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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals).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

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Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2020 left sidebar update § Follow-up
 – {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:33, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Local Language requirements

Simply that where available place names should be accompanied by their local language name. EG The learning of Scots Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is increasing. So, placenames like Glasgow should also display as Glaschu,(Glasgow has the highest percentage of Gaelic speakers in Scotland) Fort William should display An Gearasdan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tartanthing (talk • contribs)

I think you mean that Glasgow has the highest absolute number, not the highest percentage. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:25, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
Aren't local names are already displayed in the article on Glasgow? – Teratix ₵ 04:10, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
They are at the Fort William, Highland article as well. Including alternate “local language” names for places is a fairly standard practice. Blueboar (talk) 11:36, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I think a rule of thumb is that only names used in the local road signs are worth putting in, at least in the lead. Last time I was in Glasgow I don't remember seeing any "Glaschu" in signage. It is potentially misleading for readers from far away to suggest that the locals use a different name from that in the title, the way those in say Rome and Naples do. I see that Fort William railway station uses the Gaelic name (sometimes by itself) in platform signs etc, but Glasgow Central station does not. "Glaschu" is not the "local language" name at all - that is Glasgow. Johnbod (talk) 17:02, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
Johnbod are you suggesting that should apply to all place names or just Scottish ones? An example is Cambridge Bay which has the traditional name Iqaluktuuttiaq but there are not any road signs with that on it. Tartanthing the use of other names is common on Wikipedia as per the example in the previous sentence and Kiev or Kyiv. Perhaps the reason many Scottish place names are missing is because nobody added them yet. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 23:56, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
In terms of what we show right at the start of the lead, yes. I think we are frequently misleading readers by failing to distinguish between eg Belgian names, where both versions are actually used, and other places where they aren't. I said it was a rule of thumb - are you likely to hear Iqaluktuuttiaq on the street? Johnbod (talk) 03:01, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes it is heard. There are several organizations using it in the name like the Ikaluktutiak Co-op and the Ikaluktutiak District Education Authority. Anybody speaking Inuinnaqtun or Inuktitut will use it. In those languages the proper name for Cambridge Bay is Iqaluktuuttiaq, spelt several different ways. In written documents Cambridge Bay is always translated as Iqaluktuuttiaq. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 18:29, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
(Belatedly) - oh well, that's fine then. But shouldn't they add it to the road signs? Johnbod (talk) 13:25, 23 September 2020 (UTC)j

Central notice banner discussion for "Wiki loves SDGs" on 19-26 September 2020

The week during which this banner would have been displayed has now passed. Bishonen | tålk 08:11, 27 September 2020 (UTC).

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

I put up a central notice banner request for an online editathon that I am involved with for the period 19-26 September 2020. It would be for the English Wikipedia in those countries that don't already have another banner at the same time (there is one for Wiki loves Monuments and for fundraising also going up in September, it seems). I was told by an admin on Meta that it should be discussed on Village Pump, that's why I am writing here now (I hope I have put it in the right section). Here is the link to the discussion so far: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Request/Wiki_loves_SDGs_2020#Wiki_loves_SDGs_2020 . The admin advised me: "Hi @EMsmile:, in the meantime: is the English community okay with yet another global banner? Could you please share a link to a place where this was discussed? The English community sometimes is a bit hesitant to allow another banner, therefore it would be good in inform the community and seek consensus. " What do you all think? More details about the campaign is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Request/Wiki_loves_SDGs_2020#Wiki_loves_SDGs_2020. Or see for more information about the online editathon here. It's about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and all the topics related to that (which are loads). EMsmile (talk) 11:13, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

  • I have the same opposition to this as I do to the current one - I don't really like the "Wiki Loves X" style, since if you asked us to openly campaign for their better implementation on-site, people would oppose on the grounds that we aren't supposed to be campaigning. Now, it won't be running in my country (UK), the editor is in GF, and it's not a major thing, so I'm willing to be neutral on the issue. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:49, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Hi User:Nosebagbear, thanks for your comment. Just wondering what you meant with "the editor is in GF"? This is a campaign to get more people from the Global South (developing countries) to edit topics that are particularly (but not only) relevant to the Global South, and especially new female editors. It's a campaign to improve existing Wikipedia articles. In which sense do you mean "we aren't supposed to be campaigning"? Personally, I would have preferred "Wikipedia loves SDGs" over "Wiki loves SDGs" but others that were involved in starting this preferred the shorter version of the project title... EMsmile (talk) 14:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
@EMsmile: - I meant to just write "the editor is GF (good faith)", and just tripped up over the grammar. I share the preference for Wikipedia over Wiki, but I decided a while back it wasn't worth picking that as the hill to die on. Wikipedia doesn't campaign except on things that are inherent threats to our functionality (most recently, for example, there was a very staunch decline on blacking out for BLM). I've no objections to more/better articles on the SDGs at all. However "Wiki loves SDGs" isn't just a more pithy version of "Wiki(pedia) loves writing about the SDGs" - if you asked someone to tell you what it meant, they'd feel it read as Wikipedia pushing them, hard. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:13, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
If this is mainly creating/improving articles, I would recommend: 'Wiki writes . . .' or 'Wiki writes about . . .'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:21, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
It's mainly about improving articles and interlinking them better. Are you both saying you don't mind a banner on this, but you don't like if the banner says "Wiki loves SDGs"? Would you be happier if the banner had a different text? The banner is meant to alert people to join the week-long effort (during Global Goals Week) to improve SDG-related articles on Wikipedia (of which there are hundreds, see here). EMsmile (talk) 14:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Who is Wiki? Do we know this person? A wiki is not sentient and so cannot love anything. Wikipedians may love other people (Wikipedians or not), but in this case they might be keen, enthusiastic, determined or they might wish to promote, encourage, enhance or even solicit, importune, invite. As for "SDG's" or "SDGs", just spell it out in full. Are we that short of space? So, all in all a horrible choice of wording. Or is the inherent wrongness just contrived to catch our attention? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 17:34, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Sounds great! Thanks for organizing. Some people don't love "Wiki Loves..." because it implies endorsement by everyone. Hence it was disappointing but not surprising when advertising a "Wiki Loves Pride" event was controversial. It is a fairly well established naming format (Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth, etc.), though, and are the SDGs controversial? Are there people who don't want to be seen endorsing things like "no poverty" and "zero hunger"? Would support the notice under whichever name it winds up being, but since it seems like there's already some organizing behind this under that name, it's probably best to keep it as-is, noting for future organizers that "Wiki Loves" causes more hesitancy than other verbs. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:03, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
    Yes. Some might object to Wikipedia endorsing a designed-by-committee laundry list of technocratic platitudes papering over the absurdity of globalised capital fixing the social and ecological crises it created. But hey, there's always going to be someone who objects. I don't think that should stop anyone making a good faith effort to increase participation in the project. – Joe (talk) 18:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for this link, User:Joe Roe. Those articles that criticise the SDGs and their process is exactly what I ALSO want to bring to Wikipedia. We already have a section on "reception" in the SDG article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals#Reception) where those things can be discussed / cited. The section was called "criticisms" before but I was told as per WP:CRIT that's not the right way to do it. I definitely want to provide a balanced view and if there are scholars and NGOs who have criticised the SDGs then this ought to be included. It might even warrant a spin off article lated that deals specifically with that, like "Controversies about SDGs". Existing UN websites that explain the SDGs are obviously very biased and make it all sound clear and easy... Having said that, we do also want to edit all the SDG-related topics (and link them with SDG articles); these are topics like maternal mortality, FGM, birth registration, forced marriage but also climate change, eutrophication, ocean acidification and so forth (see list here). By saying that the editathon will be about SDG-related topics (not just the SDGs) we would actually cover a large number of articles, many of which are highly relevant to the Global South / developing countries - an area that has traditionally received less attention on Wikipedia, simply because editors are volunteers and tend to write about what they know and care about. If the editors are from Europe and North America then naturally they are less inclined to write about such topics which don't immediately affect them. EMsmile (talk) 04:22, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
  • This gives me pause: The nine most active volunteers will receive a cash prize at the end of the edit-a-thon of 100 Eur each (Wikipedia:Meetup/Online edit-a-thon SDGs September 2020#Prizes). You're vague about what "active" means and sending the message to potentially thousands of new editors that lots of edits = money could cause a mess. WLM's prizes get around this by making it clear they're for quality not quantity. – Joe (talk) 18:26, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing this out, Joe. I have changed it now to say: "The nine volunteers who have made the most valuable contributions during the editathon will receive a cash prize at the end of the edit-a-thon of 100 Eur each. The organizers will determine who the volunteers with the most valuable contributions were based on quality and quantity of their editing contributions. To make this judgement, the editors will carefully review the volunteers' contributions as per the data collected in the event's dashboard here. " (Wikipedia:Meetup/Online edit-a-thon SDGs September 2020#Prizes) I think valuable equates broadly to quality and quantity, would you agree? I couldn't find the exact criteria that WLM uses for their prizes (could you point me to the exact location if you have it? The link that you gave didn't show me that information).
  • How about this for a compromise with regards to the wording of the banner: We include both the long version and the short version. Short version is "Wiki loves SDGs". Long version is: "Wikipedians meet online to improve articles that touch on topics related to the Sustainable Development Goals"? (I am also not a big fan of the short version but I have been told by people with experience with volunteers and activities on SDGs that this would work and has potential to galvanise people into action, get them curious and get them to come to Wikipedia). Maybe the title "Wiki loves SDGs" works better outside of Wikipedia but for inside of Wikipedia we could more push the longer version? EMsmile (talk) 04:26, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose, for the following reasons:
    • The CentralNotice has been heavily overused recently. We should not have another broad campaign to all users now, especially with Fundraising season coming up. It's important to not use the banners too frequently.
    • SDGs are not exactly such a broad topic that the expected editing is likely to be sufficient to justify displaying the banner to such a broad audience (that is, the entire readership). Very few users are likely to have something to contribute to this.
    • Anything near the area of public policy is risky from a neutrality standpoint. It's difficult to simultaneously communicate that we'd like to write about these topics, but we are neutral and have no involvement in actually accomplishing any of these goals, and are not interested in supporting them. It's even harder when the name is "Wiki Loves SDGs".
  • --Yair rand (talk) 04:32, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
I just want to point out that the banner wouldn't be for the entire English Wikipedia readership but only for people in those countries who don't already have the Wiki loves Monuments banner or the Fundraising banner. If possible, I would like to have it visible for all readers in the "Global South" developing countries, or if that's too hard, all of Africa and Asia (which is where the SDGs are furthest behind). - Regarding the issue of implying support or not: Another option could perhaps be to say "Wiki loves sustainable development"? Or "Wiki loves sustainability"? as those would be concepts that Wikimedia Foundation has officially endorsed if I am not mistaken (see for example here where it says "Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation created a group called the Sustainability Consortium"? - With regards to overuse of banners: perhaps it depends which country you live in. I live in Australia and I find we get very few banners here. The only ones I have seen in the last 12 months seem to be Wiki loves monuments and perhaps a fundraising banner - at least I can't remember any other ones. Doesn't feel like overuse. Perhaps they get used more in the United States and Europe? I am not sure. (whether they actually attract more editors in the end I don't know either; I guess there is some research about that somewhere) EMsmile (talk) 06:45, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
Which of the large countries where English is widely spoken would the proposed banner appear in?--Wehwalt (talk) 14:06, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
Our focus would be on developing countries. We could go by this list (List of territorial entities where English is an official language) minus the countries where Wiki Loves Monuments has a banner in September (those are shown here), minus the countries where there is a fundraising banner (they are all not developing countries, i.e. US, GB, MZ, AU, CA, IE). Wiki Loves Monuments does not have many developing countries on the list, except for example Benin, Brazil, Egypt, India, Nepal, Uganda. So maybe keep it simple and only take countries in Africa, Asia and Carribean which would be these (taken from here):
Countries where English is a de jure and de facto official language
Nr Country Alpha-3 code Region Population1 Primary language?
5 Botswana BWA Africa 1,882,000 No
6 Burundi BDI Africa 10,114,505 No
7 Cameroon CMR Africa 22,534,532 No
11 Eswatini SWZ Africa 1,141,000 No
13 Gambia GMB Africa 1,709,000 No
14 Ghana GHA Africa 27,000,000 Yes (used as lingua franca)
20 Kenya KEN Africa 45,010,056 Yes (in business and education)
22 Lesotho LSO Africa 2,008,000 No
23 Liberia LBR Africa 3,750,000 Yes
24 Malawi MWI Africa 16,407,000 No
29 Namibia NAM Africa 2,074,000 No (used as lingua franca)
31 Nigeria NGA Africa 182,202,000 Yes (used as lingua franca)
37 Rwanda RWA Africa 11,262,564 No (but official and educational)
43 Sierra Leone SLE Africa 6,190,280 Yes
46 South Africa ZAF Africa 54,956,900 Yes (and official, educational and

lingua franca in formal economy)

47 South Sudan SSD Africa 12,340,000 No
48 Sudan SDN Africa 40,235,000 No
49 Tanzania TZA Africa 51,820,000 No
53 Uganda UGA Africa 37,873,253 No (but official and educational)
55 Zambia ZMB Africa 16,212,000 No
56 Zimbabwe ZWE Africa 13,061,239 No (used as lingua franca)
27 Mauritius MUS Africa / Indian Ocean 1,262,000 No
42 Seychelles SYC Africa / Indian Ocean 87,000 No
17 India IND Asia 1,247,540,000 No (but official and educational)
33 Pakistan PAK Asia 212,742,631 No (but official and educational)
36 Philippines PHL Asia 102,885,100 Yes (co-official with Filipino)
44 Singapore SGP Asia 5,469,700 Yes (used as lingua franca, mostly and widely spoken, and educational)
1 Antigua and Barbuda ATG Caribbean 85,000 Yes
2 Bahamas BHS Caribbean 331,000 Yes
3 Barbados BRB Caribbean 294,000 Yes
10 Dominica DMA Caribbean 73,000 Yes
15 Grenada GRD Caribbean 111,000 Yes (except for small French Creole population)
19 Jamaica JAM Caribbean 2,714,000 Yes
38 Saint Kitts and Nevis KNA Caribbean 50,000 Yes
39 Saint Lucia LCA Caribbean 165,000 Yes
40 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines VCT Caribbean 120,000 Yes
51 Trinidad and Tobago TTO Caribbean 1,333,000 Yes
4 Belize BLZ Central America 288,000 Yes

EMsmile (talk) 05:02, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I feel a little drowned in information. Let me put it this way, of the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Eire, which of these would take the proposed banner?--Wehwalt (talk) 17:51, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
User:Wehwalt Of the list that you mentioned, only developing countries would get the Wiki loves SDG banner, so that's Pakistan and India from your list (but not India if it already has the Wiki loves Monuments banner at the same time).
Much obliged, thanks.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

As a resident of the Southern United States, I take great offense to any analogies implied by the term "Global South". Moreover, it's [geographically inaccurate]. I hope you don't intend for it to actually appear in the banners. ―cobaltcigs 00:37, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

User:cobaltcigs, yea well, the term global South exists and has its own controversies which are well explained in its Wikipedia article (Global South). Whether it "sticks" remains to be seen. Equally, someone living in Australia could take offence. Anyhow, I prefer to use the term developing countries but there are others who object to that term as well. See here. It's not easy. The banner would not include the term Global South, but would use the term "developing countries" or actually not mention the region at all. My proposal was: Short version is "Wiki loves SDGs". Long version is: "Wikipedians meet online to improve articles that touch on topics related to the Sustainable Development Goals". The SDGs are officially for the entire world, but of course it's the developing countries that have the hardest job to achieve them. EMsmile (talk) 06:34, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
Great project EMsmile, I love it. The global goals are worthy in itself to be thoroughly covered in Wikipedia as they have been agreed upon by more than 190 members of the UN in 2015. In 2019 the Wikimedia movement held its annual international conference Wikimania in Stockholm. The motto of the conference was: "Stronger Together: Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals." The Wiki loves SDGs project, a one week virtual editathon, is a natural follow up to this conference. We owe it to the world to do this. It is the least thing we can do after we have gathered with a crowd in Stockholm over a year ago, and have been talking about what we can do. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 14:28, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Ad Huikeshoven. That's really useful to be reminded of last year's Wikimania's theme. - If we get that banner up for those countries that I have listed above, would many of you agree with this banner title?: "Join us for "Wiki loves SDGs" during 19-26 September: Wikipedians meet online to improve articles related to the Sustainable Development Goals". The online platform that we'll use for interactions in that week is Workplace by Facebook by the way, see here. EMsmile (talk) 15:53, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
the draft of the banner is now visible here (see at the very top of the page): https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Announcement_Universal_Language_Selector/ja&banner=WLSDG2020&force=1 . It will only be displayed in certain countries, mainly developing countries (as discussed above). What do you think of the banner? Can you live with it? Any suggestions for improvements? EMsmile (talk) 03:26, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • WP is intended for information, not for advocacy. We may need to extend our coverage in this area, but we shouldn;t be making a moral principle out of it, or giving it undue visual prominencem or using using what will be to a non-WPedian unfamiliar abbreviations. We should just write the articles. If we need to organize to find the necessary information, that would be a good thing, but we shouldn;t mistake displaying prominent banners with the need to do actual work. DGG ( talk ) 00:59, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
So... did "we" decide to do this? Is it happening right now? — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 10:26, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
I guess I will never get an answer. (IT's okay, there are many unsolved mysteries in my life.) — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 21:56, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Oppose any banners, any place, any time. Please read the Wikipedia Mission Statement. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 11:13, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I concur in this opposition to such spam, advocacy or worse. See my fuller comment here: Village_pump_(policy)#Request_to_stop_non-encyclopedic_self_advertising:

I am a (minuscule) part of Wiki and I do not love X. Not in my name.

Zezen (talk) 18:55, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

  • SDGs are (now that I've looked up what it means) a more reasonable thing to love, especially for one week only, than the effing monuments that Wiki apparently loves in my name for an extremely long time (when is that banner going away, if ever?). But the week in question, 19-26 September, has just passed. Could this thread be closed now, please? I hope the editathon went well, EMsmile! Bishonen | tålk 19:36, 26 September 2020 (UTC).
thanks, Bishonen. Yes, the thread could be closed now (how do I close a thread?). EMsmile (talk) 02:20, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
You can use the {{archive top}} and {{archive bottom}} templates. I'll do it. Bishonen | tålk 08:11, 27 September 2020 (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.

Displaying A-class topicons

Hello everyone, my name is Rebestalic

In short: Should we display A-class topicons for A-class articles?

The display of these topicons is inconsistent--before I entered into an interesting discussion with J Milburn, Nina Simone and the Battle of Pusan Perimeter had it on beside their Good Article topicons, while A-classers without the topicon included the one for the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

J Milburn, who is a broom (REBESTALIC IS A TOADY ALERT), mentioned that he was 'not aware of any policy or guideline recommending their inclusion'. Perhaps now would be the time to make such a policy?

