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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (idea lab).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

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New: Template:Introductory pages for pages helpful as introduction

Hi. We have a lot of introductory pages, and a lot of guides and central pages to help newcomers to find introductory pages. I felt that instead of adding another page to list the links, perhaps a nav box might be helpful to some newcomers.

Below is what I came up with so far. Please feel free to comment, provide feedback, etc. this is Template:Introductory pages. thanks!

Thanks! ---Sm8900 (talk) 🌍 03:19, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I would appreciate if anyone here could please offer a reply; anything, even something very brief, would be greatly appreciated. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 10:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

comments on original nomination

@Sm8900: It's presently at TfD, where it's getting plenty of feedback. To avoid a discussion fork, people should either comment there, or wait for that to conclude - and if it survives, the place to discuss improvements will then be its own talk page, not here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:20, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64: ok, noted. so in that case, if this navigational box is indeed deleted, which seems very likely, then would it be ok if we could please then proceed to discuss this item's content and ideas here, but obviously as an idea for a nav box, rather than as an existing nav box, of course?? I have saved a copy of this item on a page in my own user space.
Please bear in mind, I have simply been asking for feedback all along; if someone wanted to provide some feedback that was negative but constructive, I would be totally fine with that. I do appreciate your helpful reply. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 13:32, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
If it's deleted, there is nothing to discuss. If iit's not deleted, this is the wrong venue. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:55, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64:, if it is deleted, then I will greatly revise the idea, and come back to Village Pump, to discuss the new revised version, taking account fully of all the valid and helpful feedback that I received on this, elsewhere. However, since I did initially ask for constructive feedback right here in this section, and have not (still!) received any actual feedback here on this page, I will retain this section here, simply to document and reflect that I did in fact make a full good-faith effort to discuss my initial nav box idea, very much in advance and previously before I tried to insert the navbox for use on any actual page. I do appreciate your helpful reply. thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 01:07, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@Sm8900: Here's a few thoughts on the template as it stands, hopefully you'll find some of them useful:

  • It's way too big for an introductory template, the number of links is overwhelming. If I was given that as an "introduction" when I was getting started I would have just given up.
  • There's a lot of duplication. You have multiples of some things (tutorials for example) and listing out both the main and sub-pages for various policies is unnessasary. Do we really need "Help Contents", "Help:Directory" and "Site map for help pages"? do we need both "Essays in a nutshell" and "Essay directory"?
  • You have way too many sections. Some of these (like "categories" and "Text formats") essentially only list one page. Some categories are broken into sub-categories for reasons I don't understand, what's the point of the "By topic" subsection in the article tips box that only lists one page?
  • You have a lot of pages here for things that I would consider to be either extremely niche or rather advanced. How many people are going to be interested in "The Bugle for military history"? Are database reports something that a brand new editor needs to know about? Is WikiProject Democracy really a page that newbies should be getting directed to?
  • I don't understand some of the categorisation here, "Article tips" seems to be entirely stuff that would be better placed elsewhere.
  • I can see a few omissions, e.g. you don't really seem to have anything related to reliable sources here. I would expect a template aimed at beginners to include something like Help:Referencing for beginners.
  • Some of this does give the impression that pages have been selected based on your personal interests, rather than pages that would be of use to everybody getting started. E.g. why do the wikiprojects for science, cities and military history get specifically called out and linked, while all the others you have to navigate to through a list? Why does "The Bugle for military history" get a link but there's no sign of the other newsletters for wikiprojects?

I agree with the general feeling in the TFD that it would be better to focus on improving Template:Basic information, we already have a load of introductory help pages (probably to the point that it's a bit overwhelming) and I don't think it's really worth the effort of maintaining duplicates. I hope this doesn't come across too harshly. 192.76.8.70 (talk) 18:19, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@User talk:192.76.8.70, your points are actually indeed helpful. I will indeed either act upon those points, or else seek some way to implement them with an existing template. I appreciate your points, and will give them some thought. your last sentence is very considerate and thoughtful, and is appreciated as well. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 02:54, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Deletion of template

Okay, this template has now been deleted. I am fully open to and respect the community consensus on this. however, I want to simply note that, since I was fully willing to have a positive discussion here, before I started using this template on any page, I hope that some editors who commented at the deletion discussion will be willing to be helpful and to add their comments here. the whole point of this section, when I first posted it, was precisely to openly discuss this template, and any possible problems.

