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Petition to amend the arbitration policy: discretionary sanctions and deletions

The arbitration policy's section on "Ratification and amendment" says, "Proposed amendments may be submitted for ratification only after being approved by a majority vote of the Committee, or having been requested by a petition signed by at least one hundred editors in good standing."

This is the petition part of the amendment process. The ratification process may be started if and when the petition is signed by at least one hundred editors in good standing.

The first paragraph of the "Policy and precedent" section of the arbitration policy is amended to add the following underlined text:

The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated. The Committee's discretionary sanctions must not authorise the deletion, undeletion, moving, blanking, or redirection of pages in any namespace.

See the "Rationale by Cunard" subsection for further background and this AN discussion for discussion about the drafting of this petition.

There is a parallel discussion at #RfC: community general sanctions and deletions that should not be confused with this one about the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions.

Cunard (talk) 07:28, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Petitioners

  1. Cunard (talk) 07:28, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  2. Support, although it’s only the deletion part that really matters. Anticipating objections of CREEP, this is required to limit the creep of discretionary sanctions subverting deletion policy, and crossing from behavioural remedies to over-blunt remedies. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC). Actually, I think I oppose limits on blanking user pages for reasons relating to discretionary sanctions. The blanking of an inappropriate userpage is often the best simplest quietest and least confrontational way to dealing with some perceived problems, especially if done in the userspace of a blocked user for example. Deletion is censorship, blanking is tidying. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:42, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  3. Phil Bridger (talk) 07:45, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  4. I agree with the sentiment, but would suggest a different implementation. The approach described can easily be avoided by ArbCom developing an alternative procedure at a different page. ARBPOL (bizarrely) allows ArbCom complete discretion over its procedures and the community no mechanism to challenge them even if the procedures create policy or are otherwise inconsistent with ARBPOL. The issue here is (a) whether ArbCom does (or should) have deletion authority, and, if so, (b) whether they should be able to delegate it. My view is that (a) they currently don't, so the recent deletion is invalid and should be reverted based on the DRV, and (b) they should have such authority (Rob has offered a couple of reasonable reasons why) but should only be able to exercise it themselves but not delegate it to AE or any other process. Any deletion undertaken during DS / AE procedures should be an ordinary deletion subject to ordinary procedures. If ArbCom deletes a page for private reasons with majority support, I see little reason to question whether the page needs to go. I am willing to accept that if there is a reason to question the action, one of the Arbitrators will raise it, as such deletions can be expected to be very rare. EdChem (talk) 08:23, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  5. It is a well established principle that ArbCom is supposed to deal with conduct and not content. Deleting a page is a content decision, just as removing a paragraph from a page would be. ArbCom can sanction people who add content but they aren't supposed to be ruling on what the encyclopedia does and does not say. The same goes for ArbCom-authorised discretionary sanctions. Hut 8.5 09:25, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  6. Support, without objection to tweaking the wording, e.g. to permit ArbCom to delete its own pages, since they already have all authority over those anyway (this codicil is to address Nosebagbear's semi-oppose below). It could also be tweaked to permit undeletion as a response to "badmin" deletion actions addressed as patterns of tool abuse, without regard to the specific content (i.e., a behavior-addressing not content-determinative decision); but I can't easily think of a way to say that concisely. I have to disagree vehemently with EdChem that ArbCom should otherwise have (thus be able to delegate) any kind of content deletion authority, because ArbCom is completely barred both from content decisions, and from invention of policy, which includes new deletion criteria or procedures. Agree that the deletion that sparked this was invalid and must be reverted (even if re-imposed by proper community process later, which is hardly certain). I also don't buy the idea that blanking or redirection are any different from deletion for these purposes. Page moving is also a content matter (either a titling dispute, or a dispute about whether particular content suits a particular namspace), so nix on that, too.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:05, 5 May 2019 (UTC); rev'd 11:24, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  7. Tazerdadog (talk) 11:33, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  8. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 15:45, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  9. S and echo SMcCandlish but adding a few of my own thoughts: (a) that simplicity without ambiguity is desirable; therefore, I support Galobtter's wording: "The Committee has the power to delete pages, but may not delegate that power to individual admins" and (b) I am of the mind that ArbCom may be over-delegating its authority in areas where it's needed most - decisions the community entrusted to them as a body corporate to avoid individual admins making discretionary decisions involving actions that are riddled with ambiguities and/or potential biases, perceived or otherwise. Atsme Talk 📧 15:49, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  10. Support. In response to some of the objections below, note that this would not prevent an admin from deleting under existing CSD, nor would it prevent ArbCom from directly deleting a page or pages itself via motion. It only places its restriction on discretionary sanctions, keeping them from becoming something admins can invoke when deleting pages in order to make them difficult or impossible to contest via existing deletion mechanisms. --Aquillion (talk) 16:07, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
    @Aquillion: that is the intent but the wording is ambiguous. See also Nosebagbear's comments. Thryduulf (talk) 16:45, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  11. Arbcom needs to respect its boundaries.—S Marshall T/C 16:09, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  12. Support. The "oppose" perspective reminds me of the people who argued in 1791 that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary in the U.S. because a democracy would respect the people's rights and the judiciary would uphold them based on traditional procedures. Which was, at best, naive. The 'Arbitration Committee' is rapidly consolidating institutional power with unreasonable grasping like the arbitrary declaration that all of the politics in the U.S. since 1933 is one topic area subject to one of its decisions to resolve a 'dispute'. You can't chain it down fast enough but you should try. Wnt (talk) 18:55, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
    @Wnt: I agree with the intent of this proposal and agree that something is needed but I disagree that this proposal will achieve that aim. I believe Nosebagbear, SmokeyJoe and possibly others also think this way. Thryduulf (talk) 20:06, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
    Most definitely - much of the unhappiness arose when ARBCOM couldn't agree to limit DS' authority on the area. The ambiguities in this (particularly ARBCOM's authority) either have to be settled by us or by ARBCOM, and I'd rather avoid the unhappiness that might come from them having to rule on the limits of their own authority. Nosebagbear (talk)
    @Thryduulf and Nosebagbear: The alternate proposal I saw at [1] seems like this with major loopholes added, and I don't see why they would be needed. Regular admins seem to be capable enough of deleting material in sensitive cases as it is, and we have regular processes for anything else. Arbcom's remit is supposed to be arbitration -- settling irreconciliable disputes between limited groups of editors, probably by banning somebody/everybody involved. The fact that someone was topic-banned or banned by Arbcom ought to provide enough guidance to suggest what to do with dubious articles linked to the controversy. And the fact is, even the brightest of bright lines -- like that paid editors aren't supposed to directly edit articles -- seem to get blurred near the point of uselessness around here. I think that collection of ifs and buts I see in your draft will fly apart like a house trailer in an EF5 once it comes to a significant political disagreement. Wnt (talk) 20:45, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
    I believe an amendment will have to state whether ARBCOM has the authority itself, or not. Individuals seem split as to that. I believe it is a necessary covering aspect but can certainly understand the opposite view. I also feel that the amendment i've put in VPI is clearer than either the current status quo or this one. That is not to say it is flawless or there isn't a better way. I argue in this sense that seeking perfection risks being the enemy of good (and critically, better). Nosebagbear (talk) 21:04, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  13. Support – All deletions should be done within deletion policy (XfD, CSD, or PROD). All deletions should be reviewed at DRV. The community, through consensus, must always have The Last Word™ about what pages are removed from the encyclopedia. There should be no exceptions to these principles. I do not trust any individual to have the unilateral power to delete a page, and I do not trust any small group of individuals (whether it's Arbcom, or "uninvolved administrators at AE", or whatever) to have the sole responsibility of reviewing deletions. The thing about DRV is that anyone can show up and make an argument and be counted. This is not true at AE or Arbcom, which are venues that have shown, in this firearms article instance and in other instances, to not be sufficiently sensitive to community consensus. Deletion is just too important to leave in the hands of the few. Leviv ich 21:48, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  14. Support. Calidum 04:22, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  15. Support - The scope of the proposed amendment is limited to DS, so it would not limit ArbCom's ability to exercise their authority to delete (if that authority actually exists). –dlthewave ☎ 11:35, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  16. (Summoned by bot) Makes sense, sunds about right. SemiHypercube 12:20, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  17. Support. Since the Gun Control arbitration clarification request didn't result in any clarification over whether deletion is an allowable discretionary sanction (DS), this is a reasonable proposal to provide that clarity. Cunard did a good job at limiting the applicability of the proposed regulation to DS and at explaining why this needs to be an amendment to the arbitration policy, not the DS page. Deryck C. 14:07, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  18. Support per Levivich and SMcCandlish. —⁠烏⁠Γ (kaw) │ 09:17, 07 May 2019 (UTC)
  19. Support, noting that the incident inspiring this petition is one of the incidents in response to which I am protesting the Committee. Also note that, while the AE deletion being appealed was not valid in the opinion of many respondents to the clarification request, and the community's deletion review unquestionably overturned the deletion, the restored page was deleted again under auspices of Arbcom authority anyway. This clarification needs to be made, one way or the other, and I prefer this way. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:55, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  20. Support, I have general concerns about ArbCom growing their powers more than necessary for their functions. Stifle (talk) 11:03, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
  21. Support - the Committee was made for dispute resolution and dealing with other community-based problems, not article-based. Currently it seems that ArbCom may be pushing an agenda by enforcing article deletion while railing against community consensus (see Ivanvector's !vote and his essay). Defying community consensus on the grounds of authority is blatantly bureaucratic and is definitely bad faith, and goes against what Wikipedia stands for. Community consensus should be the the final say on content, not an elected body that we have to hope are doing the right thing. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 14:23, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
  22. Support: Whatever I was going to say I think User:Kirbanzo stated it perfectly. I will add that to me this screams "overstepping boundaries". Otr500 (talk) 00:16, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. Oppose in implementation - I too agree with the sentiment, but banning ARBCOM from all page deletion is unwise. Instead, I back @EdChem:'s thoughts - we should limit it to ARBCOM itself only. I'd back an alternate amendment for that, as we could run into a few cases (especially with offwiki info) that warranted page deletion that we couldn't handle with a total ban. In effect, we risk "bad cases make bad law". Those with similar mindsets, please oppose and form a new one, not support Nosebagbear (talk) 09:32, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
    Agree. A formal motion by ArbCom to delete certain pages is not offensive. What is offensive is delegation of authority to others to delete unilaterally, etc. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:50, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
    Typically Arbitrators are administrators. If they are informed of some kind of outing/defamation on a page as a byproduct of arbitration work, they are not prohibited from deleting it in their personal capacity as administrators. They do not need the authority of Arbcom to prohibit reversion of the deletion -- the main disincentive is simply that the admin undoing it would be seen as using his tools to make such material visible again, which would probably cause as much complaint whether or not that content had been the subject of an arbitration case. Am I missing something here? Wnt (talk) 20:52, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  2. I don't know if I agree with the intent but I initially thought this was a reasonable, albeit inelegant, solution, and as such intended to support: this is the petition to start a ratification vote, not the ratification vote itself. After rereading the below, however, I no longer think it would be productive to have a ratification vote on this, so I must oppose this petition as written. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:39, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  3. Slight oppose I believe AE should be able to delete pages as long as the page deletion is relevant to conduct and not content (the only exception being the content must fall within an area of sanctions.) Rare? Yes. I also believe most deletions in this space should be subject to review at DRV (most implying there will be some deletions that aren't reviewable such as office actions), and enforcing the result of the DRV will not lead that user closing/enforcing the DRV to administrative sanctions. I agree there's a problem here that needs fixing, though - AE should not unilaterally delete pages based on content - and I commend Cunard for leading the charge - I just don't think that a blanket ban on AE deletions is the most effective response. SportingFlyer T·C 11:33, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
    @SportingFlyer: Cunard's proposal doesn't say ArbCom can't enact remedies that involve deletion, but rather that DS doesn't include deletion. It's proposed as an amendment to the Arbitration Policy rather than the DS policy, purely because DS is an ArbCom resolution and therefore could not be directly amended by community resolution. Deryck C. 19:51, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  4. Oppose the specifics. I fully agree with the intent - all deletions not involving private information must be permitted by either CSD, Prod or XfD, and must be reviewable at DRV, but per EdChem, Nosebagbear and others this wording is poor and introduces new ambiguities. I do not believe it is within policy (certainly it is contrary to the spirit) to change the wording of an amendment between petition and ratification. Thryduulf (talk) 11:47, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  5. Oppose - I would back this alternate amendment. --MrClog (talk) 14:10, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  6. If a page's existence presents a content issue, DS can't be used to delete it anyway, because arbcom can't delegate authority it does not have. If a page's existence presents a conduct issue, and the topic area is toxic enough that normal community processes have failed and DS had to be authorized, then there's no reason to expect the deletion processes to be immune from that toxicity - especially the less well-attended ones. T. Canens (talk) 17:25, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
    It actually is somewhat less affected since a massive amount of AfD participation is from general AfD participants rather than individuals linked to a page (active pages are only rarely in AfD), and this is even more so in DRV. Nosebagbear (talk)
    AfD, perhaps (though it's not as if AN(I) don't have their own share of regulars), yet virtually all AfD discussions involve indisputably content issues and are outside arbcom's remit anyway, so it's not particularly relevant. Many other XfDs do not have as many. As to DRV, it can correct an admin's misreading of an XfD, but it can't do much if the underlying XfD is itself broken due to the influx of partisans on both sides. T. Canens (talk) 17:49, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  7. Oppose ARBCOM already has a hard enough time enforcing its decisions. Restricting it even more is step in the wrong direction. Yilloslime (talk) 17:32, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
  8. Oppose. As an admin active at AE, I cannot remember an enforcement action or request other than the recent one concerning one userspace page that involved deletion. This is by far not happening frequently enough to warrant a discussion at this level, or changing policy. If we ever get to a point where rogue AE admins are deleting pages by the dozens to circumvent deletion policy, then action might be warranted - but probably more at a disciplinary rather than at a policy level. Sandstein 06:56, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  9. Oppose As has been noted several times, this is not a problem that needs a solution. No one has yet, once, demonstrated a Wikipedia article which does not yet exist but should, only because ArbCom forced it to be deleted. --Jayron32 15:03, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  10. Oppose see WP:ARBPIA3, where G5 would apply and having it be under AE would make a lot of sense. Agree generally, however. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:09, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  11. Oppose As for the related discussion, I doubt that this is regurarly happening/needed, and there is simply no reason why the road needs to be closed. And even if there is policy against it, there is anyway IAR / occasional exception possible, so whether it is codified in policy or not, it will/may still happen. We are NOT a bureaucracy. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:39, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  12. Hard cases make bad law, they say. I think this really applies here. – Ammarpad (talk) 20:02, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  13. Oppose. Solution in search of a problem. This simply doesn't happen enough to be worthwhile adding to the policy. Besides, this writing wouldn't do much, since it would still allow ArbCom theoretically to separately authorize deletions. It just disallows them as part of standard discretionary sanctions. What you want is probably something to the effect of "The Arbitration Committee may not authorize any non-arbitrator to delete any page outside of the deletion policy." ~ Rob13Talk 05:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  14. Oppose – while I agree that ArbCom should not be involving itself in content decisions such as deletion, this is not the best way to make that clarification. – bradv🍁 05:42, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  15. Oppose - agree with several others, this seems to be a solution based on an outlier. Not a great way to set policy. Springee (talk) 13:25, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  16. Oppose - per T. Cannens, though I think we need to make sure admins do not use AE as a content bludgeon. It didn't happen in this case, but I have seen it happen in the past. --Kyohyi (talk) 13:42, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  17. Oppose WP:G5 is policy, and therefore deletion is explicitly part of AE. The workload on ArbCom is great enough, and delegation of authority is both practical and in accord with the concept of a self-regulating community. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:40, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
  18. Oppose This is specifically included in G5, also per Beetstra while this is rarely used it doesn't make sense to close this avenue if there are future issues arising that the community can't seem to deal with. --Cameron11598 (Talk) 13:16, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
  19. Oppose per G5 --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:56, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
  20. Oppose. If it were about mainspace then that's one thing, but edits made in userspace are user conduct issues, which is firmly under the remit of Arbcom. — Bilorv (he/him) (talk) 20:55, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

Amendment Procedure

Unless I really don't understand the procedure - something I won't rule out - we're in stage 1 of an amendment to the policy: the gathering of 100 signatures on a petition. The other way that this stage can be completed is by a majority vote of ArbCom. After stage 1 is successfully completed an amendment will be formally opened for ratification at which point it'll need 100 supporters while having a majority.Therefore, people who are opposing at this point are sending a signal about their lack of support but not actually stopping this process from moving forward. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:39, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

That's correct (or at least how I read it). Standard procedure for a petition but colliding with our great love for sectioned !voting. It's a fine way of organizing those encouraging folks not to sign the petition, but, yes, it's not stopping anything. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:53, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes, but by explaining why we don't support it provides an opportunity to tweak and/or amend the proposal, or (my preference in this case) replace it with an alternative, before it gets to ratification. AIUI Small changes might be ok at this stage, but anything significant may (imho should) invalidate the support of those who signed before the most recent change; I believe that no changes can be made during the ratification stage. Thryduulf (talk) 20:00, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
And that all seems great. I just wanted to alert those who might not be as aware of the significance of what they were doing or who might be confused why, if this gets 100 signatures, they could see this reposted "like new". Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:16, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Rationale by Cunard

Background

An administrator deleted User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles with the rationale "Arbitration enforcement action under gun control DS". The term "gun control DS" refers to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gun control#Discretionary sanctions.

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions#Page restrictions says:

Any uninvolved administrator may impose on any page or set of pages relating to the area of conflict page protection, revert restrictions, prohibitions on the addition or removal of certain content (except when consensus for the edit exists), or any other reasonable measure that the enforcing administrator believes is necessary and proportionate for the smooth running of the project.

The dispute is whether "any other reasonable measure that the enforcing administrator believes is necessary" includes the deletion of a page as part of the discretionary enforcement process. The Arbitration Committee at a recently closed clarification request did not decide whether pages can be deleted under "other reasonable measures" as part of the enforcement process. The Committee instead passed the motion:

All actions designated as arbitration enforcement actions, including those alleged to be out of process or against existing policy, must first be appealed following arbitration enforcement procedures to establish if such enforcement is inappropriate before the action may be reversed or formally discussed at another venue.

There is further discussion about the motion on the Arbitration Committee noticeboard here.

Conflict between deletion review and arbitration enforcement

Both Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 February 24#User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement reviewed User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles.

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 February 24#User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles was closed as "The clear consensus is that this deletion should be overturned per the deletion policy. It now requires arbcom to sanction this."

A parallel review of the deletion at an WP:AE request titled "Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Dlthewave" was instead closed as:

Appeal declined. The requisite "clear and substantial consensus of [...] uninvolved administrators at AE" to overturn this discretionary sanction is not present.

The page was re-deleted despite the strong community consensus at deletion review to overturn the deletion.

EdChem (talk · contribs) put it well here here:

[T]he difference between DRV and AE is not merely the standard applied, it is also the question considered. DRV looks at whether the page should have been deleted, whether there is a policy-based justification, etc. AE looks at whether the action is within administrator discretion under DS. An AE deletion is endorsed even if every admin who comments says "I wouldn't have done that but I can see how it is a possible conclusion to reach and so is an allowable exercise of discretion." It is true that AE can also say "looking at the page, the deletion decision is unreasonable / goes beyond allowable discretion" but the process as now enforced does not mandate that there be a consensus in favour of the deletion for it to be upheld, it merely requires there to be no consensus that the decision was outside of discretion.

Why is a change needed to the Arbitration policy to prohibit deletions under discretionary sanctions

Without a change to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy:

In the proposed amendment, I am also including "undeletion, moving, blanking, or redirection". Undeletion, the reversal of deletion, is included because an undeletion under discretionary sanctions would require a deletion discussion to happen at WP:AE, WP:AN, or WP:ARCA instead of at WP:XFD. Moving, blanking, and redirection are also included because they are or can be pseudo-deletions.

Petition

As noted here, the community cannot directly amend Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions because it is an Arbitration Committee decision. Limiting the scope of the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions requires modifying Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy.

The petition is listed as an RfC for advertisement purposes but will follow the petition and ratification process of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Ratification and amendment instead of the 30-day schedule of RfCs.

Cunard (talk) 07:28, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

KISS. Deletion is not a sanctions enforcement tool

All of this is too complicated. I propose instead:

Explanatory comments:

  1. For virtually everything needing immediate deletion, existing CSD suffice. G11 for unsourced promotion. G5 for pages created in violation of a ban.
  2. Deletions for privacy or child protection reasons already occur, and will continue to occur, without the need for deletion needing to reference any "sanction".
  3. WP:Deletion review is a respected community forum that operates by consensus. Decisions to temp-undelete, or speedy close, operate by consensus, with no complaints to date except for where "sanctions" have crossed the deletion line.

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:53, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Even more KISS: leave it as is. It is not an enforcement tool, it has never been used as an enforcement tool. Plain, non-AE enforcement also has never included deletion. There is just now one (or a couple of cases) where pages were deleted because of a AE. There is simply no reason to write down a rule for that, it is utterly rare, there may not be many cases where it is needed but IF it is needed (for some obscure or IAR reason) it should simply be possible (and anyway, people will IAR on the cases where your now newly written enforcement rule is to be ignored). We are not a bureaucracy. Rather, just a sentence that those (rare) deletion reviews for the sanction-related areas should be properly cross-linked between the two is sufficient. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:48, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Dirk Beetstra, explain to me then the deletion of User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:47, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
@SmokeyJoe: that is not up to me, that is to the person who deleted it. And I am not saying that these were those examples that needed deletion, but I am against codifying that into policy - I can think of scenarios that could use deletion (this content is an example of something that does not fall under CSD criteria ..). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:37, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
As per 'even more KISS: leave it as is' .. oppose. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:25, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. I could almost get on board with the full ArbCom being allowed to delete something, but the idea that a single admin, acting on his/her own, but in the name of ArbCom (i.e. AE) could delete something beyond review, is just absurd. The above concise statement fixes the problem. My one nit is that WP:G9 should still not be reviewable. I'm not sure I've ever seen a G9. Has it ever been used? Looking through the back links, it doesn't look like it ever has. Which seems like about the right frequency. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:45, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    • WP:CSD#G9 would be reviewable to the extent that the WMF authority is verified. A random admin claiming G9 authority based on thier interpretation of what WMF said, that should be overturned. I would expect that known "(WMF)" account to be used to do the deletion, a verified functionary. As G9 doesn't restrict to the reason for deletion, there would be no validity to request review of the underlying reason, just that the policy (G9) was complied with. I completely trust the admins regulars at DRV to do the right thing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:31, 9 May 2019 (UTC) For bona fide G9s, it’s all pretty professionally laid out at Wikipedia:Office actions, including who may do them. I see WMF take child protection seriously. I see that some Arbs are inching towards assuming Office responsibility and authority. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:30, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
    • I recall someone saying that WMF were quick and easy with G9 deletions of images of WMF buildings. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:42, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose this as well Per the same reasons as above. There has not been demonstrated that there exists enough of a problem to justify enacting this policy. The one or two times that AE has been used to justify deletions are rare enough to not merit a policy dealing with it. --Jayron32 14:03, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
    • It’s more about stopping Arbs from expanding their own scope. They never had power over content, now they authorise others to delete subject only to their own procedures for review. It’s a straight line to the end of consensus and WikiGovernment by ArbCom. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:12, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
      • The sky is not falling. "If we don't fix this now, all of Wikipedia will end as we know it" is hardly a useful rationale for enacting a policy. Irrational alarmism is not a useful attitude to take. --Jayron32 13:39, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
            • It’s not that the sky can be seen to be falling, more that ArbCom is undermining the foundations. What can’t they do do, if they can render their own policy subversion unreviewable? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 17:28, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
        • I agree that SmokeyJoe is being overly alarmist. But, I really can't see any legitimate reason for ArbCom to be deleting things. We've never had a rule against it, because nobody ever thought it was needed. It was common sense that it would never happen. Now that it's happened, and ArbCom has insisted they have the right to do it, this is the logical time to tell them that they can't.

          Tools already exist to delete things. If a page meets a WP:CSD, that can be used. If not, then regular XfD should be fine. And, if something really is so bad that it has to go quickly, ArbCom can always ask WMF to delete it as an office action. You could even do something like blank and protect the page, or revdel the offending material pending review.

          The toxic combination here is not just the deleting, and not even just the deleting beyond the reach of community review. It's the delegation of that power to any admin who happens to wander by WP:AE and deputises themselves to act ex cathedra, enforced by pain of desysopping to any other admin who intervenes. That cannot stand. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:07, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

  • Support. This is simpler and cleaner than the original proposal, and is correct, so just do it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:24, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Support this clearer wording. the wub "?!" 22:06, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm afraid this wording would limit the use of G5, which is sometimes needed in edge cases. I really do get the concerns here, but the overwhelming majority of admins do not want to use deletion as a sanction (myself included.) What is happening is that anything with DS is one of the most difficult areas of the project, where the normal part of policy that work well elsewhere don't work as well. That is the whole point behind DS. There are limited cases (ARBPIA3 enforcement is the biggest example that comes to mind, but I'm sure you could find others) where deletion may be the preferred tool to enforce sanctions. In the overwhelming majority of cases it is not and will not be used, but writing hard rules for difficult areas is almost always a bad idea. See also WP:CREEP. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:19, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Support with caveat. Per TonyBallioni, we need to do still allow G5 enforcement of bans. I would tweak it to something even simpler: "All deletions made in the course of arbitration enforcement must be in accordance with deletion policy and are reviewable at Wikipedia:Deletion review." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:35, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
Any admin can still delete under G5, but they do it as an administrator, not a functionary, or using the stick procedures of arb enforcement. Even an arb can do that, but they can't claim immunity from reversion. I do not see why they would need to do that. If some admin is reverting deletions to help a banned editor, arb com can and should take action on that. DGG ( talk ) 05:14, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
  • There's no way in hell I'll support allowing a 7-day public discussion at DRV about a privacy deletion, which is what the third sentence will do. Also per TonyBallioni. T. Canens (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Are you concerned that DRV would result in the privacy violation being restored, either as the result of consensus or to allow public review? A deletion review doesn't guarantee temporary undeletion; that would be at the (terrible) discretion of an individual admin. –dlthewave ☎ 01:26, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
Existing policy already prohibits admins from revealing private info which may be in the deleted text. Like it or not, discussion of the issue (i.e. the publicly available aspects thereof) will take place publicly somewhere on-wiki, because someone will start a thread, unless you impose a sitewide gag order on the whole thing (WP:OUTING is the only case I can think of which enforces such a broad prohibition). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:59, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose seem like a poor idea. There are privacy issues beyond what we can do in public --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:59, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Prefer Cunard's amendment, but would be prepared support this instead if Cunard's amendment fails. I'm concerned that this alternative amendment might be too broad; and ArbCom should be allowed to pass a bespoke sanction that includes deletion, just not as part of the existing system of Discretionary Sanctions. Deryck C. 13:32, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support this simple, logical amendment, but I think Levivich's second proposal is really the way to go. – Teratix ₵ 04:05, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support: I will make this easy, "Deletion is not a sanctions enforcement tool" so I support consensus, no matter how it is worded or tweeked, that makes this clear. Otr500 (talk) 00:24, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Applicability of the Goldwater Rule and HIPAA to information published in places generally considered to be reliable sources

The discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Health of Donald Trump has raised a number of issues with far-reaching implications with respect to the propriety of Wikipedia reporting information published in reliable sources about the health of public figures. I would therefore like to gauge the community's sense on the applicability of these issues. Specifically:

  1. Where sources that we generally consider to be reliable sources (e.g., CNN, BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill, Forbes) publish articles containing the opinions of third parties regarding the health of a BLP subject, are we bound by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) from reporting the information contained in these publications?
  2. Where sources that we generally consider to be reliable sources publish articles containing the opinions of mental health professionals specifically regarding the mental health of a BLP subject, are we bound by the Goldwater Rule from reporting the information contained in these publications?

