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:13, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
For the brief note, we can look at this year's cases. As for (s)electing members, I haven't elected ones yet, so I have no opinion on that. However, are you proposing an increase of members, or what electoral reform are you proposing? Also, I don't see anything wrong with Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy or WP:Arbitration... yet. George Ho (talk) 19:46, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • In a sentence, ArbCom is something of a combined legislative and judicial body that is effectively beyond community consensus. For starters, I think we ought to reduce ArbCom's scope so that they have less to do. Concentrating too much power in the hands of one person or group is never good. For instance, we could hand over all responsibility for privacy-related issues to a well-trained group of WMF staff so that ArbCom could focus entirely on arbitrating disputes. In my opinion, the extremely sensitive privacy issues are just too much for a group of volunteers to handle on their own. And as Kudpung mentioned, we need to cut back on the bureaucracy and officiousness. It probably wouldn't be hard to draw up a new plan for streamlined case procedures. However, as I mentioned, ArbCom is really above direct community action, so even if the community did agree on any changes to ArbCom, I think ArbCom itself has confirm it by motion. Biblioworm 20:01, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Compared to three branches of the US government, we have Arbitration, Administration, and... what are other branches? Anyway, what about creating a newer system without replacing or reforming Arbitration? Something higher than Arbitration. A royal family perhaps, or a King/Emperor or Queen/Empress? George Ho (talk) 20:57, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
To follow your analogy "community" would be the other one. HighInBC 22:01, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm also firmly of the opinion that ArbCom, at the least, needs a fixed number of seats for non-Admins. But I bet this is one of those ideas that will go off like a lead balloon considering the strong prejudice we see against non-Admins in ArbCom elections... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:01, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Excellent idea, IJBall, and probably well worth discussiing, though one problem is that there are potentially all sorts of groups with similar claims (women, junior editors, non-westerners, the elderly, different religions and ideologies, various other minorities) to have guaranteed seats, and/or to have more votes at election time.Tlhslobus (talk) 05:27, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
If by "junior editors" you mean under 18s then you have a problem in that Arbs need access to personal data so they have to be of legal age. If you mean editors in their twenties, I'm not sure that age group does badly in arbcom elections, if anything it might be silver surfers who fare less well. Women are underrepresented, but at least in the last election not as underrepresented as they are among the voters (one third of the nine arbs elected this year are women, half would be nice, but our gender problem seems to be in getting and keeping women as editors, they aren't doing badly in arbcom elections). The geographic skew is pretty extreme, this year in particular was a bad one for UK and Indian candidates with a near clean sweep for North Americans, I'm not sure whether that is a longterm trend but for now I'd rather monitor it than press for action. As for non admins, the electorate, most of whom are not admins, have made it repeatedly clear that they expect arbs to already have admin experience. Personally I'm willing to vote for those non admin candidates who I think are suitable, and I voted for at least two non admins in the last election; But realistically anyone planning to go for arbcom would be advised to become an admin first. ϢereSpielChequers 21:57, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
By junior editors, I mean those with relatively few edits and/or who have not been here very long - on the basis that if we want to get more new editors we arguably need to be more sensitive to their experiences, so giving them the vote might arguably help with that. As for non-admins, it might be better to think in terms of creating juries of non-admins, on the ancient principle of trial by a jury of one's peers.Tlhslobus (talk) 23:42, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Ah, new editors or newbies. A problem there is that Arbcom is a very demanding time intensive role that requires in depth understanding of the community and also the policies of the community and the software we use. Newbies are by definition not yet qualified to sit on Arbcom. If we started appointing newbies to Arbcom we would risk a range of scenarios from people being censured for following a policy that Arbs disagreed with or didn't understand to Arbs leaving or simply coming to decisions that other find bizarre. As for trial by peers, isn't that an archaic notion? If we use the common analogy of adminship being like a driving licence, then trial by peers would mean only fellow car drivers on juries where motorists are on trial for traffic offences, and non drivers when pedestrians are tried for jaywalking. ϢereSpielChequers 06:49, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
The problem with having only Admins on ArbCom is two fold: 1) it means it is "not a representative body": it's like having a House of Lords without a House of Commons; 2) it gives even more power to Admins as a class when Admins as a class are already too powerful as it is – it essentially means Admins are only held accountable by other Admins. It's no wonder this system is causing more and more dissatisfaction among the great unwashed masses (and include me among those...). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:42, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Why would we want a royal family? I think the goal is to make things more balanced, not create a hierarchy. And right now if we have an Administration and Arbitration branch, we don' have something that looks at that. But i agree a little with IJBall, perhaps Arbcom could do with more non-Admins. Whatever the case, it does feel like Arbcom isn't universally appreciated. It would be worth to find out why to see if it can be solveable. I have no experience with Arbcom, but i do hear whispers here and there. Lucia Black (talk) 23:49, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Shall we make the system similar to checks and balances? Whatever ArbCom decides might be overturned by a rule approved one of the branches or a consensus. George Ho (talk) 01:00, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me. Lucia Black (talk) 01:08, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
We don't have a royal family, Lucia Black and George Ho, but we already have a kind of King/Emperor who reigns but mostly no longer rules, namely Jimbo Wales. But a few years ago I tried his Talk page twice and found it far too toxic, and Lucia's Talk page shows that when she took her complaints to him that just got used as ammo against her by at least one of her critics.Tlhslobus (talk) 23:55, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Despite my own bad experience with Arbcom the only time I interacted with them (already partly described in my above comments on the proposed bullying task force), I would be strongly opposed to reducing their powers, let alone abolishing them.
  • My main reason is that, however flawed they may be, they are the only democratically accountable element in Wikipedia.
  • As far as I'm concerned, it's largely (and perhaps entirely) the lack of democracy that makes Wikipedia the ghastly and unreformable place that it is. Few sensible organizations prefer consensus rule to democratic rule, although some (such as many UN conferences) end up stuck with consensus rule because powerful members are unwilling to be outvoted. Our own system of 'crowd-sourced pseudo-consensus' is especially crazy. It means that dreadful policy changes and/or content changes can be (and have been) sneaked in by a clever individual or clique unnoticed by the rest of us, and if they remain unnoticed for a short unspecified period of time they can never be removed because 'there is no consensus for removing this consensus text'. Since the form of bullying known as 'Mobbing' is extremely useful for vested interests and other kinds of cliques to impose their will by bullying people into surrendering to their alleged 'consensus', there is never likely to be a consensus in favour of new rules to outlaw mobbing (or 'piling on' as it gets called by those who are aware that our article on Mobbing means they need a safer name). Much the same goes for any other reform that threatens the power of vested interests and other such cliques. As such our democratically-elected ArbCom is currently a quasi-parliament (as well as a quasi-judiciary) with no power to enact legislation, and a body that needs more power, not less, but vested interests and other cliques will presumably ensure there is no consensus for that.
  • But even without the above-mentioned effective veto of vested interests and other cliques, there would still be huge difficulties in getting agreement on the changes needed, as we would also need the equivalents of a Constitution, an Executive, a Supreme Court, and agreement on who (readers, junior editors, senior editors, admins, etc) got to elect how many 'parliamentarians', what constituted a 'qualified majority' for different kinds of 'parliamentary vote', should we have gender and/or other kinds of quotas, and so on.
  • Historically that sort of result tends to get brought about by an elected Constitutional Convention deliberating for some time and then proposing a draught Constitution that addresses these issues and that with luck then gets ratified by something like a referendum. In our case for legal reasons the entire process would probably have to be authorised by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), and I'm not sure how one asks for such authorization, though I expect there probably is a way of asking.
  • And even if all that could somehow get agreed and could somehow go through unvetoed, it might still not be enough to fix our problems with vested interests and other cliques, let alone the presumably many other problems of which I am less aware.
  • But none of that is a good argument for weakening or eliminating the only democratically-elected body that we currently have.Tlhslobus (talk) 05:16, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • We need to understand tha all the Foundation does (or should be doing) is own and maintain the servers, provide essential software engineering, and collect and disseminate funds. The effort should be to reduce their involvement in the day-to-day running of he individual Wikipedias, not give them more power over them. I agree however that some Arbcom responsibilities should be devolved to the community, but in a way that stil keeps trolls and users with an agenda out of the action but which does not suffocate under its own red tape.
We do have a higher authority than Arbcom - it's called The Bureaucrats. It's a waste of their intelect and judgement t have them just rubber stamping bot requests and mashing buttons (or not) for RfA.We need to convince the community (and the 'crats) that this little group of very wise old men are perfectly suited for doing a variety of other tasks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:40, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Who are these presumably unelected Bureaucrats, and why are they preferable to the elected Arbcom, or to the legal 'owners' of Wikipedia, the WMF (assuming they are not the same as WMF)? Tlhslobus (talk) 05:57, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
More power to the Bureaucrats (and/or Technocrats) is usually demanded by vested interests such as global capital (or in our case groups with products or ideologies which they want advertised) to enable an institution such as a country (such as Italy under the technocratic government of Mario Monti) to continue to be run in the interests of such vested interests rather than that of the majority of its stakeholders (such as the Italian people, who voted Monti out as soon as they got a chance). So why would we want more power to the Bureaucrats? Or put another way, why should I as an editor expect that I will be made better off by changes that make my annual vote for Arbcom carry even less weight than it already does? Tlhslobus (talk) 06:08, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Bureaucrats are elected, but for life not a mere two year term. However I wouldn't agree that their power is greater than Arbcom, they are a small and highly trusted group of editors who have some extra buttons that enable them to do some important but usually uncontentious things like setting bot flags and setting admin flags, they used to also do renames before the Single User Login system started. The crats handle decisions that are invariably public and rarely contentious. The Arbs handle decisions that are by definition contentious and which often involve private information, hence much of what they do is off wiki and private to them, and they rarely have as much trust from the community as the Bureaucrats do and the community insists on two year terms, and when Arbcom is deemed to have performed badly as most reckon it did this year, sitting arbs get voted off (this year only three Arbs whose term ended re-stood and only one was reelected). ϢereSpielChequers 21:35, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the useful info, WereSpielChequers. As Bureaucrats are elected for life and thus can't be unelected, that's a very good reason for not transferring any potentially contentious functions from Arbcom to them.Tlhslobus (talk) 22:55, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes we need someone to make unpopular decisions when the community is deadlocked. It is only natural that people will grumble about such a group. HighInBC 21:59, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I think that is definitely true. We do need a group that relies more on reason that vote-count. But we also have to have them checked regularly because that is a very important group just in case. wikipedia is not a democracy, bureaucracy. I also want to make mention that some people seem to are saying that its not about giving Arbcom less power, but more refining on what ArbCom should be focusing on. Lucia Black (talk) 23:19, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
I note that you, Lucia Black, who started this topic, have warnings from your critics on your Talk page about the terrible things that will supposedly happen to you if your case goes to ArbCom. This may have influenced your perception of ArbCom, as may the fates of other female editors (Carolmooredc and Lightbreather, as well as the unstated-gender Neotarf) in 2 relatively recent ArbCom cases that have seemingly shocked many feminists both on and off Wikipedia. In theory the partial solution to such problems, whether real or merely alleged or a bit of both, would seem to lie in some kind of system of gender quotas, either for ArbCom itself, or for some new jury system to be linked to ArbCom and perhaps other cases. And in theory our GGTF (Gender Gap Task Force) should have some ideas (or welcome new ones) on how to try to bring this about (I usually try to avoid the GGTF after being mobbed there some time ago, but they may well be more sympathetic to you, Lucia). Of course gender quotas won't solve the problem for males such as SageRad (who proposed the anti-bullying task force above) whose Talk pages contain similar dire (and conceivably well-founded) warnings about what ArbCom will allegedly do to them, but a partial solution may be better than no solution at all.Tlhslobus (talk) 23:59, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm strictly here to see if there is something flawed with Arbcom, and this has nothing to do with me personally, but i do see others around talk about it negatively including AN/ANI, but i dont want to even touch AN/ANI. Last time i attempted to reform AN/ANI in a neutral and positive way, i was accused of "neutering" AN/ANI. there weren't any "gaps" or problems, but i distinctly remember that being the biggest gender-gap in WP. But Arbcom as it stands sounds like a bigger force that has a lot more control. As for the gender-gap, i dont think its an issue. However, some of the actions i see here is definitely more male-oriented. Lucia Black (talk) 00:17, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for pinging me here, Tlhslobus. I would support gender quotas as a sort of ad hoc bandaid to address a problem of gender issues prejudice in ArbCom, and i bet that a gender-balanced ArbCom would make better decisions across the board with less probable bias. However, the issue may go deeper. I think there is some sort of philosophical bias in the ArbCom constituency that slants their thinking in a certain "establishment" direction, which would generalize to things like a patriarchal bias and thinking, as well as to other underlying tropes of modernity. I should state right now that i was recently topic-banned by ArbCom in the GMO/agrochemical proceeding, and so use that to color your reading of my thoughts as you will. In my reckoning, the evidence was not fairly analyzed. In my view, the results were very biased and served to strengthen a certain point of view that is aligned with the biotech and agrochemical industry. Tactics of bullying used by many in the industry-aligned position were overlooked across the board, while other editors were maligned on minor infractions and even bad-mouthed by the arbitrators. There are those who say "hasten the day" (meaning, hasten the day that ArbCom no longer exists). I'm not sure where i stand. Perhaps we could assemble an ArbCom by elections that is neutral. However, elections tend to be popularity contests, and the voters tend to vote by affinity. Therefore, ArbCom will reflect the biases of the general editorship more than they would be held to enforcing the actual policies -- which is what i want. I want policies enforced fairly and without bias. Behavior, not point of view, should determine outcomes. Perhaps a random jury of peers would be better. Even that would result in a bias according to the bias in the editorship population. We ought to at least make sure that ArbCom is explicitly tasked with enforcing policies, and hold them to it. Any bias should be a thing of shame. ArbCom should not be able to rule with clear bias and get away with it. They are supposed to work for us. The work is hard, and they deserve thanks for this, but it should be good work. If i had time, i would run for ArbCom, but i probably would not get elected, i'm guessing. SageRad (talk) 00:21, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Arbcom is a necessary consequence of consensus decision making. When we get a solid consensus, we don't need arbitration - and we don't need ArbCom. When we can't get a solid consensus for a change, we default to the status-quo, which is mostly OK. But when we all agree that a decision absolutely, utterly has to be made - and we can't get consensus - then we need an overseeing body who can step in and at least get some kind of a decision made. It it a consequence of this role that they have to step in when there isn't consensus - and that means that a significant number of people are going to be unhappy with their decision. So it's obvious that a good fraction of people are going to hate them for it.
I've seen decisions that they made that I didn't like - and decisions that I did like - but in every single case, I understood the need for them to get involved and break some kind of a log-jam.
These people are elected - so it's not like we're not able to choose the right people for the job.
Perhaps there is value in tinkering with the system - but we really do need something with the role and power of ArbCom - and we might as well continue to call it "ArbCom" even if we tweak it a bit. Personally, I'm happy to leave well alone.
SteveBaker (talk) 18:26, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Automatic reader's voice

dear wikipedia organisation,

as a regular user of your webpage I have a suggetsion to add to the articles.


I, and im sure many other reader as well, would be thankful if there was a automatic readers voice that could read the article to the user.


>this would help ppl who want to learn the language (I myself regularly use wikipeda to practise languages im not fluent in by reading the articles in both the foreighn and my native language) and are struggling with pronouncing certain words. >it would help blind or old people who cant read (well) >it would help ppl with a low concentration capacity to not always get lost in the articles and get distracted.

i hope you take my suggestion into concideration and i hope ii send this to the right department. I simply couldnt find another place to submit it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.189.196.12 (talk) 11:07, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

This is the right place. I changed your heading from "idea to improve wikipedia". ―Mandruss ☎ 11:43, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
  • You're talking about computer speech synthesis? It seems to me that you'd be better off getting a software program on your computer that does that, whether than adding it to Wikipedia. I know that some articles have been recorded spoken, but I don't know much about it. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:31, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Hello, there are voice readers as plugins for web browsers. --NaBUru38 (talk) 22:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Don't many software web page readers need special content in the web page for reading? Or is that special content optional? The Daisy Digital Talking Book format might have some useful standards. Chuckr30 (talk) 12:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Tool to count "new pages" created by overwriting redirects

Thinking out loud: do we have a tool which can list the instances where a user has converted a redirect to an article? My thought process here is that one common way that new articles are created is from overwriting previously existing redirects, and the tool that counts articles created doesn't count these. A side effect is we've had a few editors who "sit on" redirects: they create a redirect for a topic that might possibly become notable in the future, expecting that when another editor creates the article, they'll get credit for it (and they do, according to the tool). As a side effect of that, we occasionally have redirects brought to WP:RFD by newbie-ish editors insisting that we must delete the redirect first before they create the article, because they want the credit. Which becomes a burden on RFD watchers and on deleting admins. Of course, this is all WP:EDITCOUNTITIS, and it doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

Plus it would just be nice to see a list of redirects that I've turned into articles, without having to do it manually. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:49, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Probably not what you're looking for, but the new pages feed does list redirects that have been converted as new pages. Annoyingly though, it lists them by the date the redirect was created, not the date it was converted, so if you sort by oldest first they're all there at the top. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 22:09, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
There is filter 342 (currently disabled) that tracks this, which might be what you're looking for if you can convince an Edit Filter manager to enable it. Dax Bane 07:43, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Time to increase the frequency of WP:TFL again?

Looking at the Featured content section of recent Signpost issues, it seems that the rate of featured article and featured list promotions is roughly equivalent. Yet, we still only have today's featured list twice a week. Category:Featured lists that have not appeared on the main page has 3,289 pages, while Category:Featured articles that have not appeared on the main page has only 715 pages. At the current rate of two featured lists per week, it would take 25+ years to burn through all current featured lists even if no more featured lists get promoted, compared to less than 4 years for featured articles. It may be a good idea to increase TFL to daily, or at least more times a week, so that editors are rewarded for their efforts and to make sure that most featured lists get a chance to appear on the main page. Thoughts? sst✈ 11:07, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I responded to the original poster here after they posted on my talk page. In short, as FL director I don't support an expansion of TFL at this time, but will be more than happy to go along with the greater community should it support having TFL run more often. Giants2008 (Talk) 22:21, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
I would love to see the TFL expand a litle, but we've just not got the diversity or depth needed for even one extra slot at the moment. I think we should bear the proposal to expand in mind and revisit it annually or so, just in case editor habits change and there are pushes into more diverse topics, but sadly not yet. - SchroCat (talk) 15:24, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

"Naturally" shortened footnotes

I like the idea of shortened footnotes in the case of quoting different pages of a single source, but it has some drawbacks:

  • The presentation to the reader is complicated.
  • A bibliography entry in the References section appears even if it is not used.
  • It is not checked whether the bibliography entry pointed to by a short citation (from the Notes section) is actually present.

How about being able to produce something like

The brontosaurus[1] is big[1] and thin at one end.[1a] Then it becomes much thicker in the middle.[1b] But at the end it is really thin.[1a] The Norwegian Blue Parrot will not move if its feet are nailed to the perch.[2] Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians.[2]

References
  1. ^ α β Elk, Anne. Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses.
    a. ^ α β p. 5: "Lorem ipsum"
    b. ^ p. 6: "sit amet"
  2. ^ a b Praline, Eric. Dead Parrot sketch.

by markup 

The brontosaurus<ref name=Elk>Elk, Anne. [[Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses]].</ref> is big<ref name=Elk/> and thin at one end.<ref parent=Elk name=thin>p. 5: "Lorem ipsum"</ref> Then it becomes much thicker in the middle.<ref parent=Elk>p. 6: "sit amet"</ref> But at the end it is really thin.<ref name=thin/> The Norwegian Blue Parrot will not move if its feet are nailed to the perch.<ref name=Praline>Praline, Eric. [[Dead Parrot sketch]].</ref> Its metabolic processes are a matter of interest only to historians.<ref name=Praline/>

== References ==
{{reflist}}

Petr Matas 12:03, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Is what you're requesting not what the {{efn}} template already does? See William Etty for an example of it in use on a long article with heavy footnoting. ‑ Iridescent 16:53, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
It is not. William Etty uses the standard shortened footnotes, where the short citations are in a different section than the corresponding biblography entry. In the rendered page, I want the uses of a bibliography entry to be grouped with the entry. Also, citations in that article do not contain any quotations (sentences copied from the source), and in such case I would use {{rp}} instead of shortened footnotes. Petr Matas 19:20, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
This reminds me of phab:T15127; I've even considered writing code to do that a few years back, but these days the work would need to be done twice (in PHP and in Parsoid). Anomie⚔ 19:10, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
That task's description seems to be very similar to my proposal, although it does not specify the format of the sublist and forward- and back-links. I see that you don't like {{rp}}, so you would use the proposed solution even if there were no quotations. Petr Matas 19:42, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Project Box wording

(I hope I'm in the right place.)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Korea, a collaborative effort to build and improve articles related to Korea. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion.

