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Changing all values of the Hebrew language, from Yeshu(ישו), Yeshua(ישוע)

Hello Wikimedia Foundation, my name is Jack from Israel and I would like to talk to you about a very important topic that has never been mentioned almost at all. In the United States they say the name Jesus, the "J" becomes a "Y" and thus the name Yesus or "Jesus" was created. Anti-Christian elements criticize his imposition on his name and omitted the last letter in the name of Yeshua and turned it into the name "Yeshu" as a derogatory word, when the word Yeshu becomes an initials and its meaning becomes the phrase "yimakh shemo v'zikhro", This was mentioned in all the Hebrew scriptures and also in the wikipedia. In my opinion it is not even necessary to explain why this topic is so important and most importantly to change the value of his name from "Yeshu (ישו)" to "Yeshua (ישוע)". But here are some explanations from my own why it is so important; First, changing a person's name can damage history, also changing Napoleon's name can damage the future reporters and also lead to the end of the being Napoleon, we would not want to erase a person like this from our history and forget him on the other hand, today it can be seen that 80% of the people of the State of Israel do not know His real name and they even call him in the derogatory word "yimakh shemo v'zikhro" Wikipedia should tell us (the people), Correct information, up-to-date, and true information! And a person who doesn't understand what a certain entry means, like for example "Yeshua" is welcome to do Wikipedia, that's what you were created for, right? When a person does not know what Yeshua word means, he can do Wikipedia and understand. Secondly, the moral and social level involved, changing a person's name and turning it into a derogatory word looks like this ("yimakh shemo v'zikhro") an injury to Christianity as a whole, disrespects the person (Jesus) and humanity, which colludes with deranged Messianic rabbis who devote their entire lives to inventing lies about Christianity . Does Wikipedia, are you members of the Wikimedia Foundation, agree with these values? In this way, it is like taking the name of something and changing or removing or adding a letter to its name, this can lead to complete oblivion of the person. As can lead to the future bringing of precious Hebrew reporters, and even the rewriting of the New Testament and changing its future name from Yeshua to Yeshu. We don't see it now, but in the course of the years and the progress of evolution, where books will become digital material and thus bring Wikipedia as the most authoritative source on the Internet; What will be created by this is an injury to the name of Jesus and also an injury to the values ​​of history. In addition, here is an article that was written on Wikipedia in 2017 but did not receive much attention: "As a free encyclopedia, we are supposed to meet certain standards. These standards should on the one hand be professional and on the other hand take into account the reading public. I will point out facts: regardless of the name, the entry is currently one of the poorest in Wikipedia on the subject when it includes a list of sources that is so sparse on one of the entities (Note that I did not use the word people so as not to offend, of course) the important ones in humanity history. In addition, in my humble opinion, the Hebrew Wikipedia is the only one that uses a historical derogatory word. I understand that for a large part of you it is not perceived as a derogatory word, but it is certainly possible that a large part of the population does. In fact, it is so unfortunate because it is also about "gypsies", one of the most common derogatory words in connection with peoples in the world that people use without noticing. On the one hand, Wikipedia should champion the professional name, which is Yeshua, and on the other hand, it should champion the non-blatant name, which surprisingly ( cynicism) is also Yeshu. In fact, every time a discussion about the name of the entry comes up, we must reject the request, which comes up again and again, and it changes the name of the entry. The fact that we as Wikipedians receive these complaints over and over again only exacerbates the situation and presents us in a negative light My hypothesis is that it will not offend a person if the name of the entry is Yeshua, but indeed it will be if it is the name Yeshu. We, as Wikipedians, allow the name of the entry to continue, so it is possible that we are actually hurting other people's feelings, even if unintentionally..." In conclusion, changing the name of Yeshua(ישוע) to Yeshu(ישו) is not only an injury to Christianity as a whole, to human dignity, it is also an injury to history itself and can even cause major problems from this issue. Therefore I ask the Christians who are reading this, will you allow the people to blaspheme the name of Jesus? Will Wikipedia give priority to such a disgrace? That's why I ask in every language of request, to change the word "Yeshu" to the word "Yeshua" in the Hebrew values I would love it if you read and contact me, many thanks Jack 87.71.160.172 (talk) 22:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

If you're hoping for a constructive response, you might want to consider WP:TEXTWALL. And in the future, consider using paragraphs. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:44, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I ask not to judge my writing.
Thank! Appspame (talk) 20:40, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
From what I have been able to gather, you have a problem with the way the Hebrew (or transliterated Hebrew) for Jesus of Nazareth is written in at least some (all?) articles? From what I can see (MOS:JESUS) we don't have a site-wide consensus on how the name should be presented in Hebrew. As such, how it is referred to in any particular article will depend on the sources being used for the information - if the sources use one transliteration then that's fine to use. That said, I appreciate that this IP believes one spelling of it (in Hebrew or transliterated Hebrew) to be offensive to some at least. I can't tell if the IP is complaining about something solely present on Hebrew Wikipedia (if so we can't really do much), but it may be a good idea to add something to MOS:JESUS as to how we refer to the person - do we always use the English name "Jesus (of Nazareth)", do we sometimes use the Hebrew name, and if the second, what spelling/transliteration do we use? I'll be leaving a note on the IP's talkpage to ask them to clarify their issue. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 07:42, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
It looks like there is some related information in Yeshu. It appears that this set of letters was used in one (i.e., a single) medieval-era Masekhet as an acronym rather than/as a pun on the name, and a 17th-century German man, Johann Andreas Eisenmenger pushed the idea that this spelling is always insulting, along with quite a lot of errors, bigotry, and nonsense.
Some modern writers use the difference between Yeshua and Yeshu to distinguish between Jesus of Nazareth and all of the (many) other people with the same given name ("Joshua" being the most common English spelling). If that is the widely accepted convention in Hebrew, then I would expect that not following it would be confusing to readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
According to your opinion, the two main reasons why you do not want to change the name from Yeshu to Yeshua are:
The first was that the use of the name Joshua can cause confusion with other names in history, many rabbis who use this claim as a cover for changing his name Yeshua to Jesus (yimakh shemo v'zikhro).
This claim is completely absurd and can be refuted in several ways.
The first, the most well-known example (which occurs mainly among the rabbis), is the change of the name Yeshu to Yeshua, so that they do not get confused between the name *Joshua* and Yeshua, which is completely absurd in the English language and also in the Hebrew language, it does not come out or sound the same, the addition of the letter " The "in the King of God" can change the spelling completely, (Yeshua - *Yehósua*), another example, changing a name, dropping a letter changes the name completely, for example Jack-Jacek, one can understand the essential difference between the two names, thus expanding the claim. Of course there are other examples in this regard, but I will not list them...
Second claim, "Israeli society is already used to the word "Yeshu", and this is also a rather absurd claim, as if a society decides to change the name of something (and something else very important throughout history) collectively, it does not really change its name, like this friend that everyone calls him by a nickname, but finally his original name will appear on his ID card. And so is Wikipedia, which is supposed to serve as an identity card of values; And the kind of value and also Yeshua.
In addition, if any company decides to boycott any country, and even create a political conflict against it-
A. This does not mean that it is impossible to change the situation and bring it to a better two-state situation.
B. The mere fact that one country decides to ignore another country does not make the other country non-existent.
And likewise his name, if a company of people decides to reverse the name of Yeshua and become the word "Yeshu" it did not reduce his name to Yeshu!
Also, Wikipedia must adhere to the correct values ​​and provide correct and reliable information.
In addition, you wrote "there is not much to be done if this"
I am personally ready to sit down and change all the values ​​in which the word Yeshu appears, and I also recommend to the members of the Wikimedia Foundation in Israel to make an effort to correct the values.
I ask not to ignore the first message I posted.
Thank Jack. Appspame (talk) 20:36, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Foundation is not in Israel, and it has no members. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:02, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
First, I agree with Gråbergs Gråa Sång that the WP:TEXTWALL makes it hard to read.
Second, This was mentioned in all the Hebrew scriptures is anachronistic; the Hebrew scripture were closed long before his time. As for the Talmud, the date that I have seen for the early part, the Mishna, is 200 CE, surely a bit late to have influenced the spelling in the Christian scriptures.
Third, if there are surviving Aramaic copies of the Christian scriptures then the name written there should be used. Otherwise, the Greek transliteration now accepted in Christianity should be used.
Do you have a RS for the original name being ישוע? Or for the Christian fathers adopting יִמַּח שְׁמוֹ וְזִכְרוֹ (abbreviated יש"ו) as his name? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 09:18, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
My intention is that it could lead to the rewriting of the New Testament, in the name of technological progress... What could be written by a Jew who does not know the true name of Yeshua and will therefore call his false name Yeshu Appspame (talk) 20:38, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
In Judaism there is such a thing called the Ark of the Covenant where every rabbi can add more and more and more books the Hebrew Scriptures do not close they continue. The very fact that you say such a thing means that you know nothing and a half about Judaism or about the State of Israel itself. You can ask any rabbi and he will answer it for you. (cf. Sifrei Kodesh entry) Appspame (talk) 08:11, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Here is another example of a book written in the last 500 years Shulchan Aruch is a very important book for Judaism! So much so that it even entered part of it into the Pesach legend! Appspame (talk) 08:14, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
In general, the very thought that they took the name of a historical figure and simply changed his name definitively does not excite you, the use of the wrong name can lead to historical disruptions and surely the website Wikipedia, which should lead to one of the most authoritative sites for learning on the Internet, gives the wrong name of some person throughout history  ? If the name Napoleon was written incorrectly you would correct it correctly and if any other name was written incorrectly you would correct it.! But when it comes to this name, suddenly there is a problem, right?! Appspame (talk) 20:44, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I specifically turned to you because I know that you are people with logical considerations, people who know some logic in their lives. You can admit that you simply do not have the strength to change all the names on Wikipedia to their true value. I actually did not address the Israeli community because the Israeli community does not understand the value of the importance of such a thing, but you who live in the United States should know the value of the importance of such a thing! This is not only a disruption of history, it is also an injury to the person's name. Appspame (talk) 20:47, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Respectfully, there is no "true value" to which we should change everything on Wikipedia. Names have been transliterated and written different ways in various languages throughout the centuries, and Wikipedia relies on verifiability, not truth. If you want this change to be made, claiming that it is the "true" spelling isn't enough, you need to provide us with sources actually using it as the Hebrew spelling. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Isn't the New Testament the most correct spelling for Jesus' name? The rest of the inscriptions are actually under the inscriptions of rabbis or rabbis that were written after the New Testament. The oldest inscription in which the name Jesus was mentioned was the New Testament. Appspame (talk) 21:41, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
In my opinion, it is absolutely absurd that you need to bring evidence for the name of Jesus, that you can simply go to the place where he mentioned his name for the first time in the New Testament! This is the oldest source that mentions his name, and also it should be brought to the most authoritative place regarding his name, and also an attribution of a name change written about 500 after his death, should not be attributed any meaning to it. If so, can you bring me a Hebrew source older than the New Testament that attributes his name, and also says that his name is Yeshu...? Appspame (talk) 21:47, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
There are many editions of the New Testament, some of which use one spelling. Even if you took the oldest edition, that one would have several words spelt according to the conventions of the time instead of modern Hebrew. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:54, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
In Hebrew we have two types of new house, the first is modern Hebrew and in biblical Hebrew the word Yeshu does not appear in both of them Appspame (talk) 22:06, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
"new house"?? Is that a standard metaphor in modern Hebrew? —Tamfang (talk) 02:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
You say that there are other versions of the New Testament in an older way in Hebrew, I want you to find me an older New Testament in which the word Yeshu is written, if you do not find it, this makes the most recent existing New Testament the oldest place where his name was mentioned. Any claim that is not a counterquote is considered to be evasion Appspame (talk) 22:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I can also invent that there is an older inscription past the life of Alexander the Great and it says his name Mordechai Reuveni. That doesn't make it right! Appspame (talk) 22:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Matthew 1:16... (and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.)
מתי 1:16... ("יַעֲקֺב הוֹלִיד אֶת יוֹסֵף בַּעַל מִרְיָם, אֲשֶׁר מִמֶּנָּה נוֹלַד יֵשׁוּעַ הַנִּקְרָא מָשִׁיחַ." ) Appspame (User talk:Appspame|talk]]) 22:03, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
> If the name Napoleon was written incorrectly you would correct it
True, but we'd have to talk about what "correct" is. We write about Napoleon, even though his name was Napoléon in French and Napoleone at his birth. Which one is "correct"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:08, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
In the United States they say the name Jesus, the "J" becomes a "Y" and thus the name Yesus or "Jesus" was created. What?? —Tamfang (talk) 06:06, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
A lot of languages share the Latin root Iēsūs. Learned borrowing, the proper way of inheriting words, changes the spelling to be more in line with a language's phonetical spelling. Way back when, the J was the proper way to spell Y. I think that's what it means. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:37, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
So why suggest that one or the other is an American innovation? —Tamfang (talk) 02:48, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume they tried to explain why it starts with a Y for the uninitiated. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:02, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
I believe that this has to do with the Protestant Reformation happening in German(y). A German J is pronounced like an English Y. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:09, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
It looks like, around the time of the Reformation, "J" hadn't even become a separate letter yet, it was still considered an "I" written with a swash. J#History, J#English, and Jesus (name)#Medieval English and Jesus have more. 🙂 Anomie⚔ 11:48, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
Latin too. —Tamfang (talk) 02:47, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, not in Hebrew. Cullen328 (talk) 22:15, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

But I'm not looking for the value in Greek, I'm looking for it in Hebrew, in Hebrew they write Yeshua, according to the oldest inscription the New Home in Hebrew! Appspame (talk) 22:28, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
If I didn't want to search in Greek I would contact you with a Greek caption, but I'm searching in Hebrew Appspame (talk) 22:30, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Does Hebrew distinguish Y from J ? —Tamfang (talk) 02:48, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
in Hebrew they write Yeshua – no, apparently they write יֵשׁוּעַ —Tamfang (talk) 02:53, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
That's splitting hairs. They's used the romanization nearly everywhere throughout the entire thread. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:01, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Why do you insist so much on not changing the name of the entry, and admitting mistakes?, I suggest you also research the issue and go to the Igod.com website, which explains some important topics in the Bible and the New Testament! Appspame (talk) 22:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Appspame, nobody can tell from your overly lengthy commentary which specific articles here on the English Wikipedia you propose to change and which reliable sources you propose to cite. We cannot help you with any other language version of Wikipedia. You need to be far more concise and clear. Cullen328 (talk) 01:33, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Ok, I'll try it, the oldest Hebrew source in which the name Jesus appears is found in the New Testament. The New Testament is not found in the entire state of Israel where the word Yeshu appears, Wikipedia relies on older writings written about 500 years after Jesus and 1500 years written by Rabbis. I am personally ready to change the values in which this disgrace appears and change his real name from Yeshu to Yeshua all I need you to do is to approve me thank you! Appspame (talk) 08:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I brought all the proofs, I brought all the explanations!... Appspame (talk) 08:02, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Appspame, I guess that I need to repeat my questions since you failed to answer the first time. Which specific articles here on the English Wikipedia do you propose to change and which specific reliable sources do you propose to cite? Vague, sweeping claims are worthless here. Please produce the specifics, or move on to something else. Cullen328 (talk) 08:56, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
No, I'd love to talk about it a little more I want to really understand what is the point where you don't want to change his name to his real name? the New Testament because it is a faithful place, and if you don't want to take the New Testament it is a faithful place, the place after which it was written was the Koran, also in the Koran his name is mentioned and guess what his name is Yeshua, my first point is that it is forbidden to change a historical detail, to come and say that there is not enough evidence to prove that it is a historical detail whose name Was Yeshua it's like coming and saying that there is not enough historical evidence of Napoleon's name was Napoleon. The books of the New Testament are not only "books of stories" but also historical books that tell us about the First Temple period here in Jerusalem. My second point is that if a society is used to something it doesn't mean that you can't just change it, for example if South Africa is used to massacres and genocide, doesn't that mean you can't change it and just leave it as it is? So you can also change! I'm trying to understand why you are so opposed to this question mark I brought proofs I brought points for thought but you decide to ignore them why?! It's about my English, I'm very sorry, it's my English, after all, I live in Israel, be patient with me, thank you. And once again, it's important for me to point out that I don't come from a place of anger, I come from a place of disappointment, disappointment that I even have to come and say such a thing to come and wake up people's eyes and explain to them that my name is my name, and my name is not what changed it, that's why it gives me a feeling of disappointment Towards myself, towards humanity and towards Wikipedia which cooperates with unreal and incorrect values! More than that, you take values that were written exclusively in Hebrew by messianic rabbis and not by people who actually knew Christianity and who knew who Jesus is, so I think that your faithful source are not instructive, but because they were written by people who hate the New Testament and hate Jesus and that's how they are Let his name be known. In the same scripture where the name Yeshu was written, there were also lies written about him and lies also about the New Testament by those people who did not even dare to open the New Testament or read from it or understand it. And you call them a faithful source? Appspame (talk) 09:20, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Do you think WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS applies to what you want to be done on the English Wikipedia, whatever that is? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:26, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Btw, this is not the Wikimedia Foundation (you wrote "Hello Wikimedia Foundation" in your OP), this is more like the en-WP Wikipedia community, or at least the parts of it that noticed this thread and decided to write a reply.
My understanding so far is that you want every Wikipedia-article, in any language, that includes a Hebrew spelling of Jesus, to use the Hebrew spelling you prefer. That is not something en-WP can decide, and while you can try to contact the Wikimedia Foundation, it's not an issue I think they'll consider their business, they generally leave Wikipedia content to the various Wikipedia communities. Hope this helps some. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Aren't you the Wikimedia Foundation?! So what good are you to me?! Appspame (talk) 14:16, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Like someone once wrote, that is the question. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:18, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
What?.... Appspame (talk) 14:20, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia is written by thousands of volunteers. The Wikimedia Foundation maintains its infrastructure, not its content. —Tamfang (talk) 06:01, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
We are not the Wikimedia Foundation. We are the volunteers who actually do the work. The Wikimedia Foundation just handles funding and legal issues; it doesn't actually control the content of Wikipedia at all. You're talking to the right people if you want to change something, but Wikipedia makes changes by WP:CONSENSUS, not by a few people who are in charge. This means we will argue about something for a long time before doing anything about it. Cremastra (talk) 07:18, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
No, this is the English wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation is something entirely different. And we (TINW) are here for the benefit of the readers, not for the benefit of editors with an ax to grind, and are subject to various policies, one of which is the requirement for reliable sources as defined in WP:RS. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:15, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

For the interested, related discussions on he-WP:[1][2]. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)


Addendum: An Israeli citizen could hypothetically lobby the Israeli government to change the name of its public holiday "עליית ישו השמיימה". If -- and only if -- that effort were successful, then Public holidays in Israel could and should be modified. Getting the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to modify the Ossuary shown in The Lost Tomb of Jesus so that its caption could reflect the change is another task that a local could likewise hypothetically attempt. (TL;DR: Don't) ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 12:44, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Nonsense! In Israel, according to the Hebrew Language Academy, Yeshu's real name is Yeshua and you can ask the Hebrew Language Academy, they are responsible for the Hebrew language, not Wikipedia! So that Wikipedia does not only dishonor the name of the person, it also dishonors the historical value, also dishonors the Hebrew language and the Hebrew Language Academy. Appspame (talk) 14:20, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Assuming you mean the Academy of the Hebrew_Language (הָאָקָדֶמְיָה לַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית), then your assertion does not appear to be reflected in the practice of that organisation. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 14:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
You take the names of the Catholic Christian holidays that were translated by non-Catholics and these names were never approved by the Hebrew Language Academy and you give them as an example?! What kind of example is this? You show some examples and you say, here is the name that appears here and here and only on this holiday does this name appear, perhaps only because only this holiday has been approved and translated by the academy and qualified Christian authorities! Appspame (talk) 14:24, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
By the way, I actually chose to talk to you because I thought you were more reasonable people who know facts and live in the sand and should understand the essence of the matter! Appspame (talk) 14:26, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
And once again you never answered me why you are so, so opposed to changing the name to his real name? Are there internal factors that tell you not to do such a thing, is it only because I am Israeli and you are anti-Semitic? Is it because you are against Christianity and in favor of desecrating the name of Jesus? Tell me what the real reason is that you are so opposed!? Appspame , (talk) 14:28, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Stop with the absurd personal attacks, Appspame. Your proposal is failing to gain support because you do not understand English Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, have not brought forward any reliable sources, and show no sign of taking on board the feedback you are receiving. You are an anonymous person and your claimed personal expertise is of no value here. Cullen328 (talk) 15:52, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
@Cullen328, it appears that you've accidently edited Appspame's comment to improperly add an expletive? Aaron Liu (talk) 15:59, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Aaron Liu, that was an inadvertent burp from my phone. I apologize and have removed the error. Cullen328 (talk) 16:33, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Rewriting WP:BITE