I will wait a bit, just to give the participants in the deletion discussion a chance to come here on their own and to comment. If they do not do so, then I may ask them individually. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 14:13, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I would like to note that the editors at the deletion discussion made some highly important points; the best proof of that is that the template in fact was deleted. On that basis, I would like to specifically invite some of the participants in that discussion to add their specific comments and points, if they wish to do so.
My goal in requesting this is simple; since I opened this Village Pump section for discussion, well in advance before I made any effort to actually use this template, I feel it is reasonable to ask if the people who deleted it could please add some of their points here for the record. I fully accept, acknowledge, and yield to each and every one of their points made. I will simply note the following:
  • since I hope to propose a new template sometime in the future, taking all of their points and objections into account, it would be helpful if this section could please incldue some of their points for the record, before it gets archived.
  • since this is in fact the Idea Lab, any discussion here is supposed to be an open-ended colloborative exchange anyway. so any points that are made against the original template above, can simply also become some positive points, in the subsequent discussion which potentially could discuss a future proposed template.
  • lastly, let me just fully reiterate that I am making this request with the utmost respect for those who called for the template's deletion; and in fact, as I stated above, I fully intend to accept each and every one of their points, in seeking to formulate a revised template which might hopefully be more acceptable.
so, on that note, I would like to invite the following users, if they wish to do so, to either quote, copy, or summarize the comments and points which they expressed at the deletion discussion.
I am pinging @Sdkb and Nigej:, to request their comments. I have created a new subsection below for their comments, in order to avoid pinging them repeatedly when this subsection is revised. Lastly, I will note that I fully respect their right to decline to comment, if that is their preference. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 03:25, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
since I hope to propose a new template sometime in the future One of the main reasons the template was deleted was that it is redundant to templates that already exist. Given that Wikipedia is 21 years old, there's quite a limited set of things that need to be created new from scratch. I don't think we need any more welcome templates or navboxes listing out PAG pages. If you'd like to make improvements in this area, I'd instead encourage you to focus on trimming and merging introductory pages that already exist. Having fewer and shorter pages to go through will help out newcomers more than having an overwhelming list of all the ones that currently exist. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:52, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
Sdkb, your comment is very helpful, informative, and much appreciated. thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 05:34, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Idea for new template: Explore Wikipedia

Ok, below is a new template which I have come up with, based on the important ideas and points above. I have greatly shortened this template, shortened the lists, and consolidated several areas to make this more compact and condensed.

the purpose of this template is to be helpful as a hub and a guide to help people who wish to explore wikipedia, in the myriad resources, areas, group efforts, and guides and tutorials, etc.

Just to answer SKDB's important point above, yes, we have numerous nav boxes which are designed and structured to provide information around a central topic, or a central set of topics and resources. However, we currently have no template which serves as a helpful guide to explore wikipedia itself; in other words, to get an overview of all the utterly distinct and diverse areas, types of resources, forums here, as well as the more well-known pages for central policies. that is why my draft template below, includes resources like the library, links to group editing efforts, links to some fundamental tutorials, and also a brief snapshot of more traditional and well-known items such as the five pillars, etc.

feel free to comment on this item. all comments welcome. Please note, one purpose of this template might be to place it at important pages that are highly visible to newcomers. one page I have in mind is Community Portal. Thanks.

Also, to clarify one important point; I will gladly add links to all active newsletters, as well as all monthly collaborations, if that makes this nav box seem less arbitrary. the items below were meant as a cross-section or sample set. if people wish, I can add a complete set of links, if that would improve this nav box.


--Sm8900 (talk) 13:38, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Comments on template idea

This really isn't the place to discuss such templates. Are you aware of WT:WC? They have put together a number of templates used to welcome new users, and have worked on many more that were created by other people. WT:WC is where general matters concerning welcoming messages may be discussed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:52, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Redrose64, that is a valid response. However, I prefer to discuss this idea with the Wikipedia community in general, rather than Welcoming Committee. I agree that their work is immense;y valuable.
However, the whole point of this template is that it is not intended solely for or focused upon beginners; rather, this is meant as a resource to assist and to enable all editors who wish to further explore, understand, and to utilize a wide range of resources at Wikipedia. --Sm8900 (talk) 18:29, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb:, If it is okay for me to do so, then I would like to ask if you could please kindly provide some input. Are there any conditions under which I could please ask you to support the template above? Please note, I will gladly make any, and all changes and revisions to this template above that you may request, seriously. I simply want to get the basic concept and idea behind this template into a working form, namely, to approach the goals below.

  • We need a template which serves as a navigational aid to point editors towards common community resources that serve as hubs for information, editing, and collaborative efforts; i.e. rather than simply grouping topics together, no matter how beneficial those topics may be.
  • Currently, we do not have any such template. namely, we do not have a template which points editors to specific research resources such as the library, and which also serve as a helpful gateway generally, for any editors needing basic guidance on how to find various hubs, forums, and group resources at wikipedia.
  • I will gladly agree to any editing, or shortening of this template that you may request. to wit, I only request that the template contain some of the items below, in some form or fashion:
    • A link to one or more working hubs for research, i.e. the reference desk, and the library.
    • A link to one or active hubs for assisting editors, i.e. the Help Desk, and the Teahouse
    • A link to one or more pages that list tutorials for the use of new editors.
    • a link to one or more pages that serve as general community hubs or town squares, eg Admin noticeboard, and Village Pump.

Do you see where I am going with this? Just as an aside, my own edits and contributions to Wikipedia articles are not of any great major significance. I enjoy editing, but I am not a scientist, mathematician, or scholar, whose edits will change Wikipedia in any earth-shaking way. The one real contribution that I would like to make as a long-lasting benefit to the community, is to make Wikipedia more approachable, more easy to use, more accessible and more useful for all editors, users, and visitors who may come after me.

The idea behind this template is therefore very important to me. I am willing to edit it and condense it into any shortened version that you may prefer.

Please, I would like us to really try to reach some positive consensus on this. I will welcome any revisions that you may request. Is it possible for us to please have a collaborative dialogue on this, where we might work through any possible issues and problems,. and arrive at a mutually beneficial consensus, that allows us to add this as a positive community resource?