If reporting of this material is improper, this would implicate a wide range of material covered in hundreds, perhaps thousands of articles, from descriptions of injuries to athletes to reports of substance abuse problems by celebrities, and of the state of mind of victims and perpetrators of crimes. It is therefore probably better to have a definitive answer to these questions sooner rather than later. bd2412 T 21:57, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

As we are not a covered entity, HIPAA doesnt apply to us. And the Goldwater rule would only apply to those editors who are psychotherapists, and even then they have an out because publishing a third parties opinion reported in RS is not giving a medical opinion themselves. While the APA might have ethical issues with it, its functionally unenforceable on ENWP. Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:02, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
Should we apply these rules to ourselves, then, even if they do not legally apply to us? bd2412 T 23:38, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Medical professionals shouldn't be doing this stuff. As a matter of editorial discretion, I would prefer if we generally didn't include it in articles. But in a case like this, where there is a plausible argument that the controversy over the medical opinions is itself notable, it is regrettably necessary to include the opinions that are the subject of the controversy. Regardless, articles are not covered by, nor should we adopt a policy to treat articles as if they are covered by HIPPA or the Goldwater Rule. The inclusion of this sort of information in an article should be discussed on a case by case basis. Monty845 02:34, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • We're clearly not covered by HIPAA. I've never heard of the Goldwater Rule. I don't think either are an issue for the project as a whole. SportingFlyer T·C 05:45, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • While I am not a lawyer, I think I can confidently say that Wikipedia is not a "covered entity" under HIPAA. (Generally, health care clearinghouses, employer-sponsored health plans, health insurers, and medical service providers that engage in certain transactions.) So no, HIPAA does not apply to us.
    Similarly, while I have so special expertise in determining what is and is not a "person", I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia does not qualify as a psychiatrist who is a member of the American Psychiatric Association rendering a professional opinion. So no, that does not apply to us either.
    It is the job of Reliable Sources to determine what is noteworthy and appropriate for publication, and it's our job to summarize what those sources say, in Due Weight proportion to presence and significance of various views in those sources. If sources such as CNN, BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill, Forbes, are all reporting something, then that is obviously a very major part of extremely public discourse. We need to accurately summarize what those sources say. Alsee (talk) 12:09, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The concern is more about repeating defamatory statements someone else published when they are not "privileged" to repeat a statement. A persons medical record/health condition is private information protected by HIPPA (including public figures, celebrities, politicians, etc.) If medical professionals are providing a diagnosis about a person's medical condition in violation of their own ethics rule, and it gets published in a defamatory/libelous/slanderous manner by media, what are the potential repurcussions if repeated? I may be overly cautious but why gamble if it's just speculation, an ethical violation and/or protected information? It would probably be better to contact WMF Legal for a definitive answer but again, is it worth going through all that trouble or is it better to just leave it out of the pedia since it's considered speculation/gossip anyway? Just my cautious nickel's worth. Atsme Talk 📧 17:32, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Most of the privileges apply here. For purposes of providing information on current events, Wikipedia is afforded the reporter's privilege to report news. Of course, statements can only be defamatory if they are determined in a court of law to be untrue. Furthermore, statements of opinion (including professional opinion) can not be defamatory, because they do not assert facts. By definition, medical opinions are just that - opinions. bd2412 T 19:56, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
      Correct, except that statements are defamatory if they damage someone's reputation, and courts can still consider this to be the case even if they are true. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:10, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
      It is black-letter law that defamation is defined as "the communication of a false statement". bd2412 T 21:13, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
      @Hawkeye7: See Fair comment. Truth is a defense against defamation. GMGtalk 19:50, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
      Only partly. "In some Australian states, truth alone is an adequate defence. In other states, a statement has to be true and in the public interest -- if what you said was true but not considered by the court to be in the public interest, you can be successfully sued for defamation." [2] Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:26, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
      As if I needed another reason to continue not-visiting Australia. GMGtalk 20:32, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
      Its wrong anyway, Defamation law was standardised across AU a few years ago, Truth is an absolute defense in all states now. Although I believe that it can still be negated if malice can be proved, but I would have to look that up. Public interest is no longer a requirement. (Unless they re-added when I wasnt looking) Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:41, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
      Thanks for that Only in death. And fear not GreenMeansGo, we will protect you from the drop bears. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:56, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

And one other thing that concerns me - they are opinions made in violation of their own professional code of ethics. Wouldn't want to be them. Atsme Talk 📧 21:42, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

RM on 911

An editor has requested that {{subst:linked|Talk:911 (disambiguation)}} be moved to {{subst:#if:|{{subst:linked|{{{2}}}}}|another page}}{{subst:#switch: project |user | USER = . Since you had some involvement with 'Talk:911 (disambiguation)', you |#default = , which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You}} are invited to participate in [[{{subst:#if:|{{subst:#if:|#{{{section}}}|}}|{{subst:#if:|Talk:911 (disambiguation)#{{{section}}}|{{subst:TALKPAGENAME:Talk:911 (disambiguation)}}}}}}|the move discussion]]. not me but somebody else. As this RM is practically working as an RFC that affects WP:NCNUM, and no attempts were made to notify users (as this will affect numbers and years), I add this notification. © Tbhotch™ (en-2.5). 19:49, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Office actions changed from a policy page to an information page

I've changed the Wikipedia:Office actions page from a policy page to an information page. It is clear that it no longer holds local community support to be considered a policy following the update of February 2019. –xenotalk 12:58, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Three questions from andrybak

  1. About WP:Bureaucrats  Answered
  2. About WP:Arbitration/Policy
  3. About WP:Administrators  Answered

Are talk pages good places for these questions, or should I move them to this Village pump page? —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:25, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

They're not unreasonable locations - if you don't get responses in, say, a week, then moving them elsewhere would the next port of call Nosebagbear (talk) 21:06, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Nosebagbear, thank you. —⁠andrybak (talk) 03:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

"Bill Whitney seems to have it all....."

I have always wanted to take an axe to any and all articles whose "Plot" section consists of breathless scene-by-scene, edit-by-edit, play-by-play creative writing episode of encyclopedic content. I would delete 90% of content at a stroke. The question I ask here is, what can we do about WP:PLOT and similar policies, how can we police them properly, how can we stop, specifically, an article such as Society (film) begin its "plot" section with "Bill Whitney seems to have it all....."? That is not how "plot" sections should start. That is how a trailer starts, that's how an essay starts, that's how a commentary starts. Wikipedia is better than this, so what can we do? How do we finally take "plot" sections by the neck and shake them out of their 14,000 word description disease? doktorb wordsdeeds 22:08, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

This isn't a very informative answer, but since you asked: There's a near infinite about of work to be done, and the only magic wand is to go edit. Alsee (talk) 00:23, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
Well, I mean, writing or adding to plot descriptions of movies is something that people like to do, a lot. It's understandable. There're a lot more people who could describe the plot of a recent popular movie than can contribute to articles on high-energy-particle physics, and it's a lot easier too.
It's an artifact of how we operate. It does drive you nuts sometimes, but I wouldn't overly worry about it. It's non-excellent, but it's not terribly harmful to the project. And it's probably an entry for editors. I'd bet that a lot of editors start off by making or adding to plot sections of movies they like, and some small but non-zero number of them probably go on to be active editors. So there's that. Herostratus (talk) 21:11, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
That quote triggered my brain's copyvio detector. It's too late now that a million sites have copied Wikipedia, but if you come across text like that when it's just been added, I suggest putting it between quotes and Googling it. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 05:45, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Expanding Semi-Protected to be easier to use to target unregistered users

  • Allowing Semi-Protected to be place if a article violates WP:FAN. The goal is to prevent over zealous fans from spreading mixed up information and placing them in articles even if 2 or 3 unregistered people doing it.
  • Allowing Semi-Protected to be place before a "popular" sports event starts. This stop unregistered users from posting adware streams into articles. Regice2020 (talk) 21:46, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment. This should be applied more widely than to fancruft, also to IP paid editors and POV warriors. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:33, 24 June 2019 (UTC).
  • Oppose WP:FAN isn't a policy or even a guideline and if AFD is indicative there is a lot of room of disagreement about whether something is cruft or not. So we are going to see lots of arguments about whether something should be protected or not. Additionally, not all IP/unregistered editors make bad edits and we'd need to demonstrate that the bad edits outweigh the good ones for each article before protection - we can't just dish out locks on the basis of an assumption. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:40, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose- I dislike this rhetoric of "targeting" people. Reyk YO! 07:45, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose, because the proposal is entirely contrary to the one of the core stated aims of the project: that 'anyone can edit'. If Wikipedia is going to create policy restricting edits solely to registered users, it should do so openly and consistently, after a community-wide discussion, rather than by picking specific topics to place such restrictions on, based on nothing more than a selective reading of a non-policy essay and a presumption of bad faith. 86.147.97.69 (talk) 00:41, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm not going to try to figure out what "if a <sic> article violates WP:FAN" is supposed to mean. I disagree with the pro-active protection for articles. People who edit using an IP address are editors too, and most of them make useful contributions. Editors with a name in place of an IP can be vandals and edit war too. I've found that WP:RFPP is very responsive when problems arise. The proposed expansion isn't needed. Schazjmd (Talk) 01:13, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This proposal is not compatible with Wikipedia's principles (Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute) Anne drew (talk) 01:43, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Comments

Yes mostly here to keep over zealous unregistered users that do inappropriate edits to Wikipedia away. The other point mostly to allow a short term Semi Protected to be inserted before a event start to prevent unregistered users from adding malicious stream links into the sports event Wikipedia articles. Happens too much. They mostly target popular wiki articles sports event like NBA, WWE and UFC Events. Regice2020 (talk) 02:15, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

This suggestion seems to be motivated (solely or in large part) by a recent dispute about the Ryzen article, which Regice AfD'ed. While the AfD was working its way towards a snow keep, an IP user offered to improve the article. Regice responded to that work (accompanied by reasonable talk page activity) with two requests for semiprotection, even though there was no vandalism (either from that IP user, or the minimal other activity on the article). Regice also went after the IP user at WP:ANI. It has been suggested Regice is a "vexatious litigant" in this matter, and this honestly doesn't help matters. More generally, I don't see the big idea in going after allegedly overzealous unregistered users. Registered users have no special status compared to unregistered users, and we do encourage all users to be WP:BOLD. Keeping them away is, in my opinion, contrary to the spirit and policies of Wikipedia. Sakkura (talk) 18:39, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I understand you are going be on other side according to recent AFD of that page and there were specific group got upset over a must needed improvement. I had this suggestion in the thought before making "must needed" attempt to improve Ryzen article or even started the appropriate afd. I just decided post it later. Have a nice day. Regice2020 (talk) 22:50, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
There was nothing remotely appropriate about the Ryzen AfD. I suggest you learn a little more about how Wikipedia works before making further policy proposals. 86.147.97.69 (talk) 00:45, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

No topics on Village Pump? Was Citation needed?

Extended content

The Britain's role section in the 1953 Iranian coup article does not have any British media sources cited.-ApexUnderground (talk) 06:34, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

I have put this comment back as the remover in comment stated only that its not policy related, and didn't say if he moved it to the proper WP:VP page. If you are the remover, please say where it goes in comment. -ApexUnderground (talk) 14:06, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
The place to discuss this issue is Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état. Rather than move this myself I would suggest that you start the discussion there, so it is attributed in the history to the right person. The other thing you might want to do to help is to cite a better variety of sources yourself, as this section seems a little over-reliant on primary sources from the US National Security Archive, but note that academic sources are usually better than media sources. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:52, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for that Phil. It seems there needs to be a place for topical discussions outside of article talk pages and somewhere on WP:VP so that WP:VP is not just talk about policy or miscellaneous. As far as the Iran coup, I would want to bring the above issues up on a more general page, but then what page would that be? Coups in Iran? Iran military history? And then for many pages it takes a long time to get a response, just because Wikipedia is so big now. A more general place to post comment seems needed, like here on WP:VP, otherwise comments are always pidgeonholed and nearly mothballed to very specific article talks. -ApexUnderground (talk) 03:29, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Rather than expending energy on finding the proper place to complain about it, why not fix it yourself? Find some Brit media sources and cite them. If you're not sure how to do that, help is available at Help:Referencing for beginners. Matt Deres (talk) 18:59, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
If you want broader input on a particular article, sometimes the talkpages of associated wikiprojects can be helpful: in the case of 1953 Iranian coup d'état, there's WT:MILHIST (fairly active) and WT:IRAN (looks like not particularly active). You are more likely to find interested editors there than on WP:VP. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 13:33, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion: Ability to soft-block users.

If an user has good faith, but makes low-quality edits due to being a Wikipedia beginner, they could be soft-blocked, meaning that they can still submit edits, but all of their edits will be stored as pending changes instead of being published immediately. This concept already exists on the German Wikipedia (as WP:Sighting). ––Chanc20190325 (talk) 01:15, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

I think on English Wikipedia WP:SOFTBLOCK might have a different meaning than perhaps it does on German Wikipedia. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:10, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
This helps explain all of the weird colors I see when I try to edit DE-wiki or look at an article's edit history. Softlavender (talk) 10:36, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Hmm like a "moderated" reverse-right? I personally don't find pending changes helpful when patrolling because as much work is involved to audit, versus semi-protection that prevents them (of course, the difference is that it's only visible when logged-in). In this case, it would not introduce more work when patrolling (edits would have been done anyway if not moderated and show on watchlists/recent-changes), but may if it was commonly used in situations where editors would normally be under a block... The way pending changes currently work, they have special status like higher priority on watchlists; would these moderated edits be distinguishable from normal pending changes ones? Perhaps it'd help editor retention and be a good idea? Another thing worth wondering: if this was active and working, would the next proposal to prevent IP address editing alternatively propose to have all IP address editing moderated (however, similar proposals never gained much consensus)? —PaleoNeonate – 11:06, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Pending changes is buggy and useless at best, and harmful because it requires more patrolling at worst. If we should be having any discussion it would be about banning the use of this feature on en.wiki, not expanding it. TonyBallioni (talk) 11:12, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
The editing level is probably very different to DE-Wikipedia, too —PaleoNeonate – 11:19, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
And this now reminds of the possibility of article revisions (where when an article reaches a certain quality status, a particular revision can be flagged as the last official one to publicly display). If I remember the functionality exists as a module but was never enabled/accepted on EN-Wiki. —PaleoNeonate – 11:25, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Tony here - PC, as currently used, is close to useless - edits still need to be reverted, the interface is opaque and confusing - and it seems to be a total lottery whether an edit gets approved or not, depending on the understanding of the reviewer as to what PC is even for. ...Having said that, there are more than a few occasions where I could see putting an editor's edits "on review" might be helpful, and it's a little tempting at first glance to imagine that PC could be 'repurposed' for that - but... you'd need an entirely different set of reviewers with a different mindset and a whole new set of procedures, plus PC would need to be able to be set per-user instead of per-article, which sounds like a nightmare interface-wise, and I'm not sure how you'd go about assembling that group of people and those interface changes/'rules'. -- Begoon 11:29, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  • This would actually make the users more powerful - their PC-edits would block any page they edited on from edits taking place until it was processed. Nosebagbear (talk)
  • I attempted to get a better Pending-Change platform through on the Wishlist, but no joy there - it really doesn't work if 2 or more editors have participated, as processing them becomes extremely hard. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:22, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Some newbies actually need the time-out which allows the ones who are serious about helping to build an encyclopedia the time necessary to research and study our PAGs and learn a little more about the community. Pending changes only adds more work on top of piles of backlogs we're already dealing with - and like Tony said, it's buggy. Time out, and possible mentoring. Atsme Talk 📧 00:00, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Without commenting about my own views, I'd like to explain how this could be partially implemented using the current pending-changes software. This would be modeled after the current enwikibooks, were users who haven't met certain criteria yet have all of their edits to pc-protected pages flagged as "pending"
Extended content
  1. Create a new user group (referred to here as editor, but identical to the autoreview user group that comes with the FlaggedRevs extension - current, autopatrolled users are a part of the "autoreview" user group)
  2. Give the editor user group the autoreview user right, meaning that their edits are automatically patrolled when pending changes are enabled
  3. Automatically give the editor user group to users who meet the threshold for autoconfirmed using wmgAutopromoteOnceonEdit, but have it be an explicit user group like extendedconfirmed, rather than implicit like autoconfirmed
  4. Grant administrators the ability to grant and remove the editor user group using wgAddGroups and wgRemoveGroups
  5. Remove the autoreview right from the autoconfirmed user group
At this point, the rights changes are done. Normal users should have seen no change, since all users that currently have the autoreview right as part of the autoconfirmed group still have the right. However, since it is given using a different user group, it can, like extendedconfirmed, removed from (and given to) editors using Special:UserRights. To "soft-block" a user, a sysop can simply revoke their membership in the editor group, which would mean that all of the user's edits to pages in ns:0 (articles) and ns:4 (Wikipedia:) would be set as pending if the page already has pending changes enabled.
An alternative could be to revisit the use of Wikipedia:Deferred changes. --DannyS712 (talk) 02:50, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
  • My understanding is that all new accounts are unconfirmed until they are at least four days old and have made ten edits. This means they are already limited in how they can edit any page which is protected, but can freely edit pretty much any non-protected page. It's the protection added to the page, which probably has nothing to do with these new editors, that restricts them from editing. What's not clear (at least to me) about this proposal is whether the OP wants to place some kind of restriction on all new editors or only those editors whose first few edits seem to be a problem.
    The first approach sort of sounds like a learner's permit for editing where the new accounts are allowed to edit, but only under supervision or review of some kind. I'd imagine that most people who edit for the first time expect their edits to go live when they press "Publish changes", but this would sort of be like requiring them to press "Propose changes" instead. Since Wikipedia encourages editors to be BOLD, it seems to understand and accepts that mistakes are going to be made, and hopes that these will eventually be caught and cleaned up by those more familiar with relevant policies and guidelines. This approach seems to limit BOLD to being applying to only after you've passed an entrance exam or completed an orientation of some kind.
    The second approach seems to be sort of like an "time out" or "teachable moment", where the edits are not enough of a problem to warrant perhaps a user warning or direct administrator involvement, but still require some kind of mild reprimand. The editor who made the good faith mistake gets limited access for some designated period of time or mumber of edits in the hope that they will learn from their mistake(s). This seems like it would be even harder to implement than a learner's permit approach because you're first going to have to determine how low is a "low-quality edit" (i.e. simple formatting or style errors, WP:RS error, BLP or copyright violation) and then determine who is going to explain why the edit was a problem. Are these editors going to all be required to participate in some Wikipedia re-education class where they will receive advice on how to edit properly? What if they don't want to? They might just stop editing altogether or decide to do so as an IP or different account.
    I think OP's proposal is well intended, but also seems like something which would have a hard time receiving the kind of support it would need from the community to be effectively implemented. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:00, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

It's worth considering something like this, at least. We should avoid hard blocks as much as possible. Benjamin (talk) 01:41, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

How do articles get to be on the recommended articles list? The current content seems to be very POV/random/restricted. If this is something coming out of Wikidata added by any old drive-by editor without going through any kind of process, then I don't think we should be advertising those pages as "recommended" on Wikipedia. SpinningSpark 14:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

If an article with a Wikidata item is marked as "recommended article" on a Wikipedia and this status is added to the Wikidata item, it appears there. "Recommended article" is a quality rating similar to "good article" or "featured article" that is used on some projects. Compare a page from the corresponding list for "featured article". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:00, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
So... are you saying that this is indeed yet another undiscussed integration of Wikidata into Wikipedia? (Not good)... Or was it fully discussed and approved by the Wikipedia community? (If so, please link the discussion). Blueboar (talk) 15:16, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
(after ec) Well that still hasn't answered my question of how the page gets so marked. The Wikidata page for "recommended article", Wikidata:Q17559452, shows Wikipedia having zero entries. The Wikidata page, Wikidata:Q22002916 for the first entry on the list at our Special pages, Bailey May, is not tagged with this property. In any case, the essential question here is what is the process for such tagging? It should be based on Wikipedia's own quality processes, such as the quality scale assessment, or Wikipedia:Vital articles. SpinningSpark 15:17, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
If the article isn't a "recommended article" in any language then it shouldn't be marked as such on Wikidata, similar to how one shouldn't tag an article here as "featured" if it hasn't passed FA(R)C. I don't know if there was any discussion. Wikidata:Q22002916 has a marker at the Portuguese Wikipedia entry, but you need to click on the badge icon to see it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: please give me an idiot's guide of how to find the badge icon, I'm not seeing it. So are you saying that articles marked as recommended on Portuguese Wikipedia are showing up as recommended on English Wikipedia? I don't think that's how it works for FAs or other badges, and it shouldn't work that way here. SpinningSpark 15:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
On Wikidata:Q22002916, go to the bottom of the page where there is a box titled "Wikipedia". There you can see a badge icon next to the "pt" entry. Turns out, when Myara K. updated the item in March they also changed the badge for enwiki even though it is not a recommended article here; I've rectified this. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:53, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. It sounds to me then, that enwiki does not use this system and that all the entries on the list are spurious and should be terminated with extreme prejudice. SpinningSpark 18:10, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I've removed the others. Job queue will take care of the rest. --Izno (talk) 18:53, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
They are still visible to me two days later. SpinningSpark 10:55, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Null editing the pages will correct the issue. --Izno (talk) 14:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I am totally confused... not only do I not understand how a page gets added to this list of “recommended articles” (is there some sort of nomination process?)... I can’t figure out how to challenge or remove an article from the list. Blueboar (talk) 11:50, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Blueboar: I'm guessing this is a server purging issue, but Bailey May did disappear from the list as soon as it was unchecked from the badge dropdown. Strange that the others haven't gone. SpinningSpark 15:20, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    The more I look into this, the more I get confused... so let’s go back to basics. Could someone please explain what the hell a “recommended article” actually IS? Is there any process for adding/removing an article to the list? Blueboar (talk) 16:20, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    If an article with a Wikidata item is marked as "recommended article" on a Wikipedia and this status is added to the Wikidata item, it appears there. "Recommended article" is a quality rating similar to "good article" or "featured article" that is used on some projects. Compare a page from the corresponding list for "featured article". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:00, 28 June 2019 (UTC) Right above. We don't use it so there should never be a page marked as "recommended article" on Wikidata for the English Wikipedia. --Izno (talk) 16:37, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    So this is a rating that is used on some of the other language Wikipedias? Blueboar (talk) 17:02, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
    Other projects possibly. I do not know which projects. --Izno (talk) 17:06, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

“Recommended article” status - misuse for promotional purposes?

And something else concerns me... currently, the "recommended articles" list has seven entries:
Hmmm... anyone else notice a pattern here? Seriously, this is a red flag to me... I strongly suspect that someone connected to these games is trying to use the "recommended article" tag to promote their game. Blueboar (talk) 12:35, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Bertaut is the editor who added the tags to Wikidata, for what it's worth. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Ok, thanks... Looking at the editor’s history, I think it’s a fan rather than an employee. Nevertheless, I hope you can see why I was concerned about the potential for promotional editing with this. Blueboar (talk) 13:55, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Oh, this struck me as typical of a fan as soon as I saw the names of the articles. --Izno (talk) 14:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I had notiiced. That's what pushed me into bringing this up in the first place, although I did not say so. A bigger question is why is Wikidata allowing their editors to manually assign badges that only the local Wiki can award? This data should be taken by bot from the badges or lists here on WP where the info is monitored. It makes me wonder if there is not a much more widespread problem. RA was easy to spot as we do not have that badge on enwiki, but the lists for FA and GA might be utterly corrupted for all anyone knows. Could someone skilled with AWB do a comparison for GA, FA, FL etc to highlight any problems? SpinningSpark 15:20, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
There are actually bots which do this. I don't know if such bots can also unflag items, though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:32, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Ah... so it may be used in sister projects like Wictionary or Wikivoyage (or whatever). Got it. Thanks for explaining. Sounds like we need to ask the folks over at WD to remove WP as an option for this. Blueboar (talk) 17:41, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Hi there. Yeah, holding my hands up, I'm guilty of using the recommended badge. But just to assuage your initial suspicions Blueboar, I have no connection whatsoever to Blue Byte or the games, as my history on here should attest. I can't even remember how I came to use the badge in the first place; I think it may already have been used on one of the titles, and I just thought it was a kind of "if you want more info, the best place is...". Never actually occurred to me that it was an equivalent of the GA/FA rating system we use on here, and thus required proper vetting. Although I'm fairly new to Wikidata, that's still my bad, and I'm glad you caught it. If I can answer any further questions, I'd recommend you...sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously though, just ping me or leave me a note on my talk. Cheers. Bertaut (talk) 02:44, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Shortcut prefixes and namespaces

Can I please have more eyes on Wikipedia talk:Shortcut#Shortcut prefixes and namespaces? That is, are there any restrictions (not expressed on the WP:SHORTCUT page) on shortcut creation? Thx CapnZapp (talk) 18:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Censoring talk page comments, pov editing of talk pages

This is a sock of Inowen (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki). TonyBallioni (talk) 03:38, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

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

My comments at Talk:Vaginoplasty#Clarification were censored, and the editor applies labels as to the reasons why. This is a kind of censorship from a pov, where he censors because he disagrees with my comments, which were on point and editorial about clarifying the language in the article. The article calls them "vaginas" when they are not actual vaginas.-ApexUnderground (talk) 20:37, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

  • This isn't the right place to discuss this. Furthermore, I agree with the user who hatted your comments. You haven't even made any edits to the article. SportingFlyer T·C 20:46, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
The comment is about the innacurate terminology in use in the article, and goes on to bring up a problem where the field is pseudoscientific but isn't described that way. That's two glaring problems with the article. Where is a central place to talk about this? -ApexUnderground (talk) 20:50, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Censorship involves omission or removal. Nothing has been omitted or removed.
  • If you wanted to make an issue of it, you could try filing a complaint at WP:ANI. Good luck with that. But this is not the venue for resolution of such disputes.
  • It's not like editors never read collapsed comments, and there is no strict prohibition against replying to them. If anything the Streisand effect comes into play, as it's human nature to wonder what's behind a closed door that says DO NOT ENTER. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:59, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • The collapsing of a comment is a kind of removal of the comment short of deleting it from the current version, or wiping it from the history. If there is a reason for doing so, it needs to be well-formed. In this case it isn't, and so it may be a matter for ANI, but that doesn't deal with the problem that a comment was collapsed for pov reasons.
  • Where is the proper place for discussion. The collapsing of the comment has interfered with the discussion of the article issues raised in article talk space. -ApexUnderground (talk) 22:19, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • There is no place for you to discuss this that will arrive at a conclusion that pleases you, since the collapsing of your comment was appropriate in the first place. And that's because it doesn't matter how ApexUnderground interprets words. That will have no effect on the article. All that matters is the terminology used by reliable sources. So unless you are presenting new sources that use different terminology, arguing that the existing sources are not being followed accurately, or at least arguing that existing sources are bad for some reason (NPOV, RS, etc), there is nothing to discuss. If you want to just ask for the purpose of learning, "why are these terms used?", well, you could try at the reference desk. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:03, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Someguy said: "There is no place for you to discuss this that will arrive at a conclusion that pleases you, since the collapsing of your comment was appropriate in the first place."
  1. There should be a place to discuss the topics I raised
  2. The collapsing of my comment was not "appropriate" as it was a kind of pov censorship.
The removal of comments needs to be done only when appropriate, and so there needs to be a review in this case. The question of whether there is system creep where pov individuals use comment removal as a tool of censorship has to be discussed. -ApexUnderground (talk) 01:46, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
The topics you raised were being raised without mention to specific sources or in regards to improving the encyclopaedia and were clearly WP:FORUM. You don't have a right to just talk about the topics on the talk pages, particularly the line: In addition, bear in mind that article talk pages exist solely to discuss how to improve articles; they are not for general discussion about the subject of the article, nor are they a help desk for obtaining instructions or technical assistance. Your absolute best bet is to drop this and move forward with improving the encyclopaedia, your next best bet is probably WP:ANI, but as others here have noted, it's unlikely to go well for you. SportingFlyer T·C 03:15, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
OK, some points. Two common and valid reasons for collapsing talk page comments are if the comment is very long, or if it's an off-topic digression from the main thrust of a thread. Neither apply here. Collapsing is not supposed to be done to indicate one's personal disagreement with the other editor's points. Hope we're clear on that.