From time to time a newbie posts at the Reference Desk, "An obscure article has an error. Please fix it." And one of the RD regulars (today it was me) may grumble, "If raising the issue on the article's Talk page didn't help, right at the top of the Talk page is a notice about where to find editors likely to be willing and able to do something."

But, it now strikes me, the wording of the Project Box doesn't say that; it's addressed to editors with a broad and deep interest in $FIELD, not to those wishing to call attention to a concern with a specific article. How can it be worded to invite such questions more explicitly?

I've been around a long time but I don't pay much attention to such issues; my involvement in WikiProjects (as such) has been slight. Maybe this has been debated to death in the past, and the Projects prefer not to risk inviting a flood of such comments. —Tamfang (talk) 22:59, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Tamfang! The Spanish-language Wikiproject template says: "You may visit the discussion page to collaborate and make questions or suggestions." It's better, but I'd write it around: "To collaborate and make questions or suggestions, please visit the discussion page." Good luck! --NaBUru38 (talk) 22:05, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Here the real solution:

  1. When pressing the "new section" button on a talk page, the Mediawiki software places the user's post on a separate page and then transcludes that page to the talk page. So, a post headed test at Talk:Foo would appear at Talk:Foo/topic/test and Talk:Foo would includes {{Talk:Foo/topic/test}} in it's code. The software would do this all automatically, and bots would fix the stray posts not done this way.
  2. If the page is tagged with a wikiproject and meets certain standards of low activity, the discussion would also automatically be transcluded to the appropriate Wikiproject pages. The exact activity standards would be decided by the community.
(BTW, I've been doing #1 at my user talk page (unfortunately, manually). Feel free to make a test post there.)

It's crazy to expect our new editors to know to post at the wikiprojects. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Template pending changes

My apologies if this has already been proposed, I was unable to find it

I know that many, many, many forms of flagged revisions have been proposed and subsequently rejected by the community, but I was curious what people would think about changing the current template protection to a system where high-risk templates were editable by everyone or autocomfirmed users, and then approved by template editors or admins in a similar way to pending changes works now? I'm just curious what the reaction to something like this would be... thanks for feedback! Kharkiv07 (T) 00:39, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Note that this isn't just a switch we can turn on; it would require new code to be written for the FlaggedRevs extension. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:10, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
This certainly seems like a good idea; however, it does need the extension to be modified to allow it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 22:05, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

New search buttons

At search, could we have clicky buttons to dump "intitle:", "prefix:", "insource:" into the search box so we don't have to type them again and again? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:54, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Second the motion, that'd be a user-friendly change. And ... while we're at it, please can we have a Google-like allintitle: operator so that when we search for two or more words in title, we don't have to put intitle: on each word, so "allintitle:village pump" instead of "intitle:village intitle:pump"? Stanning (talk) 09:03, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
About the latter suggestion, it would be better to use the same command with commas: intitle:"village pump". --NaBUru38 (talk) 22:06, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
But intitle:"village pump" finds only titles containing exactly that string. It finds "small village pump" but not "village small pump" (assuming such things to exist).  intitle:village intitle:pump would find both, and I'd expect allintitle:village pump to find both also, as in Google. Stanning (talk) 08:33, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Any of the {{search templates}} could be offered as a specialized search box for itself. All we need is for the friendly developer of mw:extension:inputBox (they are really friendly on that talk page) to add a feature that accepts a template. Then the inputbox input would go through that template and land on the search results page. That's like a parameter input. Not sure how the developer would handle two inputs. The morelike search parameter uses pipes, just like a template does; so probably the developer of inputBox would use a pipe to separate parameters. It's perfect, and would be very easy. You'd just set it up (as documented there), then use it by typing in, say, title for an {{intitle}}, prefix for a {{lookfrom}}, regex for a {{regex}}, template usage for {{tlusage}}, or in Anna's case username for a template that could even be called from a user page that implemented a design-once, use-many-times query. I think it would make a good subpage for Help:Searching: Top ten searches. — CpiralCpiral 06:12, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Add importScript( "User:Fred Gandt/searchSpecifics.js" ); to your common JavaScript page for an interpretation of the requested functionality. I'm not suggesting this is an end to the proposal, just trying to be helpful. Is this kind of what you had in mind? fredgandt 01:39, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

New essay about an idea for more peaceful editing

I just created a new essay, Wikipedia:Revert notification opt-out, with an accompanying userbox. It came from an idea that I got, about how to maybe make editing more peaceful. It seems to me that getting notifications that "Your edit has been reverted by..." can create needless drama. I don't think opting out will work for everyone, but maybe it will be helpful for some editors, as it seems to be for me. So I figured I would point it out here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

There's a better solution to the problem you are attempting to address, to wit: Learn how the Wikipedia editing process works. Learn that a revert (especially the first one) is a normal, routine part of the process. Train yourself not to take it personally, not to get your feelings hurt, not to react in anger. Chill. I think your solution is a band-aid fix, and I think your essay is misleading to editors. We could probably do more to promote the proper thinking, but such an essay will only muddle the issue (to whatever extent people read it). ―Mandruss ☎ 06:39, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I have to agree with Mandruss. Some people will benefit from growing up and learning to stop the drama that starts with them. OTOH I would like to learn from my mistakes, a revert with no explanation does not help me learn. I'd like to know if I violated some formatting or other standard. Chuckr30 (talk) 12:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
If you really think that there is something misleading, I would be very interested in knowing more specifically what it is, and I would want to fix it. However, I can assure you that I have already learned "how the Wikipedia editing process works". I am not a new editor, and I understand the reverting process. (And another thing one might learn about the Wikipedia editing process might be not to tell experienced editors that they need to learn about the Wikipedia editing process.) One part of training oneself not to take it personally can be, for some editors, opting out as I have described. As for "band-aid", I do not claim that it's an all-encompassing solution for everyone, just one more thing that might help, and I do not know why you would have expected otherwise. As I said just above, I recognize that it will not work for everyone, and it appears that it wouldn't be helpful to you. That does not mean that it wouldn't help someone else. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:39, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, I thought my intent was clear enough but apparently not. I wasn't referring to you, but to the editors your essay is intended to help. We cool?
My point was merely that, in my wretched opinion, you're addressing the problem in the wrong way, and thereby doing the editors (and the project) a disservice. The band-aid reference meant that, while your solution might treat the symptom, it fails to cure the illness, for lack of a better metaphor. The solution to the problem already exists, it's already in writing somewhere although I've forgotten where, and we simply need to make it more prominent for new editors and more actively promote it where needed. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:34, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
Oh, thanks so much for clarifying that, no problem! I see now what you mean. In my own opinion, it's not that I'm really addressing the problem in the wrong way, as that there are underlying, basic, issues that my idea does not address. In other words, if someone has a bad attitude about being reverted, then the solution is to develop a better attitude. I agree with you about that. But I don't think it has to be all or nothing. Myself, I think (perhaps biased) that my own attitude is pretty good, but I also find that it's best if I take a bit of time after finding a revert, before I decide what to do about it, instead of responding right away. That way, I can think it over. When I look over my watchlist, I can decide which changes to look into first, and which to deal with later, and I can decide to wait on dealing with a revert. But I began to notice, through self-observation, that when I was getting those red-colored alerts that there was a revert, I tended to react too quickly. Now again, I'm not saying this works for everyone, but I think that opting out is a tool, more so than a band-aid. It's not a tool that fixes everything. For an editor with a great attitude, it may be superfluous, and for an editor with a lousy attitude, it might not make any difference. But I think it helps me, and therefore it might help some others. And per the old line of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good enough, I think that's good enough. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks in turn for clarifying. With that new understanding, I see your point and agree. I think the essay should say something briefly about the "cure" (near the top) and provide an appropriate link for further reading. As I said, I can't remember where that was. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:25, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
Great, that's a good idea, and I'll work on that. And I wish everyone peaceful editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 03:09, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Interesting; I didn't realize it was possible to opt out of notifications. I agree it's not 100% necessary to be notified of reverts to one's edits: if one has the article on one's Watch list one will probably find out the old way. Still, I'm going to retain the notification. Nice essay, though, and helpful for those who experience it as additional drama and don't want that. My personal preference would be a reminder to people to carefully read the edit summary of the person who made the revert -- I can't count the times when I've had to explain over and over and then at length on the article Talk page why I made a very simple and justified revert/change, simply because the person did not read my detailed edit summary. Softlavender (talk) 06:51, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. I agree that the usefulness depends on the individual. And I will also add your helpful idea of reading the edit summary. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:35, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Reporter's Notebook - preliminary system design

  • Reporter's Notebook Just the facts, ma'am
    Reporter's Notebook
    Just the facts, ma'am

Been pondering this idea for a while, just wanted to express it at an early stage, and perhaps get some thought on preliminary system design.

Imagine a really good investigative journalist's personal notebook of facts related to a breaking story. This project (early design phase ONLY at this point) would be to "generalize" that single user notebook into a multi-user tool that would permit collaborative fact reporting, in near-real-time, for news stories large enough to be potentially included in WikiNews and/or WikiPedia.

More preliminary design concepts in bullet form, in no particular order.

  1. The tool would be a support tool, used "behind the scenes" to aid Wikinews and Wikipedia authors and editors writing major news stories.
  2. It would be an accurate, permanent, historical accounting of who reported, what, when.
  3. It would relieve many authors and editors of the tedious job of complete citation creation in Wikinews and Wikipedia articles.
  4. It would be LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) based, and also rely heavily, if not entirely, on the standing WikiMedia wiki software.
  5. The design would be such that it would appeal first and foremost to professional users, including a fairly wide audience of:
    1. investigative journalists
    2. beat reporters
    3. detectives
    4. private investigators
    5. special agents
    6. etc.
  6. The design would also allow participation (perhaps to a lesser extent) by everyone, perhaps subject to login and positive identification - to upload images, videos, recordings, eye-witness accounts. It might do things like geo code the IP of the poster to corroborate being "at the scene / at the time" etc.
  7. A key feature of a reporter's notebook would be hyper vigilance to accurate reporting of names, places, times, titles, organizations, etc. There would be particular attention paid to the accuracy of these to insure that professional media could rely on them.
  8. Hearsay (according to our anonymous source) and leaked documents could possibly be scored for reliability based on the reporting entity.
  9. Dates/Times/Events of specific interest to the press would be included. For example date/time/place of upcoming news conferences, press releases / media kits / backgrounders / transcripts captures. These are of little or no relevance to subsequent articles directly, but are a part of the information web around news events.
  10. Hyperlinks would be provided to the source, historical snapshots, archiving and intense demand cache might be issues.
  11. Because this would be a permanently accessible "archive" of items perhaps the article in WikiNews and/or WikiPedia might not need to have extensive space devoted to references in the main articles. This would unclutter, without loosing the "one click" away from the source citation.
  12. The tool would "capture" news facts as they are discovered/reported in (very) near real-time. This would provide a location for users interested in "any breaking news, irregardless of the fully vetted reliability of the source" vs. WikiNews and WikiPedia which need to report only reliable sources, with neutral point of view.
  13. Professional journalists (and WikiPedia/WikiNews authors) are charged with placing the news in proper context, this system would be totally free of that constraint.
  14. The system would be designed for speed in reporting. Each report has a time/date stamp. LATER, the item may be corroborated, or "enhanced" with the credibility of the source, or official corroborating info. There could be a high speed "preliminary and unverified" status, that could later be updated.
  15. Corrections would be a reported event, also get a time/date stamp.
  16. The news ticker (by event) could be launched into Twitter, encouraging Twitter "news hounds" to also report into the system. Weibo could be another prime user/contributor
  17. As time passes the early "sensational news" as reported in WikiPedia needs to be refactored into more thoughtful, more enduring "encyclopedic" article content. Several times going "though the loop" (use this tool from the outset, going from first versions of articles to later, more stable versions of the articles) would improve both early stage and later stage news reporting. The system would be specifically designed up front to improve the news reporting process (early "breaking" and later "more thoughtful/analytical")
  18. Crowd sourced news is of critical importance in States where professional news is heavily censored. Some of the "good reasons" for early news censorship in restrictive States are that much of it is overly sensational or even downright false. Panic has very negative consequences. This "reporters notebook" design might (eventually) help support a better balance. In uncensored new States it might be designed with an eye to encourage more responsible reporting all the way through. In censored States the entire "trail" of reports might be allowable after a reasonable time delay.
  19. Just look at Wikipedia page views in the first day-days-first week or so of breaking news. The demand is INTENSE! Those readers want ready access to any fragment of information related to an event, ASAP! All that demand clashes with encyclopedia writing, however people DO turn to Wkipedia for news.
  20. I'm thinking of something that is row oriented for reporting, with a time/date stamp, relevant fields for speedy human scanning, drill downs for more, built for
    1. high speed, real-time use (perhaps with a scrolling window tool, similar to a AP wire headline reporter)
    2. easy subsequent review, and lookup research later on, for "depth" article writers
    3. very dbPedia oriented "under the hood" to preserve linked data
    4. very well thought out data structures to satisfy all current and future users
    5. flexible reporting of "fields" in rows to allow users a wide amount of flexibility, lots of ability to cut down the heap with flexible filters.
    6. metadata tagged everything with significant attention to data integrity all through the system

Again, this is so far from any proposal, just a fuzzy concept floating around at this point. Only looking for thoughts around preliminary system design concepts. No rush. If it ever moved forward we would want to deep engage with news professionals (especially associated with investigative journalism) on a world wide basis to really to elicit all system requirements, engage academics in journalism, pay close attention to news values, media bias, reporting bias, publication bias, etc. Would want the design to be global friendly and up to date at the outset to encourage potential broad scale use.

Might be fun to engage even the professional news censors in heavily censored States to find out what their precise requirements are? Perhaps the need for censorship might "expire" after a certain embargo? Even censored news States need a flow of reports to pick and choose what to broadcast. A system that also accommodated those needs might bring the benefit of potentially increased future collaboration?

All feedback more than welcome :) Rick (talk) 17:29, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

What you're proposing certainly couldn't be a part of Wikipedia, since if I'm understanding you correctly you're proposing breaching virtually every core Wikipedia principle regarding sourcing, encyclopedic content, using Wikipedia as a webhost and original research; "Ignore all rules" doesn't mean "disregard every rule completely", and the funders would never stand for turning Wikipedia into a hybrid of Twitter and the Google News Lab. You could try proposing it on Meta to see if the WMF would consider a separate project unconnected to Wikipedia, although given the expensive failure of Wikinews they'll probably be unenthusiastic. ‑ Iridescent 18:24, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Iridescent - thanks for the valuable feedback. Quality negative feedback is just as valuable as positive. I may have picked the wrong spot to discuss this very preliminary concept/idea only (and its far from "I'm proposing"). Reporter's Notebook as conceived would be a support tool, not at all under the Wikipeida or Wikinews "brands/service marks/etc." Its a behind the scene tool (#1 above) designed from the ground up to aid authors and editors. No, its not at all something turning Wikipedia into a hybrid of Twitter and the Google News Lab, its not about Wikipedia in general, only about Wikipedia news articles. Its a time/date stamped reporters notebook tool for news events that are likely to reach the Wikinews/Wikipedia WP:Notability standard and result in an article. I wholeheartedly agree Wikinews is an utter failure, didn't know it was expensive. Perhaps more preliminary design thought up front and more disciplined failure analysis would have put that on a better track. As of right now I'm not sure Wikipedia or Wikinews is hitting the ball out of the park with quality news reporting. Wikipedia articles sometimes "mature" gradually over time but the preliminary reporting, when it gets the very most viewership is highly problematic. Wikinews coverage and readership are scant. This would be just one tool, helping support news reporting. The tool doesn't write the articles, which of course should be fully compliant with all current policies. Rick (talk) 19:07, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

On an individual level, you're welcome to either create your own Sandbox, or gather notes and stuff offline. If there's concerns about the reliability of given sources, you can leave them out of the article and mention them on the talk page ("Hey, everyone, I've found this, can you all tell me if it's any good?" or the like). Beyond that, there's little I'd recommend. There are non-WP tools that can accomplish a lot of that but going off the wiki to do wiki business is non-transparent at best. To be honest, there's little need for this; there is no deadline for the encyclopedia. Articles affected by breaking news stories usually have a message to that effect on them, and if someone is asking about breaking details on the talk page, then someone can point out that this isn't a newspaper, and suggest they look elsewhere for breaking news and such.
Having said that, something like having a notebook would probably be great for creating new articles, and if it isn't part of the new article creation mentoring process (which I know exists, but I don't actually interact with) perhaps it could be taught. The first draft of an article can be like the first draft of a paper: you've done your research and have something to say, but it's still subject to revision. Wabbott9 Tell me about it.... 20:41, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Sub-categories for articles with topics of unclear notability

Since the {{notability}} template allows an Org parameter to be added, would it make sense to subdivide Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability by Org? At present the category has 60,000+ entries, making it unwieldy to peruse by interest. Even the monthly sub-category is fairly large. (Ex.: Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability from December 2015.) Praemonitus (talk) 20:05, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I typically support splitting categories with thousands of articles. However, until we have watchlists of subcategories and a better search page, these overpopulated categories my be useful. --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:04, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Publish Wikipedia on Freenet

Suggesting we take a defined version of Wikipedia articles from WP:1.0 and format it into Freenet freesite html format, thus making quality articles available to internet users who require anonymity protection when browsing, or if the Wikipedia website is blocked in their particular region.

There are a few technical requirements that would need to be considered, such as an automated process for converting articles into freesite html format, bundling similar articles into 2 MB containers, browse/search functionality, and hash key considerations. --Breno talk 22:42, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

What is different about the Freenet HTML format? Shouldn't it use standard HTML? Also consider that the compressed English Wikipedia is at least 11GB and that's without any change logs. Chuckr30 (talk) 12:04, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Hi Chuckr30, Freenet does use standard HTML, however to work best as a Freesite and maintain privacy it must not contain scripting (most Freenet browsers block this), use proprietary formats such as .PDF, and avoid links to www Internet sites when Freenet resources can be linked instead. I'm aware of English Wikipedia's size, and also would like to see an "authoritative" version published, which is why I suggested using a set list of quality articles such as those from WP:1.0 Wikiproject. One of the earlier versions could fit on a CD for example, so 700MB of articles including pictures is an achieveable result to publish to Freenet. --Breno talk 09:01, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Push notifications

I've been experimenting with a service that monitors edits and notifies readers and editors about unusual edit activity on articles. I've been experimenting privately with this for the past week and it has sent me notifications within minutes of the deaths of David Bowie, Glen Frey and Alan Rickman and alerted me about the 2016 Istanbul bombing and the start of the 2016 Australian Open. I've been playing around with its sensitivity and I'm keen to get feedback from users.

My goal right now is to explore a mechanism for pulling in new readers to Wikipedia as content gets created and hopefully inspire them to help with the editing and during my experimentations I have also seen potential in notifying interested parties in edit wars happening on certain articles (that's one for the future).

Here's how you can help! Right now you'll need the latest version of Chrome (mobile or desktop) or Firefox (developer version). This makes use of pretty new technology that hasn't yet made it into other browsers.

  • Visit pushipedia and subscribe to "Trending edits (experimental)"
  • You should receive at least one push notification within a 48 hour period - number of notifications really depends on activity in the world and Wikipedia :)

Questions I'm keen to have answered by you:

  • What did you get push notifications about?
  • Did pushipedia lead you to make edits that you normally wouldn't have made? Tell me about them!
  • Did pushipedia notify you of something happening before you heard about it elsewhere (e.g. news, Twitter, word of mouth)
  • Was it obvious from reading the article why the page was trending
  • Were there pages that you would have expected to receive notifications that you didn't?
  • Were there edits that you were alerted to that were due to vandalism? If so what titles were they (will help me finetune the algorithm).