I would welcome any input you may have. Please feel free to reply. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 18:48, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm afraid my input is that we already have too many such templates. Adding another would make Wikipedia less approachable, less easy to use, less accessible and less useful for all editors, users, and visitors who may come after you. I would only entertain your idea if you could identify several templates that this one would replace. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:57, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
A slight correction to that is that the same concern is addressed by things other than templates. I would suggest that the OP stops trying to create things from scratch, and concentrates on Wikipedia:Community portal, which is linked from the sidebar that is displayed on every page. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:07, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
@Phil Bridger: I appreciate your thoguhtful reply. As you said, we already have too many such templates. if we have a multiple number of such templates, then could you please list at least some of them? I will be glad to take a look at some of them, and to see if they are indeed somewhat duplicates of my idea above, as you suggest. I am open to any input on this. could you please feel free to indicate a few of them? thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 05:15, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Ok, based on the specific and useful feedback offered here by several helpful editors above, I am working on some proposed changes to Template:Basic information. you are welcome to view the changes at User:Sm8900/templates/changes basic information, and to comment there using the talk page, if you wish.

I hope to present these proposals at the talk page at some point, at Template:Basic information, once they are fully ready. If anyone wishes to comment further in this Village Pump section, then of course you are welcome to do so.

I expect to conclude the discussion now with this comment. I hope to present these proposed changes later to the community, using the talk page for Template: Basic information. I welcome any comments, feedback, ideas, suggestions, or other messages that anyone might wish to express. For now, I would like to thank everyone who offered their helpful ideas, insights, and comments above. thanks for your help. cheers! --Sm8900 (talk) 15:35, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Below is my proposed draft so far. This is not posted as a formal proposal yet; I am still revising this. If you wish to discuss this, I would welcome your comment. However, I would suggest that any further comments and discussions should take place at the page below in my user space, and not here at Village Pump. I think it might be helpful to allow this discussion at Village Pump to conclude for now.



thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 15:43, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T102280

Hi, the tooltip text and image that opens when mouse is hovered on links like [[Engineering]] generates Engineering and is the same as the text and image for this link [[Engineering#History|History]] that produces History. The second link tooltip's text and image is wrong, it should represent a text like "Engineering has existed since ancient times, when humans devised inventions such as the wedge, lever, wheel and pulley, etc." and an image like File:Grondplan citadel Lille.JPG that is the text for "Engineering#History" Heading section of this article. So in my opinion we should change tooltip text and image selection policy for links pointing to sub-heading sections of articles. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:52, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

phab:T102280. This is rather difficult to implement. --Yair rand (talk) 06:23, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
@Yair rand: In my opinion it is not hard to implement, i.e., tooltip should read some data from a Sub-Heading instead of lead of article. Is hard or not, current policy is clearly wrong. In the above example, History data is not shown, and data shown (definition of engineering) is roughly unrelevant to the history of engineering. Note that some articles is a merged item of 2 or 3 concepts, and each concept is defined in a different Sub-Heading section. Then tooltip data is completely unrelevant to the intended concept and totally wrong data is rendered to users. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 06:57, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
@Hooman Mallahzadeh: So submit a patch? The task is blocked by the fact that no one has written the code, so if you can figure out a way to make this work, please go right ahead. --Yair rand (talk) 07:43, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Protection idea

I got a random idea:

- Protected pages appear normally to anyone who can't edit it.

- Edits to a protected page by editors who didn't have the rights to do so are logged, for purposes of determining if an article can be unprotected.

- When attempting to publish the edit, the editor will instead be offered an option to automatically make an edit request. – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 01:44, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

What advantages would this have over WP:Pending changes? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:29, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
The advantages that I can see are two: you won't need to switch over all semi-protected pages to pending changes, and you don't get the page history polluted by long series of reverted edits. – Uanfala (talk) 16:34, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
It's a fine idea to be implemented as a user script (see WP:US/R), which in fact can be written quite easily. – SD0001 (talk) 19:19, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
I actually like this idea. I feel that making it not a user script would be beneficial, however i understand that there may be some challenges in doing so. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 04:16, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
This was suggested by me at the 2022 CWS. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 03:58, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
@EpicPupper: I actually really like your idea. It would probably lower the amount of blank and complete gibberish edit requests, and lower the amount of times we have to respond with "It's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please suggest your changes in a "change X to Y" format" ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 04:01, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Add "Did you find what you were looking for?" feature to the end of any article.

At the end of any article, there would be a box asking whether the reader had found the information they were looking for. They could either click a green tick or a red cross. In the latter case, they could be asked to indicate the question they were hoping to find an answer to (the simplest implementation would just be a text-field, but adding the option to select among previously suggested topics would reduce friction and make it easier to see which questions most commonly go unanswered).

Example: Recently, I was researching Proton-Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells, a topic to which I'm fairly new. I was hoping to find some information about polarization curves, which are a very common way to characterize the behavior of a fuel cell, but the article didn't contain any. Suppose for the sake of argument that my experience here was relatively common. If the system laid out above were in place, it would now be much easier to improve the article; editors would know that adding information about the polarization curve specifically was going to be especially helpful to many users.

I expect the above is one of the most straightforward ways to implement this. However, coming up with variations and iterations is generally valuable and there might be other ways of gathering more user feedback.

Disclaimer: I'm new to this community. I hope I've tried to obey all the norms, but it's possible I did something wrong, in which case I apologize. I want to emphasize that I don't feel "entitled" to someone else doing my research for me or anything; Wikipedia has been of immense value to me and I'm really thankful to this community for that!