Comments that are vandalism, trolling, unrelated to the article subject, unintelligable, etc. are not collapsed but removed; that also doesn't apply here in my opinion. If you want to remove the comments on the grounds that they are vdalism, trolling, unrelated to the article subject, unintelligable, etc., I suppose you could, or try anyway. I wouldn't recommend that, since they're not. They are objections to the lede sentences, with intelligible (if dubious) reasons given.

It's not usual to edit another person's talk page comments (which collapsing is a form of) except under particular circumstances, and since the editor objected, I undid the collapsing. I'd recommend either addessing the editors complaints on the merits -- shouldn't be hard, since they're pretty weak -- or just ignoring them, rather than more drama. Herostratus (talk) 03:33, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

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

Encyclopedic Mission

I am worried about the strident tone of the 'banners' that are now presented insistently to users. For example 'Wiki Loves Monuments', 'Holiday Photos', prize offerings, 'Gay Pride' etc. Dammit, we are an encyclopedia, not a pressure group, not social media, not a focus group. My hope is that some big beasts in Wikipedia will realise this and stop the nonsense — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnWheater (talk • contribs) 14:45, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

In an effort to improve the encyclopedia, the community often organizes drives/initiatives regarding particular topics. Right now it's LGBT topics. We have lots of encyclopedia articles on LGBT topics which need improvement and/or illustration. We also like to illustrate our encyclopedia articles on monuments, holidays, etc. There are events dedicated to creating articles of women, of Asian artists, of suffragists, etc. Today's article for improvement is Bookworm (insect). Sometimes we have contests on particular subjects, like military history, or general contests to improve article quality like the WikiCup. There's Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Science, Wiki Loves Love... On the sillier side, there was even an initiative (not one organized by the community) to upload pictures of pigeons. Over on Commons, this month's contests are on "geology" and "keys and keyholes." I'd like to think that the opposition to this particular drive I've seen in a few venues now is based on a misunderstanding of these initiatives (or broad objection to highlighting particular subjects) rather than thinking that encyclopedia articles on LGBT topics are a particular part of the encyclopedia unworthy of focus. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:21, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
The tone of the top comment is homophobic or anti-Gay. It's not often explained, but Gays have been the backbone of the Western world, and Wikipedia is honored to let Gay activists into its community and its offices to undo the hundreds of years of damage done by Christians and other homophobic groups. -ApexUnderground (talk) 21:04, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Well that latest comment from ApexUnderground is getting offensive, unlike the OP. Those top banners do get annoying, taking up space and attention for nothing, but at least there is an x to stop that one message from popping up, until the next one comes along. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:36, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
"but Gays have been the backbone of the Western world" OK, I'm about pro-LGTB activism as it get, but let's not get carried away with historical revisionism here. Gays have been the backbone of the Western World? Historically, they've been marginalized and kept out of power. You can certainly argue that Alan Turing contribution to Britain's war effort in WWII was rather important, but Turing was not the reason why the Allies won the war. Likewise, let's not hinge the very existence of Western Civilization on a minority that was historically oppressed by Western Civilisation. That's problematic for several reasons, both because it's not true, and because it whitewashes Western history of its problems. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
The replacement banner has changed, making it more clear that photographs rather than support is requested. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:40, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
And ApexUnderground blocked as a sock. - Sitush (talk) 11:45, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Feature American honors and not just the British honors

Going nowhere and proposer blocked as a sock - Sitush (talk) 11:47, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Its not fair that the British styles are featured prominently on the articles of famous Brits like The Corrs (sic) and unimperial nations are not featured on their celebrities. I suggest that Wikipedia feature titles from the American empire, for example in the case of Tiger Woods, AMF (American Medal of Freedom). -ApexUnderground (talk) 19:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

The Corrs are Irish. DuncanHill (talk) 19:22, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Quite. And I note that The Corrs have their British honour mentioned toward the end of the lead section and that Tiger Woods had his American honor listed in a similar position until the editor who asked this question added it to the first few words. This looks very much like trolling to me. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
It does look that way to me as well. --Izno (talk) 19:58, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

This is not trolling, and I ask you to withdraw the accusation. This is a formal proposal which asks that Wikipedia give formal honors bestowed by the United States the same representation as British honors are given. To not do so is favoritism to the British honors system. -ApexUnderground (talk) 20:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

A simple comparison of Google searches for "Sharon Helga Corr MBE" and "Tiger Woods AMF" should settle this question without further ado. In the vast expanses of the internet, Google couldn't find a single occurrence of latter aside from the Wikipedia article that you modified today.
Speedy close? ―Mandruss ☎ 20:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
This is the fallacy of argumentum ad Google.-ApexUnderground (talk) 20:06, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Argumentum ad WP:V. The world does not treat all awards like British styles, and neither should Wikipedia. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:07, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
But that argument is favoritism toward the British styles, and against all others. Wikipedia shouldn't be beholden to British styles in a disproportionately favoring way. Plus, let's say you are a British subject, its unfair that British subjects like you should put down the honors of the United States, and at the same time promote your national styles on Wikipedia. -ApexUnderground (talk) 20:16, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not lead, it follows—with a handful of unfortunate exceptions where activism has been allowed to prevail. BTW, I'm an American "subject". ―Mandruss ☎ 20:23, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Once again, before you made any edits, the article about Tiger Woods gave equal prominence to his American honor to the prominence of the British honour received by The Coors in their article. How is that in any way favoritism? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:27, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I believe they are referring to the individual BLPs, e.g. Andrea Corr. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:31, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Tiger Woods is an American, who has been given the highest honor in the American land. The Corrs aren't even British, they're Irish, and yet carry British honors, with what must be great stigma to them in their homeland. Wikipedia then places these foreign honors high, next to their names. -ApexUnderground (talk) 20:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Tyrus Raymond Cobb BHF
James Maitland Stewart DFC CdG AA
Bob Dylan NPL
No thank you. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:57, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Many Irish people are happy to accept British or American or French or whatever honours without there being any stigma attached. Only a minority of people harbor such ancient hatreds. Wikipedia simply reports things as they are - if post-nominals come along with honours then we use them, but if not we don't. It's pretty simple really when you look at things without nationalistic blinkers on. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
So you say "no thank you" to American honors, but British honors you say "fine" and that includes putting British honor tags on non-Brits. And you call my lack of praise for British honors "ancient hatreds" and say I'm the one who has "nationalistic blinkers on." You put forth some inherently contradictory statements. -ApexUnderground (talk) 21:18, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
The issue is that the British honours system confers post-nominal letters, while the American honours system does not. If you think that's unfair, take it up with the American government. We can't just invent post-nominals where they don't exist. Frickeg (talk) 21:19, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

This is not the British Wikipedia. It doesn't matter what the British 'honours' system "confers" or doesn't. Wikipedia has no owed allegiance to the British government or its "systems." The post-nominal titles convention is something of Wikipedia's option, which it may, and sometimes does, choose to confer on non-British titles as well. -ApexUnderground (talk) 22:02, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Maybe a simple solution would be to do like:

Adam Clayton (titles, born 17 January 1964)

Titles

with a "titles" label that links to a simple footnote at the bottom. -ApexUnderground (talk) 00:40, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Hyphens and Dashes

Question the first

Which method of dash insertion is preferred? A raw insertion ( — ), or an HTML character code ( &mdash; )?

MOS:DASH does not make this clear. GUYWAN ( t · c ) 16:10, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

I would have thought the raw insertion. There's even a blue link in the box at the bottom of the edit window, to enable this without finding the unicode shortcut. We don't want to be inserting HTML into pages unless necessary.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:16, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
There is no preference. The default monospace font for most Windows users doesn't make it obvious the difference between one straight line versus the other in wikitext, so some people prefer the explicit character reference rather than the Unicode version. In fact, I am pretty sure there is an {{mdash}} for a third way. --Izno (talk) 20:28, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Question the second

Also, the MOS states:

An em dash is always unspaced (without a space on either side):
Another "planet" was detected—but it was later found to be a moon of Saturn.
An en dash is spaced (with a space on each side) when used as sentence punctuation:
Another "planet" was detected – but it was later found to be a moon of Saturn.

Greenlighting two methods is just asking for trouble. Is this an American vs. British thing? Damn, I wish we could agree on something. GUYWAN ( t · c ) 16:10, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Greenlighting two methods is just asking for trouble. [...] Damn, I wish we could agree on something. I agree with that, but that's called compromise. Most Wikipedia guidelines are like that, and trouble we have. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:03, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I believe that this is more a case of individual style rather than an American vs. British thing—at least in British English I'm not aware of any preference for one usage over the other—but others – those who are expert in such matters – may know better than I do (and, anyway, I prefer to use brackets, which you may call parentheses, where possible). Phil Bridger (talk) 17:19, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I spent half an hour or more confused over this exact policy here. I would support changing to em dash—it's simply more readable to me—and perhaps other users. Perhaps grandfathering in en dash for current articles.--E.3 (talk) 14:41, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I see what you did there, Phil Bridger, and I am sufficiently impressed. (^^)v
Just to clarify, am I free to use whatever method I wish, as long as it's consistent within the article? I will assume this is so, until I am contradicted. GUYWAN ( t · c ) 16:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
On a minor point, "[]" are brackets, "()" are parentheses. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 18:47, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
When and where I was educated (a long time ago in England) "()" were certainly called brackets. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Well in 1960s England they weren't. For that matter neither were they in 1880s England, though that's not from memory but from song lyrics. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:16, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I beg to differ about 1960s England, but, anyway, such nostalgia, although it would be nice to have a fight discussion somewhere, is probably irrelevant to this discussion. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Question the third

There appear to be many articles in which a hyphen ( - ) is incorrectly used in place of an em dash (or en dash). Example: Enuma Elis. A bot may be needed to convert this incorrect usage to one of the accepted usages. But which one? Perhaps this is the problem. Flip a coin, I say. GUYWAN ( t · c ) 16:10, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

So, regardless of how this discussion "ends" - expect hyphens to persist, as they are on keyboards.... — xaosflux Talk 16:53, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Also, I would be wary of deploying a bot to deal with the "problem". It might make mistakes, and render things worse than they are, or incorrect. Better to let the Gnomes and AWB handle it, as they always have. It's not a major deal if there are places where the MOS isn't fully applied.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:19, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
This is a regular request and is usually shot down as a WP:CONTEXTBOT. --Izno (talk) 20:29, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I occasionally see this pointed out in discussions - and it's probably the MOS guideline I ignore the most. This definitely feels like a solution in search of a problem. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:02, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Guywan you may be interested in Greg's dash script, which does this. Running it is barely any more work than clicking edit, so I often just run it as part of an ordinary edit. I've only seen a couple of problems in all the times – certainly hundreds, possibly thousands – that I've run it. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 05:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: That's a fine nugget of wisdom right there. Touché, touché.
@Amakuru: The possibility of false positives; I suppose this is something that must be amended on a case-by-case basis.
@Adrian J. Hunter: I see someone has beat me to it! That tool may come in handy. Thank you, kindly. GUYWAN ( t · c ) 16:34, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Rename "Articles for Deletion" to "Articles for depublication"

The outcome of this discussion is clear. There is no appetite for such a change at this time. bd2412 T 20:28, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

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

This proposal is related to the perennial proposal to rename Articles for Deletion, however it is not a procedural change.
The usual reason for the perennial proposal is in order to seem less confrontational, especially to newcomers, and to align with forums such as redirects for discussion. The perennial proposal received widespread support in 2009 but not implemented due to inertia and procedural issues.
Wikipedia is a publisher, as reminded by the Foundation's legal department that every time we create an edit, we are publishing. I propose that the AfD process remains the same, and it is renamed "Articles for depublication". I suspect that this will bring down the tone of deletion debates, especially for newcomers. This will have the same effect as shown in the perennial proposal - namely "Users should be made aware of the very real possibility that the article will in fact be depublished at the end of the discussion (the result for perhaps three-quarters of nominated articles)".
Similarly articles for speedy deletion could be renamed Articles for speedy depublication. I have requested comment from the Article Rescue Squadron here.--E.3 (talk) 13:23, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Is there any evidence of this causing an actual problem? Triptothecottage (talk) 13:41, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I have long thought that "articles for discussion" (in line with TFD and FFD) is vastly preferable to "articles for deletion". It is more accurate, more consistent, and less intimidating. However, this has repeatedly failed to gain consensus. I believe I was personally the last one to formally propose it, sometime in the past year or two, though I'd be hard pressed to find the actual thread. GMGtalk 13:54, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @GreenMeansGo: I agree that "articles for discussion" is an option, but previous consensus was "Users should be made aware of the very real possibility that the article will in fact be depublished or deleted at the end of the discussion (the result for perhaps three-quarters of nominated articles)".
  • I am happy to use myself as an example here in 2009, article kept but I didn't continue contributing. In 2018 when I restarted my article was first nominated for speedy deletion and then nominated for deletion here. The resulting article is now GA aiming for FA but needed improvement, but this discussion resulted in me requesting an enforced wiki break here.
  • There is an off wiki blog here about some reasons for women not contributing here which we are all aware of, noting deletion as a concern.
  • However, the consensus as far as I understand in 2009 was to consider rename I am simply proposing "depublication", as a less confrontational term. I have previously noted that deletion IMHO is a very strong word, and unnecessary when there is a more "grown-up" alternative as wikipedia becomes more respected a publication. --E.3 (talk) 14:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Just going to point out the "FFD" used to be "Files for deletion" because there was basically just two outcomes: "delete" or "keep" when it came to the files discussed there. However, after WP:NFCR and WP:PUF were incorporated into FFD a few years back, the "D" was changed to "discussion" because now there were more possibilities since NFCR and PUF didn't really deal with file deletions, but rather file removal or relicensing. Anything involving deletion was usually sent to the old FFD for review. -- Marchjuly (talk) 14:07, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't think language is the problem with AFD being confrontational, it's structural. So long as we have a compulsory process that presumes a binary outcome, whatever you call that (keep/keep published, delete/depublish), it will function the same way. What we need more than euphemisms is more effective enforcement of WP:BEFORE or WP:ATD to hopefully discourage AFD from being a first stop for resolving issues. All too often I see that there has been a complete failure to even attempt talk page discussion prior to a nomination, which is really poor practice not only when it's a page by a brand new editor, but also in the many AFDs where the issue really is how best to organize content, or requires subject-matter familiarity to resolve. postdlf (talk) 14:48, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I think "depublish" would just cause confusion because it doesn't have a clear meaning to most people. Even for those who are familiar with the term in an academic or legal context, it doesn't mean to "remove from view and make publicly inaccessible" in the way that deletion of an article functionally does. postdlf (talk) 15:27, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Is there anything inheritly wrong with simply: "articles for discussion" similar to other discussions? Depublication would mean draftify, soft delete, hard delete, userfy, but I've also seen AfD end with "stubify" and "redirect" which aren't really depublications. The only issue as far as I can see, is that technically something like a move discussion is also similar to this, so it would need to be noted that moves and discussion aren't at the same platform. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:54, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Lee Vilenski: I do not see anything inherently wrong with "articles for discussion" at all. However consensus previously was that new users need to be aware that a very real outcome could be deletion/depublication. However, this could be addressed in the template to the author. Something like "Possible outcomes for this discussion could be: 1. Depublication and/or moving to your user space 2. Stubify 3. Redirect or 4. Keeping the article etc. This would require a lot of back end structural changes, perhaps with the tone of enwiki at the present moment, it might be time! I support either option. --E.3 (talk) 15:16, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose and speedy close this is a non-issue. AfD is for deletion. We have processes that work better for other types of discussions. “Depublication” is a clunky word that sounds silly and I’m not even sure what it entails. In short, there is zero reason for a name change and no reasonable alternates have been proposed anyway. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:23, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • "Discussion" seems much more appropriate to me; "Depublication" is just a euphemism. "Discussion" is simply more accurate: articles on AfD are not "for deletion", because no decision has been taken that they should be deleted. At the point they are in AfD, they have simply been nominated for a discussion on whether they should remain on Wikipedia. Yes, messages relating to the process should be clear that deletion is a possible outcome, but "Articles for deletion" or "for depublication" unfairly implies that the article is currently designated to be deleted, which is not the case. Words aren't everything, but they do help set the tone of debate. TSP (talk) 15:27, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose; I don't think the change would help. I would agree that "articles for discussion" would be better, and I think the TfD approach of holding mergers at the same venue might also be useful here (as far as I'm aware, participation in article merger discussions is usually very low and they can be left open for years). Jc86035 (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • OK since several editors and myself having been swayed by this discussion prefer "articles for discussion" can we have that as a potential consensus option for this proposal? Or should myself or a more experienced editor open a new proposal? Thanks for everyones thoughts! --E.3 (talk) 15:37, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • No. It’s a perennial proposal that’s voted down at least once a year. The odds of it getting through this time are slim to none as well. If you want to rename it that, you should start a proposal a new proposal, likely at WT:AFD. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:25, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • OK I'll do research on all the previous discussions, and put it in a new proposal here, as it seems @Jc86035:, @Lee Vilenski:, @Marchjuly:, @GreenMeansGo: @TSP: and myself seem favourably disposed to articles for discussion in this short proposal, as consensus was in 2009. Hopefully we can push through the inertia and technical issues this time, consensus doesn't seem strongly against, just inertia for the status quo to me! --E.3 (talk) 16:42, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • This isn’t just a 2009 thing. It’s a constant proposal that never achieves consensus. The reason for that is because it’s completely pointless make work that confuses processes and would cause significantly more disruption to the project for no added benefit. It is usually snow opposed. The reason it hasn’t been yet is that you included a weird title, not the standard change title. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:49, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I mean, I am strongly in favor of a rename, but I don't have any illusions that such a proposal would gain consensus. Even if it did, it would require an immense amount of work to implement, and I doubt either you or I really understand how much would need to be done . There's nothing stopping you from opening a new discussion of course, but you shouldn't be disappointed if it is quickly closed. All in all, it'd probably be more productive if we just did something else with our day entirely. GMGtalk 17:21, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose pointless euphemism. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:23, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm not voting for anything that's not the old proposal "Articles to yell at each other over." In seriousness, this is pointless. SportingFlyer T·C 17:56, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose It ain't broke. MarnetteD|Talk 18:18, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Pointless semantics. —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 18:26, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm all for making the process less confrontational, but I'm not convinced that moving to a euphemistic name whilst keeping the same deletion focussed process would take us in the right direction. ϢereSpielChequers 18:33, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as it needs to be made clear that an article could be deleted, also changing to discussion is wishy washy and would resultt in a time sink of nominations that want to discuss issues that belong on the article's talk page imv Atlantic306 (talk) 19:37, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Kudos for trying to remove some of the nastiness but oppose I think that title wording is a minor aspect. The standard conversation is rough at an AFD, plus there is a general attitude that the author is somehow a beneficiary of the article being allowed to exist and has to fight for it accordingly rather than it being treated as a contribution to Wikipedia. Of course some of this comes from the fact that many articles are promotional or due to paid editing. Plus "de-publication" sounds confusing. Maybe "Articles for status discussion" ? North8000 (talk) 20:24, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Guideline: Avoid Plus-One-More-Thing lists

Representative examples can be useful to aid understanding a topic but this can never include all possible examples. Nevertheless, it's easy to add the one more example that a user cares about. Each individual user is acting in good faith but the resulting article decreases in quality.

In the article on weight training is this Plus-One-More-Thing list.

Sports where strength training is central are bodybuilding, weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman, highland games, hammer throw, shot put, discus throw, and javelin throw. Many other sports use strength training as part of their training regimen, notably: American football, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, lacrosse, mixed martial arts, rowing, rugby league, rugby union, track and field, boxing and wrestling.

The examples are not wrong but they do not help the reader.

I suggest a content guideline to avoid these ad-hoc lists. --TomCerul (talk) 15:07, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

  • I believe there are already guidelines to this effect. There's WP:NOTDIRECTORY generally and MOS:SEEALSO and MOS:NAVLIST more specifically. However, I agree that it's a good idea in principle and would not oppose any attempt to make it a more specific section of the Manual of Style. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 06:15, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
  • In the specific example chosen, the phrase "notably" should necessitate that each of the list items be supported by a citation, either individually or collectively. I think that a guideline could include the need for individual or collective support by reliable sources. Further, a limit could be imposed (say, 5 items) with expansive lists beyond this value relegated to an article note (either in References or Notes section). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:41, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
  • @TomCerul: Just to clarify, are you suggesting a guideline to avoid creating lists that could grow out of control this way? Or a guideline that says If you see a list of a few representative examples like this, resist the temptation to tack on one more example just because? Colin M (talk) 19:21, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
    • @Colin M: I'd say that 2 - 3 examples can be helpful but I encourage people to limit the total number of examples in a list. If the only change being made is adding yet another item to a list, it's probably not a helpful edit. TomCerul (talk) 14:23, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I normally cite the essay Wikipedia:Example cruft when paring example farms.—Bagumba (talk) 14:59, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Petition to allow Fram to defend themself

Please join in asking the Wikipedia Arbitration committee to allow editors with advanced permissions the opportunity to participate in their own defense when accused of harassment. Thank you. EllenCT (talk) 18:24, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

RfC: An alternative version of the lead sentence to the lead in SNC-Lavalin affair

Request for input at article page. I didn't post the RfC here. I posted information for interested parties. Sorry for the confusion.Littleolive oil (talk) 15:49, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Gender identity addition at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography

We could use more opinions at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Gender identity section. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:02, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Political bias in Wikipedia must stop

From the top of the page: "The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines." This isn't a proposal, please come back if you want to discuss changes to our policies or guidelines. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:30, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

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

When it comes to politically charged subjects, Wikipedia is ridiculously and clearly biased, and biased to one side of the political spectrum only. When it comes to people, groups or movements that the extreme left opposes and detests, the Wikipedia pages for those subjects consist of pretty much nothing else than endless lists of mostly irrelevant minutia, which purpose is quite clearly nothing more than to meticulously collect ammunition for political activism. These articles tend to be excessively long, and put completely undue weight and emphasis on irrelevant minutia which consists pretty much exclusively of negative traits and events related to the subject in question. For example, just check the articles for Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gamergate, or Incel, and see exactly what I'm talking about. (Consider that for example in the Gamergate article the word "threat" appears 82 times, and the word "harassment" a whopping 121 times. This is clearly excessive and unnecessary.) They are pretty much nothing but example after example after example of irrelevant minutia, to use as political ammunition against the person or group. They are essentially smearing campaigns. Donald Trump even has several distinct pages that are nothing more than such lists, meticulously collected, full of irrelevant minutia. Quite conspicuously, and tellingly, no such lists exist for people, groups or movements that the extreme left likes. For them, their articles are significantly more neutral, and full of positive traits and adulation. And even when there's something objectionable or controversial about the subject, it's usually mentioned only briefly, and sandwiched between positive traits. It couldn't be clearer that there's a heavy political bias in Wikipedia.

The sources used for all this are often notoriously and famously politically biased, but that doesn't matter. Using biased sources for all this is official Wikipedia policy. Editors don't care if the sources are notoriously biased, they are still used. Many editors will use the excuse of "the articles simply reflect what's being talked about in mainstream media" and "the neutrality rules only apply to editors, not sources". Except that their personal biases still shine through, for example in the decisions they make on what details to include and what not, and the wording and order in which these details are presented. In other words, there's heavy bias in editorializing the content. As an example, the "sandwiching" rhetoric technique is heavily used: If the subject is someone the extreme left likes, when presenting negative traits or criticism about the subject in question, it will be sandwiched between positive traits. If the subject is someone the extreme left hates, any positive characteristics or achievements will be sandwiched between negative traits and criticism. Such positive traits almost never appear on their own, without being immediately preceded and followed by negative traits (often in the very same paragraph). The amount of article space dedicated to negative traits and controversies will be significantly higher for subjects that the extreme left hates than it is for subjects that they like. This choice of content, structure and presentation, and the difference in this kind of writing depending on the person or group, cannot be attributed to any sources, and are purely a decision made by editors.

Do not even bother trying to deny the quite clear and evident political bias in Wikipedia, which is amply clear to anybody who compares these articles. The only question is what exactly will it take to stop this bias from happening. For a more in-depth examination of this political bias, see my user page. Wopr (talk) 15:41, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Reality has a well-known liberal bias. Also is this where I chortle at Milo, Trump, etc. being people that only the "extreme left" dislikes? Speaking of bias, mate. --Golbez (talk) 15:55, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
The phrase "extreme left" appears five times in the above screed. The term "left" does not appear without it; the term "right" does not appear at all. --Golbez (talk) 15:56, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
It's also not even true; we have lots of articles about Donald Trump because he's the President of the United States and there's a lot to say about him. If you look at high-profile people the extreme left does like you'll find exactly the same "List of allegations against…" articles; go rooting round through Category:Hugo Chávez or Category:Jeremy Corbyn for a few minutes. ‑ Iridescent 16:02, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
The plural of minutia (singular) is minutiae. Oculi (talk) 16:20, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
My objection was not to the number of articles, but to the content and purpose of those articles. For example, what is the purpose of an entire separate page with endless lists of individual popularity ratings for Trump, especially given that no other president has such a page? Does it exist just to show all those red rectangles? And how many other politicians have an entire separate page meticulously listing all the "false statements" that they have made? There are plenty of politicians out there that have made false statements, yet they don't get their own separate Wikipedia page meticulously listing them. Quite clearly the existence of these pages, which are quite unique and pretty much don't exist for any other person in the world, serve a political purpose, and have been created by Wikipedia editors for purposes of smearing. Wopr (talk) 16:35, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Feel better now? O3000 (talk) 16:05, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Much is made of statistics on the relative number of women and men editing Wikipedia. Are there any similar statistics available for left-wing and right-wing editors? I don't see anything on Ideological bias on Wikipedia. Haukur (talk) 16:28, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
And why am I not surprised that this was immediately locked? Wikipedia editors do not like their political biases being discussed. How typical. The fact is that there is no place in Wikipedia where this could be discussed because editors do not want to discuss their own biases, and any discussion will be immediately stifled. Wopr (talk) 16:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
It was locked because it is totally off topic to what this page is supposed to be used for. Rather than rant at Wikipedia as a whole, choose a specific policy or guideline to discuss or propose your own. This isn't a place for WP:SOAP. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:40, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Replacing a low-resolution JPEG screenshot image with a higher resolution PNG

thumb I recently uploaded this screenshot to replace an earlier one at The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(video_game) because the former was such low resolution that it couldn't be read. This one was created by me at the exact same place in the game being run on Unix Frotz, with better resolution, and smaller file size, but is otherwise identical to the older image. I tried to change the name of the file's extension from .jpg to .png, but it seems that when editing a FILE, one cannot do this. Therefore I uploaded a new file, set a speedy-delete on the old one, and notified the original uploader. Today I got a message from that uploader telling me that I did it wrong:

You don't speedily delete the entire page, losing the history. You just reduce the size of the image and replace it on the same page, like this. —Prhartcom♥ 11:43, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

So then I looked back at the file I marked for deletion and it had been deleted. Did I really do this wrong? I'm not clear how what's being pointed to is "right". How can I do this sort of thing better? There are several other Infocom game screenshots that I'd like to improve. -- Frotz(talk) 19:44, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with that. Yes, you could have used a higher res JPG and overwritten, but that's a lot of extra bits where PNG for the type of rendering gives a smaller file size. I do not think that with File space we are as considered with contribution history particularly with NFC in play. --Masem (t) 19:52, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion of interest

A discussion of interest to those who frequent this page can be found here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:45, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:List of policies and guidelines#Status of WP:Office actions and WP:Bureaucrats

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:List of policies and guidelines#Status of WP:Office actions and WP:Bureaucrats. —⁠andrybak (talk) 22:30, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Notifications being deleted

Per this discussion, which it seems was just a de-facto announcement, older notifications are being deleted from the database. This means we are losing historical records of thanks, for example.