I rewrote the guideline Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers to be more concise and readable in this rewrite. The current version contains many duplicated guidance, irrelevant information, and painfully common-sense recommendations (I don't think I need to provide any examples). It contains one outdated guidance (draftication is now more common than userification), and poor accessibility decisions like long bullet points as well as linking non-specific words like "here". Concise writing leads more people to actually read the guideline. How do you feel about this rewrite? Should I add/remove/change anything? Ca talk to me! 14:41, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy diff. Folly Mox (talk) 15:07, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
I performed some minor copyediting on the main guideline page, but I am proposing a major rewrite as in the subpage Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers/rewrite. Ca talk to me! 15:13, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
The rewrite is the diff posted above; your minor copyediting is this one. I did compare the current rewrite to the last revision of WP:BITE prior to your edits there, to show the totality of your changes, and then forgot to mention it after I figured out I had to reverse the parameter values in {{Diff4}} to get it to produce the effect I wanted. Apologies for the confusion. (Also I like the rewrite. Have you seen shameless plug?) Folly Mox (talk) 15:27, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
No worries! I didn't realize that diff viewing between two pages were possible. I do like HouseBlaster's YFA rewrite over the current version. Ca talk to me! 17:41, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Much better and much more concise, while still keeping the spirit! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:20, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
While I like most of this, I feel like some of the removed points should be kept. For example, the "what to do" section feels like it would make people pointed to the guideline less aggravated, and "Common newcomer errors" offers examples of situations to apply the guideline. A lot of rationale was removed: for example, the point that newcomers contribute most substantial content was pretty poignant and the part about "be bold" feels like it should be included in the "it's okay" section. I'll see if I can change some of this.
Also, I personally have an intense dislike of punctuation right after an external link; the icon stands out a lot and looks unpleasant. Should the Stackoverflow link be converted to a footnote? Aaron Liu (talk) 22:38, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
I'll be incorporating your suggestions into the rewrite. 👍 Ca talk to me! 07:03, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
What do you think of this diff? Ca talk to me! 07:13, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
I tried to improve it a little more. I think it looks good now. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:50, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Much thanks for ironing out awkward prose! I am not a native speaker of English so copyediting takes effort for me.
I relegated the result of 2006 informal study into an efn since it is outdated by nearly two decade. I am not sure if the finding still applies today. I'll try to find up-to-date sources.
I removed the section What to do if you feel you have "bitten" since it felt like the standard life advice when you have hurt somebody/made a mistake, and isn't specific to bite cases.
I like the bit you added about WP:AGF/Hanlon's razor. AGF should be mentioned as a strategy to not bite. However, I feel as if the paragraph could be reduced to a simple bullet point/sentence, since much of it is just restating the first and second paragraph. Ca talk to me! 16:39, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd go the efn route as well.
For the razor, one of the other points I felt was missing was the part about teaching. The paragraph seemed like the best way to incorporate that. It also includes stuff about not assuming malice. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:45, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
I couldn't really find anything, but I did find this graph which shows a decline in anonymous editing. Ca talk to me! 17:05, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
@Ca, for the graph on retention, what about File:Editor Retention Update.png, from that 2011 study? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:57, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
We're more trying to see if the "anons and newbies contribute most substantial content" can be sourced with recent, "published" data. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:36, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
I'll look on my side. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 15:54, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Trizek. Ca talk to me! 16:45, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
t felt like the standard life advice when you have hurt somebody/made a mistake A lot of life advice applies to Wikipedia. Common sense isn't as prevalent as it once was, and being a section near the bottom (we could even move it to the very bottom) it really shouldn't hurt to include it. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:44, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
I understand your point; but if someone doesn't know a interpersonal skill as basic as this, they shouldn't be editing Wikipedia in my opinion.
Maybe the section could be condensed to these three bullet points:
1. Apologize
2. Reflect on alternatives and learn from it
3. Move on Ca talk to me! 14:48, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
A lot of us here are on the autism spectrum (I am) and interpersonal skills aren't necessarily our forté. Also, people can react very differently towards conflict, irrespective of neurodivergence. A lot of other websites thrive on unkind interactions like sarcasm and cutting remarks. We can assume neither an editor's interpersonal skills nor their learnt behaviours from other online communities. Attempting to educate is worthwhile. Folly Mox (talk) 16:16, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
I should have realized that my comment can be inconsiderate, I am sorry for the insensitive remark. I agree with your reasoning behind keeping the section, though I do think the current version of the section has room for concision-ing. Ca talk to me! 16:29, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
I've opened a RfC: Wikipedia_talk:Please_do_not_bite_the_newcomers#RfC:_Is_this_rewrite_ready_to_replace_the_current_page? Ca talk to me! 11:33, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Make UI more user-friendly

As a regular, I find the UI honestly dull. In an age where the Olympics has a webpage for the purpose of quizzes and games. I find that maybe Wikipedia would be touted as a technological marvel in 2015, but the year is 2024 and, in all honesty, Wikipedia is quite uninspiring. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Usernamesenior (talk • contribs) 19:02, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

So, your title is "Make the UI more user-friendly", but your actual interest is "make the website something other than an encyclopedia"? Remsense诉 19:06, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
+1 Cremastra (talk) 15:27, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
But Wikipedia is a technological marvel. There's a lot going on behind that UI. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
It is a marvel that in 2024 there is a high-profile mainstream website that isn’t filled with ads, flashy junk, and trendy design churn. Well, as long as you think Vector 2022 was an improvement… Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:28, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
+1 Folly Mox (talk) 17:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
There is a great deal of potential in the notion of supporting a quiz/game interface with Wikipedia. It would not be part of Wikipedia per se, but would draw on and depend upon wikipedia. This could be, potentially, the 21st Century Trivial Pursuits. --03:09, 6 August 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceyockey (talk • contribs) 03:09, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
There is also a potential for interfacing generative AI into article enhancements in the following way ... Given Wikipedia Article X and Source Y, what propositions would be suitable to pursue for enhancement of the Wikipedia article (X) based on the newly propositioned citation (Y)? The beauty of this is that it provides suggestions to editors about how to contribute rather than working toward AI-based article revisions. Thoughts? --03:16, 6 August 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceyockey (talk • contribs) 03:16, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
This is a nice idea. I suppose people can already do this albeit in a clumsy, high friction way now that LLM context windows are large enough to cope with the entire contents of Article X and Source Y. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:26, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
But that's not that hard for a human to do. I think the effort of building that infrastructure for mediawiki would outweigh the total effort of doing it the way we do now. Cremastra (talk) 14:06, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
No, a big part of the appeal of Wikipedia is being what it is, an encyclopedia, without tons of flashy distractions like games and stuff. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
+1 Donald Albury 16:57, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
My favorite Wikipedia game is https://redactle.net/ It picks a random page from Wikipedia:Vital articles, blanks most of the words, and leave you to fill in the blanks by guessing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Then maybe you'll like Pedantle better still! Thincat (talk) 17:08, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Redirects to Film categories

For context, I am primarily an editor in the Simple Wikipedia, although I occasionally edit here. Many Wikipedia readers and editors switch to Simple Wikipedia by changing the domain from "en" to "simple", and back. This works well until you get into categories involving films. In simple wikipedia, "films" are referred to as "movies". In English Wikipedia, the only redirect that redirects you from "movies" to "films" is Category:Movies. I wonder if it would be possible or even a good idea to create every related Film category and create a Movie redirect page for it. For example, Category:1942 movies would redirect to Category:1942 films. This would also go for any templates, articles, etc., that would be related. I think this would be a good idea since this is an often enough redirect target, and the words are basically synonyms. I would also wonder if there is a way to automate this. Thank you. MrMeAndMrMeTalk 04:14, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

From anecdotal experience, most people do not know how to edit the URL bar. To go to a site like YouTube.com, they'd Google YouTube even though there's a YouTube suggestion that pops up before they hit enter. I doubt that changing the domain is the primary way of switching against Simple Wikipedia.
I'd recommend using the language switcher (文A at the top of the screen) to switch between these wikis; after a while of switching with it, the switcher will pick up that you primarily switch between these wikis and put the targets under "suggested languages". Aaron Liu (talk) 13:50, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
While this may be true in some aspects, that is a very broad and unreasonable assumption of many It is still a very common and reasonable way to switch between wikis. In any case, “movie” is a reasonable redirect for anybody to search up. MrMeAndMrMeTalk 14:53, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Some kind some revive to the WP:ADCO

I was looking around some pages, and found the now defunct WP:ADCO. I thought that this would be a great idea to bring back in a way, as the amount of RFAs is dwindling, and I believe there is many Wikipedians who would want to start a RFA, but would find it too daunting. I am aware of programs such as WP:RFAPOLL, but believe we need something more. Now I don’t believe we can revive WP:ADCO in its entirety, but I think we can come up with something similar. Thanks, Lordseriouspig 05:06, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

My take on this is that anyone who needs coaching will not make a good admin. The quality needed (besides honesty, which I hope goes without question) is to "get" Wikipedia, which is very difficult to teach someone. The problem that we have with RfA goes much deeper than this. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:27, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Naming convention for Uzbek names

Although thirty years have passed since the government of Uzbekistan decided to switch to the Latin script, the use of Cyrillic remains widespread, and the Latin script in use is widely considered inadequate to say the least. There's growing pressure to change it, particularly the letters Oʻ/oʻ and Gʻ/gʻ which are particularly problematic. However, so far no political will has materialized.

On Wikipedia, Uzbek names present many challenges, which I discuss in some detail below. Maybe this discussion will lead to a naming convention, which would be quite helpful. I can't start drafting one yet, as I don't have all the answers. Maybe after discussing the issue here, a task force could be put together to start drafting a proposal.

Distinct characters

Google's Uzbek keyboard uses U+02BB ʻ / U+02BC ʼ

The letters Oʻ/oʻ and Gʻ/gʻ (and the tutuq belgisi ʼ denoting a glottal stop or a long vowel) are a nightmare (See Uzbek alphabet#Distinct_characters). Basically, while it's clear that the straight English apostrophe should not be used, there is no official guidance on whether U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA / U+02BC ʼ MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE or U+2018 ‘ LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK / U+2019 ’ RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK should be used to properly render these two letters and the tutuq belgisi. Unicode.org states the former should be used. The Uzbek Wikipedia also favors U+02BB/U+02BC, and Google's Uzbek keyboard uses these characters.

However, Uzbek sources often use both—sometimes within the same text—and some do not distinguish between the modifier letter turned comma and the modifier letter apostrophe, instead opting for the straight English apostrophe, which is incorrect. Here's an example of an unfortunate Uzbek name that contains both problematic characters:

U+02BB ʻ / U+02BC ʼ U+2018 ‘ / U+2019 ’ Straight Apostrophe Romanization through Russian
Spelling Variant Yoʻdosh Aʼzamov Yo‘ldosh A’zamov Yo'ldosh A'zamov Yuldash Agzamov
Sources English (Yoʻldosh Aʼzamov) and Uzbek (uz:Yoʻldosh Aʼzamov) Wikipedias, Uzbek academic publications (Journal of New Century Innovations), Uzbek newspapers (Platina, Yuz) Uzbek academic publications (Journal of Culture and Art), Uzbek newspapers (Daryo, Dunyo, Kun,Xabar) Bloggers (Xurshid Davron), handful of Uzbek newspapers (Uzreport), average Joe Websites that rely on Russian sources (Bolshoi Theatre of Uzbekistan, IMDb), local journal articles in English (Oriental Journal of Social Sciences)

The question is: should we, like on the Uzbek Wikipedia, formally agree on which pair of characters to use in Uzbek words? I've been using U+02BB ʻ / U+02BC ʼ, but other editors might be using, or may have already used, U+2018 ‘ / U+2019 ’ instead.

On a related note, when a new page is created here on enwiki, the U+02BB/U+02BC pair poses no challenges. However, if the article is misspelled, as in the case of Yodgor Sa'diyev, moving it becomes impossible. "Yodgor Sa'diyev" is clearly wrong: reliable Uzbek sources use both U+02BC (Kknew, Zamin; Ministry of Internal Affairs) and U+2019 (Daryo, RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, Xabar), but not the English apostrophe. The handful of English sources that I could find on Yodgor Saʼdiyev use the Romanization of his name in Russian (Yodgor Sagdiev: Uz Daily) or a mix of his Uzbek + Romanized Russian name (Yodgor Sagdiyev: President.uz)! Since there is no single variant used in English sources, I decided to move the article to the Uzbek Latin spelling. (Although, as mentioned above, there isn't one standard Uzbek spelling, but this still seemed the best option.). However, when I tried to move the page to Yodgor Sa’diyev (with U+02BC), the following error popped up:

The page "Yodgor Sa'diyev" cannot be moved to "Yodgor Saʼdiyev" because the title "Yodgor Saʼdiyev" matches an entry (?!(User|Wikipedia)( talk)?:|Talk:)\P{L}*\p{Latin}.*[^\p{Latin}\P{L}ʻ].* <moveonly> # Latin + non-Latin on the local or global blacklists. If you believe that this move is valid, please consider requesting the move first.

When I tried to move it to Yodgor Sa’diyev (with U+2019), I got the following error:

The page title that you have attempted to create contains a right single quotation mark (’) Unicode character. Per MOS:STRAIGHT, such characters should not normally be used in page titles. Please replace it with a standard apostrophe, or a modifier letter turned comma (ʻ) or modifier letter apostrophe (ʼ) character if appropriate, and try again. If you got here by clicking on a red link in an article, you should go back and fix the link first.

Talk about a Catch-22! When there are no English sources and it's appropriate to use the Uzbek spelling, what should I do if I cannot move a misspelled page name due to the technical issues mentioned above? Should I request a name change every time I encounter an Uzbek word wrongly spelled with the English apostrophe, or can we make an exception for Uzbek names to facilitate moving articles?

As a page mover, I should be able to move over the title blacklist, so asking at WP:RM/TR could be an option. However, I notice the page has already been moved in the past, so maybe it is best to discuss it first. On that note, if you end up having a lot of them to request and consensus is that they should indeed be moved to the modifier letters turned commas/apostrophe, asking for the page mover right yourself could also be an option. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:00, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Romanization through Russian

Since Soviet times, Uzbek names have tended to be crudely transliterated into Russian, especially in official documents such as passports. As you can see in the table above, Йўлдош Аъзамов (Yoʻldosh Aʼzamov in the modern Latin script) was written as Юлдаш Агзамов in Russian, and English sources relying on Russian transliterate it as Yuldash Agzamov (see the table above for sources).

Per WP:COMMONNAME, we should generally use the most commonly used English spelling ("as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable, English-language sources"). Are sources in broken English, like the ones mentioned above, sufficient for this purpose? While the current policy states "When there is no single, obvious name that is demonstrably the most frequently used for the topic by these sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering these criteria directly", it would be helpful to have a general policy for such cases, as most Uzbeks have multiple names, and the Romanization of Uzbek names through Russian is unlikely to stop any time soon.

Listing all the different spelling variants

When a given entity has many different names, it's helpful to list them in the relevant entry. Over the years, I've variously formulated the existence of different spellings while creating content here on enwiki. For instance, in Yoʻldosh Aʼzamov, I wrote:

Yoʻldosh Aʼzamov (sometimes spelled Yuldash Agzamov in English) (Uzbek: Yoʻldosh Aʼzamov, Йўлдош Аъзамов; Russian: Юлдаш Агзамов; May 10, 1909 – June 16, 1985) was...

In the recent entry on Olim Xoʻjayev, I added the following footnote:

Uzbek Cyrillic: Олим Хўжаев; Russian: Алим Ходжаев, romanized Alim Khodzhaev.

There are also Uzbeks like Hamza Hakimzade Niyazi who almost exclusively wrote their name in the Arabic script, and there are many reliable sources that use his name in the Arabic script. This complicates things even further. Is it best to specify all the various spellings in the lead section, or is it better to list them in a footnote? Either way, how should I word it so that it doesn't get too clunky but at the same time lets the reader know that multiple spelling variants exist? It would be really helpful to have some sort of rule of thumb for such cases.

P.S. I create redirects from all the known spellings to the main entry whenever I can. While I haven't encountered any issues on this, a future naming convention should probably have some guidance on redirects as well. Nataev talk 19:18, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Making "Wikipedia:Closing discussions" a guideline?

Within Wikipedia:Closing discussions, only the "Closure procedure" is a how-to and could be split and marked with something like {{Wikipedia how-to}}. The rest seems like widely agreed-upon guidance. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:18, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Have you read WP:PROPOSALS yet? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:30, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:45, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Content assessment tweaks

Since Content assessment was decoupled from individual WikiProjects, I'd like to develop an idea regarding how it can be tweaked. Currently assessments for Stub-class to B-class can be placed on a talk page by any editor, but the manner in which reassessment is done can be a little tricky. If an editor wants to have their article reassessed (such as moved up from Start to C class), where to do this is currently a little convolluted.

This can be asked on the article talk page, but most talk pages on Wikipedia are will not yield a result, as they are either empty or inactive or both. Or it can be asked on a WikiProject page, which is still not a guarantee of getting it answered (also, might defeat the point of unlinking content assessment from WikiProjects in the first place). Or it can be asked on Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia/Assessment – which doesn't make sense technically. Surely WikiProject Wikipedia/Assessment should be about articles relating to Wikipedia, instead of acting as a general catch-all page as it currently does.

My question is – how could this be optimised? For example, should assessment requests be moved to one centralised location? If so, where? Hope village pump can help me here DimensionalFusion (talk) 15:44, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Other than promotion to GA or FA status, very few editors pay attention to article assessments… so we don’t actually need clear cut criteria or a process for assessment. We can rely on editorial judgement.
If you think an article should be assessed as being in a certain “class”, feel free to mark it so. If someone else disagrees, discuss it on the article’s talk page. Blueboar (talk) 16:11, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, and marking an assessment totally independently, without any input from others is and would remain a valid way to assess an article. However, some people may not wish to do this and may want to have an uninvolved editor look at the page. This is the problem I would like to address DimensionalFusion (talk) 16:17, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) If there is benefit in an editor being able to request someone else take a look at an article and seeing whether they think the quality assessment is correct then I can think of two approaches that might work:
  • A central location in which to ask.
  • A template that can put on an article talk page that populates a category.
In both cases WikiProject article alerts should be generated to aid discoverability by editors interested in the relevant topic area.
Whether there is benefit in such a system is a different question, but I think the answer is yes. Even if it's optional in most cases, someone who was heavily involved in rewriting the article or who has a COI with regard to the subject or who is a declared paid editor may want to (in the latter two cases probably should) ask for another editor's opinion. Thryduulf (talk) 16:20, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Either could be suitable – although a central location may be the better option. In my personal experience, categories don't tend to lead to actions being taken DimensionalFusion (talk) 16:34, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
If I come across an assessment that is clearly wrong on an article I am involved with, I simply edit out the assessment. By means that are completely mysterious to me someone eventually comes along and (re)assesses it. Thincat (talk) 10:17, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
What? DimensionalFusion (talk) 10:28, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
@DimensionalFusion I think @Thincat is saying that if an article they are involved with is rated as e.g. start class but they believe that is clearly wrong they will simply remove the assessment rank, meaning the formerly start class article is now unassessed class. In their experience these articles then get a new rating (that presumably more closely matches their opinion) from somebody else without any additional input from them (i.e. they make no requests anywhere). They don't know how the people who do the new assessment become aware that this needs doing (although my guess is that they're patrolling e.g. Category:Unassessed United Kingdom articles). Thryduulf (talk) 10:39, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes! Thincat (talk) 10:42, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
In my experience that doesn’t tend to lead to articles being reviewed, either because it is a broad topic (leading to a huge backlog) or because it has a very inactive wikiproject DimensionalFusion (talk) 10:51, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Question: other than GA and FA, does it actually matter if an editor self-assesses an article they have worked on? Blueboar (talk) 11:15, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
No, an editor would be completely entitled to change the rank themselves. But again some editors wouldn’t want to do this and would want an uninvolved editor to take a look at it. I’m thinking of proposing a central location to replace Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia/Assessment DimensionalFusion (talk) 11:54, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
DimensionalFusion, content assessment between "stub" and "GA" is meaningless. No one is likely to respond to a request to reassess article quality unless you're taking it through a formalised peer review process, and editors interested enough in the topic would likely respond better at any centralised venue to a generic hey I just created / expanded Topic; improvements welcome than to a request for reassessment.
If you're not comfortable changing the assessment rating yourself on articles you've significantly contributed to, turn on WP:Rater in Special:Preferences, and use whatever it suggests with the default edit summary. If you want other editors to take a serious look at your work, take it through WP:GA. Folly Mox (talk) 14:52, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
If content assessment between "stub" and "GA" is meaningless then why does it exist at all?
Anyway, for people who know that an article does not meet GA standards but want it to be looked at/rated by another editor, if only for 15 seconds, would create a massive waste of time in taking it to GAN as you suggest, which already has a massive backlog. One of the ways to reduce that backlog would be to improve the process for content assessment, no?
A centralised location like what Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia/Assessment is (but should not be) providing would help this, no? DimensionalFusion (talk) 16:18, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
As someone mentioned below, they're mostly an historical artefact, leftovers from the days when WikiProjects roamed still. I don't know why we still have them. My apologies if it seemed like I was recommending taking a known sub–GA-quality article through GA. I miscommunicate sometimes. What I meant is that other editors are not likely to invest significant time reviewing work that the primary contributors have not already invested significant time into.
We might not be seeing eye to eye on this because I'm experiencing disagreement with your problem statement. To me, reassessment has never felt tricky: if I've improved an article and notice its rating feeling out of sync, I'll update it. Also the notion of a venue where someone might be guaranteed a response doesn't feel in alignment with the state or ethos of the project.
I suppose you could just remove the rating on articles you've recently improved, which should lead to someone else assessing them eventually. Folly Mox (talk) 18:29, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
How soon will eventually be though? As far as I'm aware, the Citation needed category for example hasn't led to many articles having citations added
But I see your point. The problem (or, the reason) behind CA is that nobody cares about anything other than FA and GA. DimensionalFusion (talk) 19:32, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
In theory, the rating helps copyeditors find good-enough articles to bring to GA and major content adders to transform stubs. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:47, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
does this actually happen? DimensionalFusion (talk) 22:10, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
That would be pretty hard to determine. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:16, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Recent backlog drives at WikiProject Unreferenced articles and WikiProject Reliability have used maintenance categories to improve the project, but it really does seem like that kind of organised effort is what it takes to budge the needle even a little bit on highly populated maintenance categories.
At some point last year WikiProject Stub improvement was reactivated to expand stub-class articles, which didn't last long since there were an overabundance of false stubs. I blame myself for rating some of these upwards out of the stub categories without significant expansion.
I don't have good anecdata for routes to GA, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone taking an article there on the basis that it was already B-class. I have seen B-class used in guidance once or twice, like at H:YFA, where newcomers modeling their first article on existing examples are advised to make sure their model is at least B-class.
As to my eventually above, that's difficult to predict, and I don't have time at the moment to look into how long articles remain unassessed, nor even how to formulate a method of checking. Late for work, Folly Mox (talk) 11:34, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Given the amount of outrage declared paid editors doing anything that could be seen as advancing the interests of their employer (regardless of whether this aligns with Wikipedia's interests) causes among some sections of the community, I think some method of requesting an independent assessment is warranted. Personally I don't see them doing this as an issue at all, but I recognise my views regarding paid editing are a lot more relaxed than the average. Thryduulf (talk) 12:05, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
What does paid editing have to do with content assessment? Gawaon (talk) 12:40, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
If a paid editor has contributed significantly to an article, should they be allowed to change the rating of that article themselves? As I say I don't have a problem with that (as long as it's not to GA/A/FA, but that applies to everyone) but given how controversial paid editing is I suspect some people will have a problem with it. Thryduulf (talk) 12:48, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Uh, the problem here is the paid editing, not the content assessment, I'd say. Gawaon (talk) 13:11, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Given that there is absolutely NO BENEFIT to be gained from changing an article assessment from “Start” to “C” (or even “B”)… why would it matter if the changer was paid to do so? Blueboar (talk) 13:19, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
@Blueboar If there is "absolutely no benefit" why do we have three different ratings? Is telling a client you improved their article from "C" to "B" not a benefit?
@Gawaon neither paid editing or content assessment is a "problem", I think you're misunderstanding this discussion. The question being asked in this discussion is "Should there be some central location or other method for editors to request a different editor re-assess the quality of a given article?" This cannot be answered without answering the question "Is there a reason and/or benefit to requesting another editor do this rather than just doing it themself?". My view is that the answer to the second question is "yes", giving a paid editor as one example scenario of when it would/might be better for another editor to do it. Paid editing is controversial (imo way more controversial than it should be, but that's beside the point) but it is not, in and of itself, a problem. Content assessment is not a problem, but an individual editor reassessing the quality of their own work might be a problem in some circumstances. Given that such circumstances exist, I see benefit in their being a way to avoid the problem. Thryduulf (talk) 13:33, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
It's like Blueboar says: Ratings are a hint to other editors, our readers will in general neither see nor care about them, and the payer probably won't either. Gawaon (talk) 13:44, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Thryduulf- To be blunt, we don’t need all these ratings. The original intent was to help wikiprojects figure out which articles needed the most collaboration (we would focus on high “importance”, low “quality” assessments first).
However, as more and more wikiprojects became moribund, the ratings system became increasingly irrelevant. They are now little more than an ego boost (it’s nice to think that you improved an article to a “higher” level). Blueboar (talk) 15:00, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
User talk:Iridescent/Archive 45 § Assessment streamlining (2021) remains the most edifying thread on this topic that I'm aware of. Folly Mox (talk) 15:07, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I don’t care enough either way but if I could; I would simplify assessments to Stubs, Start, GA, FA. I have never ever used B, C, A classes. If an article can be improved, then do it! These debates about their classes could be better spent on improving the content however much or little. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 15:40, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Folly, thanks for the link. I note that the 2021 discussion focused on GA and FA… while this discussion seems focused on the lower assessments (Mostly “c” and “b” class). Blueboar (talk) 16:25, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Only big and active WikiProjects like MILHIST use class A. IMO it's good that B-class exists as it has actual, tighter criteria, and the banners always give tick marks for which specific criteria need improvement.
I do agree that there need not be a centralized, stringent discussion forum for these ratings. They are not supposed to be formal, and I agree with Blueboar. The assessments are working as they should. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:20, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree that assessments in their current form are not working as they should. Rating an article as GA or FA gets that article more recognition as they get a topicon, and can be featured in DYK or today's featured article.
Rating an article as A-Class, B, C, Start, or Stub does... nothing. Originally they alerted WikiProjects as to how much an article needs improving but since WikiProjects are no longer giving out ratings this seems irrelevant. Which leads to the obvious question – what is the point of content assessment? But that discussion is most likely out of the scope of this idea lab.
If I personally had control over the process then I'd rename A-Class (something like Quality article), and consolidate B and C class into one. DimensionalFusion (talk) 16:28, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
The ratings provide the exact same information regarding article quality to Wikiprojects as they did before. The change to a single rating did not affect their Wikiproject functionality, all the categories etc. still work. CMD (talk) 16:44, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
The big question is – does content assessment, through wikiprojects or otherwise, help improve Wikipedia? Because from personal experience, lots of wikiprojects seem to not actually undertake coordinated efforts to improve articles, much less using content assessment to do so.
But this is getting off topic, anyway DimensionalFusion (talk) 16:51, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
It certainly helps at the upper end (GA and FA)… I don’t think the lower end (from Start through B class) is of much use. However, it doesn’t harm anything to have these levels… so… meh. Blueboar (talk) 17:17, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Right, it's not a big question as we know the answer already. They're there if someone wants to use them; if they don't want to use them, no harm done. CMD (talk) 17:19, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I personally disagree with this – if it isn't going to be consistent what's the point of having it at all DimensionalFusion (talk) 17:38, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
We have a single long-standing set of criteria defining each assessment rank that has been pretty consistent over time. Editors apply these based on their best interpretation, up to and more or less also including GA. CMD (talk) 17:49, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
For the people who don't know about our content assessment processes:
  • The most important level is B class This is implicitly the minimum requirement for DYK and ITN.
  • GA is B class with a review It is, like Start, C and B, a low level. Since the review is conducted by only one editor, YMMV.
  • Our highest level is A class This involves reviews by multiple editors from a project.
  • FA is similar to A class, but reviewers are drawn from all projects. However, unlike all the other levels, there are limits on the articles that can be submitted.
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:34, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
^*trying to be helpful*(Hawkeye means this is guideline that WP:MILHIST follows). I thought ITN required only non-stub status?. Schierbecker (talk) 20:54, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I can't find anything at Wikipedia:Did you know/Guidelines about being assessed as B class. Schazjmd (talk) 21:08, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
DYK requires Start-class (because their minimum length exceeds a stub).
@Folly Mox (and others), these ratings are primarily for the WP:1.0 team, which uses them for offline/curated releases. The difference between Stub and GA is important to their algorithm. They consider factors like popularity, centrality (=incoming links), and WikiProject ratings (i.e., to identify articles that humans say are important but that otherwise might be skipped). All else being equal, an article with higher ratings in terms of either quality or importance/priority is more likely to make the cutoff. Most of that group's work is coordinated off wiki these days, but AIUI they are still active.
(Search engines don't care, so a spammer/paid editor shouldn't, either.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Most of the time, anything well-cited is gonna be B-class, though it could be C-class or start-class if it's short. While ITN doesn't have this criterion, DYK's length criterion means it's usually B-class. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:18, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Only 1,500 character are needed, so that's actually most relevant to the B-class criteria DYK is likely to miss (The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies). DYK articles are expected to be well cited though, and being well-written comes from the attention, so most of the other B-class criteria are met in some way. CMD (talk) 14:51, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Central hub for WikiProjects