🤔 Rebestalic[leave a message....] 00:43, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

J Milburn, who is a broom (REBESTALIC IS A TOADY ALERT) What? ST47 (talk) 05:02, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
I believe this is a bit of light humour referencing J Milburn's administrator status. – Teratix ₵ 05:45, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
As a quick bit of background -- I came across an A-class article with a "topicon" by chance and removed it. I later checked, and found about 15 articles had A-class topicons, and removed them all. These articles were mostly military history, but there were a few of others, including one that decidedly was not A-class. Featured articles, featured lists, and GAs routinely have topicons. Off the top of my head, when we introduced topicons for GAs -- it was in my memory, but not that recently -- there was a centralised discussion about it. I don't have a very strong opinion about whether A class articles should have topicons (I lean against, simply because A class is not as centralised or codified as FA or GA, at least as far as I can see) but I don't think they should just be added in by a few editors who'd like to see them. If it's going to happen, there needs to be a central discussion about it. If this is that central discussion, so be it. Josh Milburn (talk) 07:26, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
@ST47: My apologies for not being as clear as I could be, Teratix is right with my horrific sense of humour Rebestalic[leave a message....] 21:22, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
Hey Paul 012, I actually asked a question about this just after I joined Wikipedia! It was at the Teahouse, and the replier directed me to the A-class articles category. I had a look at it just now, and it was mostly just empty categories. I haven't the faintest clue which category Nina Simone fits into, because I don't suppose she had much to do with military history
Consider the Grades section of the content assessment page though; on the column with the class codes, the Featured Article, Featured List, Good Article and A-class fields all have their topicons beside, while all the poorer-quality classes (like B- and C-class) don't. I wonder why there's no such thing as a 'Good List' as well? But thank you for giving your opinion to my thread! Very exciting for me Rebestalic[leave a message....] 11:10, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Lean against - I prefer only having the plus/star, based on proper, centralised, peer review. For A-class to work, we'd have to review each project that wanted to offer them and decide that the project had a good enough system to handle that review, probably with a delisting process external to that project. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:23, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment: We need to figure out, at a fundamental level, what it is we're hoping to achieve by having A-class as a designation before we can answer this question. I'm not sure we can even agree on whether A-class is higher or lower than GA, let alone expect readers coming across the topicon to be able to distinguish it. Has there been talk (other than my brief question here) about deprecating A-class and making review of military history articles some sort of subtrack within GA?
That said, generally speaking, I support (as I have in the past) making article ratings more available to readers. It's important for maintaining trust that we make it clear which parts of the encyclopedia they can generally trust and which are still under construction The stumbling block is making sure that ratings are accurate enough, and there's issues particularly with the ratings in the middle of the spectrum. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:51, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Lean oppose. While receiving an A-class assessment is a good indication of article quality, it's not the product of any uniform or standardized peer-review process. It has a place (the article's talk page), but it's different from GA or FA in the sense that it (like every Wikiproject assessment) is completely localized. It shouldn't be elevated to the same place as a community-wide designation. -- ExParte talk 16:19, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
Changing my !vote to lean support.. While I do still have some misgivings about elevating something w/o a uniform standard like an A-class rating, WikiProjects are probably best qualified to assess the reliability of an article within their purview. And when an article receives that designation, it's a useful thing for a reader to be aware of so they can consider that when determining how much to lean on it. -- ExParte talk 07:56, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions here, Ex Parte! Rebestalic[leave a message....] 01:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

  • I am not aware of any A class processes outside of MilHist. Are there any? If they were equivalent to what MilHist does I'd be open to this idea. If it's only MilHist that has an active process I'm opposed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:42, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
    Video games deprecated theirs in favor of GA, and I would guess most other WikiProjects basically never had an interesting/relevant A-class assessment. Looks like mostly MILHIST and Hurricanes with functioning A-class systems. --Izno (talk) 01:29, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
    Wow, so we really have an entire class that's functionally reserved for just two projects? If this were anywhere but Wikipedia, A-class would have been deprecated long ago. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:36, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
    There are have been previous discussions. The biggest reason why not is because the quality level allows WikiProjects to assess things as the best that WikiProject has to offer (rather than as the community has to offer). Ostensibly, it's also to indicate a different focus from what GA/FA have to require. Lastly, they are good stepping stones for the two projects to get their quality up on the different interests that GA/FA have. I don't see a fundamental issue with leaving the systems in place if it's working for those groups. --Izno (talk) 02:48, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
    Projects with A-class articles include Military History (629), Cyclones (133), US Roads (22), Chemicals (8), Cars (7), Japan (7), Carnival (3) Lebanon (2) and Science Fiction (2). While about three quarters belong to the first two, there are another 250 or so scattered across dozens of projects. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:10, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Solid oppose. This classification is specific to the WikiProject and is not representative of the community review processes that GA and FA provide. (And, the categorization is basically-unused outside two particular projects.) --Izno (talk) 02:48, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
    FA does not provide this, so A class is the highest review process we have. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:10, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose since it's only really used by one project. It would be better to find some way to map MilHist's assessments onto those used by the wider community (e.g. providing a process to automatically recognise MilHist's A-class articles as GAs). – Joe (talk) 10:04, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Adding IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes ratings to article infobox (wherever possible)

Currently, no (or very few) articles about films, short-films, web-series, etc. on Wikipedia contains ratings provided by prominent sources like IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes at the Infobox of the article. Many people visit Wikipedia to get all the possible information about the Film including about its Critical Reception. Most articles written about any website contains its Alexa rank. If such articles can contain Alexa rank, then I believe that articles on movies must contain their IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes ratings. Soukarya (talk) 18:11, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

For the sake of keeping separate discussions distinct, I've split this thread into subsections below. Please place further comments in those sections. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:12, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
The topic of this discussion has been edited to include the word 'Infobox' to avoid further confusions regarding the proposal. Soukarya (talk) 12:04, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey: IMDb in the infobox

Consensus to not use IMDb in the infobox. No-one but the proposer is in support. Prior to this discussion, there was recent consensus (WP:RSP#IMDb) that IMDb is not reliable for ratings as they are user-generated. There is no consensus here to overturn this decision, or to include such content in the infobox. (non-admin closure) — Bilorv (talk) 21:27, 28 September 2020 (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.

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.

Survey: Critic review aggregations in the infobox

Consensus to not use critic review aggregations in the infobox, including but not limited to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. There is consensus that such aggregations are not factual content of the sort suitable for an infobox. Concerns have been raised that any individual aggregator methodology is not appropriate when presented in an infobox without further context. (non-admin closure) — Bilorv (talk) 21:31, 28 September 2020 (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.

E.g. Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic

  • Support adding one of these scores, since it is pertinent information for readers. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:12, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose At least coming from video games, there are far too many times that just presenting the aggregate score by itself is a misnomer of how the game's reception should be taken. The score needs to be presented alongside other reviews and comments to give it perspective. (A recent case being The Last of Us II). I am sure the same can be said for films; a critically-panned film may be an audience favor which won't be captured by a single score. --Masem (t) 19:40, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose per past discussions at the filmproject. MarnetteD|Talk 20:00, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose The infobox is for facts. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are review aggregators, so their scores come with the "subjectivies" of which critics are approved and counted by them, plus every review's own subjectivity. Putting either or both scores in the infobox would give a quality of fact that they shouldn't have. El Millo (talk) 20:07, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose I agree with El Millo that the infobox is best reserved for factual information. The very next question in this survey (i.e. should we use RT or MC in the infobox?) undermines the argument for including an aggregator. Per WP:AGG there is no single authority on critical reception. Sometimes RT and MC can arrive at different conclusions due to their differing methodologies and sampling different reviews. Also, these aggregators don't work particularly well for foreign films (sample size is often too small) or older films (reviews are often spread out meaning a mix of contemporary reviews and revisionist ones—ideally you want to compare the initial reception with the modern day standing for a classic film). Betty Logan (talk) 23:25, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose We should be summarizing the assessments of professional film critics instead of allowing aggregators summarize for us. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 21:43, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • OPPOSE: InfoBoxes are for facts, and not necessarily all the facts, either. In fact, InfoBoxes are optional. Per CREEP. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 18:19, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose I don't think these should ever go in an infobox, much less "whenever possible" Too much context is needed to present such ratings in a useful way. If present, it should be in the article prose. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 13:34, 9 September 2020 (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.

Survey: Rotten Tomatoes vs. Metacritic for infobox

Outcome not implemented due to the close above that all critic review aggregations are inappropriate for the infobox. (non-admin closure) — Bilorv (talk) 21:34, 28 September 2020 (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.

If we decide above to include a critic review aggregation, which service should we include?

Misplaced !votes
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.

General discussion

Please note that policies and guidelines for this already exist. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Film#Critical response and MOS:TVRECEPTION as well as this essay Wikipedia:Review aggregators. The OP may not be aware that a large percentage of the film articles include RT ratings. IMDb should not be included as they are simply a fan poll and of no critical or scholarly value. MarnetteD|Talk 19:16, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

@MarnetteD: I think the OP is asking primarily about infoboxes. I just refactored the subsections to make that explicit. Sorry for doing such aggressive refactoring here; I'm trying to put this on a focused/defined path before it gets too far off the ground. Soukarya, please let me know if you have any issue with it. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:26, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
At no point in the OP's statement is the word infobox used. If that is what they mean then please note that this has been discussed numerous times at the filmproject and been rejected. Perhaps Betty Logan or Erik (who both have much better memories than I do) can direct you to the archived discussions. MarnetteD|Talk 19:32, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
In fact the header for the thread clearly reads "Adding IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes ratings to articles (wherever possible) (emphasis mine) so your refactoring the subheaders to add the word "infobox" is just confusing the issue. I would suggest closing this thread down as (again) policies already exist regarding this. MarnetteD|Talk 19:43, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
"Infobox" is added here. Bus stop (talk) 19:48, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for fixing my misreading of the post Bus stop Apologies for the error. The title of the thread is part of the confusion. I didn't locate the past discussions yet but I did find this WP:FILMRATING whixh is also part of WP:MOSFILM. MarnetteD|Talk 19:54, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Here is one past discussion Template talk:Infobox film/Archive 24#Rotten Tomatoes. Another problem is once you make room for one aggregate website then you have to keep adding them which leads to infobox bloat - a thing that is always to be avoided. MarnetteD|Talk 19:59, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
If we reach any consensus on whether to add any ratings to the infobox, then we can continue our discussion on what aggregate websites could be the most reliable ones and stick to some policy that allows ratings of only a few aggregators that would be recognised by most of the Wikipedia editors. Soukarya (talk) 12:17, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you, and thanks for highlighting this issue with the title of the thread, which I have edited to make the title more informative. Soukarya (talk) 12:17, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
  • It looks like this thread isn't going anywhere, so I'm fine with it being SNOW closed. We may at some point want to discuss RT vs. Metacritic in the body, and as always there's tons of work to do to improve documentation of past consensus. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:52, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
    OTOH, several of these, especially IMDb, get added as ==External links== in thousands of articles. I'd rather see them in a little(!) footer bar, similar to Template:Medical resources (which normally takes up a single line on a not-very-big laptop screen, because while there are lots of options, only a few apply to any particular subject). I asked at WP:BOTREQ about this, and if we wanted to build something that would provide these external links, but take up less space than listing each as a separate item in a bulleted list, they thought most articles could be converted to the smaller format by bot. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:51, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
I would certainly support this ^^^ as a proposal. Regards, GenQuest "Talk to Me" 18:21, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
That kind of change would need site-wide consensus, and I think it might be hard to get. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 13:36, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I think the infobox is the absolutely wrong place for this kind of content. There might be room for a standardized template in something like the "critical reception" section to give links to Rotten Tomatoes, iMDB, Metacritic, etc. that would include aggregate ratings, but I would suggest that would be a stylistic and operational decision for WikiProject Films/Cinema/Movies/whatever. VanIsaacWScont 01:52, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
    Vanisaac and Inter&anthro, your comments adding on to the pile were well-intentioned, but the consensus was already clear and the discussion had died weeks ago, so unfortunately all they did was reset the archiving clock when this thread was just about to be archived, keeping it cluttering this page for longer. Next time, please consider just ignoring it and letting it be archived. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:05, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
    Whoops sorry about that I had not noticed. My apologies for the inconvenience. Inter&anthro (talk) 20:08, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
    @Sdkb:I would kindly ask that you not disparage me as beating a dead horse. In my comments I specifically added thoughts on a constructive way forward, as the proposal may be dead, but the issues it was trying to address remain alive and well. We owe that consideration to each other in a collaborative environment. If you want to prevent further additions to a discussion, the proper ways of effecting that end are to have the discussion closed or archived. VanIsaacWScont 21:26, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
    Vanisaac, apologies, I didn't mean it as disparagement and that essay wasn't the most fitting link. The impetus for my comment came from just observing that the long discussion here wasn't a very efficient use of editor time, when the thread should have been curtailed as soon as it was clearly snowing. The pump (and Wikipedia in general) doesn't have a good curtailing mechanism, which leads to threads like this fairly often; I hope we'll eventually find a way to address that more fundamental issue better. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:47, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
    Sdkb, that's okay. We all need a bit of grace when working together, and I probably took the reference to DEADHORSE a little too personally. If you want to add {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} to the top of the section, the last addition before our two interlocutions was more than 9 days ago, and would have triggered automatic archiving already. Otherwise I'll get it archived tomorrow. VanIsaacWScont 22:08, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: Give editors a chance to back out before adding broken {{DISPLAYTITLE}}

New, naive editors account for over half of recent incorrect uses of the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic word on article pages. This wastes other editor's time as we have to clean up after them.

I propose that editors be warned and given a chance to back out before making an edit that will put the page into Category:Pages with disallowed DISPLAYTITLE modifications.

This would likely require an edit filter which has a non-zero cost to each and every edit, which is why I'm proposing it here first. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:13, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

@Davidwr: From a quick glance, it seems a large amount of pages in that category are for User pages. Perhaps a first step would to be to disallow the template in User space, and then tackle the rest of the problem. RudolfRed (talk) 18:32, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
I'd be happy for a bot to run through User/ User talk and remove them all. FWIW, 425 are in "Draft:" space. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:30, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Actually, I'm not too concerned about incorrect use in user: and Draft: space, but it wouldn't hurt to warn users adding new user- and draft-pages to that category. I'm more concerned about mainspace. If you have a bot though, perhaps the easiest thing to do is run the bot against mainspace pages in that category once or twice an hour. I would give a 15 minute grace period in case someone made the change in anticipation of a page move or someone reverting their own mistake. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:15, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
How many occurences of this are there in article space? I'm afraid that I'm not prepared to wade through a category whose first few pages show the vast majority in user space and most of the rest in draft space. If it's over half being by new, naïve editors then it doesn't matter: it's the absolute number that is important. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:30, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
As of a minute ago, none, but you can check the real-time list[1] any time. There is a link to it, and for a version of it in all namespaces, on the category description page. Note - the non-"recent" lists may be missing items, I'm not sure why.
The reason there are so few is I have the category on my watchlist and I and others play whack-a-mole when someone moves an article page into that category, which is several times a day minimum. That "whack a mole" is the "wastes other editor's time" that I mentioned in the opening comment. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:51, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
@Davidwr and Phil Bridger: If we wanted to make the category easier to wrangle, we can edit MediaWiki:Restricted-displaytitle-ignored to put pages in different namespaces into different categories. I just set this up on testwiki:MediaWiki:Restricted-displaytitle-ignored, so there, articles now go into testwiki:Category:Articles with ignored display titles, and everything else goes into testwiki:Category:Pages with ignored display titles. Perhaps we could do something like that here too. Jackmcbarn (talk) 06:39, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
And surprise surprise, the first five userspace ones I checked on were all from using the hand visual editor checkbox for displaytitle, which has a tooltip that already reads You can enter wikicode here to change the style markup of the page title, including the capitalization of the first character. This field cannot be used to change the text of the page title. To change the title of the page, use the move function. Of course, no one reads that. This is compounded by VE developers not using distinct labels there, perhaps some votes at phab:T110329 would help - if these had labels we could remove the section at least from newbies. — xaosflux Talk 22:55, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
VE strikes again! EEng 05:41, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Guild of MoS fixers

Just like we have Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors, what about having a Wikiproject Guild of MoS Fixers? Editors of under this wikiproject will fix MoS issues in the requested articles. It will work in a similar way like the GOCE. I think it will help new/inexperienced users. I have proposed this from my personal experiences. Multiple times GA failed, put on hold due to mos issues (mainly with citations). ❯❯❯   S A H A 13:53, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

  • The problem with MoS is the myriad of rules are often created by a small number of editors, in practice most of us don't follow those guidelines exactly or are aware of the discussions (if there was any). The friction this creates is mostly kept in check because there is no organized effort to impose the entirety of the MoS onto masses of articles, and no MoS Noticeboard that creates a group of like-minded editors able to impose changes. Granted much of the MoS is uncontroversial most of the time like short versus long dash in dates, etc.. The Guild sounds like a reasonable idea but I hope it doesn't devolve into a Hey, Rube!. -- GreenC 16:06, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Part of the role of the guild of copy editors is to fix issues of MoS noncompliance in articles, so this sounds redundant. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:09, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Sdkb, I will partly disagree. Issues like citations formatting aren't addressed. ❯❯❯   S A H A 16:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Agreed. It's a part of what we call "minor copy edit", which also includes things like spelling corrections. Presumably that would fall under the umbrella of the Guild of Copy Editors, given its name, so this seems totally redundant and unnecessary. Re the preceding comment, citations formatting has nothing to do with MoS, to my knowledge, and I think we could do well without a Guild of Citations Formatters (but if we do get one, sign me up!). ―Mandruss ☎ 03:06, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No, no, no -- a thousand times no Just the name "Guild of MOS fixers" fills me with unspeakable dread. There's far too much mindless gnoming already. If GOCE (which has a good base of experienced editors) wants to offer a format-refs service or something, fine. EEng 02:50, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
ArnabSaha, this is a really bad idea. Not that I blame you for it, crappy formatting is an issue, but there have been so many lame edit wars over attempts to enforce MOS, a stylistic preference, over governing content policies like BLP and NPOV, that this is just going to be a huge drama magnet, encouraging MOS-obsessives to feel even more justified in preferring consistently formatted bollocks over ugly-looking fact. Guy (help! - typo?) 09:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty of making your post MOS-compliant. Hope you don't mind. EEng 10:26, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Addition/Edit: Based on the feedback received, I want to edit the proposal. Fixing whole MoS is a big deal. So, what about something more specific? Like fixing the citations. Many times they aren't properly formatted and cause issues during GA/DYK (saying from personal experience). ❯❯❯   S A H A 11:14, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I think that using Special:EditPage, Special:PageHistory, Special:Purge and Special:NewSection is better than using external links and should be introduced anywhere. (see also this discussion) 217.117.125.72 (talk) 18:17, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I think this would make an excellent "preferences" option. There are times when I would prefer an external link, but most of the time, I prefer internal one if it is available. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:49, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Link's within Wikipedia are internal links, and should certainly be marked as such, to keep the symbolism of the external link icon consist. This seems like it should be non-controversial maintenance. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:11, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Support proposed change. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:16, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
Support possible minor performance improvement of using internal links over a full url, doesn't break anything. Not a high priority, but seems to be worth switching the two dozen templates with "improve it" links on Wikipedia:Template index/Cleanup.  Forbes72 | Talk  18:15, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Addendum - While we're at it, can we please put some description on pages that act to "purge" the cache as to what pressing the button will do? It's not clear to users that this is pretty benign and is only meant to refresh stale cached info. Otherwise, "purge" sounds very violent and destructive. :) Pages where this is relevant include Special:Purge and when "action=purge" is in the URL, like https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foo&action=purge . Not sure where to file this though. -- Fuzheado | Talk 13:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Huh? It looks to me like both Special:Purge and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foo&action=purge already display a notice: "Purging a page clears the cache and forces the most current revision to appear. For pages with random components, it also forces a new random selection." and both also have a link to WP:PURGE labeled "what does this do?". 〈 Forbes72 | Talk 〉 08:05, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Adding the Tabs and Tabber extensions to Wikipedia

So the reason why I'm requesting this is that I know that some userpages and Project pages have tabs. BUT, adding those 2 extensions together are better, as you can hide different texts in different parts, which is incredibly useful when separating different pieces of text. For userpages, you might separate your userboxes, bio, and links into different sections without making multiple pages. For projects pages, well, it works the same. Even article pages can use the same thing, like if you are going to put a bunch of tables in one page, you can just put the tables into different tabs. Here are some examples of pages with tabs on them. --♦/\/\/\TheGeometryDashFan/\/\/\♦ (talk) 18:00, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Articles aren't gonna have subpages, this is mostly useful for the Wikipedia: and User: namespace. Also I proposed this so we WON'T have subpages --♦/\/\/\TheGeometryDashFan/\/\/\♦ (talk) 19:56, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Turning user-rights off and on at will

I propose a user-preference or other mechanism that will let editors enable and disable advanced user rights they hold as needed.