You can give me this feedback on my talk page. Thanks in advance for your help! Jdlrobson (talk) 23:01, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I'd encourage other editors to try this. It surfaces interesting news (Planet Nine, gravitational waves), deaths (Terry Wogan), edit wars, and vandalism. It's fun to see what is getting more attention, as the edits happen. Fences&Windows 21:47, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Embedded VR Photographs as Article Illustrations

Along my travels, I have created many VR Photographs that would serve as excellent illustrations for Wikipedia articles. (If you don't know what I mean - think Google Street View). Would anybody else be interested in seeing interactive VR/720 degree photographs as Wikipedia illustrations? The tools to create these photographs are now easily commercially available, and can even be made using software for smartphones, so we are currently seeing an explosion of imagery of this type, and it would be great if some of that could be used to improve Wikipedia.

In fact, Wikimedia already has a ton of really cracking illustrations that we could use right from the get-go:

From a technical perspective, this should be quite easy, as Mozilla's AFrame project allows for cross-platform, responsive VR photograph viewing, and I think illustrations on Wikipedia would be an excellent application of the technology.

What do you think? Miserlou (talk) 17:49, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@Miserlou: these sound useful, but "commercially available" doesn't really fit our overall philosophy. Would you be willing to release these under an open license? — xaosflux Talk 18:02, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, I misread that - so long as the images are license friendly I think they would be useful; can you point to examples of where others are hosting these for viewers? — xaosflux Talk 19:14, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: AFrame provides a good example of what these feel like in practice: Panorama Demo - there are many of these types of Free as in Free photos on Wikimedia, we just need to build a way to view them properly in the encyclopedia! Miserlou (talk) 19:37, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Also, if we could get some consensus about whether or not to add these, I'd be willing to make the WikiMedia extension myself! Miserlou (talk) 09:40, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
This NYT piece seems very relevant, and right on time. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
Exactly! So.. what next? Miserlou (talk) 14:08, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
@Miserlou: Good question. While this page is probably the best "general public" place for initial discussion of this, it seems to get less participation than the other Pump pages. So Step 1 would seem to be: Get wider exposure. You might advertise this discussion at places like WP:VPM, WP:VPR, WP:VPT, and appropriate WikiProjects. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:09, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Concerning the watchlist

I'm getting kind of tired of having to go through my watchlist, and clear it out after fighting vandalism. Now I'm not going to say that unchecking the watchlist option is a huge inconvenience, but it does become a pain when it's the middle of the day, and there are multiple school IP vandals blanking and disrupting Wikipedia. I'm, however, proposing the idea that we make the watchlist button on edit pages here because I'm not very good at these sort of things. Of course, by that I mean making templates for proposed ideas and such. I'm still fairly new here. I'm sure that this idea can be a foundation that can be build upon, so have at it. Cheers! Boomer Vial (talk) 19:51, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

It sounds like most of that vandalism is being done by IP users. I see that you mentioned unchecking watchlist options, but I wonder if you might find it helpful to leave "hide anonymous users" checked on your watchlist most of the time, and only uncheck it when you are planning to revert vandals, and check it again when you are done with that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:00, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
User:Tryptofish Well, I actually meant making it so that the 'watchlist' option is not automatically checked when editing articles, and the like. I would empty my watchlist page, but there are pages on there I'd like to keep, so that makes it even more of a pain. Sorry about the confusion. Boomer Vial (talk) 23:22, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
@Boomer Vial: Thanks for clarifying. So, if I understand correctly that you want to be able to edit pages (such as reverting vandalism) without automatically adding those pages to your watchlist, then there is already a fix you can use. Click the Preferences link at the top of the page, to go to your own user preference settings. One of the tabs there is for Watchlist, so go there. There is a section called Advanced Options. It has a bunch of settings that can be checked or un-checked. I'm guessing that you have "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist" and/or "Add pages where I have performed a rollback to my watchlist" enabled. All you have to do is un-check them, and then save the changes. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: Well, how about that. Thanks for the tip. Cheers. I was wrong, actually. It turns out that pages that I revert due to vandalism are still added to my watchlist. Boomer Vial (talk) 03:37, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Unchecking "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist" should prevent that. I have confirmed this with the following test:
  • Reverted an edit using "undo". The page was not added to my watchlist.
  • Checked the above preference and saved.
  • Reverted the previous revert using "undo". The page was added to my watchlist.
No logout/in was necessary after the pref change. If you have double-checked that the above checkbox is unchecked, what method are you using for these reverts that add the pages to your watchlist? ―Mandruss ☎ 04:16, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Note that the “Watch this page” checkbox in any edit window (just below the edit-summary field) should reflect the preference setting; you needn’t actually save an edit to find out what’ll happen. (And of course it provides the option to override the default behaviour.)—Odysseus1479 09:48, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
@Mandruss: I checked to make sure the option "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist" is unchecked, and it is. I am using Twinkle (mainly) to revert vandalism. Boomer Vial (talk) 20:54, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
@Boomer Vial: I'm stumped. I'd suggest taking the issue to WP:HD or WP:VPT. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:49, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
If you are using rollback, or if Twinkle is using rollback, then you need to uncheck that too. I'm not familiar with Twinkle, but could there be a setting in it that is causing the problem? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:04, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: Ah, I see the preferences page for Twinkle now. I have the options off, and it seems to have worked. Thank you for your help. :) Boomer Vial (talk) 22:43, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
You are very welcome, and I'm glad that it worked! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

GOCEreviewed template change

An example such as {{GOCEreviewed|user=Dthomsen8|date=January 2016|issues=awaiting deletion decision}} should be made sortable by user, date, and especially issues. Some of the articles not copyedited some time ago because they were considered for deletion and then kept should be tagged for copyedit and the GOCEreviewed template should be removed.--DThomsen8 (talk) 20:21, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Merger

There is a huge backlog in Merge requests on Wikipedia. I have personally not witnessed even a single merger since I have joined the editing community. I am not aware of the progress to resolve the same. However, there are few suggestions which I can propose, which might help. For example, split the list of articles proposed for merger into two separate categories - 1) Proposed 2) Consensus reached. AfD and Move are pretty efficient tags for any article due to prompt action by volunteers and a defined action plan. AfD tag never stays on an article for more than a week. Even move is closed within a month or so. So should be merge tags. Would like to open this discussion for experts here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Capankajsmilyo (talk • contribs) 06:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I used to do several mergers per year, my last one being here, back in July. If someone objects after I put the proposal tags on the articles, I discuss it on the Talk Page, and drop the idea if objections don't quickly go away, as I have other things to do. Probably at some time in the past I bothered with the Wikipedia:Proposed mergers list but offhand, I don't recall. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:34, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Is there any way to resolve such backlog? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 16:35, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Check the articles and their talk pages. If the merge flags have been up long enough and there's no controversy, decide it yourself. Either carry out the merger, or drop the merge flags and cancel the merger. It doesn't need an admin or unusual expertise unless there's a wish for a history merge or similar fine finishing. If there is a controversy, I usually simply walk away, unless one side is clearly misunderstanding, in which case I join the controversy to explain the situation as I see it. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:57, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. But I am not discussing an individual case here. I am talking about the backlog created by proposals from multiple users. How can it be resolved? No one person would be able to do it I suppose. Can the current system of proposing and resolving a merger be improved? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 18:48, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

More Wikipedia articles

Some people when they're about to use a company's service want to read the Wikipedia article about that company to see if if that company has a tendency to rip people off so that they can decide whether to use its service. If there's no Wikipedia article about that company, they might decide that since they can't find out whether the company rips people off, they'll just use that service and suck up the risk that they'll be ripped off. Some companies are not well enough known for there to be a Wikipedia article about them. Maybe there should start being articles about them so that people will no longer have the good aspects of them revealed and the bad aspects hidden. In order for that to happen, research groups might first have to start publishing research about those companies. Blackbombchu (talk) 05:19, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're proposing that the WMF should commission and publish books on non-notable topics in order to make them notable. I'm aware that the Idea Lab is for blue-sky thinking, but this is simply not going to happen for reasons which should be obvious. ‑ Iridescent 21:42, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
If that's what "some people" do, "some people" are idiots. Wikipedia is not the Yellow pages, it's not Consumer Reports, nor should it try to be either - it has it's work cut out being an encyclopaedia! Chuntuk (talk) 16:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I'll just note that ignorance is not the same as idiocy. Nonetheless, it's true that this is not a consumer protection service, and providing such information without an independent source may even subject Wikipedia to legal disputes. Praemonitus (talk) 18:33, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Amazon is one of the best places to find reviews on products, and therefore, the company that sells them. IMO Wikipedia should not try and reinvent the wheel or duplicate effort. Chuckr30 (talk) 12:18, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiktionary lookup

I don't know how this would work technically but it would be cool if instead of bluelinking words that may be unfamiliar to readers, they could right click on the word and have and option to look up that word on wiktionary. Let me know what you think.Nemoanon (talk) 01:12, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

To clarify, are you talking about the ability to look up any word they see anywhere on the page? ―Mandruss ☎ 08:25, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Good question, Nemoanon. You can type wikt:keyword into the Wikipedia search, and to your specific request there are browser plugins and add-ons that can do this, see Wiktionary's guide to searching, their page on Firefox extensions, a Chrome desktop plugin. There may be others. There is a Wiktionary Android app, but it is no longer supported by the WMF. Fences&Windows 09:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Article feedback

About 3 years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation worked on a tool called Article feedback, which allowed readers to contribute "feedback" to articles in the form of community-moderated comments. A lot of time was spent building guidelines for managing the tool. The Foundation was very ambitious with the project, hoping to roll it out on all Wikipedia articles. Following an extensive request for comment in February 2013, the tool ended up becoming opt-in only, and it was eventually discontinued in March 2014, because:

Though some editors expressed interest in keeping the tool on an opt-in or limited basis, Article Feedback would need significant improvements to better serve its users, and the foundation doesn't have the resources to develop it further at this time. Besides being unpopular with many in our editor community, it is also slowing down site performance -- and may require more technical maintenance that we can adequately provide.

The WMF also stated in its decision to retire the tool that most team members involved with it agreed that Flow is better positioned to give our readers a voice -- and that we should clear the way to make it a success.

Now that Flow is no longer a viable solution, my question is whether the community has any interest in asking the WMF to bring Article feedback back. In my opinion, Wikipedia still lacks an effective means through which readers can communicate with editors, and the WMF has been struggling to develop solutions. I think that Article feedback would be useful for this purpose as long as it is limited to being completely opt-in for each article, and as long as past flaws are discussed and resolved. We still have entire behavioral guidelines that we can revive. I think part of the reason why tools developed by the WMF have failed in the past is because they lacked a grassroots approach to community integration. Perhaps this is a start to fix that. Mz7 (talk) 06:09, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

"An effective means through which readers can communicate with editors" sounds good in theory, but it creates a huge open-ended commitment since you then need to ensure there are editors willing to read, moderate and reply to said communications. (Over a million comments were posted during this experiment: on average, 12% of posts were marked as useful implies that during the limited period of the trial, the poor saps monitoring the AFT-enabled articles had to wade through a minimum of 880,000 useless comments.)
An immediate practical concern which springs to mind is how would you make it "completely opt-in for each article"? Wikipedia articles don't have a single author; if one person involved in the article wants AFT, but nobody else does, is that one person allowed to opt-in?
Plus, any proposal to revive AFT would need to address the elephant in the room, that it became fantastically unpopular for a reason; it creates a constant stream of publicly-visible comments which has to be moderated on every article on which it's in use, and unless you can show that people willing to take on the thankless task of reading and replying to all comments, the WMF are never going to switch it back on. The devs have only just had their fingers burned over Gather. ‑ Iridescent 13:07, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Iridescent for the response. I think the solution is a change of approach. The Foundation's original plan of rolling AFT out to all articles was completely untenable, and I think that was a major cause of the plethora of useless comments. Enabling the tool on popular, widely-edited, and/or controversial articles would definitely be unhelpful—in the same way such articles are sometimes semi-protected due to persistent vandalism.
You're right that Wikipedia articles don't have one single author, but it's also true that a significant number of articles are written, developed, and closely watched by only one or two editors, simply because the topic itself isn't all that popular or controversial. It is these articles where I think switching on AFT would be beneficial. Such articles would generally only be read by users who are genuinely interested in the topic, thus minimizing the trolling. And I think there's an editor retention component to this too: Not only can readers offer constructive criticism, simple statements of praise – "this article was very informative", "thank you for writing this article" – can help those of us who are starting to wonder if their contributions are really worth something.
With regards to the task of moderating such comments, back when it was turned on, I thought the task was somewhat enjoyable. I draw a parallel to counter-vandalism, a task that is almost as important to the encyclopedia as content creation. Every day, editors and administrators spend hours patrolling recent changes. Having been there and done that, I wouldn't describe the task as "thankless", but rather, "contributory". I'm not sure why anyone would commit so much time to the task if they didn't somewhat enjoy it. Mz7 (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Many of the volunteers here take on a share of the chores in order to keep the site going; That isn't an unusual situation for a volunteer community. But increasing the chores and diverting people from the parts of the project they like to something they take on out of a sense of duty is not good for community morale. Especially if those extra chores stem from a mistake by those in power within the organisation. If AFT had generated a new community of people who enjoyed processing it and managed to keep the problematic stuff out then it wouldn't have been quite so toxic. But you'd still have the central problem that the community was built on the SoFixIt mentality of encouraging readers to correct things. Diverting readers from correcting errors to commenting on them via AFT undermined that and took us further down the wrong track that started with the shift from fixing things to tagging them for hypothetical others to fix. ϢereSpielChequers 23:27, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Here's a different approach - We don't allow readers to leave open-ended comments, but you do allow them to rate the article, perhaps on several categories. A WMF-run bot would then keep these ratings up-to-date on the talk page, and also categorized. This gives the editors the ability to go thru the articles rated the worst, but eliminates the burden of moderating. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:34, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
  • That's been tried; it was a complete fiasco, with "ratings" owing considerably more to readers' opinion of the topic than to the quality of the article, and was soon withdrawn and replaced with WP:AFT5 (the Article Feedback Tool under discussion above). ‑ Iridescent 20:20, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Like this Article! <-- No thanks. Seriously: The method in the madness that lies behind the current 6,919,264 articles existence is allowing anyone to edit, not pass by whinging or applauding. Wikipedia is by the people, for the people and one of very few fine examples of that ethic done (mostly) right. If readers have anything valuable to contribute - let encourage them to get on and do it themselves.
That said, automatic, algorithmic evaluation of articles could provide invaluable insight. Possibly worth training a machine what good and bad articles look like, then ask it to evaluate them all, and update itself and the results on an ongoing basis. fredgandt 21:17, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Google Cloud Platform - Prediction and IBM Watson - Retrive and Rank have favourable quotas for diligent use, and could both be trained to rank article quality. fredgandt 02:33, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Required knowledge in articles

Would it be possible to decorate articles with a list of required knowledge that are necessary to properly be introduced to concepts without having to go through all the detailled articles you can find along wikipedia pages. Like the outline of a course on a subject in college, what would be the steps taken by a teacher to introduce you the concept. Or the required course necessary to enroll you can sometime find for college courses.

This will save a lot of hours of research, and hopefully improve retention rate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.194.198.248 (talk) 17:34, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Some infoboxes are used for this purpose. An example might be general relativity. Praemonitus (talk) 23:37, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
For some top-level topics, we have dedicated Outline articles. The problem is that for many topics, "required knowledge" depends on what one's looking to learn so there's no single answer; someone reading Heroin, for instance, will need a completely different set of background knowledge depending on whether they're interested in pain relief treatment, social history, addiction epidemiology or 20th century popular culture. Most longer articles have some kind of background section near the start, which tries to explain the framework in which the article's set. ‑ Iridescent 23:44, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Some articles are going to require a lot of basic knowledge to understand or else every article will be repetitive. It would be like going to Barack Obama and saying that the section him joining the Senate should include a background on the Senate itself and then a section on the electoral college so people gets its history and then on the history of the presidency, etc., etc. It's simply not feasible. There's also Simple English Wikipedia which specifically focuses on avoiding too much jargon and complex wording so that English as a second language speakers and children have the ability to grasp the basics of most articles. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:47, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
It's important to remember that Wikipedia is not a how to guide - it's an encyclopaedia. And like the paper bound versions, it should serve to detail the subjects within, not teach them.
Since all the data that forms the project is freely accessible, it could fall to the WMF or a third party to develop an(other) application to present the data in a manner structured specifically for learning, but the encyclopaedia should IMO remain as such.
A little perspective - I use these pages autodidactically with little trouble, and although not far from here on this very page other users complain of too many links, I personally love the little wonders! :-) fredgandt 00:09, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Subject troublesome IPs to peer review instead of blocking

Moved to Proposals.  fredgandt 01:09, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

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

I imagine this has been discussed before, but it can't hurt to try again in that case.

This suggestion for a proposal could be extended to also cover accounts, but personally, I see account holders as having already taken responsibility for their actions, so would leave them out.

This suggestion for a proposal would almost certainly require changes to the MediaWiki software.

I propose:

Instead of outright blocking IPs found wanting, we (first) try limiting them to submitting edits for peer review (draft edits for [dis]approval). Any unhelpful work would be no hassle to ignore; poor quality attempts to be helpful could be a good place to start the healing process (i.e. education and encouragement); good quality edits can be approved and published. If the IP continues being unhelpful, they stay in limbo; if they make an effort, we can help them improve; if they prove worthy, they're released from limbo.

Clearly the prolific vandals are keen to edit ;-)

A particular benefit of this procedure would be in the case of dynamic IPs previously used by vandals (or just plain old idiots) being adopted by decent folk who are immediately blocked and have a terrible instant history for no personal fault. Another benefit would be a shared workload, with less administration required. Another would be simply having fewer ugly warnings and block notices around the place, which just don't shout "Welcome!".

For the community's consideration. fredgandt 11:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I've been a sysadmin before and I've been on the web since 1989, so I'm well aware of spam and other abuses. But Wikipedia has blocked my IP sometimes because I use a VPN, and someone has been spamming from that IP. The IP from the VPN is taken from a block of IPs and randomly assigned to a person. I'm glad there is a way to unblock an IP for innocent people. I suggest the IP in question be initially blocked for 7-10 days, enough to hopefully discourage abuse from that one individual. Also realize that when Wikipedia blocks an IP, there is a high probability they are blocking one of a block of IPs for a public computer in a public library. I don't think Wikipedia wants to limit the use of their site or limit the dissemination of information.
I hope my idea is a reasonable compromise. Chuckr30 (talk) 12:01, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Honestly Chuckr30, your suggested compromise is how things already are; IPs are treated as individuals for the most part, even though they often are not, and are banned for various lengths of time and must request to be unbanned (which is a job of work for everyone involved). Also it should be understood that that there is no specific IP in question.
Your experience of being online for decades and once or sysadmin are interesting to you, but irrelevant (not being mean, just honest). I am a sysadmin on a commercial MediaWiki wiki and a web developer, but that makes absolutely no difference in this discussion.
I fail to see how allowing what would have been banned IPs to offer peer reviewed edits could be in any way viewed as limiting use - quite the opposite.
I wonder if perhaps you misunderstood my proposal? fredgandt 23:52, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, pretty much in the end. By that I mean, the user's end. The process though for IPs (I'd stick with banning accounts if they act up) to be limboed might be a lot like the current process that leads to banning, but the release could be semi-automated; 10 approved edits (good enough for auto confirmation) and they're back to full health.
So also "yes", there'd be some serious coding to be done, but worth it I reckon. fredgandt 00:40, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Multiple Wikipedia articles to EPUB

Does anyone have an interest in a Perl application that would run on a PC and create a single EPUB file from a list of Wikipedia URLs? My idea:

  1. User creates a text-based Build file, with one Wikipedia URL per line.
  2. Software grabs the Wikipedia article, converts the main part of the article to XHTML (ignoring sidebar stuff), makes one chapter of it for an EPUB. All URLs listed in the Build file create one EPUB.
  3. The software would be written in Perl so it would run on any OS that supports Perl.
  4. I already have software to convert MultiMarkdown into an EPUB and the EPUB passes third-party validation. So I'm familiar with the EPUB format.
  5. The software would be free and open source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chuckr30 (talk • contribs) 12:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I hear the old EPUB functionality for saving Wikipedia "books" was discontinued. Why was that?