I think there should be a central hub for WikiProjects which would provide a space for editors to collaborate on all topics (yes vanilla wikipedia is a collaborative project but note that some editors are more open to collaboration whilst others prefer to work independently, this taps into the former). At the moment WPs are isolated from one another, and collaboration is often limited to within a single WP, when most articles have multiple WP banners and scopes overlap. This central hub could be called something like WP:WikiProject Hub and incorporate the directory (unsure whether WP:WikiProject Council would be best kept technically separate). It could have a resource that people could submit articles to that they would like to collaborate on (eg. most recent at the top, off the list after 2 weeks) and users could filter out/in WikiProjects technically based on the WP banners. I'm sure there's lots of other resources and uses it could provide that I can't think of right now Kowal2701 (talk) 20:08, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

i could support this idea, depending on the details. however, you should check out WikiProject Council, to see if this existing resource overlaps with your idea. Sm8900 (talk) 20:18, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I would suggest you could call it "WikiProject Cafe." that's a word which easily lends itself to this use, and yet has not been used for actual items here, so far. Sm8900 (talk) 20:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
It'd be like an actual WikiProject, and other WikiProjects would sort of be sub projects of it. I don't know whether WP:WikiProject Council would be best kept separate as a sort of regulator and help hub while this would strictly be for collaboration on articles etc. Kowal2701 (talk) 20:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
oh. well ok, but sorry that sounds overly broad. i don't really see a role for that. sorry.if you want to see why an overly generalized wikiproject might not work, please look at WikiProject History. let me know what you think, if you want. Sm8900 (talk) 20:27, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
all WP:HIST needs is taskforces for different regions and periods. I really think the lack of collaboration between projects hurts wikipedia and there's a lot of potential here Kowal2701 (talk) 20:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
@Kowal2701, well you have my support for that. could you please come by WikiProject History, and get that going? I can give you my support for that. Sm8900 (talk) 20:32, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I'd be happy to, although not sure about the best approach and I'm wary of wasting people's time. Do we immediately ping people to a discussion about taskforces with minimal initial comment or do we make a fleshed out proposal and then ping everyone? Kowal2701 (talk) 20:36, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
in general, it's neither. you simply create the task force with like-minded editors, in areas that you yourself would be interested in editing. that's not an official rule or method, in any way; it is simply my own personal opinion. Sm8900 (talk) 21:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
there're already taskforces for each continent, is it not just about reviving those and maybe merging WP:WikiProject European history into a taskforce? If people support it, we should probably discuss it with the people at WP Council, they've expressed similar ideas Kowal2701 (talk) 21:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
sure, revive those. if you find people interested, then go ahead! Sm8900 (talk) 21:13, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
"all WP:HIST needs is taskforces" – No, what HIST needs is people. A collection of task force pages is worse than worthless if there aren't lots of people involved. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, @WhatamIdoing is actually doing a better job of providing a relevant and helpful reply here than I am,actually. thanks! Sm8900 (talk) 21:29, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
It's got over 300 members, if it were to be reorganised all could be pinged to a post which lists the taskforces, and hopefully enough would engage with them to keep them all sustainable Kowal2701 (talk) 21:30, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
@Kowal2701, sorry but there is no practical benefit to doing so. editors generaly edit whatever topics inteest them at the moment. there is little to be gained by organizing a whole lot of task forces which no one is already showing an interest in, actually. Sm8900 (talk) 21:32, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I disagree, editors often have narrower interests than just history, which makes WP:HIST too broad like you said. If there was a push to organise the project around taskforces I think enough people might be inclined to engage with them especially considering only a small proportion of the large membership would be needed. I think it's worth a go rather than leaving it semi-active/inactive Kowal2701 (talk) 21:42, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I wonder how many of those "members" are actually active these days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I’d assume 150, but with the taskforces that don’t get off the ground we could just message contributors. Idk, it entirely depends on whether there’s appetite for it Kowal2701 (talk) 06:42, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
@Kowal2701, can you describe your idea in concrete terms, with examples?
I can't tell if this is "I want one group of editors to be in charge of all the other groups of editors" (a WP:WikiProject is a group of editors) or if this is "I want a multidisciplinary group of editors". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
No this is nothing to do with authority or even a group of editors necessarily. It's a restructuring of the wikiproject system. Think of a tree diagram where you have
central hub --> wikiprojects --> taskforces
Kowal2701 (talk) 21:38, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
What is the purpose of the central hub? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
To serve as a central place for collaboration on Wikipedia. Where people can collaborate on topics without a WikiProject. A place where WikiProjects can collaborate with one another. To macro manage WP’s coverage. Where WikiProjects can notify people of initiatives etc. To foster collaboration and make a healthier culture. I’m sure there are other uses. I think the resource mentioned in the initial post might be a good core idea. Kowal2701 (talk) 06:36, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
There are basically no topics that don't fall within the scope of an existing WikiProject.
Cross-project collaboration is relative rare, probably because "editors often have narrower interests", to quote your words above, but interdisciplinary collaboration is common, and even has multiple thematic groups (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation, Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors, Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles).
If "macro manage" means "tell people that we need more articles about X or fewer about Y", then it's doomed because we're WP:VOLUNTEERS, but the Village pumps serve that purpose. The Village pumps are also where groups can notify others of their initiatives; WP:VPM is usually the most popular for routine announcements.
Creating yet another forum for communication is not usually helpful. See https://xkcd.com/1810/ ("Chat systems") and think about the problem of walled gardens (a handful of pages/people end up isolated from everyone else, leading to drift) and local consensus (e.g., we declare our group to be the One True™ group for deciding whether Our™ articles get an infobox, and we make sure that nobody else gets notified about or invited to participate in these conversations, because Those Other Editors might disagree with us). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:57, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
That makes sense, I think there’s some merit to it but there’s too many ways it could fail and it’d take a lot of community resources and time which might not be worthwhile. Tbh with you I just really like the resource mentioned in the initial post, if that could be incorporated into an existing page I’d be satisfied. People really like serendipity and this could provide that, and bypass the isolation of WPs. It is also entirely voluntary, people can submit articles they’re working on that they’d like more input in and others can choose anything that intrigues them. It sort of serves to direct people I guess Kowal2701 (talk) 07:09, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
There is also Wikipedia:Articles for improvement. CMD (talk) 07:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
That’s really great. Maybe another list/page with a list could be added which didn’t have nominations so anyone can add an article regardless of importance or page views and it stays on the list for a month and people can filter by WP banners? Kowal2701 (talk) 07:36, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
WikiProjects are groups of people, and you probably don't want to filter by "WhatamIdoing and her wiki-friends". If you'd like to be able to filter by topic area, then the WMF did some research a few years back, and found that articles could almost always be classified into a couple dozen categories under four main headings of Culture (includes biographies), Geography, History/Society, and STEM. See mw:ORES/Articletopic#Taxonomy for the full list.
Having said that, if you just want a place to tell people what you're working on, then I suspect that Wikipedia:Discord might be a better match that anything on wiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:17, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I would suggest that Movement Strategy Forums might be a good venue as well. Sm8900 (talk) 15:25, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
It’s more you filter by topic area, so you if you’re interested in say 5 topics, you just filter for them, it’s not necessarily about collaborating with those WikiProjects but with people on the articles for improvement page. Those groups are good, but I imagine it’d be a lot easier technically to use WP banners as identifiers for which topics the article is a part of Kowal2701 (talk) 15:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
If the resource was made, it could have a signpost about it which would attract more to use it as both submitters and browsers Kowal2701 (talk) 15:30, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
It would be nice if there were a way to surface articletopic at the article itself, or its talkpage, rather than only being visible through CirrusSearch and the Suggested Edits pane. Folly Mox (talk) 18:00, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
A tool should be feasible, or maybe a magic word. Something for the wishlist? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Bot to block Proxy/VPN IPs (ST47ProxyBot replacement)

Hey folks, I'd like to get some thoughts on an adminbot that monitors RecentChanges and reactively blocks VPN/open proxy IPs it encounters. We used to have ST47ProxyBot which preemptively blocked such IPs, however the bot's operator, ST47, has indicated that they are no longer interested in running this bot. Long story short, there is a plethora of VPN/open proxies on the internet with new operators coming online every day; it has become technically unfeasible to identify and block all of these. Bad actors have been attacking our admin noticeboards with these VPNs/open proxies which has resulted in them being semi-protected for extended durations of time. That said, I'm interested in building an adminbot that monitors RecentChanges (or just the administrator noticeboards) for edits from VPN/open proxy IPs and blocks them (can optionally revert the most recent edit made by these IPs too). Noting for the record that some discussion on this has occurred here (permalink). Courtesy ping for @Robertsky. -Fastily 21:25, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I don’t have strong feelings against this one way or another. I share the concerns of others that, especially with developments in internet infrastructure over the past decade or two, it is much less simple to block open proxies now. But if an admin bot can accurately evaluate (with a sufficient level of accuracy) and block/revert, so what if it only catches 1% of the actual open proxies? I also think this should be evaluated as a “continuation” of the prior adminbot - even if it has slightly different code, from what I can see there was consensus for this type of adminbot before so absent significant new concerns about the stability/false positives now, should be fine for Fastily or another admin to take over the *task* even if doing it with different code. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 21:35, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Thus far the disruptive IP addresses that have been blocked on the admin boards has proxy-like behaviours stated in the user information tool (that can be seen on the Contributions page). That can be a likely reliable signal/condition to revert and block such IP addresses if they touch on the admin boards. – robertsky (talk) 10:52, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Agree with Berchanhimez that this task doesn't seem like it should require a second consensus for approval, but if it does I support it. Folly Mox (talk) 11:28, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Maybe for full transparency when this bot is activated, User:ST47ProxyBot should get -sysop at the same time, with each bot's user rights log message linking the other account. Folly Mox (talk) 11:32, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
FYI: the removal is already  Done, simply per request of the operator. — xaosflux Talk 15:57, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
A bot that monitors recent changes and reactively blocks VPN/open proxy IPs rather than preemptively may be a useful compromise. We already have a bot that monitors recent changes and logs VPNs/proxies at WP:OPD; it seems to log very many but perhaps not all, that will be dependent on the database. As an aside, I’ve never see so many blocked 'anonymizers' on that log, which is almost entirely due to the current disruption.
The current disruption is using a very particular anonymizing network so perhaps a focus on blocking that one preemptively would be helpful in the short term. -- Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:38, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have a way to search Wikipedia articles by inserting an image and finding the most relevant articles?Anonymous1261 (talk) 07:51, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

To be honest I think google images would probably be better suited for that. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:55, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Maybe, in theory, if we take an infrastructure similar to Google Images and then do something complicated that does image recognition involving wikidata. But it hardly seems worth the effort. Cremastra (talk) 19:17, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Use of "former" to describe occupations

I continuously see the word "former" before describing occupations in biographical articles. For example, Tiffany van Soest's article describes her as a "retired American Muay Thai kickboxer who competed in the bantamweight division". This feels redundant, as the past tense is also found in the word "competed".

I only find it helpful in cases when the person has other current jobs, such as in Ben Carson, which says "retired neurosurgeon" as he went into politics.

I say the use of the word "former", "retired" or others versions be banned to describe occupations, except for cases such as Carson's. Roasted (talk) 23:13, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

It's much less confusing than "was a kickboxer", which sounds like one died (knock on wood). If we make it "is an American Muay Thai kickboxer who competed in the bantamweight division", that sounds like they used to compete there but then moved on to other places. I don't see how this adjective can possibly be harmful. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:31, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Aaron Liu, "former", "retired" and similar are usually unambiguous accurate descriptions that are clearer than omitting them. There might be exceptions in individual cases, but as a general rule they are more good than harmful. Thryduulf (talk) 00:25, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

The use of former is often used to push a POV in BLPs such as: "Jayle was is a convicted fraudster and former businesswoman". These things are arguably true, but a more neutral way to state it is "Jaylee is a businesswoman who was convicted of fraud". It avoids the name calling, "fraudster"; and makes no crystal ball guess what the future might hold for Jaylee, who might continue to have a career in business, after she serves 10 years in jail. The use of "former" is a dig over her downfall. So yeah I would agree that "former" can be a loaded term and is usually unnecessary. Another hypothetical example: "91-year old Jaylee is a former skydiver, former book author, former model, former Olympic swimmer and currently a painter." Ugh. Please no. -- GreenC 01:07, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any problems with your last example except for the fact that some of these formers are probably way more important than others, for which we already have existing guidelines that say that only the most notable occupations should be included. I also don't see how one could be a former businesswoman. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:38, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
You can stop running a business, just like you can quit any other career. Some people might interpret "is a businesswoman" as meaning that she's running a business right now, which, in the specific case of "a convicted fraudster" might not be compatible with their legal situation. If the BLP in question has been barred from certain business activities (e.g., being a director or officer of a publicly traded company) under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act or similar legislation in the relevant country, they might even consider it harmful to be described as a current businessperson. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I expect people to use their wits and do this rationally. I doubt that bad cases of such scenarios will pass sane minds. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:16, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I don't think the former reads that way in your first example, I wouldn't assume someone with a conviction can't do business. The fraudster use is a separate issue, "former businesswoman convicted of fraud" uses both. ("Businesswoman" is a bit vague I suppose, which makes the example tricky.) CMD (talk) 02:47, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Ultimately, what we ought to do is describe subjects the way the sources describe them. If sources generally describe someone as a "former XYZ" then we should to. That said, the lead does also have some degree of leeway to paraphrase and summarize (since it's trying to summarize the entire article); in some situations it's fairly uncontroversial to describe someone's previous roles in the past tense, especially when the ending is unambiguous - for example, former elected / appointed officials. Even then I think it's more commonly worded as eg. "was the secretary of whatsit under whosit" but I wouldn't support a hard-and-fast ban on "former"; it has to be decided on a case-by-case basis, like most things. --Aquillion (talk) 03:02, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
  • A "kickboxer who competed in the bantamweight division" might be someone now competing in a different division. Thincat (talk) 04:28, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
    Past tense is not used in many areas of Wikipedia, such as TV programmes that are no longer made where the word "was" gives the reader straight away that it is no longer made, but the MOS says we cannot use it. I think "former" is acceptable in my eyes, as it what the "normal" world outside of Wikipedia would use, however common sense and this place doesn't always meet. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 05:16, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
  • There is a near-identical RFC ongoing at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Biography#RfC:_The_position_of_"retired"_and_"former"_in_the_first_sentence_of_biographical_articles - arguably a more proper place. I suggest people comment there. Johnbod (talk) 17:06, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
    All of this stems from formulaic writing and trying to fit too much information into one sentence. Blueboar (talk) 17:38, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Universal reference name

Would it be possible to create universal reference names for writers to use across multiple pages? Pbergerd (talk) 01:03, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Currently? No. In the further future? Would be hard, but possible ig. Legends speak of a http://wikicite.org/ project under Wikidata. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
You can already do this through Wikidata, the issue is that it makes those sources inscrutable when editing on en.wiki. CMD (talk) 03:13, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
{{Cite Q}}, in addition to inscrutability, will sometimes generate CS1 errors that are not possible to repair on this project. Folly Mox (talk) 16:11, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Pbergerd, if you're reusing the same source enough times, you can also create a {{CS1 wrapper}} for that specific source. Folly Mox (talk) 16:13, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Can’t we repair them on Wikidata? Aaron Liu (talk) 16:55, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Sure, if we understand how to, and if repairing them there for our project doesn't break them for other projects. I've never tracked an error to Wikidata that I was able to repair myself. Sure, I'm pretty incompetent technically, but so are most of us, and Wikidata is inscrutable and seems poorly documented to those of us who interact with it only infrequently. Folly Mox (talk) 16:07, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
Please promote Meta:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Shared Citations wishlist ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:53, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
"Can’t we repair them on Wikidata?"

Yes, but it will break them elsewhere.