- Matt — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.135.82.55 (talk) 13:50, 20 February 2022 (UTC) (just found my old (not very active) account, so figured I could try signing the right way) MathieuPutz (talk) 20:01, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I like this idea. It would give editors ideas for improving/expanding articles based on questions asked, and it would help readers feel like participants. The text entry could auto-create a section on the Talk page. I have no idea how technically feasible any of this is, but I think it's a useful suggestion. (Granted, there will probably be plenty of "questions" that aren't appropriate for answering in the article, but those can just be disregarded.) Schazjmd (talk) 16:14, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
I like the idea too. Wikipedians are self-directing volunteers so there's limited scope for influencing the ways they choose to contribute, but there's probably enough of us that could be spurred on when gaps are pointed out. The suggested question for readers seems focussed enough, so it will be less likely to repeat the results of the discontinued article feedback tool. – Uanfala (talk) 16:29, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
This sounds like an improvement on the old article feedback tool, in that it is more focused on what the reader wants. One possible drawback of this is that it could raise people's expectation that a volunteer editor will add the information requested pretty soon. That expectation is likely to be dashed. Maybe there could be an additional request that the reader should add the information if it is found somewhere else in a reliable source? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:36, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
We're not a Q&A site, although WP:RD does go some way to doing that. If the feature proposed at the top of this section is implemented, who is going to monitor the inevitable flood of questions? Some may be relevant, but might duplicate the purpose of the article talk page; but I foresee plenty of off-topic questions like "where's the best place to rent a house" or "why can't I have access to my children?". Mind you, we get plenty of that already; so do we need more? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:47, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Version 5 of the article feedback tool worked exactly that way: it asked "Did you find what you were looking for?", and if you selected no, you could enter freeform text into an edit box to submit your feedback. isaacl (talk) 02:54, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
WP:Reference desk is a place to ask questions about content. WP:Edit requests can already be made on the talk page. I don't see a need for the feature. Sungodtemple (talk) 01:22, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
To be fair, I don't think the average reader is (very) aware of them. Maybe they could be made more prominent instead? Dege31 (talk) 19:24, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
@Dege31:, that is an excellent idea. that is precisely what I am trying to do, in my proposal above. could you please comment there? thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 03:48, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
An edit request making a general suggestion will be rejected for not being specific enough and then ignored, so that doesn't address what the OP is talking about. Mlb96 (talk) 03:38, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
This is Wikipedia:Article feedback tool all over again. There's no reason to think the problems that lead to the 2013 iteration being disabled won't recur. * Pppery * it has begun... 01:59, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
What I would like it to be temporary enable a question like that for articles I'm actively working on. I often wonder if my editing is too technical (or whether I'm removing too many technical details in my attempt not to write too technical). I do think the benefits may outweigh the disadvantages if the question is asked by an editor actively editing the article. Femke (talk) 18:47, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
What Pppery said. In theory, this a good idea. In practice, you'll be picking out the helpful suggestions from between "lol this is all fake" and "dude looks like a f__" and so on. This is what always happens when you leave an obvious "comment" box and the end of a page. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

arbitrary section break

  • A free-form text box isn't a workable idea, as has already been said, it would lead (and has led) to a lot of nonsense questions and spam, and articles already have talk pages for productive on-topic commentary. What about a multiple-choice response instead? The first round would just be "Yes/No" ("Did you find what you were looking for?"), which would then lead to a short survey with <10 questions about the most common issues readers notice in articles. Then the results of those surveys could be collected and displayed as a visual on the talk page. Articles change over time; we can monitor how the responses to the survey change, and use that feedback to guide article development (at least with respect to reader experience). Unlike a text box, this could be fully automated to minimize the amount of volunteer time needed to attend to the responses, while still providing some amount of useful feedback to those editors who already happen to be working on the articles receiving the feedback. Mysterious Whisper (talk) 20:38, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
A multiple choicw question "Did you find any errors yes/no" with a freeform edit box to explain what errors were found is a workable idea, in my view. Per in Sweden (talk) 22:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
As explained above, that's what we tried in 2013. The result was a huge volume of text with a very bad signal-to-noise ratio, and I believe the consensus was that whatever useful feedback we got from it it wasn't worth all the extra work it made. Readers can already leave feedback in the form of text on the article talk page; this survey thing I'm suggesting would supplement that feedback without risking another flood of YouTube-like comments. Mysterious Whisper (talk) 23:06, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Surely if you have a question that guides you into explaining what type of error one has found, you will not get a flood of messages; then the talk page would be flooded the same way, but it isn't. People who are illiterate or afraid of/about editing the main or talk pages could contribute in an a way that is not too complicated. Most people are respectable, and if you find abusers, they can be blocked by IP-numbers, the same way abusers are blocked from editing wikipedia articles as seen.Per in Sweden (talk) 23:25, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Whether it was functional depended on the article's subject. If you put it on a rare disease article, the feedback was largely helpful. If you put it on a Boy band article, the feedback was largely useless (or worse). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
Have you met the human race? You have way more faith in their good behavior than I do. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 21:20, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
  • This feels like the same old Article Feedback Tool wearing a different colored shirt. It was a bad idea last time, and is not likely to be any better this time. --Jayron32 13:53, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Perhaps some way to make talk pages more visible? A discreet button or link at the end of the article that says, "For discussion about this article use the talk page" that automatically opens a new section on the talk page? Something not quite the article feedback tool, but that tells people where to go with their comments and questions. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:42, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
I've always wondered why the tabs aren't at the bottom of the page as well as the top.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 02:54, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
  • What about a message at the bottom of every page that says something like "Think that something should be added to this article?/Think that something is missing from this article?/Have any suggestions to improve this article? Consider/Feel free to/Please leave a message on the [[Talk:Article|talk page]]." This language should let people know that it's specifically to suggest improvements to the article, not for asking questions. Mlb96 (talk) 03:36, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
I don't see a lot of use for this feature. if it generates lots of discussion, then it will mainly be from people who add well-meaning comments which are entirely not specific enough to generate meaningful change. and if it doesn't then there is little point to this feature anyway. --Sm8900 (talk) 03:45, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello, I'm new to the whole proposal thing. So, almost all of us has placed wikilinks next to each other, shown in this example. This is to ensure the compliance of MOS:SEAOFBLUE, so the edit filter would most likely have a "warn" setting. I am aware of the pop-up if you link common words like in the example, but it does not address the aforementioned issue. Thoughts? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:03, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