Why?

I hold autopatrolled and pending changes reviewer user-rights. There are times I wish I could turn them off either for a particular editing session.

I don't think there is a way to do that short of having two accounts or logging out. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

Please reply if you would benefit from such a setting. If there is enough support I'll make a formal feature request. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:21, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

  • I can't speak for others, but I have to say this wouldn't really be at the top of my priority list, given how many more pressing technical requests the community has. It's always possible to log out to see what editing is like without a given user right. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:40, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I am curious as to why anyone would want to toggle their user rights off... is there a benefit? Blueboar (talk) 16:49, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Testing how things look/work for a user with different permissions is often a thing in software/interface/etc development, but very rarely is something other than admin, regular user or logged out necessary (at least in my experience as an admin). Logged out is obviously very easy to see, and often admins will have a second account for use on insecure connections they can use for this purpose (I use Awkward42). About twice in the last 5 years there has been an occasion where I've wanted to check how something looked to an administrator who wasn't an oversighter (I can't remember the details of why), but on both occasions I happened to be in the same physical location as someone who fit that bill. On the whole I don't think that a feature to allow switching of user rights like this would be worth the effort of making it. This is especially true because any such tool would need to be able to determine whether you don't have a particular user right because you removed it yourself, because someone else removed it or because you never had it. I would be very surprised if this is currently tracked, so it would likely need two record at least two states (not held because you removed it or not held for some other reason) for every unheld right (there are about 28 rights it is possible for en.wiki users to have) for every user. Thryduulf (talk) 20:43, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Just open Wikipedia in a private browser session. You could even directly compare your logged in window to the private one. VanIsaacWScont 20:49, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Note that the software already supports this, so we'd just need to request configuration changes if we wanted it. What we'd do is create a new group called "autopatrolled-available", and then add "autopatrolled" to "$wgGroupsAddToSelf['autopatrolled-available']" and "$wgGroupsRemoveFromSelf['autopatrolled-available']", and similarly for the rest of the groups we wanted to do this for. Then admins would just grant the -available group along with the main group. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:56, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
    • @Jackmcbarn: Do any other wikis use this scheme? What might be the downsides? If it's benign and has worked well elsewhere, I think it might be worth trying even if it has a narrow use case. — Wug·a·po·des​ 19:33, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
      • I can't think any wiki does something as extensive as is proposed here, but the closest analogue is the translation administrator right on multilingual wikis, which admins can grant and remove from themselves, but only bureaucrats can grant or remove from other users. That's not caused any problems in my experience. For what it's worth, I think this proposal is complexity creep unwarranted by its benefit. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:33, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
  • OK so this is technically possible, looks to some editors including myself to be an unnecessary complexity, I think we need to see other editors say why they think it would be useful before it is worth taking further. Disclosure - I sometimes do or assist at training, usually as the tame admin setting accounts as confirmed, but I get why trainers need an account without userrights to demonstrate things to newbies; However, that's what declared alt accounts are for...... So this is a solution to a problem that already has a solution, unless others see advantages to it? ϢereSpielChequers 08:07, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I am struggling to find a use-case that could not already be handled by our present system using two accounts. For example, I currently have the following rights: extended confirmed user, file mover, IP block exempt, new page reviewer, pending changes reviewer, rollbacker. I also have an alternate account with a long random username (don't want to use up one of the good names) and no user rights that has never edited that I use for seeing how pages look to a newly-registered user. Let's say that for some reason I decide I want to run an editing test with my rollback turned off but IP block exempt left on (If they ever let me leave the US again I will need that to edit from the Tails OS when I am in China). I could simply create User:Guy Macon Alternate Test Account E694E42C05C5995D7D613720520A9C69146F544F18C80F5, slap an alternate account notice on it, and ask an administrator to copy my user rights over but without rollbacker. No turning user-rights off and on needed. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:18, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
  • See phab:T153454 and phab:T210909 which incorporate aspects of this, both are basically stalled. — xaosflux Talk 10:51, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Personally I don't see a point to this - If you don't want the rights temporarily then create an account?, Not to sound disrespectful but it's not that hard to log out and in... –Davey2010Talk 13:31, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Most of those who've commented above seem to proceed from the assumption that you'd use your advanced rights most of the time, and would only on rare occasions need to turn them off, for example when editing from a public computer or when needing to see how the interface looks to newbies. But that's not the only scenario; I, for example, do 99.99% of my editing without the need for any user right other than auto-confirmed. I guess it can be kind of a drag to have to worry all the time about account security, or cats walking on the keyboard, if that's really only relevant 0.01% of the time. – Uanfala (talk) 18:44, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Still easily handled with the current system. Create an alternate account and ask an admin to give it your advanced rights while giving your main account reduced rights. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:51, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
    • I was thinking about writing something about this mode of operation, which is a best practice when logged into your computer, for instance. With a security elevation approach, all of a user's edits, whether made with regular permissions or when elevated, can be easily associated together. But the misclick scenario is the only one I can think of where this might be useful. (I guess defending against malware targeting Wikipedia administrators would be another.) Account security still needs to be maintained, whether or not it requires authentication to occur again when elevating security privilege. Perhaps someone familiar with the administrator interface can weigh in on the value of avoiding accidental administrative actions? isaacl (talk) 21:09, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Requiring article talk page notifications for RfCs that would remove references used in those articles

I've started an RfC at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard that could do with wider input. The RS noticeboard holds RfCs that deprecate sources that are subsequently removed from articles, without notifying article editors. I propose requiring that notifications linking to the RfC are added to the talk pages of affected articles so that article editors can participate in the RfCs before they are closed. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Alexa Rankings in Infoboxes

What should be done with Alexa rankings in infoboxes? -- GreenC 17:19, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

This is a follow-up to the well-attended discussion here about a year ago about what to do about Alexa Rankings in infoboxes. For example WebCite contains |alexa=Negative increase 107,988 (December 2018)

Summary of problems:

  1. The Alexa numbers change monthly and quickly becomes misleading when outdated.
  2. The ranking data is proprietary (Amazon) and there is a tiered fee to access it via API, with the free tier limited to 1,000 queries a month. There are about 5,000 instances of {{infobox website}} that contain |alexa=.
  3. It can be web scraped.. but when done on a regular basis and loaded into Wikipedia it would almost certainly violate copyright or a terms of use rule, if not cause an outright IP block.
  4. The data can be manually checked and added to Wikipedia.. but in practice done sporadically see the WebCite example (2 years old as of this post), I have seen some over 5 years out of date.

The RfC proposes three options:

  1. Keep Alexa rankings in infoboxes as is currently done.
  2. Remove Alexa rankings from infoboxes entirely.
  3. Automate a solution that has no recurring article edits. Possibilities include:
    • Pull data from Alexa to local hosting (Commons tabular data, Wikidata, etc.) using the Amazon API at the rate of 1,000 per month. This would then display in the infobox via Lua. For example it could look like:
      |alexa={{alexa|webcite.com}}
    • Create a new template {{webrank}} that displays static generic link(s). For example the Wikipedia infobox currently:
      |alexa=Negative increase 13 (Global, August 2020)
      Would instead appear as: |webrank=Alexa, SimilarWeb
Automated solutions could be mixed ie. the top 1000 are done via API and the remainder via static links .. or some other idea. #3 is a single option for RfC purposes.

Please !vote your preference in order eg. "1 or 2 or 3 in that order" or however you want to word it.

Due to length of time previous participants pinged: @Wnt, Xaosflux, Izno, Phil Bridger, Ammarpad, UnitedStatesian, Lkolbly, Jc86035, Newslinger, Kaldari, Guy Macon, Objective3000, Headbomb, DGG, Moonythedwarf, and Arsonxists: -- GreenC 17:19, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Survey (Alexa Rankings in Infoboxes)

  • As in previous discussions, it should be removed. So I guess that's a bold 2. --Izno (talk) 18:42, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 These rankings seem to hit more than one item in WP:NOT including WP:NOTDIRECTORY and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. What do the rankings even tell a reader - that some people at some point in time used Alexa for something. IMO they are of no more critical or scholarly value than IMDb ratings. Also why is preference being given to Alexa over other things like Siri? Didn't Ray Bradbury write a short story about one of these automated services taking over the children of an entire town or country. If he was still alive I guessing he would pen one now. MarnetteD|Talk 18:59, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 The rankings are uncylopedic, as they change alot. Also: Arsonxists (talk) 19:30, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • https://www.realskeptic.com/2013/08/12/why-you-shouldnt-use-alexa-traffic-statistics/
  • Keep some sort of traffic metric. I'm new to this question, but at a basic level, the amount of traffic that a website receives is important encyclopedic information that is appropriate for an infobox. We can discuss whether that ought to be in the form of a ranking or in the form of monthly pageviews (is that available for most sites? it seems potentially more useful, especially for lower-ranked sites, since no one knows what 20,000th-most visited website actually means in practical terms), and if we keep a ranking, whether it ought to be from Alexa or somewhere else. But until we have some better alternative, I can't support just removing it. If option 3 with local hosting turns out to be feasible, that would seem the best. We're in 2020; we shouldn't be requiring editor work to update something that could be automated. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:49, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 - They're not even accurate. O3000 (talk) 20:41, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 They are unencyclopedic. Doesn't matter if we could convince Jeff Bezos to give it to us. We could also automate a feed into {{infobox company}} that pulled in the closing stock price of every public company. But is that what an encyclopedia exists for? No. Infoboxes are for data that is static (or near-static, like a website's owner); data that changes continuously does not belong in the encyclopedia. Much better to use a reliable, secondary source in the article text if a site's traffic is notable, e.g. "As of 2020, Wikipedia.org is one of the most heavily trafficked second-level domains on the internet" (with a reliable source in a ref tag). UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:50, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 - The rankings are unencyclopedic, proprietary, inaccurate, constantly changing and a complete waste of time and effort. If a website is popular, or has been popular, we should explain that in the prose in the context of the website's history, not try to reflect the latest internet fads and trends in our infoboxes, without regard to the importance of history and longevity. Kaldari (talk) 20:52, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 unstable and inconsistent.--Moxy 🍁 22:06, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2. It probably meant something way back when, but now? Not so much. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:07, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Anecdotally, I am yet to see an Alexa ranking that actually provided some useful information or was covered reliable sources. The problem is that it's an arbitrary number produced by an unclear algorithm that isn't basing it on something immediatelly tangible (like MetaCritic, for example). And reliable sources do not care to discuss this ranking, nor follow it on regular basis. Infoboxes are already a big dump of all the stats about a topic that don't have sourcing half the time. You'd think that an "Internet score" a website receives would be a big deal, but that's not how reliable sources treat this one. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 22:36, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Yup, Option 2, per almost all above, especially the several pointing out the non-encyclopaedic-ness; happy days, LindsayHello 23:16, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 Unencyclopaedic and partisan faux rankings. Fiddle Faddle 23:39, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 3 is the middle road. It recognizes the issues and addresses them - no watchlist churn, fully automated, no manual work required, data is kept up to date monthly for some fraction of the sites, and the rest static links (no ranking data displayed). As for accuracy of Alexa data this is address in the Alex wikipedia article and by JC in the previous discussion. As for unencylopedia, Wikipedia ranks many things, including itself on occasion. All 5,000 sites could be updated monthly with a cheap $25/year WMFoundation grant once the system is working down the road if there was community support for it. -- GreenC 00:54, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2. , but keep them as some sort of periodic table somewhere in the article. They're unstable, and confuse notability with popularity, but popularity is not irrelevant information. But putting the current value in thee infobox is overemphasis. DGG ( talk ) 01:14, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2:
...or just do a google search on "Buy Alexa Traffic".
If anyone with a credit card can inflate a statistic, the statistic is useless as a Wikipedia source. I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:02, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 We are not shills for corporate America (or shouldn't be). GenQuest "Talk to Me" 13:10, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 - they aren't a statement of fact about the subject since they can so easily be manipulated. They certainly do not belong in an Infobox. They can be misused for promoting a subject. Doug Weller talk 18:28, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 - Alexa ranking is utterly worthless, there's no point in including it. We ought to be able to automatically show a set of information about the domain held in the url parameter, I could just about live with that including Alexa rank (if Amazon provided it for free), but we shouldn't go out of our wayy to include such nonsense. Chuntuk (talk) 11:22, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 Not sure what values these numbers provide, and have concerns about how accurate and maintainable they are. PaleAqua (talk) 18:52, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 I didn't even know what an Alexa ranking was (is?) until I read this RFC. Seems irrelevant. Wes sideman (talk) 21:22, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 Do you have the Alexa toolbar installed? ... You don't? Neither do I. Oh well, Alexa does not count our web surfing in its stats. See selection bias. P.S. If you're on the fence, please read several of the articles Guy Macon posted for in-depth analysis. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 22:56, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 I don't think this information belongs in the infobox. Another annoying issue is that the red triangle/green triangle is extremely confusing; I can't figure out whether it means the rank is going up (meaning it is getting less popular) or the popularity is going up (meaning the opposite). It might make sense to include the information for the most popular websites (top 100 or so), which have much more stable positions in the ranking. But still I think that info better belongs in the article body, e.g. "According to Alexa Internet, google.com is the most visited website since 2010" or whatever. Sincerely, Ovinus (talk) 07:42, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Option 2 - Never seen the point to these - As noted above these often become outdated thus giving the reader false information. –Davey2010Talk 19:43, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (Alexa Rankings in Infoboxes)

My main problem with alexa is "What are we putting into it, and what are we getting out of it?" If we put in a bot, request data from Alexa, or just do it manually, it doesn't really matter if we are putting in more than what we get out of it. So, what are we getting out of Alexa? Do people really come to Wikipedia to know about the Alexa rank? Arsonxists (talk) 17:44, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! -- GreenC 21:50, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Is this something we could work with WikiData on and/or get a WMF grant? WikiData would probably love to host this kind of data and it could populate the infobox from there. A WMF grant could fund the fees for whatever the next tier is so we can make the ~5k requests a month that we need to update these. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:35, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
Yeah it's cheap, $25 a year for current needs. Without institutional support there is no guarantee payments could be maintained in perpetuity. Regardless of the outcome here, it might still be hosted at Wikidata or Wikicommons, and used for other language wikis. -- GreenC 00:43, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
@I JethroBT (WMF): Could you help us navigate this? A $500 grant could keep this going for 20 years which is a bit longer than the 12 month max for Rapid Grants, so I don't think we'd qualify for any of the grants. Should we be looking at WMF programs other than grants? — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:16, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
@Wugapodes: I don't have all the details around this proposal, but in general, it's not an issue to request $500 for a Rapid Grant and simply report on outcomes/data after the first year. That some of the funded work will continue beyond 12 months is not problematic, and in fact, is basically ideal. If the benefits of this program/service are going to persist after the first year, it is clearly worth funding in my view. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Annual visitors parameter?

Okay, so it seems that, unless something changes, the Alexa parameter is on its way out. But I maintain that it is useful to have some sort of metric that indicates the popularity of a website. Would the community support having an |annual visitors= (or |annual pageviews=) parameter? It really doesn't seem all that different than having an annual visitors parameter for {{Infobox museum}}. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:47, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Do you have a source for that data in mind that is likely to be both free of cost and freely licensed? --Izno (talk) 02:33, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
@Izno: I don't think there's any entity that collects that data at scale, so it'd come from individual websites. E.g. for Wikipedia, we'd cite as 882 million[1] Many websites don't release their numbers, but I think it'd be better to include it for the ones that do than to have nothing at all. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:21, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Even for Wikipedia, the stats aren't clear. The figure of 882 million is a monthly rather than yearly figure and represents unique devices rather than visitors. Considering that people browse the internet on phones, PCs, laptops, games consoles, equating unique devices to visitors isn't straightforward. Richard Nevell (talk) 10:02, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Wikistats - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
But then we're facing WP:V and WP:RS issues. The only people who (possibly) know how many visitors they get are the sites themselves. (And: pageviews I'd believe before visitors.) Such an infobox param supposes we have somebody to trust for their values. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 09:41, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Actually, it is not true that "the only people who (possibly) know how many visitors they get are the sites themselves." It is impossible for the site to know how many visitors they get. The reason is caching. Let's say you have a really great website that is hosted in New Zealand. A thousand people using the same ISP in New York City all visit at around the same time. Now the ISP could send a thousand requests to New Zealand, or they could just send one request, store the result locally, and serve that to the other 999 users. Cheaper for the ISP, the users get the page faster, but the site in New Zealand don't know how many visitors they have.
The sites have a bunch of tricks that try to defeat caching and force each visitor to go to New Zealand, but the local ISPs, browser makers, adblockers, tracker blockers, and pretty much every computer between NZ and NYC work to defeat those tricks. I won't bore you with the details, but the end result is that the stats are all educated guesses. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:19, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Aren't all statistics educated guesses? Annual visitors to a museum, or passengers using a train station is only ever going to be an educated guess. That seems a reason to good avoid excessive precision, but I think the figure is still valuable. --Paul Carpenter (talk) 13:55, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Forensic science

There is currently a proposal to start a new WikiProject for Forensic science. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Forensic science for anyone who is interested, thanks. Jerm (talk) 04:05, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Service awards

Service award eligibility is currently based on "the number of contributions that the editor has made to Wikipedia and the length of time registered". I believe that a user's average edit size (which can be seen on https://xtools.wmflabs.org/) is at least as important as these criteria. If a person contributes a great deal but have made a fairly small number of large edits, while another person contributes a very good deal but each edit is very small, the latter may end up with a higher rank even when they are somewhat less responsible for the site being as strong an information source as it is. It's not a massive problem, but I feel that the sort of change recommended would result in the service awards system better reflecting which people are the most significant contributors to Wikipedia. There are various reasons why not all of them would be among the most prolific. AndrewOne (talk) 19:43, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Using the number of contributions alone could encourage bad behaviour of making multiple small edits instead of bigger ones. I think the number of Good/Featured articles should be taken into account. T8612 (talk) 20:21, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Ah yes, yet another form of WP:Editcountitis. --Izno (talk) 20:37, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
My average edit size is -122.5 bytes. I am not sure how this represents anything useful. Not to sound too dismissive of your attempt to improve these "awards". But I feel like this is a pointless solution, because the idea that service awards have any solution is a flawed premise. It's a metric applied to a subjective measure, so you can never use it to judge anything objectively. All you would be doing is just adding more rules and factors to it. Here's another extreme hypothetical: what about someone who reviewed and tagged a thousand speedy deletion candidates versus someone who added "lol penis" to an article and got reverted and banned. The latter editor is still higher rank, because all the former editor's edits are deleted but the latter one has +9 content addition. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 20:55, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I can't get an average; I only get: User has made too many edits! BD2412 T 21:04, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Wow! 1640315 edits since: 2005-02-20, is that a record? Doug Weller talk 08:42, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a problem. People are making too many edits on Wikipedia. Including me, obviously. --A D Monroe III(talk) 21:17, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Edit count is and always has been a very crude measurement. We could try to adjust for edit size, semi-automated vs. manual edits, etc., but it's a Sisyphean task. The only realistic thing we can do is de-emphasize edit count and inform people about its limitations as a metric.
Personally, I find it useful mainly for new editors. 5 edits is different from 50 is different from 500, but after a few thousand, I just lump everyone into the same "experienced editor" category. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:21, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
User badges are all self-assigned, so feel free to devise any ranking system that pleases you. isaacl (talk) 22:29, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
The service awards carry no official weight and mean less than nothing. They time it has taken you to type your initial post and read these responses is more energy than you should have expended on the issue of qualifications for them. --Jayron32 17:48, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I've said it above. T8612 (talk) 10:43, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
Many factors tend to make edit counts useless. For someone like me who couldn’t give a rats about them, I have discovered that editing on an iPad will frequently result in loss of entered text when opening a reference or an information screen and then returning to the edit screen. Thus my edit count when using this method is typically 5 or more times that on a computer for a small article with a small number of references and lookups. Downsize43 (talk) 23:48, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
They are just for fun. As has been pointed out, there is no solution, and no one should care if people do acceptable edits to get an award, and if they are bad edits, well that's what blocks are for. Doug Weller talk 08:42, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia - Not a Newspaper - 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict Article

Misplaced request—this noticeboard is for project-wide concerns. Raise your suggestion at Talk:2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 07:56, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

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

I'd like to make a proposal regarding inclusion of "breaking news" in Wikipedia articles, specifically the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict article. If you look at the timeline section of that article, there is a lot of reporting from official/government outlets about attacks and denials of attacks. As we all know, Wikipedia is not a newspaper. I suggest we put a hold of at least 24-48hr on adding ongoing news, to give time for them to be consolidated, and to secondary sources to verify the claims and the neutrality of the claims to be established. With the current arrangement, there is a risk that a Wikipedia reader will get a one sided view of what is happening on the ground. This is also necessitating extra work to bring in secondary sources to verify these claims, which may not need to be in the article in the first place, again given that Wikipedia is not a newspaper --Sataralynd (talk) 16:30, 17 October 2020 (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.