For example, in one article, you might use the style (Smith, John (Month Year))

  • Davidson, Lloyd A.; Douglas, Kimberly (December 1998). "Digital Object Identifiers: Promise and problems for scholarly publishing". Journal of Electronic Publishing. 4 (2). doi:10.3998/3336451.0004.203.

and in another (J Smith (Year))

while in Wikidata, the support style is John Smith (Day Month Year)

WikiData can only support one such style. So if you fix Wikidata to match Article A, you break Article B. If you fix Wikidata to match article B, you break article A. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:47, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

As said at Template:Cite Q#Workflow, that seems like an easy fix: Wikidata already has an easy way for dealing with this through the "object named as" property.
Aaron Liu (talk) 00:24, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Which is the most convoluted asinine process that defeats the purpose of "universal references". Use {{cite xxx}}, provide DOIs/ISBNs, let User:Citation bot expand the references, and then review the output for uniformity. You'll see directly in the edit window all the information provided, and can standardize everything in one go. Everyone gets to see things are uniform, and no one has to deal with the abyss that is {{Cite Q}}. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:30, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
How is it convoluted or purpose-defeating? You just add a "object named as" property to Wikidata, bam. It's just one step. If you really wanted to go all fancy, you could query the author names for the part that is the family name. Aaron Liu (talk) 04:13, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
You can use the "object named as" property to cause the reference to appear different ways on different articles? CMD (talk) 05:55, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
The above discussion seems like people are confusing data with presentation. If different articles really are needing different ordering of the name-parts or different formats/precision of dates, ideally the template should handle reformatting the data instead of trying to do it all in the data layer. Anomie⚔ 11:26, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Wikidata items exist for DOI database entries, but not other sources. DOIs are well structured data in comparison to a web link, where either multiple urls point to same data, or the same url points to different data depending on when it's archived, along with all other issues of link rot etc.. Meta:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Shared Citations is a proposal to make a Wikibase just for shared citations.
The presentation (maybe one article wants to list first 5 authors and not more, while another also wants to expand all authors, their presentation format, their publisher cities etc...) but either way the presentation should be customizeable per citation and or page wide, as is done with dates already. {{Use DMY}} will change presentation of dates in references for example while the data stays same regardless of whether it's fully typed out like February 28, 2024 or enclosed as 2024-02-28.
The risk of harm from Citations being edited is akin to widely transcluded templates being vandalized. So any interface should have additional safeguards whether permission levels, or or edit-restrictions depending on number of transclusions. Same for merging data objects. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 13:07, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

we may need to fix wp:or

initial ideas

I think we may need to look at some possible ways to fix WP:OR. Apparently, one editor thinks it means you can't use any news media coverage for articles. i think their point is maybe that you can only use peer-reviewed articles to cover current events, since those are published findings? i think.

this whole thing kind of doesn't make a whole lot of sense, to me. anyway, I am trying to decide what to add to WP:OR. i have a few possible drafts, but i wanted to get this section started now. i hope to work on some possible drafts, and then post them soon. However, please feel free to comment now. Sm8900 (talk) 14:01, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

If the issue is just one editor misunderstanding the existing content then the solution is to explain to them what it actually means. If they cannot or will not understand that then the solution is to take action against that user to prevent their misunderstanding disrupting the encyclopaedia. Only if the misunderstanding is widespread is a rewrite of WP:OR likely to be needed. Thryduulf (talk) 14:09, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Thryduulf, that sounds pretty good. i could use a little heelp, actually. would you be willing to please add some input? you can find the article talk page easily, in my contribs history today. Sm8900 (talk) 14:52, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
If we want a misinterpretation that's so wide-spread it has been written into the policy, how about we get rid of most of Wikipedia:No original research#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources? As far as I've ever seen, the distinction between "primary" and "secondary" is often unclear and seldom actually useful versus the nutshell of WP:OR itself, Articles must not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that reaches or implies a conclusion not clearly stated by the sources themselves. Even much of what's said in the PSTS section is just as true if you only read "source", ignoring the adjectives. Mostly the section seems a vehicle for people to reject a source for being "primary" (i.e. the opposite of the essay Wikipedia:Primary does not mean bad) instead of having a harder discussion about WP:RS and WP:DUE and the other parts of WP:OR. But I doubt this will go anywhere, too many people value exactly that vehicle. Anomie⚔ 15:02, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

section break 1 for comments, re wp:or

@Anomie Agree Sm8900 (talk) 15:39, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Anomie I agree too. I've lost count of the times that I've had to argue that for objective facts primary sources are often the most reliable sources. Thryduulf (talk) 16:06, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
well this is helpful. I definitely suggest we think up some small options for revising WP:OR. Sm8900 (talk) 16:20, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree too. Secondary sources are fine when we have them, but the current wording seems to disfavour primary ones more than they deserve. Gawaon (talk) 16:45, 9 August 2024 (UTC
here is the kind of comment i have to deal with in opposiition to using perfectly good factual data, from perfectly reliable good sources from newspapers: The text that would be added makes no coherent case or argument. It has no clear theme, thesis or point. It does not show an analysis. This would require secondary sources - preferably of good quality. That would then be encyclopedic content. Research is the analysis of primary material. Drawing together the data is the first step in research. The added text alludes to a thesis, which, if stated, would be OR (where the thesis does not exist in sources). But without this, the text lacks the cohesion and substance that would make it encyclopedic. If the thesis is not presented in sources, it probably isn't noteworthy - or perhaps it hasn't been found. Either way, the addition as made isn't supported.
unbelievable!! Sm8900 (talk) 01:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
so this comment is saying that absolutely no data can be gleaned from primary sources such as newspaper accounts, firsthand accounts, etc. really!! this is unbelievable!! is there anything we can do???!!! Sm8900 (talk) 01:59, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
so by this logic, even a published book would not be able to serve as valid source for self-efident objective facts, such as the book plot etc!!! this doesnt seem reasonable!!! Sm8900 (talk) 02:01, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Without more context, that's a discussion that probably needs to happen on the page where it's happening rather than here. "The text that would be added makes no coherent case or argument" is something one cannot judge without knowing the text in question. Gawaon (talk) 06:39, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
@Gawaon, the talk page is at Talk:Iraq War. they are simply refusing to let me use newspaper articls that clearly show that major national leaders expressed opposition to the war years later. the question of whether that topic is needed is not the focus of the comment above; they are literally rejecting any use of newspaper articles, as clearly shown in the comment above. Sm8900 (talk) 11:12, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Instead of "getting rid of" PSTS, I suggested splitting it to its own policy page a while ago (1, 2, 3, probably others). It did not go well. We had really fundamental I-can't-believe-we-are-all-native-English-speakers-here levels of failure in communication. The most frustrating was trying to convince people that if we put the PSTS ==section== on a different page ►with a {{policy}} tag at the top, it would still be a policy. Editors thought that giving PSTS its very own {{policy}} page would be a demotion that would somehow make it stop being a policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:13, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
ok. @WhatamIdoing, that info is truly helpful. i was not aware of any of that. you are truly helping me to gain more knowledge on this. thanks! Sm8900 (talk) 21:17, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Wow, yeah. Looks like you had two people there who had things absolutely backwards, seemingly convinced that whether a source is "primary" or "secondary" is critical to determining whether something is WP:OR or not rather than that WP:OR#PSTS is a (somewhat poor) heuristic for "source that will probably have the kind of analysis we need for a good article". Anomie⚔ 01:42, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
really fundamental I-can't-believe-we-are-all-native-English-speakers-here levels of failure in communication
Many such cases! jp×g🗯️ 04:27, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
I believe that news sources are good for basic facts, but their use should mostly end there. It's not that you should never use news articles as sources, but at a practical level the key is contemporary versus retrospective coverage. Real time contemporary sources definitely shouldn't be used to determine notability, provide analysis, explain effects or significance, etc. They lack the scope and context to make that possible. To avoid bogging down discussions every time this comes up, I wrote my full thoughts at User:Thebiguglyalien/Avoid contemporary sources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 07:31, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien ok, but the problem here is that we have people who are refusing to use newspaper articles at all. Sm8900 (talk) 11:14, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
by this logic, you would never be able to write articles about opinions of major public figures at all. you would not be able to use a newspaper article to glean a public figure's opinions on anything, and you would need to someohow search for some complex thesis article when writing even about the most minor issues. Sm8900 (talk) 11:20, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Well, that's kinda the point? If no one else has ever written about the views of some major public figure on some topic in e.g. a book about the topic or the public figure, and the only place we can find that information is in some contemporary news article, then it's probably not important enough to include in an encyclopaedia article. Folly Mox (talk) 13:28, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
on the contrary, most historical statements get completely missed by secondary soruces. this is wikipedia. the historical coverage here is ten times more broad and more complete than any other reference works that are published. Sm8900 (talk) 23:10, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Your impression of our historical coverage is roughly the reciprocal of my impression, ± a few orders of magnitude. And I'd posit that most historical statements are deliberately unmentioned by secondary sources, not "missed" during the research phase. Folly Mox (talk) 09:29, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
ok, so then wikipedia is the repository for such statements, which most historical works and journal articles would otherwise miss entirely. Sm8900 (talk) 14:36, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Wikipedia is and is WP:NOT. In all these years, has no one ever nudged you in the right direction and told you that you're supposed to be summarizing information from reliable secondary sources, proportional to how it appears in these sources? That you can't string together primary sources to support an argument? The historical works and journal articles have already decided what's significant enough to cover. We don't get to act like we know better than them; that would be original research and it would deviate from a neutral point of view. Surely at some point your work has seen scrutiny through a process like GAN or PR where a problem like this should have been noticed? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
ok sorry, i truly don't understand. so if a natural disaster, or an election, or a major coup, or a major government appointment occured within the last week or so, what sources should be used, other than newspaper articles? could you please clarify?
I think this discussion will go much better if we are simply open to asking questions, or expressing constructive ideas and opinions, and getting useful information. ok, so please feel free to clarify. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 15:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
If a simple fact needs updating like who holds a government office, then yes, a news article is fine to verify that. News articles might also be useful for basic facts, like if one mentions someone's date of birth for example. It's not that primary sources can never be used. It's that they don't dictate content. Like I said under section break 2, WP:PROPORTION lays it out plainly. An event or an opinion simply appearing in the news on its own isn't enough to say it needs to be in an article (let alone have its own article); millions of things appear in the news. But if a subject matter expert includes it in a journal, a book, or any sort of analysis, that's an indication that it might be WP:DUE. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:53, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
ok. thats a valid reply. but then, why do we have articles on elections , coups, natural disasters, new laws, changes in government, etc? if no secondary soruces exist for such event when they are only two or three weeks in the past, then how can such articles exist? Sm8900 (talk) 16:12, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Political stuff like elections and coups get analyzed pretty much right away. There's already extensive analysis of the upcoming U.S. elections, and those are still months away. But in my opinion, people often jump the gun on creating articles about events like disasters or crimes, and they often have to get deleted eventually. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:18, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
ok, so now wait a second friend. the title of this is maybe we need to fix wp:or, remember? so now maybe we are finally coming around to the actual topic here. ok, so you vote in the column for not using newspapers as sources too often. ok, fair enough. now can we discuss the fact that we already do use them, and then maybe consider what would be some logical constraints or ideas, for how to actually do so properly? Sm8900 (talk) 16:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Please remember, both of you, that newspaper articles are secondary sources. Gawaon (talk) 16:43, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Agree!! Thumbs up iconThumbs up iconThumbs up iconThumbs up iconThumbs up icon Sm8900 (talk) 17:05, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I would actually say that they are often secondary. Sometimes they are primary sources, like if you wanted to source an editorial for someone's opinion. Loki (talk) 17:06, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Gawaon This is a common misconception, but it makes a huge difference when it comes to OR and NPOV. When we're considering newly reported content like we are here, they are primary sources. This is the case both in academic historiography and on Wikipedia. Per WP:RSBREAKING: All breaking news stories, without exception, are primary sources, and must be treated with caution. WP:PRIMARYNEWS also gives a little explainer. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:19, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
ok, but "breaking news stories" are totally different from articles pblished in an actual print newspaper. "breaking news" refers to stories that can only exist online, as they would need appear immediately after the event. and also, to quote that page: Just because most newspaper articles are primary sources does not mean that these articles are not reliable and often highly desirable independent sources. Sm8900 (talk) 17:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Breaking news comes out of radio and television: they would "break into" normal programming (e.g., interrupt a soap opera) to make an announcement. The older equivalent is a Newspaper extra (if you have enough to fill a page) or just a last-second article added at press time (or after it, in the case of a stop press order). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
It depends on what they are saying. News reports are not secondary sources for the content they are reporting. Traumnovelle (talk) 08:30, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
@Folly Mox, if the only place we can find that information is in some contemporary news article, then thats why we would use the news article as the source for that, actually. Sm8900 (talk) 21:18, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

section break 2, re wp:or

  • Sm8900, I took a Quick Look at the text you would like to add, and immediately saw why other editors are saying that it violates WP:OR. The text starts with a sweeping statement about the world’s view of the war and then attempts to support that statement by giving examples of politicians sharing that view. The examples are individually (and appropriately) supported by citing news sources, but… what is missing is a source that sums up these examples to reach the initial sweeping statement (a conclusion, even though it is written first).
This is classic original research. We can not take examples A+B+C and state conclusion D … unless we have a source that explicitly states A+B+C=D. This is precisely why WP:PSTS warns that primary sources must be used with caution. It is very easy to misuse them to inappropriately support original research. Blueboar (talk) 12:45, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
ok, i will change it simply to "some notable political leaders." Sm8900 (talk) 13:09, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
That does not resolve the Original research… the problem is that you (a Wikipedia editor) are the one combining these individual statements by various politicians to form a conclusion. What you need is a reliable secondary source that combines the statements by various politicians to reach some form of conclusion.
Weasle wording “some” also introduces DUE WEIGHT issues: why were the statements by these specific politicians chosen? Do they represent the majority view or are they cherry-picked outliers? Are there politicians who have contrary views?
Again… what you need to look for is a secondary source that notes what various politicians have said about the war, puts what they said into context and sums it up. Doing it yourself (even hedged by weasel wording) is where you engage in the original part of NOR. Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Those kinds of secondary sources don't always exist, depending on the topic. And when reporting politicians positions and views, then published news articles seem totally acceptable as sources. Sm8900 (talk) 22:35, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
That's the point. If those secondary sources don't exist, then it should not be in the article. To quote WP:PROPORTION from the NPOV policy: An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially for recent events that may be in the news. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:50, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
That sounds vastly exaggerated and non-proportional. Especially for recent events, it'll take years, if not decades, until they (maybe) get reliable coverage in secondary (later insertion: academic) ssources. Academics don't work so fast. Plus many films, series etc. may well get next to no coverage in secondary sources at all, despite meeting our notability criteria. If there are secondary sources, it's best to chiefly rely on them. If not, primary and tertiary sources may well come to the rescue, and that's a good thing. Gawaon (talk) 06:58, 11 August 2024 (UTC), edited 07:25, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
If there's next to no coverage in secondary sources at all, then it is not notable. Per WP:GNG: "Sources" should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability. There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected. If you think that means Wikipedia would have to ignore most current events, then you're correct. Wikipedia doesn't exist to document news. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 07:08, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Okay, I got confused a little bit. Generally I tend to think of secondary sources as academic sources, and I'd say those are indeed among the best sources we have. But I had somehow mentally classified newspaper coverage and such as tertiary sources. However, it seems they are generally considered secondary too. WP:NOR#Reliable sources even says that "magazines, journals ... published by respected publishing houses" as well as "mainstream newspapers" are among "the most reliable sources". So sure, a topic needs sufficient coverage in secondary sources, newspapers included, to get its own article, per WP:GNG. I absolutely agree on that. But note that the GNG is about whether a topic gets its own article, it's not about the article content at all. See WP:NNC. Here we're mostly talking about content, so the GNG doesn't apply. Gawaon (talk) 07:42, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
But WP:DUE certainly does apply to content. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:01, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Secondary sources don't have to be academic. An analysis published in a newspaper is a secondary source for example and these are not uncommon. Traumnovelle (talk) 08:30, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
@Gawaon Agree Sm8900 (talk) 23:00, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

section break 3, re wp:or

While some changes might be needed, I think I would be against "getting rid of most of Wikipedia:No original research#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources." In editing historical topics, I have found WP:PRIMARY useful. Users have, for example, tried to argue that Nathan Bedford Forrest wasn't actually racist or involved with the KKK, tried to argue that Mehmed II committed rape on the floor of the Hagia Sophia, etc., using primary sources. If accounts like these (memoirs, diaries, travel literature, ancient histories, etc.) aren't reinforced or repeated by scholars, they usually don't belong in there. I am definitely not arguing for a blanket ban on journalistic sources; the user you're telling about was clearly misinterpreting it. I am just saying how it has been useful for me.--MattMauler (talk) 14:24, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
@MattMauler, thats very useful input. your statement here is very useful: I am definitely not arguing for a blanket ban on journalistic sources; the user you're telling about was clearly misinterpreting it. Sm8900 (talk) 23:09, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I would make two points. Firstly many editors seem to think that the distinction between primary and secondary sources is something that was made up by Wikipedians. It was not. It has long been used by historians and rather more recently by scientists. And secondly I get the impression that there is a generational divide here between us oldies, who grew up in the days before Wikipedia (and even the World Wide Web) existed, and remember encyclopedias that existed before Wikipedia supplanted them and that were nothing like newspapers, and the youngsters who seem to think that every web site has to be up-to-the-minute with breaking news. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:01, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Although our definitions of "primary" and "secondary" seem to match that about as well as WP:NOTABILITY matches wikt:notability. Anomie⚔ 20:08, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
without newspaper sources, half of wikipedia articles for events in the last 25 years wouldn't even exist. Sm8900 (talk) 23:03, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Good. Wikipedia isn't a news hosting service for random irrelevant stories that have no historical significance. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:42, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
thats ridiculous. countless articles use newspapers as sources and it is totally vital that they do so. Sm8900 (talk) 03:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Question re secondary sources

I'm finding it completely baffling to understand the objection to secondary sources. where is the secondary, non-journalistic source to tell you who is the Secretary of Agriculture? who is the governor of Maine? who is the director of budget for the city of Norfolk, Virginia? what is the current status of the Iraqi government? what is the current nature of the Q train in Brooklyn, New York? what are current plans for the BQE expressway in New York?

could someone please explain? --Sm8900 (talk) 03:34, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

furthermore, if an article is decribing any recent current event, then what source would they use other than news articles? there are dozens of examples, obviously. for example, if the article is covering the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, or the 2024 US presidential election, or the accession of King Charles of the UK, what sources would exist at all, other than news articles? I'm truly baffled by this. Sm8900 (talk) 03:37, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
we already have an article on the recent tragic plane crash in brazil. i don't want to detail it too much in this venue, out of respect for the human tragedy here. however, there would not be any source to use for details on this, other than newspapers. Sm8900 (talk) 04:52, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
The relevant guideline is WP:PRIMARY. Generally speaking a primary source trumps a secondary when it is authoritative. In other words, the Secretary of Agriculture is whoever the Department of Agriculture says it is. When it comes to news sources, they can be primary sources and sometimes not. For current events, news sources may be the only sources available. However... primary sources must always be used with great care. It is fine to use them for facts, but you cannot draw conclusions from them. (WP:No original research) For this, secondary sources are required. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:13, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
@Hawkeye7, I Agree!! please note, my key point of agreement is with this statement of yours. please note, I'm saying this with sincere assent, as your statement on this seems fully valid to me!! For current events, news sources may be the only sources available. ....primary sources must always be used with great care. It is fine to use them for facts... [etc] Sm8900 (talk) 15:51, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Last night I was reading Death in Yellowstone and the author talked about the dilemma of using newspapers: Newspapers, as every historian knows, must be used with care, most often as a supplement to more reliable sources. Unfortunately, with all of their potential inaccuracies, caused by deadlines, distance, and other factors, newspapers are sometimes our only sources for fleeting bits of history, pieces that get too easily lost in the forward march of time, and pieces of strictly local history that get published nowhere else. It caught my attention because of this ongoing discussion. Schazjmd (talk) 13:16, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
@Schazjmd, excellent insights indeed! Agree fully!! with two Thumbs up icon Thumbs up icon ! thank you for that, so much!! Sm8900 (talk) 15:48, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

can we make a rule against excluding newspapers as sources??!!

there seems to be some contradictory rhetoric going on, above on this page. we Wikipedia has articles such as 2024_United_Kingdom_riots#10_August, yet we have people in the section above stating outright that newspapers should not be used as sources. can we simply make it clear there is no basis for excluding newspapers as sources? this simply seems ridiculous. --Sm8900 (talk) 20:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Newspapers need to satisfy WP:RS requirements and be weighted accordingly with the claim made. There is extensive and nuanced discussion in WP:RSN to resolve disputes over reliability of said newspapers. Happy verifying! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 20:29, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
further example(s) below, of articles requiring newspapers as sources. this whole issue seems self-evident to me.
@Shushugah, thats a helpful item to note, thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 20:33, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we can make blanket rules. See WP:MEDPOP for an example of when we shouldn't be using newspapers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I think we can make a blanket rule that no source should be excluded based solely on what type of source it is. Sometimes using a newspaper is appropriate, sometimes using a newspaper is in appropriate - but in neither case is that because it's a newspaper it's because of the combination of the context of the Wikipedia article and the context of the specific source article. Indeed WP:MEDPOP explicitly says the quality of press coverage of medicine ranges from excellent to irresponsible. An excellent newspaper article about a treatment that explains it in appropriate context without oversimplification etc might be the best available for the topic, conversely articles in peer review journals get retracted and those should not be used (other than for WP:ABOUTSELF and similar purposes).
One I've seen a few times is editors rejecting a youtube video as a source because it's a youtube video. Some youtube videos are top quality reliable sources, some are active disinformation. Thryduulf (talk) 00:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
yes, I agree with @Thryduulf on their comments on this, as stated above.
  • I think we can make a blanket rule that no source should be excluded based solely on what type of source it is.
  • One [problem] I've seen a few times is editors rejecting a youtube video as a source because it's a youtube video. Some youtube videos are top quality reliable sources, some are active disinformation.
Sm8900 (talk) 14:49, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree that we can not (and should not) “ban” citing news media… however, I do think that we often cite news sources inappropriately. There is a more nuanced discussion that needs to take place: When is it appropriate to cite news media, and (perhaps more importantly) when is it inappropriate to do so? Blueboar (talk) 15:07, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
@Blueboar, awesome insight and idea. i'm hoping discussion can proceed, and address the possible refinement that you have helpfully added and expressed above. thanks!!! Sm8900 (talk) 15:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we really need any more rules about newspaper sources. We already have WP:PRIMARYNEWS, which qualifies when newspapers should be treated as primary sources, and WP:MEDRS, which state that newspapers aren't usually appropriate for medical topics. It really depends on the context and the reliability of each specific source though. Even generally high quality sources like the NYT may not be reliable for high-level scientific discussion, whereas a local newspapers that gets all the facts right can sometimes be used as a source for a complex topic. Epicgenius (talk) 23:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
this is a helpful reply by @Epicgenius. and in general this whole discussion has been very informative. i think this discussion has brought up a lot of points that were helpful, and which helped me increase my knowledge. i will give this some thought, and review the policies again with the points above in mind. I will comment if I think of any actual changes that I would like to propose. Sm8900 (talk) 02:41, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