The benefits are fairly clear (warn would indeed the logical setting), but two potential points jump out (and I imagine they did to CSC as well) - the big one being that this could do a lot of undesired warnings. It might be worth running a month of log-only to see what the rate would be. Secondly, would be good to get a specialist saying it'd be fine on a computational front - run-time could be expensive (in comparative terms) for a filter like this. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
I think maybe placing them client-side would be a better idea then. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 09:52, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Clarifying the number of sources required by GNG

WP:GNG states There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected. In theory, this nuanced rationale is useful, but in practice it is rarely applied; editors find their preferred definition of "multiple" (I believe it is typically three, in line with the essay by RoySmith and with most of the remainder defining it as two) and so long as the editor believes each source meet WP:SIGCOV they consider it sufficient.

As such, I believe this nuance doesn't benefit the project, instead making it more difficult for new editors to understand what is required for their article to survive, harder to determine a consensus at AFD, and complicating the work of AFC and NPP. To resolve this, I believe it would be useful to provide a fixed number; as a first thought, I would propose the above quoted text be replaced with At least three sources are required.

Raising this here, to develop the idea and because if an RFC is opened broad input would be desirable due to the significance of GNG. BilledMammal (talk) 16:27, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

We have never spelled out the number because this is far too game-able. We are looking for what is sufficient to show that significant coverage exists. That could come from one really strong comprehensive source like an in-depth biography, or it might require six or more sources that each only have a paragraph or three but combined provide good coverage. Just saying N sources means that editors at AFD will only focus on the number of sources with no consideration of what significant coverage there is. We know this happens. --Masem (t) 16:33, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
I would agree, except editors already focus on finding N sources that individually meet the other requirements of GNG; the only difference is that they use their own definition of N. This idea won't fix the issue, but it won't make it worse and it will fix other issues. BilledMammal (talk) 16:40, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
@BilledMammal, it happens that @SmokeyJoe and I have been discussing this for the better part of the year. I can't say that we've made much progress towards an answer, but we might be getting better about asking the questions.
On the one hand, you have editors like @Masem, who will take a paragraph here and a paragraph there, and so long as the total combination of all independent sources results in being able to write an actual encyclopedia article in the end, then they all count towards notability. One excellent source might demonstrate notability on its own; for another subject, six small sources might be needed.
On the other hand, you have editors, many of whom are focused on (perceived) self-promotionalism, who prefer the WP:SIRS approach, and declare that no source counts towards notability at all unless that single source, evaluated in isolation, would basically be enough to write a whole encyclopedia article on its own. These editors usually require a minimum of two or three excellent sources, and they will not consider less-than-excellent sources at all. A mere paragraph (or three) in a news article is immediately and completely discarded as having no bearing on the question of notability at all; they never reach a point at which one could consider whether the combination of a couple of paragraphs here plus a couple of paragraphs there could produce enough sourced content to make it possible to write an article.
I've never been impressed with the "game-able" claim. We should write down what the actual answer is, because that's consistent with our value of transparency. If we write down "three sources" and people produce three sources containing a single sentence each, then that proves that we wrote down the wrong answer – not that the answer should be kept secret. IMO the actual answer probably sounds more like (a) two different authors writing for two different publishers plus (b) a minimum of 500 words directly about the topic, across all [financially] independent sources, including at least 10 severable facts about the subject and at least one indication of analysis (e.g., comparison to a similar subject or classification as an instance of some larger notable subject). But I'd also ban editors from rejecting sources just because they personally feel that the source's linguistic style is insufficiently scholarly or because the newspaper reporter directly interviewed the subject (and therefore allegedly is no longer "independent"), so you can take my view with an appropriately large grain of salt. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:01, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
@BilledMammal please read the notes that go along with that essay. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:42, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Thank you; I originally had both yours and WP:3REFS, but for concision I shortened it to just yours, as the more influential essay in establishing or maintaining the position that N is three, not two or four, even though that wasn't your intent. BilledMammal (talk) 16:50, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
That's still the point: the GNG is 100% centered on showing significant coverage and that can come from 1 high quality source or may require many where the topic itself is not the central topic of each source. Counting sources is not a replacement for reviewing significant coverage, and editors that continue to equate GNG to number of sources using those essays are fundamentally wrong. --Masem (t) 16:59, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Unfortunately, counting sources (that meet the other criteria of GNG) is what happens, and the fact that there should be more nuance doesn't change that.
On a side note, I disagree that one high quality source is enough, as I don't believe we can comply with NPOV when we only have a single perspective, but that isn't relevant to this discussion. BilledMammal (talk) 17:38, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
What I mean is if I have a book-length biography, high quality, it will likely have its own set of references about that same person. The initial WP article about that person would not need to include those references but that they exist with the biography means more sources exist out there. This doesn't apply to, say, a single long-form obit that is not going to have that type of feature. --Masem (t) 18:05, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
I agree with Masem here. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:18, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
With this clarification, so do I, although I would interpret it as having multiple uncited sources, rather than just one. BilledMammal (talk) 18:22, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
The GNG (and pages related to retaining/deletion of articles due to notability) should be viewed as the potential for articles to be developed further from the likelihood of additional sourcing to be found in the future or that can be added that has been identified but not yet added. EG: if an article goes to AFD and 10 new sources are found and agreed to be sufficient to give that topic significant coverage, then the only thing that should be done is getting those 10 articles added to the article, but we don't have a deadline for that; if years later those 10 sources have yet to be added, it would still be inappropriate to AFD the article because we know those sources exist. Same concept with the "one great source that has a known bibliography/reference section to work from" situation. This comes back again to why we try not to judge just on the number of sources since one source could be a link to potentially multiple additional sources that could build more significant coverage in time. Of course, what more commonly happens today is that editors are just using web-based sourcing that rarely include references to other source, so we judge each source on its own and not what it can led to. --Masem (t) 19:11, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
42. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 18:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
The GNG requires two, minimally. This does not mean two is sufficient, but in practice two are sufficient if they are both very good sources.
WP:THREE is about countering WP:Reference bombing. If it’s already been deleted, and you think sources support reversing the decision, then show us your best three, and we will review them very seriously; but DO NOT give us twenty and ask us to spend hours analysis in them all. Also, a rule of thumb that stands up to experience is that if the best few sources are GNG non-compliant, no number of worse sources will be sufficient.
The GNG is just a guideline, and the real decision gets made at AfD. However, when push comes to shove, and we are talking about for-profit company, it’s CEO, or it’s products, the Wikipedia:SIRS approach is the consistent winner. WAID and I have talked at length, without agreement. I believe the crux is that for promotional topics, product reviews are to be presumed non-independent and GNG non-compliant.
Exceptions are traditional encyclopedic topics, like the natural sciences, and distant history. For these, WP:V is enough.
—- SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:50, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
  • 5 sources is always sufficient; 4 almost always; 3 usually, 2 often, and 1 never meets GNG but may be sufficient if paired with a notability guideline for special circumstances. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:38, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
    I can view one source as meeting GNG if it's very extensive - most commonly, this is a book dedicated to the article. This is one aspect where NCORP is de jure different and not merely an "enforce more vigorously" Nosebagbear (talk) 13:13, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