Technical justification seems handwavy at best, I think this is something that should have had full community input.

Anyone from WMF who can comment, or assist? Anyone in the community who feels, as I do, that this is a bad idea? Or a good one?

@Quiddity (WMF), Ricordisamoa, Ottawahitech, and Trizek (WMF):

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 07:59, 11 July 2019 (UTC).

Your comparison to page history is false equivalence; not all records need to be kept forever. In six years I've never had a need for as many as 20 most recent notifications, so I can probably make do with 2,000. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:27, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Well then, you could have a preference to allow them to be deleted. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:14, 11 July 2019 (UTC).
Why would deleting the notifications lose historical records of thanks? The thanks log doesn't need to be affected. —Kusma (t·c) 14:24, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
That's useful, and not something the developers seemed aware of. but even here, I can no longer see what the thanks were for. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:14, 11 July 2019 (UTC).
I don't see any need to retain them indefinitely anyway. With article contribution history, it's necessary, for CC-BY-SA purposes of attribution and also a record of article development, that contributions be retained permanently. I don't see any similar need for notifications to be retained forever; the underlying edit is still there. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:20, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
In fact, I think they should go further and just give us a button already to delete notifications ourselves (only notifications to one's own account, of course). Someguy1221 (talk) 21:50, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I have no problem with that, in fact I suggested it above, however it's not "further" it is "different".
Deleting thanks is a bit like deleting barnstars, IMHO. If the recipient can and there's a record, that's fine. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:40, 14 July 2019 (UTC).

Code Examples

Is there a Wikipedia policy regarding the usage of example code in computer science-related articles? For example, Anonymous function#Examples seems to contain an excessive amount of code. I haven't been able to find one, so this is my proposal:

  1. The example code and discussion thereupon should not exceed the size of the rest of the article combined.
  2. Examples should be limited to a few 'well known' implementations. For example, when talking about anonymous functions, lambda calculus is 'well known', because it introduced the anonymous function, and Lisp because it was the first programming language to implement anonymous functions.
  3. Examples should introduce Encyclopedic Value™. This is somewhat subjective but let me define it as something new and interesting that has not been discussed within the article yet.

GUYWAN ( t · c ) 22:32, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

This is a good observation. I think the simplest solution here would be to split that section into a separate article Comparison of programming languages (anonymous functions), in the style of e.g. Comparison of programming languages (associative array) and other articles listed at Template:Programming language comparisons. I would tend to agree with you that these long directories of example code per language are questionably 'encyclopedic', but it seems like there may be some consensus to keep them, and as long as they're in a separate article, they're not getting in anyone's way. BTW, you might get more responses if you bring this up at WikiProject Computer science or WikiProject Computing. Colin M (talk) 16:32, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
No, that would not be a notable topic. Many articles (even hello world) have attracted exhaustive lists where each item is added by an enthusiast for that language. I have seen several cases where the lists where severely pruned. Johnuniq (talk) 23:12, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Well if you want to nominate Comparison of programming languages (associative array), Comparison of programming languages (list comprehension), Comparison of programming languages (object-oriented programming) etc. for deletion, you know where to find them. I wouldn't object - I'm just trying to read (local) consensus. The hello world examples are an interesting case - looks like there was a list article that got transwiki'd to Wikibooks. Maybe that option would make the deletion of these pages more palatable. Colin M (talk) 18:43, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Strategy Survey

At best indirectly policy-related, but likely of interest to those who follow this page. I stumbled across this on a project talk page and thought it warranted wider publicity. As part of the Wikimedia Movement Strategy process, nine distinct working groups are running surveys of the broader Wikimedia communities on areas that are likely of interest to all of us on enwiki.

The surveys are located here. The working groups, and topic areas being surveyed, are: Advocacy, Capacity Building, Community Health, Diversity, Partnerships, Product & Technology, Resource Allocation, Revenue Stream, Roles & Responsibilities.

I know the dates here make it sound like this is over already, but a working group member indicated that at least the Community Health one, and it sounds like all of them, will be open till next Friday.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:42, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I tried to click on one of the links, & nothing happened. If they extended the period to gather responses, someone apparently wasn't told & has disabled them. -- llywrch (talk) 21:05, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
@Llywrch: Having selected one or more topics, did you then click on the "next" arrow bottom right? Not the most intuitive user interface! PamD 04:43, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
No, it is far from an intuitive user interface. Thank you for the hint. I hope this design decision is discussed at length with the person responsible for it at their next employee review. -- llywrch (talk) 05:56, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
I was bemused about that at first, too. There are some seriously off-the-wall ideas being tested there, eg as currently being discussed at User talk:Iridescent#Diversity survey. - Sitush (talk) 06:38, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
From the reply to Opabinia regalis's post on Meta, the "surveys" will remain open until the end of July. SusunW (talk) 18:19, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Diff for the record. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:57, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Appalling web design. I would never have thought to select a link at the top of a page and activate it through a button at the bottom of the page below the fold. Where is this system in general use? One would think they are trying to avoid getting responses while being able to claim they were consulting the communities. But we should not ascribe to malice things which are adequately explained by incompetence. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 13:13, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Using complex footnote formats to wall out the ability of other editors to participate

Recently I have come across an editor who appears to be using very sophisticated reference formats that make it impossible to add new material to various parts of the entry. I typically use the basic "<ref>" format. The entry used the simple format throughout for quite a long time. However once the complex format was launched, it became almost impossible to use the simple format! I have spent quite a few hours attempting to understand what is going on and how to work with it, but so far I haven't been able to decipher what is going on..The format allows the editor to insert long quotes that support his POV inside the references. Neurorel (talk) 23:57, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

The relevant policy is WP:CITEVAR. Could you indicate an example of this? Perhaps I can help. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:06, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
I assume this refers to V. S. Ramachandran? The article appears to have been referenced with a mixture of {{cite}} and non-template cites for quite a while, so there does not seem to be an "article style" to conserve. What HouseOfChange is doing is making use of the "quote" parameter in that template, which is entirely legitimate in principle. There's nothing preventing you from continuing to use the basic plaintext reference style. Not pronouncing on any content and/or POV issues here; this looks like an article to stay away from unless one wants to join the battle. -Elmidae (talk · contribs) 02:39, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks to @Elmidae: for pinging me about this complaint. I would be grateful if anybody wanted to "join" the dispute over whether WP:RS or WP:OR is a better way to edit a BLP. @Neurorel: Quotes are meant to add information, usually by pulling out a piece of the article text that verifies the item being cited. Templates are available for anybody to use at Template:Cite_web and Template:Cite journal. You are also free to keep using a different format if you prefer it. HouseOfChange (talk) 03:00, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
(EC) In general, you can add citations in whatever format you feel comfortable adding them. If someone wants to bring things in line with the established format, that's great, but they can't revert a valid addition just because it's not in the same format they want to use.
That's like reverting someone for writing "Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (born 12 April 1965) is politician involved in the labor movement" because it's labour in UK English, not labor. The solution is to bring things in line with the variant of English used in the rest of the article.
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:07, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Yup, that. If you want to add new, appropriate, sourced material to an article: just do it. But then don't fight afterwords with someone adjusting the technical aspects of how the sourced citation appears unless you have a good understanding of what is going on there. — xaosflux Talk 15:26, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Is the problem with the citation style... or with the quotes that are included in the citations? I ask because I get suspicious whenever I see lots of quotes in citations... that practice is often a red flag that material is being taken out of context to support a POV. Blueboar (talk) 16:48, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm not convinced that Neurorel's summary of affairs is entirely complete: checking some diffs from the past week, I see he has also extended quotes from sources (albeit in blockquotes rather than using the "quote" parameter of CS1 citation templates) [3], so this is not a one-sided struggle where one party can add lengthy quotes and the other can't. There's clearly an ongoing debate between the two editors over how to assess Ramachandran and various incidents of his career. I don't see evidence that HouseOfChange has been using CITEVAR to revert constructive contributions by Neurorel, or has objected to Neurorel's additions on the grounds of citation formatting. I do share Blueboar's concern that extended use of quotations is a troubling sign, but this may partly be a function of the back-and-forth that's going on over the article (i.e., quotations are included so that the other party can't misrepresent the source). I don't know whether or not Neurorel is correct that the article is overly favorable towards its subject, but some of his contributions are troubling, most egregiously [4]; Quora should not be treated as an acceptable source to gauge the critical reception of a living subject's work. Choess (talk) 22:12, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

The problem has disappeared! Perhaps, I was repeatedly doing something incorrectly. Sometimes working on Wikipedia can be exhausting. Thanks for the discussion. Wikipedia is a great gift to the world of knowledge and information. Everyone who contributes to it should be proud.Neurorel (talk) 23:48, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Portal Guidelines

There are two discussions going on below that sprang out from this section. Comments should be made there so that discussion doesn't get split up. Wug·a·po·des​ 05:17, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

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

Some of you may be aware that there is discussion in progress about the status of the Portal Guidelines. The current guidelines, or something similar, have at least appeared to be in effect since 2006. However, as User:SmokeyJoe has observed at the portal guideline talk page, they were never approved. They have been used as if they were approved portal guidelines for more than a decade, and so an argument can be made that they have been grandfathered into place. However, about two months ago, some of the advocates of portals proposed that the guidelines be suspended, or at least that some provisions of the guidelines be suspended, because they were ”weaponizing” portal deletion. The key sentence in the guideline (or proposed guideline, or failed guideline, or whatever) says that portals should be about broad subject areas that will attract readers and portal maintainers. Portal advocates have traditionally claimed that particular subjects, such as countries, or states of countries, or popular TV shows or performers, are broad subject areas, but more recently other editors have been using quantitative techniques to argue that some portals are not satisfying that criterion, because they are not attracting readers and maintainers. Okay. So we now don’t know whether we have any real portal guidelines.

I think that a Request for Comments with centralized discussion is needed to establish or re-establish accepted portal guidelines. I will be discussing here unless I am advised that there is a better venue for the discussion.

I propose that the community be asked to choose between perhaps three or four alternate portal guidelines. The first is simply to re-affirm the existing guidelines. At least one editor has proposed downgrading or archiving all portals except those linked from the Main Page. It appears that there is significant disagreement on regional portals. Some editors think that portals should be standard for countries and for first-level national subdivisions (states or provinces). I would like to identify two or three alternative sets of portal guidelines within the next week and start a Request for Comments that will run for 30 days and be binding on the community. This will not necessarily change the rate at which portals are being nominated for deletion, but a consensus establishing portal guidelines in 2019 should rationalize what is now a chaotic process.

Comments?

Proposals for alternate portal guidelines?

Robert McClenon (talk) 03:58, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

In 2018 there were about 1500 portals. WP:ENDPORTALS, whilst it did not exempt every single portal from deletion, found a strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals at this time. Many more portals were created, many on narrow topics and containing errors, but almost all of those were soon deleted and need no longer figure in our deliberations. The deletion process then turned to existing portals. Although the rate has slowed, we are now down to 919 portals and losing about eight more each day. WikiProject Portals is dominated by editors who !voted to remove the entire namespace, a situation which one commentator likened to a Republican running a Democrats' conference. Their proposals include reducing the number of portals to eight, and unlinking all portals to make them orphan pages. I agree that it is time to seek the community's views on these developments. Certes (talk) 07:54, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
It is quite extraordinary that after all this time, Certes and a few other editors continue to wilfully misrepresent the WP:ENDPORTALS RFC.
The decision there was very simple. Editors were asked a single crude binary question: whether they supported the immediate deletion of all portals. The answer was was no: do not delete all portals now.
That in no way amounts to a consensus to keep all or even most portals. It was simply a rejection of compete and indiscriminate abolition. It does not preclude a case-by-examination of portals, even if the outcome of that case-by-case review was to reduce the total to zero. (Note: I would oppose zero. I just not that it is not precluded by ENDPORTALS).
This is such a basic matter of logic that I believe that editors like Certes who keep trotting it out are either
  1. being deeply and brazenly and repeatedly dishonest, or
  2. have spectacularly poor comprehension abilities.
Either way, it's long past time for them to stop wasting the community's time with this utter nonsense.
As the Certes's moan that WikiProject Portals is dominated by editors who !voted to remove the entire namespace, lord help us. If there is any policy anywhere that only editors with a particular point of view are allowed to participate in a WikiProject, then please identify it. It would be a new one to me, so I'd welcome the revelation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:54, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
It is not my intention to moan, nor to wilfully misrepresent. I admit that WP:ENDPORTALS did not explicitly rule out deleting 99.4% of portals; nor did it rule out removing incoming links to hide them from readers. However, I hope most editors will agree that such actions would not be in the spirit of last year's consensus. As for wikiprojects, I cannot think of another whose participants are there mainly to delete the pages in their custody. For example, WP:WikiProject Donald Trump should welcome pro- and anti-Trump editors, but not those who seek to minimise Wikipedia's coverage of Trump. Certes (talk)
  • [ec] Portal guidelines must reflect the purpose of portals, which is currently poorly defined and open to conflicting interpretations, which are the cause of most of the drama. If we (the community) had a common understanding of what portals are for, we could work together to describe how to do it. That common understanding does not exist. Creating portal guidelines should follow deciding on a useful and clearly delineated function for portals. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 08:06, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment – Extensive ongoing discussion has been occurring at Wikipedia talk:Portal/Guidelines regarding the Portal guidelines. In my view, opinions and views there should also be fully considered. North America1000 13:16, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, Peter Southwood. I agree that a discussion of the purpose of portals is appropriate. I am trying to get that discussion in progress. As Northamerica1000 says, there is discussion going on at the portal guideline talk page, although it isn't productive. If there is agreement that the discussion should take place there, I am fine with that, but it should get to the purpose and objectives of portals rather than just restating the same complaints, and should focus on developing an RFC with a few options for portal guidelines to reflect some idea of the purpose and rationale for portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:17, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

I think that Robert McClenon raises some important issues, but misses the fundamental question posed by Peter Southwood: what is the purpose of portals?

So far as I can see, the main purpose of portals has for years been very simple: to entertain the small group of editors who like making portals.

Nearly all of the existing portals are shunned by readers: see the viewing figures for the month of June 2019, when only 51 out of 904 portals averaged 100 or more pageviews per day. A further 94 portals received between 50 and 99 daily views. The remaining 759 portals received less than 50 views per day. In nearly every case, the head article for the topic received between 100 times as many views to 2000 times as many views a the portal.

The lesson is clear: the vast majority of portals serve no significant purpose for readers. Discussion at WT:WPPORT has for years been focused on the supply-side: how to create portals, how maintain them, and how to oppose deletion. These discussions almost entirely omit the very simple fact that readers do not use them.

This has been reflected at MFD, where objections to deletion overwhelmingly come from the editors who create or edit portals, rather than from editors who have identified a use for them. I have almost never seen any such discussion joined by an IP who says something like "hey, I'm a reader and I use this portal".

The dominant model of portal in current used consists of sets of content-forked subpages, with one item from each set displayed at any one time. Alternatives are available only through the unbelievably crude mechanism of purging the page.

This model of portal is absurd, in multiple ways:

  1. These forked subpages are nearly always unreferenced, contrary to WP:V.
  2. The content forks are mostly unmaintained. I have encountered many sets of them which have not been touched for over ten years, so they will a'most always represent an outdated view of the topic.
  3. These content forks are largely unwatched, do they are a vector for vandalism. I have encountered several cases where these subpages have been edited to display wholly irrelevant topics; they could just as easily be used as attack vectors.
  4. It offers readers no overview of the list of topics available. Either take what you are given, or do a lucky dip. Rinse and repeat without even any indication of how many pages are included in the cycle.

Two newish features of the Wikimedia software means that the article and navboxes offers all the functionality which portals like this set out to offer. Both features are available only to ordinary readers who are not logged in, but you can test them without logging out by right-clicking on a link, and the select "open in private window" (in Firefox) or "open in incognito window" (Chrome).

  1. mouseover: on any link, mouseover shows you the picture and the start of the lead. So the preview-selected page-function of portals is redundant: something almost as good is available automatically on any navbox or other set of links. Try it by right-clicking on this link to Template:Mumbai topics, open in a private/incognito tab, and mouseover any link.
  2. automatic imagery galleries: clicking on an image brings up an image gallery of all the images on that page. It's full-screen, so it's actually much better than a click-for-next image gallery on a portal. Try it by right-clicking on this link to the article Mumbai, open in a private/incognito tab, and click on any image to start the slideshow

Similar features have been available since 2015 to users of Wikipedia's Android app.

Those new technologies set a high bar for any portal which actually tries to add value for the reader.

So far, the only one of the portal fans who has even tried to address the issues raised by these technical developments is @Bermicourt, who has been adapting from de.wiki portals such as Portal:Mecklenburg-Vorpommern which use a "mega-navbox" style. But most of the other portal fans are still busy creating content-forks and/or subpage farms, most of which are unread.

So looking at this stage to create guidelines is putting the cart before the horse. Guidelines are mostly about the "how" question. Before we can answer that, we need to answer the the more fundamental questions of "why"? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:07, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