OR is working well and as intended, actually

This discussion wasn't making much sense to me until I read Talk:Iraq War#suggest we need a section on "political impact", and then everything fell into place. Sm8900 is trying to add a section on the war's political impact which synthesises quotes he's selected from various American politicians into sweeping statements like By 2016, the public consensus in both major parties of the United States was that the Iraq War was based on invalid reasons, did not accomplish anything positive, and was highly detrimental. Other editors are correctly pushing back on this because this is a conclusion he has drawn himself rather than a conclusion drawn from a source. This is good. There is no problem here. – Teratix ₵ 06:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

it is not good, and your dismissal of this topic shows your approach.
and there is absolutely nothing wrong with adding a section to describe politicians' opinions on any particular policy issue, using newspaper accounts and articles as sources. it is entirely possible that my own draft on that specific topic needs to be changed or improved, or perhaps discarded if it does not have consensus. that does not change the larger issue here.
your obvious goal is to cause some degree of personal upset here. by the way, @Teratix, all that's needed for WP:Civil to be needed here, is for one of us to state that the other one is acting discourteously. that is it. I will be glad to show you basic courtesy, and ask only the same thing in return. Sm8900 (talk) 14:41, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
re the public consensus on the Iraq War, when Jeb Bush did not express strong opposition to the Iraq War during the 2016 campaign, he was widely criticized, both by major candidates and also by major media outlets, so in the end he did need to reverse his approach.
and newspaper articles which provide broad overviews of a major societal consensus or reaction, are indeed valid sources in this regard. maybe we need to open a section to address the larger issues here? oh wait, thats right, that's precisely what this section is. Sm8900 (talk) 14:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
in short, your objections above may indeed be valid re my own proposed text for that specific article. with that said, the topics of this discussion here at village pump are entirely different. editors here are entirely free to agree or disagree with my ideas here on the topic of WP:OR, as they see fit.
however i think it is obvious that any editor would find it somewhat demeaning to see their own ideas on one article brought into the discussion as an absolutely non-relevant tangent, in a page section which relates to other issues entirely. i am trying to indeed grant the validity of anyone's views who may wish to disagree with my approach for the proposal at that specific article as you cite above. Sm8900 (talk) 14:59, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
any editor would find it somewhat demeaning to see their own ideas on one article brought into the discussion as an absolutely non-relevant tangent. By your own account, the pushback you received from other editors regarding your proposed addition on Talk:Iraq War was the impetus for starting this discussion in the first place. You, yourself, have quoted and mentioned the discussion in the above sections. Why would you do that if you didn't think it to be relevant?
there is absolutely nothing wrong with adding a section to describe politicians' opinions on any particular policy issue, using newspaper accounts and articles as sources There is a problem when you draw conclusions that the sources do not reach themselves, when the section gives certain perspectives undue weight or when there are higher-quality sources available that could be used instead. These problems were why your proposed Iraq War section was rejected.
that does not change the larger issue here. The point is, despite what you think, there is no larger issue here. Editors applied the policy exactly how they are supposed to, they got the right result, Wikipedia is better off than it would have been. Changing the policy would make things worse.
I'm not out to upset you. I just think your ideas about how Wikipedia works, and how it ought to work, are badly, badly wrong. It's not personal. – Teratix ₵ 15:55, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
  • You, yourself, have quoted and mentioned the discussion in the above sections. Why would you do that if you didn't think it to be relevant? correct, i mentioned the specific views on the question of what sources can be used, since thats the topic of this section here at village pump. i did not belittle any of the replies that disagreed with me on the specific proposal for that specific article.
  • There is a problem when you draw conclusions that the sources do not reach themselves, when the section gives certain perspectives undue weight .. these problems were why your proposed Iraq War section was rejected. i'm completely ok that there may be flaws or problems with my proposed text for that article, and that the community may choose to disagree or indeed reject the proposed text for that article, if it chooses.
  • The point is, despite what you think, there is no larger issue here. Editors applied the policy exactly how they are supposed to, they got the right result, with respect, pelase read the mutilple replies i have received above, that agree with my views on the larger issue here. thats the whole point of opening this question for wider discussion here, where the community can comment.
  • I'm not out to upset you..... It's not personal. ok, noted. I'm fully willing to accept your reply on that, as helpful, and as constructive, and as responsive to my concerns. i do appreciate your reply, on that note. thanks.
Sm8900 (talk) 16:06, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Sm8900… WP:NOR is less about which sources we use than it is about how we use them. Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Our job is to summarize what others have said, and not to say original things. When we give examples to support a conclusion, we need to show that at least one reliable source reaches the same conclusion using those same examples. Otherwise, we are stating something original. Teratix is correct in saying that the policy is working as intended. Blueboar (talk) 16:47, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
it is not working, because lots and lots of people are indeed using newspapers as sources. or sometimes not at all! Sm8900 (talk) 17:04, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Like was pointed out above, newspapers usually are secondary sources. The issue here is that you're using them to cite something they don't technically say.
My suggestion is to just be very precise in your phrasing. To draw a sweeping conclusion you need a direct source for that, but you can definitely source "Many prominent politicians regarded the war as ..., such as X, Y, and Z" with sources quoting X, Y, and Z. Loki (talk) 17:11, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I think news articles are usually primary sources. Most news articles, if you actually pick up a paper copy and count them up, are very short and say little more than "An event has been planned" or "Someone got arrested for drunk driving" or "A routine government meeting happened". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
What's more important here is to say that newspapers are usually reliable sources – they're just not appropriate for picking random quotes out of (or cherry-picking quotes that support a preferred POV). As WP:RS says, " Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article and is an appropriate source for that content." An appropriate source for the views of various countries or groups for a war that started more than 20 years ago is going to be a book or a scholarly work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
A book or scholarly work is usually going to be more appropriate. That's very different to a different type of source always being inappropriate. It depends on the specific claim that the source is being used to support. Thryduulf (talk) 21:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Again… The NOR policy is not about whether we can use newspapers (or any other type of source), but about how we use them. A source can be used appropriately in one context, but be used inappropriately (in a way that violates this policy) in a different context. Blueboar (talk) 17:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
if you mean my proposal for that specific article is flawed and needs some work, point taken, and no argument there. thanks! Sm8900 (talk) 17:07, 13 August 2024 UTC)
  • Thank you, User:Teratix, for the clarification. Having read the Talk:Iraq War discussion I couldn't understand the reactions of the other participants in this Village Pump discussion. Even after Sm8900 basically told on themselves. Schierbecker (talk) 20:17, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

possible new subsection for ideas, options, conclusions

A long discussion like this one might benefit from a new subsection, for ideas or conclusions from those who agree on the need to refine our approach to wp:OR in order to allow greater openness to usage of reliable newspaper articles as sources. Also, if they wish, the commenter could indicate their position separately on whether wp:OR needs actual revisions or not. By the way, I am glad to also note and mull over the comments above against my ideas as well. however my main thought here is to compile ideas and options for any positive changes desired. any such proposed ideas would still be fully open for discussion.

Obviously i have no basis for making rules on any comments here, no matter what the topic may be. It's just a thought on how the subsection might be set up. I may set up this new subsection, once some time has elapsed for further comments in the existing discussions above.thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 13:55, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

ok, I am going to conclude my own comments on this pretty soon. anyone is welcome to add views if they wish.
just a small note, in the future, i may review some of the highly informative views above,and formulate some proposal for changing WP:OR, and post it here for comment in a new post, at a later date. I do appreciate all the views above. i have learned a lot, and i hope to use the resources cited above, to add to my knowledge about this. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 14:02, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Offering to link.

Is it possible to have links offered when any page is created in mainspace (or moved from say draftspace). So if Grand Poobah Association is created, as part of the creation in mainspace, it brings up a list of article (and clips of the article) containing the phrase "Grand Poobah Association" unlinked. Basically, I am trying to somehow staple https://edwardbetts.com/find_link/ to the end of the creation/move to mainspace process. Absolutely fine if this is optional.Naraht (talk) 18:55, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

This sounds like a useful tool/gadget that editors could install if they want. Posting at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests is most likely to attract the attention of people who can make it happen. Thryduulf (talk) 21:29, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Save Changes

If someone's computer crashes or for some another reason they close the tab, their changes while editing will be lost. I think we can have a 'save changes' button so that the changes can be saved without finishing the edit halfway. Please provide your inputs. Anonymous1261 (talk) 14:36, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

In your Preferences > Editing, select Enable the Edit Recovery feature. Schazjmd (talk) 14:42, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! Anonymous1261 (talk) 14:45, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
You're welcome. Schazjmd (talk) 14:46, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
This happens automatically in the visual editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:23, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Bit numbering in field descriptions

IBM 7094 registers
Data registers
S Q P 1 2 3 ... 17 18 20 21 ... 35 (bit position)
Accumulator AC
S   Multiplier/Quotient MQ
0 1 2 3 ... 17 18 20 21 ... 35 (bit position)
  Sense Indicators SI
Index registers
3 ... 17 (bit position)
  Index Register 1   XR1
  Index Register 2   XR2
  Index Register 3   XR1
  Index Register 4   XR4
  Index Register 5   XR5
  Index Register 6   XR6
  Index Register 7   XR7
Instruction counter
3 ... 17 (bit position)
  Instruction Counter   IC

Articles on computers and software frequently display fields labeled by bit number in, e.g. instructions, registers. Tables are a convenient means to do this, but involve a good deal of manual editing to consistently align field descriptions with bit labels. It would be helpful to have tools that automated the creation of such tables.

As an example, the IBM 7094 registers table might be generated from the templates 

{{dbitdef|S|Q|P|AKA|0|1-35}}
{{dword|S|Q|P|1-35|content=Accumulator|label=AC}}
{{dword|S|1-35|content=Multiplier/Quotient|label=MQ}}
{{dbitscale|0-35}}
{{dword|S|1-35|content=Sense Indicators|label=SI}}
{{dlabel|Index registers}}
{{dbitscale}|3-17}}
{{dword|3-17|content=Index Register 1|label=XR1}}
...
{{dword|3-17|content=Index Register 7|label=XR7}}
{{dlabel|Instruction counter}}
{{dbitscale}|3-17}}
{{dword|3-17|content=Instruction counter|label=IC}}

Examples such as the PSW layout in Program status word § S/360 would require additional templates.

An alternate or supplementary approach would be for VisualEditor (VE) to provide tools for building such layouts. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:54, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

When you look inside these templates, is this ultimately just a fancy way of formatting a wikitext table? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:39, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Pardon my pragmatism, but it doesn't seem viable unless you can do it yourself. Even with community consensus, you're not likely to find a template-qualified editor willing to spend the necessary time without a personal interest in the product. Many far smaller proposals have failed for that reason.
If such an editor exists, they can Just Do It™ as normal bold editing; prior community consensus is not required.
Re "personal interest in the product", it doesn't get much more arcane. I say this as a retired system software developer very familiar with the S/370 PSW and its descendants. Sadly, I'm not template-qualified. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:55, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Easier-to-read Article Font when Editing

When editing a page in Wikipedia it can be difficult to read the actual article because of the code, i.e. brackets, urls, citations, references etc. My suggestion is for all code to be in either a different font colour, theme (e.g. Times Roman) or style (e.g. bold), with the published words, numbers etc., clearly legible and distinct from the code, such that what the reader will see on the published page will be seen on the editing page. Protestnt (talk) 08:34, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

@Protestnt you can enable syntax highlighting. See also: WP:SYNTAX —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:50, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't use it myself (I'm old-fashioned and small-c conservative in that way) but I am told that the visual editor provides a more WYSIWYG interface. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
VisualEditor's primary design characteristic is not displaying wikicode, so it's not an ideal solution for this user story. As mentioned, the Syntax highlighter gadget at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets under "Editing" is probably a good start, or the 2017 wikitext editor. Those will handle the colour changes (well, not in Minerva, but it looks like Protestnt edits in desktop view). Font family changes could likely be handled with custom CSS.
I feel like User:Alexis Jazz/Factotum might have rich enough and configurable enough syntax highlighting to be a one-stop option here, but I only used it for a brief time around a year ago (too much javascript for my phone) and I can't remember all the options in that package. Courtesy ping Alexis Jazz. Folly Mox (talk) 16:32, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
I think it might be a great answer to this User story. If the problem is "it can be difficult to read the actual article because of the code, i.e. brackets, urls, citations, references etc.", then "get that visual clutter out of sight" is a great solution. A lot of FAs get copyedited in the visual editor precisely because it's easier to "read the actual article" without brackets and templates in the way.
@Protestnt, click this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Australian_Football_League&veaction=edit and see if you like this style better. A lot of experienced editors use both editing environments, depending on the kind of change we want to make. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:12, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Merging mass-created village stubs into district articles

Initial ideas, village stubs

There are a lot of mostly formulaic (though that's not necessarily bad) stubs of villages with 60-100 people that will probably never be significantly expanded, at least beyond one or two events happening there. I know that under the the guideline on geographical features all inhabited places are considered to be notable, but what if very small villages were by default merged into district articles? I'm thinking of a section "Villages" or something similar with a subheading for each village and a few sentences with the population/location (what's already in the leads). Villages that had enough coverage to need their own article would be split; it could be done based on the categories "Rural localities in X district" that already exist.

For example, Basovo and Timonovo in Valuysky District, Russia. The second has 1 event happening there, and the 1st none listed; both are very small towns with a couple hundred people. It's possible Timonovo could be expanded with a description of the event, but that would be rather WP:1E-style and deserve its own article.

I'm posting this here because I don't know the history & policy details sufficiently to put it into proposals (or the 300-vote discussions), but I wanted to see what people thought and if this had been proposed before. Mrfoogles (talk) 04:00, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

It depends on what the guidelines are agreed to. I'd say if a location only cites census tables and maps (gonna use Hashemabad, Kerman as an example), they should be merged with the above-class subdivision. All these location articles only have maps and census tables, could possibly violate geographic feature Notability. Roasted (talk) 04:22, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
I would support this. BilledMammal (talk) 04:40, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
I would cautiously support this as long as it was done carefully so no information was lost, was explicitly without prejudice to later expansion and excluded places with significantly more extensive articles on another language wiki. Of the three places here, only Timonovo has more information elsewhere (ru:Тимоново (Белгородская область)) but that is borderline. My ballpark suggestion would be that any article with circa two paragraphs of prose of non-census information excluding a description of it's geographical location on any language edition of Wikipedia should not be merged in without an individual discussion. I'd also say that before any merge takes place there needs to be a list of all the merges proposed laid out in a fashion easy for humans to check (separate lists or separate sections for each destination article would probably work well). Thryduulf (talk) 10:25, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Section break 1, village stubs

I support the concept… Wikipedia should continue to cover all noteworthy geo locations, but we can be more flexible in how we cover them. Not all locations require a stand alone article to be included. Blueboar (talk) 11:49, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
The ru.wiki versions of the villages are not much longer unfortunately, and the length of the longer one comes from quite generic information that would likely apply to the district. Your method of merging to the district article sounds like one in which no information would be lost, although I would leave room for a bit more than what is currently in the leads. CMD (talk) 12:00, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
I doubt anyone will stop you but I think it's a waste of time. For some reason some editors have strong feelings about the existence of stubs vs. redirects to entries in lists but, from the reader's perspective, they're pretty much the same. I can't tell anyone how to use their time but if all the collective hours we've wasted on merging or talking about merging stubs were instead put into expanding them, the encyclopaedia would certainly be better off. – Joe (talk) 07:13, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
As a reader, they are not the same. Hunting through various pages to try to glean info takes up time. The reader of ru:Валуйский район will not see the climate information in ru:Басово (Белгородская область). A mobile reader does not even have a way to get from Valuysky District to the information in Timonovo. CMD (talk) 15:26, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we should be making content decisions based on known bugs in the mobile theme. – Joe (talk) 05:47, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
There's the rest of what I wrote, and if your counter-proposal is to treat the nav boxes as great article content then I don't think that's very helpful to the reader either. CMD (talk) 12:31, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I might come to the same conclusion ("As a reader, they are not the same") but in the opposite direction: Hunting through a merged-up page to try to glean which info is relevant and which is about other villages takes up time. With a stub like Timonovo (five sentences, 75 words, five sources, plus the infobox), you know that all the information is what you're looking for, and you know that's all there is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:19, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
List articles don't have to be tabular data with no prose, nor do they have to be internally consistent as to whether or not the list items they contain are bluelinks or not. The GA Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway is basically a list article that contextualises borderline notable information beautifully.
I should disclose that I'm strongly in favour of contextualising stubs into their container topics wherever possible. Folly Mox (talk) 16:18, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Somehow I doubt the result it this will be a load of GA-level lists. It'll be the existing stubs, pasted in one after the other. – Joe (talk) 05:49, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree that the implementation of contextualisation is likely to resemble pure concatenation, and would prefer that outcome to the status quo. JMO. Folly Mox (talk) 15:59, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I was more thinking of a policy allowing people to merge such things if they felt like it: because there are so many village articles it's never worth it for any one person to start a discussion about merging the villages of one district, because who cares about this one random district in particular. And no one has the hours and hours you refer to to just go do it for all of them. With a pre-consensus it could ideally happen piece by piece? If there was a policy on this I might merge the villages of that district just because I ran across them, but I wasn't planning to spend 900 hrs on trying to do all of them.
As for expanding them: 60 people live in most of these village, and it's unlikely someone's written a book about most of them. Not going to say it's not a little bit of a waste of time, but having a list of villages in a district in its article seems useful: it was helpful to me finding some village list in district articles on the German Wikipedia I think when I was trying to figure something out. I think name+whatever small details exist could be somewhat helpful, if not the most important task. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:54, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
We already have such a policy. – Joe (talk) 05:51, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
Be bold, but also be WP:CAREFUL. When you know the community's practice is to split the subject into small stubs, then boldly merging the articles up without discussion might result in WP:DRAMA. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

section break 2, village stubs

@BilledMammal put together a sample of 10,000 articles so we could try to find out some basic information about what the community's actual practices are – the revealed preference, if you would like to use that language, rather than the aspirational goals. So far, we're finding facts like these:
  • 90% of articles have between 2 and 95 sentences, heavily skewed towards shorter articles. The most common number of sentences in an article is two. Half of articles have 13 or fewer sentences. A quarter of them have 5 or fewer.
  • If you define a stub as having ≤10 sentences, then 43% of Wikipedia's articles are stubs. If you define is as ≤250 words, then 41% of articles are stubs.
  • Half of all articles have 4 or fewer (detectable) inline citations. A quarter have 2 or fewer. Only 21% have more than 10. Having more than 20 (about 10% of them) is a statistical outlier.
  • Compared to longer articles, stubs tend to have about twice as many citations per sentence.
The reason I bring this up is because when we compare articles against our ideals, it's very easy to think "What garbage. It 'only' has five sentences. It 'only' has five sources. It 'only' has 75 words." We ought to be thinking "Huh, that has more sentences than 25% of our articles. It has more refs than 60% of our articles. It has more words than 16% of our articles. Maybe it's not too different from normal, actually." WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:40, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I recently ran a new scan, of 100,000 pages, where the talk page categories are also provided. I’m not sure how to upload it yet - it’s a far larger dataset than all the others I’ve uploaded put together - but it should be helpful as it will allow us to determine which topic areas have abnormal articles.
We’ve already identified species as one of those areas; I think we’ll find that places is another. BilledMammal (talk) 23:37, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Maybe consider uploading that as c:Commons:File types#Tabular data? ORES can automate identification of the main subject area.
I suspect that the size of places will vary by location. Most US census places have longer than median articles (e.g., Mulberry, Kansas has 25 refs and almost 1,000 words) but were largely written by bot/script.
Getting the numbers for FAs and GAs would also be interesting to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:49, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I totally support the idea to reduce village stubs. here is one possible way to do so; make articles consistently named "villages in ___ County", or "Villages in ___ Oblast," or "Villages in ____ Arrodinsement," and so on, and make these into list articles.
doing so is more efficient, and actually will enable more people to view this information, not less. Sm8900 (talk) 14:07, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
I think that the fact that these articles are close to the status quo doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't be improved by merging them, though. The point is that they have very low potential (only have 50-200 people or so), which is not true of all stubs. Mrfoogles (talk) 17:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Some time back (we're talking at least 15 years), I wanted to have an article on every inhabited place in Ethiopia. This aspiration was foiled by the fact that information on even sizable towns in that country can be hard to get ahold of -- at least at that time. In many cases all the information I had about the village was the population statistics. Moreover, at the time I was not interested in adding to the large number of stubs on Wikipedia; this is why you'll find a lot of red links in those articles.
I considered addressing this problem exactly as proposed above: create a section in the article that provided the stats on those towns/villages. However by that point I was tired of working on Ethiopian topics & decided to move on. -- llywrch (talk) 18:18, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Proposed temporary solution to the "remember me" function bug

Here is the thread on the bug -> Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#"Remember me" not working as intended for me Basically, "remember me" would forget about you sometimes, for whatever reason. Now, I have no idea how wikipedia works under the hood, so this idea may be absurd or even stupid. I would like to suggest that a check is done every time an IP edits wikipedia to see if it is associated with an account, and a banner be displayed if the check returns a positive result, promoting to user to log back in before publishing their edit. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 02:57, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

A warning is displayed every time you edit with IP address about editing under an IP address. I would say that's already a warning enough if one has been editing while logging in. – robertsky (talk) 01:55, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
@Mint Keyphase, Wikipedia runs MediaWiki software under the hood, and if you are interested in that, please go to mw:How to contribute on our sister site (same username/password; it'll usually log you in automagically).
Robertsky is correct that we already post a warning for every IP. It's in a yellow box at the top of the page and says:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to a username, among other benefits.
Additionally, there are privacy problems around doing things with detecting logged-out editors. Here be dragons, or at least lawyers. This might be solvable, but it's not likely to be quick.
The practical problem is bigger. Imagine what would happen if we did this, and you were using a shared internet connection, e.g., at school. Everyone in the school building would get 'warned' because one person logged out. This is probably not solvable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:59, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Rename and/or Combine Content Assessment classes

Currently Content Assessment is named arbitrarily at Featured, A, Good, B, C, Start, Stub. Looking for ideas as to what A, B, and C classes should be renamed? And if B and C classes were combined into one, what would that be named?