Thank you. Chuckr30 (talk) 12:07, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Promising articles

So I was looking up some things for a trip to Denmark I'm taking later this year, and was looking at Frederiksborg Castle. I figured it wasn't in bad shape, and I saw the star next to to the Danish language version. I clicked on that and was shown an unusual icon next to the article header. So naturally I clicked on that out of curosity and then ran it through the auto translate to discover that the Danish Wiki has a "Promising article" level in addition to Good and Excellent (our Featured). The summary it gives is as follows [2]: "Promising articles is a project in which Wikipedia's users improve the existing articles, with a view to preparing them for nomination as good articles. For an article can be considered as a promising article, then it must be at a reasonable level. Assessed an article promising so is the lowest rating of three possible ratings on Danish language Wikipedia. Items which are rated as promising, has still some significant gaps that need to be improved before they can be assessed as good articles. See the requirements for a good article for an overview of what is expected of realistic possibilities for improvement of promising articles."

As far as I can see, this has never been discussed at the Village Pump for the English language Wiki, apart from back in 2010 when someone from the Finnish Wiki was looking to create inter-wiki links for them. So I presume this is on the Finnish Wiki and the other Scandinavian ones too.

There is some duplication between this and some WikiProjects B class assessments - but this allows for a cross-project accumulation of articles which are ready to be worked up to GA status. I would think it was appropriate to have a few differences in approach should this be implemented - I wouldn't add an icon onto the main article page itself, but keep it strictly to a talk page thing. Furthermore, I think that should it be implemented, then it must have the requirements for improvement to GA incorporated into the new template as well as the general index page as well. There isn't much point without that or else it simply becomes a new indexing system for B class articles, which we completely don't need. Thoughts? Miyagawa (talk) 16:19, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

The old/rarely-used-today A-class is a quasi-approximation, although these are frequently better than a GA. "Good article candidate/nominees" are probably the closest project-wide label. Some wikiprojects have lists of articles they are collaborating on to raise to GA status, but until the page is officially nominated as a GA candidate, it won't have and particular marking.
Even GA-nominees just have markings on the talk page, not on the article page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:47, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
Similarly if the project has a full Stub/Start/C/B/A/GA system, that's pretty good as identifying various levels of quality. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:52, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Button to turn links in article text black

It would be nice to have a button somewhere that changes the colour of all the links in an article black, for readability's sake. Found this while searching for the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_AD#Changing_link_color

In Firefox there is the Read mode -button built into the browser that really helps with reading long articles, but afaIk no such thing in Chrome. I know Chrome has similar things as extensions, but it would be nice to provide the functionality to all users.

91.152.109.7 (talk) 03:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)J

I proposed that in May 2014, here. No traction. (I was fairly new then and didn't know that this page or WP:VPR would have been a more appropriate place to pose something like that. But I'm pretty sure the outcome would have been the same.) ―Mandruss ☎ 09:21, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Go to any article, then click on the "Printable version" link on the sidebar. How does this differ from your desired goal?--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:36, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
If the ugliness of the printable version doesn't appeal (and why would it?), there's the option of developing it as a User script or/then a Gadget if not adopted as standard MediaWiki GUI or specifically added as a Wikipedia extra feature.
A relatively simple matter of adding "the button" (somewhere) and a little CSS to instantly switch the hyperlink color [sic] back and forth. fredgandt 10:44, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Add importScript( "User:Fred_Gandt/subdueLinks.js" ); to your common JavaScript page to have the basic functionality you require. The button will be just below the Wikipedia icon at the top of the left navigation panel. It might not be perfect; it was slapped together ;-) fredgandt 11:46, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
@Fred Gandt: Works great, nice work! It preserves the links while turning them black, and does so without re-rendering the page, which was the best I hoped for in my above-linked proposal. The only improvement I can conceive would be if the button were kept on-screen at all times, regardless of where you are in the article (for that matter, the entire left sidebar should act like that, and should be independently scrollable if it's longer than the window, but that's a different discussion). No idea of the feasibility.
My preference would be for it to be an unconditional thing, since it could then work for unregistered users/readers (including the OP in this thread) and registered ones who don't know anything about gadgets, etc. But I expect that would receive the same opposition that I got in May 2014, which was basically that it sidesteps and masks the real problem, that there are too many links. For now, I'll pass your solution on when I see someone ask for it. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:06, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
I started a related thread at: WT:Tools/Editing tools#Tool to turn links black. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:10, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
@Mandruss: I use importScript( "User:Fred_Gandt/navigationUI.js" ); to affect the navigation UI in ways that amongst other things fixes the position of the left panel. It's pretty trivial to separate out the code to have that functionality without the rest (which is not trivial). See my sandbox for several useful (IMO) scripts (documentation is sparse).
I appreciate that IPs can't use these, but then they can always create accounts ;-)
For this (OP subject) to be added (more or less) for ALL users, it would be simplest (but not bestest) to just make the printable version less fugly, which is easy and requires no scripting (just CSS). fredgandt 19:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
As for the sidebar, I was speaking in terms of all Wikipedia users, not just myself. It's not worth doing just for myself. After 30 years in mainframe computers, about half of that in software, I can't get used to the idea of all this unlimited personal customization of the Wikipedia UI. Most of this would be pejoratively called "hacks" in the world I come from. The more of that there is, the harder it is for us to help one another with problems and questions, or to even "speak the same language". To some greater extent we need to live in the same Wikipedia world, in my opinion, even if that means settling for less than what we see as the ideal.
I appreciate that IPs can't use these, but then they can always create accounts - Hmmm ... where have I heard that before? ―Mandruss ☎ 19:35, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
@Mandruss: Some of us are vision and/or color-impaired and need the ability to customize. I remember those mainframe green-screens (and amber-screens) and I for one am glad that we have evolved beyond them and embraced color as a tool for communication. Of course you can always tinker with your own WP "common.css" file and make all link types on all wiki pages black for you. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 10:13, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for the comments. The point is to be able to easily switch links between blue and black at will. Sometimes one wants them blue, sometimes black, depending on the situation. Such a button would not force anything on anyone, it would only make easy switching available to everyone, including unregistered users/readers and those who aren't comfortable with fiddling with their local configurations (as I've indicated, my interest here goes beyond my own personal needs and preferences). If the button were never clicked by a user, nothing would change for that user. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:13, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Localization Project: Units, Dialect, Pronounciation

How about an add-on which can localize pages by default, for easier reading. A Wikipedian could set a locality, and articles would appear with the date/time format, and automatically convert units of measurement to the local standard. It could be taken to the logical extreme, and replace regional language variations (colour vs color), IPA vs US Customary phonetics, as well. Obviously, this functionality would be off by default, but it could ease barriers to understanding. Article or section tags could override the preferences (on scientific articles as an example). The function would also display a warning somewhere, that the page is being automatically localized, and block editing until the function is turned off.

This would help mitigate issues surrounding what version of English an article was started in.  superβεεcat  21:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

We can get round this by stilted writing, but we cannot compensate for other authors prose. This becomes really irritating when you are administering Wikipedia in a school, as you are insisting that your clients use correct English for assessments and exams. We have the {{convert}} to process numbers- but when it comes to words we have been abandoned. The first priorities are the page titles. eg Artificial fibre redirects to Synthetic fiber which then links to other fiber pages. The second priority is the section heads, and the spelling in the wikilinks. Then we can start looking at the text.
Personally I would default on the ip-address location, which could be over written by cookie, which could be overwritten by the users personal preference.
I think we should start by implementing a partial system, then users could opt in for a dictionary lookup system to get over the pants-trousers, sidewalk-pavement faux amis, which could be driven from Wiki-Data. I can see that this will transport over to de: who also have problems with swiss German, fr: with fr-be and the multiple varieties of es: Just a few suggestions. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 21:35, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. I like the idea of your "partial system", this makes a lot of sense to me. How does a project like this begin in earnest; a more concrete proposal for village pump? - superβεεcat  20:03, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
It's worth noting that several years ago, we had date-format autoconversion; it was turned off after a 3:2 vote. Personally, I think the number of semantically ambiguous variant words is so rare that this kind of complexity is much, much more trouble than it's worth - we'd get untold numbers of false positive conversions. (How does the system know which pants are pants, and which are trousers? Do we need to mark up every instance of a potentially translateable word?) Andrew Gray (talk) 20:27, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Draftprod

There have been numerous debates about deleting stale drafts, including expanding G13 or just removing the idea altogether (see VPP's attempt). On the one hand, people argue that no one's old drafts should ever be deleted in favor of editor retention. On the other hand, people argue that they would like to go through and triage places like Category:Stale userspace drafts so removing things will help (currently at 38k or so down from a high of 46k). What do people think about a proposed draft deletion process? It's basically like PROD in mainspace but much more highly restrictive and lengthy. It would cover both draftspace and userspace drafts. I think it could even overrule the need for G13 and cover WP:AFC as well as well as keep MFD from the current flooding of undisputed deletions it currently has. There would be a couple of rules here.

  1. First, only a draft that itself hasn't been edited in six months can be considered.
  2. If it's in userspace, following WP:STALE, the original creator and the editor's who space it is in (if they differ) must not have edited anywhere for at least one year.
  3. If the deletion is proposed, it would go into a category similar to Category:Proposed deletion for at least one month at which time any one can remove the proposal for any reason whatsoever. This is similar to the 5 month notification of Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions with a month before G13.
  4. After a month with no deletion, an admin can then decide if it's worth deleting.

I also tag draft with WikiProject so I imagine we can have WP:ALERTS for these draft prods similar to Prods so projects can see if there's anything of interest. Any thoughts? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:40, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

One thing that I'm just throwing out there, is to even have some sort of autodelete, if something is not touched in over a year, and then it's tagged by the bot, and then it's not touched for another month, it should just be deleted. We don't need any intervention. Otherwise, it might (not sure of the backlogs) cause admin headaches. Regardless, we do need to do something. I like your idea, it has safeguards in place so that somewhere along the line users can catch it and edit, and more than enough time elapses to delete. Sir Joseph (talk) 06:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Prod has an autodelete in some ways. I'm not sure more is needed. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:11, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
since this idea lab, I think we should allow moving to article space even when marked. Another use is to copy some content and then redirect. Also I prefer two years of creator inactivity before dispatching or prodding. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:24, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't think it matters why people deprod them. Prod allows for any reason. If you're deprodding to move into your userspace, to move to articlespace, to merge a bit and redirect it, to move into draftspace or simply because you think more time is needed like Category:AfC postponed G13, that's fine with me. We could probably added a deprod counter if people wanted to, but there's always still MFD if people think the draft is actually problematic or shouldn't be extended but postponements of two years repeatedly are not unheard of. Even then I say that anything that is prodded this way can be immediately restored via WP:REFUND so this kind of merges the AFC system into the wider universe of drafts. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:52, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I think there must be some content-based criteria. For example: Has no independent sources; Has no claim of notability (would not pass A7). Simply being old is not enough to auto delete. Alternatively, or additionally, there should be a way for an auto confirmed editor to review and approve a draft as having merit and substance. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:10, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
    A rescue squadron could use any reason they like to deprod and use the content. I don't know what problem deleting the drafts prevents though. Perhaps there could be a limit of 1 per day per nominator to save the rescurers from too much stress. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:23, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
    I suspect it will start like Prod did, with people prodding, people joining and creating rescue squadrons to review and deprod, with some accusing them of being over the top, with some accusing the others of being too deletionist, and over time, a balance will form. As noted above, this would basically make G13 and the AFC system moot and I think we have a good balance there of drafts going to G13 deletion, drafts not going there and basically people on both sides arguing the other one is wrong. G13 currently doesn't make additional content-based criteria, so I don't see a need. It's just the idea lab here so I just want to throw it out there. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:35, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
    I think it sounds like more work than it is worth. A negative cost-benefit. Unlike the massive quantity of worthless drafts created by AfC, userpages are not mostly worthless. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:40, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
    I know it's a lot of work but I think it would be helpful in terms of the potential benefits that come from bringing these drafts to the sunshine so to speak. Also, because deprodding is a one person review, it's more akin to a community vote and community veto than the current MFD set-up. One huge advantage I would imagine would be if the alerts system for projects uses this. An alert would notice that a draft was subject to draft prod (like here and would then archive that title for the project for all eternity. If someone, say years later, was thinking about a subject, they could scroll through the alerts article and at least see the title and possibly ask for restoration. That I think would be helpful for certain places like projects on various television shows, or the math project where there's a lot of stuff out there that can always be written but it's often a matter of WP:TOOSOON or just having lost that person with the interest in it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
    But drafts aren't usually tagged with project templates or placed into categories, so how would the wikiprojects know? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 12:47, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
    In the chance they are. It's a lot of ifs on whether it's useful. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:49, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This is a nonsense solution to a non-problem. There is no need to delete a single draft. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.170.45.98 (talk) 04:42, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Struck comment by banned user. — JJMC89 (T·C) 21:41, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a somewhat complex plan to make deleting old drafts and problematic user pages easier. How can we make it happen? Legacypac (talk) 06:47, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Oppose.  What is the problem being solved?  What is the purpose of arbitrarily moving a draft from Draft or User space to delete space...other than to prevent building the encyclopedia?  There are different issues for userspace, draftspace, and AfC drafts.  For "inactive" drafts in draftspace, the age of inactivity is defined by the work capacity of those working on the inactive drafts.  Unscintillating (talk) 07:06, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose. Several years ago I helped a Freshman student at my community college work on an new article for WP. By the end of his first year he had several KB of content. During the Fall semester of his 2nd year his class load was pretty heavy and he wasn't able to put in much time even to do the research, let alone the editing. At a request from his family for some quality time he did not do any academic work during the holiday break. Again in the Spring semester he was wrapped up in his Thesis so he ignored WP. For virtually 9 months he did not work on his article at all. Then, just before the start of the next Fall semester he sent me an email with a URL asking me to review the WP page and apparently during the summer break he had become a WP editing machine. I learned later that he had to actually start from scratch because while he was "away" his article had been deleted. My point is that there are many possible valid reasons most of us can't even imagine for why an article could sit dormant for an extended period of time. Now that WP has created the Draft namespace there is no good reason to go deleting articles just for being stale. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 08:06, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Was that an article or a draft? If he created an article and it wasn't "complete" (i.e. didn't qualify) and it got deleted after nine months without his involvement, is that really anyone's fault? This also is nothing like this situation too. If you're talking about a draft, that's fine and all but we use six months for G13 and the current method is through MFD so it's not like people aren't going to discuss deleting these right now and even then I'm still fine with restoring anyone's drafts if they return (a quick browse through their deleted contributions will solve that). In contrast to MFD where you have to essentially form a majority to keep each draft, a prod-based approach only require one person in opposition and not more. On many levels, this gives more chances for a new user than the current schemes. However, if you do stop editing for some period of time (currently I'm proposing a year, not just a summer break), is it wrong for people to look over your stuff to blank/adopt or even delete it? I think everyone agrees that there is some time after which we just assume you've moved on. The discussion at WT:UP had one person propose five years and we've had MFD discussions involving 9-year-old drafts but one year seems to be the majority viewpoint here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:00, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Found 235 false synonyms on Wikipedia

The redirect pages "Sooglossus sechellensis" and "Tachycnemis seychellensis" both link to Seychelles treefrog. The problem is that they're two different species, belonging to different families of frog—Sooglossidae and Hyperoliidae respectively, where as the article only refers to one of these.

I've found 235 candidate "false synonyms", similar to this pair, listed here:

I generated the list based on data from the IUCN Red List.

Is there anyone interested in joining the project to either help go through these individual entries or to help coordinate the effort? —Pengo 13:37, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Pinging Legacypac who has been going through frog redirects on an entirely different issue, but might be interested in this. LP - these two are not Neelix redirects, but others may be. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't think it any of the redirects have been added maliciously. The example appears accidental based on common name (or similar scientific names), while many others on the list reflect changes and disagreements in taxonomy. —Pengo 01:30, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
As to the Moose (one of the articles listed there), Wikipedia says that the moose is one species, Alces alces; yet other sites (such as http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/818/0) ssay that the moose are 2 species, the other one being Alces americanus. If the other classification is listed in significantly many sources, even if not up to our expectation of reliability, then we should have such redirects to make it easy for readers of these other sites to find information on our site. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:47, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
I wasn't trying to say all the redirects should be deleted, just that they need to be checked. The North American moose isn't so bad, but perhaps there should be some indication in the Moose article that Alces alces americanus is sometimes elevated to species and that there is debate around it. Amethyst-throated sunangel includes this kind of discussion, for example. I suspect many other redirects are listed for similar reasons, but some are simply wrong, such as the Seychelles treefrogs example I listed at the start. Also I suspect there are many cases where we should consider splitting articles if more recent authors consider them separate species, and in some cases it might be worth creating a subspecies article regardless. Is anyone interested in actually going through some entries in the list and annotating them or cleaning up the articles? —Pengo 07:10, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
It would probably b easier to find someone willing to do so, if you split these up by general groups - no reason that deer, flowering plants, frogs and doves need to be on the same list (you could at least sort it into orders based on the redirect target); and no reason to expect a single user would be likely to be knowledgeable enough in the entire tree of life to do a good job ob the whole thing. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu
Yep. I was going to do that before posting to various WikiProjects. —Pengo 21:16, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

An other issue (not with species, but with higher level taxons) is that some times, the species doesn't have its own article, so in stead tsomeone created a redirect to a higher level taxon. A perfect example of this would be Tuatara. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:21, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I filtered those ones out and listed them separately under the "Link to higher taxa" heading. The main list is only of species-level pages. —Pengo 02:43, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

By the way, if anyone's interested in learning more about the project this has come out of and lending it some support, I've added Beastie Bot to IdeaLab. I'd appreciate any participants or endorsements. —Pengo 01:30, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Bibliography of Reliable Sources for Parapsychology

Hi, I've created a bibliography of reliable sources for parapsychology, curated to aid other wiki editors who are editing articles in this controversial area. I am inviting comment on this bibliography, and would welcome your ideas on where to best place this resource within Wikipedia. It can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Annalisa_Ventola/Sources_for_parapsychology. Annalisa Ventola (Talk | Contribs) 17:49, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

User:John Carter has produced User:John Carter/Reference sources and User:John Carter/Reference works. Also, there is Wikipedia:WikiProject Parapsychology/Resources.
—Wavelength (talk) 13:34, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Where would I post/discuss an idea for an offline tool?