User:BrownHairedGirl writes:
"So far as I can see, the main purpose of portals has for years been very simple: to entertain the small group of editors who like making portals." Unfortunately, I think that is mostly correct. I said, back in April, that the portal platoon was apparently creating portals because creating portals is fun. That conclusion of mine was dismissed, with a comment that creating portals is hard work (but evidently has to be done), but BHG and others showed that the creation of automated portals takes between 3 and 10 minutes, which is consistent with it being done because creating portals is fun. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:43, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, BrownHairedGirl, your initial premise to me is nonsense so not sure where do we go from there. So what if only 50 people look at something in a week or 500 read something in a year - they might well have learned something, and they are readers served. It seems like it should be a cause for celebration, if just one person say every 500 days, is inspired by knowledge or their curiosity peeked. We don't delete articles based on page views, so it makes no sense to do it with portals. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:36, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
@Alanscottwalker, that reply makes me despair. You are making the fundamental logical error of confusing portals with articles, so no wonder you mistake the rest for nonsense. This is what is called a category error.
The content of Wikipedia is in its articles. We don't delete stub articles because that stub is all the content we have on that topic, and we hope that some day it will developed into a decent article. We don't also delete unviewed articles, because our test for including article sin notability, not how many readers view it.
Portals are not content. They are a way of showcasing and/or navigating content. If we deleted every single portal right now, we wouldn't lose a single item of Wikipedia content, because the portals are not content.
The utility of portals lies solely in how well they do that job of showcasing and/or navigating content. And we have a very clear answer from our readers: portals don't help.
Here's an example. Take the list of pageviews by partl from June 2016. It lists 954 portals, and splat in the middle of that, at #452, is Portal:Louisiana, which got a pathetic 15 pageviews per day. Now compare that with the head article Louisiana, which got 2,734 daily views. Or to put it more simple, for very view of the portal, there were 179.48 views of the head article.
That portal simply isn't fulfilling its intended purpose. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:31, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
That's not why I said your argument does not make sense. So, I am despairing that you should despair. It does not make sense because: 1) an article (you say, great, wonderful); 2) group of related articles, images, ideas (suddenly it's terrible). Your disdain for grouping just does not make sense. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:37, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
@Alanscottwalker, you appear to have a serous comprehension problem. Which part of "deleting the grouping does not remove any content" do you dispute or not understand?
The content is in the articles, which therefore have intrinsic value. For presentational purposes they can be grouped in many different ways by many different technologies, and the value of each grouping is simply in whether it helps readers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:48, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
I comprehend perfectly. You don't like these groupings of articles, images and ideas in portals, for reasons that make little sense. (Your question can only suggest that it is you that is having a difficult time understanding, as it has nothing to do with what I said). Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:14, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
No, @Alanscottwalker, you demonstrate zero comprehension of the difference between the content (in articles), and groupings.
This is simple and it is fundamental.
Let me give you a physical analogy. In my larder, there are about food containers of various sizes, with various characteristics. I could group arrange them in many different ways: by size, by weight, by expiry date, by use type, by price, by how much I like them, by packaging type etc. And I can abolish any or all of those groups without binning a single food container.
However, what you are arguing is that I cease to organise some of them in a group called "tinned food", that is the same as throwing all my tinned food in the bin. Which is utter nonsense; I can just rearrange these items on the shelves, or I can jumble them around.
And for the millionth time, it's not that I don't like these groupings of articles, images and ideas in portals. This is not some sort of personal aversion. I regard most of of them as deficient because they offer a risibly small and arbitrary selection of topics, presented through outdated forks of text, and made available to the reader only one at a time. You may have reasons to disagree with that, but if it doesn't make sense to your, then your comprehension skills are even more abysmal than I had thought. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:38, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Your larder story is silly, as silly as your claim to saying anything "fundamental", which cannot be anything but risible given the paltry things under discussion. If you want a physical analogy, go with a shop window, but no need to smash the windows. And it is still completely a mystery why this this topic makes you so angry that you feel the need to lash out. At any rate, I now see I was right at the beginning, when I said, 'well, BrownHairedGirl, your initial premise to me is nonsense so not sure where do we go from there.' Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:47, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
@Alanscottwalker, I am here to build an encyclopedia. So I get fed up with editors who repeatedly spout falsehoods.
Wikipedia is a wonderful project, but its downside is that doesn't evict or mute people with such shockingly and persistently low comprehension skills that they not only can they not distinguish the fundamental difference between an an article and a device for navigating or showcasing articles, but that they repeatedly shout nonsnese when the distinction is pointed out to them.
An encyclopedia needs to be built by adults with above-average adult skills of literacy, comprehension, and reasoning. There is something about portals which has a sad tendency to attract the passionate support of editors like Alan who persistently display none of those qualities. There are some lovely and intelligent editors who work on portals, but when it comes to portals, the proportion of outraged reality-deniers like Alan and Moxy is depressinghy high. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:17, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
It is too bad you are so angry, that you feel you have to attack people who build this encyclopedia. Your BATTLEGROUND ways are not only unfortunate, they are detrimental. I don't recall ever reading what Moxy has said on this, nor know what Moxy has to do with anything, and I seriously can't recall ever discussing these with you, and if we did, it was so long ago as to be forgotten, which is the only sensible thing when it comes to someone who is doing BATTLE.- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:30, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
No, Allan, I am not angry, and I am not taking a BATTLEGROUND approach. I am challenging persistent stupidity. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:22, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, it most certainly looks like you are angry in BATTLE, attacking people who disagree with your premises, bringing up names of people not in discussion, making bogus sides up in your mind to assign people to. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:32, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Allan, the issue is not that you disagree with my premises. The issue is that you are in verbose denial of simple matters of fact and logic, and that your verbose stupidity is impeding the reasoned discussions needed to build consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:31, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Verbose? Look in the mirror. Let's compare word count, or rather you could just choose not to go on and on, as you have. Your battle-grounding has made it clear you have no interest in consensus, winning seems to be your thing. It's not I who is standing in the way of consensus, I am with the consensus of the last large RfC, but still under no obligation to buy your poor arguments. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:44, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Allan, consensus is not built on stupidity and on denial of facts. That's why in a consensus-forming discussion it is important to robustly challenge the falsehoods you spout.
I also accept the outcome of WP:ENDPORTALS. That was a proposal to delete all portals, and the clear consensus was not to do that. Sadly, you and some other portals continue to misrepresent that rejection as some sort of decision not delete any portals. That misrepresentation has continued for so long that it is no longer even excusable as stupidity; it is wilful dishonesty.
If you want to propose that no portals be deleted, or that even unviewed abandoned crap portals be retained, then feel to open an RFC proposing that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:00, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Once again, your battle-grounding demonstrates the weakness of your arguments and the uselessness of your approach. You invent straw men and talk nonsense. My arguments do not preclude pruning portals, and thus are in full accord with consensus. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:41, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
More la-la fantasy. I have invented no straw men. And you have explicitly objected to deletion even of abandoned portals, even though t now suits you to change tack. Have you no shame, man? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:37, 7 July 2019 (UTC).
More Battle and strawmen -- it's just not working. As to your complete falsehood, I have not objected a single time in a portal deletion. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:50, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I think the important question is whether portals are accomplishing their purpose and whether something else could do it better. One idea I've thought about is replacing the current portal system with Outlines. Both serve as an introduction to the major topics of an area as well as a tool for navigating the encyclopedia. Consider Portal:Contents/Mathematics and logic, it serves as an outline of the topic, presented in a visually appealing way, and effectively directs readers to content they might be interested in by providing short descriptions of a subtopic's scope. For many portals, however, this is done by just listing the contents of a category which is not particularly useful and does not provide readers with much information on how it relates to the topic beyond the title---it's only useful if you know what you're looking for. Take Portal:Television in the United Kingdom as an example. The BBC, one of the most important topics in British Television, is not linked until near the bottom of the page, and unless you know about the BBC, you won't know that it's important or what it does. Compare that portal with our articles like Television in the United Kingdom and Outline of television broadcasting and it's obvious that the portal does not do a good job of introducing readers to a topic or directing them to important and related information. Perhaps merging or replacing the current design standard of portals with the outline system, to produce something like Portal:Contents/Mathematics and logic, would make the portal system a better browsing tool for readers while also drastically simplifying the necessary maintenance. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 18:26, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I have been reading the above, and no one seems to actually answer BHG’s basic question... so let me ask it: what is the PURPOSE of portals? Blueboar (talk) 18:59, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
    • It seems as obvious, as perhaps, it is unambitious: 'Here is a subject, here are articles, images, ideas related to that subject -- explore, enjoy, learn, make connections, etc.' People have differences, they explore and connect with things in different ways, with different presentations. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:20, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
  • All very lovely as an abstract theory, @Alanscottwalker, but in practice that's not what happens.
The practical reality is that most portals are complete crap, and don't make those connections as well as articles do.
The result is that reality that readers do not use portals. Just look at the abysmal pageviews.
The problem is quite simple. Powerful search and massive cross linking have already supplanted the early-90s concept of portals across the web, and wikipedia is no exception. On Wiki, navboxes add another powerful navigational aid, again supplanting portals.
The only Wikipedia portal which thrives is the main page, partly because it's the default landing page, and partly because it is the product of a huge amount of ongoing work every day by several large teams of editors. No topic portal gets that anywhere with in several orders of magnitude of that sort of attention.
What will it take to persuade portal fans to stop waffling about dreams, and engage with those realities? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:43, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
It's not at all an abstract theory. If I go to most portals I bet 9 out of 10, I can make an interesting connection, I never thought of before. People can do all kinds of things with different presentations. (By the by, since I have told you already the page view thing does not impress, why would you repeat it to me.) Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:00, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Alan, you can go to any article other than a sub-stub and make an interesting connection, so that observation amounts to nothing more than "portals have links".
I repeat the pageviews thing not in any hope of educating you, because that is clearly an impossible task. I repeat it in order to remind other editors reading this of the depth and determination of the reality-denial in which you engage while constructing your parallel universe in which you believe that there is no distinction between deletion of content and deletion of pages which are just groupings.
In this parallel universe of Planet Portalfan, it matters not a jot that most portals are outdated, have limited scope, poor display and selection techniques, inadequate watching, and are almost unused. Planet Portalfan is sustained by faith, to the exclusion of reason and of evidence. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:27, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
So what. I can go somewhere else to make that connection, when that page does it. That is not a reason to get rid of that page, you don't know what connections people may make, and when. As for the rest, the only thing that people are educated upon is that you view this as a WP:BATTLE, where you have to attack people who don't see things the way you do. We have never discussed this before (as far as I recall, but then I am not in this for BATTLE), that's all, and you have not convinced, certainly not by attacking. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:30, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Allan, a page with a computer-generated random collection of links will let some editors make some connections. We don't maintain such pages, for the obvious reasons that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an a collection of indiscriminate pages which somebody thinks might be helpful to somebody someday.
And you are wrong again on a key point of fact about how Wikipedia works. Navigational pages which doesn't serve that purposes well are repeatedly deleted. There is a whole discussion zone just for doing that with categories: WP:CFD. Similarly, navboxes which don't serve a useful purpose are repeatedly deleted at WP:TFD.
Note that the existence of TFD and CFD are verifiable facts. I don't know whether you were somehow unaware of their existence, or whether you just chose to try to pretend that they don't exist because they don't fit with your Portalfan fantasy worldview. But either way, it is disruptive that a discussion such as this about how to organise an encyclopedia get cluttered up with these witterings from a parallel universe.
It's interesting to note that this same demonstrably false argument that "we don't delete navigational pages" has been trotted out by a few other inhabitants of Planet Portalfan ... many of whom whine like you when their streams of falsehoods and illogicalities are challenged. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:37, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Most unconvincing, your talking about me and your made up universe is useless and demonstrates BATTLE, and your connections to TFD and CFD are not relevant to anything I have said. So to review, not many views -- not sensible reason to delete. Needs improvement -- not a sensible reason to delete. You have an ideological thing against a Wikipedia space -- not sensible reason to delete. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:53, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Portals exist for navigation and/or showcasing. In the last few months, editors have identified about 600 portals which fail that basic task: they are almost unused, have no maintainers, and in many cases are so long out of date that they are presenting falsehoods.
Yet Allan insists that there is not sensible reason to delete this forest of unused, abandoned, false signposts, which mislead readers and waste their time. It's a great relief that so far as I know Alan is not in charge of any signposts on the real world, or we would have carnage on the roads ... but in the meantime Allan is sadly free to post here insisting that it is not sensible to remove pages which treat our readers with contempt by luring them to abandoned portals which nobody wants to fix and which waste reader's time through inadequacy, and/or present the readers with outright falsehoods.
In any context other than a discussion about portals, that reply by Alan would be quite extraordinary. Sadly, that sort of argument is common in portalspace, where Allan actually goes to the extra mile down wormhole by claiming that it is some sort of ideological perversity to ask that readers not be lured to this crap. Why on earth is anyone with such deep contempt for readers even participating in a discussion about an encyclopedia?
Yes, that's what we are reduced to. On Planet Allan, deleting abandoned crap signposts is ideological. And this is supposed to be an encyclopedia. God help us.
Even when presented with the undeniable fact that CFD and TFD routinely delete unhelpful categories and navboxes, Allan's reply is a glib assertion of unconvincing. Once again, in the fantasy world of Planet paortalfan, facts are clearly unconvincing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:30, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Planets? It's no wonder you are not making sense. And are you not paying attention -- you're the one who attacked for imagined long statements, so now within long statements -- you author --- you attack for short summing-up statements (further evidence of your battle grounding). Your straw-men are meaningless. My views are consistent with individual portals being deleted and others being kept. Which is consensus. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:53, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
    • [ec] That question has been asked many times in many places. It is fundamental to the problem, and no-one seems to be willing to attempt an answer. I will have a go, but it is only my personal opinion. To me, a portal is another navigation tool, formatted to be more entertaining and decorative than a navbox or an outline list, but serving a similar function, possibly with suggestions to the user of how to navigate a topic in entertaining or educational ways, and illustrating the full scope of the topic available on Wikipedia. Ideally it should be low maintenance, so as much automation of maintenance as technically possible should be used. The breadth of topic should not be critical for this application, but there should be enough articles to be worthwhile, and they should be a logically coherent group, like the scope of a WikiProject. Others opinions will no doubt vary, but this is a start. Portal:Mecklenburg-Vorpommern style is a possible way to go, but other formats may be as good or better. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:39, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
But on a practical level, the answer is very clear: nobody has yet devised a model of portal which readers actually want. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:51, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
On a practical level, a portal of the type I have described would be of value to editors of the associated project whether or not any users ever use it or want it, and who knows what the users want? Do we assume that if they do not ask for something they don't want it? Do we assume that if they cannot find something that exists they don't want it? It is a tricky question. sometimes we try something and it turns out to be a good idea. Like Wikipedia. If no-one had tried it who would have thought it could be successful? Other times things that look like a good idea at first turn out to be non-workable, or work in a way but are truly horrible in other unexpected ways. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 20:01, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
@Peter Southwood, that argument would have been very persuasive in 2005, when the portal namespace was being created.
However, after 14 years of trying this idea, your argument it looks more denial of the evidence that readers do not use portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:44, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
That may be a consequence of them being hidden where most readers are unlikely to look and the search engine will not look unless it is specifically instructed to do so. Portal space has doomed portals as much as their other deficiencies. Hiding a feature and demanding that it must be found and used are contradictory requirements. If the community wanted portals to be used by readers they should have put them where readers would find them. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 04:42, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
@Peter Southwood, if the portal namespace had never been created, portals would still be in the Wikipedia namespace, which also doesn't show up in search.
The default search finds content, not navigational devices like navboxes or categories or portals. Feel free to propose that default search should include the portal namespace, but watch the proposal get shot down in flames. Do I need to explain why a search for content should return only content?
As to other forms of promotion, there are three problems with that argument:
  1. 8 portals are promoted in the most valuable real estate on Wikipedia: the top right of the main page. That is the most valuable space for online advertising, and it is devoted to portals. Yet despite that prominence, those portals significantly under-perform other less prominent elements of the mainpage. Even DYKs, below the fold and displayed for only half the day, get higher views. The reasons are simple: readers don't need or want portals, because search, navboxes and massive cross-lining makes them redundant.
  2. promoting portals elsewhere, mostly through links on categories, navboxes and in "see also" sections has very low returns. The evidence is that even when portals are advertised, takeup is very low.
  3. It probably would be possible to boost portal views, at least in the short term, by intrusive advertising: e.g. on the top right of every page, link to the most relevant related portals. But unless the portals advertised in that were actually good, the effect would be short-lived, because if readers followed those links and when repeatedly confronted with abandoned crap like Portal:Colorado or Portal:Neuroscience, they would rapidly retreat from all of portalspace. Even lovingly-maintained portals such as Portal:Cheshire will deter readers because of their broken design, which requires a country-intuitive and time-consuming page refresh just to see a new selection. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:34, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • No need to explain. It is clear that from the start the framework was ill-conceived and constructed in a way that with hindsight could not possibly have worked. "You can't get there from here". Shit happens. We still lack good navigation aids for cases where the user does not know what to search for, but where the subject matter experts working here could give guidance. We also need good topic structure maps for editors to keep track of what has not yet been written, and the quality of what has been written. Navboxes are useful, but somewhat limited. Index and Outline lists are useful too, but I suspect that most users don't know they are there. Categories just don't work for that purpose. I am not attached to any specific method of navigation, but would like to see something that works better than what is currently available. Anyways, that is where I am coming from and where I am trying to go to. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 15:14, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with all of that, @ Peter.
There is indeed a gap to be filled, but I think that the fundamental error of portals is that they use a complex and very high maintenance structure which never had got anywhere near the required levels of maintenance. Categories have significant usability problems (one of the worst is the abysmal navigation between categories, see e.g. my notes at WP:IECATNAVP#Navigation), but they avoid complete failure because they are built using a distributed push model and are easily edited with minimal specialist knowledge. Navboxes are hard to create, but are are mostly well-maintained because they are easily editable in situ, tho some are in poor shape.
So whatever ideas are considered for filling the gap, the solution needs to be something which can be easily maintained. My hunch is that few of us have a clear idea of the real shape of that gap you rightly identify, and that what we really need is for WMF to invest in scientific usability studies to first identify where readers get stuck. Then some more studies to test the usability of ideas which the community has identified as maintainable. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:01, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Maybe not very relevant to this discussion, but the work on WP:IECATNAVP#Navigation looks potentially very useful. Good luck with expanding it for more general application.
Getting WMF to invest in something like that would be good if it can be done. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:10, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I quit trying to save portals at MfD, as those trying to delete portals were nominating faster than I could muster a response, and it became the single most frustrating bit of Wikipedia editing I've ever participated in, especially since some fantastic content was lost along the way. I'd very much like to have a discussion with the full community about the rules for creating a valid acceptable portal, especially since there wasn't consensus for their full removal. SportingFlyer T·C 00:14, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Content belongs in articles. Portals are navigational tools and/or showcases.
If the portal contained actual content, then that content was in the wrong place. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:32, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
On this point I completely agree. Unique encyclopedic content belongs in main space. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 04:49, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • If SportingFlyer thinks some fantastic content was deleted, he should request userfication and work it into mainspace articles. I don’t think Portals should contain showcases. The best content belongs in its best presentation in mainspace, unless the intent is overt promotion (promotion of Wikipedia, presumably for editors), in which case the showcases belong in the not-reader-facing WikiProjects. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:54, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I can userfy portals for anyone who wants to extract any good referenced content for transfer into mainspace, just ping me with a request detailing which portal files you want and the name of the user space files you want them to go into. When you are done you can ping me again to delete the user files if you no longer want them. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 15:14, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Portals are not for showcasing. Or at least they should not be. User:BrownHairedGirl has assert five times that Portals are for showcasing. If that was their purpose, it is a big part of their failure. The purpose of showcasing is promotion. Wikipedia should not be showcasing on reader facing pages. Portals are a failed experiment. A huge revamp is required, at least. If their ostensible purpose is navigation, rethink how to do that. Showcasing is not navigation. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:38, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @SmokeyJoe, I agree with some of that. However, showcasing is an important part of the main page, and per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". The evidence I see is that the mainpage-style showcasing function cannot be successfully replicated in portals, because it is highly labour-intensive, and that labour is not available in portalspace. So I'd happily see the showcasing function removed along with abandoning the mini-mainpage metaphor.
I agree that current portals are rubbish for navigation. The portals who do that job most successfully are the mega-navbox style of portals such as Portal:Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but it takes a lot of work to create them.
I disagree with the assertion that portals are a failed experiment. The reality is that elsewhere on the web, portals are a redundant technology. Their heyday was in the mid-1990s, and they were supplanted by two developments: deep interlinking and powerful search. Basically, Google's high-quality search killed Yahoo's portal model, and similarly the WMF's successful (and under-acknowledged) investment in Wikipedia's search tools made portals redundant on Wiki before even the first one was implemented.
So instead of Joe's comment that portals are a failed experiment, I would say that Wikipedia's 2005 deployment of portals was not an experiment; it was an exercise in denial of reality, by adopting of an already-redundant technology. And it remains a denial of reality, as evidenced by the continued abysmal state of most portals and their abysmal pageviews.
Readers don't want or need portals, because they have better navigational tools. Editors don't maintain portals, because the overwhelming majority of editors prefer to put their effort into developing actual content which will actually be read rather than into building an outmoded navigational device. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:07, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
How many editors will it take for you to see that your approach to portals is simply not what the community is looking for. You may have valid points but it's clear from a dozen conversations involving dozens of editors spread out over multiple noticeboards and talk pages that a better way forward is needed.--Moxy 🍁 15:22, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Moxy, how many discussions will it take before you develop the basic comprehension skills to stop assuming that there is some sort of consensus for your desire to retain swathes of almost unused portals which consist of malformed collections of outdated content forks that will remain outdated because v few editors are interested in devoting their time to building a redundant navigational tool?
The fact that there are perhaps half-a-dozen editors who pop up in various venues to echo in more literate form your usually incoherent ramblings does not alter the fact that in the last 4 months there has been consensus at several hundred MFDs to delete not just the crapflood of portalspam unleashed by TTH, but much of the dungheap of portals which have been abandoned for up to a decade? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:39, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • There are certain editors, with differing opinions about portals, who have said everything that they are going to say here many times over. How about stepping back and giving other, less vested, editors a chance to have their say? Phil Bridger (talk) 16:46, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
I proposed, starting this restatement of views, that a Request for Comments be used to survey the views of the community. Maybe User:Phil Bridger agrees that the RFC is a reasonable next step at this point. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:43, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
I would agree with anything that doesn't involve a small group of editors re-re-re-re-restating their views. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:46, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Why Portals?

Several editors, including User:BrownHairedGirl, with whom I usually agree, have said that we need to address what the purpose of portals is. I agree. BHG has said that it appears that the purpose of portals is to entertain the group of editors who like to create portals. I said in April that it appeared that the portal platoon was creating portals recklessly because creating portals is fun. That isn't a valid reason for retaining portals. BHG appears to be disagreeing with my call for an RFC to establish or re-establish portal guidelines, because the guidelines address the How and we should first address the Why. I am suggesting that a new RFC on the portal guidelines is the best way to address the Why question, as well as the How questions and the What questions (such as whether regional portals are semi-mandatory). If someone else knows of a better way to address the Why question of the purpose of portals than either an RFC on the portal guidelines, or the re-statement of fixed positions, please suggest it, but for now, I think that an RFC on portal guidelines is needed.

I will comment on BrownHairedGirl's repeated statements that certain portal advocates seem to have a comprehension problem. I have an alternate assessment. Perhaps the advocates of portals have an explanation problem. Perhaps they know what they think will be accomplished with portals, and why the deletion of portals is harmful, but they are failing to explain their views clearly. Perhaps they have some idea that they think should be obvious. It isn't obvious. Maybe they aren't explaining well, and maybe they need to provide a clearer explanation.

To follow up on that suggestion, there are laments that portals are being under-viewed, and that the placement of portals in portal space is contributing to that problematic underviewing, and that measures should be taken to increase portal pageviews, such as links to portals from article space. The mission of the encyclopedia is the presentation of knowledge to readers. Editors who want portals viewed more should explain how the encyclopedia and its mission of providing knowledge to readers would be better served by more viewing of portals. (Otherwise, I hear whining, but am not sure what is being lamented.)

So possible purposes for portals are:

1. Showcasing. To provide a way for readers to view our best articles, most recent updates, most interesting trivia, etc. This is the primary purpose of the Main Page, and the Main Page is a super-portal. The Main Page is also very labor-intensive. Showcasing is work.
2. Navigation. As a means to facilitate viewing of related information. This is the most commonly stated reason for portals.
3. Content. As an alternative means for displaying information to readers that is not in articles. Some editors have stated that portals contain content, so that content is harmfully deleted when portals are deleted. (This statement was in particular made above by User:SportingFlyer, and has been made by User:Buaidh.)
4. Exercise.

Are there any other reasons for portals? Perhaps the advocates of portals, or the editors who complain about the deletion of portals, have not adequately explained what the value of portals is. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:30, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Reviewing those purposes:
  1. Showcasing. Agree that it's labor-intensive, and gets diluted when there are a vast number of portals.
  2. Navigation. This is likely the most commonly stated reason for portals because it is the best/most valid, IMO.
  3. Content. This is somewhat in conflict with the navigation reason above. Content belongs in articles; to the extent that there's any de novo content in a portal, it should either be able to be transferred in an article or template, or risks being SYNTH.
  4. Exercise. This is the least convincing IMO; the sandbox exists for a reason. (Probably a joke on Robert's part, to be fair.)
(I also remember in ENDPORTALS that some said that people had worked very hard on portals and thus it would be bad to get rid of them. I'd like to remind anyone with a similar argument of the sunk cost fallacy and WP:HARDWORK.)
Given these, I would support deprecating the portal namespace and not creating any more. Having said that, I realize that the main page portals still receive some decent traffic, so a complete deletion of the namespace might not be warranted. We might yet create some high-quality portals notwithstanding all that's happened, so perhaps we can somehow otherwise limit the number of portals, perhaps to somewhere in the tens. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 01:48, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
User:John M Wolfson wrote: "Probably a joke on Robert's part, to be fair." That depends on what you mean by a joke. Both I and User:BrownHairedGirl have suggested that portals are created largely because creating portals is fun. (I have a database on portals. I created it because creating a mini-database is fun. But it is on my desktop computer, not on a WMF server.) One could make a somewhat different but similar argument about reason 3, content. However, I was asking for reasons beyond 1 through 4. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:59, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I thought you were being a bit facetious with the whole "exercise" thing, given that Wikiepdia's not a webhost. I'm not saying that the idea that portals are created solely for fun is ridiculous, just that that's not a good reason for their existence, again since we're not a webhost and games exist elsewhere on the internet. And fair enough on looking for more reasons. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 03:02, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
  • If this was intended as a brainstorming session it would have helped to keep the list open-ended, but anyway, add:
5. A tool for planning and maintenance of articles within the scope of a WikiProject, that can also be used by readers to see what project-relevant topics are currently available, possibly also their current assessed quality, and what articles are missing but planned. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:03, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Indeed, and at at least two people already answered this before this section was even started. Even set out in a list as this is, there is not logical reason each thing in the list is mutually exclusive and that one thing on the list is the only thing, rather than being overlapping and existing all at once and more. (As to the last thing, 'entertainment' only, strikes as close to 'assumption of bad faith' -- there is nothing wrong and everything right with having people like, enjoy, etc, what they are doing, and have done, volunteering, here, in a space created by Wikipedia for them to do that volunteering.) -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:43, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I have yet to see any good implementation in a portal of that articles-in-scope-of-WikiProject thing. If it exists and I have missed it, it doesn't require a portal to host it. So that's something which may be added to a portal if it exists, but it is definitely not a reason to create a portal. (NOTE: this is a widespread problem in discussing portals. There are many things which could be added to portals, but too little focus on the question of what things add enough value to justify creating a portal in the first place. This was one of the key conceptual failings of the automated portalspam: they were pages which added precisely zero value).
As to the entertainment issue, it's actually a very important one. Content in articles justifies its own existence, and if enthusiasm leads editors to create or develop content, that's great. But portals, categories and navboxes have only utilitarian virtue, and editor enthusiasm which leads to creation of portals, categories and navboxes with insufficient utility is a very bad thing. Over the years, several editors have had CBANs for repeatedly creating unhelpful categories, and the same principle applies to portals. The creation of inappropriate portals/categories/navboxes may be done in good faith, but good faith is an insufficient test: we also need good judgement and respect for consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:44, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
6. A statement about the breadth of the topic. The statement that "This is a broad subject area" is made so often, or variants of it, such as "This is a very popular TV show", that it may be a reason in itself for creating or keeping a portal, to make the statement that it is a broad subject area. (That is not to say that I agree with that reason.)
User:Alanscottwalker - It was not said that the reasons are mutually exclusive. It is possible that a portal may have multiple reasons. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
This list was not intended as brainstorming. It was intended to understand the reasons for portals. When User:UnitedStatesian, User:BrownHairedGirl, or others nominate a portal for deletion, there is whining that too many portals are being deleted, and that the deletion is contrary to the wishes of the community to have portals. The poorly stated unhappiness of editors with the deletion of portals implies that there are poorly stated reasons why they want the portals kept. Perhaps my request for an explanation is brainstorming, in which case maybe the portals were created without even brainstorming the reasons why they were desired. But I am simply asking what the reasons are for the keeping of portals, since those reasons are seldom clearly stated. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Per my comment above, it is essential to distinguish between:
  1. features of a portal which justify its existence, because they add sufficient value which cannot reasonably be provided in other ways
  2. features which may be added to a portal once we have decided that it should exist
Most of the discussions I have seen focus on the second point, rather than on the first. That is part of the editor enthusiasm problem with portals: I have seen far too many cases of enthusiastic editors doing lots of busywork adding lots of features to a portal, while adding no value for readers. A classic example of this is US state portals whose main features are an intro to the state, and a "key facts" box. Both are already available in the head article, so a portal which has those as its main offering adds nothing, but harms readers by wasting their time through luring them to a redundant page.
Similarly, the "selected article" sets frequently overlap massively with a navbox, and the navbox does the job much better. Most of those sets are destructive busywork which wastes the time of readers and editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:58, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

The text under discussion

The part of the guideline that causes the conflicts is the following: "Please bear in mind that portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. Portals which require manual updating are at a greater risk of nomination for deletion if they are not kept up to date. Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create." There are many issues there.

  • Readers and maintainers. As written, it says which is the requirement (a broad subject area) and the ideal reason for this specific requirement (it may be easier to get readers and maintainers). It does not say that a portal must actually have a regular flow of readers and maintainers to be kept, which is the argument often used in MFD discussions. As said in Wikipedia:Five pillars, "The principles and spirit matter more than literal wording". After all, the availability of readers and maintainers can be influenced by other things as well (for example, how visible they are, the net availability of maintainers, etc).
  • A good portal should not really require frequent manual updating. The hard work should be done the first days, when everything is first set up, but from then on the portal should work on its own. We add {{Random portal component}} in the main page, and {{Selected article}} entries in an internal list, and that's it: the portal randomly selects one of those articles each time it is loaded. It can be maintained (by further adding more articles, or removing improperly added ones), but it does not require so, and keeps working even if all maintainers have left. The problem may be with an abandoned section that relies on nominations or time frames (as in "one new entry per month"), but that doesn't mean the portal itself has to be deleted. It can be simply fixed.
  • "Kept up to date". Up to date in reference to what? The real world? Other than a stale "in the news" section, there's very little in a portal that may become "outdated". Featured or good articles that lost that condition, and are still listed as selected articles? Again, just fix it. In the meantime, there's very little harm done: former good and featured articles were selected as such at some point, and even if they are no longer "the best of the best", they will likely still be reasonably well written articles in their own right.
  • The alleged risk of nomination for deletion goes against Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#Nobody's working on it (or impatience with improvement).

I propose that we simply remove it. The rationale for keeping or deleting a portal should be the breadth of topic (perhaps clarifying a bit more what does that mean), and no intersection with another portal. Cambalachero (talk) 14:09, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Interesting. User:Cambalachero is saying that the paragraph that refers to a "broad subject area" should be deleted, so that the rationale for keeping or deleting a portal should be the breadth of topic. First, there seems to be an inconsistency. However, on my third effort to parse what was written, it appears that Cambalachero is proposing to delete all except the provision for broad subject areas. Do they have any ideas as to how to define a broad subject area, other than attracting readers and portal maintainers? In any case, what if anything are they proposing be kept, and how are they proposing to define broad subject areas? Also, what need are they saying is served by portals that do not attract readers and portal maintainers? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:08, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
I think the question here is whether unmaintained portals should be allowed to exist. Some topics change slowly and old material can still be relevant. Portal:Mathematics is well curated with 30+ edits this year but, if it weren't, would its failure to reflect this year's mathematical discoveries be sufficient cause for deletion? Certes (talk) 09:58, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Correlation does not imply causation. Breadth of topic and number of readers and maintainers do not have a "cause and effect" relation, for the same reason that Vital articles and Popular pages are not the same either. If properly advertised, we can easily get loads of people to check a portal for Donald Trump or Toy Story, but they would still be narrow topics anyway. Maths is a broad topic, we may find it a bit more difficult to attract people (as it is the archetypal "boring school subject" that most people study only because it's required), but it would still be broad topic. Besides, notability of articles is not temporary, and any portal inclusion criteria should equally be a stable one, not one that depends on people that comes and goes. See my previous example: we may be able to easily get readers and maintainers for a Portal on Trump (current US president) and Toy Story (a popular film franchise now in theaters), but what about in 10 or 20 years, when Trump had ended his term of office and Toy Story will probably be a dated film? Cambalachero (talk) 12:53, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Notification of: Resysop criteria: RfC on principles

There is a request for comment at Wikipedia_talk:Administrators#Resysop_criteria:_RfC_on_principles. All are invited to participate TonyBallioni (talk) 03:27, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Announcement of forthcoming temporary and partial ban tool consultation

As many of you already know, a recent (2 July) Board statement about the Fram case recommended that the Wikimedia Foundation "[add] community input to the two new office action policy tools (temporary and partial Foundation bans)", and Katherine Maher, in her 3 July follow-up statement, noted that "Foundation staff have begun preparing for a dedicated community consultation on [...] the two new office action policy tools introduced during the last change".

While ArbCom continues to review the original case that is relevant to the other points Katherine identified, the Trust & Safety team has begun drafting a consultation on the topic of partial and temporary Office Actions, including their purpose and scope, and re-examining the question of appeals for them. We expect to publish a draft of this consultation before Wikimania, so that contributors both online and at Wikimania are able to review it and give us feedback about the consultation format before we launch the consultation. Announcements of the draft consultation will go out to all affected communities in line with the commitment from 17 June.

Once that feedback has been incorporated into the draft consultation, we plan to launch the consultation itself on September 1, 2019 on Meta. We offer our thanks in advance for your contributions, and we hope to get as much input as possible from community members both before and during the consultation! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