Following on from some ideas slightly touched on here. DimensionalFusion (talk) 21:41, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I would merge B, C and Start together and call them all "start". Anything checking criteria of article like DYK would not solely rely on WikiProject content assessment anyways. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:51, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Interesting! DimensionalFusion (talk) 22:13, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I’d definitely be opposed to lumping B and Start into the same bucket, the resulting rating would cover a really wide range in quality. There is a difference between “often not used and superfluous in many cases” and “totally unnecessary”. ― novov (t c) 01:57, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
The names aren't really arbitrary. They're basically American letter grades, plus two existing review processes (FA and GA), the separate {{stub}} system, and a squeamishness about rating anything with a "bad grade". C is a relatively recent innovation; back in the day, it was realistically Stub–Start–B, and anything else required extra effort. In 2008, editors basically decided to divide the Start class into two groups (C and Start).
As a first approximation, we started with:
  • Stub: Less than ~10 sentences.
  • Start: More than 10 sentences but not yet B-class.
  • B class: Meets all six specified criteria.
and we decided to have:
  • Stub: Less than ~10 sentences.
  • Start: More than 10 sentences but still kind of short and not B-class.
  • C-class: Kind of long but not quite B-class.
  • B class: Meets all six specified criteria.
Your question is basically "Shall we reverse the decision that split Start class into two groups?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:09, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
It's bigger than that. It's "if we were to reinvent the wheel, and repaint the bike shed, what would it look like and what colour should it be?" The answer to that is "it'd still be a wheel and the shed is fine as is". The criteria are well-established and clear, and short of a clear actionable problem supported by the whole community, they should remain as they are. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:53, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Merging classes was only part 2 of the question. I was asking about whether A, B, and C classes should be renamed DimensionalFusion (talk) 09:21, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
  • I would consider using something other than the A-B-C convention. I noticed that an inordinate number of editors were adding A class to India articles. Apparently people think it's like self-grading a homework assignment. I think A-class should either become a universal process like GAR or FAR, or go away entirely. That I know about, only WP:MILHIST, WP:USROADS and WP:HIGHWAYS have a process to review A-class articles. WP:WikiProject Biography and Wikiproject Cyclones had a process, but the latter turned out articles that in no way represented the best of Wikipedia. Schierbecker (talk) 02:40, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
    Yeah I agree. Given how few WikiProjects actually have a process for reviewing A-Class articles and how difficult it would be to create them given how many of them are small and/or semi-inactive. Standardising it to a universal process or eliminating it would probably be better. Although there is always the idea that "it's there if people need it" DimensionalFusion (talk) 09:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
    What's A class? Why does it even exist? I always thought there's B class, better than that is Good Article, and the very best is Featured Article. A class seems to have no good place in this scheme of things. Gawaon (talk) 11:23, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
    A class exists because there is a broad gap between GA (B class with a review by a single editor - a low grade) and FA (A class with a comprehensive review by at least three editors - a high grade). B class is the minimum acceptable standard, which is why it would be destructive to merge with lower classes. Starts and stubs are unacceptable quality. FA is not generally available. Our very best is A class (comprehensive review by at least three editors from the project). Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:16, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
    A class (comprehensive review by at least three editors from the project) isn't necessarily correct. The majority of WikiProjects don't have any specific assessment criteria for A-Class articles, and WP:Content assessment just lists some generic criteria. In contrast, GA gives much more solid criteria.
    It may be because GA is a site-wide standard but A-Class criteria is handled by WikiProjects, though this is a bit confusing given the majority of articles have multiple WikiProjects. Am I missing something here? DimensionalFusion (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
    The majority of WikiProjects don't use A-class at all, so of course they haven't wasted their time setting up a process and criteria for using it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:19, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
    Under the rubric suggested by Wikipedia:Content assessment/A-Class criteria, A-class reviews closed as successful by WikiProjects without a formal A-class review system should be supported by two uninvolved editors, with no significant opposes. The number of articles that were made A class using the informal process is basically zero. For a while WP:Cyclones was promoting subpar articles based on discussions held on IRC, but they were the rare exception. Schierbecker (talk) 21:38, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
    If most WikiProjects have no formal A-class review and almost no A-class reviews are carried out using the criteria at Wikipedia:Content assessment/A-Class criteria, how are most articles supposed to get A-Class DimensionalFusion (talk) 16:05, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
    They aren't expected to be rated as A-class. Most groups would rather have them rated as either GA or FA instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:36, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
    Other than a topicon, why? DimensionalFusion (talk) 11:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
    Because as someone not involved with MILHIST, I am not familiar with A-review. I cannot name a single other WikiProject off top of my head that does A-reviews though they exist. On other hand, most editors understand what GA standard is, which isn't custom to any Wiki projects. If there was a proposal to introduce A-class as a universal standard, I would reconsider my position, but as it stands, it adds more confusion than anything else to rest of the project. This is why project banner shell has been simplified to rate class of an article on behalf of all WikiProjects. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:42, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
    The problem here is that making A-Class a universal review like FA or GA is that GA already has a big backlog, but as A-Class is above GA it would make reviews take longer due to the higher quality requirements. Potentially leading to an even longer backlog.
    But what is your position on A-Class because I’m not entirely sure what your suggestion is DimensionalFusion (talk) 15:27, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
    A-class is not above GA. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:01, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
    @Aaron Liu According to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment#Quality scale A class is between GA and FA. Thryduulf (talk) 12:06, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
    @DimensionalFusion, do you mean why do WikiProjects generally prefer FA and GA? It's because they don't want to bother with A-class. Think about it: Either you can do a whole bunch of extra optional work for very little value, or you can just... not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
    That doesn’t really make sense./Why/ does A-Class offer seemingly little value compared to GA and FA DimensionalFusion (talk) 01:56, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
  • We could rename start to D class, and stub to E class to make the system more consistent. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
    Although stub is listed in WP:Content assessment I'm told it's technically a seperate thing(?)
    and D and E classes apparently suggest an article is "failing" DimensionalFusion (talk) 10:35, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
    I agree; that would go against the spirit of WP:BITE. If my first articles were rated as "D or E"(even if it was deserved) it'd have demotivated me. Ca talk to me! 06:24, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
    Their current names seem fine enough. Gawaon (talk) 11:22, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
There definitely isn't a pressing problem here, but I do agree that we're being overly precise with content assessments, both in terms of the capacity of WikiProjects to review and re-review them (way, way down from 2008) and what they're actually used for (does the difference between C and start and B actually change anything, anywhere?) That the current situation works okay shouldn't stop us trying to refine it.
I like the simplicity of Stub > Start > GA > FA. A stub is a potential article, that might still end up being merged or redirected. GA and FA are well-defined standards with dedicated review processes. The GA criteria in particular are way lower than most people think: we could aim for most articles being GAs one day, and a lot of things that are being rated B or A are already there. I don't see the point in differentiating the mass in the middle---articles that have established themselves but that nobody has really whipped into shape---perhaps just call them something like "satisfactory" or "average" instead of "start" (which implies some deficiency). – Joe (talk) 07:29, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
I see a big difference between articles like for example Mode conversion (start) and Atom (B). Start class articles are short articles that probably cover the basics but there is a lot more they could say and improvements to writing style, referencing, etc are almost certainly possible. B class articles are (mostly) comprehensive and generally well written but haven't been through any formal processes. Whether there is a need to differentiate B and C is the only question in my mind, but retaining the distinction between them and start is useful.
When looking for examples though I did find MXenes which is tagged as start class but is clearly higher quality than that, especially if someone who understands the subject expands the lead. Thryduulf (talk) 10:28, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
There is absolutely a difference between Start articles and B-rated articles in the abstract, but the goal remains the same with either article; keep improving them. And at the same time, there are a ton of improperly classified articles, because editors are either too stringent or self conscious and either way, the energy should be focused on improving them. Heck, editors are reluctant to downgrade a B article to a Start article and prefer to fix issues (which is probably the right spirit), but makes the ratings exaggerated in their helpfulness across our 6 million articles here. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:36, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
The goal remains the same but the implied method is different. A Start article implies great adding work is needed, a B-class article implies curating and refinement is needed. This difference is why you don't really go from a B to a Start, as it's rare that much content leaves articles. CMD (talk) 04:19, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
> does the difference between C and start and B actually change anything, anywhere?
Yes. It changes the likelihood of the article being selected for an offline release by the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:20, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Note that this project was recently marked as historical. ― novov (t c) 08:56, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the note. I've pinged the person who was coordinating it to the 1.0 talk page to see whether they're actually inactive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Angela (enslaved woman)

On June 4, 2024, I moved the article Angela (enslaved woman) to Angela (slave), for homogenization. It was reverted by @CaroleHenson on July 3, in which they cite Slavery#Terminology. I attempted to reach them 6 days ago (as of August 30), but they are currently inactive.

The following is from User talk:CaroleHenson#Angela (slave):

The terminology section itself describes the naming as "dispute". I thought the (slave) disambiguator would be a better choice due to WP:NOTCENSORED, similarly to changing "passed away" to "died".

Second, only Angela's page was moved. I can easily find other pages still using the (slave) disambiguator, including John Punch (slave), Abigail (slave), Fortune (American slave), William Gardner (former slave), John Brown (fugitive slave), William Grimes (ex-slave), William Green (former slave). You also didn't move Caesar (slave), which I based my move off of.

The only other pages I could find using the (enslaved man/woman) disambiguator are Acme (enslaved woman), Ana Cardoso (enslaved woman) and Peter (enslaved man).

Should (enslaved man/woman) replace (slave) as a disambiguator? Roasted (talk) 22:13, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

VPI is for broader idears. You should be opening a WP:RM. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Also, I suggest reading WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS before writing your explanation for the requested move process. You will want to write something that doesn't sound like "It's more important for this article to match the others than to avoid language that I've been told is potentially offensive".
Wikipedia should generally avoid needlessly offending people. We want people who read that article to be thinking about the historical subject. We don't want them thinking about whether Wikipedia uses outdated or offensive language. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
There was a recent discussion that, while not formally closed, basically came to the conclusion that both "slave" and "enslaved person" are acceptable ("slave" is not "outdated language") but that one might be preferable to the other depending on the specific context. In such situations it is almost always a bad idea to change from one to the other without consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 23:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
So should the other pages with “(slave)” is the title should be moved? Roasted (talk) 23:08, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Certainly not without discussion. It's clear that the title is not uncontroversial so a requested move discussion needs to be initiated to determine consensus before any title is changed. Thryduulf (talk) 00:22, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
@Thryduulf It might be a good idea to put that one on WP:RFCL. I'd do it, but I have 2 pending ones there already. Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_228#MOS:SLAVE? didn't go anywhere. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:21, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think that (non-RFC) discussion needs a formal closing statement. We probably need to have multiple conversations like that, until more editors become familiar with the subject matter. A formal summary tends to discourage future discussions.
In particular, "both are acceptable" summaries tend to get misused this way: "The rules say that both are acceptable, so my preference is acceptable, and so the rules say we have to do it my way (and never, ever your way)".
As linguistic practices in scholarly and other high-quality sources have just started changing enough for editors to be noticing this, this is probably an area where we need people to keep their brains turned on instead of just trying to find a simplistic rule. I think the best approach will be more obvious in, say, five years. For now, we just need to avoid carving a rule in stone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
In the specific topic of article titles, OTHERSTUFFEXISTS may be a valid argument, as consistency is one of the titles policy's criterions. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:33, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
The policy requires Neutrality in article titles, so if editors decide that they have to match, they might need to make them match on the one that won't create an opportunity for complaints about offensiveness.
NB that I'm not saying anyone should be offended; I'm just saying that we already do get complaints about "slave" being offensive, so we can reasonably predict that we will get complaints about offensiveness if we choose the (slave) convention. Similarly, we currently don't get complaints about "enslaved person" being offensive, so I think we can reasonable predict that we won't get complaints about offensiveness if we choose the (enslaved person) convention. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:50, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
But I do find substituting "enslaved person" for "slave" grating. Now, I was trained as a linguist and fully understand that a spoken language is a living thing and constantly evolving, but I am also an old fogey and have grown weary of euphemism churning. I have lived through several cases of a term being recognized as offensive, so we switched to some euphemism, which in a few years become offensive to some, so we switched again. In truth, we are just avoiding how the term is used offensively, and replacing one term with another that will also come to be used offensively. That said, I do not choose this as the "great wrong" to right. I will speak up, though, against the trend I've recently seen of changing "plantation" to "forced-labor cotton farm" and similar monstrosities. Saying that slaves were just "forced laborers" is hiding or dimishing the horrors of chattel slavery. Donald Albury 17:05, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
People are replacing "plantation" with that‽ Aaron Liu (talk) 17:28, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
These aren't exactly euphemisms, but I wonder sometimes whether the idea is to grab attention, in the way that an annoying advertisement for used cars is grating but effective at communicating the basic content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu: here Donald Albury 21:46, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

To stub an article

Should we put stub templates on articles that will never be able to be expanded to a start-class?

For example, John Settle (footballer) will very very very very very likely never be expanded to the 1500 character threshhold. It's stub category (Category:English football defender, 1890s birth stubs), could be used by editors to find short articles to be made longer, but is crowded by articles that are extremely unlikely to have more information to be added.

I believe stubs should only be added to articles that can see expansion. Roasted (talk) 03:21, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

What would you call such articles? In any case, how can you tell that an article has no hope of being expanded beyond a stub? At least some editors feel that stub articles that have no hope of being expanded don't belong in Wikipedia as stand-alone articles, and any useful information in them should be merged into a higher level article. So, search for reliable sources on the topic; if you cannot find anything useful, explore merging the article into a more inclusive article, convert it to a redirect, or take it to AfD. Donald Albury 13:30, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
As Donald mentioned, WP:N's purpose is to remove such articles. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:26, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
A basic question, what OP asks, is what to do about historical biographies? For the example footballer above, I suppose you could make articles for each team he played in for each few seasons that include biographies of all footballers, but then you'd be duplicating all those biographies for the multitude of teams they play in. The alternative is a "list of 1890s footballers" type article, which in addition to being an arbitrary categorization, does not solve the GNG justification for the article, and is a list article, which I would argue is more difficult to maintain and generally of worse quality than a stub (especially when entries do not have main articles). SamuelRiv (talk) 14:46, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
This isn’t a notability issue. A short article does not make it a deletion-worthy one. I’m saying we should remove stub templates from articles that will pretty much always be a stub. Roasted (talk) 01:48, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
If an article is notable, it shouldn't possibly remain a stub. Aaron Liu (talk) 04:02, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Conversely, if it "will pretty much always be a stub" then widespread coverage in reliable sources is lacking. Our guideline, Wikipedia:Summary style, says it should be merged. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:03, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Ok, great advice; and so again, what would you do about my example, taking OP's example, above? SamuelRiv (talk) SamuelRiv (talk) 19:03, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
I would just delete it as it seems like indiscriminate trivia. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:05, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
User:Roastedbeanz1 I found these from Historical newspapers [3], [4]. As far as notability yeah its difficult finding sources for those times. Timur9008 (talk) 15:12, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
@Roastedbeanz1, there is no mandatory "1500 character threshold". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Sports biographies have been a particular problem on Wikipedia where editors mass create them in the hundreds or thousands despite being asked to stop. It got to the point that a discussion in 2022 determined that sports biographies without significant coverage should be deleted. Feel free to WP:PROD or WP:AFD any sports biography like this that you see where it doesn't have any significant coverage in its listed sources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:34, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Length and complexity

I noticed the recent expansion of Mekosuchinae that evolved from this to its current form. Articles can sometimes become so large and complex, they exceed the average audience's time and interest. This is not to say the current article should be trimmed or split, it presumably does a good job. But it's very long and specialist. For example one sentence has:

"A later study focused on mekosuchines in general; examining material assigned to Kambara, Baru, the "Floraville Taxon" and what might have either been a juvenile Baru or Mekosuchus; suggests that the group as a whole had collumnar humeri than modern crocodylids with an elliptical rather than rounded crosssection."

One option is to feed it to ChapGPT and ask for a summary in the style of a museum brochure ie. for a "general audience", which is what I thought Wikipedia is supposed to be anyway. There is Simple Wikipedia, but that seems different. Anyway, there does seem to be a need for articles on complex topics that are geared to a casual general audience, that are approachable, readable, interesting without sacrificing accuracy. -- GreenC 18:05, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Nobody is expected to read a Wikipedia article, or any encyclopedia article, in its entirety from front to back. It's a reference book. (Wikipedia is many more things than that, but the encyclopedic style, the piecemeal improvements, the both narrow and wide audience scope, and the nature of citations, suggest you treat it more as that.) SamuelRiv (talk) 18:15, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
There's WP:Technical and Wikipedia:Summary style that pretty much contradict that. That said, I don't see GreenC's concerns; the lede exists for a reason, and I don't see the problem with the quoted passage, especially with all of the links omitted. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:33, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Technicality and prose complexity are independent of whether or not something is a reference book. A Michelin's Guide is a reference book. A children's encyclopedia is a reference book. I don't see how either of the guidelines you link contradict my statement. I fully understand that the lede section is aimed to be read as a cohesive narrative whole... which is why I specified that an entire article is what should generally not be expected to be read front-to-back. SamuelRiv (talk) 02:44, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
I thought your point was that articles aren't supposed to be unspecific and untechnical. I think we actually agree on this thing. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:20, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Re: High-profile criminal investigations

Given recent news regarding an investigation into the promotion of Russian propaganda by right-wing media outlets (see Tenet Media and Lauren Chen), I'm curious about best practices for new articles of people and companies involved in high-profile criminal investigations. Within 24 hours of news being released, editors created Wikipedia articles for Lauren Chen and Tenet Media, both of which primarily focused on the investigation. While Chen had been a public figure prior to the investigation, I had trouble finding RSes with SIGCOV to establish notability without including articles related to the investigation, which runs up against issues regarding Wikipedia's policies relating to illegal conduct--especially without a conviction and especially for a BLP. As such, I brought both articles to AFD (see the discussions for Tenet Media and Lauren Chen). Both discussions quickly filled with keep !votes given the high profile of the case, the vast majority of which do not cite existing policy. I'm curious how to best handle scenarios like this. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 01:27, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protect the nomination? Aaron Liu (talk) 11:29, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
Accept that you failed at this time to make your case for deletion. If you really think that WP:ILLCON and WP:BLP1E apply, you'd do better to advocate for both to be merged to an article on the investigation, as suggested in some of the early comments on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tenet Media, rather than continuing to push for deletion. Even then I see several claims in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lauren Chen that sufficient sources exist for that article to counter WP:BLP1E, so you may need to wait for the dust to clear on that before proposing that merge. Anomie⚔ 11:56, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Idea for a bot. If you can work it, go ahead.

A TP message I woke up to, this morning, combined with User:Cullen328/Smartphone editing, got me thinking this morning, of how many mobile diffs must be getting thrown up on-wiki every day, and causing the interface changes that Gray flagged up with me.

So why don’t we have a bot, that sweeps edits for en.m.wikipedia links, and changes them to en.wikipedia? I’m not a coding guy, so I couldn’t build this myself, so I’m bringing it to the Idea Lab, if anyone likes the look, and fancies having a go. MM (Give me info.) (Victories) 10:57, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

One options is for editors to use something like User:Þjarkur/NeverUseMobileVersion. I use it because I use the desktop site on mobile. Editors who then do click on a mobile diff are just auto-redirected to the desktop site. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:16, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
User:Aveaoz/AutoMobileRedirect is a better version that checks if you're using a desktop browser. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:02, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Changing other people's comments is probably a non-starter. That is guaranteed to upset people (e.g. see IndentBot's BRFA). Plus, CONTEXTBOT. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:30, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
It seems to me that the root problem you're identifying is that when people in mobile browsers copy-and-paste their url from (some) mobile sites, they get the mobile version of the url, which they then post to some permanent outside forum (and then a desktop user clicks, which takes them to the mobile version of the site, which can be intended behavior on something like wikipedia because we want easy ways to force the mobile version for slow browsers e.g., etc.). The problem then is the copy-and-paste step -- the bare url on your browser's navbar can be the same for both mobile and desktop users if site preference (passed through "m.wikipedia.org") is preserved (which I think it is anyway? I'm not a web dev). For me this can be a minor annoyance on, say, reddit, where many links are posted to the mobile site (I like the mobile site on desktop quite a lot, but having both urls has minor inconveniences like with sorting browsing history). SamuelRiv (talk) 21:19, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Measures of editor experience

Is there a better way of assessing an editor's experience? This is something one might (should?) do before interacting with another editor. (And also something to apply to oneself, now and again.) At present we have (1) edit counts and (2) number of articles created (3) date of first edit (have I missed one?). It seems hard to get an opinion on how much of an editor's work is in writing new encyclopaedia content of articles – which is the job we are here to do (yes, just like, e.g., a car manufacturer being all about building cars, we do need a lot of support functions to achieve that job).

The problem with edit counts is that this includes:

  • lots of short edits because the editor does not prepare a considered piece, check it with a preview, and then add it.
  • interminable discussions/arguments on talk pages.
  • a focus on page curation (example:[5]) or other "maintenance" activity.

The problem with number of articles created is that an editor may be working in an area where most subjects have an article on them already. Some of these may need improvement (sometimes radical improvement), updating or simply expanding from a stub. So this measure favours those who edit in rapidly changing subjects where new topics arise frequently.

Date of first edit has some use, but there are still editors who started years ago who seem to be unaware of some of the basics, and quite new editors who seem to have got a real good grip of how everything works and produce quality article content.

In searching for a useful set of measures, I suggest something that looks at activity in main namespace (i.e. encyclopaedia content). This could be, as a single group of information:

  • the total number of characters added
  • the number of edits
  • the number of edits grouped in size bands

I feel this would give a more useful view of an editor's activity. What is important is that this should be easily visible to anyone (without needing knowledge of some little used method of getting this data).