I have an idea for an offline tool that would help analyze the evolution of an article's contents. This could be helpful when trying to identify orphaned refs and other accidental damage to content. I am aware of WikiBlame but that really is not adequate for what I am considering. Among other things that tool requires separate online searches and is sometimes rather cryptic in its logic for selecting edits. One of the key items my idea would require is a way to download the full (sans admin deleted material) edit history log and files of a single page so that it could be searched rapidly offline for complex strings using regex routines. I believe this would actually reduce the WM server CPU load when working with older and larger articles. An important thing to note is that I am proposing an analysis-only tool, not an offline editor. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 20:37, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Are you trying to recruit a team of programmers? Just need some guidance? All of our content is already openly available, so nothing is preventing you from taking the data and doing any analysis you want. — xaosflux Talk 20:46, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
I need some technical advice on stuff like "dumping" the history files, and would appreciate any information on prior similar projects, both to avoid re-inventing the wheel and to see how others have approached offline work with wiki data. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 20:56, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
To be more specific on the "technical advice" what I mean is that I know about Wikipedia:Database download but I am not familiar with XML. I know how to code HTML, some PHP, some Delphi, BASIC/VB/VBA (I know, don't say it) and I am currently learning Ruby ... but I am willing to learn other languages for text parsing (I have heard Perl is good for this) if needed. Ultimately right now I want to know basically three things:
  • 1. How to download/dump the full set of history data for a single page only --- in the most WP-server friendly way possible.
  • 2. Understanding the dump file format enough to be able to extract the log data to create a standalone log file in text or HTML.
  • 3. Understanding the dump file format enough to be able to extract each edit into a separate plain text file of wikitext just as would be seen in the Edit window on WP.
With those three things I can start to work on this project in my spare time. After I get the basics done I would love to open it up to anyone who wants to help. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 21:26, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
You can always download an xml dump of all or certain articles (using Special:Export), but this will give you quite a bit of information. If you have a program that can sort through it and pick out what is useful for you, then great. I'm not sure if more condensed information exists unfortunately :( Ajraddatz (Talk) 02:50, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I saw Special:Export. I am unfamiliar with XML but if I have to learn it I will. It just slows the process down a bit, but then again I am in no rush to get this done. If there are any opensource XML "extractor" programs out there that I could examine it might be helpful. Like I said, just trying to not reinvent the wheel if someone has already built one. Thanks Ajraddatz! Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 03:37, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
XML interpreters seem common. --Izno (talk) 12:19, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
@Koala Tea Of Mercy: if the export gives the same structure as the total DB dump, the text will be almost exactly the same as you find under "edit source". The only difference is that certain characters like &, >, " are replaced by their html code (&...;) because the xml tags use the characters. Every page starts with page tag, title, namsepace, and pageID, after that you get all the revisions. For IP edits the contributor tags will only contain ip /ip tags with the address. The structure is self-explanatory: Here's the first and the start of the second revision (most text of article replaced by ....):
 <page>
   <title>Mölln, Schleswig-Holstein</title>
   <ns>0</ns>
   <id>102865</id>
   <revision>
     <id>379324</id>
     <timestamp>2002-10-12T19:26:02Z</timestamp>
     <contributor>
       <username>Baldhur</username>
       <id>28358</id>
     </contributor>
     <model>wikitext</model>
     <format>text/x-wiki</format>
     <text xml:space="preserve">Mölln is a town in 
 ....
 ....
            there are several monuments to him in Mölln.</text>
     <sha1>omx4jn6qc49d5agkvseqpwzxc77t11a</sha1>
   </revision>
   <revision>
     <id>986158</id>
     <parentid>379324</parentid>
     <timestamp>2002-10-23T12:02:58Z</timestamp>
     <contributor>
       <username>Baldhur</username>
       <id>28358</id>
     </contributor>
     <comment>coat of arms</comment>
     <model>wikitext</model>
     <format>text/x-wiki</format>
     <text xml:space="preserve"><div style="float: left;"> 
 ....
 ....
You can download the full dump, it contains all versions of all articles, and other namespaces as well. The 7z files are about 110 GB in total (don't take the bz2 files, they are ten times as big). Compression rates are very high, starts at 200+ for the first files, drops to less than 100 for the last ones (fewer page revisions so less redundancy). Total data is more than 10 TB, but there's no reason to extract them all at the same time, the zip files contain complete pages (all revisions). The pages are stored in order of ID, the name of the 7z file gives the range of IDs included: example: enwiki-latest-pages-meta-history6.xml-p000623996p000656933.7z contains 623996 to 656933. I've got the October dump, has 37433981 pages (articles, redirects, user talk, article talk etc..). Prevalence 01:12, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
The idea is to create a tool that anyone can use for analyzing a single article. Downloading 110 GB -- a feat that only a small percentage of the internet has the ability to do quickly -- every time you want to work on the latest revision of a single article is counter productive. I need to convert the XML back to wikitext. What I want to do is create a tool that stays in the same language that users are already familiar with, so that when they go back to edit the page (remember that this is not an editing tool I am designing) they know exactly what to look for. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 19:23, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
Ah, ok, I thought you meant a tool for people who wanted to analyse edit histories (for a study for example), rather than a quick search tool for normal editors. In that case the export seems the only option, using one or more POST requests with offset and limit parameters to get all the revisions. For the wikitext of the revisions you take the content between <text.. > and </text> and replace the html character references for <, >, ", and & with the characters themselves, (I think it's only those), see HTML#Character_and_entity_references. And for the log data, you only need what's between the timestamp, username (or IP) and comment tags. Minor edits will have a <minor/> tag. But you'll know all that already if you tried the export. Size is something you'll have to calculate yourself. Well, good luck. Prevalence 08:02, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the information Prevalence. Sounds like maybe the export files and all those XML fields aren't as complicated as I thought they were. This is not a high priority project for me, but there are times when I run across an obvious text remnant (usually a broken citation or sentence fragment) and I want to find out when it was broken and what was there before the breakage. Currently there is no easy way to do that. Hopefully if I can get this working it will allow me (and others) to focus on a key string of text (the remnant), find out when it entered the article, and then follow it via an animated text display through the article's history to see how and why it was edited over time, in order to either rescue or remove it. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 09:51, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Problem is, the export files grow very fast. Mölln, Schleswig-Holstein is a small article, 2,980 bytes, 110 edits, the export is 300k. For an article like E. E. Cummings, 4029 edits, page size 37 kBytes, the export is 110MB, and its for such large articles that one would use it most I assume. Prevalence 12:37, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Fission Strategy 'editing Wikipedia for nonprofits'

Hi. I've recently read an interesting pair of articles by a specialist marketing company named 'Fission Strategy' on how nonprofits can edit their Wikipedia page (or hire FS for their expertise in doing same). They're here and here.

I find them a bit concerning, since they don't mention any of the guidelines for editing an organisation's own Wikipedia page (I think WP:COI, WP:NONPROFIT, WP:PROMO WP:USERNAME and WP:COPYVIO are the big ones in this area), and just suggest putting up a page as "necessary recognition of the credibility and work of your organization." Would anyone be up for sending them an email or reply of some kind mentioning this to them, if only so if they can't say they didn't know about it? Let me know if any thoughts. Blythwood (talk) 17:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I too find these blogs/ads problematic. To be sure, they are not as problematic as those of PR companies for commercial organizations, but they are trying to put in PR for non-profits. I can think of 2 or 3 possible responses:
  • Wikipedia's communication department sends them a polite notice, stating what the problems are and asking them to include some more info.
    • If the communication dept won't or can;t do this, then individual editors should. This may bombard them with some conflicting advice, but they might deserve a bit of bombardment!
  • Perhaps a small project to help small non-profits do it right. I'm sure I don't have the time to do it on my own, but if others want to take the lead on this, I'd certainly join in.

A word about my POV or biases. I think it's fair to say that I've been among the most active Wikipedians working against abuse by paid editors. I also have worked with WP:GLAM with helping non-profit galleries, museums, etc. getting good coverage in mutually beneficial areas. I have had a bit of concern with GLAM focusing on very large museums, I prefer smaller organizations, and even prefer making the Wiki editor - the person who will make the best additions - the focus of the project rather than the sometimes big corporation-like GLAM institution. I do think WP:GLAM has moved a bit in my direction.

Maybe the proposed new project, say WP:Non-profit organizations, could coordinate with WP:GLAM? I'll ping a few folks. @Blythwood, Wittylama, SLien (WMF), JSutherland (WMF), and Slim Virgin:

Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:20, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughts. I have to say, I'm not too interested in setting up some project you don't have time for and I don't have time for, more about looking at this case. The guidelines for COI editors are clear: it's just that this company doesn't seem to be aware that they exist. I'm thinking more in terms of a basic response to this. I might take it to COIN, since they name some companies they work for. But at first glance while I can see some editors on those pages that might be undisclosed promotional editors none of them seem to have been active too recently. Blythwood (talk) 20:54, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Smallbones:

Sorry for the delay. I spoke to a few of my colleagues at the Foundation, and it sounds like this might be more appropriate for my colleague on the legal team @Jrogers (WMF):. Pinging him for his thoughts here. Thanks. SLien (WMF) 19:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Following on that, I took a look at their pages. I agree it would be nicer if they explained about some of the conflict policies, but I wasn't able to tell from their site if they're doing anything wrong. They don't throw up any red flags like promising to keep their clients confidential or otherwise saying that they don't disclose their work. I think in this circumstance, it would make sense for a user to email them with a "hey, just so you know" type of email, and if it ends up escalating or it's discovered that they're violating the Terms of Use, then WMF can take another look at it. Also, sorry I'm being somewhat vague about what we'd do here. I'm hesitant to commit because even though it's distasteful, I don't really think it's wrong for people to use promotional language on their own blog to try and get business as long as they follow the rules when they're working on Wikipedia. But having said that, I don't want to say we'll do nothing because it's fully possible that more info could come out linking Fission to a paid editing problem and then we might end up helping. But at this point, I think a message from a concerned editor is the best next step. Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Better responses to people who want to know how to add an article about their organization

I don’t know where to else to put this but I’m looking for ideas so this seems like a good spot.

Multiple times every day someone writes to Wikimedia (fielded by OTRS agents) asking how they can add an article about their company to Wikipedia. We have a canned response, which takes a lot of words to send the message “don’t”. Many times that answer is sufficient and we do not hear back. In some cases, the person writes back and says we’d really like to have an article, and I see our competitors have articles so how can we have an article?

I know the official response is that there is a place to request an article. I can’t bear to tell them this is as it is my understanding that the request article list is a blackhole. I’ve never heard of an article being developed from that place but maybe someone can give me better news.

I also know that if their competitors have articles the odds are very high that those articles exist because someone ignored the COI policy. I could ask for names of the competitors track the article down search for proof that it’s the COI violation and remove that article, but that’s a lot of work and doesn’t accomplish the goal.

Our official answer is that if they are notable eventually someone will write about them. That answer may have been satisfying a decade ago, when there was a realistic chance a highly notable organization would get an article in short order. Most of the highly notable organizations all have articles, and we are left with marginally notable organizations. The likelihood is that it will be years if ever before someone chooses to write an article about this organization, even though it may be technically eligible.

I don’t like sending them to Wikipedia:Requested_articles because I believe it is a blackhole. I don’t like telling them to just wait, because I suspect the wait may be years. It is very hard to tell him that it is just too bad maybe they will have an article when they know there are articles about less notable competitors.

Anybody got some better ideas?--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:12, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

If they are newish and growing then wait and apply for awards might well be all that is needed. If they are a long established not particularly high profile organisation then I would suggest they release some appropriate images on Wikimedia Commons. Current and former CEOs, notable board members and other publicity shots are welcome though they have to be openly licensed. There may well be things related to their business where images and even video might well be of value; Good quality images of "notable board member xxxx with CEO yyy of redlinked organisation" are worth having and may well bring them to the attention of editors. COI is a very different issue on commons. The other thing you can suggest is to make sure they have a comprehensive "in the News" section on their website showing when newspapers and magazines have written about them. ϢereSpielChequers 16:14, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Sphilbrick I have been experimenting with different messages sometimes in OTRS discussion and beyond. I too would like to sync with messaging from others. I never use the standard OTRS message without deleting the "requested articles" bit. There is no sense in which it is reasonable or fair to send anyone there, except to tell them that the process will not work if they engage it.
Sometimes I say "I know of no instance in which an organization has had a positive experience editing their own Wikipedia article. So far as I know, no one in the entire Wikipedia community since 2001 has ever seen such a thing go well for the company. If there is a success story, I have never seen it, and I have looked and asked others what they know." Sometimes I say, "The Wikipedia community recommends against this and I am not aware of any good advice on the matter existing anywhere." Many times I have said, "If you are thinking about editing Wikipedia, first start by editing in your field of expertise but in articles that are unrelated to your organization, projects, and products. Wikipedia needs more experts developing general content." I am sure I have told that to 1000 company representatives and so far as I know, for all the years and times that I have tried that, not even one has ever followed through and edited anything other than their company article.
I would like to turn the conversation about paid editing away from what is theoretical and possible and start giving statements that are practical. Sending people to "requested articles" is not practical, nor are the other available paid editing support channels and processes. At [[[Talk:Louvre_Abu_Dhabi#Requested_edits]], for example, a respected organization has requested edits and paired them with sources. No reply since July 2015. The request is formatted as requested, but still, there is no way a volunteer could easily process this request. It would take 2 hours at least, and probably more. I do not think it is fair to advertise support forums that have a known multi-year backlog at best. Somehow, we should raise the bar for making requests and communicate that Wikipedia requires much more preparation and development from the side of the requester. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it is very discouraging. I had hoped someone might tell me that requested articles wasn’t the blackhole I feared it was but I think I was right. I love the concept of requested edits, but the execution is failing miserably. I have attempted to work on some of the requests, but as you note on many occasions it would take a substantial amount of time to properly research. I was tempted to characterize this type of work as “mind numbingly boring” which I think is accurate but it doesn’t tell the whole story, because I find myself spending several hours each week working on tasks that would be characterized as “mind numbingly boring”. I know other editors also work on things that might be characterized that way, so it might be helpful if we could tease out what is different about the mind numbingly boring tasks which are not getting done.
I know there is a strong consensus against paid editing, but this is one area in which I think it could be cautiously introduced. If we could find a way to fund editors who are willing to work on some of the multiyear backlogs (request edits, requested articles, CCI) perhaps we could clean up some of the backlog. And it isn’t just that there is a backlog, it is that well-meaning individuals want something (an article in Wikipedia) and our best advice is to tell them to do something that is almost certain not to work.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
This discussion prompted me to look at wp:Requested Articles ("RA"), and I find myself at least as interested in drafting one of these requested articles and submitting it to AFC, in this case for a nonprofit (whose request helpfully included multiple sources and mentions of awards already), as I would be in choosing an AFD in which to !vote, like I and others very often do. "RAs" could be revamped to be operated more like AFD, which attracts participants and tracks status of requests. Consider the following just-drafted navigation template ({{RequestedArticlesByTopic}}) comparable to {{AfDs}}, one of AFD's promotional signs/tools. This has been adapted partway (so far) for RAs:
The date groupings are red-links but the categories link properly to "RAs" of those types. Maybe groupings of requests could be done by week or month? If requests were processed by separate pages like AFDs are done (and like drafts for AFC are handled), those pages themselves could be categorized by dates and by topics sensibly to allow browsing like for AFDs, and each could eventually be converted to article drafts and submitted smoothly into AFC (or categorized as impractical/resolved negatively), perhaps with automatic notice provided back to the original requestor giving the resolution. Requests are like pre-AFC draft items. Currently it's virtually impossible to figure out when any specific request was made and I don't see how requests are turned down, at all.
I notice the topic categories in RAs are similar to those in AFDs (both have "Biography" for example); perhaps the correspondence could be tightened up. Certainly the AFD category for Biographies could sport a suggestion that the RA category should be looked at, like new {{RAsuggestion}} displays:
and so on. These cross-links would be very small steps towards redirecting editors' attention currently given to AFDs (fundamentally destructive of Wikipedia community fabric IMO), towards more positive RAs. :) --doncram 06:39, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
I just saw this and wanted to chime in because I am apparently one of the few success stories to come from RA. I have created an FA, three GAs, and over 25 other DYKs from ideas I found at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Sports since I began editing in 2008, so it is possible to find gems that have not been mined. One of the real issues with RA is that there are so many articles there, many of which prove to be non-notable. It takes a skilled content editor to wade through the many topics of unclear notability to find something or somebody that belongs in the encyclopedia, along with time to search for sources since none are usually provided in my experience at the sports RA page. If I may offer a suggestion, it would be to sort the business RAs by type of business, if such a thing can be done. The sports RA page breaks potential articles down by sport, with subpages used often. I always find this system helpful, as it allows me to focus on the sports that I am most interested in and the ones that I've seen coverage gaps in before. The business RAs page does not seem designed to help content creators find articles of interest to them, and looks more like a directory than anything. The one good thing about it is that many requests have source links, but some of them are probably self-promotional in nature, so one still has to do Google searches and the like to ascertain notability. Perhaps a system in which comments are offered on requests (as mentioned above) would be useful. Giants2008 (Talk) 13:19, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

NPOV Welcome Template

Where do I go to propose a change to the NPOV welcome template? As currently worded, the template mentions NPOV but focuses on RS, and I'd like to propose a bit of re-wording there. Rklawton (talk) 14:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

@Rklawton: On the template's talk page. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:42, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks. I didn't know how to find it. Rklawton (talk) 14:49, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

BLPCAT, mental illnesses, and learning disabilities

I'm seeking input on how to address a few related issues. I'll try to be brief and clear. My goal is to come up with a coherent proposal to post at WP:VPR, but I need some assistance.

Area of issue
  • Addition of mental illness and learning disability categories to BLP articles.
  • Stand-alone lists of people with mental illnesses and learning disabilities.
Concerns

Mental illness and learning disabilities are highly stigmatized and labeling people with them should be done with the utmost diligence. WP:BLPCAT specifies extra stipulations for categories for sexual orientation and religion in that people must self-identify as a specific identity to be categorized as such. However, there is no such specification for or even guidance for mental illnesses and learning disorders. Given the stigma involved, inappropriate categorization can be tantamount to libel. Unlike categorizing based on other stigmatized labels such as criminality, there's no easily accessible public record of definite rulings. These diagnoses, like most medical diagnoses, are private in nature.

BLPCAT states that "Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each content category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Categories regarding religious beliefs (or lack of such) or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources."

The WikiProject Autism page also states that "The explanation at WP:OCTrivial is worth noting: 'Avoid intersections of two traits that are unrelated, even if some person can be found that has both traits.' For example, celebrities are usually notable for reasons other than being gamers. So while Stephen Wiltshire really is notable for being an autistic artist, people in occupations like dentistry or aviation are not.'" (WP:AUTISM#Lists, categories and templates; thanks to Permstrump for pointing this out).

This issue has arisen a few times the past couple days with people adding such categories to biography pages (e.g., edits by Discott, edits by Pol9, and this discussion on Doug Weller's talk page), as well as finding some stand-alone lists such as List of people diagnosed with dyslexia and List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Concerns over this issue have resulted in AfDs.

Quandaries

My first thought (as mentioned on Doug's page) was to suggest individuals must self-identify with a mental illness or learning disability for a category to be applied to their BLP. Doug Weller raised the reasonable point that (1) not all mentally ill and learning disabled people understand/comprehend their diagnosis and (2) many would reject such labeling. This got me thinking about how to deal with the issue. For example, if someone is diagnoses by a court as having a mental illness, would we be in the right to label that BLP with the category, even if the defense presents experts who disagree? Below are some questions I'd like input on and my thoughts on them.

To summarize, I think I'm learning toward suggesting that people should need to self-identify to be categorized as having a mental illness or learning disorder. I would propose editing BLPCAT to include them, but wish to hear input first. Thank you. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:43, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Quandary 1

How do we deal with self-proclamations without evidence of an official diagnosis?

I'd err on the side of trusting the person, but only if they specifically claim to have X disorder. I think we'd do the same for other illnesses like diabetes or cancer. While self diagnosis of mental illnesses and learning disorders might be more common, in the spirit of WP:TRUTH I'd rather reflect the person's comments and be wrong than disregard their statements. Categorization based on statements like "I was a hyperactive kid" are not sufficient and constitute WP:OR. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
This sounds fair. I would also advocate erring on the side of the person in question. I also agree that it should be explicate explicit so something like "I have dyslexia" is okay.--Discott (talk) 15:41, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
The premise of this discussion that mental illnesses are not like other (real?) illnesses is disturbing, including that "Mental illness and learning disabilities are highly stigmatized" ... well that is not necessarily so in general, and it is a culturally bound determination as well.
  • Treating a condition as if it highly stigmatizing is reinforcing the idea that it is shameful or morally bad or whatever. There are some conditions that, in some cultures and some time periods, have clearly been stigmatized, but there is a whole range. Reflecting something about me and how/where I grew up I suppose, I perceive there to be no stigma whatsoever associated with dyslexia, for example. And let us suppose that there "should" be no stigma associated with it. If Wikipedia has to explain that dyslexia is awful, or is widely perceived as dirty in some way, to defend why BLP mentions of dyslexia are to be treated as horrible in many many BLP articles, well then Wikipedia is itself promulgating the conception that the condition is dirty. Of course a historical general perception of dirtiness can/should be described appropriately in the article about dyslexia, but it would unduly perpetuate the presumption if the matter is treated as if dyslexia is dirty everywhere else it is mentioned in Wikipedia.
  • There is a biological/genetic/physical basis to many/most of what some might term mental illnesses. If mental illnesses are conditions that are affected by psychology, by situations, then add stress-related disorders like ulcers, and add heart attacks, and add cancer and just about every other "real" illness--in which attitude and psychology do matter in effectiveness of treatments--to the list of "mental" illnesses. Probably religion and sexual orientation are both also partly physically determined and partly situationally. Unless there is some clear distinction proposed that I don't see yet, this discussion should be about all medical disorders, not just "mental" ones.
Back to official diagnosis: we believed Nancy Reagan when she said she has breast cancer; we don't require copies of doctor reports. Likewise for Barbara Bush having Graves' disease, for Howie Mandel having ADHD, and so on for for notable dyslexics or notable heart attack survivors etc. --doncram 20:45, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Doncram: A point I struggled with and alluded to. There are other highly stigmatized medial conditions (like HIV/AIDS). My reasoning for starting at mental illness is that most (if not all) of it is stigmatized whereas most medical conditions are not, or at least to a lesser extent. The split is not in my view of mental/physical as different but rather in what I see as the difference in society's reaction to them. I didn't want to "jump the shark" by going straight to all medical conditions, but you and Opabinia regalis both mention it so I might include medical conditions in general. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
  • In my view, it needs to found in a reliable source - one with a reputation for fact-checking. Listing something as a fact in WP's voice that someone says about themselves is not OK generally. If the NY Times reports that Nancy Reagan has breast cancer, that is one thing. If the dailymail reports that Kelly Osbourne says she has misophonia, that is another. Jytdog (talk) 21:33, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I think that we do, and should, deal with self-proclamations of any medical condition the same way that we would deal with self-proclamations of other personal information. If it's both plausible and reported in a reliable-for-general-news source, then we accept it and give WP:INTEXT attribution: "Shirley Temple announced that she had breast cancer during an interview on television". If it's dubious, then we might omit it or phrase it more circumspectly: "Bob claims to have Fake Disease, which is not widely recognized as a medical condition". WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:14, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Quandary 2

What sources should be trusted regarding reported diagnoses?