NSONG for covers

From WP:NSONG: Songs with notable cover versions are normally covered in one common article about the song and the cover versions. This rule... makes no sense to me. Since I've ranted about this at length already, I'm just going to copy my reasoning for bringing this up here:

... a good song article is going to have big sections about production, release, reception, and themes. Those are going to be very different in cover songs that have taken on a life of their own. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through The Grapevine (as well as Creedence Clearwater Revival's), The Beatles' Twist and Shout, The Animals' The House of the Rising Sun, Simon & Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair, Gillian Welch and Allison Krauss's I'll Fly Away, and They Might Be Giants' Istanbul (Not Constantinople), but there are many more. If a Wikipedia article on a song solely focuses on the song's lyrics and tune, that's a pretty terrible article—but that's the only thing a notable cover has in common with its original. If a cover has independent notability, it should have a separate article. Pigeonholing a cover into the original's article fundamentally misrepresents what a song's Wikipedia article should focus on, and leaves out a lot of notable information that could very well have its own article.

So, I want to brainstorm on language that can replace that line. I haven't been able to get it past the rules-lawyer in my head, though, so I'm putting out my best guess and I want to hear your thoughts on how it can be improved:

Songs with notable cover versions are normally covered in one common article about the song and the cover versions, except where a comprehensive overview of a cover in the original article cannot reasonably constitute due weight and must be spun off into a separate article.

It's... pretty conservative at the moment. Basically, covers (even notable covers) are merged to the original wherever possible, but if a cover is just too big or renowned or has a life of its own, it'll get its own article. Any ideas for this? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 11:10, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

For the record, the original discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Notability (music)#Really, a cover can never have an independent article? – I don't want to relitigate whether or not we should be drafting this rule at all at the moment, since we're not consensus polling. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 11:11, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Updating the protected page symbols?

Protected pages on wp currently use lock symbols to indicate restricted editing. However, in the open access / open knowledge movement more generally closed vs open locks are used to indicate closed vs open access resources (indeed we also use Closed access icon {{Closed_access}} to indicate paywalled resources). Because of this, it's left our symbology out of synch with the wider use in online resources. If we were creating the icons today from scratch, what would we use? I wonder whether something more like etc might work better. What do people think? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 05:24, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I know you're probably just looking for general ideas and this isn't a formal proposal or anything, but for anyone looking to make this a thing I would suggest checking out the 2018 RFC that led to our current images being adopted for a good format to ask the question. Primefac (talk) 07:20, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Oh crap, is it that time of year again? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:28, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
@Evolution and evolvability, if we were creating our symbology from scratch, I think you're right that shields might've been preferable to locks. But locks aren't terrible, and at this point, the community is so used to locks that it's unfortunately not even worth talking about; it just isn't going to happen.
The only big icon update that I think it's really worth our time to push for is the FA and GA symbols. There's also currently an open discussion on the taxonomy box pencil icon where I'd love to have your and others' input. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:25, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Community statement