Any thoughts would be welcome. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 11:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

My first thought is to back up a step and ask why you think we need a measure of editor "experience" in the first place? Anomie⚔ 11:19, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Agree with Anomie, especially since "experience" doesn't really translate linearly, someone could be very experienced at writing content but not familiar with "backend" or administrative tasks. Or someone could be very good at writing templates and maintaining code. Or doing mostly WikiGnoming. Etc.
Yes, one could say that only the first one is "pure" editing, but this doesn't mean they're inherently the only one doing valuable work, or that they should be higher in some kind of hierarchy of experience. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:43, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
In addition to the points made by Anomie and Chaotic Enby (with which I agree), your proposed metrics are not reliable indicators of anything relevant: a highly skilled copyeditor will have fewer character additions to their name than someone who writes long, terrible prose. Which of these two edits of mine is the greater addition of encyclopaedic content +220,030 bytes or +759 bytes? Is making the same improvement in one edit better or worse than making it in two edits? My recent gnoming contributions have ranged in size from -167 bytes to +220,030 bytes, almost entirely overlapping with my non-gnoming edits (other than deprodding and BLARing). The number of edits in each band tell you nothing about the sort of editor I am. Thryduulf (talk) 12:04, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I thought the brief analogy (above) with a car factory was clear – sticking with that analogy, yes the main task may be building cars, but you still need accountants, cleaners, a marketing department, etc., etc. So I am well aware that Wikipedia would not function without lots of tasks other than "pure" editing. What I find a problem is that in the example I gave above, [6] the edit count (as the only readily available metric) does not make clear that the editor has done very little writing of encyclopaedia content, yet they are welcoming new editors, have offered themselves (on 11 July) for multiple feedback services and are active on approval of draft articles. There is very little editing of actual article content and even less of finding some sourced material and adding it to an article. So from this I conclude that the measure of edit count is misleading and that the editor in question does not really have the experience to be judging other editors' efforts. Hence the need for more better quality information. With that information available to all, it might make an editor ask themselves "am I the right person for this job?", so providing a self-policing element. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 12:42, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:Page Curation, we find Page Curation is a suite of tools developed between March and September 2012 by the Wikimedia Foundation, and greatly improved in 2018 in collaboration with the Wikipedia community, to help experienced editors review new pages on the English Wikipedia.[bold added] The thoughts here are all about determining what is an "experienced editor" – hopefully with that largely being self-policing if the right info is available. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 12:48, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
What is it about extensive writing of article content that makes someone uniquely qualified to welcome other editors, offer feedback on articles or determine the quality of a draft? In the passage you quote, "experienced" means "is familiar with Wikipedia's policies, guidelines and norms", someone who spends most of their time on Wikipedia reading a broad range of existing articles and discussions is very likely going to have a much better grasp of what page curation entails than someone who has spent twice that amount of time adding sourced content to a narrow topic area. Two people who spend the same amount of time making the same number, size and type of edits to the same type of articles can be very differently suited to page curation - for example if editor A's edits are almost all accepted as good by others while editor B's are reverted and/or require extensive fixing by others. Editor B is arguably more experienced because they will likely have been directed to read more policies and guidelines and had more talk page interaction regarding their editing than editor A (whose talk page may consist only of a welcome message). There is no simple metric that can capture this. Thryduulf (talk) 13:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Large numbers of edits that welcome new users make a correspondingly large increase in the edit count of a user. These are not edits that increase an editor's knowledge of Wikipedia. This is something that devalues edit count as a useful measure of experience. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 16:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Respectfully, I don't think we need more metrics and ratings and hierarchies of editors. I'll also note that the Wikipedia:New page reviewer user right (which gives access to the Page Curation tools) is only granted by administrators, most often at first for a short trial, so there is already every opportunity to check if the user has the experience needed.
One does not simply walk in and start patrolling new pages. (Although NPP always needs more people!) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I think it’s helpful to know whether someone is a [[WP:Young editor]] when giving them feedback on potentially problematic edits. But when people are able to communicate adequately, none of the metrics about previous edit count, areas of expertise concern me. I can be convinced that having certain about edit count, user permissions can be helpful when looking at someone’s diff and to ascertain what kind of question to ask someone; but again with emphasis on being kind and effective communicators. In the past, I’ve been chided as a “new editor” when I had 500 edits by someone who was abusing their seniority status. Needless to say, they were also blocked frequently for problematic behaviours. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:46, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
From my experience (and I am talking about positive experiences) the most helpful of editors are those who have added a lot of encyclopaedia content. I attribute that to their understanding of some of the problems in sourcing and explaining an article, and also in how to interact with some of the more difficult people in this community. I suspect that many editors, whether they know it or not, have learnt most of their knowledge on Wikipedia from other editors with a substantial track record behind them. What worries me in this case is: who will a new editor go to for assistance/guidance? If they go to someone who was their new page reviewer, but that person does not have any depth of experience, that new editor is being short changed.
In the example given, the editor in question apparently does not read the articles too closely – I have no idea what they are doing, but tagging a short article that says when some died (20 years ago, at a good age) with a BLP warning suggests a superficial approach, as does immediately sticking an orphan tag on everything that comes out of draft, which will obviously be the case on making that transition.
To answer I don't think we need more metrics and ratings and hierarchies of editors: I think I am trying to make a closely related point, that the metrics we do have can mislead. Perhaps we just need a warning that the existing measures can mislead. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 16:14, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Just for completeness, I chanced upon [7] recently. I have no idea how meaningful its results are, but it certainly appears better than just edit count. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 18:04, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
Heh, my net byte count is negative. —Tamfang (talk) 18:35, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
And that's no reason to think that you're a better or worse editor than anyone else. User:ThoughtIdRetired, is there any page that gives the impression things like edit count, number of articles created, and date of first edit are meaningful measures? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:53, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
That's one of the points that I am trying to make: that measures of editor experience can mislead. I have in mind an argumentative editor who questioned my edits (to "their" articles, of course) based on the fact that I have only created x number of articles (whilst they have created very many, one of which I am currently looking at proposing for deletion as it is a complete work of fiction). At the other end of the scale, as described above, we have a relatively new editor whose edit count consists of a large number of welcomes to new editors – so perhaps misleading them on their knowledge of Wikipedia, when a new editor might go to them for help (due to the welcome message). Based on comments here, I am coming to the conclusion that we need some sort of health warning on anything that could be construed as a measure of editor experience. Whilst measures do have value (like spotting the new editor, or realising that you are dealing with an editor with a huge amount of experience), they are only indicators. Both new editors and very experienced editors can surprise with characteristics we might not expect. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 13:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
ThoughtIdRetired, I usually check xtools's Edit Count tool available at the bottom of an editor's contribs. Here's yours. There's no perfect method, of course, but it combines enough information that I find it genuinely helpful. The namespace breakdown pie chart can be particularly illuminating. YMMV. Folly Mox (talk) 11:21, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I do wonder (partly in jest) if the best measure of an editor is the number of times that they have been thanked as a proportion of their total number of edits. In reality, this might be a function of the other editors that they interact with. More seriously, all of these methods of assessments are useful only if we all remember their limitations. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 13:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Do note that on some devices (e.g. my smartphone), an editor's edit count is prominently displayed when looking at an edit, whilst it is not on the computer that I am using now. I think we need to take this into account. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 13:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that any automatically-generated process can give any meaningful measure beyond knowing that an editor with only a few edits probably hasn't read all the policies and guidelines that old-timers have. I don't use a smartphone to edit Wikipedia, but know that there are many more important things than edit count, so I wouldn't have decided to display it prominently. I would probably do reasonably well on the "number of thanks" measure but that's probably just a function of the pages that I tend to edit. There's no real substitute for looking at someone's contribution history and deciding for yourself who the good editors are. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I like User:PleaseStand/User info. Both account age and number of edits is useful.
The thing about the number of edits is you have to remember how few edits is normal. Of the registered editors who edited at all last year (calendar year 2023), half of them had five or fewer edits. Not "five in 2023", but five total, for the whole lifetime of the account. Someone who has just reached Wikipedia:EXTCONFIRMED is in the top 1% of all time. We tend to think "Oh, three thousand edits – practically a baby", but almost nobody reaches that level. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
That's an interesting viewpoint. Doing a very small sample of all recent edits in Wikipedia (just 20 – we would need a higher level of automation to get past my patience level), we get:
Sample of recent edits
Number of edits editors
0 to 100 4
101 to 1,000 3
1,001 to 10,000 5
10,001 to 100,000 3
100,001 and above 3
Automating such an enquiry is beyond me, but it would be informative to see the results of a bigger sample. This snapshot suggests that there is some equality between the number of inexperienced editors (less than 1,000 edits), moderately experienced editors (1,000 to 10,000) and highly experienced editors (10,000 and above). ThoughtIdRetired TIR 08:53, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
Automating is also beyond me, but I have patience enough to look at the edits for the most recent 100 registered editors making non-bot edits (from 10:13 UTC 15 September 2024).
Sample of recent edits
Number of edits editors
0 to 10 9
11 to 100 8
101 to 1,000 14
1,001 to 10,000 25
10,001 to 100,000 29
100,001 to 1,000,000 14
1,000,000 and above 1
Three editors were making their first edit, 1 editor (Jevansen) was making their 2,863,752nd edit, only two other editors were above 500,000. The average was 82,933 edits (excluding the top 10: 23,597), the median 6,550 edits. Thryduulf (talk) 10:49, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
Automating it is not beyond me. 😀 Caveats: I can't get edit counts for IP edits, and I have to bucket by total current edit count rather than edit count at the time of the edit.
Breakdown of edits for 2024-09-14 (UTC)
Bucket Editors Edits Edits per editor
IP 7365 19515 2.6497
0–10 1797 3511 1.9538
11–100 1841 6305 3.4248
101–1000 2427 12467 5.1368
1001–10000 2881 22996 7.982
10001–100000 2206 37833 17.15
100001–1000000 480 30027 62.5563
>1000000 32 29498 921.8125
Something to consider is whether you're talking about edits or editors. In this sample, the 32 editors in the last bucket made an average of 921.8125 edits each, while the 1797 in the lowest non-IP bucket averaged less than 2 each. If you pick a random editor who edited during the period you're more likely to get someone in the lower buckets than if you pick a random edit during the period. It gets more pronounced if we look at a longer time period:
Breakdown of edits for September 1–14, 2024 (UTC)
Bucket Editors Edits Edits per editor Edits per editor per day
IP 97888 280695 2.8675 0.20482228
0–10 23486 53038 2.2583 0.16130582
11–100 16730 92157 5.5085 0.39346341
101–1000 14742 177328 12.0288 0.85919724
1001–10000 9940 344981 34.7063 2.47902414
10001–100000 4464 559417 125.3174 8.95124488
100001–1000000 650 450341 692.8323 49.48802198
>1000000 36 432235 12006.5278 857.60912698
Running the query for the first half of September, the number of editors in the lower buckets increases much more, while the number of edits in the higher buckets increases much more. Anomie⚔ 12:30, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
That's fascinating. Is there an "interesting facts about Wikipedia" place for this sort of thing to go? I've just sorted the month to date list on "edits" and put percentages on each line of the total number of edits. What that show is that if you have an interaction on a "random edit", it is most likely with an editor in the 10,000 to 100,000 band (23% of all edits).
But thinking of interactions, that doesn't seem to be my experience. (Latest interaction is reverting some terminology put in by an editor with 261 edits, being reverted, then having to explain on the talk page that the article's source is not an RS and list three high quality sources that support the preferred language.) I suppose that says that the more experienced editors do work that does not really need any attention from the likes of me.
The month to date table also shows that 9% of the editors do 75% of the work. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 13:08, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
See Template:Registered editors by edit count for percentage/ranking by edit count.
Pages such as Wikipedia:Statistics#Edits per editor and Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number of editors would also be suitable repositories for this kind of information.
There are also qualitative differences in edits by volume. The 5th edit is more likely to be adding content than the 50,000th edit. High-volume editors tend to be doing semi-automated edits – a Twinkle tag here, an AWB run there, a reference formatting script... WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

break up paragraphs

This is a practice request rather than a feature request.

When looking at diffs, it's a pain to scroll through a paragraph taller than my screen to find the one changed word (or comma), not to mention the similarly long paragraphs shown before and after it for context.

I would urge editors to insert single line breaks – which are invisible on the page – between sentences, especially after complex refs. Or at least not to go out of your way to remove such breaks! —Tamfang (talk) 19:10, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

That will converse the bots as to where the paragraph ends. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:06, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't want to converse anyone unnecessarily, but can't bots detect a blank line? —Tamfang (talk) 23:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
It's fine to put linebreaks inside templates, such as the citation template. If one is really concerned about losing something in the underlying html, then one can enclose a linebreak within an html comment <!-- -->. These may or may not help with alleviating the diff display.
The html for a single line break in plain wikitext appears as a newline character within a <p> element, which is not rendered by default, but may be picked up accidentally by a bot (not sure for example if AWB's regexp tools default to stop at newlines, or else match "^" to newlines, but imo regexp is inherently a trial-and-error tool, and people who have been using it on WP for a while will have tested their code on newlines already).
As for whether it impacts something more important like commercial accessibility tools (like screen readers), I don't know. But OP's issue is an important accessibility issue as well, since as most of the emerging and young world is operating exclusively on mobile devices, we want to address their UX concerns. (I enjoyed the essay Wikipedia:Editing on mobile devices.) SamuelRiv (talk) 18:41, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
I would concur it's worth considering a habit of single linebreaks following elaborate citations. Remsense ‥ 论 12:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
As it happens, there's already an essay advocating for this exact practice: Wikipedia:Newline after references. jlwoodwa (talk) 22:54, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
See, the issue is that shortcut isn't memorable, so how can I possibly make the same point as this essay two weeks from now if I can't remember what letters to link the guy? Remsense ‥ 论 22:57, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Teach the controversy: WP:NEWLINE —Tamfang (talk) 15:56, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Feedback on WP:Admin reconfirmation requested

This isn't a perfect match for VPI, but it's not concrete enough for VPPROP and isn't a policy proper yet, so can't be on VPP. This page is a result of WP:RFA2024, but being familiar with the RFCs isn't required (and, as a matter of fact, fresh eyes are encouraged). In short, we had an RFC to determine the specifics of the policy (proposal) which isaacl has summarized here. The page tries to convert the sparse bullet points into a proper proposal.

Though none of the bullet points may be changed without a strong consensus, there are obviously gaps to fill (the templates, for example, are a new addition and need refinement) and sentences to be made clearer and more concise. Sincerely, Dilettante 23:25, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

The title sounds like Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Reconfirm administrators but the contents are more like Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Community-based process for removing adminship. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
That's a good point. A few others raised the issue of the name, but just cited personal preference. Sincerely, Dilettante 01:26, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Left behind.

I feel like I've been left behind, forgotten, invisible. I made a post then it got removed. See the page Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab): Difference between revisions - Wikipedia. Blackbombchu (talk) 15:19, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

It was removed by Remsense with the summary "can't make any sense of this post, unfortunately.", an assessment with which I agree. Thryduulf (talk) 15:25, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I guess it's just my tiny little seed. It will add that very little tiny bit. They will all add up and get us there eventually. Blackbombchu (talk) 15:29, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
@Blackbombchu, I've left a message on your talk page out of care for you. I hope you read it and see it comes from somewhere authentic. Remsense ‥ 论 15:31, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Verified badge for Admins!

I’m not sure what others will think of this, but I accidentally had this thought: how would it be if we added a verified badge, similar to Instagram or Facebook’s verified badges, to admin signatures when they comment? It would make it easier to identify that the editor is an admin, instead of having to check their profile, contributions, or diffs, which is a lengthy process and not ideal. Similar to how Discord groups use a green name for admins. What are your thoughts on this? GrabUp - Talk 13:03, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

@GrabUp, there's a script for that: User:Mdaniels5757/markAdmins. Schazjmd (talk) 13:46, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
Schazjmd, GrabUp: there's quite a few, actually. — ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · contribs · email) 13:47, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
My personal favorite is user:Bugghost/Scripts/UserRoleIndicator. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:30, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
Admins who care to do this can do so, and users who care to see this can do so. But in general this needn't be and shouldn't be the default. We've all seen how sometimes editors seem to show unusual deference to known admins in discussions on non-admin-related matters, such as content and meta-content. This may be unconscious or conscious, but it's counterproductive to discussion and counter to the spirit of the project either way. SamuelRiv (talk) 14:14, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
Agree on this one. Admins are just users trusted with some tools, they don't have any special authority on content or anything else. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:26, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
If I use my administrator's tools to block an editor or delete a page or protect or unprotect an article, any one who is looking closely will know that I am an adminstrator because only adminstrators can do those things. On the other hand, when I write a new article or expand an existing article or give an assessment on an article talk page or offer advice at the Teahouse, nobody needs to know that I am an adminstrator because those are not administrative functions and I am just another editor at that moment. I did all those things long before I became an adminstrator. If I tell another editor that I am an administrator, that is in the context of a warning. I see no benefit to a badge. Cullen328 (talk) 08:52, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
It's technically impossible to enforce with traditional wikitext discussions anyways. Structured discussions as used on other wikis might be able to support it, but in that case, why are admins given the blue check and other users not?--Jasper Deng (talk) 09:00, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
(It's actually possible, you just query members of a CSS class and show them the same way you may in structured discussions.) Aaron Liu (talk) 10:57, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
(That is not impersonation-proof.)--Jasper Deng (talk) 11:03, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes it is? The API always tells the truth. By query CSS class I mean all userpage links next to timestamps. There are scripts above that do the exact same thing.
A more efficient implementation would be automatically adding a new CSS class to admin userpage links along with sanitizing signatures against manual addition of the class. That said, I'm not convinced this is something we should do. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:48, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't think this is something we should do either (if users really want it, there are already several user scripts doing that and allowing for custom CSS). I'd say the only place where it isn't impersonation-proof is if someone goes out of their way to fake another user's signature, but at this point it's just saying that our signatures themselves aren't impersonation-proof, and a quick check in the page history is enough to spot and revert it... Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:02, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
No it's not. The user can completely fake the badge visually by not even querying the API, since inline styles are possible in wikitext, and users control their own signatures.--Jasper Deng (talk) 18:51, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
That's a good point. If we settled on an API-based style that changed signs to say something like "Jdforrester (talk) is an admin", then soon after, we'd find that some editors had set a WP:CUSTOMSIG to say something like "WhatamIdoing (talk) is an admin" – only the first is 'real' and API based, and the second is mimicked in wikitext.
It might be possible to minimize this technologically, using the same kind of code that already disallows custom sigs without a link to your own account, but doing that would require dev intervention, which in turn probably has a minimum requirement of us thinking that it's a good idea, which doesn't seem to be the case. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:25, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Proposed Measures for Mitigating Vandalism from the Indian Region

At present, Wikipedia addresses vandalism in India through IP and host blocks. However, a significant issue is that most Indians access the internet via mobile connections, where mobile providers assign NATed IPs. As a result, when administrators block a host range, it inadvertently affects a large portion of mobile users. Consequently, individuals within these ranges are unable to create accounts or make IP edits. There have been reports of a decline in editors from India, which coincided with the shift towards mobile-based internet access.

To address this challenge, I propose introducing a requirement for users accessing Wikipedia from suspicious networks to provide a verified email address when creating an account. The email should be from a trusted domain, such as Gmail or Outlook, which require mobile number verification as part of their sign-up process. This would help ensure that new accounts from these networks are legitimate.

Additionally, there is room to improve how Wikipedia handles repeat vandals. Currently, when a user is flagged for vandalism, they receive a temporary block, but once the block expires, their account is restored to its previous status without further consequences. It has been observed that some users take advantage of this by making constructive edits for a period, only to revert to vandalism later, perpetuating a cycle of temporary bans. Over time, certain users have accumulated considerable edit counts and status, which they leverage to manipulate factual data—such as box office figures—or prioritise certain sources to skew rankings. The high edit count often discourages other editors from reporting them, despite their history of disruptive behaviour.

To curb this, I suggest implementing additional measures when reinstating users after a block. First, users should be required to provide a verified email address from a reputable domain before their account is reactivated. Second, they should be reinstated in a limited or "safe mode," regaining full editing privileges only after completing a specified number of good-faith edits. This would slow down organised vandals and disrupt their timing, as many appear to operate on a carefully coordinated schedule.

Lastly, to further safeguard the platform, IP edits from suspicious domains IP-Ranges should be permanently blocked, as these are often used for repeated abuse.W170924 (talk) 21:50, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Addition To address the issue of unreported vandalism, which often remains only as an edit description, I suggest implementing an Email Required Block Filter (ERBF) for moderators. This tool would allow moderators to temporarily freeze a user account until the user provides a valid email address from trusted domains like Google or Outlook, which require phone number verification in India for account activation. Additionally, the user should not be allowed to change the email address for a month.

Furthermore, users who are temporarily blocked for vandalism should be reinstated in 'safe mode,' meaning they will only have the permissions of a newly created account. In this mode, they must complete 100 edits to regain their previous status. If the user is blocked again for similar behaviour, the required number of edits could be doubled for subsequent reinstatements. This approach encourages responsible editing while providing moderators with more effective tools to prevent repeated disruptions.W170924 (talk) 07:21, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I removed the statements that couldn't be implemented due to WMF core principles, but I am confident the last part doesn't violate any privacy.W170924 (talk) 23:55, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Minor nit: neither Gmail nor Outlook require mobile number verification to create an email account. Schazjmd (talk) 21:56, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
@Schazjmd:I am not sure about other regions, but in India, they won’t allow access to their service until phone number verification is completed.W170924 (talk) 22:04, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
I didn't know that, @W170924, thanks! In the U.S., there's no phone verification requirement to set up an email address. Schazjmd (talk) 22:07, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
I'd rather we just make accounts with a verified phone number get IP-block exempt by default unless the rangeblock specifically requests to block them as well. Wikipedia's software has no such functionality yet though.