Deindexing talk pages

No consensus. Editors are split, with 26 favoring de-indexing talk pages (and many expressing surprise that this isn't being done already), and 23 opposed. Arguments in favor of de-indexing were relatively uniform, asserting that talk pages are more likely to have harmful content (BLP violations, copyright violations, etc.) and that readers will not benefit from being able to find this content directly from search engines. Arguments opposed asserted that concerns about harmful content were overblown, that Google search is an important tool for editors to search talk pages that internal search is unable to match, and that Wikipedia should be transparent and thus not hide talk pages from search engines. Given the small difference in vote count and the lack of a basis for discounting arguments presented, there is no consensus. One editor proposed de-indexing administrator noticeboard pages, and another editor suggested deindexing talk pages for BLP articles in order to mitigate the most harmful content. However, the Administrators' noticeboard is already deindexed by MediaWiki:Robots.txt and {{BLP}} tags already deindex talk pages (although the latter does not affect talk page archives for BLP pages, which may be a point for further discussion). signed, Rosguill talk 19:38, 18 October 2020 (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.

Should we deindex all talk pages on Wikipedia from search engines? This comes about a month after a similar (not-RfC) discussion about the potential benefits and drawbacks of deindexing some non-content namespaces. Aasim 17:23, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

To give some context: One day I was browsing my search engine of choice and ended up finding an image that was only included on a talk page. The reason why I am making this proposal is (1) we do not want inaccurate (and potentially libelous) information about a subject (be it person, company, organization, or medical topics) showing up in search results and (2) talk pages provide no help to readers whatsoever [clarification: what I mean is they do not help readers searching for a topic on Google or Bing]. I would see them as causing more confusion (even with the disclaimer) as, and I am going to quote myself here, people that check the source of [images on talk pages] will be confused that they see what looks like a weird kind of forum that only some people can comment on instead of the traditional Wikipedia article. For these two main reasons, I started this RfC. Aasim 17:29, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Should we deindex talk pages?

  • Strong oppose - Wikipedia's search tool sucks 99% of the time for specific discussion search. Googling for discussion pages is often far easier and more flexible than MediaWiki's built-in search and accepting this proposal will result in it being much harder for myself and many other editors who use Google and other search engines to find talk pages or other discussions, especially as many might not even be aware of the indexing change. Ed talk! 18:44, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
    Ed6767, I understand that Wikipedia's search may be a little unintuitive to use for searching for a specific discussion. I just voted on an MfD and learned that the page nominated for deletion, before the MfD, was showing up on search results when searching for the subject. See [2]. I do not think this is something that we want readers to see. Aasim 20:43, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
    @Awesome Aasim: To clarify, do you mean (i) that Paul A. Bonacci was showing at Google; (ii) that Talk:Paul A. Bonacci was showing; (iii) that Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Talk:Paul A. Bonacci was showing? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:33, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
    Redrose64, I just did a search with Google, and sure enough, there is the talk page. Aasim 18:37, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
    @Redrose64: (ii). Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:43, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
    Per Template:NOINDEX#Warnings, major search engines should respect the {{NOINDEX}} tag, but it may take days or even weeks for content already indexed to be removed from them. In this case, the tag was added less than 24 hours ago. Ideally, that talk page should have been tagged with {{WikiProject Biography|living=yes}} several years ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:48, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I disagree with the assertion that talk pages provide no help to readers whatsoever (emphasis in original). Stricken following clarification that talk pages provide no help to readers seeking information on a topic via external search engines. 22:03, 19 August 2020 (UTC) As a reader, I'll typically check an article's talk page if I see certain maintenance tags, principally NPOV. And before I started editing, I would sometimes go to the talk page to ask questions as an ip to seek clarity on confusing language, for example. I'm not sure if that second use case disqualifies my experience as the question I asked would technically make me an editor rather than a reader, but I've definitely found benefit in checking out prior discussions about a topic I'm unfamiliar with, even if I have no intention of ever editing the page.
No comment on the proposal itself, but User:Awesome Aasim do you think you could courtesy ping the other ten editors involved in the prior discussion you started on this page archived less than a month ago? I may be mistaken but I believe that's standard practice for RFC proposers. <3 Folly Mox (talk) 20:22, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Folly Mox, Okay. @Ed6767, Rmhermen, Þjarkur, TheDJ, Teratix, Orangemike, GenQuest, John M Wolfson, DGG, Phil Bridger, and Schazjmd: courtesy ping. Aasim 20:31, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Folly Mox, to clarify about the "no help" part: talk pages are really only beneficial to editors seeking to improve the article. Many readers do not seek out talk pages for sources of information. They are not going to help readers searching for a topic. I should have made that clearer in the context of the RfC. Aasim 20:33, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
I added that clarification in the "context". Aasim 20:54, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Concur - the garbage content on talk pages is much higher, and stuff we would never allow to remain in an article can just lie there on a talk page, like the proverbial "t**d in a punchbowl", ready to be stumbled on by an unsophisticated seeker of information. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:08, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • ? Awesome Aasim the "Talk:" namespace is pretty easy to identify in your proposal, but as far as "other discussion" - how are you defining these? For example are you also proposing that the entire village pump not be indexable? — xaosflux Talk 22:47, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Xaosflux Hmmm... for now, let's just do talk pages I guess. I'll update the header and question to clarify that. Aasim 23:26, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support not appropriate for Google, and I think the assertion that the internal system is "too hard", etc., is nonsense; many discussion venues (such as the Village Pumps and Administrators' noticeboards, etc.) have an archive search tool, and for the rest there's Special:PrefixIndex. Anyone who unfortunately falls through those cracks can, ultimately, just "deal with it", to be blunt. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 23:01, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support for talk pages per previous discussion. Oppose anything beyond that for now. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:09, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support honestly astonished that those were indexed to begin with. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:14, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, also for all *_talk: namespaces. I'm also surprised that these pages are indexed. Although publicly available, they correspond to behind-the-scenes discussions which most websites would keep private and which retain material that we would quickly purge from articles. Readers almost always seek an article and don't want to be diverted to discussion on how it was made. Certes (talk) 00:43, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support - somehow thought this was the case already. I know userspace isn't indexed, but in general I don't think there's a need to index talk namespaces by default (but there might be a good case for exceptions on a case-by-case basis). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 01:32, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose (from previous discussion): I think the negative effects of indexing talk pages are too slight to justify changing the usual practice ... I would expect users who come across talk pages in their search results will grasp their nature as discussion hubs, given the clear prefix in their titles, and adjust expectations of their content accordingly. The problem is when search engines present talk pages' content misleadingly, as in Aasim's Bing search. Bing, unlike Google, does not give an image's domain without a mouseover, and even then it ambiguously gives the chart's source as "Wikipedia" (you have to click through to see it's from a talk page). That is their responsibility to fix, not ours. If the chart's source was presented unambiguously, there wouldn't be a problem. – Teratix ₵ 03:14, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Another issue was the potentially negative impact on users who dislike MediaWiki's search engine and prefer to browse discussion archives through external engines, which, as Ed6767's comment suggests, is not an uncommon practice. – Teratix ₵ 03:19, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Teratix it will not do to say that [it is Bing's] responsibility to fix, not ours. That something might not be our responsibility does not make it any less our problem, especially if Bing does nothing about it. We can't control what Bing does but we can control what we do. Your other arguments are sound (even if I don't agree with them, see above), but I just wanted to note and rebut that particular point. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 03:57, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Do we know for sure that Bing won't do anything about the problem if someone asked? – Teratix ₵ 02:10, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
They may or may not, but that's beside the point that we shouldn't reject an otherwise good proposal based solely or even partially on what other websites "should" or "should not" do with our pages (unless, of course, it entails a legal responsibility on their part, but I digress). – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 03:08, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't believe it is an "otherwise good proposal"; it would have serious negative impacts on editors who prefer to use external search engines to browse discussions, as several have attested. – Teratix ₵ 03:20, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose People searching on Google should be aware of the context in which information is present. As noted under the technical notes section, talk pages of BLPs are already noindexed. Also, most internal pages that we don't want to be indexed such as all deletion discussions, copyright investigations, etc are already being noindexed. There's no need to apply a blanket noindexing on all talk. Google is a much more sophisticated search engine than what we have internally - if you remember someone having said something on a discussion page but can't recall the exact wording, Google search is more likely to yield the correct result than internal search. The internal search is good only for exact strings. SD0001 (talk) 03:25, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
    SD0001, I just did a check on Bing to see if Donald Trump's talk page is indexed. I discovered that only the talk page of Donald Trump is deindexed; all of the archives are indexed, which still poses a problem regarding BLPs as potentially defamatory content should not show up on any search engine rank. Something that deindexing pages in the Talk: namespace could fix. Aasim 07:24, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
    The solution to that would be to have the archiving bots apply noindexing when creating archives of a noindexed talk page. SD0001 (talk) 07:52, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
    That would kinda work if we did not have 1000000+ BLPs (and many more archives). If we had fewer archives, this would definitely be a practical solution. Adding __NOINDEX__ to the millions of archives we had (or to {{talkarchive}}) would unnecessarily waste a lot of server resources, and it would take time for the search engines to stop deindexing the millions of archives. Plus, like I mentioned above, we have libelous content on talk pages of non-BLPs and it would be impractical to try and suppress each of this libelous content. Turning off talk page indexing makes this content part of the deep and dark web. I know it may inconvenience us editors trying to find archives, but this is really just the less than 1% of all readers that go through archives. For editors it may be something to get used to, but readers could probably care less as many of them don't look at talk pages anyway. (I did not learn about the various namespaces and maintenance pages until I just happened to stumble on pages in each of those namespaces.) Aasim 15:09, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

    Adding __NOINDEX__ to the millions of archives

    There aren't millions of archives. The vaast majority of the million+ BLP articles don't have any talk archives at all.

    ... would unnecessarily waste a lot of server resources, and it would take time for the search engines to stop deindexing the millions of archives

    It would take the same time for search engines to stop indexing regardless of what method we use. As for server resources, that isn't much of a concern for us. The WMF gets millions of dollars in donations and have enough resources -- it's silly to employ a poorer solution at our end just for the sake of server resources.

    Plus, like I mentioned above, we have libelous content on talk pages of non-BLPs and it would be impractical to try and [[WP:OVER|suppress]] each of this libelous content.

