Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-01/Discussion report

Discussion report

Notability for train stations, notices for mobile editors, noticeboards for the rest of us

A collage of abstract images illustrating an argument at a train station, a calendar surrounded by question marks, a phone with an exclamation point on its screen, a moving van with a trash bin in the back, a person in front of a large pile of papers, and a village pump.

Train station arguments, calendar confusion, mobile editnotices, trashing-while-moving, neutrality on bureaucracy, and the good ol' village pump.

Showing editnotices to mobile editors

A screenshot of how the new editnotice system will appear to mobile users.

A Village Pump proposal asked if a JavaScript gadget should be installed to MediaWiki:Minerva.js in order to show editnotices to mobile editors. Normally, due to mobile communication bugs, these contributors cannot see editnotices, causing Arbitration Committee discretionary sanction notices, WP:MEDRS, WP:BLP notices and much more to not be displayed. TonyBallioni made the following closure:

"Clear and overwhelming consensus to implement this. No need to wait the full time period to get it implemented. Any comments on technical questions, etc. can be discussed at User talk:Alexis Jazz/EditNoticesOnMobile."

Proposal to disallow moves during AfD

Robert McClenon started this discussion in May about prohibiting page moves while an article is undergoing the AfD process. It was closed on June 23rd with no consensus for a blanket ban of mid-AfD page moves, primarily because it was found that moving a page within mainspace can be a perfectly reasonable way to improve an article while it is being nominated for deletion, with multiple examples of the usefulness of such intra-mainspace mid-AfD moves cited.

Replies and "neutral"s at RfA/RfB

Two specific proposals were discussed at the Village pump in June. The first was to require all replies to RfA/RfB !votes to be done in the General comments section or on the talk page (rather than as a direct reply below the !vote). The second was to eliminate the neutral section of RfA/RfB and only have support and oppose. Consensus reached that the first proposal will make it more difficult for RfA to follow and is counter to the existing community consensus that RfA is not a vote. The consensus against the second proposal was less strong, but ultimately concluded that it is not a necessary change.

Use of 'today' as a relative time reference

Kudpung started a discussion in June about the appropriateness of the relative time expression "today" given that Wikipedia is a permanent work in progress over longer periods of time. The community reached a consensus and on July 15th the discussion was closed with the outcome that using the word "today" is inappropriate when discussing information that is dated or time-dependent. However, there was no consensus about categorically banning the use of "today" for information that is very unlikely to change, such as one editor's example: "The 49th parallel border established between Canada and the United States at the Oregon Treaty remains in place today". The discussion came to no conclusion about specific changes for MOS:RELTIME/MOS:DATED/WP:ASOF.

Notability of train stations

An unfortunate crash for trains and notability.

A new consensus was formed after an RfC by Trainsandotherthings on July 2nd that attempted to come to an answer on the question of inherent notability for train stations. It was closed on July 19th with "clear consensus that train stations have no inherent notability". Most participants seemed to agree that Wikipedia policies provided little to no basis for an exception for train stations beyond the general notability guideline.

Noticeboard roundup

A few large discussions are currently ongoing on various noticeboards. The largest current discussions include:

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1 August 2022 (all comments)

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I read the comment about the (in)appropriateness of the relative time expression "today", scrolled down a little bit, and then clicked on the link to the article about the Porta Nigra, the subject of one of the new featured pictures. One of the article's headings reads "The Porta Nigra today" ... Bahnfrend (talk) 06:33, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The problem with the use of "today" in "The 49th parallel border established between Canada and the United States at the Oregon Treaty remains in place today" isn't the relative time element. It's that it's redundant. If it remains, "today" is understood.
  I remember this once reaching comical heights on some NRHP article I read, where some helpful person had written about an outbuilding on the property: "The shed still remains extant to this day". WOOOOOOWWWW ... four ways of saying the same thing.
  Cleaning up these redundancies (I now try to shoot them on sight, basically) might take care of quite a few instances of this. Daniel Case (talk) 19:37, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The railway stations RfC could lead to a lot of work and potentially a lot of AfDs if people try to 'cleanse' the existing station articles. In the UK alone there are 2,500 current stations (the vast majority of which have articles) and almost three times that number of closed stations, many of which also have articles. A lot of the articles are little more than stubs which only show that the station exists (or existed). Finding sources to show that each of these passes GNG would be time consuming, especially for closed stations given that most of the closures occurred many years ago. I can't help thinking that these articles do no harm and all this effort could be used more productively. Neiltonks (talk) 13:43, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Neiltonks: I doubt that AfDs will be much of a problem in relation to railway stations in the UK. There are hundreds of books on UK railways that can be cited as reliable sources on such stations. For example, I understand that Middleton Press has published a book about pretty much every railway line that has ever existed in the UK (see this page for brief details - 500 books by 2011 and many more since), and that all of those books are potential reliable sources for Wikipedia articles about the individual stations on those lines. The problem is far more likely to arise in relation to articles about stations in countries that are not mad keen on railways, developing countries (eg India and most countries in Africa) and countries where English is not the first language, and also articles that are translations of Wikipedia articles originally published in other languages. Bahnfrend (talk) 14:09, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Neiltonks: I don't have strong opinions (or even weak ones) about keeping/deleting railway station articles but neither of your arguments (no harm and productivity) should be a reason to keep. Dutchy45 (talk) 16:43, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As Neiltonks mentioned earlier, I don't see the harm in keeping many of these station articles. In the case of Canada (whose stations I mostly edit) Wikipedia information on train stations is more comprehensive than the official websites - and can be of great assistance to travelers. Train stations are also often central to the local history of the many towns and cities that grew up around them. If Wikipedia considers hundreds of pages on obscure anime titles and characters to be notable, why must train stations meet a higher standard? Ottawajin (talk) 11:44, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As the one who started it, the RfC was made necessary by several editors who maintained that no train station articles could ever be merged, not even the tiniest stubs, because they were always "inherently notable". This made it impossible to deal with permastubs better merged into rail line articles. The findings of the RfC make it clear that merging train stations is acceptable when there's little coverage of them in reliable secondary sources. For the vast majority of train station articles, nothing will change. The "harm" was in letting permastubs, some with zero reliable sources, remain standalone articles even when their accuracy was questionable. It's usually not difficult for a train station to clear GNG, and if it falls well short, the station can be redirected to the line or service it is a part of, leaving open the possibility of recreating a standalone article if more sources are identified in the future. There's not going to be a "cleanse"; I watch the transportation deletion sorting page and a grand total of 2 train stations have been brought to AfD recently, one was a wrong name and was deleted for that reason, the other was redirected to the article for the line it is on, where it lives quite nicely without any real loss of information. What may happen is a number of short stubs getting merged. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:53, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the concise summary. Sorry, for the confusion - I'm not so knowledgeable about Wikipedia notability guidelines, as I don't add new pages. I should have read through the talk page more carefully. The guidelines you mentioned sound like common sense. Cheers. Ottawajin (talk) 11:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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