I've drafted a potential community statement on the arrest of a Ukrainian Wikimedian and the Russian government's threats to censor Wikipedia at meta:2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine/Community statement. Before opening it up to signatories and promoting it widely, I'd appreciate feedback. Should anything about it be changed? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:54, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

If you want to add a little extra to it, it could mention Wikipedia as being a source of credible info for the Ukrainian and Russian people.North8000 (talk) 02:55, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Article we talk about today at WikiCanada chat Wikimedia says it ‘will not back down’ after Russia threatens Wikipedia block.Moxy- 03:08, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Good article; already linked! And yeah, that could be a nice thing to mention if we can find a place to put it. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:25, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
@Sdkb: - I really like the letter content. Perhaps the only thing that comes to mind is that the header (currently "Russian invasion of Ukraine") suggests a more "support Ukraine against the Russian invaders" focus, whereas the letter is (rightly (for Wikimedia)) more on the censorship by Russia & Belarus. Without the title becoming too long, perhaps a rewording to make the title more directly clear to meaning? Nosebagbear (talk) 15:33, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Help with discussion participation

I propose in the talk page we have an area where users can sign their name to show they are major supporter of an article. This could be beneficial so people in disputes can have editors too easily ping for discussion regarding the article. This will help with participation in the consensus making process. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 04:09, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Don't we have the article's page history for that? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:32, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Meh… Any “major supporter” of an article will probably have it on their watchlist. Thus, it is likely that they already know about any disputes that have arisen. Blueboar (talk) 14:32, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
A list of people to WP:CANVAS? CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 19:09, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
WP:AALERTS more or less covers this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:01, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Comment section after citations

It should be possible to add a little snippet of text after a citation that says what the source is/what it says. This would be especially helpful for long sources like PDFs where people could say what page they found the info in question on or just put a quote of what it says. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ranicher (talk • contribs) 17:24, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

That is possible. If using free-form citations then anything you like can be entered, and when using citation templates such as {{cite book}} or {{cite web}} the page= and quote= parameters can be used. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:06, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
For works without page numbers, you can use the parameter "at=" (instead of "page=" or "pages=") (see Template:Citation#In-source locations) in cite templates to indicate section/chapter headings or other identifiable markers in the document. - Donald Albury 21:01, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
Even when using a citation template instead of free-form text, if one of its parameters doesn't quite fit your need, you can add a snippet of text after it. isaacl (talk) 21:13, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Give page movers the right to move past move protection?

I want to know how people feel about this.. So, there's this right called Page mover, and it allows users to do stuff related to moving pages (suppressing redirects, overriding title blacklist.) Separately, there's also this thing called move protection, which makes it so only administrators can move the protected pages.

So, uh, if there's a right that specifically makes it so one can move more pages, then why is there a protection on moving pages that doesn't let them, the people trusted to move pages correctly, through?

(I've never really done a proposal before so I wanted to hit by here first to check if I'll get snowed out in an actual proposal of this) casualdejekyll 01:39, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

@Casualdejekyll please first read through similar discussions from August 2018 and April 2021. — xaosflux Talk 01:48, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Well, @Xaosflux, the April 2021 proposal appears to have a lot of votes that oppose but would be neutral on PMR-level move protection existing. That doesn't make much sense to me - the proposal is to replace admin move protection with PMR-level move protection, so they're saying the oppose and are neutral at the same time? casualdejekyll 01:59, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
@Casualdejekyll I think one of the technical challenges is that to move a page you have to be able to edit the page, so this would require a lot of technical work for something that doesn't occur that often: pages that are full-protected against "move", but not full-protected against "edit" - that actually need to be moved - and that the best solution isn't to reduce the protection. You would need to come up with some good statistics to show that the scope of the problem is large enough to build a new technical system. — xaosflux Talk 09:25, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
A quick glance through Special:ProtectedPages shows that about 80% of the first 1,000 move-protected non-redirect articles are also full-protected. @Casualdejekyll, it looks like you don't have this user right. How often has this situation affected your own editing? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Give WMF feedback on model cards

The WMF Privacy and Machine Learning Platform teams are developing model cards to increase visibility, transparency, and accountability of algorithmic decision-making on WMF platforms. The broad goal is for every ML model hosted by WMF to have a model card for the community and public to understand, discuss, and govern that model. As part of rolling this out to more models, we want to get feedback from as many people as possible.

To that end, we would love for you to give some feedback on the talk page of our prototype! Of course, please feel free to ask any questions/give any general comments as a thread to this conversation.