Anything with direct quotes from the person or interviews with them (e.g., [3]). No gossip rags or reports from loved ones. Such reports might be mistaken or amount to outing the person (more of a concern for highly stigmatized mental illnesses). EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
I would expand the range of trusted sources to trusted medical bodies and professionals. On the issue of reports from family members I am a bit more uncertain. On one hand I agree that reports amounting to outing should be avoided. I suspect this might be the root cause of the discomfort I expressed on my talk page about needing a blatant proclamation of the individual in question having dyslexia before they can be categorized thusly when it should rather be the case that they be comfortable being 'out' about having the condition before it is reflected on their article page. This issue gets more complicated for me when talking about people that died before their status was diagnosed, recognised and/or testable. In some cases it is well known by people close to them that X person in history struggled with Y symptoms which are consistent with a known status/condition and that condition is hereditary and that person's family wants to make this status known to fight stigma about that condition/status. And, of course, all this is in a form that can be regarded as a trustworthy reference.
I must admit that for something like dyslexia (a regarded as a learning 'disability' (a term I strongly dislike as I feel it is a perfectly natural status but one that the educational establishment is prejudiced against in a way that produces a sort of structural discrimination that is similar in some sense to how structural racism operates, I prefer the term learning 'difference')) might be viewed very differently to how mental illness is viewed. Mental illness being regarded as something to be treated whilst approaches to learning disabilities is more controversial as to weather or not it is something to be treated (like a medical condition), adapted to, or catered for (like it were a natural human condition some people just happen to have). This is why I feel there is a good chance we might have to have two very different conversations about mental illness and how we approach it and learning disabilities.--Discott (talk) 16:24, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
the dyslexia article might offer some insight on this question(What sources should be trusted regarding reported diagnoses)...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:15, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Discott. I don't know what you mean about "I am comfortable with treating both as reliable sources." "A source" is the actual newspaper article or other report in which the diagnosis is made public - the thing we put in the citation. What are you talking about when you use the word "source" there? You ~seem~ to be talking about "the person who says they have the disorder", which is not a source. Or maybe that was just a momentary slip/confusion caused by my slop[y writing above, which I have now redacted for clarity .. anyway please clarify. Jytdog (talk) 14:05, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Jytdog. Both medical diagnosis and self-reported diagnoses. You are right about the 'source' issue, for clarity sake I should have rather said "I am comfortable with either type of diagnosis" mentioned within the RS.--Discott (talk) 14:23, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
with that i agree. i think high quality sources will generally treat self-diagnoses very gingerly, unless they have support of a known diagnosis. yes. Jytdog (talk) 14:30, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I think that we should accept the same sources that we would accept for other sensitive personal information, e.g., Alice said that she is pregnant, Bob announced that he is engaged to be married, Chris Celebrity said that he is having financial problems, etc. We're not trying to prove that anyone was correctly diagnosed; we're just trying to be responsible enough to not report something that they didn't claim. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:19, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
    Very good point, I agree.--Discott (talk) 12:48, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Sure, and as always, conditional on the relevant policies and guidelines being applied. WP:NOTNEWS, WP:NOTGOSSIP aka WP:SOAPBOX, WP:UNDUE,etc. Editorial judgement matters, as always. Sure. Jytdog (talk) 14:08, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Quandary 3

Should we label people who have been diagnosed (e.g., in court) even if they reject the diagnosis or label?

Again, I'm erring more toward the side of self-identification here. For court cases, we rarely present an entire court case and without know the full context of the case we may misconstrue the facts. As BLPCAT states, "category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers" so I'd rather leave such information for the body of the article. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
I largely agree but also feel there is also some nuance here. On one hand 'outing' of others is not something that should be promoted or done. On the other hand (as I briefly outlined in my responce to Quandary 2) if the person is dead and the person's next of kin/family want it to be known to fight stigma about the diagnosis/label then it should be allowed. If the person is alive and rejects the diagnosis then their word should be accepted for one of or both of two reasons. One being moral the other being that they are more likely to be an expert about them selves.--Discott (talk) 16:34, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
It was pointed out in a related discussion that a medical diagnosis in court itself may be disputed, that there can be opposing medical viewpoints. If the condition is disputed, then a higher standard of consensus that the condition really is present would be necessary to include the person in a list or category of persons having the condition. A person also does not get a free pass, in life and after life, to disassociate themselves from something they perceive to be negative, just on basis of their false assertion that they did not have a given condition, when there is overwhelming evidence that they do have the condition. What I have in mind are some cases when prominent persons died of AIDS denying that they did and denying relatedly in these cases that they were gay, and everyone knew the truth, and post-death the family immediately issued statement that they in fact were gay and did die of AIDS. --doncram 20:58, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Doncram: The best example of what you are looking for that I can think of (who really should have a Wikipedia page too, I work on that) is Peter Mokaba[1], a South African politician who denied the very existence of HIV and died from it. I agree with you that a person does not get a free pass because it is "something they perceive to be negative". I also agree with Jytdog that what is most important is reliable sources.--Discott (talk) 12:40, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • It is not relevant. it doesn't matter what LPs say about themselves. It doesn't matter what advocates want about anything. We rely on reliable sources. And they should be high quality if the LP contests it, for everybody's sake. Jytdog (talk) 21:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
    @Jytdog: Can you please expand on how you see this as advocacy? From my pov, this is about adhering to WP:BLP and addressing how categorization is done with respect to it. We have precedent for changes based on religion and sexual orientation. I see this as a logical extension. Please note that my "quandaries" are just issues that arose while I was thinking of this. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:03, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
    above, discott mentioned making decisions about what advocates might want and it has come a few places in this thread. Jytdog (talk) 22:12, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
    Discott appears to have said "family/next of kin", which feels rather different from "advocates" to me. But let's be clear: to the extent that some LPs and advocates go to a lot of trouble to get their claims published in reliable sources, it does matter "what they want", because "what they want" affects the contents of the reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:25, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
    What I am saying with regards to the "family/next of kin" statement is that a statement from such as source should be considered as reliable. Family is rather different from 'advocates', a family might advocate for X but that is largely irrelevant to my point which is that the next of kin/family is more likely (although not always) be a more reliable source on that person than most other sources. So for example George Paget Thomson and his father Joseph John "J. J." Thomson or William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg, their family/decendents openly acknowledges that they had dyslexia as we can learn from this reference. Now this particular reference might be problematic because it is a blog entry, that is fair enough, but assuming it were not a blog entry but say a newspaper article then I would say that it would be reliable enough to add as a source on the matter on Wikipedia.--Discott (talk) 12:40, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
What discott wrote was the person's next of kin/family want it to be known to fight stigma about the diagnosis/label then it should be allowed.. That is advocacy. It has no role to play in Wikipedia (except something we constantly have to keep pushing out of WP as advocates keep coming here grinding whatever ax they have to grind) . Yes of course if the diagnosis is described in reliable sources we can use it here. What matters is that the reliable source reported on it. Why they found it significant enough to investigate, we don't much care. Going down that road of "what the family wants" is going down the wrong alley. Jytdog (talk) 13:42, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
@Jytdog: that is a fair point.--Discott (talk) 15:57, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Quandary 4

Should we extend this to other contextless cases like infoboxes, navigation templates, and stand-alone lists?

Yes, BLPCAT includes those as areas its applies to. Because of lack of context, they should be treated similarly. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Agreed--Discott (talk) 16:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
  • These are not all the same thing. Infoboxes are terribly divisive and in my view the less we put there, the better. If they are "known for" this, then OK, however. The other things are case by case. everything needs reliable sources tho. Jytdog (talk) 21:37, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Jytdog: Not the same thing, but BLPCAT does extend to them explicitly. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:43, 9 March 2016 (UTC)


What is "this" to be extended? I don't concur that excessive "kid-glove" treatment should be extended anywhere, given that "kid-glove" treatment is possibly/probably the wrong way to go over-all.
And, if it is acceptable to identify in a person's article that they have a significant association with a given medical condition, then I believe it is absolutely okay to include that in lists, categories and so on. Completely frivolous characteristics (or intersections of characteristics) are not allowed to be categories; what I mean are cases where it is reasonable to say the condition is significant, perhaps the same as saying it is a defining characteristic for the person (e.g. that they have put themselves forward as an advocate related to the condition, or that everyone credits the condition as being the cause for their career success, or similar). Given the substantial association, then Wikipedia cannot pretend we do not identify someone as having X, by not including them in a list and by not including them in a category. What, do we want a Wikipedia-critic website to be the one that provides the list that Wikipedia is too squeamish to present? Either we do say person A has dyslexia or we do not. It is a false, patronizing-like idea that we can "protect" persons by not including them freely in a list or category while we do describe it (even "out" them on it) in their own article. Just assume that there will be a Wikipedia-critic site that does serve up the list if we do not, like there have been sites that serve up deleted articles (some on notable, well-supported, deserving topics) and that otherwise strive to keep Wikipedia honest. So then it makes sense for Wikipedia to do the list or category. --doncram 22:32, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Doncram: I agree with you here. This is not meant to be kid gloves, just a clarification to BLP protections already in place. That doesn't mean we won't categorize or list people with, say, dyslexia. Just that we'd only do so under certain conditions similar to how we already do with religion and sexual orientation. I can see how this might appear to be "kids gloves" though. I'll have to think about thow to address that perception (it's certainly not my intent). EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 22:48, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Quandary 5

What about other illnesses or disabilities?

I'd like more input on this. I can reasonably see this issue extended to all medical diagnoses, including disabilities. For now I'm focusing on mental illness and learning disabilities given their heightened stigma, but would like to hear voices on this issue too. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
As a person with dyslexia I feel I can only really comment on that one condition/diagnosis so I am also very interested in hearing what others have to say about other (or even the same) conditions/diagnosis/disability/illnesses.--Discott (talk) 16:38, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The WP:WEIGHT of such content gets depends on what sources say. Advocates of all kinds may want to highlight X about someone because they are an advocate about X. That is not what we do here. We are guided by RS. Jytdog (talk) 21:38, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't go quite as far as doncram did above, but I do think there's an issue to be explored here. There's a certain degree of tension between the very understandable desire to be sensitive to the heightened stigma of certain conditions, and the practical reality that doing so may in fact reinforce the stigma (or at least reinforce the perception that there is a robust and well-grounded difference between mental illnesses and other medical conditions). My preference would be that any policy changes about categorizing BLPs be applied to all medical conditions. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:48, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Quandary 6

How do we know if a mental illness or learning disability is notable enough to warrant categorization as mentioned in BLPCAT?

No clear line here, but I think if RS discuss it in context of the person's career it would be notable. E.g., Octavia E. Butler had dyslexia which would be notable for a famous author. But simple coming out statements by people might not be sufficient. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Good question, I feel that as a rule of thumb it is notable but also that this is not a binary issue as there are different degrees to which a person might be effected by the condition in question. So the acute porphyria of King George IV which played a major role in this life is clearly noteable. Whilst a minor stutter during childhood (to make up an example) or delayed linguistic development might not. Where that line is very hard to say. If it had a significant impact on the person in question's life or is something they are explicit about then I feel it should be regarded at notable. What passes for a "significant" impact on a person is a more difficult thing to work out and is something that will in many cases largely be left to the judgement of the editor editing the page in question. What guidelines might we make help people make that judgment call? Hard to say. Should we make such guidelines? Perhaps, I assume so but cant say for sure or with any conviction.--Discott (talk) 16:57, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I am advocating for a rule of thumb that errs on the side of notability.--Discott (talk) 16:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Let's use Channing Tatum as an example. There is no shortage of coverage referencing statements he made in this NYT interview. During this one interview, he did talk at length about the impact ADHD and a learning disability had on him as a child. We can verify he made those claims about himself, because that link is the original source reporting on the interview and it's a reliable source. There are tons of hits if you google "channing tatum ADHD." HOWEVER as far as I can tell, this is the only interview he's given where he talked about it. It's a human-interest PR piece for Magic Mike 2 though. It's a nice piece and maybe I'm a sucker, but I buy it, but it's still a crafted PR piece. My point is that the notability on the topic is more of a reflection of the notability of the NYT article, not a reflection of how often he's spoken about it. I think it deserves one sentence that says, he talked about his childhood struggle with ADHD and learning disabilities in a NYT interview. The end. When you google it, though, there's so much circular referencing that it would be easy to assume he made this a major campaign, when in reality, he was promoting a movie about a male stripper and his PR person told him to say something that would be endearing. I fell for it hook like and sinker, don't get me wrong, but it's not like he's the world's #1 ADHD advocate now. Permstrump (talk) 22:10, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
About Channing Tatum, I don't see the talking "at length" or the talking at all. What the NYT Style Magazine article says is, in full: "As a child he struggled with A.D.H.D. and dyslexia, was prescribed stimulants and did poorly in school." That is without detailed support, actually. There is not even a quote from Tatum supporting the idea that he had ADHD. Neither the New York Times as an organization or the author of the Style magazine article have any credibility bound up in supporting that. Tatum could easily deny that he had ADHD. I saw in another source that was used in the List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder article (since dropped from the list-article by me) that Tatum said merely he "was put on" Ritalin, notably omitting any assertion that he did in fact have ADHD. We're not disagreeing. This one does not meet any reasonable standard for saying that he has had ADHD, or that he self-identifies as having had it. --doncram 22:04, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree with the comments so far. I think we might need to do major clean up of categories though. A lot of articles are tagged for non-notable cases. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
doncram, re: About Channing Tatum, I don't see the talking "at length" or the talking at all. At 2nd glance... hmmm, not so at length. I'd read a lot about Channing Tatum that morning. :) But you make good points about the exact wording in the NYT article. I didn't even pick up on it and I thought that's specifically what I was looking for. Tatum said merely he "was put on" Ritalin, notably omitting any assertion that he did in fact have ADHD. I think it's a good example of why more explicit rules would be helpful. I don't think anyone is maliciously adding stuff about ADHD to Tatum's article. Those journalists are sneaky, even in RS. PermStrump(talk) 09:07, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
This is what WP:EGRS says about it at Disability, medical, or psychological conditions:
  1. People with these conditions should not be added to subcategories of Category:People with disabilities or Category:People by medical or psychological condition unless that condition is considered WP:DEFINING for that individual. For example, there may be people who have a speech impediment, but if reliable sources don't regularly describe the person as having that characteristic, they should not be added to the category.
  2. Categories which intersect a job, role, or activity with a disability or medical/psychological condition should only be created if the intersection of those characteristics is relevant to the topic and discussed as a group in reliable sources. Thus, we have Category:Deaf musicians and Category:Amputee sportspeople and Category:Actors with dwarfism since these intersections are relevant to the topic and discussed in reliable sources, but we should not create Category:Biologists with cerebral palsy, since the intersection of Category:Biologists + Category:People with cerebral palsy is not closely relevant to the job of biologist nor is it a grouping that reliable sources discuss in depth.
This is further reinforced by the WikiProject Disability Style guide's advice about invisible disabilities:

There are many social reasons why a person who has an invisible disability may wish to conceal their disability and pass as non-disabled. One who is successful at this is considered able-passing, while one who is unsuccessful is considered visibly disabled. Intellectual, sensory, mental or sleep disorder disabilities tend to be invisible and allow passing, while physical disabilities are more difficult or even impossible to conceal. Able-passing people have the option to later come out or disclose their disability, a process that is analogous to coming out as gay. Sometimes disabled people are outed without their permission. Such outing should never be done on Wikipedia - see WP:AVOIDVICTIM for further guidance.

IMHO this is sound advice. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:20, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Quandary 7

1) What terminology should we use to label the diagnosis if the person self-identifies using colloquial, outdated, offensive or inconsistent terminology? 2) And at what point does the use of non-existent or conflicting terminology call into question the reliability of the claim? And which label should we defer to? Permstrump (talk) 18:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

1) In most cases, I think we should use the same language the person used to self-identify, and use direct quotes if their statement wasn't technically correct. For example, if the person is quoted as saying, "ADD," I will restrain myself from changing it to "ADHD, predominately inattentive type." If the person says "dyslexia," Discott, IMHO we shouldn't change it to, "learning difference." Exception: I’m tempted to say it’s better to change the verbiage to use person-first language though. So if the person said, “I’m ADD” or “I’m dyslexic,” we should write, “He/she has ADD” or “He/she has dyslexia.” 2) I just don’t know. If you look at Adam Lanza, it’s a hot mess. This piece in the Courant says, “Details of a three-hour exam that Adam Lanza had in 2006 with another Yale Child Study psychiatrist, Dr. Robert A. King, were released for the first time Friday…. According to the police files, King said that Adam Lanza "displayed a profound autism spectrum disorder with rigidity, isolation and a lack of comprehension of ordinary social interaction and communications." Lanza was also diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder.” A psychiatrist that actually evaluated Lanza is quoted as saying he diagnosed Lanza with profound autism, but there are tens of thousands more sources that quote his mom saying he had “asperger’s” with no mention of the changes. Google shows 57,300 hits for ”adam lanza” asperger’s -profound, but only 17,300 for ”adam lanza” intext:profound. In this case I think it’s appropriate to neutrally address the discrepancy b/c despite the disproportionate coverage, 17,300 mentions of “profound autism” is still notable. That might not always be the case though. I could imagine some child star with estranged parents who completely contradict each other when they talk to reporters, but only one side received wide coverage. That kind of scenario could present a legal issue if the parent with notable coverage actually had their parental rights revoked or something.
Side note, I think a policy should direct people to choose the wording very carefully so the BLP doesn’t inadvertently make it sound more official than the celebrity did. So if in a few interviews the person said, “I’m bipolar” or “I have bipolar,” and never alluded to seeing a doctor or therapist or being formally diagnosed, the article shouldn’t imply that the person was “diagnosed” with bipolar. Permstrump (talk) 18:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Interesting quandary... I think it might be a good idea to put category descriptions that say something like "This category is for people who have publicly stated they have condition X or are reported by reliable sources to have had it." I'd rather not try to bifurcate the categories into "diagnosed" and "self-identified"... too much hassle and would seem to diminish self-identified claims. And I doubt we'll ever see official definitely diagnoses from living people anyway. This is why I prefer relying on people's own words. But I do agree we need to make sure we don't categorize someone who flippantly says "I'm schizophrenic some days. You know, where I'm all active one hour and tired the next". That's just colloquial (and improper) use of the term. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:34, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Permstrump: I am not advocating for us, here on Wikipedia, to refere to something like dyslexia as a "learning difference." Wikipedia is not the sort of place for that sort of advocacy which is better done in a different space. I was just expressing a strong preference of mine as a side note to a different point. Highlighting the overall controversial nature of these sorts of terms and definitions around these terms.--Discott (talk) 12:56, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Right. So that is a super high profile case of a very messed up kid, in a messed up family. And the media is indeed going to be filled with all kinds of garbage. That will take a lot of work, reading what the best sources have to say, and applying editorial judgement and care to come up with encyclopedic content that captures "accepted knowledge." Accepted knowledge there is unlikely to have a black and white answer (we may never know what disorders he actually had) The negotiation among editors will be very difficult because people who are are just "interested" will be involved, as well as people with all sorts of advocacy issues (anti gun control, pro gun control, autism advocates of various stripes, etc). It makes the editing work harder, but it doesn't change the nature of it. Jytdog (talk) 13:54, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Anyone have a suggestion about the best format for responding? I think this thread could get really long, really fast and then it might be hard (for me) to follow the conversation as it branches out to EvergreenFir's different bullet points. From a writing perspective, it would be nice to make a separate comment below each point, but that might make it confusing from a reading perspective. Idk... maybe I'm overthinking this? I think what I'm trying to say is... will it irk people if I comment inline like I'm tempted to do (perhaps in a different color) or should I lump my response it all together at the end? :) Permstrump (talk) 23:25, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