I would strongly advise that this be delayed until the Fram case is completed. This community is still trying to heal. Trying to start this when people aren't going to have the energy to participate, and really aren't clear on the true dimensions and depth of WMF's conduct in this case, is only going to deepen the schism that has already been inflicted upon us. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 16:09, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm putting this here because it was the first mention of it, but thanks to a number of you for highlighting the timing thing. I’m passing it on, and we do plan to take all the key issues (like “is the Fram situation still a jumble” and “would we get more neutral responses at a different time”) into account when we make the decision in late August whether to stick with a September 1 launch or push it back. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Kbrown (WMF), thank you for taking this into consideration. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:17, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
What I am about to say should probably go somewhere more relevant, but one of the things that has disturbed me the most about the way T&S operates is that they keep dossiers and files on people without their knowledge. If they are doing that without informing the people that they are keeping dossiers on, that is not acceptable. For any system going forward (if T&S are to regain the trust of the community), there has to be an absolute guarantee that any user can ask if T&S have a file about them. And the WMF have to be truthful when replying to such requests. In some jurisdictions, it is not legal to keep such a file of personal data about someone without their permission, and the WMF would be required (with the appropriate redactions) to release that file on request by the subject whose personal data is being handled (there are both legal and ethical implications to handling such data). Carcharoth (talk) 16:39, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree with this. I think it would be reassuring, in fact, if WMF committed to honoring EU-style disclosure requests worldwide, and built the mechanism for this into its privacy policy and the TOU. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:37, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
WMF commitment is irrelevant. Under GDPR any corporation or entity regardless of location that collects data on EU citizens or those residing in the EU has to abide by GDPR. Which means any SAR requests etc cannot be ignored. Since a number of WMF officials are actually in the EU it makes it substantially easier. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:12, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I think it's actually unclear whether noncitizens not residing in the EU have rights under the GDPR with respect to non-European firms that store data outside the EU. Many companies have committed to doing so anyway because of the inefficiency of having separate models for EU and non-EU persons (Microsoft has, for instance). Even if you are correct that the GDPR applies in that scenario, I think it would be reassuring and appropriate for WMF to publicly commit to honoring GDPR rights for non-Europeans, and moreover to incorporate those protections into the TOU so that there's teeth to drag WMF to court and get your data from them if they suddenly decide it's too inconvenient. This has to be more than a reassurance from a single board member or even the whole board: This has to be built into the TOU. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:40, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Suffice to say, no its not unclear at all to anyone who actually lodges GDPR requests on behalf of EU residents, but I wont go into too much detail here. I agree that having the WMF actually commit to doing that would be nice. Unlikely though. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:35, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
If it’s on behalf of an EU resident, then it certainly applies. I’m talking about what might be classed as “non-EU cubed” cases: non-EU resident’s data, non-EU firm’s storage, non-EU server. I don’t think it’s too farfetched to demand a commitment anyway. This is a corporation that rakes in $100M/year, not something being run out of a dorm room closet. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 20:50, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I wonder what would happen with such a request: Kbrown, what would you do if I would request from you a report on what type of data you (that is, WMF including all the departments) are keeping of me and if I would request the complete file with all the data you are keeping of me to be sent to me? Or are these procedures that would be discussed in this consultation? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:50, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
@Beetstra: Procedures like legal-obligation release of data will not be covered in this consultation, which is limited to the topics of partial and temporary Office Action bans. I mean, I understand what you’re asking, it’s just a completely different topic than the one we’re discussing here. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask it; it just means that it’ll be more productive if you shoot questions like this directly to the T&S team’s inbox (ca@wikimedia.org) rather than hoping to get them answered in a conversation where we’re focusing on questions about the consultation. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
@Kbrown (WMF): I understand that this discussion is not the right place for this question, but I want an on-wiki answer to the question - I am not requesting my personal information, I want to know what you do when you get such a request. And I do think that it is fully relevant to any discussion regarding when and how to ban wiki editors based on such information, because, clearly, you keep information on volunteers and you act on that information that we do not know that you have, what type of info that is. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:07, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
@Kbrown (WMF): This is going to come off snarkier than I mean it so apologies, but I want to check for understanding. Prior to Wikimania there will be a draft released which people can give feedback on - a consultation if you will. Then there will be a second draft that comes from that consultation and which will then be used to launch a formal consultation process in September. At the end of that consultation process Trust and Safety will resume issuing temporary and partial Foundation bans. Is that correct? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:43, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: Kind of? Prior to Wikimania there will be a draft of the consultation released so that people can give input on topics like "does this format and set of prompts give space to address all the questions that need to be addressed regarding this topic?" and "is this consultation format likely to end in disaster when people start trying to talk about the topic?" We'll then take that input and adjust the consultation content/prompts/format as needed, and then proceed with actually holding the consultation. The goal is to be equipped to actually address (or at least talk about) all the important questions when we actually launch the consultation, rather than discovering partway through that, say, the community really wanted to talk about $insertTopicHere with relation to these actions and we didn't cover that in the consultation.
As far as "will the Foundation resume issuing temporary and partial Foundation bans at the end of this consultation", the answer is no, not necessarily. If there's no consensus to use those actions at the end of the consultation - either as-is or in some adapted format - then we will not resume using those actions. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Put differently, if WMF concludes there's consensus that they can continue, they'll continue, even if that's well before the Fram ArbCom case ends and and anyone really understands what's going on here. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:46, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Gaining consensus before proceeding could have avoided a lot of these problems so it seems like a reasonable stepped approach - especially upon hearing that it's not baked into the cake that the foundation will resume issuing temporary and partial bans at the end. This for me was always about FRAM and what it said about the WMF and English Wikipedia and all its users as opposed to what it says/said about Fram, one devoted but complicated user. I trust our elected arbitrators to handle that case well just as I think that they've handled other complicated cases well. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:05, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Wikimania should have nothing to do with this - it is a highly skewed club of the (mostly) more "cult-y" people and with COIs galore. Do it openly in the biggest forum, not in some echo chamber. - Sitush (talk) 18:12, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
@Sitush: "Openly" is definitely how we're doing this. The draft consultation will be placed on Meta so anyone can comment on it, including those who aren't at Wikimania, and as my initial announcement said, we plan to publicly announce when that draft is up so people know to come give us feedback. Our goal is to get as much input as possible both in designing the consultation, and then in the actual consultation itself. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
No, Wikimania is a closed shop where you can prime a skewed sample of the community. - Sitush (talk) 19:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Anyone care to bet what the keynote address will be about?--Wehwalt (talk) 19:31, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
@Kbrown (WMF): What are "all affected communities"? --Rschen7754 18:17, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
@Rschen7754: Heh, you caught me in one of my rhetorical flourish moments. "All affected communities" is just a fancy way of saying "all communities that use our Terms of Use," which is of course in turn just a fancy way of saying "We're going to notify all Wikimedia communities." Our Community Relations department will send out the notifications via bot when the time comes. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Does this include banned users who are still subject to the TOU as a result of the language in Section 12? Or will they not be able to participate in these consultations? (edit: to clarify, I am 100% serious about this question and it is not intended as snark) —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:52, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Globally banned users are banned from participating on any Wikimedia projects, so they are not included in this consultation (similarly, event-banned users are banned from attending Wikimania, so they are also not included in that part of this consultation). Otherwise, users who are in good standing on Meta, whatever their standing on other projects, are able to participate in the Meta consultation. That includes the recipients of past partial and temporary office action bans, none of whom are in anything other than good standing on Meta as far as I'm aware. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 11:26, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
I think that’s a real shame, as these individuals are by definition an “affected community”. Why are we not interested in their input? Are there other affected communities that will receive similarly unbalanced consideration, or similarly be ignored entirely? Surely such individuals should at least be permitted to participate via email. Not doing so strikes me as antithetical to the claim that this is an open or inclusive dialogue. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 16:59, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Idle question - is the consultation is a single process involving multiple communities, or will a positive consensus be required on each specific project where the new bans could be applied? As a random example, if the en-WP community delivers a consensus in favour of T&S behavioural bans, will that also apply to (say) the Azerbaijan Wikipedia even though no editors from there might have offered a view? -- Euryalus (talk) 20:42, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
This is a single consultation that we're holding at the global level, and we will be soliciting input to it from all our communities. The global future of partial/temporary bans will be based on whatever consensus we find (or don't find) during this consultation. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 11:26, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for engaging in this discussion. Is it the intent of the Foundation to implement whatever comes of the consultation in a uniform manner across the communities?--Wehwalt (talk) 11:33, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • A very valid point has been raised by Sitush. Although we need to get this issue/these issues resolved as soon as possible, anyone who has attended several Wikimanias knows that it is a WMF event, and not as is commonly misunderstood, a community event. A very large part of the programme is presented and/or facilitated by WMF staff who account for a significant number of the attendees; the conference is a showcase for the WMF's work in front of a privileged audience. Although Wikimania 2019 falls at a convenient time, it should not be used as a proving ground for a WMF scheme. Due to cost and location of the conferences many of the people who matter are denied access. The effect would be skewed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:40, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with Kudpung here. Although there is no doubt people will discuss things there, as indeed they do at other wiki meets, Wikimania should not form a formal part of the process. I say that not particularly because it's a WMF event, but simply because its attendees are not representative of the communities at large. They are a small subset who have both the time and the money to spend several days in Sweden at the height of summer. The process should be based on on-wiki discussions only.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:58, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I understand where Kudpung and others are coming from; however, Wikimania is sort of a key point in the WMF's calendar. About a third of the staff attend (and almost all of the T&S staff, many of whom have specific "on duty" responsibilities there), so it's sort of a point where most non-essential work - such as monitoring and responding to "consultations" - comes to a halt. It's also about a month from now, which is a common timeframe for consultations. I don't think it is a bad idea to elicit opinions while there, either; although a fair chunk of attendees are what might be called "the usual suspects", it's also the one place where it's easier to directly connect with individuals who work on smaller projects and in small-language projects. The WMF sponsors some of those folks, but so do several chapters; at one point, WMDE was actually sponsoring as many non-local (i.e., non-German) attendees as the WMF was sponsoring non-English attendees.

    I suspect that what we may see is that some of the smaller projects, which lack the well-developed structures that we have on English Wikipedia, may find some value in getting assistance from the WMF to deal with their rare "big problem" users; in fact, we have good reason to believe that some of those non-English, small communities have already reached out to WMF for that kind of assistance, although the nature of the "problem users" that they're dealing with don't usually have much to do with harassment per se, but instead tend to be more into content manipulation or garden-variety misogyny or racism. Risker (talk) 00:25, 16 July 2019 (UTC) Disclosure: I am being sent to Wikimania 2019 as part of the Strategy 2030 project as an official representative of the Roles & Responsibilities working group. I have been assigned to talk about strategy for pretty much the entire weekend, starting the morning after I arrive. This isn't a tourist opportunity for me. Risker (talk) 00:25, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Risker, I have been to dozens of international conferences in my long career. None of them were tourist opportunities - on most of them my costs were covered. On most of them all I saw was the road between my hotel and the conference venue, and perhaps a couple of restaurants - and that was pretty much the same for all the Wikimanias I have attended.
The vast majority of 'people that matter' (and I include you in this) are the experienced users who care about Wikipedia, bring some qualified baggage with them from RL, and populate these various serious online discussions about policies, technology, etc, but most of us are the very people who due to the cost are denied access and refused scholarships and other travel grants. We are just unable to meet up anywhere and discuss these things properly. Perhaps that will change for me personally next year in Bangkok for obvious reasons.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:02, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Quite agree with you on every point, Kudpung. I once described going to an FDC meeting as "get in a flying tin can, get regurgitated into a hotel, spend 10-12 hours/day in meetings, get back in the flying tin can, try to get back to my normal time zone." I just wanted to reinforce that, contrary to the belief of some, most of these events aren't really junkets, they're mainly "work" type events, even if the work is volunteer-based. I'm thrilled for you that next year's Wikimania will be close to home; it was really nice to have Wikimania in Montreal, which is a short (in Canadian terms) drive for me for a change, and I'm sure you'll enjoy not having to spend all that time in "flying tin cans" in order to participate. While I suspect that discussions at Wikimania will inform the outcome of whatever consultation takes place, I'm pretty certain it won't be the main source of feedback by a long shot. The key will be persuading people from non-English projects to participate in the discussion on Meta. Many of those projects are far more independent of the WMF than we are. Risker (talk) 02:38, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Risker, knowing you, and that although we occasionally have healthy disagreement on some things, I am sure that your input at the conference will be very much appreciated. I'm just sorry I won't be able to be there to lend you support. Bangkok is only a $25, 500 mile, 55 minute flight from Udon, and in BKK I can use my sister-in-law's apartment. OTOH, I might even drive down - there will probably be plenty of occasions where my car will be useful (I know plenty of good and inexpensive restaurants). I hope you will be there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:08, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Kbrown (WMF) One of the mistakes that the WMF made in the Fram case was to give a temporary ban to someone without specifying why. Will the forthcoming draft learn from this and be clear that if someone is temporarily banned they need to know why so they know what not to do again when they return? ϢereSpielChequers 07:21, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
@WereSpielChequers: Restrictions that should be placed on the use of these partial/temporary actions (such as your idea, which I’ll paraphrase as “These actions should not be used unless the Foundation is willing to release evidence regarding the case or the accuser to the accused” - please correct me if I’m misreading you) are the type of thing we are hoping people bring up during the consultation. We want to know under what circumstances, if any, the community is ok with us using these actions. So I would encourage you to contribute to the pre-consultation phase to make sure we include the topic of such restrictions, and then to the consultation itself to make the case for that restriction. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Kbrown (WMF) The problem with your paraphrase is that it adds a contentious point that I avoided and misses the nub of my point. I made no comment as to who made the complaint. My point was that if you want someone to continue editing but stop a particular pattern of behaviour then they need to know what that pattern is. For example, and purely hypothetically, if you are banning someone for 12 months for making excess comments in AFDs you need to tell them that when they come back they can only comment three times in any one AFD. You don't necessarily have to say who complained about them, and if the restriction is justified it may not be anyone who they have interacted with - just someone who watched their edits and suggested to you that something was untoward. ϢereSpielChequers 16:52, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I think it is rushing things and very premature to start this less than a month from now and publish the finalized consultation in less than 1.5 months. The planning and drafting and submission should all be delayed until after the Fram-ban ArbCom "case" and the Fram-ban itself is resolved however it is going to be resolved. This is as much for T&S's sake as it is ours. If we haven't fully understood and resolved the Fram-ban, then the community(ies) are not going to support the temporary/partial ban tool -- at least the communities (EN-wiki, etc.) that are sharply aware of the Fram-ban are not going to support it. So it would be best for all concerned to wait until the current issue is resolved, or else all of your drafting and such will have gone to waste as it won't be accepted. (And by the way Wikimania is not "the community" -- EN-wiki and its closely related projects are "the community" -- so right off the bat the self-selected main audience of inquiry is suboptimal, in addition to the timing being very premature.) Softlavender (talk) 08:28, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Kbrown (WMF): I do feel that this is awfully wrong timing. The community is still in the dark regarding Fram, still waiting for a hopefully positive and informative outcome. Although I applaud the initiative, I am very afraid that this will be burned at the stake even if it is a good proposal and way forward. You banned an editor without explaining why, upsetting a rather significant part of your community (~10% of your active admins resigned their bit) and you expect that the greater plan behind it will be met with general approval, ready for a real trial a couple of weeks later? --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:50, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
    • To me this feels like having a plan to strip a complete nursery of toddlers of their candy. While preparing the plan, you decide to set an example by stripping one of the kids, without warning or explanation and in complete silence, from their candy. After having that kid running around in tears for two days and having the whole nursery in distress (including their caretakers) you plan to bring said plan to the kids to see whether they agree with the general principle of the plan, and intend to implement it yet a couple of days later. Do you really expect those kids to even listen to your 'but it is bad for your teeth and you might get diabetes, we do this to protect your health!' (and I agree, stripping them of their candy to protect their health IS a good plan .. ). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:45, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Even if that means driving millions of tooth-fairies to join the lines of the unemployed? Nishidani (talk) 11:20, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Making sure that those little teeth don't rot away before they take their natural cause of being taken by the tooth fairy seems to be part of the noble, albeit hidden, goals of WMF: it avoids that the tooth fairies have to ask for benefits. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:33, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I feel the same as Dirk and others. Wasn't there a promise that something like Fram's ban would not happen again? I'd call that ban the worst distraction from content editing I remember in almost ten years. Assuming good faith always, I believe that it was not intended, but can't help feeling anything going in the same direction will not be acceptable. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:11, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • As the board statement said, "Any changes in the long-established practices of dealing with toxic behavior within the communities should be introduced carefully and only following close collaboration with the communities." The unilateral introduction of these "tools" violated this principle, and should be reversed pending consultation. It also seems that T&S have issued conduct warnings and interaction bans that have strayed into local governance, and this practice should also be examined. Kanguole 10:29, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
@Kanguole: Per the Board’s request, we have already halted the use of partial and temporary bans pending the outcome of this consultation. So those won’t be used unless and until the consultation reaches a consensus to use them. Things like conduct warnings and interaction bans are not covered by the topic of this consultation (remember, there is more consulting coming in the future regarding things like “identify[ing] the shortcomings of current processes and enforcement mechanisms, and to support the development of appropriate solutions”). So there will be a chance to discuss more generally the current processes and enforcement mechanisms like the ones you cite. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • T & S staff may have done a poor job or a good job with Fram; since the facts are still veiled in secrecy, the en-wiki community has no way of evaluating the question. So, if the WMF is asking for my opinion on whether they should do more of what they did in the Fram case: no, not until the Arbcom case has been resolved and I can judge the facts for myself. I don't see how any other answer is possible, and I'm surprised that they don't get that. - Dank (push to talk) 13:59, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • The use of partial and temporary bans on the English Wikipedia must be decided by a RfC on enwiki, that is conducted in accordance with the norms of enwiki RfC's and closed by experienced enwiki editors. Other projects can decide whether to use this process as they see fit. Having this discussion on meta is unacceptable. Having it at a wikimania is beyond the pale. Tazerdadog (talk) 17:52, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @KBrown (WMF): regrettably, my question for you seems to have gotten buried somewhere above, as did my thanks to you for engaging in this discussion. The question was, "Is it the intent of the Foundation to implement whatever comes of the consultation in a uniform manner across the communities?" Thanks again in advance.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:27, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Kbrown (WMF): Sorry, screwed up the ping.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:29, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Wehwalt: I get the sense I might be missing some nuance to what you're asking, but to the best of my knowledge, the answer is yes, the results of the consultation will be applied globally. Does that answer what you were asking? Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
    Yes, thanks. No particular nuance, just me talking through my lawyer hat. :)--Wehwalt (talk) 19:56, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • As jaded as I am with the WMF in general, and knowing their general incompetency to manage the projects they notionally oversee, I can't say that I'm surprised by this next step in the events. The timing here isn't just wrong, it's abysmally stupid and once again demonstrates abject incompetence on the part of the WMF. First, the WMF moves at speeds that would make a sloth look fast while responding to the crisis they created, and now they are moving at a pace that is outstripping this project's processes for taking this case through appropriate resolution. WMF, BACK OFF. It's blatantly obvious you don't know what you're doing, yet your impacts are going to send seismic tremors throughout the movement. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:44, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps the T&S team need to practice management of some rather more trivial scenarios first, such as organising parties in breweries. This scheme is wrong in so many ways. - Sitush (talk) 20:26, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Hammersoft's assessment. The time for fast action, within hours rather than weeks, was when the WMF made an obviously bad decision, which should have been reverted as soon as someone competent in the heirarchy saw that such an obviously bad decision had been made. I can only conclude that there is nobody competent in the WMF heirarchy. Long-term, non-urgent, decisions should be made after discussion and reflection. And the idea that a wank-fest like Wikimania has anything useful to contribute is way out with the fairies. The WMF has become a self-sustaining bloated bureaucracy that interferes everywhere where not needed but when a genuine issue arises, such as the takeover of the Azerbaijani Wikipedia by extremist nationalists, just sits back and twiddles its thumbs. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:41, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • To put it bluntly: the WMF's T&S staff is the most incompetent body of people I have come across in my 30+ on the net. (Personally: after receiving literally thousands of death & rape threats here: I have suggested 3 easy improvements for the safety of community (and me!): none have ever been acted upon). I have totally given up on T&S: I have no trust in them, and they bring us no safety. And just while we are not yet finished with their latest spectacular failure (The Framban), they want to formalise rules to give them the rights to commit further blunders. (<facepalm/>) What could possibly go wrong? (<sarcasm/>) Huldra (talk) 21:32, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
  • A quick note before I go offline for a while: I would not go forward with this plan, were I a member of the Trust and Safety team, and/or the Foundation. The community here is still recovering from the fallout of earlier, unwise actions and statements by the T&S team, and throwing something like this at them is decidedly imprudent at this time. I also question the necessity of celerity, and, moreover, the inclusion of any comments from individuals at Wikimania; on the latter, I'm in agreement with Sitush: at the end of the day, this is a hobby, really, for me, to which I'll help and contribute, but paying money is a bridge too far (for now). Moreover, the idea of folks at a Wikimedia convention (that's honestly what Wikimania is, if you'll pardon my simplification) having a greater say simply because they can go and schmooze and whatnot seems antithetical to the egalitarian spirit of the Wikimedia projects as a whole. —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 00:16, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Read the room, T&S. This should not go ahead until ArbCom has finished with the Fram case. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:46, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • No, I very much don't think so. You can take your tool and shove it until such time as you a) become more communicative and b) start following your own damn policies. Jtrainor (talk) 00:46, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
    Sadly I can predict the response to this: (a) "All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years..."—er wait, wrong story—"The community was put on notice of the changes months ago and there was significant support for the changes, so we're surprised by this sudden protest to something that was already done!", and (b) "We followed the policies exactly as we wrote and intended them." —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 01:34, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • While I normally do not interject in matters of Administrator bans, I am fully aware of the need for hierarchy and general order for the good of this noble project, Wikipedia. If the Wikimedia Foundation should ever stay its hand from imposing a temporary ban on Administrators, which bans are sometimes needed to stop a particular pattern of behavior, then how do we expect to handle behavioral issues in the future? There seems to be a need for clarity in this matter. No man is unassailable. In our capacity as collaborative editors, there is always a need to ensure that ordinary editors and Administrators uphold the high standard of showing common decency and respect for all others, even when they disagree with others. After all, consensus is what prevails here. With that said, we all make mistakes. After falling, we stand-up again, and try to amend our ways. BTW: I have also been topic-banned twice. We learn from our mistakes.Davidbena (talk) 01:35, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
    • "[H]ow do we expect to handle behavioral issues in the future" There's this little thing called ANI, and failing that, ArbCom. Softlavender (talk) 01:43, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
      • That might be, but in the case of filing a complaint against an Administrator, most editors here would be afraid to do so because of their fear of reprisals. Sometimes going to the "man upstairs" is the best option, particularly, if they are non-involved observers of a bad situation that needs fixing. Besides, I have noticed where matters of dispute submitted to ANI have often turned into a "free-for-all," with participants showing little regard for true jurisprudence or circumspection.Davidbena (talk) 01:54, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
        • Not true. Complaints are filed against administrators all the time. And ArbCom is the "man upstairs" -- an elected, uninvolved group of editors who disinterestedly arbitrate issues that are contentious, that are privacy-related, or that have remained unresolved by ANI. ArbCom has desysopped and/or banned many an administrator. Softlavender (talk) 02:47, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
          • Perhaps, but in this most recent case (which prompted this current action), I have not seen one iota of interjection by people who sit on ArbCom to correct what others might see as a behavioral issue. Do you not trust the good judgment of someone who serves as a Wikimedia Foundation appointee?Davidbena (talk) 03:05, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
            • Do you not trust the good judgment of someone who serves as a Wikimedia Foundation appointee? On the off chance that this is a serious question: No way. This is based on years of watching them do business. Especially not after this debacle. And I know for a fact that I'm far from the only one who feels this way. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 03:10, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
            • "I have not seen one iota of interjection by people who sit on ArbCom to correct what others might see as a behavioral issue." No one brought Fram to ArbCom for any longterm sitewide behavioral issues. ArbCom does not "interject" to correct behavioral issues unless a case is brought to them. Softlavender (talk) 02:19, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Yes, in basis I agree with you, Davidbena. But there are ways to do things and ways to do things. As may be clear from this page and from WP:FRAM is that most agree that there are problems, and that a change is needed. But what WMF is doing here is not the way. If you have a problem with your neighbouring country you can either close the border, or you can start talking, or you can nuke them. This is the latter solution. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:16, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
I have only briefly looked at the complaints against WP:FRAM, and while I am sure that he has contributed much to the benefit of this worthy project, which he should be commended for, there was still something in his approach to problems (use of language) that caused me to cringe. When I was a child and I used foul language, my mother rushed me into the bathroom and washed-out my mouth with soap. That literally happened. I learned from that experience. Now, those who sit on the board at WMF have a greater responsibility than most of us here, which is to maintain the integrity and good-working order of this project, and to correct wrong when they see it. A temporary ban is not a permanent ban. It's a way of saying to the person that he should correct his ways. Correction / Reprimand / Reproof are never an easy thing. It hurts. But it is the most effective way to bring about change in a person's attitude.Davidbena (talk) 03:29, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
This is in no comparison to washing-out someones mouth with soap. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:15, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
To go with your example: your mother should have shot the cat of your neighbour's daughter. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:49, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Davidbena: You know I don't like "foul" language; the problem with WMF targeting Fram is: why him? We both know there are lots of other editors who use equal language here....so why have they not been banned? Was it just "incidentally" that the editor they banned, also was one of their harshest (and very on−the−point) critics, or that he had made some very relevant criticism of the edits of the wife of the Head of the Board of Governors on WMF?? Lol. Frankly, from day one this has looked as: "If you are criticised: ban the critic!" That will make the criticism go away, for sure. (<sarcasm/>) Huldra (talk) 22:51, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
I wouldn't know about all that. Besides, it is impossible for WMF board members to know about all the "foul" mouthing that goes-on, and, frankly speaking, I have seen almost no "personal attacks" that make use of foul language. Normally, you would not expect such conduct from an Administrator. I know only of one other case where the Admin. used provocative language in his discourse with fellow editors, and he was stripped of his administrative duties (desysopped). So, with that said, I give the Wikimedia Foundation and its staff members the benefit of the doubt.Davidbena (talk) 23:23, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, that's the "he said 'Damme'" argument heard from. "That word of evil sense/Is wholly indefensible". Odd WMF should concentrate on a vague expression of frustration when we have nationalistic wars raging across Wikipedia, but they've never been noted for getting priorities straight. No offense meant, Davidbena.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:33, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrary break (WMF partial ban announcement)