    Why suppress? Simply removing will cause noindexing. It the material is that libelous, it has to be revdeled/suppressed anyway, regardless of whether the page is indexed. SD0001 (talk) 08:29, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
    Ran some numbers: turns out there exist just 13494 talk archives of BLPs. That's pretty trivial to noindex using a bot. SD0001 (talk) 16:04, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per above. Also surprised this wasn't already the case. I can imagine your average Joe reader reacting with either disinterest or frustration when the contents of the page they were expecting to see does not match up with the contents of the page they're actually seeing. Net negative at best. -FASTILY 07:45, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose our talk pages are a valuable part of what makes Wikipedia unique. We should not be hiding it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:00, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support contra what TheDJ says above, our talk pages are too often at best embarassing and at time verging on the libelous, with doxing and sometimes unacceptable insults. I can point to at least one talk page which consists only of insults and rants. Our internal engine does work. Leaving defamatory content open to the public is IMHO unacceptable. Doug Weller talk 08:53, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - I don't agree that talk pages aren't useful as a search result, both for readers and editors. Benjamin (talk) 09:55, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose When a reader lands on a talk page by accident, they will quickly see that it's not a normal Wikipedia article, as posts are signed, there are people replying to each other, &c. I think we can trust the reader to understand that it's a discussion page. If they were just looking for the article, there's a link at the top, which I think they will quickly find. Furthermore, as xaosflux pointed out, the template "BLP" contains __NOINDEX__, so libel is not really a concern. Talk page discussions can be pretty interesting, so I do think reader value would be lost if we deindex the entire Talk: namespace. PJvanMill)talk( 11:26, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Search engines already employ sophisticated algorithms to help their users find what they want. Our talk pages are public and open to all, rather than being private and privileged. It may be that they are exactly what the searcher is looking for. We should leave such decisions to searchers and the providers rather than second-guessing them and pre-emptively censoring everything. If there's a problem, it's that our talk pages are too little understood and used. This proposal would make matters worse. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:50, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Talk pages may be interesting but they are not the Wikipedia Content. The articles are the content, all the rest exists to support the process of making the content. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:17, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Talk pages are hidden enough, but are a fundamental part of Wikipedia. I don't think they should be hidden further, it's better just to remove problematic content as you see it then to implement this blanket proposal. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:09, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support While I get the "our search is insufficient" arguments (though I don't necessarily agree with them), I think about the number of BLP violations brought to talk pages in order to demean article subjects and then the idea of them showing up in search results? That makes my skin crawl.--Jorm (talk) 18:38, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment - Special:PermaLink/862856598#Prevent new users from allowing search engine indexing of user pages caused spam in userspace to halve overnight. I am not aware of any systematic spamming in the talk namespace. MER-C 19:08, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose until such time that the MediaWiki search engine is significantly improved. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 22:36, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Talk pages could confuse readers. Depending on a user's search, the search engine might pull up a talk page (no search engine is perfect). P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 23:03, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strategic support, with my actual !vote being an abstention because I'm not an expert on search engine results and thus feel WP:UNQUALIFIED to weigh in on the all the potential ramifications of this. But from the !votes above, I'm concerned that some editors are prioritizing their own desire to be able to search for pages on Google rather than putting the WP:READER first, so that pushes me into a strategic support to counterbalance. I find the support arguments above that talk pages are not part of the encyclopedia proper (as ill-defined a concept as that is at WP) and thus should not generally be appearing in Google search results persuasive. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:39, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
How does talk page indexing hurt the reader, and why should only pages part of the "encyclopedia proper" be indexed? – Teratix ₵ 03:20, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Teratix, plenty of the support !votes here have made arguments as to why that would be, and why we wouldn't want internal pages appearing in Google results. I expand on my views about reader-facing vs. non-reader facing parts of Wikipedia here—part of what it boils down to is that we need to be able to distinguish between the product we work to create (an encyclopedia) and the efforts that go into creating that product. Going back to WP:Reader, the view I hold most strongly here is just that it's not appropriate to be !voting taking into account only or primarily our own desires to be able to find the internal pages that heavily concern us but don't 99% of Wikipedia's users, since we're not making Wikipedia just for ourselves but for the world. At least some people above very clearly seem to be centering their own needs rather than readers', thus my !vote. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:24, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
From what I've seen so far, supporting arguments boil down to vaguely waving at the possibility of reader confusion and the possible presentation of libel and misleading information. However, they have not presented any evidence that this is a significant problem, beyond a couple of isolated instances. The "reader-facing" and "non-reader facing" distinction is an interesting point (though I would dispute that talk pages would be non-reader facing), but merely invites another question – why should non-reader facing pages be deindexed? Finally, it's a bit disingenuous to assume opposers are only taking into account their own experiences. Perhaps they have merely found that whether or not talk pages are indexed has little impact on readers' experiences, and so have not included this consideration in their comments. – Teratix ₵ 02:06, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't think the BLP concerns here are insignificant or restricted to isolated instances. We routinely have discussions on BLP talk pages over whether to include or exclude sensitive information that may affect privacy. We are a top ten website in the world, so anything we publish here, even on our talk pages, has the potential to expose the content to significantly more people than if we hadn't published it. Take Talk:2020 Twitter bitcoin scam#Premptive caution, which is a discussion that happened just a few weeks ago over whether we should name a 17-year-old who has been accused of committing a notable cybercrime. In the discussion right now, someone has pasted a link to the website of an obscure state county court with instructions on how to access court records. Yes, the information is technically public, but we have increased the exposure of the information by including it here (and it would be a violation of WP:BLPPRIMARY to depend on court records as the sole source for any BLP content). In other words, we are too lenient about what we tolerate on talk pages in routine discussions to make it a good idea for talk pages to be indexed. Mz7 (talk) 06:17, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Since the link was posted on 1 August, the article has been viewed about 30,000 times, but the talk page has been only viewed 181 times. I'd say not everyone who viewed the talk page actually clicked the link (quite a few viewers are likely just there for editing purposes); the number of people who visited the talk page, scrolled to the bottom, clicked the link, actually searched for the record and would not have otherwise had the desire and ability to find it would be few to none. (And the amount who found it because the talk page was listed in search results would be even smaller) – Teratix ₵ 04:54, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, and I'm also surprised this isn't the status quo. We are quite a bit more lenient with the kind of information we allow to stay on talk pages versus in the mainspace, particularly with respect to WP:BLP content. For example, we might use the talk page to discuss whether certain borderline information constitutes a BLP violation (e.g. victim names, crime allegations, full names and dates of birth, etc.), and even if the consensus is to omit the content from the article, in general the content remains visible on the talk page, which is problematic if readers can happen upon it via a Google search. The alternative would have to be to more liberally apply courtesy blanking to such discussions, which isn't routinely done today. I find the argument about MediaWiki's search function unconvincing; we can certainly live without Google search for talk page archives, especially at the benefit of reducing the probability that a reader will stumble across content that is not intended to be reader-facing. Mz7 (talk) 05:32, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support: Talk pages are internal discussions for the intended public-facing article namespace. There's an awful lot of inappropriate content contained in Talk space that has no need for beingindexed on external search engines. One also can't expect all users of search engines to understand how Wikipedia works and that the Talk pages can contain user-generated nonsense that would otherwise violate Wikipedia policies in articles. — MarkH21talk 06:21, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support: Wikipedia:Administration..." administrative namespaces are used to assist the building of content and should be seen to be mutually exclusive of content pages, except for cases where a linkage is required. In other words, administration pages should be in the background and not visible to the reader."--Moxy 🍁 10:11, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose, because talk pages are a very important part of our processes and shed light on our content. Everyone gets dumber if they get ignored. Nemo 11:08, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose I can't speak for other users, however I use a search engine (Google, in my case) to find talk pages. The search engine is just much more effective than Wikipedia's search bar, and I would have a lot of difficulty finding discussions if they weren't indexed. However, I recognize that this discussion is about the WP:READERs, not the users. As far as that is concerned, I don't really see the harm of keeping them indexed. Anyone is free to view the behind the scenes work that goes into each article, and I think it gives Wikipedia more credibility when people are exposed to the endless discussions that have helped build and maintain the articles that they read. The OP mentioned that readers may be confused by the talk pages that they encounter in search engine results. This may be true (and I'm not convinced that it is), but it is irrelevant. Not knowing what the talk page is doesn't make it any more difficult to read articles that they encounter. It just means that they'll click the link, see it isn't a regular article, and leave. It doesn't hinder the experience of someone that went straight to an article from the search engine results. --PuzzledvegetableIs it teatime already? 13:29, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. I agree that the internal search engine is terrible. But Wikipedia is in the real world. The targets of libel don't care about our ability to find old talk page discussions. Yes, most BLP talk pages are noindexed, but the archives aren't, and libel can occur on non-BLP talk pages, too. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:41, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support I think many people here assume too much of the casual reader. When people look up Paul A. Bonacci and click on the link (as two thousand have done in the last 30 days) and find as the first sentence is "This is a real case. Paul is a real person. This case needs to he heard, it is the 1st pizzagate. If you find yourself here, don't stop...keep digging, it's all there" Wikipedia itself is essentially spreading misinformation; our reputation as a trusted source is hurt every time this happens even though a select few readers may accurately surmise the purpose of the page. Our goal is give the public access to the world's knowledge, not to give editors a marginally more convenient searching tool for the talk namespace, and most certainly not to actively mislead them by linking to pages that are not part of the encyclopedia with content that is presented in a somewhat similar format to an article that violates all of Wikipedia's pillars. For the reader's sake, talk pages should not show up on google. Zoozaz1 (talk) 03:39, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Andrew Davidson hits the nail on the head with: If there's a problem, it's that our talk pages are too little understood and used. I'm not convinced like some of the opposers that a reader stumbling across a talk page will immediately understand what they're looking at. Our methods of discussion threading are now 20 years behind the times. But it should be easier and more common for a reader to find themselves on pages that are not articles. Someone finding a talk page could be a gateway to them learning more about what Wikipedia is and how it works. Readers should not believe that they are looking at a website of factual content that magically appears or has existed for all time, but an unfinished, imperfect work with a provenance that is constructed over time by collaboration and communication. Every editor is already a reader, but every reader should be an editor (if only in the sense that they know how to correct a typo or remove vandalism or falsehoods if they see it). — Bilorv (talk) 20:02, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
    • Bilorv, I agree that we are kind of behind in terms of talk pages and usability. I also agree that a reader that wants to know how Wikipedia works can view talk pages. It is important to remember that no page on Wikipedia is entirely private; we do have a few private wikis and the MediaWiki software does allow for hiding of pages, but none of those features are enabled on the English Wikipedia. Readers can still view discussion pages by clicking on the "Talk" or "Discussion" links at the top of every page. But even then, most readers are not super interested in how Wikipedia runs. And if they are, they can view our policies, guidelines, etc. and our tutorials themselves and/or try to make edits themselves (and get guidance). But most readers searching for topics on Google or Bing are not looking for talk pages, though. Aasim 08:53, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support The mainspace itself has its fair share of defamatory bias and POV commentary, but talkpages have even less control. And there are millions of them. Junkyards have a fence for a reason. --Pudeo (talk) 23:44, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support I remember once reporting a BLP concern and one reason (there were others) not to remove it was that it was on the talk page. We let more slide in this space than on others. If an editor is looking up an article on google they are looking for the article on google, not the behind the scenes process that led to that article being made. While we should not hide how we make the sausage, we don't need to send people looking for a butcher into the meat works. AIRcorn (talk) 02:22, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong SUPPORT: The reader doesn't need to see how the sausage is made. Active editors know how to find the "talk" info they seek. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 16:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support' The process of how articles are improved is internal to the project, and, while public, should not be advertised to search engines more than necessary. Strangely enough, I can't remember having received talk page hits searching Google until recently, so I was living under the impression this would be the default already. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:45, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - it is better to find things than to hide things. EllenCT (talk) 01:37, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose They're already not ranked very highly, and it's useful for people who want to be able to search them in particular with a better search engine than ours. Jackmcbarn (talk) 05:58, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Mostly ambivalent, but on balance oppose per Jack. Really the argument in support is that talk pages are not helpful to readers and may contain completely false content (which is true), but indeed, they're not indexed very highly and the typical reader is unlikely to stumble across them by accident. There is a reason to keep them indexed, however, and that is (to be frank): MediaWiki's search can suck. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:36, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I'd support this if there was a reliable alternative way to find talk page consensuses, but there isn't so I've got to oppose it.—S Marshall T/C 13:01, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support If people want to see why we put something, then the talk page isn't difficult to find. However, I don't want server resources to be heavily wasted on this; I don't know much about computing but if it possible to set a limit on how much RAM(?) it is using to not slow down the website, that would be optimal. ping me when responding, gràcies! TheKaloo talk 23:35, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose per others above who have pointed out that external search engines are often critical for editors trying to identify old discussions. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:43, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose I think our readers are quite interested in the process of how articles are written. Comments on Talk:Kamala Harris made the news just two weeks ago, and that's only one of many articles on how Wikipedia handles current events which extensively cites talk page discussions (see [3] [4] [5] for a few more recent examples]). xkcd has done multiple comics satirizing talk pages. Making it harder to find talk page discussions and see how an article's content was formed makes Wikipedia less transparent and does our readers a disservice. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 15:20, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
    I disagree. It is still possible to find talk page discussions by clicking on "Talk". Those that want to find talk pages can still use the extremely rudimentary "MediaWiki" search, which is pretty dated compared to modern search engines, but still usable. And as mentioned above, Talk:Kamala Harris is already deindexed. That means that major news publications like The Atlantic had to use MediaWiki's search anyway. Aasim 19:24, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Talk pages are part of the internal discussion process, which is not, I believe, what readers are looking for. They are also more prone to abuse. While patrolling recently created talk pages without an associated article, I have seen several talk pages being used to create spam and attack pages to avoid detection, sometimes after the associated article got deleted and salted. These pages were then, as expected, still ranked highly in search results. - Flori4nK t • c 22:00, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Talk pages are part of Wikipedia's internal discussion process and hence it would be better if they are deindexed.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 04:03, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose On balance, moving in the direction of less transparency seems bad to me. Running a bot to add a NOINDEX to all BLP Talk pages and their archives sounds pretty trivial, and that would adequately cover the privacy/libel concerns, in my view. Old archives slipping through and remaining indexed, an incident mentioned above, is a reason to tag more thoroughly, not to de-index the whole space. XOR'easter (talk) 18:47, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Opposes general deindexing. Support BLP deindexing as a compromise. Complete deindexing reduces usability for editors, as the media wiki search is very poor. pburka (talk) 20:04, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as content in talk pages could include false information, copyright violations, and all kinds of other content that is part of the sausage making of an open encyclopedia, but not the vetted content itself. People certainly can still find this information via WP's interface, but we don't need to promote it externally. --ZimZalaBim talk 00:27, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, content in talk pages is not usable to search engine visitors, as described above. We should be trying to keep random people away from talk pages as a matter of privacy. Swordman97 talk to me 05:35, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
As a sidenote, deindexing talk pages will not lead to "less transparency". Talk pages are one of the first things you learn about when you become an editor, so it isn't that hard to find them at all. Swordman97 talk to me 05:40, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. Users who are interested in the discussion are going to find the talk pages. The content of talk pages is for internal consumption and does not need to show up in search results. And the OP's comment on the sort of harmful content that might appear on talk pages is significant. If the problem is that the internal search engine is crap, then we should improve the internal search engine. Kahastok talk 20:40, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Wikipedia's search function is fairly terrible for "fuzzy" searches, and makes searching anything other than articles onerous and unintuitive. I have often had to use Google to find a talk page discussion that I couldn't find with Wikipedia's search tools. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 14:17, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose, we should keep as much searchable as possible. While MediaWiki search has improved a lot in the past 10 years, there is too little gain from this proposal for the inconvenience to editors that it adds. If necessary, use targeted deindexing. —Kusma (t·c) 09:54, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Support – Talk pages contain many serious violations of BLP that are left unchecked and unverified. Allowing a page like Talk:Ilhan Omar to be indexed is irresponsible on our part. All talk spaces should be deindexed. This issue is not limited to pages that are themselves BLP. All talk pages are vulnerable to this BL issue and COPYVIO issues. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 05:43, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose - the material needs to be searchable. That there are serious violations on the talkpages of BLPs, copyright violations, or other harmful content is a red herring: it is there anyway, whether or not people find it on Google. If it is a problem it simply needs to be removed and possibly even revdelled/oversighted. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:55, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose as a solution looking for a problem per Beetstra. OhKayeSierra (talk) 12:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose for reasons expressed elsewhere by Andrew Davidson, Jackmcbarn, Nemo, and especially ProcrastinatingReader - namely, that the reality is that talk pages are already ranked pretty low in the vast majority of search results, and you often need to be deliberately looking for them in order to show up at all. The question of which page to direct searchers to is one for the search engines, who have pretty sophisticated methods for determining this, not us simply because we don't feel it's our best work. Many here are comparing the talk pages to an outdated, niche forum, which isn't entirely inaccurate. But the reality is that there are plenty of times when I've been using a search engine and wanted to find information others have posted on forums. Search engines don't exist just to point users to articlespace-quality results, and we should let the decision of what to look for lie with the users and the search engines, rather than decide for them. They're generally doing a fine job not giving too much prominence to talkspace anyway. (This discussion has served to bring up a good concern about BLP archives however, which I would support using a bot to automatically noindex given the additional special considerations there.) MarginalCost (talk) 04:20, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (Deindexing talk pages)

For one thing, I see that those that support deindexing talk pages seem to suggest that the Talk: namespace is not part of the encyclopedia proper and is often littered with inaccurate, defamatory material. For another thing, those that oppose seem to suggest that the MediaWiki search engine is poor compared to Google and Bing. Is there a way where we can figure out a solution that keeps talk pages hidden for readers but visible to those who are looking for them? Aasim 03:53, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Is there a way someone could find it only if they use site-specific searching? Meaning that they write site:en.wikipedia.org as part of the search. El Millo (talk) 04:03, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
That is what I am wondering. If there is a way to make talk pages hidden when doing a generic search (like "cars") and visible when doing a specific search (like "site:en.wikipedia.org cars"), that would be great. Aasim 04:16, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
That's already what happens in practice. The main namespace has most pagerank etc. The fact that you can find a page in an external search engine when looking carefully for it doesn't mean that it would be normally displayed in search results. Deindexing seems to be a solution in search of a problem, until someone shows statistics of the real impressions and clicks of said pages in search engines. Nemo 18:40, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
I found Bing's search result removal policy: [6] According to them they will remove search results either from legal requests or through content control systems. Maybe read the page; do talk pages contain any of the following: copyright infringement, spam, sensitive personal information? The answer: it can have any of three at once.
Google says that it would be best to Contact the owner of the website to have personal information or copyright violations removed from the site. Basically, Google is putting the onus on us to make sure that our pages do not have bad content. Just putting the information out there. I am not sure about how likely this RFC is going to pass because there does not seem to be any consensus for or against. But hopefully we can work out a compromise that works for both readers and editors alike. Aasim 19:44, 15 September 2020 (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.

Double-click option

Duplicate of other sections; see above thread for logout discussion - see note below for rollback. — xaosflux Talk 02:25, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

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

I'd like to propose that Rollback and Logout actions require a double-click to confirm (e.g., "are you sure"?), either by default or as an option available at User Prefs. Currently, especially on small-screen mobile phones, it is all too easy to mistakenly click these buttons unintentionally. Although some js gadgets work for Rollback, depending on os, it's not completely effective.  JGHowes  talk 18:44, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

It's already an option for rollback under gadgets, though perhaps that's what you are referring to. 331dot (talk) 19:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
331dot I think the gadget is broken. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:51, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
@ProcrastinatingReader: for log out, please see the above section: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Log_out_second_chance. For rollback, please see Confirmation prompt for rollback action workboard for the related tasks. Having these capabilities invented in a non-gadget method will require those development tasks to complete - at that point we may have some choices about opt-in vs opt-out for certain combinations (e.g. logged in status / browser type / mobile app). Is there any thing else specific you want to cover in this thread? — xaosflux Talk 13:46, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Xaosflux. I didn't see the above section and have now commented there re the desirability of double-click for Log out (and Rollback too, imo).  JGHowes  talk 17:48, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Xaosflux I think you meant to ping JGHowes? (I was just replying to 331dot re the rollback gadget suggestion, as I believe the gadget, at least the mobile one, is broken). I suppose the core software functionality is tracked by T219781, which probably won't get far anytime soon, but it'd be nice to fix our local gadget if we can figure out what's wrong with it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:40, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Oops, yup :D Also opened a thread at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-confirmationRollback-mobile.js. — xaosflux Talk 16:54, 16 October 2020 (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.

Home page needs login information

www.wikipedia.org layout is outside of our scope, if there are specific ideas for improvement a feature request may be filed. — xaosflux Talk 19:08, 20 October 2020 (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.

In my humble opinion, I believe it is a bit of a hindrance to search for a random article first and then select my watchlist to access it. Most people would bookmark their own Watchlist but it seems counter-intuitive to not have the option readily available. Is it possible to add personal account information such as talk page, sandbox, preferences, Watchlist, and Log out/Log in button?Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 17:11, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm not following — are you saying that, to log in, you search for a random page and try to watchlist it to get the login prompt to come up? There should already be a button for logging in in the upper right corner on vector desktop. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:17, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Blue Pumpkin Pie: what client and skin are you using? There is a prominent link to most of those things right on the top of every screen normally. — xaosflux Talk 18:18, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Sdkb and Xaosflux I'm just using the standard skin and I use google chrome. When I mean the "Home page". I'm literally referring to the first page when you go to https://www.wikipedia.org/ not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page . There is no option to select "Main Page". There is no method to log in or to go to your account. The first page just has the option to search for a random article. To get to anything you need to access as an editor, you have to search for an article or just search for a blank option.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 18:25, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Blue Pumpkin Pie: Ah OK. Our main page is https://en.wikipedia.org - so just use that, that other page is not part of the English Wikipedia, so there isn't anything for us to specifically do about it. It also isn't a wiki, and having a link to something like "watchlist" there wouldn't know where to go anyway - maybe you want to read the German Wikipedia, or the Spanish Wikipedia for example - there would be no way for that page to know. — xaosflux Talk 18:32, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
I understand.Blue Pumpkin Pie Chat Contribs 19:06, 20 October 2020 (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.

Evaluating vandalism allegations and a vandalTraceBot?

In the last four days, @Suffusion of Yellow: reverted three very similar edits to the Wikipedia article on "political corruption" that were obvious vandalism, all three written as if the current US presidential election was over, and the recent revelations in the Biden-Ukraine scandal "ended Corrupt Joe's chances of being elected President," and he lost the November 3 election by a landslide, in the first two cases, and "the Democrat pedophile candidate lost by huge margins on November 3" in the third. These three cases of obvious vandalism were by User:Grayindie, User:Indanon, and User:Joscack.

Does the Wikimedia Foundation currently have anything like a "vandalTraceBot" that could do something like the following:

  1. Once invoked, the "vandalTraceBot" could identify other recent changes by a suspect user and present them for manual evaluation by a human in reverse chronological order.
  2. The evaluator would be asked to rate each edit on some scale with levels like "good substantive edit", "minor, not vandalism", "edit farming", "questionable and without a reference", "blatant vandalism", "questionable edit citing an apparently irrelevant source", and "substantive distortion of a cited reference" (scale ranging from positive to evil to destructive editing that is difficult to detect).
  3. After an evaluation had been recorded, the user would then be informed of whether the edit had been reverted, shown the current status of the article and passage in question, and invited to modify it themselves or helped in posting a request on the Talk page asking two or three users with reasonable edit records active in that article to review a selected passage that sounds a bit strange to the reviewer.
  4. The "vandalTraceBot" could also optionally look for other other users using the same IP address and other similar IP addresses and anonymous edits from any of those IP addresses and possibly related IP addresses. Lists of likely sockpuppets could also be consulted and included in the evaluation. (What percent of identified sockpuppet groups use the same or similar IP addresses?)
  5. The tracing effort of each potential vandal and IP address would be scored, so it's easy to identify users and IP addresses that actively work against the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation.
  6. A record of each such trace would saved for review by a Wikimedia administrator and / or a committee of users, who volunteer to do this kind of work. The most blatant perpetrators of vandalism can be blocked, possibly after a more careful review of their recent edits that were not marked as vandalism or substantively biased editing.
  7. To help document the impartiality of this audit process, this evaluation should follow a standard blinded experiment protocol: People who volunteer to be evaluators would be asked to evaluate other users in pairs, one having been reported and one other selected at random, presented in a random order. This data analysis could also help estimate the rate of undetected vandalism as well as evaluate the reliability of reports of vandalism while also helping improve the quality of Wikipedia.

If a capability like this currently exists, how can I learn more about it? If you don't know of any such capability, what do you think about creating such?

I recently asked @Muboshgu: about something like this, who replied, "I think such a tool could be incredibly useful and have no idea how one would go about creating it. There are pages for bot requests or you could discuss it at the Village pump."

User:Suffusion of Yellow wrote, "FYI that user has been going at it for a while. See WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Fishguyen. Any help in stopping them is appreciated."

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 12:39, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I mean, blatant perpetrators of vandalism are already blocked, to the tune of dozens every day and thousands every year. I can't see them ever reaching a step of review of high-vandalism rates, since they'd already be blocked Nosebagbear (talk) 19:23, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia does not have a huge problem with blatant repeat violators, like User:Grayindie, User:Indanon, and User:Joscack, all of whom may be sockpuppets of Fishguyen, if I understand correctly the comment from @Suffusion of Yellow:.
Wikipedia has bigger problems with more subtle "substantive distortions of cited references", which I mentioned.
Permit me to suggest another use case and a modification of the above to deal with that: User:X accuses User:Y of edit warring or stalking.
It should be possible to compile data on the time between an edit by User:X and a subsequent one by User:Y and vice versa, also keeping track of the cases where X or Y made edits without one being followed by the other. Blatant stalking should become obvious from this kind of analysis.
Edit warring is more subtle. We could do statistical evaluations similar to those for stalking but then supplement those with human evaluations, as described above.
For that we'd need two evaluators: One would be asked to compare User:X with a control. The other would be asked to User:Y with a control. Evaluators would then also be asked if they perceived that either the case or the control was involved in an edit war, and if yes, the extent to which each side was handling the conflict inappropriately.
It's certain that Wikipedia has a problem with paid editors trying to burnish the image of their employers and attack their employers' opponents. This evaluation methodology using something like a vandalTraceBot would produce data on (a) the level of such activity among users chosen as controls, (b) how often users misjudge others, inferring motives that don't seem to be there when evaluated by a third party, and (c) how often users complain about others when they seem to be a major contributor or even the primary instigator of edit wars.
Thanks for questioning the need. We shouldn't develop an expensive methodology to solve a problem that is handled more easily, cheaply and adequately by currently procedures. DavidMCEddy (talk) 20:05, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
@DavidMCEddy: No, I meant I hadn't really read the proposal, and was just filling you in on that one vandal since you pinged me. :-) Reading it now, it looks like you're suggesting flagging (privately to CheckUsers) IPs that have been used repeatedly for vandalism from multiple registered accounts? This sounds like Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 169#Proposed: a massive automated invasion of privacy for the greater good. Except, instead of reporting everyone, you'd just report users that trusted users think are vandals. That's much saner than the original proposal, which would have basically overturned WP:NOTFISHING.
But, I'm not sure we'd need an elaborate scoring system. Just have a bot that looks for indef blocks with "vandalism" or "spam" in the summary, and if more than N in a 90 day window have the same underlying IP, contact CUs somehow. The idea of a CU-enabled bot makes me twitch though. Security is hard. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
Another edit to "political corruption" with essentially the same message in different words was just made by user:WokyBond and reverted 60 seconds later by user:Greyjoy. I don't have tools to confirm that this is a sockpuppet, but it looks like one to me.
I agree that this is not a big enough problem to justify any substantive effort just for this. However, Wikipedia has more serious problems with biased editing, and something like that could help characterize the magnitude of those problems. DavidMCEddy (talk) 05:50, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Redundant templates on biographies

Direct further discussion to Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 81#Redundant template pairs. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:11, 21 October 2020 (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.

According to their documentation, {{COI}} and {{autobiography}} are mutually exclusive. Consider:

{{COI}}
This tag is not generally used to notify readers that an article appears to be partially or wholly autobiographical. If this is the case, please use the more-specific {{autobiography}} tag. An exception to using the autobiography tag is when such use would reveal the identity of a Wikipedia editor.
{{autobiography}}
This tag is more specific than the widely-used {{COI}} template. It should be used preferentially to that template when the article in question is not only affected by a conflict of interest but when that conflict is specifically autobiographical in nature.

and yet according to this search, there are currently 206 articles that have both.