@Permstrump: I'm fine with whatever. I can number the bullet points if that helps? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:32, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
It's discouraged to insert comments within a different editor's comments; it makes it more difficult to see who is saying what. I'd make a separate subsection for each bullet point, with EvergreenFir's sig at the end of each bullet point. I suppose you could just add the signatures and omit the extra subsection headings, but the former seems like better organization to my ADD brain. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:56, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Anyone is welcome to refactor as they see fit for formatting. Didn't really think about that part, sorry. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
@EvergreenFir: Ok, I took a shot at it. I think you should ungreen ({{tq}} is generally for quoting previous comments by others), and add your sigs to each. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:07, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
@Mandruss: Done! EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Muy bueno. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:13, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
@Mandruss: Perfect. One more peanut gallery comment (jk I'll probably think of more questions, but this is at least my last one before I leave work)... I thought EvergreenFir's use of green was nice for reading, because it was easier on the eyes than a block of black text, but I've never seen anyone use green for quoting. A) People should do that more. I'm going to make it a new habit starting now. Thanks for teaching me something new! B) Is it "uncouth" to use different non-green colors or does it only let you use black & green for actual comments and the pretty colors are only for usernames? In general, I've been wishing there was a way to make it more obvious where one person's comment ends and the next one begins. The indentations are kinda subtle and then people always mess it up by accidents anyway. Makes it hard to skim. Permstrump (talk) 01:23, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
If there were any guidance on that, it would be at WP:TPG. That page discourages "excessive emphasis" at WP:SHOUT, but the word "color" or "colour" does not occur on the page. Absent any guidance against it, you could try it and see if anyone gripes; maybe that would result in some nice instruction creep added to SHOUT. My take is that good use of indenting (see WP:THREAD) and signatures does the job, and, judging by the fact that I almost never see anyone else using colors, the community agrees with me. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:34, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, use of color seems to be reserved for {{tq}}. Perhaps consider installing BeeLine Reader, Permstrump? Might help. Mandruss thanks for the formatting help. Now to wait for comments. I'm always wary of suggesting changes as pushback seems inevitable even on the most benign issues let alone a policy change. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:45, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, people. The last thing I meant to do was create a whole new quandary, but I wanted to expand on something Discott brought up in Quandary 1, so blame Discott. /s Permstrump (talk) 18:40, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Happy to take that at blame. :-) --Discott (talk) 13:00, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Insufficient evidence I am not convinced that this is a practical problem worth addressing. I agree that the issue is raised regularly but I would want to see someone collect a few troublesome example cases before we developed a general rule. The most common "quandary" that I see is not listed here, and that is "an editor insists on adding information without the backing of a reliable source". Wikipedia requires that information come from reliable sources. Insisting on reliable sources resolves most of these supposed quandaries in most cases, because the only common problem I see is lack of reliable sources. Again - I would like to see edge cases when WP:RS is not working, but no such cases are presented here. It would be worthwhile to resolve all of these issues if we had a few cases to which to apply them, and from which we could develop a general rule. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:46, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Blue Rasberry: There's been issues of recently as I mentioned in the beginning. I'm sure I could find more if you feel that I need to show more reason for updating policy. IMO, the real reason to address this is more fundamental and not in response to poor editing. Rather it seems to be an oversight. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:27, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@User:EvergreenFir, I notice you citing WP:BLPCAT, but nobody has yet mentioned WP:EGRS which actually expands on BLPCAT, which is just a summary. The WP:WikiProject Disability/Style guide also has some advice. (BTW Nobody thought to notify WikiProject Disability about this topic.) Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Dodger67: Thanks for pointing out EGRS! I did forget about that. It will help if/when I move to the proposal stage. As for notifications, I didn't notify anywhere about this since it's just in the idea lab. If there were no comments I likely would have started drumming up comments. But lack of notification wasn't meant to be a slight by any means. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:27, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
In addition to your posting on Disability, I posted requests for comment on the Medicine, Categories, and Biographies WikiProject talk pages. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Well, since we're talking about it, I guess I should mention that when I saw Roger (Dodger67)'s comment on WP:DISABILITY in my watchlist, it reminded me that I had wanted to leave a note about this thread and also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder on WP:PSYCH, so this morning I posted at WT:PSYCH#Categorization of people with mental illness and other disabilities: Comments requested, but it didn't occur to me to mention it here. Permstrump (talk) 22:51, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

GERMHDS

@EvergreenFir, Discott, Dodger67, Jytdog, WhatamIdoing, and Doncram: I just had a moment of clarity, so I pinged usernames that looked familiar out of the recent edit history just because this thread has gotten long and less active over time. (My apologies if I missed anyone or included anyone by accident.) Somewhere ITT Roger (Dodger67) brought up that WP:EGRS covers disabilities and psychological conditions, which is a good starting point, but its current wording is insufficient for a few reasons that I think discussion here can/should address. (FYI from now on, when I say “disabilities,” I’m also referring to psychological conditions)… Per WP:EGRS, there’s a different standard for including disabilities than for religion, sexual orientation, etc (explained below). EGRS is the only place where you can find that information. None of the other policies that summarize or link to EGRS mention if disabilities are an exception to the rule. In fact, they don’t even mention that disabilities are covered under EGRS at all, which isn’t intuitive considering EGRS only stands for “ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality.” This makes finding the policies regarding disabilities unnecessarily hard to find. It also means that we don’t get the same level of clarification on how different policies specifically apply to disabilities, the way we do for other EGRS attributes. For example, BLPCAT says (abbreviated):

Categories, lists and navigation templates
See also: WP:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality
Categories regarding religious beliefs or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources. Caution should be used with content categories that suggest a person has a poor reputation (see false light). For example, Category:Criminals… These principles apply equally to lists, navigation templates, and Infobox statements that are based on religious beliefs or sexual orientation or suggest that any living person has a poor reputation.

1) It does not specify if the same principles apply to disabilities or even mention that disabilities are addressed separately under WP:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. It's not safe to assume that everything covered under EGRS follows the same rules because, according WP:EGRS, the inclusion criteria for categorizing people by disability is WP:DEFINING, which is a much higher standard than “relevant according to reliable published sources.”

2) On the other hand, while WP:EGRS does specifically address disabilities, it only talks about categorization of people with disabilities and doesn’t specify if WP:DEFINING also applies equally to lists, navigation templates and infoboxes as BLPCAT does above for other EGRS attributes. Once again, this is not a safe assumption because according to WP:NONDEFINING, “In cases where a particular attribute about a topic is verifiable and notable but not defining, creation of a list article is often the preferred alternative.” (My emphasis.)

3) On top of that, EGRS and BLPCAT don’t apply to main articles, where the general rule of thumb is only that the content should be WP:VERIFIABLE and WP:NOTEWORTHY. For BLP’s it’s supposed to err on the side of privacy, but IMHO that's too subjective to be sufficient for private health information. Considering EGRS and disabilities are exceptions to the rules for categories, lists, etc., it makes sense that they should also receive special consideration within the main article, but as far as I know, there’s no clarification of how EGRS and disabilities should or shouldn’t be evaluated differently than other facts included in the body of an article.

TL;DR: It’s clear that per WP:EGRS, people should only be categorized by disability if the disability is DEFINING. It’s not clear which rules apply to naming people’s disabilities in lists, navigation templates, infoboxes, or within the body of main articles.

Proposals

1) Change the acronym to GERMHDS (gender, ethnicity, religion, mental health, disability, sexuality) or create 2 separate policies, one for EGRS and another for MHDs. Add links and summaries about how to treat disability and mental health conditions at least everywhere that EGRS is currently spelled out and add some example scenarios involving mental health diagnoses and learning disorders, etc. (P.S. I'm opting for MH instead of P for psychological, to avoid the awkwardness of the acronym DP.)

2) WP:DEFINING should be the inclusion criteria for people with MHDs in categories, lists, navigation templates and infoboxes and that should be clearly stated.

3) As far as the body of main articles, I’m not sure exactly how the inclusion criteria should differ for GERMHDS, but IMHO it should be held to a higher standard than even material that could suggest a poor reputation. Why? Because in the US, an Invasion of Privacy lawsuit can be brought under the publication of private facts. The release of personal medical information falls under the ‘publication of private facts’ category. Unlike lawsuits for defamation, the truthfulness of the facts disclosed is not a defense in an invasion of privacy case. And also unlike defamation, the plaintiff does not have to prove special damages, meaning no actual harm must be proven in order to prevail. Unlike defamation, where compensation is confined to actual injury, for invasion of privacy, damages are extended to presumed or punitive damages. Invasion of Privacy is a willful tort which constitutes a legal injury, and damages for mental suffering are recoverable without the necessity of showing actual physical injury. Technically, the law protects you if you publish information already exposed to the public eye and especially material obtained from publicly available court records, but personally, I wouldn’t want to have to hire a lawyer just to make that case. PermStrump(talk) 03:17, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I'd suggest changing MHD to DMH, if it's to be used. It's not meant to be read as "mental health disorders" (or "mental health disability") but people are likely to remember it that way. Better with D for Disability first (DMH) for clarity, IMO. --Hordaland (talk) 08:20, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Peter Mokaba". The Guardian.
The ==Disability== section was proposed in an RFC. It was added in July 2014, and the page was sensibly renamed to Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, and disability at that time. Then there was a move-war with a WP:RM that was closed as no consensus for anything. The next attempt to address it seems to have been unsuccessful – quite like the old joke about asking four people for advice and receiving five opinions.
The result is probably that everyone got tired of pushing the rock uphill and forgot to deal with things like whether or not this new advice had been properly integrated into other advice pages. Since you're interested, then perhaps you'd like to WP:PGBOLDly update the BLP policy and other pages to include the word "disability". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, I knew I had seen old threads about this! But I couldn't remember where and wasn't able to find them again when Evergreenfir made this post. I might consider being PGBOLD enough to at least add the word disability to the links if I thought what EGRS actually says about disabilities was a clear and comprehensive explanation for most questions that might come up. <sigh> PermStrump(talk) 05:23, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
You've got to start somewhere, and a good place to start is helping editors find the guidance that we're already giving them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:32, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing and Permstrump: Thank you both. I'm sorry I've let this sit for a few days. Plan to get to it soon. Wanted to leave it up for at least a week before moving on, but then life happened. I'm curious about making it medical stuff in general though. There were a few comments about that. Any input? We can do PGBOLD, but want to be ready for what I assume will be a slog through dozens of comments (usually how things work... just look how much it too to update HARASS...) EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 05:03, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
EvergreenFir: I think medical stuff in general makes sense. It actually already says "disability, medical or psychological condition" but I overlooked the "medical" part. The other day on WT:MED someone posted a link to an RFC asking if someone needed MEDRS to say a fictional character's diagnosis: Talk:Electromagnetic hypersensitivity#Request for comment. The people who responded seemed to think it was a given. Maybe there's been discussion in that project about this exact thing before. I'll try to look around for stuff over the weekend. PermStrump(talk) 08:08, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
I wouldn't make any generalizations from that discussion. There's significant skepticism as to whether anyone is truly "hypersensitive" to electromagnetic anything. (There are a tiny number of people who claim to be, just like there are a tiny number of people who claim that cotton fibers on their skin are caused by infection.)
Evergreen Fir, start by making the smallest possible change you think would be helpful. That might be something as small as changing a link to "EGRS" to "EGRSD". One baby step at a time is the way to go. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect implications and terminology

This section is defined as being about mental illness and learning disabilities. Points refer to autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These are neither mental illness or learning disabilities.

If you want to include these two conditions in your discussion, then possibly an appropriate catch-all term would be "mental conditions."

By the way, it is disputed especially whether autism is a disability or even a disorder. I believe both conditions are deemed by the medical community to be disorders, but that whether any given condition is a disability depends on its effects on any given person. Maurreen (talk) 03:20, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

"Possibly resolved" parameter for cleanup tags

Random brainwave: A big issue with cleanup tags is that they can be applied to newbies' articles, discouraging them, in particular because they feel that they can't remove the tags themselves (not knowing how Wikipedia works).

What if we added a parameter to cleanup tags allowing people to mark individual cleanup tags as (potentially) resolved, which could then be reviewed by experienced editors not afraid to remove them?

Go ahead, tear the idea to shreds; I haven't critiqued it internally myself. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 16:59, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Not a fundamentally bad idea, but it pushes metadata into the main namespace for a potentially-longterm tag, which is typically viewed as undesirable. --Izno (talk) 17:25, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Good point, though … if it's inside the markup used for the tag itself, all that this change would represent is an expansion of "metadata" that's already in the main namespace (the tag itself). I mean, ideally, article tags would be external to article content, but until/unless they change structurally, giving them an extra parameter seems harmless. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 00:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
We could maybe have an input box on the message templates with a prefill text of "tell me if you think I've been fixed". Any entry into that box would fill the parameter causing the review category to trigger. How many spam edits might that cause though? --Izno (talk) 13:07, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree there is a problem, but not sure about the solution. Better would be to replace the cleanup tags with hidden categories. Removing a category that no longer applies is more intuitive and lots of newish editors do learn about categories. ϢereSpielChequers 18:36, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Cleanup tags serve important purposes as a) warnings about potentially flawed content and b) calls to action to improve Wikipedia. I don't think I can support replacing them with categories, unless categories were able to emulate the display of maintenance tags in the first place (not something they can currently do). {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 00:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
That's a WP:PEREN suggestion which never finds consensus. As it is, I think having hidden the maintenance categories may have done Wikipedia harm, since that was another entry point for an unlogged-in editor, or a newly-logged-in editor (who hadn't fiddled with his preferences to display hidden categories), to find things to change. --Izno (talk) 13:07, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Nihiltres, I accept that some tags such as unreferenced serve as warnings, but many, including orphan, uncategorised and dead end are simply maintenance matters. I'm all for calls to action, but if we want to recruit newbies with calls to action we should simply change the appearance of the edit box every few weeks. It isn't clear whether maintenance templates attract more newbies to fix them than they deter. ϢereSpielChequers 23:46, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

See this proposal where I outline my idea for a way to resolve this problem. I hope editors will contribute there, as well-received ideas at that location may make it onto the developers list of projects.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

IDEA: Priority watchlist

I'm sure this has been floated before, but it would be helpful for active editors who patrol tons of pages to be able to set up watchlist groups or at the very least, to be able to flag certain pages as high priority. A practical application for this, would be in the monitoring of pages that have seen recurring vandalism recently. Or if you have open talk page discussions you need to monitor, you could flag those pages with priority, and they would be displayed more prominently on your watchlist, either being colored differently, or being placed at the top. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:05, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

This is probably blocked by the number of bugs of the sort "Watchlist code is suck", but it seems like a pretty neat idea. In the meantime, you can create a subpage at e.g. User:Cyphoidbomb/Priority watch, add a list of prio links, and then use Special:Recentchangeslinked. --Izno (talk) 17:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:User scripts#Watchlist - Evad37 [talk] 21:54, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
I tried to "thank" Evad and Izno on the page history for teaching me something new, but I accidentally I thanked them for comments they made in other threads, so now I'm posting my "thanks." Thank you too, Cyphoidbomb, for bringing it up. :) PermStrump(talk) 00:10, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Idea: Automatic Welcome Message for New Registered Accounts

I have an idea that any time that a new account is registered, a welcome banner should be automatically posted to the new user's talk page. Currently welcoming new users is voluntary by other editors. The reason that I am making this suggestion is that this seems like the most friendly way to address a problem (or related set of problems) which is the lack of knowledge by new editors of Wikipedia's complex rules, or specific actions by new editors that are against the rules of Wikipedia, but where those rules are not obvious and the new editors are acting in good faith. I haven't reviewed the multiple existing welcome banners recently, and so am not recommending that a specific one be used. However, the policies and guidelines that need to be mentioned clearly include neutral point of view, reliable sources, verifiability, conflict of interest. the rule against edit-warring, no personal attacks, and civility. There should also be an explanation of the difference between article space, draft space, talk space, user space, and Wikipedia space. Many new editors don't know the difference, and make mistakes, such as submitting user page drafts as articles (or even thinking that their user name has to be that of the other article which they are here to create). There should perhaps also be a mention that the creation of new articles is difficult and that new editors are invited to edit existing articles, and that, if they do want to contribute to new articles, they should use Articles for Creation. (That is the consensus among the regular editors at the Teahouse.) There may be other policies and guidelines that should be mentioned. The key to the idea is that any new registered account should get a welcoming message that is also informative, and, if read, may reduce some of the good-faith violations of the rules. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:43, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

This is a WP:PEREN proposal. --Izno (talk) 17:46, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't see my particular idea in the list of perennial proposals. Please provide a more detailed link. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:54, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Having just looked at the 20-link welcome and the 60-link welcome, the 20-link welcome isn't detailed enough and the 60-link welcome is more detailed than necessary. A 40-link or so welcome, with a few comments, would be good. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:54, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Where is it listed in perennial proposals? Even if it is listed, I would like it discussed again. There are too many discussions at the Teahouse that just result from not understanding. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:54, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
WP:PEREN#Use a bot to welcome new users. SiBr4 (talk) 17:58, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
On some other language wiki's I get that the first time I edit. I always think that a bot or automatic welcome in a language I don't understand is meaningless. But if it is a real person talking to me, then I take notice! There are a heap of links already too many things to read when you first edit Wikipedia. A welcome message with links just adds to that. However if there is a specific message related to the first edit, that will be far more helpful. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:38, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Terrible idea, and I despise the other wikis that do this. If I'm registered here and I visit a page in another language, I am "registered" as a new user on that other language wiki. I then receive a welcome message in a language I don't understand. I usually replace it with a soft-redirect back to my en-wiki talk page. Except for the time that the Arabic wiki posted a welcome message, and with the whole right-to-left thing, I had no idea how to type in the damn redirect messages. I expect Arabic speakers would have the same struggle on an English page. So, hell no. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:36, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
    • Oiyarbepsy, the solution recommended to me is to type the code in a plain text editor, copy it, and paste it into the window. And when brackets and punctuation jump around, ignore them – or at least preview it before you decide that it's broken. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:50, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree that we shouldn't welcome people unless they edit. However a welcome after the first edit would be a good idea. But ideally not one of the unwelcoming rule heavy welcomes. I'm testing Template:Welcome training - a different approach based on telling people how to do things and steering them towards non bitey activities. ϢereSpielChequers 20:58, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I definately think we need to make editing advice and help (not to mention a basic introduction to how things work here) easily available to new editors from the moment they join. On the other hand, being welcomed by an actual person is very meaningful. Perhaps making the "Help" link (currently in the left toolbar) more prominent for new users could make the first few days less scary. Anyways, just my few thoughts. Happy Squirrel (talk) 02:57, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Markostri comment

I hope I am writing this in an appropriate place and, as a lot of my work has been relatively idea based, I guess I am. As I am also relatively new to creating text on Wikipedia it is important to me that I understand what I'm doing and where I am writing it. In an arts environment I was asked if art was important and replied "no but everything is interesting" and have been somewhat shy of the word "important" ever since as I was happy with what felt like a balanced answer. What I think is important is personal choice and Wikipedia has existed for me to simply check some facts that I was relatively unsure of and, though I don't know everything, I have not seen anything that I thought was clearly wrong, though with some ambiguous / disambiguation it may be easy to arrive on a page of different interest or meaning. To me this just the nature of language, mine being mostly non American English with various European phrases and double or even opposing meanings are part of a learning process as all languages have influenced others. I think I may be deviating from my idea though and one contributer suggested it may be unlikely to work but on first being presented with the option to edit / contribute I looked, almost at random, at what subjects I could work with and found some to locked, either for fear of vandalism or perhaps the content was considered complete. As a creative person I often think that nothing is ever truly complete and as artists are often noted for mischievous behaviour where graffiti, once considered mindless vandalism, is now viewed differently and perhaps legitimately capitalising on an aesthetic has undermined it's original intent. I was also advised a while ago that certain aspects of celebrity lives where often open to misinformation and, though I've worked in that area myself in terms of day to day documentation of various artists, I have not noticed any that where not related to obvious conspiracies amongst theatrical fantasy and the effects of fame. I'm not sure my idea is complete today as page to collect and discuss vandalism giving rise to some fictional fame may already exist. I made a comment several days ago about the future being of as much interest as the accurate documentation of the past and am equally interested in what is happening now. I am possibly being a bit too vague before lunch now but hope this is of some interest and look forward to substantial proposals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri (talk • contribs) 12:25, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I just received a message saying that someone had no idea what I was trying to tell you. I'm not specifically trying to tell anybody anything today but am simply trying to work out the best way to add content with some understanding of what is considered notable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri (talk • contribs) 15:45, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I contributed to this page earlier and my idea was a little incomplete as I am still introducing myself to the process whilst consuming modest amounts of tea somewhere near the pump. There seem to be some administrative issues that I'm still relatively unfamiliar with and assume they may be related to decisions on the relevance of the subject to the words provided. If anyone has noted my comments and suggestions on the constructive rather than destructive effects of visual and audible arts amongst languages I would be interested in contributing to an ideas based forum that may be of some evolving value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markostri (talk • contribs) 14:27, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I think this has been very productive over the last few days as I've found a place where I can expand upon some ideas. Beyond simply enjoying writing as an activity it is helpful to receive feedback of any sort, even if the person that provides it appears to have no idea of what I am expressing because I'm not always sure either when the proposal is still only collaboratively experimental. Some writing within a fine art context can become so conceptual that it almost renders itself meaningless, whether deliberate or intentional to gain some affected intellectual effect. Either way the purpose of my decision to accept the option to contribute to Wikipedia was to start with some introduction to myself, which I am doing by sharing a writing style that was sometimes critisised for a lack of punctuation. My response to that was to exhibit large blocks of text without any punctuationat all as it had the potential for a pleasant aesthetic and was obviously mildly reactionary and slightly pretentious, as is often the function of art, a comment and necessarily a criticism. The purpose of an encyclopedia is obviously to tell people about things in an informative way with some notable accuracy and I notice some rules of expected conduct regarding self publicity and promotion. Obviously we may all have user names on many Internet sites and my birth name is not uncommon. If I choose to look up others with my name, some of them appear to be more notable than me for doing similar things. Rather than wonder why this has occurred I know why it has occurred and have no particular issue with it, beyond considering Wikipedia to be more interesting than Facebook for example, both of which auto capitalise on my keyboard today. Facebook has probably become the most popular place for self publicity and I may be stating the obvious whilst showing some bias in electronic media. I personally would not be bothered if Facebook, Twitter or many other social networking providers decided they'd have enough and disappeared tomorrow but I would miss Wikipedia more, though I don't often use it either as I try to work with what I already know. If I was trying to tell anybody anything with my recent words it is an introduction to myself and look forward to more suggestion. The issue of vandalism arose when I looked to see what was accessible for me to edit. Obviously if I write total nonsense about anything it will probably get noticed quite quickly and it is not my intention to test the system unless it is of value to humans or robots. I'm not always familiar with computer shorthand, programming or slang but I guess a bot is a robot. This has been writen by me and I presently classify myself as human.