  • Lol, you should have heard the comments if WMF had NOT announced they were going to do this, or if they had said 'late September'.... can't please these english wikipedians. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:42, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Kbrown (WMF): The WMF should never use temporary or partial bans on any project that has a functioning ArbCom. It should also never use bans without explanation or route of appeal, unless legal / child protection issues are involved. Furthermore, secret proceedings are anathema to the openness of this community, at least, and to protect any victims, you must never invoke the Streisand effect the way it happened in the Fram case. Honestly, I find it difficult to find any use case for these tools at all, other than starting forest fires. —Kusma (t·c) 10:19, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
But if the WMF leaves bans in the hands of ArbCom... that doesn’t leave the “Trust and Safety” team with anything to do. Why, someone might suggest that we don’t actually need a T&S team (and that would be crazy talk) Blueboar (talk) 23:29, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Blueboar, if people in T&S don't have enough to do, they could just go and learn all the languages of all Wikimedia projects so they can react to enquiries from everywhere without involving volunteers. That should keep them busy for a while. —Kusma (t·c) 14:50, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Hi Kusma, those are totally valid opinions about the use of these tools. You're welcome to contribute them to the consultation when it opens, as that's where we're going to be taking in suggestions, opinions, recommendations, etc. While I'm reading what people are saying in this thread, it's what people say in the actual consultation that will go into the consensus-making. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 11:40, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
That makes no sense to me. The Board have said it should not happen but you're going ahead with a consultation covering those issues anyway? Are you really saying that the consultation is going to cover stuff that the Board has said is a no-go area? Or are you going ahead because all consultations, research and similar projects enable people to stay in a job? Or have I misunderstood the Board comments? Or what? I'm guessing it is a fault in my memory because anything else seems like corporate incompetence or grifting. - Sitush (talk) 11:51, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Hi Sitush, the Board statement called for "re-evaluating or adding community input to the two new office action policy tools (temporary and partial Foundation bans)", which Katherine followed up with "We will seek further community feedback on those [partial/temporary tools] changes. These new tools will not be used again until community consultations to clarify their purpose and mechanisms are completed". So this consultation is us doing what both the Board and Katherine requested - re-evaluating and, particularly, getting community input into the use/non-use of those tools. And as I've said elsewhere, the result of that re-evaluating and community input might be those tools still existing, still existing in a modified format, or not existing at all - it depends on the input we get at the consultation. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. It's my poor memory, then. Still a dreadful idea: bad timing, involving Wikimania etc. It should be an entirely open process and after the Fram issue has been resolved. Yes, there are numerous other projects but en-WP is the flagship and if you can't get en-WP onside for an implementation then it will inevitably necessitate at least a significant exemption. And if the WMF can't see that they are not going to get en-WP onside then I think the staff probably need to find other jobs. I've pretty much stopped editing (aside from comments related in some sense to Fram) for the last month or so and it is going to take many months to rebuild the trust, if indeed it can be rebuilt. - Sitush (talk) 04:05, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
This. The argument that there are other affected communities is a red herring. The whole reason this “consultation” is happening is because of how outraged and disgusted enwiki is. I’ve been in this position before, where those in power hold an “emergency meeting” in order to grease the squeaky wheel (and do so before the squeaky wheel really knows what it’s squeaking about). In that case, the emergency meeting mostly served to give said squeaky wheel a dressing down for squeaking too loudly. I have no doubt that is what will happen by giving first mover advantage to the Wikimania echo chamber. You might as well just limit this “consultation” to the WMF board. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 10:26, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Kbrown (WMF), nothing is stopping you from using the responses here in later consultations. At the very least, you should link to this as a previous discussion. If you want a wide-ranging consensus, you should make sure you don't ignore useful input just because it is made in a different venue, and by a different crowd. —Kusma (t·c) 15:00, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • If any legal or child protection issues are involved then any ban should be indefinite and apply to all Wikimedia projects, so temporary and partial bans wouldn't come into it. This actually gets to the nub of the problem, which is that the WMF should only get involved, at least on projects with a reasonably well performing arbitration committee, when behaviour is serious enough to justify such a complete ban. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:30, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Kbrown (WMF): Things like conduct warnings and interaction bans are not covered by the topic of this consultation My apologies if this is off-topic, but are any statistics available on how often you issue these conduct warnings and interaction bans? Bovlb (talk) 17:57, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Bovlb: Sure, I pulled the records on this. It looks like, globally (across all projects/languages) and since April 2017, we've given out 12 conduct warnings (13 if you count the conduct warning reminder Fram received after their original conduct warning) and 2 sets of interaction bans. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Kbrown (WMF): - Can you clarify two more points:- (1) Was Fram the first/second recipient of IBan? (2) Does these conduct warnings currently cover anyone's en-wiki behavior? The first query, for sheer curiosity and the second query, so that the community may take steps to determine the validity of those warnings reviewed by the ArbCom. ~ Winged BladesGodric 14:20, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Winged Blades of Godric: Sorry, while we're happy to give out general numbers, for protection of user privacy we're not able to go into specifics about who, what, where, or when. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    • @Kbrown (WMF): Thanks. One more question: Do you have a sense, on the whole, about whether these conduct warnings and interaction bans have been successful? Bovlb (talk) 21:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
      @Bovlb: That's a hard one to answer, because what counts as successful? Is a warning successful if we just never hear from the person again, or do they need to affirmatively agree to change their behavior, for instance? What if they say "I refuse to change" but then the behavior doesn't repeat? The "what is success" caveat aside, my very, very general sense is that conduct warnings tend to be relatively successful, if we use "the behavior does not repeat" as the metric, but that they often leave the warned person feeling alarmed or angry, whether the behavior changes or not (trying to avoid making people feel like that is why we created the "What is a conduct warning?" meta page, though it's not a panacea). With only two interaction bans to judge by, it's even harder to make the call as to whether they're "successful", but if I absolutely had to take a position I'd guess that they'd be more prone to violation or misunderstanding than a simple "don't do X" conduct warning, the same way interaction bans imposed by the community often are. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 12:39, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
      • @Kbrown (WMF): Thanks again for the response, and thanks for the link to that document; I was unaware of its existence, and it is very illuminating. Can I infer that, since its publication, recipients of conduct warnings have been pointed to this document and told the "type" of the warning? Do all prior conduct warnings fall under these types? Bovlb (talk) 21:11, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
        @Bovlb: Since we individually compose each conduct warning and I don't work every case in which we issue a warning, I don't know that I can say that all conduct warnings contain a link to that page (though now that you're making me think about it, they probably should, and I'm going to pursue trying to standardize that on my end). Not all conduct warnings that we issue fall under the types described in the "What is" page, but I would say those types are the most common of the types of conduct warnings we give out. A typical conduct warning talks about the type of the problematic behavior (harassment, hounding, what have you) and then gives as much description as it's possible to give of the specific behavior in question - which in some cases (though obviously not all; it depends on the circumstances and the privacy implications) can be exact specifics of what they did and when; at a minimum it would contain some explanation of what "harassment" or "hounding" or whatever is, similar to the way you see it talked about on the "what is" page. Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
        @Kbrown (WMF): I'd recommend against regularly linking to that page. If a person receiving a warning has, like most contributors, never participated in an off-wiki event such as those referenced on the page, bringing up potential problematic IRL behaviours is really unproductive and likely to make people feel confused and/or uncomfortable. Of the few on-wiki situations mentioned, I'm doubtful that any of them are within T&S's remit. --Yair rand (talk) 21:43, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
  • For the "too soon" type responses - this is a global effort that WMF is trying to work on - and giving feedback about how to handle "projects with large communities" (for example projects with 10,000+ active users) should certainly be helpful, saying don't do anything globally just because the English Wikipedia doesn't like the timing is really a bit pretentious. — xaosflux Talk 13:19, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • "just because the English Wikipedia doesn't like the timing". That is misstating the case. The timing is non-workable because the proposal/consulation will be rejected in the absence of facts/clarity/resolution in the Framban case. That means WMF's time and effort in compiling the plan will have gone to waste. It is to their advantage to have matters resolved on the Framban prior to rolling out the consultation. Softlavender (talk) 05:56, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
    • I get where you're coming from. But for me, the outcome of the Fram debacle will give me a clearer idea of how much I want the foundation to get involved around here, and whether they're actually likely to listen to what we say at the consultation. That will strongly influence what, if anything, I will say there. Reyk YO! 13:26, 18 July 2019 (UTC
    • @Xaosflux: and also I see where you're coming from, but seen that ~40% of editors are here, and there are currently quite some upset editors here they run the risk that the voice of the other Wikis will all be overwhelmed. The statistic influence of those 40% is tremendous. Moreover, en.wikipedia editors have now more reason to go there than any other wiki (all the editors here will be there, but from the, say, French Wikipedia?). It may very well be unfair to the other wikis to do this now, and even a very good idea from WMF may just fail because of that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:11, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • In the context of English Wikipedia (what happens on Armenian Wikiquote or whatever is out of our competence to decide), per my original comment when Fram's ban was announced (the subsequent discussion of which became WP:FRAMBAN), I can see no circumstances when it would ever be appropriate for the foundation to use a partial block on English Wikipedia or on any other project with a functioning dispute resolution process. Either somebody's conduct is so problematic that they should be banned from all projects permanently, or the appropriate response should be decided by the relevant community's processes. Except possibly in a very few edge cases to do with ongoing legal action where the parties need to be prevented from commenting while a real-world case is ongoing, there are no circumstances in which somebody's conduct could be so problematic they need to be totally banned with no possibility of appeal, but simultaneously so non-problematic that the problems will no longer exist in a year, or so non-problematic that they're free to edit every other WMF site without restrictions. ‑ Iridescent 14:31, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Iridescent: regarding ...with a functioning dispute resolution process... who do you think should measure this attribute? If such a process is malfunctioning, should it measure itself? — xaosflux Talk 14:35, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    Xaosflux, I could imagine that WMF Office decide that a wiki does not have a functioning DR process. In that case, they would have to dissolve the local ArbCom (or desysop all admins if there is no ArbCom) and take over. I don't think they should ever issue a local ban without dissolving the local ArbCom or desysopping all admins. —Kusma (t·c) 14:49, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Kusma: perhaps for the "large community" type projects (such as here) I mentioned above, but that seems like a really bad plan for a global rule. To compare to Iridescent's comment above if the 3 admins at Danish Wikiquote weren't able to deal with someone harassing someone there, removing their ability to do other constructive activities would be a net loss. — xaosflux Talk 15:21, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    Xaosflux, of course it would. But either you have autonomy or you don't. If the WMF want to make decisions on an individual project, they need to clearly delineate what decisions are up to them and what decisions are up to the local community. I don't think "difficult behavioural decisions" is a sufficiently well defined area to be given to WMF instead of local decision making, so I am suggesting easier options: all or nothing. —Kusma (t·c) 16:17, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux: WMF could very well measure this attribute (obviously, with Fram they did that, and decided that our dispute resolution process is not functioning). That is however something completely different than silently overtaking that. 'We get complaints of this nature, which is in our opinion a shortcoming in your dispute resolution process, can you please make it more stringent so we get less of these complaints'. If then, and only then, nothing is forthcoming or there is no success after some attempts, then there may be reason for WMF to overtake it (and then, WMF could still warn 'if you do not solve these problems, we will take a top-down approach and do it for you' before actually implementing it). That does not seem to be an approach that WMF has taken. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:15, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    "If such a process is malfunctioning" Is it malfunctioning? According to whom? Softlavender (talk) 05:48, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • KBrown (WMF), it seems like WMF is trying for a "one size fits all" approach to this, but I don't think that's helpful. There are larger and relatively mature projects, such as the English and German Wikipedias and Commons (among others), with established dispute resolution processes and methods for handling administrators or other functionaries who abuse their authorities. There are also very small projects which may only have a handful of admins and no other functionaries, and very little in the way of established processes for handling difficult cases, coordination among groups of users with ill intent, or rogue admins. It may be that those larger, better-established communities neither need nor want such intervention (certainly on en.wp, the ArbCom desysops admins who have severely or consistently behaved badly with some regularity, and at least in one case handled a case of collusion to make articles non-neutral), but that the smaller ones could very much benefit from some assistance from WMF and may well welcome it. Why not ask each project if they would like such help from you, and if so what that should look like? The answer from some will be "No thanks, we're doing fine", and from others may be "Oh thank goodness, yes please." Both of those wishes should be respected; neither one should be steamrolled or ignored. What's right for English Wikipedia is not necessarily right for Afrikaans Wikisource, and that is precisely why each project sets its own policies. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:43, 24 July 2019 (UTC) @Kbrown (WMF): (sorry, screwed up ping). Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:44, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Seraphimblade: I get what you're saying. We are open to the outcome of the consultation being something like "only use this tool on projects that don't have an arbcom" or "only use this tool on projects with fewer than X admins", so I would encourage you to think about where you think the line should be drawn and bring that to the consultation when we open it.
    Side note: I realize now that I've read your comment that this is probably what Wehwalt was asking me in his earlier question too, and I totally missed the point on that. So, Wehwalt, a second try answering your question: yes, the intention is that the consultation will result in global policy - but that policy might contain delineations of where we can and can't use the partial/temporary tools, so the tool use itself might not be global. Sorry for letting what I think was your point go over my head the first time around! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Wrong question (Office temporary and partial ban tool)

You're consulting on the absolute wrong question. The "tool" (new office bans are in scope, behaviour warnings are not?) isn't the problem, it's what the tool has been / will be used for.

It is proper that WMF should take action against users who violate the WMF's terms of use, for example clear cases of harrassment. (Having the option of issuing a temporary, limited ban rather than a permanent, total ban is not a bad thing in this context. [IMO, though there are also valid arguments the other way.])

It's not within WMF remit to punish incivility or even chronic abrasiveness. Civil behaviour is covered by community guidelines, not WMF's rules. (At least not yet!)(*)

The "tools" also should not be used to punish someone for criticising WMF policy, not for appeasing sombody who has a special relationship with WMF.

Before you say "that's not what happened here", just think: you know how it looks, right? Whomever chose that particular user to be the target of the shiny new silver ban-hammer should have taken exceeding care to ensure that wouldn't be seen as corrupt. You want "the community" to be confident that "the tools" will not be abused nor incompetently misused, well we're off to a great start there. And that's without even getting into the lack-of-transparency "Star Chamber" discussion. When the consultation does happen, will the other important issues be shut down as being out of scope, because "this consultation is just about the tools, not the other stuff"? Will WMF complain about the fractious plebs derailing their well-ordered consultation and then just go do what it wants anyway?

(*) I haven't found the proper location, but I've seen passing mention that WMF is also talking about imposing introducing a code of conduct. We may even get a separate consultation about that? This seems like a classic divide-and-conquer strategy. Have one consultation about the tools, another about codes of conduct, another about transparency versus privacy, another about WMF accountability (?), another about project governance and self-determination. On the other hand, I can't see any way to make progress effect change without breaking things down into manageable chunks. Maybe the journalists won't put together all the chunks and publish more "shitty think-pieces".

I'm not normally anti-WMF. And I'd like to think that they are genuinely trying to make amends here. But this limited-scope consultation is not, of itself, enough. Not even close. In the absence of other actions, I predict they are going to get a lot of pushback. Especially now, with the intended timeframe. Maybe that's what they want, so that they can characterise en-wp as uncooperative. I hope that's not the case.

— Pelagic (talk) 00:41, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Is Segway article too positive?

Segway forbidden zone sign in Prague

Hi, I took a picture of a Segway forbidden zone sign and wanted to add it in the Segway article. But, while reading this article, I was feeling it has been written as advertising and I was telling myself my photo could be delete just after if someone is paid to keep it a positive. I do not care about the revert: there is no conflict, I do not ask to revert the revert. I just want to notify you that we may add something like {{UPE|date=July 2019}} or something else in the same spirit. What do you think about the Segway article? --Oliver H (talk) 21:40, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Have you tried discussing this issue at the talkpage? Even if that didn't work I believe WP:POVN is the better place to ask but not as a first resort.--64.229.166.98 (talk) 19:45, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Also, if you do go to the talkpage to argue that the page is too positive I would recommend posting several WP:RELIABLESOURCES to demostrate that there is significant negative coverage that has been overlooked.--64.229.166.98 (talk) 20:09, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
The picture concerns regulation of the Segway. The obvious place for it is Personal_transporter#International_regulation. It doesn't fit well in the current Segway article because the article doesn't go into details about regulations since there is a different article. No conspiracy required :) -- GreenC 20:29, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your answers and advice 😊👍 --Oliver H (talk) 02:15, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't think that the article is "too positive". It accurately reflects the sources in describing the notable points of the history and functionality of the product. It includes, for example, the fact that the Segway is not FDA approved for use as a medical device, which could certainly be considered a "negative". There is a popular misconception that a Wikipedia article, particularly one on a product or a business, is biased or POV if it doesn't say bad things about the subject, even if the bad things come from a dubious source or represent a fringe view. bd2412 T 03:56, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I'd say that since Segway's in many countries become a metonym for a "personal transporter" (a term I've never even heard of TBH), the article does need some mention of the "negatives". That being said, I agree with the editors above that there are reasonable arguments for exclusion of this stuff, beyond the usual WP:UPE stealth whitewashing. Daß Wölf 04:08, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

How well does WP:NPOV work in the possible absence of demographic balance?

The last thread didn't get off to a great start but I'd be curious to see a bit of discussion on this topic and I think there is some policy relevance down the line. Is Ideological bias on Wikipedia a problem? Are we making any efforts to quantify whether it is a problem? We have some numbers on male and female editors and we try to make particular efforts to recruit and retain women. That seems reasonable to me. Do we have any numbers on, say, left-wing versus right-wing Wikipedians and do we think we have a reasonable balance? Haukur (talk) 17:14, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Given that US right-wingers are in general opposed to facts and reality, I'm more than fine having a reality-aligned Wikipedia. That's a left-wing bias, but only to the extent that the left is more closely aligned to reality. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:19, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
You'll find that leftist anti-GMO/anti-vaccine nutcases are equally frustrated with Wikipedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:20, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
This is getting a bit offtopic, but at least on a political level, the anti-vaccine movement in the US has become more of a right-wing thing over time, mostly because it's become more based in religious objections. That said, I feel that adhering to WP:RS, WP:V, and similar policies is sufficient to get us as close to accurate as we're likely to get as an encyclopedia, and I am extremely skeptical of the argument that we need to intentionally try to "balance out" political coverage, which is textbook WP:FALSEBALANCE. It's also important to remember that politics are very different on a global scale (and this wiki is meant to be global, not specific to the US), which might partially account for the fact that people on the right in the US find it jarring. This is compounded by the fact that right-wing viewpoints are often nationalistic in nature; nationalism specific to one counter will by definition will have less impact on (and should have less impact on) a global Wikipedia. On a global scale, people who subscribe to US nationalism or have a patriotic outlook towards the US should only be represented by, what, 4% of our editors? It's clearly far higher than that - but since (due to political self-sorting within the US) those people are used to living in an environment where almost everyone shows at least some deference to US nationalism and patriotism, stepping into an environment where it has less of a foothold seems jarring and reads to them as somehow unfair. --Aquillion (talk) 21:32, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Just for the record, the OP above has been indef blocked. I am fine having a positive discussion regarding political bias and how it relates to our policies and guidelines though. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:21, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Define "left" and "right" in a global context. I'd consider myself fairly far to the right in a British context; to our friend above I'd probably still count as extreme left. Certainly even the most left wing mainstream figures in the US like Bernie Sanders would be considered fairly far right in Europe. ‑ Iridescent 17:22, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, fair enough. But let's say that for contributors from any particular country we might want some sort of balanced sample of that country's political spectrum. Haukur (talk) 17:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
(after edit conflict) Quite. What passes as the center of politics in the USA is far from it in much of the world. As one example, the idea that my right to carry around a semi-automatic assault rifle should outweigh the right of my grandson to come home from school alive and without having seen his schoolmates massacred is seen as a wooky fringe idea in most of the world. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:30, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
That, or claims that wanting to improve health care coverage amounts to supporting Nazism. This was said, with genuine belief, to Barney Frank, a gay Jewish house representative. Let that sink in. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm a European too and I also find US right-wingers to be somewhat alien - but they could reasonably worry that Wikipedia is biased against them and this thread so far would not be reassuring to them. Nor would, say, the twitter feed of our executive director. Haukur (talk) 17:39, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, the twitter feed of our executive director is something that I have no intention of reading, and I would consider it unhelpful for our executive director to even have a twitter feed, unless it is made abundantly clear that anything posted there is only a personal opinion and not an official position of the Wikipedia community. Our only bias should be a bias towards facts and reality (© Headbomb). When I was growing up that used to be considered a conservative virtue, but the world seems to have changed now. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:59, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd have to search but I recall a survey of WPians that identified that the more experienced ones (read: the ones more likely to be admins) were generally more liberal than comparing newer editors. This is, of course, not surprising, given that WP can be seen as a similar environment to academia which also has a similar perceived left-leaning bias. Along, that bias isn't a problem, but in the current political climate and with the current body of RS we hang our sourcing hats on, we have created a serious problem of left-wing favoritism, right-ring scorning across modern political articles. It's the issues of NOT#NEWS and RECENTISM that are being overrun when editors run to include the large swath of political commentary and analysis about factual events; the bulk of the sources presented these opinions and commentary will be from the left, and editors, along aligned with the left, see little issue with including them. Arguable, should not be a problem if there were also right-wing sources and editors made sure to add those, but we've all but cut off the bulk of the right-wing, leaving Fox as likely the most extreme right leaning source. I've argued many times before, but we should not be rushing to add all the commentary about a ongoing political topic at the time, unless that commentary itself is part of the factual events around it. It's hard enough to do this when there's opinions coming from all sides that we can use, its worse due to the media's own bias, our own bias in RSes, and editors' own bias turning a blind eye to some of these events. Instead, we should wait the years it takes for a reasonable hindsight analysis of the sources can be made to write about how academics and political analysis took the importance of the topic. --Masem (t) 17:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

If what you're saying there is that we should enforce WP:NOT#NEWS and hold off from having articles about political and other events until they are covered by proper secondary sources then I wholehartedly agree. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:04, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes... I completely agree that the primary problem lies with a lack of enforcement when it comes to NOT#NEWS. The hard part is figuring out what we can do about it. Blueboar (talk) 18:45, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I remember there being a discussion about this a few months ago resulting in no consensus being reached that we should enforce the basic requirement of topics being covered by secondary sources, because many editors claimed that news reports are secondary sources, even though no historian or social scientist would agree with that claim. I fear that the answer to the question of what we can do about it is "nothing". Phil Bridger (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
A problem with this is that there's still a strong contingent of editors that think newspaper articles are secondary sources. Op-eds may be, but that's the stuff we don't want in the immediate wake of an event. We want secondary sources talking about the broad summary of the analysis and opinion around the event to give coverage to that angle, otherwise we should stick to the basic facts. --Masem (t) 19:11, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
It is not that we can't have articles on breaking political events. For example, I am following the events going on about the 2020 United States Census citizenship question, and I will fully attest we can stay current and write about the event as these events break, as long as we are sticking to the facts (eg now as we're in judicial facets, explains when X happened in court or what rulings were issued). But if you look beyond the factual coverage for this, you can see a LOT of the media riding on Trump, analyzing and opining a gazillion reasons why he wants this, why the courts need to reject it, etc. That's stuff that is beyond the news at this point, and is the type of stuff seeped in political idealism that shows off the left-leaning bias of the media. But as it is all analysis and opinion and "talking heads" about recent events, we should not be covering that facet under NOT#NEWS/RECENTISM. That's where the bias of the media and our editors shows its head in other situations. --Masem (t) 19:08, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Comments like that, mentioning "the left-leaning bias of the media" as if it's an unarguable truth, an excellent demonstration of the problem we face. HiLo48 (talk) 00:00, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Let me clarify that this is the left-leaning bias of our reliable sources from the media. The media as a whole is probably all over the media map, but as well noted, the more "truthier" ones that we'd trust as an encyclopedia lean left (or that the more right-leaning ones tend to take themselves out of being reliable by forgoing factual reporting). So we're basically looking at left-leaning media as what we base our articles on. --Masem (t) 00:59, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Again, no. I think this is a problem with the globalism issue mentioned above - by an international standard, news sources like the NYT or CNN would be considered center-right. People in the US are used to an environment that is somewhat out of step with international news coverage; additionally, since part of the right is nationalism, any source from outside their home country is going to read as more left-wing to someone on the right, and any balanced summary of international reliable sources is going to leave right-wingers in any one country unhappy due to the relatively tiny amount of weight nationalism-based opinions in their home country are given. Outlets like Fox et. all put the nationalist finger on the scale far more drastically than CNN and the NYT, but it's not absent from those sources, either (look at eg. NYT coverage in the runup to the war in Iraq, which showed a deference to and trust in the US administration that was comparatively absent outside the country). It's normal and expected that any "fair" coverage of international media that runs the full gamut is going to leave someone from the US who is used to a NYT-to-Fox-News scale feeling like that particular flavor of US-focused right-wing nationalism is under-represented. But that's appropriate, because US nationalism is only ~4% on the world stage - if anything, it's drastically over-represented among our editors and in our articles. --Aquillion (talk) 21:39, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
+1 to all of this. America use "left-wing" and "right-wing" to mean what we Brits would describe as "right-wing" and "more right-wing". No country is the center of the world and the middle of one's home country's Overton window is not the same as the center of the political spectrum. CNN may be left-wing in comparison to Fox News, but that doesn't make it left-wing. — Bilorv (he/him) (talk) 16:09, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
In many topic areas, the US is about as left-wing as it gets, surpassed only by most of Europe and 4 or 5 other Western-affiliated countries. It is also true that even within these countries, the media, academia, and government sources all skew left-wing relative to the population at-large. There really isn't much we can do about it. Just like we often lack reliable sources about members of underrepresented groups, we have fewer reliable sources from certain parts of various political spectra. We can't generate new sources, and we can't just pretend that types of sources exist when they don't, or loosen the sourcing requirements just to help balance things. We work with what we have, and do our best. --Yair rand (talk) 05:29, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
  • We can make some basic assumptions using the data that we do have. For example, almost 3/4 of Wikipedia contributors have a four-year degree or more, and it's fairly widely agreed upon that educational attainment is correlated with greater political liberalism. In comparison, only about 33% of people in the US have a four-year degree or higher. The plan for the newer Wikimedia survey (as of last I talked to the foundation folks) was also to include urban/rural data gathering, and you can make a similar comparison there as you can with education. On the one hand, there is reason to believe that we get higher quality articles when there is a more diverse group of editors working on it. On the other, despite the high profile nature of contemporary politics on Wikipedia, the majority of work is done in areas where political affiliation is almost certainly almost entirely irrelevant. GMGtalk 18:54, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Thank you! That does help a little bit. As you point out, education is correlated with liberalism and we have a lot of educated people. On the other hand, being male is correlated with conservatism and we have a lot of men. So we may need to be cautious in extrapolating political leanings from the education stats. It doesn't seem too hard to poll political leanings directly in some way and that would seem desirable. Still, I agree that political affiliation is often/usually irrelevant, just as it seems to me that one's gender is often/usually irrelevant. Haukur (talk) 19:06, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
      • Well, you would expect that oppositely slanted variable would work to cancel each other out, assuming there is no other interaction there (e.g., poorly educated men are abundantly the most conservative, but least likely to edit). Anyway, self-identified party affiliation doesn't necessarily directly pertain to article content. This study looked at a language analysis of mainspace contributions, and did a clever mini-validation using IP contributors and voting data. They found that most contributors exhibited no slant, but that these were also the least active, and the most active editors were the most likely to be slanted. Democrat-leaning editors were more slanted on average. All articles exhibited a Democrat slant, but the instances of extreme left/right slant were about equal. They also found that editors generally tend to moderate their slant over time, although I'm not sure that I see if they considered the effect of the most extreme editors simply being blocked. GMGtalk 19:58, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
      • I guess I would add that everything demographic-wise is going to be affected by the universal barrier-to-entry: if you don't have reliable internet access and you're not computer literate, you're not going to edit Wikipedia. This is a group we could pretty reliably expect to be less educated, more rural, and less individually and inter-generationally affluent, all of which would lead us to expect them to be, on average, more politically conservative. However, we would also expect them to be older, and the fact that the median age on Wikipedia fairly well tracks the median age (at least in the US) seems to be a curious outlier. I wonder if it's not being affected by places like Japan where the median age is creeping upward, but they are more likely to have reliable internet access. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GreenMeansGo (talk • contribs) 21:29, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
        • I find "almost 3/4 of Wikipedia contributors have a four-year degree or more" dubious in the extreme, given that (outside of a few specialist fields like medicine) the US and Scotland (and to a limited extent Canada) are the only significant English-speaking countries where such a thing exists, and the US accounts for less than 40% of editors. ‑ Iridescent 21:55, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
          I only did a three-year degree, but I managed to get a Masters out of it in the end, on payment of a suitable "fee".  — Amakuru (talk) 22:00, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
          Yeah, that is a highly dubious figure for any number of reasons, and can most likely be explained by self-selection bias. It simply doesn't pass the smell test: randomly go by WP:PERM on any given day and you'll see that obvious minors still make up a significant portion of the editor base, likely overrepresented compared to the number of minors in the general population. Factoring that in, and adding in the fact that we also overrepresent people of retirement age, where those with a university degree is going to be lower than people in their 30s, there'd have to be a lot of reasons to explain why our editor population is 2.25 time more educated than the US population. Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, and a survey with self-selection bias that makes such claims is pretty suspect. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:12, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Age groups of community engagement survey
Okay, following up from the above, I'm even more skeptical since apparently the English Wikipedia has no minors. If minors aren't being factored into that analysis, then that figure is missing a major portion of the en.wiki community. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:22, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Buried in a subpage of a subpage of a subpage is "The sample size for English Wikipedia was very small at 88 respondents". I'm sure you'll be as shocked as I am to discover that the WMF are spouting made-up nonsense as fact to try to push one of their pet agendas. (FWIW, they don't actually make the "four year degree" claim anywhere that I can see; that appears to be a misreading by the OP here.) ‑ Iridescent 22:32, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
If you're trying to convince me that a global WMF survey was a global WMF survey, then...yeah. If you're trying to convince me that the methodology of Greenstein is vastly superior, then...yeah. They sampled upwards of 10 million edits over 10 years. If you're trying to pick a fight over the WMF obviously excluding minors from their study, or the terminology I happened to use for a college degree, then I'm not terribly interested honestly. GMGtalk 23:25, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
I think Iridescent's point is that a sample size of 88 editors isn't particularly meaningful in terms of the statistics that it presents, especially when other biases in survey methodology are accounted for. I'm sure the Greenstein study is more accurate than the WMF survey, but just based on a quick ctrl+f of all the terms I could try to think of to validate the claim about degrees, I couldn't find it (if it's there, I'd really like to see it because I find this sort of stuff interesting.)
My point about minors is that if you're making the quite frankly unbelievable claim that 75% of editors have a BA or equivalent degree, but excluding a significant portion of the editing population, it further casts into doubt that figure since minors generally don't have university degrees. There may be very valid reasons to exclude them from a survey, but when age is a very relevant factor in a claim that's being made to advance an argument, it is something the fact that a group that would make that statistic go down by a statistically significant margin has been excluded is something that needs to be raised. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:52, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
As far as I am aware, the exclusion of minors would not affect the comparison to the genpop with this data point, because measures in the genpop are also not counting children who are not old enough to have attained the measured degree. GMGtalk 00:00, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, yes, but the general population statistics explicitly state they are age 25+. That's not what you said, and there's the fact that our editor population is very likely over-representative of minors. The point of reference matters when you're trying to make an argument that the educational attainment of Wikipedians causes bias. It's a fun fact to state, but the presentation is at best dubious when you factor in that we rightly encourage children to edit and we have had minors write featured articles. That and the overrepresentation of retirees both make that limited statistic very doubtful. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:07, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't see the point you're making. If you compare a measure of the adult population vs a measure of the adult population (as in the US Census Bureau citation I provide above, 18+) then minors don't really play any part in proportionality. You should expect them to be equal, all other things being equal. The average for completion of an upper secondary degree for all OECD countries (25+) is actually at bit higher at 39% (p. 54), but still nothing compared to the global Wikimedia adult population. I'm not really seeing a methodological argument here other than "I don't believe the results". An 18+ vs a 25+ comparison between the WMF and the OECD actually skews the WMF results downward, given that many people aged 18-25 likely haven't had the time to complete their studies. I also don't understand where you are getting your demographic data regarding over-representation of retirees. GMGtalk 00:42, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm not arguing against the methodology used on the minors point: as I said above, there may be valid reasons to exclude them. I'm saying that because our editor population has a statistically significant number of children, the non-statistical conclusions you are drawing from the survey aren't justified by the data. Additionally, yes, a limited sample size of this project as pointed out by Iridescent, does cast doubt on the figures. A low response survey making exceptional claims isn't really that strong of evidence for the exceptional claim, and even if there is larger participation from other Wikimedia projects, that can't necessarily be extrapolated to the English Wikipedia. On the retiree point, I'm sure you can find the data somewhere, but it's a generally agreed statement that our population over-represents those who have the time to edit: children, university students, and retirees. People with jobs have less time and are thus underrepresented usually. I'm far from the first person to raise this... TonyBallioni (talk) 00:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
This sounds a bit like "the plural of anecdote is not evidence". If you have data on the representation of these groups, then I'm happy to read it. I've read quite a bit on the matter and would like to read more. GMGtalk 01:08, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Agree with that fact that USA related political articles are just filled with click-bait news. The main problem is coming from very few editors who belive blow by blow coverage is notable.--Moxy 🍁 22:21, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't think there's much we should, much less can, do. While I wouldn't be surprised of there being a liberal bias on this site (even beyond the whole "truth has a liberal bias" stuff), as a personal liberal I've seen quite a few conservative editors who have contributed quite productively to the site and we're not turning into Occupy Democrats anytime soon. Hot-button stuff can be appropriately protected to prevent any major shitstorms, and the one thing I think we'd need to do is to more carefully scrutinize breaking news. That said, I think NPOV is still holding up rather nicely, especially in medium- to high-quality articles. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 06:24, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment - please, don't stop now. It is an interesting topic and one that needs to be addressed. Issues associated with RECENTISM/NEWSORG are real. How can we encourage WMF to invest more into WikiNews so that we don't have to make headlines to attract readers to the pedia? Is it a case of "news brings views" that keeps us in the top 5 Google searches? If so, what can we do to replace it w/o sacrificing anything? It may self-correct if more reliable news sources go behind paywalls. Earlier this year, I asked Jimbo to consider working with WP:TWL to get editors free access but the suggestion I received from (talk page stalker) was to search those sites incognito. Well, as one would expect, the sources have become wise to that browser feature, and have made/are making modifications. Atsme Talk 📧 21:08, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Access to email addresses and requests for oversight, etc

I have a few related questions that I can't find any answer to. This is likely the wrong place to bring this up, but I can't figure out anything else, so here goes.