I propose requesting a bot to remedy this; can we agree that in each case, {{COI}}, being the less-specific, is the one that should be removed? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:22, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing, Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. S Philbrick(Talk) 21:34, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
You're in luck - I already found the problem: 206 articles that have two cleanup templates where they should only have one. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:43, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Redundant source needed templates

Similar to the above, we have many articles with both {{More citations needed}} (aka {{Refimprove}}) and {{One source}}; can we remove the former in such cases?

We'd need to avoid cases where a template is used on a single section, such as Pretoria#Jacaranda city. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:35, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

{{Refimprove}} is explicitly about WP:V, but {{One source}} may also imply a WP:POV issue.
But on a similar note, {{Refimprove}} and {{More footnotes}} are redundant. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:15, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
On your former point, what impact would removing {{Refimprove}}, as proposed, have? I agree with your latter point; there are 5,539 such articles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:45, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
This is a bit more difficult, because some of them (example) use the {{one source}} tag only for a specific section.
Also, many of these are outdated and should just be removed outright. The example I linked is for a section containing more than one source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
As I wrote above, "We'd need to avoid cases where a template is used on a single section". I agree that many instances are outdated and should be removed (something that applies to all of our cleanup tag, and is something we're very bad at dealing with), but that's orthogonal to this issue. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:09, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Request submitted

See Wikipedia:Bot requests#‎Redundant template pairs. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:58, 21 October 2020 (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.

CentralNotice banner for Wikipedia Asian Month 2020

Dear colleagues, please comment on CentralNotice banner proposal for Wikipedia Asian Month 2020 (1st November to 30st November, 2020). Thank you! --KOKUYO (talk) 19:09, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

List Actual Articles Rather than Talk Pages in Category:Articles_by_quality

When searching for articles by quality, the articles shown and linked as examples of the searched quality are listed as the Talk pages rather than the actual article. Ex: Category:FA-Class aviation articles.

This is confusing because of implication that the talk pages themselves are the examples of FA, GA, C, or other quality standards. And when you click, the link still takes you to the Talk page rather than the article.

Ex: To find out that the 509th_Composite_Group is an FA article, need to click through: A) Category:FA-Class articles (no obvious sign that these link the Talk page), then B) Category:FA-Class aviation articles (suddenly all Talk pages?), then C) the Talk page itself Talk:509th_Composite_Group (does note that 509th Composite Group is an FA article, might still be confusing), before you finally land on D) the actual 509th_Composite_Group and see the tiny star in the upper right corner.

(Also, minor note: is there a reason Category lists can't be linked by a variation of the [[Category:Category_Name]] format rather than {{Cl|Category_Name}}? Most other pages in a group on Wikipedia such as Talk can be linked simply by cut-pasting the browser bar.)

Suggestion: List the articles themselves rather than the talk pages. Araesmojo (talk) 21:23, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Araesmojo, see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_169#Allowing_pages_to_be_categorised_by_tags_on_their_talk_page, and courtesy ping Naypta. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:50, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
That is a significant wall of text. Is the connection because Naypta's proposal {{#pageCat:The category you want}} may have affected or might affect this change, or because the user knows more about this topic than many? Either way courtesy ping @Naypta: and thank you for the response. Araesmojo (talk) 19:17, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Araesmojo: To answer your second question, you can link directly to categories with [[:Category:Category name]] (which is all {{Cl}} does). The reason [[Category:Category name]] doesn't work is that this syntax is used for putting pages in categories. This colon trick can be used with links to any namespace that would ordinarily have a special effect: categories, files, interwiki links, etc. – Joe (talk) 11:35, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Joe Roe:Thank you Joe, much simpler and didn't realize that functionality existed. Araesmojo (talk) 16:58, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Category:Featured articles and Category:Good articles both exist (hiddenly) and directly contain articles rather than their talk pages. So the short answer is you probably want to browse those categories instead.
Membership in these categories is emitted by the little FA/GA "top icon" templates. These don't exist for lower quality assessment levels, but maybe they should.
I'm not a fan of talk page banners at all. If an article's talk page has not received any discussion, I'd prefer it to remain a red link indefinitely. But no, create a stub about pretty much anything and within a day the talk page will have banners saying which five different wikiprojects have claimed it and assigned mutually redundant "stub-class, low-importance" ratings. I don't know why this is necessary or how many people even read it.
In conclusion, I'd support:
  • Merging the FA/GA icon templates into a unified "quality icon" template that goes all the way down to stub class and emits a hidden category (of articles) at every setting, to aid in navigation for users who care about such things, such as the OP.
    • I'm not opposed to also hiding the lower-quality icons by default using CSS, so that the visual experience remains unchanged for users who don't log in and opt in (to seeing graphical representations of "C-class" or "start-class" or whatever, which we assume casual readers don't care about).
  • Taking a flamethrower to any other assessmentcruft that can't (or shouldn't) be expressed as a compact icon on the article itself. If that means uninventing the "importance" scale, I'm fine with it.
  • Deleting, in the "Talk:" namespace, every page where zero signed comments exist in its entire history.
―cobaltcigs 10:33, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Before !voting, please review Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Adding IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes ratings to article infobox (wherever possible). Many of the same arguments apply.

Should IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, or any similar sites be mass-added to the external links section of the Wikipedia pages for the films they review? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:55, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

  • No to all.
The result of the previous RfC was:
"Consensus to not use critic review aggregations in the infobox, including but not limited to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. There is consensus that such aggregations are not factual content of the sort suitable for an infobox. Concerns have been raised that any individual aggregator methodology is not appropriate when presented in an infobox without further context."
...and...
"Consensus to not use IMDb in the infobox. No-one but the proposer is in support. Prior to this discussion, there was recent consensus (WP:RSP#IMDb) that IMDb is not reliable for ratings as they are user-generated. There is no consensus here to overturn this decision, or to include such content in the infobox."
In my opinion, the exact same arguments apply in the external links section. I have no opinion about using these as sources in the body, and have purposely not asked that question here. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:55, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
  • The question is whether they should be "mass-added". In that sense this almost seems like a bot request. There is no question here about whether such links can or should be in the external links section. If the intention is to find consensus along those lines, the question will need to ask that explicitly (and should be both an RfC and posted to CENT, once the question is direct, given the thousands of articles it would affect). On the general topic, I will say that I don't often edit film articles but I am usually glad for these links at the bottom. In fact, I dare say that one of the most common things I use Wikipedia for as a reader is for film articles (often including clicking these links, and sometimes visiting Wikipedia specifically to use its ready array of these links). Obviously they shouldn't be used as sources apart from e.g. the Rotten Tomatoes percentage itself, but EL sections aren't for sources. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:26, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
    • Sorry for being unclear. I copied the wording from the recent infobox RfC. While I certainly wouldn't want a bot mass adding these sort of links, I wouldn't want a bot mass-removing them either. If an editor decidesd that an external link to IMDB is needed on one or two movies, I am inclined to let it be and assume that they had a good reason. But what I am seeing is editors who are adding a external links to IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. to every movie. An editor adding external links to thousands of pages by hand is still "mass adding" them. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:11, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I'd say no to both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, because they'll most likely already be used as references in the Reception section. However, IMDb is considered both an unreliable source for references and a very useful link for both readers and editors, so I'd say yes to IMDb being added to External links, given that it would never be used for references. Rhododendrites is right in that this discussion should be advertised to as wide an audience as possible. El Millo (talk) 23:52, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
  • No mass adding or mass removing. The Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic links can be removed if they are already in the references but they are in a lot of articles that have no reception section so are useful for editors who wish to use them for expanding the article and also as a quick test of the notability of the film. IMDb is not permitted as a reference but is a useful external link for minor cast listings and so forth, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:14, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Mass removing that undoes mass adding is OK, right? If an editor decided that an external link to IMDB is needed on one or two movies, that's one thing. But I am seeing editors who are adding an external link to IMDB to every movie. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:03, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
      • I think if you are going to remove Rotten Tomatoes links from pages without review sections / Rotten Tomatoes citations you should just add them there and then remove them from External Links afterwards. (talk) 08:38, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • They should generally be present, but not mass added. To put it simply, they're useful to readers: Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes provide a directory of critic reviews, and IMDB provides non-encyclopedic but useful information like a parents guide. To put it in the context of the external links guideline, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes fall under WP:ELYES criterion 3, which includes Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to...amount of detail...or other reasons, and IMDB falls under the "links to be considered" criterion 4, Sites that fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources. We aren't talking about deeming them reliable sources here; we need to have some basic trust that our readers are smart enough to know that they're not impeachably fact checked yet still make use of them.
Regarding having them as both a reference and an external link, I reviewed WP:ELDUP, and I don't really see what the problem would be. They can be useful both as a citation for a critic consensus and as an external link for further reading beyond Wikipedia's level of detail; those are separate purposes that can co-exist.
Regarding mass-adding, I don't support that, since there will be exceptions, such as films with no or few reviews, or films where the IMDB page has perhaps been brigaded or corrupted or something. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to all. I agree that IMDB and others do generally add 'additional information', but there is certainly not a blanket. I do have the feeling that a lot of IMDB is now being added because it is IMDB and that IMDB is marked as 'generally yes' instead of critical evaluation whether it actually merits addition. IMDB often has more extensive lists, but not always and one can ask sometimes whether that is information that is really an expansion on the material in Wikipedia. It can also overlap with what is available already on the (generally linked) official website of the subject or other, more reliable, websites. Being user generated one can also ask whether they are always correct. Also, a lot of information on IMDB can be incorporated into our articles, it is mainly on the extensive lists that it may be of an addition use. Other reviews are often used as a reference already, or should be used as a reference. WP:ELDUP should generally be followed, but there are exceptions where either IMDB or a review has really much more information.
    But. I strongly disagree with making an ==External links== section a dumping ground for material that 'maybe sometime in the future' can be used to write something in the article: a) then just write it in the article, it takes just a minute more to write '=== Reviews ===<newline>Metacritic evaluated .....<ref>paste metacritic url</ref>' as that it takes to write '* [<paste metacritic url> metacritic review]' in the external links section; b) you can just dump it on the talkpage just as well as in an external links section. Unfortunately, having first reviews there does tend to invite more (sometimes non-notable) reviews to be added.
    These links really need to be added on a case-by-case basis, using the guidance of WP:EL and common sense. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:13, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to all (first preference), and certainly No to Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. All contain a mix of usable content that should be available elsewhere (e.g. notable critics' reviews) and user-generated content. Even when it's not UGC, it's promotional. Example: IMDB entry for Plandemic is Documentary series about the COVID-19 pandemic that shows the major conflicts of interest between the key medical organizations, the media and their decision makers. Guy (help! - typo?) 09:50, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Migrate to {{Authority control}} and use that on all applicable articles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:21, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Oppose moving to authority control. The same arguments against putting in an external link or infobox link apply to adding the same site to authority control; these movie review sources are dodgy, change often, are easily manipulated, and some of them are user generated. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:58, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
      I'd still rather have them in a small template than filling the ==External links== section. Something like Template:Medical resources would be nice. I asked at BOTREQ, and they said it was possible for a bot to take the current lists of links (whatever's already in the article, without adding anything) and stuff it into a little narrow template if we'd rather have it displayed compactly (and, optionally, not at all on mobile). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to all (this includes No to adding them to Authority Control, which should not include even more links and certainly not even more lower quality content: I know that "authority control" isn't supposed to mean "high quality content", but it makes no sense to add links to lower quality content automatically on enwiki, no matter if the link is wanted or useful on Wikidata). In general, the number of ELs (including Authority Control) should be vastly reduced, not increased. (Anyone proposing a bot to get rid of all findagrave and genealogy links to ancestry and the like has my support). Fram (talk) 16:29, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to all - In general, these rankings are too ephemeral to be of any encyclopedic use. The exception is when specific rankings have become noteworthy (such as when there was a significant disparity between rankings by critics vs regular people - enough that the media commented on the disparity) ... but in those cases the specific noteworthy rankings should be mentioned in the body text and cited to third party sources. There is never a reason to link to the ranking site itself. Blueboar (talk) 20:24, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to mass adding all - If IMdB is relevant to direct readers too, it should be added, but definitely not mass added to articles not currently using it. RT and MC will generally exist as inline references so per WP:ELNO, those should then not be duplicated as external links. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 21:16, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
    @Favre1fan93: Which point in WP:ELNO are you referencing? If it's #15, note the explanatory footnote This guideline does not restrict linking to websites that are being used as sources to provide content in articles, which makes pretty clear that the "rule" some editors here seem to want to follow does not actually exist. (If you actually meant WP:ELDUP, please read the above.) {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:21, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes to IMDb, an explanation concerning Rotten Tomatoes - IMDb first and foremost (despite having the explicitly professional version IMDb Pro) is a database. It provides much much more complete cast and crew lists for basically any movie ever made than wikipedia or any other website provides alongside better release date information and film locations, etc. All but the very largest movies will lack relevant information that IMDb provides. The official website for a film (if it exists) and IMDb I think are explicitly good external links that any notably film should include. As for Rotten Tomatoes I should point out that I am the person that Guy Macon is referring to who "mass added" (i.e. meticulous added by hand over the span of 5 years or so) Rotten Tomatoes links to probably on the order of 5-10 thousand film pages (I would guess, nearly all my edits to wikipedia are either adding or fixing Rotten Tomatoes links). I did it because lacking reception sections on the majority of film pages left no place for readers to go to check the reception to the film, and often the reception section is more of a "reception at the time" and thus either didn't update or had to be updated as more reviews are added over time. I also believe I did my very best to adhere to the policies set forth by Wikipedia over the last five years. All that being said, I understand if maintainers want to change the policy to strictly limit what is allowed in the External Links section of films, some of them are unwieldy to say the least. And Rotten Tomatoes is, I think, much more of a for profit brand than a database, and so I get that my activity could be construed as endorsement. I would argue that conflating Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes is incorrect though. Much like Box Office Mojo, Metacritic is accessible via any IMDb page (since they share the same parent company, Amazon) and so adding those links alongside IMDb links is somewhat redundant, whereas there isn't (as far as I know) a free service that allows a user to connect IMDb links and Rotten Tomatoes links. It is unclear what changes are specifically being proposed here, but I'll obviously adhere to any policy changes regarding wikipedia external links on film pages. -- LudaChrisKlein (talk) 09:20, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I am opposed to mass anything. I would be opposed to rapid, non-editorial (i.e. without regard for the narrative text such reviews were being used to support) adding of these websites to Wikipedia as a semi-automated process. However, I would also be equally opposed to any rapid removal of such links without regard for whether or not they were being used appropriately. I would be also, however, be against enshrining anything in Wikipedia policy or guidance that encourages "mass editing" behavior of any sort. --Jayron32 15:52, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
    • If the link was added to the external links section with no associated text, then there is no "narrative text such reviews were being used to support". And if one editor adds Rotten Tomatoes links to the external links section of a couple of thousand pages, even if they do it by hand, that's certainly "mass adding". So how, exactly, am I supposed to avoid "rapid removal of such links without regard for whether or not the external links to Rotten Tomatoes were being used appropriately"? There is nothing there to "regard" except the external link. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to mass adding, but yes to having them present in the ELs. I'm a little uncomfortable with mass adding anything, but I don't think that we really need to remove the presence of IMDb in the EL sections as a whole. It is useful to have there, as others have stated, and honestly... I've gone to Wikipedia before just to click on the IMDb link for a film, rather than wade through a Google search, since it's not always the top result. I'd wager that I'm not the only one who does that. I don't think it's absolutely necessary to have it in every film article, but if it does eventually get added to almost every article in the EL section that's not necessarily an awful thing as long as it's not used as a source. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 05:44, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No mass removal I don't think we should mass add them either. ~ HAL333([7]) 03:52, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Would that include a prohibition on reverting a previous mass-addition or mass removal without changing any other pages? --Guy Macon (talk) 06:56, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
      • I think you really need to talk to people more involved in the film part of Wikipedia about this. Not least of which because in the manual of style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Film) it specifically says "For example, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic can provide listings of more reviews than sampled in the article body. They can be included as external links instead of links to individual reviews." So I think this is much more of a actual policy change than some sort of "reverting a past wrong." --LudaChrisKlein 14:16, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
        • Except that nearly all film pages include RT and MC as part of a reception section (for new films, as a standard part, for older films, predating when RT/MC started, usually as a "contemporary reception" section as well). I've not seen a "well developed" film page that does not use RT or MC in this fashion. --Masem (t) 14:27, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
          • Looking through a small sample (1000 film pages) only about 20% of pages with Rotten Tomatoes links (which is about 90% of film pages) have them as a reference. About 60% have them as external links. The other 20% have them in both places. Those 20% certainly can have the link removed from the external links. The other 60% with links only in external links sections I'm less sure about. If you go to the talk page for that Manual of Style even the presence of Reception sections seems to be a point of some consternation (merely providing RT/MC links being much less maintenance for editors seems to be the gist of the argument against Reception sections in general). --LudaChrisKlein 08:53, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to keep and No to remove. As usual, editorial decisions should be left to editors, not to robots. When watching the series Queen Insoo, the IMDb review is amusing. They are saying that Hahm Eun-Jung (23 yo) appears there during the 60 episodes, as well as Chae Shi-ra (43 yo). The former is playing Insu before 1457, the later is playing Insu afterwards. How could they both appear in each and every episode ? Moreover the review "three women struggle with one another as each vies for power in the royal court", piously reproduced here, at en:wp, is rather misleading. The whole series is a romanced account of a 50 years clash between the hungu and the sarim factions, and revolves around the seizure of power by King Sejo (1417-1455-1468). This series involves more than 250 actors named in the credits and gives a detailed depiction of more than 150 people, a majority of them belonging to real life History. Missing that gives rather the impression that none of both reviewers watched the series. But this is not a plea for a mass removal, since this doesn't prove that other IMDb reviews are pityful to the same level. Pldx1 (talk) 10:13, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No Mass Adds This is a terrible proposal which is quickening the heartbeats of spammers everywhere. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 14:27, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Add ELs only when applicable because per WP:EL, we should only include external links when they provide unique resources "beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article". We should separate consideration of IMDb from consideration of RT and MC. IMDb, while not reliable for citing, has numerous sub-pages of different kind of resources that usually meets the unique-resource criteria. As for RT and MC, it is only happenstance that the inline citation for the aggregate score and the external link for the directory of reviews (which is a unique resource) are the same link. The ELs for RT and MC can more specifically point to the sub-page listing full reviews. But RT and MC do not need to be used if there are no reviews, or if the reviews on either website can be fully sampled in the Wikipedia article body. For example, if a film has only eight or nine reviews on RT/MC, then these can be sampled in the reception section, and no EL is needed. I think other editors need to be more nuanced beyond just saying that because RT/MC is used as an inline citation, it shouldn't be used as an EL either. The ELs exist to provide access to more reviews. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 16:40, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
    Very well put. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:14, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to all These websites are infamous for being biased --♦/\/\/\TheGeometryDashFan/\/\/\♦ (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    There's no evidence of a bias in either of these websites. El Millo (talk) 18:11, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    Note: GeometryDashFan12 originally (I presume accidentally) inserted their !vote above my reply to Erik, giving the false impression that I was praising their !vote, not his. I have restored the correct ordering and urge you to be more cautious in the future. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:24, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No to all per Masem - IMDB shouldn't be added and MC and RT should be used as cites. –Davey2010Talk 13:38, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No We already have an overreliance on these websites, and a lot of newbies think they are reliable when they clearly aren't. We should not be furthering that perception, nor do we need to be providing SEO for these websites. If folks want it, they can google it themselves. External links should be for relevant yet somewhat hard to find links of interest. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 21:23, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Things I am finding alongside IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes

There are some other external links that I am finding alongside the movie review website external links discussed above. What should I do if I run into the following? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

YouTube of the entire film? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

This seems like a clear copyvio, and I have removed them when I found them. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
Keep in mind some short films may be uploaded by the owner of the work, which would be valid. But you need to cross check and confirm the account owner, they hold the rights, etc. If this all checks out, this would be okay, it would be akin to linking to the music video uploaded by the copyright owner (legit) on the WP page about that song. But 999 times out of 1000, for film works, the upload of the full work is likely a copyvio of some means or another.
Films/works confirmed to be in the PD should be kept, though ideally we should go to a source like Archive.org where these are better preserved. For example [8] for Manos: The Hands of Fate rather than any YT version. --Masem (t) 16:55, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

YouTube of a scene from the film? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Nope, unless the scene is extremely well-known to the point that the film is primarily known for the specific scene, and the YouTube license is clear. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:56, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Any scene from a film (non-PD) that is a subject of discussion should be used as a non-free media file encoded and trimmed per our NFC policies and used as a File: directly. --Masem (t) 16:57, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
And of course if it is only found in a link in the external links section, it isn't a subject of discussion.
Public domain movies are something I didn't mention above. What about an external link to a YouTube copy of a scene or even an entire film from 1913? At first blush this seems OK, but I think it should be disallowed for the following reasons: [A] any YouTube video can be taken down at any time. [B] many of these old public domain silent films have been released on DVDs with added music or maybe just an introduction that is copyrighted. [C] Many YouTube videos have ads inserted in the in the middle of the content. Besides being undesirable just because they are ads, the ads are not PD. [D] Someone is making money off of that YouTube video, and if we link to it we are encouraging spamming more of the same to make more money. None of these problems apply to a file without any added copyrighted material that we host on commons. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:47, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Which I all agree with. Its better to use a commons version or Archive.org version than YouTube which may remain questionable. --Masem (t) 21:39, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
[A] is true for all web pages, and may even be less true for public domain materials on YouTube than average. [C] is not a problem for YouTube, because Wikipedia:External links permits a reasonable amount of advertising. [D] is irrelevant because Wikipedia:We don't care what happens to your website. Somehow encouraging people to provide appropriate external links is not actually a real problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:15, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

YouTube of a trailer for the film? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Not so sure about this. Doesn't the copyright holder want as many people to see the trailer as possible? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
Hmm, perhaps. Seems a reasonable enough EL. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:56, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps it should be restricted to "official" trailers if possible, just to mitigate the risk that the YouTube link will break in the future if the video is taken down (this is a particular problem on TMDb I encounter on occasion). But I tend to agree that a trailer is a good EL that can't really go into the body of the article as a reference.--LudaChrisKlein (talk) 09:39, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
I would not include this normally. If the trailer is the subject of discussion beyond just when it was released , we have {{external media}} that can be used to embed a box to direct people to see that near where it is discussed. (eg not a movie but this is used in Untitled Goose Game where the trailer is discussed related to how its popularity and music impacted its development). --Masem (t) 16:15, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Trailers are ads and ads are not encyclopedic, thus they violate WP:ELNO and shouldn't be included. (This is different to a discussion about a trailer, but then that would be reliably sourced with secondary sources.) —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 16:24, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Agree with HK 100%. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 15:31, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
OK, unless someone gives me a compelling argument to the contrary, I will remove external links to movie trailers on YouTube when I run across them per Masem and Hellknowz. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:36, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Facebook page? Twitter account? (Example: Whole Lotta Sole#External links) --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

My big question here is whether I would have to research to see if the account was official. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
I think you would. Facebook accounts are at least sometimes official especially for smaller films. I do think you'd want to confirm that they aren't official before removing them. --LudaChrisKlein 08:49, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Way easier said than done. There are probably hundreds of thousands of such accounts, how do you get editors to check each one before changing? You don't, because ain't nobody got time for dat! We should not be using FB or Twitter in any capacity on Wikipedia in my opinion, or only in very rare instances where they may actually be the article subject. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 15:31, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
If there's an official website, that's sufficient; no need for the Facebook and Twitter. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:56, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Sorry if I was unclear, I agree. But the issue is that you can't just remove all Facebook links because some of them will be the official site. If there is another official site in the external links then yes, I think you can remove the facebook link without checking. But whether Guy will have to "research if the account was official" I think the answer is generally yes. In my experience facebook accounts are not typically included in External Links sections, and so when they are (and no other official website is listed) I think you'll definitely have to check to make sure it isn't the official website for the film. --LudaChrisKlein (talk) 09:24, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Link to Getty Images or any other image hosing site? (Example: Whole Lotta Sole#External links) --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I would just consider the official website and the IMDb page to be somewhat-essential as part of External links. El Millo (talk) 22:51, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
Official website, yes; Imdb, not always. Can someone tell me why we locked into IMDb and not some other publicly edited movie site. I think they all should probably go in most cases. At the least these EL entries should be limited to just one per article. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 15:31, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
Can we get an example of an image hosting site in the external links section? I can't really think why something like that would belong in external links, but maybe in some cases. --LudaChrisKlein (talk) 08:51, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm confused as to why this would be present, same as Luda. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:56, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Grant Crabtree#External links and Women's American Basketball Association#External links have links to photobucket. Both photobucket pages have been taken down, so I assume that they were not official pages. If somebody put links to now-deleted photobucket pages in the external links to those two articles, I am pretty sure that an exhaustive search would turn up some examples of external links to pages from photobucket or other image hosting sites that haven't been taken down yet. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:10, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
@LudaChrisKlein, you might want an Instagram account for a photographer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:17, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: but those are generally already linked from the official website of the photographer already. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
I was thinking of cases when the Instagram account is the official website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:43, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, many movies have an official page on the company website (https://frozen.disney.com/??), and I can hardly imagine that any commercial movie will not have such a page somewhere. Per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, we link only one (original bolding) official site, twitters, facebooks, youtube-trailers, etc. etc. are then hardly useful. Only for old movies that do not have an official website (anymore) I would consider to add youtube uploads of their out-of-copyright movies, and even official movies that have been uploaded by the owner are generally linked from (if not embedded in) the official website of the owner (and I then find it hard to imagine that any facebook or twitter is 'the official <social media>' of the subject). Beyond ELMINOFFICIAL, I do think that we should generally minimize the number of links, and an official website generally links to most of the rest of the material. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Template:cite web: New keyword(s) for url-access / New parameter(s)

Library Card access

In template:cite web, under Subscription or registration required, the url-access parameter should support indicating that access is permitted via the The Wikipedia Library Card Platform.

I realize that there are some considerations regarding this approach:

  • Access is not universal, but rather depends on the ongoing accomplishments, and in some cases the successful application, of the individual editor.
  • Access to a database may shift, as it can withdraw its participation.
  • Access to a database might be limited to a specified number of editors.
  • An editor might attempt to game the access requirement by making many trivial edits.

However, there is also a potentially positive aspect: potential users of the Library Card might be incentivized to be more productive in their Wikipedia efforts. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 20:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Oppose per WP:READER. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:14, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
I think I would oppose because there is very little guarantee that TWL will always have the same access to the various databases it currently enjoys. --Izno (talk) 21:17, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Oppose The content of pages in article space should be useful to readers, but anything about The Wikipedia Library is only useful to editors. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:01, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
Comment is knowing that content could potentially be accessed without paying really not useful for readers? If someone really wanted to learn more but didn't have the financial means, giving them a viable alternative sounds useful to me. --Paul Carpenter (talk) 01:17, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Oppose per above. BUT it would be nice if there was a way like how we have Special:BookSources for when we link ISBN's , that we could do the same for DOIs and other academic papers so that a reader and/or editor can determine if they have access quickly. But this would be outside the template's ability. --Masem (t) 15:37, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
Comment From a Wikipedia Library perspective, I just want to echo the above comments and say that I also don't think this is the best way to go about this. That said, I do think it would be great to be in a place where the links between citations on Wikipedia and access through the Library Card was more direct for editors - the underlying problem here is very reasonable. You could imagine a world in which editors could, for example, turn on a preference which automatically redirected links from Wikipedia through The Wikipedia Library's proxy if the user is eligible for access at that time. The database lists and authorization would then be kept up to date and always contextually accurate, you wouldn't need to take multiple steps to access the source, and it wouldn't bother readers. Would that solve the underlying issue identified here? To be clear this is just an idea, not something we plan or have capacity to work on in the short term :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:37, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Samwalton9 (WMF), having a gadget that did that sort of redirect would be fantastic! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:57, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Geographical Restrictions (inc GDPR)

An innocent European has been locked out from a world news source.

Many news websites have, since GDPR, stopped serving content visitors in the European Union[1]. This is often pitched as a temporary measure, but I doubt the ones that are still doing this are going to change any time soon. It's not hard to get around, but it does limit verifiability for the casual reader. I don't know if there are other common geographical restrictions but I'd guess there are some.

The url-access= field in citations doesn't have an option to cover this. There is the option limited but this gives the alt text "Free access subject to limited trial, subscription normally required" so it's not exactly descriptive. My proposal is that there be a keyword allowed for geo-restricted that would look give a tiny globe image instead of a padlock and alt text saying: "Can only be accessed from certain countries". --Paul Carpenter (talk) 00:56, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

@Paul Carpenter: Sounds good. In the template code, {{{url-access|{{Geoblock check|url={{{url}}}}}}}} can be used (see {{Geoblock check}}) to automatically mark all the domains from data.verifiedjoseph as geo-restricted. Perhaps it would be better to have geo-restriction as a separate parameter though. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:12, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
@Paul Carpenter: Some YouTube videos are geo-restricted as well. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:20, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Yes I was wondering if having a separate parameter might be better, after all something could be geo-restricted and limited access once you get there. I'd hope that if/when this is implemented, it should be pretty easy for a bot to add it to all offending citations. And good point about the Youtube videos, that's definitely worth highlighting. --Paul Carpenter (talk) 15:23, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
@Paul Carpenter: Such a bot would have to run continuously and also go after any changes to the list so that things get updated when a site is added to or removed from the list. So I wouldn't call it "pretty easy". — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:57, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I mean to say, easy for a bot to do once, rather than to monitor it, which would obviously be a lot harder. -Paul ❬talk❭ 07:14, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Thoughts Trappist the monk? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:28, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
Adding different keywords and tool-tip text for the already existing access icons is simple so not hard to do this: |url-access=geo-blocked → This source may not be accessible from certain countries. I'm not at all enthusiastic about the pink globe. Too many words were spent and an rfc required before we could settle on the three access icons we have now. I'd rather avoid that sort of bikeshedding.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:30, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I support the idea of indicating geo-restricted sources, I'm not particularly interested in bickering over what icon to use. So I'm with you on that. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:57, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I imagined the icon would need to be distinct from the ones currently in use, but I can't say I hold a strong opinion about what the icon should be. -Paul ❬talk❭ 07:14, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I would not support indicating this. Support for worldwide access will come and go, and there are ways to work around it besides. On an aside, this has come up before; please review the WT:CS1 archives. --Izno (talk) 03:35, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Part of the problem here is that the editor adding the reference would not know that the content was geographically restricted - it's only people who can't get at the content who would know this.Nigel Ish (talk) 10:51, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
This would be very useful for European readers. Just as it is helpful to know that an article requires registration or subscription and I shouldn't waste my time clicking the link (or I should use the archive link instead) the same applies to GEO-blocked links, and we don't expect the person adding the reference to include those either.
Much as I would like this to happen I do think it would need to be quite specific, and not a too generic because there are readers from many other countries (many websites blocked in China for example) that are blocked in a less predictable or consistent way than the groups that block Europeans readers over GDPR.
A picture is worth a thousand words: please don't use a picture, use a few well chosen specific words instead, tooltips as Trappist the monk suggested sounds pretty good too. -- 109.76.205.197 (talk) 00:04, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Jeff South (2018-08-07). "More than 1,000 U.S. news sites are still unavailable in Europe, two months after GDPR took effect". Websites had two years to get ready for the GDPR. But rather than comply, about a third of the 100 largest U.S. newspapers have instead chosen to block European visitors to their sites.

I'm in a mode of trying to find worthy candidates for editing, so second proposal. Currently, well sorted Category lists appear to exist for articles ranked by Quality Category:Articles by quality and separately by Importance Category:Wikipedia articles by importance. There is also a listing for Category:Articles by quality and importance, however, it does not appear to be nearly as complete and looks almost compiled by hand. A natural connection for these groups appears to be the table shown below from the article on Wikipedia:Content_assessment.

All rated articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low ??? Total
FA 1,577 2,506 2,419 1,964 181 8,647
FL 181 688 768 703 100 2,440
A 371 680 788 583 91 2,513
GA 3,249 7,387 14,831 19,759 1,759 46,985
B 17,022 33,038 54,763 70,121 23,554 198,498
C 17,020 54,463 136,345 314,326 92,716 614,870
Start 18,530 92,563 417,415 1,636,820 414,529 2,579,857
Stub 4,270 31,390 277,691 2,809,645 762,370 3,885,366
List 4,914 17,307 54,489 198,025 72,357 347,092
Assessed 67,134 240,022 959,509 5,051,946 1,367,657 7,686,268
Unassessed 122 482 1,238 17,084 402,610 421,536
Total 67,256 240,504 960,747 5,069,030 1,770,267 8,107,804
About this table

Suggestion: Adding links to this table so that if I want to find a Stub article with High importance to Wikipedia, I can simply click on the correct box. Being able to immediately find those articles seems like it would be valuable for potential editors. Araesmojo (talk) 22:13, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

@Araesmojo: That sounds fine to me. To make it happen, you don't really need to come here; just find the underlying template that's generating the tables like the one above, edit its sandbox to introduce the functionality you're describing, and then make an edit request to implement the change.
As a side note, if you're looking for articles needing improvement, check out WP:TAFI or the WP:Vital articles lists. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:57, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Sdkb:Thank you for the answer Sdkb. I didn't want to undertake a change that seemed so significant without at least checking here. Modifying anything related to ratings seemed like it might set off a firestorm. I will try implementing the change later today. Araesmojo (talk) 16:17, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Sdkb:Making a larger second response because I looked into the situation and it is non-trivial to say the least.
This table has been created by WP_1.0_bot, perhaps one of the most prolific bots on Wikipedia. Including @Audiodude: and @Kelson: because they appear to be the current owners. The bot is in its 3rd generation. Originally written by Oleg_Alexandrov with a 1st gen until 2010, transitioned to Theopolisme with a 2nd gen until ~2019, and now is in its 3rd gen developed primarily by audiodude. Its source code currently appears to be primarily Python / SQL with small portions of Javascript frameworks related to Wikipedia. It has a github source code page at WP1.0 Bot Source with approximately 1 MB of uncompressed source files after download.
The 3rd gen WP1.0 Bot actually generates tables very similar to those I requested on a project by project basis such as User:WP_1.0_bot/Tables/Project/Catholicism or those shown at User:WP_1.0_bot/Tables. It is run off of Toolforge with a tool account. It can be used to summarize or update individual projects using Wikipedia 1.0 Server. The WP1.0 Bot has had a difficult history of both crash issues and unusually high numbers of logins ~13k / day because of the extremely complex compilation task it has and the large number of pages it needs to touch.
Because of these versions (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and issues where for a significant time it wasn't even clear who the WP1.0 Bot's owner was, there is some chance there may be a separate issue that the table I linked may actually be woefully out of date. Its possible it hasn't been updated since 1st gen. That's all the info I currently have and perhaps the authors will be able to add further. Araesmojo (talk) 20:37, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Hi @Araesmojo: That's a pretty good history of the WP 1.0 bot! You are correct that it's on its third generation, and I am the primary maintainer with help from Kelson. You are correct about the location of the bot's source code. One thing to note is that while the 2nd gen ran on toolforge, and there is still a redirect there from the old web frontend to the new one, the 3rd generation runs primarily on Wikimedia Cloud VPS. The table you linked actually transcludes this page which was updated on October 12 (though it's supposed to be updated every day, I'll file a bug for that in the project's Github page). So it is pretty up to date.
Anyways, as you've noticed, there is a web frontend that allows you to browse individual WikiProjects, which make up the entirety of what is included in the "master" table. This allows you to browse articles in specific categories, with links back to Wikipedia, much like you were suggesting, except that it's limited in scope to the specific WikiProject. I would recommend this as a great place to look for articles that need improvement, in an area where you might have expertise. The only reason that we don't have the overall articles table in the web frontend is that it deals with so many millions of articles that it would be very slow to generate for the user and difficult to browse. Hope this helps, audiodude (talk) 22:12, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Audiodude:Thank you for the reply and clarification audiodude. The distinction about the Wikimedia Cloud VPS was not clear from the bot's landing page. I can comprehend the lack of including the overall article table, as a user generatable table requiring looking at all of Wikipedia to create it would be quite complex. Would it be possibly to simply have the master table generated purely by the bot and not an option for normal users? Then it could be effectively static from their perspective and point to links such as the third item in my original post Category:Articles by quality and importance that seems to be out of date "last generated 28 August 2019‎" and with only 95 categories.
Ex: If I want to find Category:C-Class Computer Security articles of High-importance I would click on the pre-made table in the box for C-Class, High Importance, it would then take me to a listing of Category:C-Class articles of High-importance (doesn't exist), then the previously mentioned Category:C-Class Computer Security articles of High-importance listing, and then perhaps Botnet if it struck my interest since we're on the topic of bots. Some of these pages seem to already exist, they're just not rolled into the new generation bot. Thank you for your work maintaining what looks like a rather complex bot. Araesmojo (talk) 23:31, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
@Araesmojo: That sounds like a lot of work, with also writing a lot of pages to Wikipedia, for questionable benefit. Like I mentioned, you can already browse listings for WikiProjects such as Computer Security here and here is the listing for High Importance, Stub quality. audiodude (talk) 19:29, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
@Audiodude: That's fine. You're the owner and maintainer of the WP 1.0 bot not me. Purely a suggestion. I'm already progressing in the direction of just looking for links and articles. Araesmojo (talk) 19:33, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
@Araesmojo: the assessment scheme does not and cannot answer your question (such as what Stub articles are High-importance to Wikipedia). Assessments only record an article's importance to a particular WikiProject. The same article can be Top-importance to one WikiProject and Low-importance to another. Sure, you can infer that an article that is Top-importance to any WikiProject is relatively important to Wikipedia as a whole, but comparisons become needlessly complicated (obviously, a Top-importance Countries article is probably more important than a Top-importance Sheffield article, but comparisons need to be judged by a human).
Luckily, there is a system that records an article's overall importance to Wikipedia. Vital articles lists 50,000 articles that are most important to Wikipedia as a whole, in 5 "levels". The categories are here. You'll discover that there are two C-class articles in the highest level-1 that could need some work. Level-4 even has some Stub-class articles. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

A new category :-)

Hi, how are you, hope you're great. I was reading about the First World War and I came across Frank Buckles, last American survivor. I read he was a National Rifle Association member and I added the category "American gun rights activists", and I had an idea, what if I create the category "NRA members"?, or "NRA people"?, do you think it complies policies?. Well, I anxiously look forward to advice. Sweet greeting. –Iván– CoryGlee (talk) 23:07, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Category:National Rifle Association is small enough that members don't need their own sub-category. Presidents already have one. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:57, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
See WP:OCAT. For almost all members, it is not "defining", & I imagine such a category would be deleted at WP:CFD. Johnbod (talk) 03:45, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Proposal for new WikiProject to conduct a sweep of all old articles

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Sweep. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:11, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Simplify making templates

Not appropriate for this page, since not a defined proposal. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:07, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

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

I asked at Wikipedia: Help desk how I would go about making a template for Wikipedia: WikiProject Mysticism. I was told I would have to go to Template: WPBannerMeta to read the instructions there. The instructions there I found very long-winded and complicated. I tried creating a template on the sandbox of my user page, but always with no avail. Would it be possible to simplify instructions for making templates? Vorbee (talk) 19:33, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Ask for help at Template talk:WPBannerMeta and someone will help you. WikiProject banners are an incredibly complex piece of machinery, so these are not the place to start to get familiar with templates writting. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:49, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
Note that {{WikiProject Mysticism}} already seems to exist. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:51, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
What do you want the template to do? Perhaps an example would help — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:28, 7 November 2020 (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.