IP edits from suspicious domains

what does that mean lol Aaron Liu (talk) 23:23, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu:I wrote 'IP edits from suspicious domains,' though I intended to say 'IP edits from suspicious IP ranges,' which was an unintentional mistake. Using a verified phone number is a best practice, but it would significantly increase costs for Wikipedia.W170924 (talk) 04:22, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Currently, when a user is flagged for vandalism, they receive a temporary block, but once the block expires, their account is restored to its previous status without further consequences. It has been observed that some users take advantage of this by making constructive edits for a period, only to revert to vandalism later, perpetuating a cycle of temporary bans.
Citation needed on this one. Repeated vandalism is nearly always met with escalating blocks for registered users, and the third or fourth block is usually indefinite. For IPs, blocks are usually temporary (although increasing in duration) rather than indefinite, as they are often reassigned to new unrelated users. Nearly all indefinitely blocked IPs are open proxies rather than personal IPs.
Over time, certain users have accumulated considerable edit counts and status, which they leverage to manipulate factual data—such as box office figures—or prioritise certain sources to skew rankings.
Again, do you have any evidence? A user with repeated temporary blocks wouldn't have a lot of "status", whatever that means, and changes aren't trusted based on the reputation of the user who makes them, but on their quality of sourcing. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:52, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
@Chaotic Enby:You acknowledge that a permanent ban is only imposed after the third block. This means a person can create an account, commit acts of vandalism, receive a temporary block, then contribute positively for a year before repeating the behaviour. Essentially, the user is given three opportunities to engage in such actions, with their edit history remaining intact throughout. This process can be drawn out, as most vandalism only results in a warning. Recently, there has been a more lenient approach to vandalism, such as using unreliable sources to cite information or editing a range without providing proper references. In some cases, the user's behaviour may go completely unnoticed. My intention was not to single out individuals but to highlight this ongoing issue. I believe systematic vandalism requires a systematic approach. Also, for a new user, the edit count matters as they may not yet be familiar with how Wikipedia operates.W170924 (talk) 04:43, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
So an editor will "contribute positively for a year", and after that the engage in systematic bad-faith editing (however many weeks or months this may take to discern, it is a function that scales with the number of bad-faith articlespace edits)? I echo users above in asking for examples in which this is happening systematically, because... if people are editing WP positively for an entire year just to game the system later, I would hypothesize (awaiting examples) that WP comes out ahead. SamuelRiv (talk) 06:10, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
@SamuelRiv:I still reiterate that the scope is not to name anyone, but you can check my history.W170924 (talk) 07:23, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
  • @W170924: I know you mean well, but as someone who has worked extensively in countervandalism, including work as a Wikidata CheckUser dealing with many Indian IP's, your ideas are rather misguided. Firstly, accounts which clearly only vandalize are always indefinitely blocked even on the first instance, and that's the vast majority of cases of vandalism. Requiring verified phone number or email addresses is something the foundation categorically will not do, as they have stated repeatedly, not the least (in part) because it poses a serious inclusivity and accessibility issue for users. "Suspicious IP ranges" does not fly well in India in particular, especially with IPv6, because Reliance Jio and other ISP's stupidly allocate all addresses from one giant, monolithic, block, so (analogously to disk fragmentation) abusive users are highly interspersed with legitimate users. Verified email address obtaining is also very trivial with disposable email services and we will not allow particular providers such as Gmail and Outlook.com to gatekeep our editing access. I must reiterate what others say: you have made these claims of patterns, but have not satisfied the burden of proof since you have not provided any data to support your claims.--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:32, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
@Jasper Deng:I had sent feedback on this to you. Do you think my ideas are misguided?W170924 (talk) 13:37, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
For context, they sent an email. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:19, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
@W170924: Please do not email me unless privacy is absolutely required, which it is not here. What you sent me shows you don't understand what vandalism is; please read WP:NOTVAND. Cases where subtle vandalism are missed would not be helped by your suggestions, either.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:57, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
@Jasper Deng:So, does that mean people are allowed to do so if the threshold is not met?W170924 (talk) 22:19, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
@W170924: I don't understand your question. Not all disruption is vandalism.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:14, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
Ok.W170924 (talk) 06:08, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
@Cabayi:It would be inappropriate for me to comment on the example as I am strongly biased being Indian. I will only say this: if that matter escalates, Wikipedia may lose all Indian editors in the process.W170924 (talk) 13:37, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Which is why editors shouldn't be required at all to submit personally identifiable information: nobody should be prosecuted. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:20, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Pinging SGrabarczuk to talk about m:Trust and Safety Product/Temporary Accounts, which could reduce this problem on our end. On the off chance that any affected ISP happens to see this, if they wanted to reduce this problem themselves, then switching from using CGNAT rotating a small number of IPv4 addresses to using a stable, larger number of IPv6 addresses would help a lot, and that's something they could do themselves. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:31, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: As my Jio example shows, merely using IPv6 isn't enough on its own. The subnets still have to be geographically localized, not doing allocation from one giant block, or else the same abusers end up jumping across extremely wide ranges, which I've observed while conducting CheckUser work.--Jasper Deng (talk) 06:35, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion

I have started a new essay, User:Cambalachero/Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion, listing cases of stuff that should not be used in Wikipedia, even if we have references for it. Do you have other ideas, or better ways to explain the current ones? Cambalachero (talk) 18:35, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

You might consider adding something about "in popular culture" content, as addressed at WP:IPC. Specifically, it generally isn't appropriate for inclusion without a secondary source. DonIago (talk) 19:14, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm guessing you're aware of WP:Onus and are just writing an explanatory essay for it. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:10, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that section says very little. It says that sometimes content may not be added even if verifiable, but does not explain when. And I have often seen "it's verifiable!" or "it's in the sources!" as a catch-on defense for several other contents that are questionable for other reasons. Cambalachero (talk) 13:00, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
How does this differ from WP:NOT? Thryduulf (talk) 13:15, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Something about celebrity gossip (and even non-celebrity gossip!), may also be appropriate. CapitalSasha ~ talk 13:12, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
WP:RECENTISM, and WP:10YEARTEST in particular, might have some inspiration. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:34, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
This follows from our first pillar that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" and its corollary that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Jason Quinn (talk) 12:00, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

I've been trying to find articles which need creating and from which the topic is important for months, but it seems nowhere to be seen. So, I'm planning to create the project. I just want to pitch the idea here and see if you can think of improvements. 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 23:36, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Most-wanted articles and/or Wikipedia:Requested articles are probably what you're looking for. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
Maybe Wikipedia:Broad-concept article? Vital articles tend to be on rather broad subjects, like "Law" or "Animal". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:49, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
Might also be Special:WantedPages, although it would be nice to filter that by namespace. Wikipedia:Most-wanted articles hasn't been updated in a year and a half, and includes only #–A as initial title character, and doesn't filter links from template transclusions. Would be pretty cool if someone could do a new query for that page with those two issues fixed. Folly Mox (talk) 01:20, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
This idea interests me, but I suspect it would either become a duplicate of requested articles, or it would be a machine to churn out stubs without actually giving them the attention we're trying to bring. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:52, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
Then maybe I can expand the Tambayan Philippines de-stubbing force to a Wikipedia-wide project. 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 07:36, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
How about a weekly list of 20 articles which are important in this order:
  • Agriculture:
  • Food
  • Art and language:
  • Architecture
  • Paintings
  • Literature
  • Engineering, technology, and mathematics
  • Engineering
  • Technology
  • Mathematics
  • History
  • Historical events and figures
  • Media and drama
  • Films and movies
  • Videos
  • Pictures
  • Music
  • Albums
  • Songs
  • Artists
  • Science
  • Earthquakes and storms
  • Animals
  • Scientists
  • Philosophy
  • Religion
  • Social Sciences
  • Trends
  • Sports
  • Activities
  • Sports teams and events
  • Video games and warfare
  • Wars
  • Video games
Any objection? 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 07:43, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
How are you identifying these? Pulling from the relevant Wikiprojects? CMD (talk) 07:52, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
What do you mean by that? 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 07:54, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
How would a list of 20 vital redlinks of such a diverse scope be identified? How would redlinks be found in the first place? CMD (talk) 07:57, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
By pulling from the relevant WikiProjects like you asked. 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 07:58, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
Already created a draft: User:TheNuggeteer/sandbox2 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 08:03, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
This is your project, so I'm trying to withhold judgement on your proposed topic taxonomy, but I am a bit mystified by the choices. I'm wondering how Video games and warfare form a logical pair, and I'm thinking there might be more to Science than Earthquakes and storms, Animals, and Scientists. Historical events and figures might be a more populated subcategory than you seem to be bargaining for, and I'm curious as to why Pictures and Trends each warrant a weekly redlink for creation, when topics such as Medicine, Politics, and Geography are wholly absent.
You might be interested in overviewing the WMF's topic taxonomy at :mw:ORES/Articletopic § Taxonomy, although if your source for wanted redlinks is WikiProjects, probably the easiest and most effective taxonomic scheme will just involve pulling one redlink from the twenty most active WikiProjects. Folly Mox (talk) 17:08, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Uppercase fullname policy shortcuts

In the spirit essays like WP:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG! and WP:ALPHABETTISPAGHETTI and WP:UPPERCASE, I'm trying to do a lot more lowercase fullnaming when referencing policies like WP:OriginalResearch or wp:competenceisrequired. I've personally found this less likely to be cognitively associated with shouting or lawyering, more self-explanatory without needing a hover, and much easier on the eyes. Hopefully newer editors have felt the same.

Two things I'd like to address:

  1. Not all subpolicies have redirects in both lowercase and camelcase. I just want to make sure they can all be made without controversy.
  2. On the policy pages themselves, the shortcuts to subpolicies are always uppercase. So we have (in RS) both WP:UBO and USEBYOTHERS as shortcuts in the box, but as only UBO is an acronym, why can't we have the second shortcut suggestion be WP:UseByOthers? (Similar across the P&G.) It's just an indicator that other shortcuts besides UPPERCASE exist.

Relatively minor thing that won't change the actual functionality of anything. It just makes the replaces the suggested full-name spelling (not acronyms) of P&G shortcuts from uppercase to camelcase. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:26, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

To pre-empt the objection that editors should pipe plaintext to P&G as suggested in the essays I linked: I agree, that's great, if editors actually did it with any regularity. For my own part, piping is an extra bit of typing that may not be as clear that I'm referencing P&G in discussion in the first place, which is often important, since I've found people rarely click links anyway. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:32, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't think you're likely to get any pushback on point 1. It has long been my practice to refer to such things in whichever case makes most sense in the sentence I am writing (usually lower case or with a capitalised first letter) and, if "show preview" shows it as a red link, create a redirect. I don't think I've ever had anyone revert this. I'll have to think a bit more about point 2 - there's a danger of bloat there. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:50, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
To be clear on #2: in the box in the P&G that gives the shortcuts in bold blue text: one is an acronym and one is the fullname, so in my linked example, the box says Shortcuts: WP:UBO WP:USEBYOTHERS. I suggest replacing the fullname shortcut in the P&G from allcaps to camelcase, so the box now says Shortcuts: WP:UBO WP:UseByOthers. I'm not sure where you're seeing bloat, as not a single byte is being added or subtracted, and functionally nothing is changed. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:01, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I see one possible point of contention: in many skins including legacy vector, the search includes all redirects, and some might be annoyed to see a ton of redirects preemptively clog up the suggestions when they want to find something else after typing the first word. Personally, I like point 2-style redirects much better. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:29, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Legacy Vector search is case-sensitive? So if I start searching "mrna", it brings up a list including "Mrna", "mRna", "mRNA", all of which link to the same thing? If that's the case, and someone is still using such software, then the adding or removing of case-sensitive redirects has surely long since stopped being a cause of heartache for that person. SamuelRiv (talk) 07:26, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
There are a great many ways of searching Wikipedia, some of which are case-insensitive and display a list of possible results as you type. This includes the internal search engine, which is independent of which skin you use (you see the same results in vector, vector legacy, monobook, etc). Thryduulf (talk) 11:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't think the internal search engine brings up multiple results to the same page due to redirects. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:51, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
That makes sense. Still, I like the CamelCase redirects better since it's very clear where the words separate. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:52, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
You know what separates words more clearly than CamelCase? Anything spaces. "You're violating our policy about WP:BiographiesOfLivingPeople" vs. "You're violating our policy about WP:biographies of living people." Also easier to type; mostly doesn't need new redirects; and looks way less weird to everyone but programmers. (WP:biographiesoflivingpeople is even worse.) —Cryptic 12:37, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
I don't advocate for redirects like that and merely repeat the title. The UseByOthers example goes to a section with a different name. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:45, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
As could WP:Use by others. —Cryptic 12:55, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
CamelCase is a tiny bit less effort to type and still indicates that the link is a shortcut. I think the reason everything caps is precisely to differentiate them as redirects, and some of that differentiation should be preserved. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:58, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Personally I don't feel that the visible link text should be differentiated as redirects. This primarily serves to codify a term (in allcaps or camel case) as jargon. There are times when this can lead to greater concision, but most of the time the gain is small, with a cost of greater confusion for those who don't already know the title of the destination and the corresponding text. For example, often non-neutral points of view get labelled as being WP:NPOV. I appreciate the point of view that learning a community's jargon is part of joining that community. I feel, though, that English Wikipedia has plenty of jargon already without every shortcut being used as jargon. isaacl (talk) 15:55, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
The reason I'd advocate camelcase as the second suggested redirect (in the little redirects box in the P&G sections), as opposed to spaced-out prose versions (which I'd also like to see used more by editors), is that camelcase is also at least a little suggestive that there is an acronym people use, or i.e. that a newbie following a discussion might more readily deduce 'WP:UseByOthers ↔ WP:UBO'. If everyone here would prefer listing 'WP:Use by others', that's fine by me; one could also put three shortcuts instead of just the two: 'WP:UBO WP:UseByOthers WP:Use by others'. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:38, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Furthermore, spelling abbreviations out can at least give clue as to what the jargon means. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:41, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
@SamuelRiv, if you'd like this to be a bit easier, then try switching from 'Source' to 'Visual' in the Reply tool for a few days.
Use its Link tool for adding links. In the visual mode, just type [[ and it'll notice that you want to make a link and open the tool for you (alternatively, click the button in the toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut (=⌘K on a Mac). Type the shortcut (e.g., WP:CORP) into the link search box, and it will offer you a link to the full title (e.g., Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies). For individual sections, open the page in a tab, and paste the whole URL into your comment. For example, I opened WP:SIRS in another tab, and pasting the whole URL gives me a nicely formatted link to Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#How to apply the criteria.
I suggest trying this out for a few days and seeing whether you like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:14, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing The source mode's link tool in the toolbar does the same thing. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:40, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
The [[ sequence only works in the visual mode. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes, but the link icon in the toolbar works the same. (Also, ConvenientDiscussions has an inline-typing linking-assisting pop-up that autocompletes, even though it doesn't automatically expand the redirect.) Aaron Liu (talk) 04:17, 28 September 2024 (UTC)
Late response, but this is awkward in discussions. In practice, editors have wanted to have a shorthand way to both type out the policy they are referencing and also to read-and-refer to it. The problem is that anyone who hasn't been on discussion pages for years has no idea where to even begin understanding what they mean, so camelcase at least is a middle ground that mitigates two issues: shout-i-ness and un-parse-ability of alphabettispaghetti. The replacement in the side boxes is a completely passive notification to editors that camelcase is simply another option for typing the thing they always type, even though typing the whole policy out, or linking it into prose, would of course (usually) be preferable. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:21, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
If we are to proceed with advertising such shortcuts in {{sh}} boxes, I'm sure that's visible enough to necessitate an RfC, or at least {{centralized discussion}}. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:27, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Show good articles on main page

Portals (such as the physics portal) show good articles, so why not on the main page? Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 09:39, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

We do. New good articles are eligible to be nominated for DYK. Portals aren't really a design pattern worth comparing to given their lack of popularity, and most good articles frankly aren't worth showcasing more than we already do via DYK. Remsense ‥ 论 09:43, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Lowercase or uppercase initials at titles of entries as their true spelling

PROPOSAL: the titles of entries at Wikipedias, to be spelt exactly as they are written in their languages. With lowercase or uppercase initials.
This is a proposal for all wikipedias. Every some years, I revisit the subject.
Why here: because this is the largest and most infulential wikipedia. The opinion of the most experienced editors could make possible a global change from forced uppercase/capitals as initials at every single entry to the true and correct spelling in its own language.
Would en.wikipedia editors please consider:

  • No switch to uppercase/capital initial letter without grammatical reason. No violation of the true spelling of words.
  • If not case sensitive (in unison with the Wiktionaries of the same language), at least case tolerant.
    For any spelling at SearchBox both initials (uppercase/capitals and lowercase) would lead to an entry, written correctly:
    e.g. brown (color), Brown (surname), brown (disambiguation) hypothetical examples: BROWN (company), Brown (novel)

I know how difficult this project would be:
technically (cf WP:Naming conventions#Lowercase first letter, Template:lowercase and many discussions)
but mainly, psychologically.
I think, that choosing uppercase/capitals for all entries, at the first days of the design of wikipedias, was a huge mistake. Now, very difficult to correct. But it is never too late to do the correct thing.
Thank you for listening, a wiktionarian (inevitably case-sensitive), Sarri.greek (talk) 16:54, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

but don't you say "Lithuanian" with a capital L and thus "Wiktionarian" with a capital W? Aaron Liu (talk) 17:12, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Of course, M @Aaron Liu:, please excuse my ignorance of English grammar and any misspellings. In my personal writing i tend to use lowercase Sarri.greek (talk) 17:18, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
  • @Sarri.greek: assuming you mean changing the behaviour of page titles so that they become case sensitive, making e.g. Brown and brown different pages, then I'm not understanding what the benefits of this will be? What has changed now that makes you think the consensuses arrived at in the many previous discussions will be different this time? Thryduulf (talk) 17:08, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
    M @Thryduulf: At the moment, the page for the colour is entitled Brown. Inexplicable capital initial. I think it should be brown with lowercase or, brown (color) [the full title]. Thank you for your attention. Sarri.greek (talk) 17:15, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
    @Sarri.greek: That would be because of technical limitations - article titles that start with a letter must start with it capitalised. {{lowercase title}} can be used to force the first letter of an article title to render lowercase (as at iPhone), but this does not change the actual title of the page in software (IPhone). You cannot be seriously suggesting spamming that template across what is certain to be in the low seven-figures of articles, right? —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 17:57, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
    M @Jéské Couriano: >>must start with capitalised<< Why? Was that a WMF decision? An English Wikipedia decision? Sorry that I do not understand the technical reasons of this initial approach (or any tech matter) to write the colour 'brown' capitalised, when it is an isolated word (not in a sentence, not a title of a book or essay, but just a word). Thank you. Sarri.greek (talk) 18:09, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
    @Sarri.greek: It's a MediaWiki (read: software) decision. You would need to talk to the developers. (Just because the developers are on WMF payroll doesn't mean the WMF made decisions on how to handle article titles, especially since this well predates the WMF's existence.) —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 18:36, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I'm struggling to see how this would be beneficial. If we have our titles in sentence case, shouldn't the first word still be capitalized? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:30, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
    I believe this is a proposal to stop having our titles in sentence case. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
    Which would make the whole thing look more inconsistent, as section titles, for instance, will presumably stay in sentence case. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:18, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I am generally of the opinion that the case sensitivity of Wikipedias was a mistake (and largely disagree with that aspect of WP:DIFFCAPS, although I of course follow it). Similar to why all articles start with an uppercase letter, the case sensitivity made some sense if you look at the origin of Wikis in general where they would auto link CamelCase words without additional syntax needed. As Mediawiki no longer does that, the need for a leading capital letter is largely gone. And why it's still there is, I think, the understanding that the effort (programmatically/technically , content updates, and just everyone getting "used" to the changes) wouldn't be worth the squeeze. Although my guess is most of the technical effort would be making the migration as seamless as possible for readers, as Wiktionary already allows (or at least appears to allow to readers and editors alike) actual initial lowercase (but is case sensitive). I haven't researched enough to know exactly what I'd support or oppose. Skynxnex (talk) 18:31, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Public figure photos on infoboxes

Hello. I would like to propose a project regarding photos on infoboxes on articles pertaining to executives and other public figures. I believe there is too much inconsistency on Wikipedia, with photos ranging from official, professional portraits to photos taken of them out in the wild, such as on a stage or during a live stream. To maintain consistency and make Wikipedia articles look more presentable, I would like us to move towards having portraits of said individuals whenever possible to avoid copyright infringement. Most articles of politicians follow this trend; and so, I'd like to broaden this to all public figures, especially those who hold or have held C-level positions. I look forward to everyone's thoughts and please let me know if this type of discussion should be moved elsewhere. MikeM2011 (talk) 21:29, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what you want to do that hasn't already been done. The reason there's so much inconsistency in portraits is that we just don't have enough photographers to take pictures of subjects in public places (or get consent to take pictures of subjects in private places). Aaron Liu (talk) 21:36, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
There are many professional portraits available online we could use. I'm not sure why we can't utilize these with proper citations under the fair use agreement. MikeM2011 (talk) 02:12, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
You can't because anyone should be able to take a free image of them in a public location, and we can't afford to allow mass uploads and then get sued a ton. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:34, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the rules over non-free content do not allow to use fair use claims on photos of living people, and that policy is way too strong to even consider changing it (I'm not even sure if we can, or if it was decided by the Wikimedia Foundation). That means that, on a lot of things related to images, we don't use or do what we would want, but only what we can with the limited images available to us. I suspect that by "articles of politicians" you mean US politicians, and we have plenty of good images and even portraits because many official sites release their contents under free licenses. But try to write about politicians from elsewhere, and you'll likely have to deal with the same scarcity of good photos of many other topics. Cambalachero (talk) 03:58, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
I believe that requirement is purely local. We created it, and we can change it. But I share you skepticism that we would choose to change it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy says An EDP may not allow material where we can reasonably expect someone to upload a freely licensed file for the same purpose, such as is the case for almost all portraits of living notable individuals. Anomie⚔ 20:39, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Pages to be saved offline

It would be a very go thing to have this app where people can download or save Wikipedia for offline. This way, those who do not have access to Wi-Fi (Like me), can be able to research and edit things easily. HippieGirl09 (talk) 14:13, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Look at the Tools tab on the article page. On my system, one of the options is to "Download as PDF". Another option is "Printable version". You can use that to print to a file. Actually, you can download all of the English Wikipedia, but you will need a lot of storage space. However, you will need to perform all edits on line.Donald Albury 18:58, 12 October 2024 (UTC) Edited 19:01, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
@HippieGirl09 The official Wikipedia Android and iOS apps allow you to save individual articles for offline reading. If you're interested in having the whole of Wikipedia available offline, then you might want to check out Kiwix. the wub "?!" 22:35, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

#### in [topic]

Should articles about years in topics be linked in articles? For example, The Little Girl Lost's first link is to 1794 in poetry. The link feels like a Wikipedia:OLINK violation, but isn't specifically stated. Links to just years are already gone, but why aren't the ones about topics actively being removed? Roasted (talk) 22:56, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Everything started in some year, and linking that year to an article about a bunch of irrelevant info is not helpful. But in an article about a poem written in 1794, it is quite reasonable to link to an article about other very related stuff in that year. That is not a rule but is a defensible view, particularly for poems from 230 years ago where it is a bit of a miracle that we have any record of the poem. Johnuniq (talk) 01:04, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
I think it's a defensible view, specifically for subjects that are discussed/linked in the article. It's similar to our WP:BIDIRECTIONAL principle for navboxes: if you can get from 1794 in poetry to The Little Girl Lost, then it would be ideal if you could get back.
I think it is more defensible for shorter/narrower subjects than for sprawling pages. 1794 in poetry is fine. 2023 in film might not be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
List of German films of 2023, from which you can rightly get to 2023 in film, could be a different story though. Thryduulf (talk) 10:19, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
I'd leave that one up to editors' judgment, and I wouldn't object whatever they decided.
Another thing to consider is the formatting. Compare these sentences:
For the first, the link label is "1794 poem", and if you are surprised that clicking on "1794 poem" takes you to 1794 in poetry, then perhaps you weren't paying attention to what you were clicking on.
In the second, the link label is "2023", and you might expect 2023 instead of 2023 films. I would suggest changing that link so that it includes the words "in 2023" instead of the year alone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
My 2¢: remove direct links, but put the "YEAR in TOPIC" articles in the "see also" section. This removes any MOS:EGG issues and is if anything more consistent with an analogy to bidirectional navboxes Mach61 03:35, 30 September 2024 (UTC)
I like this.
(Man, I wish navboxes were in that section. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:43, 30 September 2024 (UTC)
I think the key issue here (justifying this position) is that while "2023 in poetry" may be related in that it's the same year and not too much poetry was published at that time, that doesn't mean it is relevant or useful in relation to that poem to know what 100 other random poems were published the same year. Mrfoogles (talk) 06:21, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
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