  1. Who exactly has access to the email address that we've set in our user preferences? I assume that at least some WMF staff would have to, but who else?
  2. If there's a good answer, then can this be added somewhere convenient (WP:EMAIL for example)?
  3. The reason I've been looking for this is that I wanted to request oversighting of some material, but there's no easy way to do so that doesn't involve giving out my email address. Can a page be added on-wiki that provides a form to submit a request without disclosing one's email address?

Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 18:55, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Okay, here goes:
  1. There is not a user right that gives access to the email address stored in your preferences. I'm assuming someone with database access could but that's just a guess.
  2. Maybe? I'm not really sure it is worth a mention since there isn't a user right that gives access.
  3. Emails to the oversight list are handled through the OTRS system and all oversighters have access to it. Speaking personally, I don't ever even notice the email address in the oversight queue because the OTRS interface is so clunky and all I really care about is suppressing the material. You can also request suppression by joining #wikipedia-en-revdel connect and typing !oversight. An on-wiki form for suppression is not going to happen because it would be a nightmare to handle. This may as well be a perennial proposal.
  4. You can create a one-off email for any number of free email services and email oversight-en-wp@wikipedia.org without having to use the Wikipedia email interface.
I hope that is helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:05, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Nobody else, as to 1. ∯WBGconverse 20:11, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies; that was helpful. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 22:24, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
More specifically, yes, someone with private database access could read the email addresses. My understanding is that the list of people with such access is fairly short, basically limited to the people who need to have such access in order to keep the site running. In theory there's a list somewhere of who has access to what, but it may as well be written in Klingon, as I have no idea what the name is of the relevant access level. Generally, if you are concerned about privacy with regard to your email address, just register one with a random name that you don't use anywhere else and doesn't mean anything. Echoing Tony, I really honestly don't care or even notice usually what someone's email address is. Typically the only time I'd look at it is to see if that person had sent other emails, or if the person is claiming to be some specific real life person and I am trying to verify that. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:37, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
Some more answer to question 3.
  • If you use Special:EmailUser/Oversight to send an email, you're sending it to a private mailing list "oversight-en-wp@wikipedia.org"; your email is disclosed to the people who have access to the list.
  • There is an extension called ContactPage that can be used to send a message without disclosing email address of the sender (and it can be disclosed if one so chooses). It's currently not in used on English Wikipedia, but it's on Meta; see for example m:Special:Contact/Stewards. I think that extension can provide what youre looking for. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:14, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
    Weren't they recently discussing about shutting that page down? Or am I mis-remembering something? ∯WBGconverse 19:16, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
    Actually I don't know. The extension's page mw:Extension:ContactPage says it's stable, that's what informed my comment. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:04, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Long-term IP blocks affecting large institutions

I am Wikimedian in Residence at a UK university, and will illustrate the following with a real-life example from there, but it is the general point which I wish to discuss.

Following an unfortunate and serious instance of vandalism, from an IP address at the University, occurring before my role began, a twenty-address IP range has blocked for two years, initially with account creation disabled. AFAICT, no effort was made to contact the university.

The university has a staff & student body of over 30,000 people. Over two years, with student turnover, the issue is potentially affecting 50,000 people.

Is it right that so many people should be affected, for so long, in response to the actions of one vandal? Does this open the door for bad actors to harm such institutions deliberately, by vandalising from one of their IP addresses, in order to engineer such a block? What would a more proportionate, yet effective, response look like? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:27, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Depends, would have to see the IP range (seriously? 50,000 people on 20 addresses?). I have seen multi-year school blocks that upon ending are immediately followed by vandalism sprees, as if that institution is just guaranteed to have some troublemakers. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:42, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
The IP range is a /19, which is 8,192 addresses. The vast majority of edits before the block were vandalism, but as Andy says, most of it appeared to be one person - and it's now 16 months ago. I would be tempted to lift the block and monitor the range to see if it recurs. Pinging @JamesBWatson: as the blocking admin in this case. Black Kite (talk) 09:59, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
As I said, "it is the general point which I wish to discuss". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:20, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I see that - I was pointing out that this is problably not your run-of-the-mill schoolblock; usually the vandalism clearly comes from multiple users and therefore blocking the entire range for that establishment is really the only option we have. In this case, it was clearly (mostly) one person and therefore - especially given that it's a higher learning establishment - my view is that we could try unblocking, whereas in most cases it would not be. Black Kite (talk) 10:51, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
It's not that uncommon. I work for a 40,000 person company that routes all web traffic through one of four IP addresses. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:41, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes. Unless the university's IT dept is run by incompetent fools, they are more than capable of identifying which user is/Was vandalizing Wikipedia and taking the appropriate action. As very few institutions run on a for profit basis are interested in policing their fee-paying customers online bad habits, yes everyone has to suffer the consequences as a result. No it's not an optimum solution, but it's better than letting vandals have free rein. A stats monkey could run the latest numbers but as I recall from the last time this came up, the number of anonymous vandalism edits from educational institutions outweigh the positive anonymous contributions. And if anyone is seriously restricted, they can register an account. The usual argument of "this is effecting thousands of people" often turns put to be bullshit as the vast majority of those in education have other things to do with their time. Of those 30k+ people,I would be surprised if the numbers who want to regularly edit Wikipedia top 50. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:46, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Only in death wrote: "Unless the university's IT dept is run by incompetent fools, they are more than capable of identifying which user is/Was vandalizing Wikipedia and taking the appropriate action." Yes. The IT department is very likely run by incompetent fools, at least by lazy fools who choose to be incompetent in not thinking of track IP addresses back to users (what Wikipedia has CheckUser do). They are very likely lazy and don't want to do what is work that doesn't directly benefit them. So Wikipedia has to make the work of disciplining the vandals directly affect them by range-blocking if they don't act. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:09, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
I wouldn't expect university IT departments to know much about how Wikipedia works at all. For example, they would have no particular reason to have learned that anonymous IPs can edit articles, except when those pages are at least semi-protected, and that article creation is an ability restricted to accounts account that are at least 4 days old with at least 10 edits. (Heck, I had to look those numbers up just now, and I wandered a bit before finding the exact figures.) Keeping track of our peculiarities isn't really their job. XOR'easter (talk) 19:04, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Its irrelevant to them as to how Wikipedia works. All they need to know is they have been given an IP address, date and time and their own internal process to track usage. They log *everything*. Perhaps I should have phrased my above as "I know they can do this, having done it on multiple occasions from both ends, worked in systems administration for large network companies" etc. Its business and liability decisions that prevent universities and schools acting on internet abuse reports, not technical expertise etc. You think if we had an IP posting child porn on random articles coming from a school and we reported it to them they wouldnt be able to tell who it was? They can in well over 99% of cases. (The remaining 1% being those skilled enough to mask their access on an educational network) Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:49, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

From what I've seen, activity by a particular vandal at a university seems to be a "burst" that doesn't run very long. So maybe shorter blocks would be a good idea. BTW this means noticing that sporadic vandalism from a university over a long period of time isn't typically the same vandal. A "kid" (to me 22 year-olds are still kids) who isn't a registered user who edits at a university is just very likely to casually screw around vs. serious editing, but this is usually no big deal. So it ends up looking like a "vandalism only" IP with 4 vandalisms per year. Not really a big problem. IMO shorter blocks would be a good idea. Also maybe with the block text at the page put an invite in for wiki-savvy IT departments to discuss it with the blocking admin if they wish. North8000 (talk) 19:58, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I would support shorter blocks (unless of course LTA is obvious), and also preferably encourage the blocking admin to contact the institution if the IP's talk page is tagged with a template in Category:Shared IP header templates. We can't assume that IT or faculty are familiar with the workings of Wikipedia (reiterating XOR'easter). From my experience, one of my IPs (a single address, not even a range) is used by over 5,000 people per year and various users make sporadic unconstructive edits. If it were to be blocked, I do not believe that many faculty would even be aware, much less try to contact the blocking admin. That said, it's better to leave it for the blocking admin or even innocent affected users to resolve, and minimize collateral damage. ComplexRational (talk) 02:08, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
  • It depends on the circumstances. Yale University has been justifiably hard blocked before, and we dealt with it by assigning IPBE when needed. While I do think that many admins are too quick to range block and for too long, there are circumstances where collateral damage is unfortunately required because the abuse is too great. There are some libel socks that I'm pretty confident work for universities. In cases like this, I would have no problem making a long-term hard block of a university IP range and assigning IPBE liberally. I don't particularly care about poop and penis vandals, but there are some really screwed up people out there, and unfortunately that means that sometimes we have to block entire academic institutions because of one person. If this occurs, and it is causing problems, contact a member of the CheckUser team and we will do our best to help find a solution. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:36, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
I have extensive experience of dealing with school/college vandalism. The vast majority (sometimes all) of anonymous edits are vandalism. The blocks are in most cases 'anon only'. When the user comes to UTRS because of collateral damage the user is given instructions as to how to select a username and apply for an account. When anon editing is needed for a project then, again, they tend to come to UTRS and we lift the block for a defined period. Even if the institution were contacted, it is not practical for them to do anything. Often it is a school library or computer room machine that is used. There is no practical way for the institution to monitor every student on every device. If you go to the talk page of one of the affected institutions you will typically find a large number of warnings and shorter blocks, none of which has been effective. The policy of escalating blocks has saved much time of editors and I should be reluctant to change an approach that works. Just Chilling (talk) 02:50, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
This. Also, admins shouldn't be afraid of disabling account creation blocks when doing range blocks of educational institutions. They'll just create it on their cell phone anyway if they really want to create a vandal sock. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:15, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
Pinging @Gilliam: and @Materialscientist: who both have extensive experience in school vandal fighting. Just Chilling (talk) 13:57, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
@TonyBallioni: your comment seems to contradict itself. If the vandal socks are going to be created anyway, blocking account creation in the conventional means would seemingly cause collateral damage without heavily hindering the main target. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:58, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear: I can't speak for TonyBallioni but I think you may be missing the double negative there. I would parse admins shouldn't be afraid of disabling account creation blocks when doing range blocks of educational institutions" as administrators should always strongly consider disabling/turning off/unticking the "block account creation" flag when blocking institutional IP ranges. This would mean that the block of that IP range does not prevent account creation from that range. (I'm not an admin but see File:ThisIsaTestB-NAS.PNG for what the Mediawiki block interface probably looks like.) Nil Einne (talk) 07:43, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nil Einne: - you are correct - too busy violently agreeing with Tony to actually do the fiddly bit of reading his message! Nosebagbear (talk) 10:38, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
  • In general, from my experience at least, edits made by anonymous users are almost always unconstructive (though many are made in good faith), but that doesn't mean we should block anons lightly. I think my first edit was anonymous and I bet a lot of people in this discussion made their first edit as an IP. Unless it's LTA, we shouldn't be making lengthy blocks to institutions because many of our experienced editors would have once been affected by that type of block. I made plenty of edits from a secondary school at which friends of mine vandalised Wikipedia for fun. The barrier caused by blocking and protection is a big one, whereas the effort to spend 5 seconds pressing "rollback" on Twinkle is almost zero. — Bilorv (he/him) (talk) 16:24, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
  • A few months ago I tried editing from a public computer in a major national library, only to find out that IP addresses belonging to that institution were blocked in perpetuity, all because of a disruptive user from several years ago. I filed an unblock request, which was swiftly declined. Is that how things are really meant to be? – Uanfala (talk) 12:20, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
You can edit without hindrance from anywhere in the Anglosphere if you open a free registered account. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:22, 28 July 2019 (UTC).
  • Yeah OP makes a fair point. My assumption would be that vandalism from an institution is by one person or a clique, and if blocked for a short time they're probably mostly go away and find other places to be annoying. Fairly short blocks ought to do the trick in most cases. If it's some dysfunctional institution that spawns vandals regularly, then OK after a few short blocks you can permablock. That'd be rare I would think. Herostratus (talk) 13:21, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
Plenty of good sense above. Don't be inhibited to give short blocks, lengthen if needed. After all, serious editors can always register. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:24, 27 July 2019 (UTC).
  • All anyone needs to do if they want to make serious edits is register an account. I have blocked dozens of school IPs. Less universities though because one would expect students in tertiary education to be at least a bit more mature. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:54, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
  • A block affecting all members (or a large portion of members) of a large institution should never be long, nor block account creation (the entire goal of the block would be to make the users register, so we can talk with them and deal with them individually). The only case where a long range block (or equivalent) is appropriate is in cases similar to an open proxy, like web hosts, in which case the duration can be of several months or a few years (but never permanent; IP addresses get reassigned). Nemo 07:07, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

RFC Colourized table headings on sports pages

There has been a discussion recently at the WikiProject Football talk page about whether or not to include colourized headings in all the tables related to association football pages, particularly in the sports team by seasons pages. This is an issue that is not only related to football pages but across all sports pages on Wikipedia. The largest discussion is whether pages need to be branded in team colours. At best it is partisan flag waving, editors want to included because WP:ILIKEIT. At worst it is distracting and unnecessary and could violate WP:COLOURS, WP:CONTRAST, among others. I appreciate any further comments on this matter as it does seem to be a larger issue. Notably corporate pages, political pages, etc., are not branded in their tables. Again, this is an issue that seems solely related to sports pages. Appreciate further thoughts! Krazytea(talk) 19:34, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject Ice Hockey decided to move to colour borders for the team table heading rows instead of changing the background and foreground colours. Some people like the cleaner look; some people prefer the previous look. Generally though it was agreed to do this to facilitate accessibility. isaacl (talk) 21:19, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
To me this seems more than acceptable. Just checked out some of the hockey team pages. But is this policy? Krazytea(talk) 02:02, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
It's a practical way to meet the colour contrast requirements while using team colours as an accent to the table. If by policy you are asking if there's an English Wikipedia-wide consensus that team tables should use colour borders, no discussion has been held to establish such consensus. Generally a more typical approach would be for editors interested in topic area X to voluntarily adopt conventions they think are useful from other topic areas. Personally I think it would be rather difficult to try to get agreement across all sports at once; there would be too many participants, and inevitably the discussion would turn acrimonious (there is a significant number of editors who don't place a high priority on accessibility guidelines). isaacl (talk) 08:59, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Labeling or categorizing BLP subjects as TERFs or trans-exclusionary radical feminists

Please see Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Labeling or categorizing BLP subjects as TERFs or trans-exclusionary radical feminists and comment. Halo Jerk1 (talk) 02:50, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Now it's an RfC. Found at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#RfC: Should we provide attribution when using "TERF" or "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" when describing BLP subjects?. Halo Jerk1 (talk) 04:10, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Indentation

Could we make things clear in the policy that double or multiple indentations are really not recommended for written communications on talk pages? Proposal here. Thank you. -- Basile Morin (talk) 11:55, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

RfC: terrorist incidents list criteria

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:List of terrorist incidents#RfC: List criteria. – Levivich 18:08, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Categories with committed suicide in title

Opinions are needed on the following: Wikipedia talk:Categorization#RFC: Categories with committed suicide in title. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:13, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Are policies being used to the detriment of Wikipedia?

I have seen a number of examples where a user (including myself) has tried to add information to an article, only to have it reverted on the grounds of Wikipedia policies such as "reliable source" or "no synthesis", and in my opinion either the policies are being misapplied or they are not good policies. The result is that Wikipedia is less informative and useful than it could be. I can give two recent examples I have been involved in. One is the article Polyphenol, where I tried to point out that "polyphenols" are not polymers of phenol -- quite obvious to chemists but this was reverted a couple times for not having a reference, or a good enough reference. Another example is the article on Quercetin, where I added a paragraph about research in mice. This was reverted on the grounds that one reference was not reliable (Nature Medicine!) and "primary", even though I supplied a secondary reference.

I know that I can argue each case on the Talk page, but I find that there are certain people who seem to consider it their life mission to stop people adding interesting information, using whatever policies they can. As soon as you add some interesting information (which may be surprising and go against conventional "wisdom"), these people revert it -- within minutes. They must have watch points set on huge numbers of articles.

It seems to me that the result is detrimental to Wikipedia. Are the policies really supposed to stop Wikipedia from giving interesting information, or are they just being applied in ways they were not meant to be applied?

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:19, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi Eric Kvaalen. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It's not meant to be interesting. It's a knowledge base of facts that can be linked to reliable sources. Adding Original research, or something which you know may be correct but is not sourced, is not permitted. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:53, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Policies can be abused to the detriment of Wikipedia. If someone adds or defends information that certain people don't like then first the sources are called unreliable (NOAA and the UKHO for instance), and then dismissed as primary when they report the real world. some times you just need to just drop it and accept that WP will never be 100% accurate. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:53, 17 July 2019 (UTC)


@Kudpung: Do you really want Wikipedia to be just dry facts? Here we're allowed to tak about what Wikipedia should be, not just how the present policies make it turn out. But let's take the example of what I added to the article quercetin. Some researchers did some (very interesting) experiments using it in mice. Their results were so surprising that they did the experiments over and over (according to the New Scientist article). They got it published in Nature Medicine, which is a top journal and of course peer reviewed. Do you think the information about their findings should not be in Wikipedia? Do you think it's "non-factual" and should be excluded? (If so, then I think you'd exclude most research findings!) The question here is not what do the policies dictate, but what should happen. If the policies don't allow what should happen to happen, then they should be changed. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 18:50, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
@Eric Kvaalen:, if you strongly feel that the material should have been added to that article, then take the question to the article's Talk-Page, or, perhaps even, submit there a WP:Request for Comment (RfC). If the majority of contributors agree that it is content worthy of adding to the article, you'll have your needed consensus to add it.Davidbena (talk) 19:23, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
(EC) Wikipedia policies reflect the consensus of editors as to what 'should' happen. If you disagree with wikipedia's sourcing and consensus requirements, then perhaps its not the place for you. If policies were changed every time an individual decided they didnt allow what that individual thinks 'should' happen, it would open the doors to all sorts of rubbish. If you have a problem with the specific application of a policy in relation to an article, raise it at a relevant noticeboard (WP:RSN for WP:RS for example). If you have a problem with the basic wording and purpose of a policy, then raise a discussion on that policy's talk page. To look at your specific example re Polyphenols: something obvious to 'Chemists' doesnt come close to satisfying WP:BLUE (and thats an essay!) so yes, it needs a citation to a reliable source. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:24, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
No one likes being reverted, but sometimes it happens. It is part of the Bold, Revert, Discuss cycle that is the usual way to achieve consensus at WP. In this case, raising the issue on the talk page with the reverting editor may give you some insight as to why your edit was reverted. Perhaps there is a compromise statement, or a better section, etc, that would fly. I don't know the mind of the reverting editor, but in this case the Quercetin assertion added could be seen as a (bold) health claim, and for that the consensus is to require WP:MEDRS levels of sourcing, where popsci secondary sources don't cut it. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 19:36, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I would expect something that is “obvious to chemists” would have lots of reliable chemistry sources to support it. If not, it may not be as “obvious” as you think it is. Blueboar (talk) 19:44, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Eric Kvaalen, Wikipedia is not just dry facts. It can be written in an interesting but formal prose. However, it is an encyclopedia and neither Primary Sources nor any form of Original Research, nor writer's Own Opinion are acceptable. Generally, reports in established scientific journals are considered to be Reliable Sources, but Wikipedia editors may not put their own slant on it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:29, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

@Kudpung: I note that your statement about primary sources is contradicted by the very link you use. Primary sources are allowed, within our limits that for any source (not just primary, despite how people often emphasize it solely with respect to primary sources) we don't add our own analysis or interpretation. In this particular case, the additional guidance at WP:MEDRS is also likely to be relevant. Anomie⚔ 12:20, 19 July 2019 (UTC)


@Davidbena, Only in death, Mark viking, Blueboar, Kudpung, and Anomie: David, I do take these issues up on Talk pages, but I'm usually thwarted by people citing policies. Once I did a Request for Comment and got blamed for it! (See Talk:Superconductivity.) "Only in death", maybe you're not a chemist, so it's not obvious to you that polyphenols are not polymers of phenol. (Of course, you have to know what the term "polyphenol" is used for, which not all chemists would know, but the article tells us!) Mark, the trouble with what you call "the Bold, Revert, Discuss cycle" is that whenever I be bold and add something surprising or that goes against conventional wisdom, someone reverts it citing some policy or other, and then it gets bogged down in discussion. If I discuss too much they accuse me of making a "wall of text"! Often there are two of these guys against me (oce recently I saw them calling me names behind my back on a personal talk page). But even if there's only one, we don't agree, so the article stays the way it was after the reversion. In the quercetin article I made sure to include both a Nature Medicine reference and a secondary reference, but they still claim it's no good. Blueboar, the question of whether polyphenols are polymers of phenol is so obvious to a chemist (once he knows what a polyphenol is) that it's not mentioned in references. It's like a book on chess openings telling you that you can only make one move at a time. Kudpung, it's not clear from what you have said whether a primary report in, say, Nature Medicine isi allowed or not, according to present policies. But I'm saying that if it's not allowed, then the policies should be changed. I might add another problem -- sometimes I have tried to delete something even though it has a reference (see for example Talk:Tomato/Archive 2#Energy value) because it's clearly wrong. But these guys still knock me on the head with policies and won't let me do it. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 14:13, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

No one is a chemist on Wikipedia.
I don’t see a problem with the policies in the examples you mentioned. Without getting into it, I agree with you in one but not the other. Sometimes editors will disagree. Sometimes they will be wrong, and sometimes you will be wrong. Often, by assuming good faith and patiently discussing concerns, you can arrive at a solution that is better than either editor’s initially preferred version.--Trystan (talk) 14:29, 19 July 2019 (UTC)


@Trystan: I don't understand your remark "No one is a chemist on Wikipedia".

I have rarely found that by assuming good faith and patiently discussing concerns I can arrive at a solution or a compromise. At least not with the group of people I am talking about.

Here's another example, that doesn't involve me. In the last eleven years there has been a lot of excitement about a drug called etanercept as a possible treatment or preventative of Alzheimer's. Yesterday I went to the article to check about something, and I notice that there is only one sentence on the subject of it being used in connexion with Alzheimer's, and that sentence was obviously added in the last few weeks because it's about an article that was published in June. I'm sure, without even checking, that various editors tried over the years to add something about the evidence that it can have an effect against Alzheimer's and that people from the group I am complaining about reverted it each time, citing Wikipedia policies. Now, what do you folk think? Should it be that Wikipedia didn't mention this aspect until the last few weeks, and now has only one sentecne about it? Is that what we want from Wikipedia?

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:01, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I mean that we don't bring the authority of credentials; we are all just editors. We all need to provide reliable sources so that other editors can verify our work, and readers can rely on it.--Trystan (talk) 17:56, 21 July 2019 (UTC)


Well, I don't think that's the way it shoild be. There are plenty of chemists who read and edit Wikipedia. If we chemists agree that "polyphenols" are not polymers of phenol, it should be allowed to put that into an article. No one has come along and said, "No! Wait! Polyphenols ARE polymers of phenol!" There's just no way that someone could argue that. Some things are so clear that they don't need references. As someone pointed out in the discussion on this (Talk:Polyphenol), there are statements in Wikipedia, like that the number 4 is preceded by 3 and followed by 5, which have no reference, and shouldn't have! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:38, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I think, Eric, you may wish to review all of those guidelines and policies to which you have already been pointed. They each exist for a reason, and that reason is almost always "Wikipedia has been burned for not having them". Now, that aside, surely if all chemists agree on this thing, there surely exists at least one published source indicating such? You have spent a lot of time railing against the system, when you as an expert should already have the paperwork on hand that corrects the issue. If you do, then it is possibly the case that your paperwork isn't trustworthy enough. It may also be the case your paperwork isn't the only paperwork, and someone else's contradicts your own, and so we need to find even other sources that tell us what the majority opinion is. You might be right, but you are just another random person who claims To Know More Than We. Provide us evidence, in the form of sources, so that we can come to a conclusion without relying on your own personal experience. --Izno (talk) 05:19, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
If by "paperwork" you mean books and journals, I don't have many, and none on polyphenols. But as I said earlier, no one actaully claims that polyphenols are polymers of phenol. But let's not concentrate just on this one issue. What about the etanercept article, which I have had nothing to do with? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:22, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
Izno, take a look also at Resolvin and my complaint about how these people made the article much worse on Talk:Resolvin. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:43, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, books, journal articles, and even otherwise. I would assume an undergraduate textbook (on organic chemistry? on design of materials?) includes the definition of a polyphenol. It looks like you even got to an answer on the talk page before coming to this page. Yes, the gist of things is that we require consensus for inclusion of material. On an aside, I do not entirely understand why you think it's important for Wikipedia to say what a "polyphenol" is not . We are not here to educate people on what things are not (unless by some happenstance that is a confusion often discussed in some weight by the reliable sources on the topic).
As for the other article, we have requirements for medical sources. My first guess as to the state of the article-in-question is that there have been no high-quality reviews published about the connection to Alzheimer's disease. As such, we seek not to include that content deliberately because we have an interest in conservatively following the medical consensus due to the ethical considerations (see also WP:Medical disclaimer). --Izno (talk) 21:34, 31 July 2019 (UTC)


@Izno: Yes, in the end I think I managed to make the case about "polyphenols", but I wouldn't be surprised if my subsequent edit has been reverted again! The reason I wasnted to put into the article the fact that they are not polymers of phenol is simply that (as far as I know) it's the only case of the prefix "poly-" affixed to a name of a chemical where it does NOT mean a polymer of that chemical!

On the subject of the resolvin article, you say that we have to comply with rules on medical sources. Well, I don't want to get into looking at all the sources that were used in the huge amount of material that was cut, but I think the policy should be changed if it really means that we can't put in all that useful information.

Another example: I've seen quite a few articles about plants, and the articles say that these plants were in the past used in folk medicine. But they never say for what. I'm sure that's because every time someone tries to put in information like that, one of these guys comes along and deletes it because there are no Cochrane studies proving that the plant works for that symptom! The policy should be changed!

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:23, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

@Eric Kvaalen: it's perfectly possible to add ethnobotanical information, including uses in traditional medicine, based on reliable sources. What's important is not to imply, in any way, medical efficacy, without a source meeting the standards of WP:MEDRS. Unfortunately, in my experience as a member of WP:PLANTS, too many of the editors who add information about the traditional medical uses of a plant do so because they believe in its efficacy, and either don't look for, or, worse, refuse to accept, evidence in reliable scientific sources, which is why too many plant articles lack an ethnobotany component. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:57, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Standardizing awards lists

I have started a discussion at WikiProject Awards (←discussion link) regarding the standardization of "artist awards" (e.g. pages using {{infobox musician awards}}). Please join in the conversation. Primefac (talk) 22:54, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

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