Consensus Talk Index (CTI) idea

Moved from WP:VPR to here in WP:VPI since this is the place to incubate new ideas apparently. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 06:33, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

I noticed an AN/I topic today where a user is making all sorts of claims of other users making-up fictional rules but ultimately says "[show] where these consensus talks happened. Show them and this all goes away. But you can't. Because they don't exist.". Now I do not have a dog in that fight so I am not going to offer any opinions on the user's claims in that specific case, I raise it here as an example only. I myself have in the past been involved in debates where someone says "consensus exists" but cannot point to any discussion(s) that created that consensus -- OR -- they point to the entire history of an article (or a topic) with thousands of edits going back a decade and say "go find it yourself". I have also seen many newbie users ask why? only to be sent to the WP:massive-alphabet-soup-library and told to "go read this".

  • I think it is always reasonable that when someone asks for proof of consensus they should be able to be shown the process details by which said consensus was reached.
  • I think it is always UNreasonable to tell a user to go read ten years of archives if they want to know how consensus was established.
  • I think it is unproductive to have users unable to know exactly why we do things a certain way.

When the US Supreme Court wants to understand a specific law often they look back to the Congressional archives in order to understand what the lawmakers were thinking when they enacted a given law. I am quite sure they have an index to find those relevant discussions.

What I propose is an area of WP where consensus talks can be easily documented and searched through. Structured similar to any number of multi-subject areas of the encyclopedia's back rooms, I envision wikilinks like WP:ConsensusTalkIndex/Infobox soap character#marriage details which would go to a page with one or more simple lists of links pointing to the various talkpage discussions that supported (and an optional section for talks that opposed) the rules. Descriptive summaries could optionally be included below such links to help the reader find exactly what they are looking for.

I think this part of the encyclopedia should NOT have talk pages (other than one for the rules/design of the area as a whole) since it is not for debate but for indexing only. Debates should stay on their own relevant policy pages and never be intermingled in the index.

I realize that such a set of pages will be huge in number and will take years to backfill, but in the end I think it is well worth the time to help users both to understand the WP consensus process in general and also to understand the specific concerns that led to various specific rules. Ultimately such a set of pages could be incorporated as wikilinks into any policy or guideline pages, essentially becoming reliable sources for our own policies.

Comments? Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 01:29, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

  • Agree. IMHO a discussion that results in worthwhile consensus should be reflected somewhere in WP:Policies and guidelines (Koala aptly calls it WP:massive-alphabet-soup-library, but the size of it is a subject for another day). Conversely, every rule policy or guideline should have a link back to the discussion(s) that produced the present wording. WP:PG is the authority. If a discussion didn't result in a policy or guideline, or change thereof, it's irrelevant, even if it arrived at consensus. Similarly, apart from the most basic ones, if a policy or guideline isn't an outcome of consensus, it shouldn't be there. — Stanning (talk) 14:46, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Weak support But let's try to keep it simple. I could think of a simple tag added with a discussion that lists a link in an archive drawer box at the top of that specific talk labelled with something like "Closed discussion tagged as consensus" or similar. That would still put some of the burden with the editor asking for evidence (as each talk may have tagged multiple consensuses) but also with the people referring back to ancient consensus (they should have tagged it as a consensus discussion once ended); while it is also not too much high-tech / rule creapy. Arnoutf (talk) 15:40, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Good idea Wiki has been around long enough that we can no longer rely that someone will remember how it happened, or that you could even find that someone if they did. I think the approach may be to have a history subpage to policy pages, explaining how the policy got to be what it is and where stuff was discussed. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:35, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose - First, if an editor asserts a community consensus but can't point to it, their assertion should be completely ignored. It often happens that they are mistaken; in some cases they are, semi-consciously or merely through wishful thinking, distorting the outcome of an earlier discussion. Such assertions must be verifiable.
    But this does not address the whole problem. I could point you to a 3-year-old RfC that supports my position, but that's not enough. The result of that RfC may have been superseded by a later discussion; or, there may be another consensus that more specifically pertains to the question at hand. Only a thorough survey and analysis of all related discussion can really show the current consensus as it applies to a given situation. And who has the time and energy to do that?
    But I don't think we need a new "thing" to solve the problem; it already exists. We call it guidelines. All we need to do is summarize the consensus in existing guidelines, or create a new one if appropriate. When a consensus is superseded, we should simply modify the guidelines. The guidelines, not talk space discussions, would represent current consensus on anything of significance. A method could be devised to point from the guidelines to the supporting discussions. This would tend to protect and provide verifiability for the guideline, serving the same function as citations in articles. (This is not to say that a guideline could be removed simply because it lacks this kind of verifiability; that would be going too far, at least at this stage of the project's maturity.) ―Mandruss ☎ 13:12, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Why WP guideline pages alone are not sufficient for understanding concensus.

Mandruss above said; " I don't think we need a new "thing" to solve the problem; it already exists. We call it guidelines." I must profoundly disagree with that comment for two reasons:

  • 1. A guideline page tells you what has been decided, but not necessarily why. Usually only the actual consensus discussion tells you anything about the why such-and such was decided that way (in most cases). Yes, a well written guideline usually has self-evident logic but not always. Pages like WP:NOT became necessary because users needed to understand both the what and the why of our inclusion/exclusion rules.
  • 2. Guidelines do NOT exist for all consensus decisions. Maybe they should but they do not. This is especially true for less-than-WP-wide rules (topic-based, article-based, etc).

Rather than take my word for it I have an {{sarcasm mode on}} "easy" {{sarcasm mode off}} challenge for anyone reading this idea discussion. Let's call this a test-case for why we need an index to simplify the frequent "show me where this was decided" debates. 

Please find the "already exists" guideline OR any clear & definitive consensus discussion on the following:

There is a blanket topic-centric rule that is ironclad (see def#2) to the point of being a quasi-policy. That rule is "Anything from the British Raj era is not reliable" for use as a source in articles under the WP:WikiProject India umbrella. Period. End-of-discussion. Game-over. Any article content using references of sources written during the British Raj era are summarily removed from such articles. Why? Because consensus says so. Maybe this is a good guideline, I do not know, but it caused me a lot of pain trying to discover the source of such a blanket rule to the point that about a year ago I self-imposed a topic ban and refuse to edit any India related articles ever. Koala Tea Of Mercy (KTOM's Articulations & Invigilations) 14:49, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Higher than autoconfirmed for moving another user's talk page?

Just saw a user (who I've commented on WP:AIV about) who moved the user page and user talk page of the user who reported him on AIV. Obviously a sockpuppet, his first 10 edits were garbage on a sandbox page. Should an autoconfirmed user be able to do this sort of thing?Naraht (talk) 18:15, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

This sounds like a loophole in WP security. Why would anyone below admin (at least) have a valid reason to move a user page? If no requirement, shouldn't be permitted. — Stanning (talk) 18:51, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
@Naraht: It's the kind of thing that could be stopped with an edit filter, but only if it was a widespread issue. If this is one of the only times this has happened then I don't see that we need to spend much time worrying about it. Sam Walton (talk) 20:02, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
I've seen it a few times now. Not wide spread, but quite disruptive when it happens. Frankly I think moving any page should require than just autoconfirmed... number of socking vandals love to move multiple pages and it requires a lot more than just clicking Rollback to fix it. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 20:11, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
While it is true that vandals and name-warriors can move articles disruptively, there are far more innocent issues for moving than there are bad-faith ones. A bad move can always be undone and move-protected by an admin. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:34, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
In the AFC review process, sandboxes are moved to draft space, and accepted draft are moved to article space, routinely. One can implement a move privilege and can that privilege to reviewers, but it should not be administrator-limited, because very few of the AFC reviewers are admins and very few of the admins are AFC reviewers. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:34, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm not talking about moves in the entire user and user talk space, *just* the main ones for each users...Naraht (talk) 04:20, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
But that is only very rarely a problem, and there's no point in adding function for rare problems. Adding this would be feature creep. DGG ( talk ) 04:29, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
How about using an edit filter to prevent this, and revoke the user's autoconfirmed status? The fact that it's rarely a problem doesn't mean that it shouldn't be added. There should be no need for a non-admin to move another user's page. — Omni Flames (talk contribs) 01:46, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
There are sometimes good reasons, e.g. moving drafts made on user pages like [4]. If bad moves is a rare problem then let's not use server and programmer resources to stop them at the cost of obstructing good moves. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:59, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
While this could be done with the edit filter, the 'remove autoconfirmed' option isn't enabled on the English Wikipedia at present. Sam Walton (talk) 23:07, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Going through the works of famous people I noticed that most of them (who are alive)don't seem to contribute to their own pages. (eg.: date of birth, portraits,etc.). So I propose a banner invite. For example: banner: "The following purpose is only for encyclopaedic purposes and is subject to it as such. We request 'famous' (link: WP: noteworthy) people to donate the portraits of famous people or themselves, and pictures, recordings, etc. of their works to wikimedia, and also to help editors edit their page. They may even give a vocal reading of their own names or perhaps the whole article (if they wish to). The invitation extends to the people who helped them get there to help contribute to their pages and articles related to them." 117.216.27.218 (talk) 05:08, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

BlacklistedWords Gadget

I have been thinking about a possible gadget for blacklisting certain words and, once rendered, replacing them with {...} until one clicks on them. This would be great so that we, unprepared and therefore not expecting for the worst, would have to read text such as bad words but only be shown click-to-show {...}s. When the gadget is activated, users can type in which words to be blacklisted during the process of rendering source of articles' "Edit" pages into readable texts on their main pages. Has anyone ever unwillingly, possibly non-willfully stumbled upon offensive text? Then, that would be why my idea is here, but it is just an idea, so, perhaps, thoughts would be welcome here; I want to see how many people would actually be interested in it and whether there are flaws in my idea. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 04:58, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps you can do this with a style sheet. But I think on Wikipedia it is not much of a problem, as most vandalism is stopped at entry, or rolled back rapidly. Manual patrollers will want to see the bad words! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:38, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
The edit filter generally stops anonymous and new users (our primary vandals) from adding content containing certain bad words - primarily the words used for vandalism. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:52, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
This is difficult, especially as a word can have a rude meaning in one culture and an inoffensive one in another. Then there's the case of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front - every year or two I go through articles linked to what could be an acronym for that organisation...... I think we are best off here with a combination of edit filters etc to deal with inappropriate use of such words and the principle of least surprise otherwise. I've tried using one of my tools to keep an eye on the use of certain rude words, and got rid of some vandalism and embarrassing typos, but the false positives make this difficult. There really isn't a word so rude that it won't appear in lots of song titles. ϢereSpielChequers 09:16, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Hiding possibly offensive words is similar to hiding possibly offensive or disgusting images, which is basically never done on Wikipedia. Just take a look at this essay: "In original Wikipedia content, a vulgarity or obscenity should either appear in its full form or not at all." This may similarly be covered by this essay as well, as hiding offensive images or text is little more than a disclaimer before you look at it. Relatedly, there's no good way to decide which words are and aren't considered "offensive", due to double meanings and cultural differences. ~Mable (chat) 09:26, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Also useful to note, there do exist browser extensions that allow one to filter the text rendered in a similar way to what you're describing, though I don't think it is possible to "replace" text while editing, as we're basically working with a text form. I'm not interested in that anyway - if you don't like working with offensive language, it should be easy to stay away from that and not remove vandalism yourself. ~Mable (chat) 09:31, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
At one point I wrote a user script to black out potentially-offensive text in articles, that should have a very low rate of false negatives. But it's not configurable and is subject to false positives. ;) Anomie⚔ 10:54, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

A 2016 Elections page for the US

There should be a uniform, simple way for voters anywhere in the US to get their info and for helpers to help others to get their info would be a powerful thing. This way could be a Wikipedia US voting info page, which leads a person to voter registration and polling place info for their zipcode.

We need this yesterday, so if someone or some group wants to do this, please cover the upcoming states first.

A 2016 Elections page for the US
– which links to pages for zipcode ranges
– which link to pages for individual zipcodes
– which link to pages for polling places by 9-digit zipcode

Each polling place page has

  • info on how to verify registration and which party primaries you are eligible for
  • info on how to register
  • a link to the voter registration web site, phone number, etc.

Encyclopedant (talk) 06:01, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Sometimes, I do feel like it is difficult to read a politician's beliefs and promises from a biographical page; I'd love to know what the actual political differences are between politicians. This kind of information presented more clearly would result in informed voting. I don't like the idea of having an "Elections page" on Wikipedia featuring information such as zipcodes, voting dates, phone numbers, etc. That clearly falls under what Wikipedia is not, and though such resources should exist somewhere, Wikipedia is not the place for it. Furthermore, that idea is very US-centric for a world-wide encyclopedia. ~Mable (chat) 07:48, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
  • User:Encyclopedant, Ballotpedia is probably closer to what you're looking for. There are also numerous organizations in the US and elsewhere that provide the type of information you're looking for. Maybe some partnership with ballotpedia or another organization where our articles about candidates and elections link there, possibly? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 13:23, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Speech Synthesis of IPA String?

How feasible would it be to see up a Wikimedia speech synthesis tool that will provide an audio rendition of an IPA encoding? I.e. provide, say, an inline (small) speaker icon that can activate a speech synthesis app to speak the IPA string. If that isn't feasible, then an alternative would be to have a bot generate a .wav file using a good speech synthesis package. Praemonitus (talk) 15:57, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

This is the sort of thing that Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility might be able to help with. Some users, such as Graham87 (talk · contribs), use screen reader software with a speech synthesiser. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:38, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
There's a Text-To-Speech proposal at m:Grants:IdeaLab/A "Listen" Button. In general it comes down to high quality closed voice fonts or lousy quality open voice fonts. The Web Speech API uses the native TTS which means high quality voice fonts for Apple iOS/OS X and Google's Android/ChromeOS, a range for Microsoft OSes, and speak'n'spell quality for Ubuntu. — Dispenser 17:19, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I can't find the discussion, but I'm pretty sure this was floated somewhere and someone pointed out that even the IPA symbols can be too ambiguous to be rendered using speech synthesis. Graham87 01:38, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Do you know if the ambiguous cases form a small fraction that can be hand corrected on a per article basis? Or is this a pervasive issue? Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. Praemonitus (talk) 19:17, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
I can't but fervently support this proposal. Maybe the idea should be raised also at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Language and linguistics and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia technical issues and templates (just add {{rfc|lang|tech}} at the top of this section). Ersaloz (talk) 13:51, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Except that RfCs are not held at Idea Lab - see the box at the top of this page. This page may be used to decide what the exact proposal should be - once we have determined that, we can start a formal RfC at WP:VPR. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:22, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Isn't there already a template that does this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

"Donate resources, not money" -- Wikipedia should never ask for money. More: It should never accept money.

I propose that "donate resources not money" and "moneyless Wikipedia" should be among the main principles that govern how Wikipedia works.

All that Wikipedia should ask for, and ALL THAT IT SHOULD NEED (!) are resources: contributors' time, knowledge and computing/storage resources of their computers. Computers of regular users could be utilized, too. This way, the main operating cost (being, to my understanding: maintaining servers and assuring bandwidth) could be nulled out. Perhaps not quite trivial, yet - I'm fully convinced - fully possible and feasible it is to restructure the workings of Wikipedia so that it will never need any actual money to support its functioning.

There are already several Proposals on "Distributed Wikipedia" (https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Distributed_Wikipedia), "Distributed Infrastructure", "P2P Storage" etc. which mention technologies such as Git (distributed version control) or BitTorrent, so there is no point for me to write more on that.

The very point that I only want to make is: both technological solutions (Git/torrent/ ...numerous others) and physical infrastructure (all our computers, tablets, etc. connected to the Internet) already exist and may be made available for free, starting today. And each new Wikipedia user, tomorrow and the day after, will bring new (computing) resources with him/her -- so any increase in demand for content will immediately be outbalanced by the supply of storage and hosting services that comes with it.

Converting to such moneyless "Distributed Wikipedia" will require some serious work, but this work can (AND SHOULD!) also be carried out under the principle of "donate resources, not money" -- e.g. as an open source, community driven IT project.

Btw. holding that belief was recently my very reason not to contribute any money to Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TarniPL (talk • contribs)

Do you understand just how expensive in terms of both money and storage space it is to host the fifth-busiest website on the planet? The database alone consists of 12 terabytes of data for English Wikipedia alone, not counting images and files and the 25 terabytes of data hosted on Commons, every bit of which needs to be made immediately available to millions of people at a time, while simultaneously being kept secure from corruption and external threats; the central hardware necessary to run a project like this distributed globally would be considerably more expensive, probably by multiple orders of magnitude, than the existing banks of servers. This is not going to happen. ‑ Iridescent 12:31, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
  • A little bit of Economics 101: Money is resources. There is no difference. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 13:19, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Some of the things that we need are only available for money. Lawyers and domain name names being just two examples. If we encourage people to give resources rather than money then we get into the complication of domain names that are owned by volunteers who are paying for them and allowing the movement to use them. Lots of our readers are willing to give small amounts of money. So many that money is not a big problem for the Foundation. These sums are mostly so small and from so many people that we are financially independent. Yes there will be thousands of donors who give a few dollars this year and don't next year, but that isn't a problem, especially if other readers decide to donate. We do sometimes have problems with bigger donations, but we have enough small donations that we don't really need the big ones. Where we do have a problem is when we depend on someone for resources. For example a key part of our antivandalism software was unavailable for a weekend a few years ago because the volunteer whose server it ran on needed that server for something else that weekend. An important step in the collection of stats for the museums and archives who have donated pictures goes through a volunteers server and that formed a bottleneck as the reporting requirements out grew the capacity of the resources he donated. It is nice when people donate resources, and we do make some use of that. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that "never ask for money" was a viable option. Or that a preference for accepting resources wherever possible would give as much independence as we now have. Or that as many people would be willing and able to donate the right bit of technical resources as the pool of people willing to donate a small sum of money. ϢereSpielChequers 13:57, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

43

I'm working on an admin hopeful version of WP:42. I could use a bit of a hand with the name etc. Cheers. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:36, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

So, what do you think? Would it be MfD fodder or would it be acceptable to the community:

Extended content

User:Anna Frodesiak/43

Please say at User talk:Anna Frodesiak/43

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:37, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

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