UBX pseudo-namespace

In order to browse userbox galleries easily, I propose to use the UBX pseudo-namespace for the purpose (a la MOS: pseudo-namespace). Note that this pseudo-namespace is proposed to browse userbox galleries, not individual userboxes. I created UBX:GAL to redirect WP:UBXG more than a year ago, but was deleted since UBX: is not currently recognised by community. --Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 16:50, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:XNRs have a consensus not to create more, and certainly we should not put these directly into main space. --Izno (talk) 20:03, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
Oppose too niche, unlike MOS or CAT, IMO. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 00:35, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Log out second chance

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T217914

Isn't it about time Wikipedia had a "safety valve" on the "Log out" icon? I have accidentally logged out many times because I clicked the icon by mistake, and then I had to log in all over again. It should be a simple matter to modify the software so when an editor clicks the icon, a message appears, asking, "Are you sure you want to log out? Yes, No."—Anita5192 (talk) 18:16, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:24, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
Only to succumb to the documented "unconscious me always press Yes so I'll press Yes this time oh oops conscious me didn't mean to press Yes". Yeah, no. --Izno (talk) 18:33, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
@Izno: That has never happened to me. I think it is very common for a visitor to any web-site to make the first mistake, but extremely uncommon to make the second mistake. When I accidentally click "Log out," I mean to click something else, and I don't automatically click "Yes."—Anita5192 (talk) 19:34, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
I am glad you are so conscientious (see also anecdotal evidence). Most people are not. That said, there is discussion at phab:T217914 about the issue on mobile. --Izno (talk) 20:17, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
phab:T217914 has a discussion on this. A personal user script (see FlightTime's User:FlightTime/confirm-logout.js) can be used to add this for your own account if you want. — xaosflux Talk 20:20, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
I edit Wikipedia from my laptop computer only, using Google Chrome. I noticed on the phab:T217914 page that someone wrote, "It's not a mobile-only problem; I've clicked log out accidentally on desktop using a mouse." However, I did not see a response to that post on the page. I loaded the JavaScript code at User:FlightTime/confirm-logout.js into my common.js page and bypassed my cache, but it doesn't seem to do anything.—Anita5192 (talk) 21:59, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Agree in a lightweight way if possible. That is, not changing MediaWiki itself but building it into a skin, user preferences or Javascript. I have often hit the logout accidentally at the top of the screen, and many times in the middle of teaching Wikipedia editing in front of dozens of people. As the Phabricator discussion mentioned, it is currently the only "destructive" action in that bar of links, so having a safety net to warn about logging out would be consistent with the user interface. -- Fuzheado | Talk 14:30, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Agree, I've done it often enough to comment here, a few times a year. For me it occurs when I want to check my contributions for something and the uploaded page has a slight hesitation and then slides left as I click. The second-chance would save some of the time involved to log back in. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:38, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
I have also done it when I meant either to check my contributions or to click one of the Chrome icons.—Anita5192 (talk) 15:57, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Agree and please do this. Otherwise it sucks. ❯❯❯   S A H A 11:00, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
Agree not a feature I'm personally looking for, but seems to be useful. However, if the logout button is ever removed as a stand-alone button and placed inside a menu,(like gmail for example) a further confirmation would be unnecessary. In other words, the actions necessary to logout should be two-clicks at most.  Forbes72 | Talk  17:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • There might be a preference but it is likely that the default would remain as it is now to avoid the problem of a hasty exit from a shared computer. A typical scenario is that someone logs in at a university or similar public place. Later, they notice they are half an hour late, and click "log out" while running away. They never see the "are you sure?" and they stay logged in. Johnuniq (talk) 00:40, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Agree I like Fuzheado's idea of having it in user preferences. Personally, it discourages 2FA a bit because it takes a while to log in (might have to find the phone too, which can be a challenge). Ovinus (talk) 07:44, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

I think the m:Community Wishlist Survey will open soon, and I encourage you all to propose this as a wish. The next wishlist will be a little different, but from our perspective, that mostly just means that they aren't sure exactly how many wishes they'll get done, so they aren't committing to a specific number in advance. Maybe five will get done, or maybe 15. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Just a quick comment that I tried the FlightTime script (as well as the one from User:Guywan/Scripts/ConfirmLogout that it is based on—just changes colors) thanks to Xaosflux's recommendation above, and they both work wonders. I highly recommend people try using either one of these in the meantime. Just pick which one based on a red/pink or a blue/gray color scheme. -2pou (talk) 22:15, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Proposals for ending the Infobox wars

There is a clear consensus against implementing either proposal. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 03:08, 29 October 2020 (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.

Infobox wars

WP:ALLROADSLEADTOINFOBOXES
Date2013–present
Location
English Wikipedia
Status Possibly petered out due to exhaustion
Belligerents
radical infobox inclusionists radical infobox exclusionists
Casualties and losses
bystanders' sanity

The infobox wars have now been raging for longer than the duration of World War II. Despite 2 ArbCom cases and ArbCom's request for community discussions, nothing's really changed since the opening salvos were fired back in 2013. Personally, I'm tired of seeing the same people show up en masse to talk page after talk page to debate over and over and over again whether or not an infobox should be in an article, especially since all such discussions quickly degenerate into back and forth name-calling. To take just one example, Mary Shelley has had 4 infobox proposals in the past 3 years. With this in mind, here are some ideas for ending (or at least reducing) the infobox wars. Feel free to add more ideas.

  • Proposal A - No one may propose adding or removing an infobox to an article if there has already been such a discussion within the past 2 years.
  • Proposal B - No one may propose adding or removing an infobox to an article unless they are one of the top 10 contributors to that article (as judged by the Xtools authorship tool).

-- Kaldari (talk) 00:00, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

  • User:RexxS/Infobox_factors is good reading. --Izno (talk) 00:09, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Radical idea and one I know will be met with contention, but another idea would be an RFC to discuss whether all articles where it is feasible that an infobox should be present, though editors are not required to use all fields present even if there is data to fill those fields (knowing for example the concerns those at Kubrick have of that). 95% of the issue of infoboxes are people coming here expecting to find "structured" data that 99% of all other articles have. I know the past discussions in this, including ArbCom have been to leave this to a page-by-page consensus, but that is clearly not working, and things have changed since (the introduction of Wikidata, Google/Bing's presentation of search results, etc.). Again, this would be an RFC to discuss this possibility, which I know certain editors will refuse adamantly, but this is a consensus thing. --Masem (t) 00:22, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
    • Is there a WP:RS for any of those numbers. Having been through over 110,000 of the 'pedia's articles in my own editing I can guarantee that the number that have infoboxes is nowhere near 99%. It is also interesting how everyone talks about what readers expect to see without ever having performed a scientific survey to validate their statements. MarnetteD|Talk 00:35, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
      • I should add there are types of articles that we have no canned infobox for that we can make the topic conform into, and so in such cases, this would be reasonable where an infobox could be omitted. These are usually for more abstract terms that lack any type of hierarchical data. (This is what I meant by "where it is feasible".
        And as a rough test, I used Category:American women by occupation with Petscan, adding in a number of known infoboxes common for this group. Of the 9790 entries, I got to about 3000 pages without the most common infoboxes, and spotchecking those (to find any other infoboxes) the ones that were missing it were all observed to be stub, not well developed articles. Nothing of the type like Kubrick or other pages that have been fully developed and where consensus presently has been to leave an infobox out. This is far from scientific, but I would definitely say that for well-developed (non-stub, non-start articles), the number that lack infoboxes is far fewer then 5% based on this very unscientific study. --Masem (t) 01:32, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
    • I think that is about right. I am not sure the restrictions above are the path forward. More we need a discussion on making them standard and if so in what capacity. PackMecEng (talk) 00:37, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Both A and B are awful proposals and completely biased in their presentation. --Gonnym (talk) 00:56, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
    • You're going to have to explain what you could possibly mean. Both proposals look to be completely neutral - they take absolutely no inherent side in disputes other than stability - and while you can certainly disagree with them on any number of grounds, e.g. proposal B is unacceptably inimical to WP:OWN (my opinion), your comment neither adds to collective understanding nor actually advocates for your position in a meaningful way. VanIsaacWScont 01:11, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • If it came up at an RfC I would support proposal A. For no other reason it streamlines what has become a sort of drag on the community. -- GreenC 01:54, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
To add.. Option A is recommended, but it does not "solve" this problem because like water erosion there is no solution rather you redirect, slow down and so on. "A" is a way to reduce the disruption, which is the main issue, the particulars about infoboxes is almost a side issue to the larger problem of disruption. -- GreenC 05:35, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I have never encountered a contentious infobox discussion. If the problem is a cabal of editors going from page to page starting infobox discussions, we should just topic ban those editors. If that is not possible, we should develop project-wide guidance similar to Masem's suggestion. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:57, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
    Have a quick look at Talk:Frank Sinatra. The argument goes back forever and has been re-launched zillions of times. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 08:38, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
    Lucky you! One of the editors in Talk:Frank Sinatra opposing infobox change also deep-sixed my infobox request on Talk:Michael Tilson Thomas — Germsteel (talk) 09:58, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Proposal B codifies article ownership into policy and should be a nonstarter. – Teratix ₵ 06:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I've added {{Infobox war}} to this discussion since it seems apropos. Please feel free to fill in more parameters. EEng 09:39, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Mleh- I am indifferent to infoboxes, except when they're used to try and make substub non-articles look deceptively like articles. I oppose both options: the first one strikes me as "Thou shalt not talk. Thou shalt not think" and the second one amounts to assigning ownership of articles to prominent editors. Reyk YO! 10:25, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Argh, is this still going on? Good grief. Personally I have never encountered a contentious infobox discussion in my own editing, but maybe I have just been lucky. I may be wrong, but my impression right now is that these "infobox wars" are limited to a small number of highly opinionated editors arguing over and over between themselves on a relatively small number of articles. If that is the case, then a better solution would be to issue a bunch of community topic bans to them for 2-3 years and then have some peace. If the problem goes deeper, then something like what Masem suggest makes sense to me. An RfC proposal to formalize the existence and structure of infoboxes along the lines that Masem mentioned seems likely to me to gain broad consensus. On the other hand, proposals A and B suggested above seem both extreme an unnecessary. Nsk92 (talk) 10:45, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
    • This is pretty much my read of the situation: there's probably a few dozen, very senior editors that have been very vocal on not wanting infoboxes on certain articles for multiple reasons. Most of us experienced editors know not to touch that. Newer editors - who see nearly every other developed page with infoboxes and have no knowledge of the infobox ARBCOM cases or the like - add infoboxes or ask valid questions of why no infoboxes, and that will never be a cycle that we can get out of beause there will always be new editors. So either we're going to have these going on forever (and as others point out, the two suggested RFC questions don't solve this), or we actually readdress the consensus around infoboxes, because if we're catering to a few dozen editors when hundreds more want it a different way (if that is what consensus is), then there's a problem. But best I can recall we have not had an RFC on how mandatory or optional infoboxes are for at least 5 years so I don't know that read: I know they're expected, but that's different. --Masem (t) 14:09, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I would reject both. B has problems, but it's also a strength of Wikipedia, and this kind of 'ownership' seems incompatible with the purpose. A does not exactly fix the issue -- the Sinatra RfC was brewing for 2 years. Masem's proposal probably doesn't help either - infoboxes are, indeed, not required on all articles. Particularly it'd look silly on short ones, and it's likely to annoy some editors who focus on their writing and don't like IBs. Further, their values are likely to get bloated so there will still be arguments on what labels to keep/remove. It's a difficult problem to solve from a central level, if pushing down a single rule, seemingly. I think what is more likely to be effective is prescribing actual guidelines which will help determine whether an infobox should be on an article (an expansion of MOS:INFOBOXUSE).
    One route to a solution is just making the infoboxes more palatable. Maybe modifications to infoboxes will help, too. People are opposed to too many fields, so maybe trimmed down 'wrappers' of contentious infoboxes with only support for some fields will be a sustainable middleground. Kaldari maybe WMF design input could be helpful? mw:Streamlined Infoboxes seems interesting. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:14, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I would reject both, B just seems both against our ethos to an unacceptable level but also a potential source of its own aggravations and gaming. Articles can change a simply staggering amount in 2 years, so don't think that's wise. But perhaps some process to enable more targeted 1 year moratoria at specific troublesome pages. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:28, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
    The moratoria can already be applied to specific troublesome pages under the existing Infobox DS. I don’t think it’s working. We need a broad solution to the issue. And the issue is targeting behaviour and conduct on individual pages doesn’t work when the underlying issue is a fundamental content dispute. The issue can only be resolved by addressing the content issue.
    In usual cases, a clear MOS guideline etc would be sufficient clarification to put the matter to rest if it’s just individuals acting out (or just enact topic bans), but since the community is unable to agree on a standard I don’t think the conduct (which is a symptom) is the root of the issue here. Thus sanctions and topic bans likely not the appropriate way to address legitimate content concerns, however expressed. Banning the vocal opponents may dim the issue, but doesn’t seem to be the correct way to proceed. If their concerns were without merit, the community would have no objection passing an update to guidelines to say so. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:18, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Can someone link to one of these specific contentious infobox discussions, preferably a recent one? Like many other people here have commented, I've never seen one ever, contentious or otherwise, other than meta-discussions like this one about how bad the problem is and what to do about it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)


  • Two editors heavily involved in this dispute (Cassianto and SchroCat)—they're the primary participants in all the discussions cited here so far—have recently left the project. Maybe we should wait to see if that changes things before considering a fresh round of sanctions? – Joe (talk) 15:06, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • It's my sense that this imbroglio is largely in some biography article areas, so maybe start whatever proposed new "rule" there is with biographies, and see how that goes. (In that biography realm, it is something to observe, because that debate (or war) in effect regularly centers around not whether there will be something in a box in the top right corner, but whether it will be limited to a picture-box, or contain more). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:48, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
    • There is a idea I've had for some specific types of bios - mostly creative people with a widely varied career - that most of the typical {{infobox person}} or its variants just don't work well and thus can be argued that an infobox doesn't help that much or if used will draw people to add the "missing" information that was purposely omitted because it can't easily be summarized in an infobox (Kubrick's fits this idea well). But at the same time, there is basic structured data like birth date + date, death place + date, broad profession list, and notable spouses and the like that can still be documented in an infobox that is the type of information that I see being asked for by the new editors that are the ones asking for infoboxes. This would need to be a discussion under my suggested RFC about the nature of infoboxes altogether. --Masem (t) 17:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose B for WP:OWN per User:Teratix and others. RudolfRed (talk) 17:32, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose both. Just add an infobox to every article (preferably from Wikidata), job done. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Seeing as this seems to be cropping up as a bone of contention in biographies, where I'm sure much of the heat comes from the question of the choice of infobox, I would suggest that at the very least the generic {{Infobox person}} should be a default whenever you have an article about a non-fictional person. I edit in too many esoteric parts of Wikipedia to be able to say that every article has an appropriate infobox available, e.g. Perkins Brailler. VanIsaacWScont 07:38, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
If the Perkins Brailer absolutely needed an infobox then I think {{Infobox keyboard}} could be made to fit: since it only has four uses already, I'm sure it could be adapted somewhat. But you're right, adding an infobox to every article does pose a challenge when it's not immediately obvious what type of thing a thing is. I would suggest that some things (persons, buildings, countries, songs, books, animals) can't really get away without having them but applying to every article ever, especially newer ones, would be too much. --Paul Carpenter (talk) 13:34, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
Vanisaac, you could also use Template:Infobox product for that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't see why option B is perceived to go against WP:OWN. The question of whether to have an infobox in a particular article has little relevance to the function and encyclopedicity of that article, and Wikipedia's core policies have no bearing either. It's largely a stylistic choice, and for stylistic choices it is only common sense – in infoboxes or elsewhere – to accord greater weight to the preferences of the people who have put in the most work. A somewhat similar principle operates in MOS:RETAIN, which guides the choice of British or American spelling. – Uanfala (talk) 14:54, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
WP:RETAIN is absolutely nothing like option B above. It simply identifies a default consensus for an English variant based on the history of a page. It privileges absolutely no editors, and that default consensus is only used as a stability policy in the absence of an established consensus. Option B, on the other hand, privileges certain editors, allowing their opinion to veto consensus. It is not a stability policy, as those privileged editors can impose a decision no matter how entrenched another choice might have been. Option B is the epitome of WP:OWN, where certain editors are elevated as the masters of a page in regard to infoboxes, no matter the consensus or stability. VanIsaacWScont 21:55, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Vanisaac. Proposal B is a pure form of WP:OWN. Completely unacceptable and goes against the fundamental editing principles of Wikipedia. The proposal offers a cure that is a hundred times worse that the desease. Not only would it create a group of privileged editors for each article with veto powers over certain decisions, it would also encourage gaming and trickery in running the edit count in order the become one of those top 10 editors. Really, it would have been hard to concieve of a worse idea than Proposal B. Nsk92 (talk) 22:31, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose both, especially oppose B for all the reasons above and zero good reasons in favor. Natureium (talk) 01:50, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose both If a specific infobox, or lack thereof, proves to be a constant issue, a moratorium on bringing it up on the talk page can be agreed to on that talk page. This should really be decided by local consensus. ~ HAL333([9]) 03:50, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Both "B" per WP:OWN. For "A" 2 years is too long. PaleAqua (talk) 18:54, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
    "Two years" is simpler than what we'd probably want, which is an escalating length. "Infobox change, discussion 2" should be at least a few months after the first; if it fails, then "Infobox change, discussion 3" should probably be at least six months (maybe a year) later; "Infobox change, attempt 4" should probably be even later than that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:02, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
No real need as very very few articles have this problem. Its a small group of editors involved and getting smaller all the time.--Moxy 🍁 01:50, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose both. I put an infobox requested on Talk:Michael Tilson Thomas and an editor took out the request. As it stands now most people would not even know there had been a request. That editor may not agree with the request but they should not erase it. They should see if somebody provides one or doesn't. And its not like they have contributed anything else to that page. Cheers. Germsteel (talk) 09:30, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose both. (A) A request to "back off and calm down" for a "reasonable" interval is reasonable, but an outright ban for a fixed time is excessive. (B) is WP:OWN-ish and limits the debate to those who have already been too involved. It also is a block on new editors, wise uninvolved third-parties or anybody who is "just passing" but has a valid view. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 10:23, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
L'infobox infernale
Opera semiseria in 25 acts by John Smith
The final scene
TranslationThe Hellish Infobox
LibrettistJane Doe
LanguageItalian
Premiere
23 December 2005 (2005-12-23)
Wikipedia
WebsiteInfobox wars
  • Oppose both. What infobox wars? Did they even exist? If yes I believe they ended long ago, as a wise voice said back in 2018. Some - very few! - editors don't like infoboxes, and I won't stress them. It's so easy. Do you remember WP:ARBINFOBOX? The infobox on the side is taken from there, 2013. The case was requested because of troubles about the introduction of {{infobox opera}}, vs. operatic side navboxes. Successful, finally. - Try to treat infoboxes like other article feature (images, tables), and observe WP:BRD, - that's all it takes to end the rumor that these wars exist. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:29, 23 October 2020 (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.

The above discussion should be reopened and closed by an editor with an account. It is a bad idea for an IP, no matter how storied, to be closing discussions. BD2412 T 23:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

If you wish to challenge the result of the closure, please see WP:CLOSECHALLENGE. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 07:35, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion notice: Infobox officeholder successor=

There is an RfC about whether the |successor= parameter of {{Infobox officeholder}} should be added immediately after the article's subject loses re-election, or wait until the successor takes office. Interested parties may participate at: Template talk:Infobox officeholder#RfC: Interim use of successor=. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:05, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

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