Thanks :)

- Htriedman (talk) 19:00, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

What is a "model card"? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:03, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm sure you are trying your best, but the only feedback that I can give is that the WMF should sack the 90%+ of its staff who work on such irrelevant projects, stop trying to raise more money than it needs, and concentrate on providing the hardware and software infrastructure that we need. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:08, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Harsh words, but fair. Certes (talk) 20:32, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
You shouldn't really hijack any thread made by WMF staff with off topic comments about this sort of thing. I'm sure you have valid concerns but it seems quite rude, especially as this *is* software related and just because you might not understand it doesn't mean its not useful to other members of the community. ✨ Ed talk! ✨ 20:53, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Agree completely. It's almost disruptive to reply to any WMF thread as if it's a WMF soapbox. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 21:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
These model cards seem very useful! Machine learning can get quite mysterious, especially when the data starts getting and I feel like this openness definitely helps.
Whist a push, deeper accessibility to run the models through APIs, similar to what ORES has, would be great too for userscript and tool makers, but I'd strongly recommend some sort of authentication check be done unlike ORES to make sure quotas are adhered to. Maybe if this content was merged onto the new API Wiki (api.wikimedia.org, I know it isn't quite an API but a central spot for all technical docs would be helpful) or Wikitech that would be nice. ✨ Ed talk! ✨ 20:58, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Jo-Jo asked a pertinent question above… please do not assume that people know what “model cards” are and what they are supposed to do. Explain! Blueboar (talk) 21:26, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, all, for the helpful comments. Model cards are a kind of standardized documentation about machine learning models — something akin to a nutritional label. Ideally, they should be standardized in their look and content, understandable by people who aren't domain experts, and provide clear answers to basic questions (who, what, why, how, etc.). Although the paper I've linked provides a specific schema for model cards, I've been figuring out what that kind of documentation should look like on various wikipedias. If we are going to host models that have a very large impact on what wikipedia looks like (e.g. the ML models that power various patrolling tools), and scale up their utility in the future, this kind of documentation is useful — and in the medium term it may be required by law in the EU for models that have an impact on basic human rights, like online speech. Htriedman (talk) 22:50, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
LOL... I still have no clue what you are talking about... but thanks for at least trying to explain. Blueboar (talk) 18:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm with you, no idea what these are supposed to be. Which seems a bit ironic if their purpose is to make things understandable to non-experts. – Reidgreg (talk) 22:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
@Htriedman I noticed on meta:User:HTriedman_(WMF)/Language_Agnostic_Link-Based_Article_Topic_Model_Card that the training data came primarily came from English Wikipedia (11.4%) and then Cebuano (8.8%). I don't know if you were aware that Cebuano Wikipedia is written by a bot, Lsjbot. If you're going to train a machine-leaning algorithm, using bot-generated content is probably not going to give you the results you were hoping for. Spanish might be a better candidate.
I'm not sure if this is the same thing or just something similar to what's used to generate the suggestions in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3AHomepage, but if so, that's not working. That I'm interested in visual arts doesn't mean I want to work on comics, interior design, comics, manga, photography, landscape architecture, interior design or manga (those are my current recommendations). The assumption that one's interests can be reduce to something so simplistic is flawed, I'm afraid. A much better method, that works for me, is to look at what other people who work on things that I care about do. Vexations (talk) 20:18, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Vexations' idea seems much closer to my experience. I for example have a close overlap with JBchrch and Fintor's edits in finance and economics, but me being interested in the broad business, finance, and economics field doesn't mean I'd be interested in some random company's page or an obscure economics article. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 20:26, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Most attempts to apply machine learning to anything seem to come at things from the wrong end. Rather than say "here's this wonderful idea about machine learning so what can we apply it to?" the question should be "here's something that doesn't work well so how do we make it better?". If the answer to the latter is by applying machine learning (as it will be in a very small percentage of cases) then the appropriate model should be looked at. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:13, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Stubs and notability

Idea creator has asked for it to be closed, no-one else seems inclined to continue in its current form. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:17, 24 March 2022 (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.

With all the vast discussion about stubs being "microstubs" or "permastubs", and all the arguments about whether they meet this NG or that NG, surely we should be seeking measurable standards that will reduce all the discussion and argument? The following is still only an idea, which is why I've come here instead of to the proposals page:

  1. Any new article must have a readable prose size (WP:RPS) of at least 500b (half a kilobyte) so that there will be around 100 words and maybe four of five lines of text. I think it is better to set a byte size limit instead of a word limit because of varying word lengths. Other content like short description, hatnotes, infobox, images, reflist, categories, stub notices, etc, are extraneous – RPS means the narrative (the readable prose) only.
  2. All content must be sourced per WP:V and WP:RS. Preferably with inline citations per WP:CITE but I wouldn't absolutely insist on that at the outset because stubs are often created by newbies who might struggle with CITE format.
  3. Unless a book source is used, there must be at least TWO reliable sources. With pre-internet subjects, a book might be the only source available and, unless there is reason to believe the book may be non-RS, it should be accepted as the sole source for the present. With post-internet subjects, I think it is fair to insist on two internet/newspaper sources if no book is available.
  4. If two internet sources are referenced and one them is a database, the other must be a non-database source such as a news site.
  5. The subject must meet the specific notability criteria (WP:SNG) set by the relevant project – e.g., WP:NFOOTY – and this criteria must set a recognisably HIGH standard of achievement. Using NFOOTY for example, playing in a Tier 1 international or in an FPL that is equivalent to the Premier League or the EFL; but not playing for non-league teams, or for reserve teams, or for youth teams, or in non-competitive matches, etc.
  6. If the subject does not meet any project's SNG, it must meet the wider definition of notability described in WP:GNG. This provides a safety net for notable subjects that are exceptional to project interest. As for why SNG should be considered ahead of GNG, the specific is more definable and demanding than the general and must therefore take priority. The caveat for the SNG is that it must set a recognisably high standard that has WP:CONSENSUS.
  7. Any stub that does not meet these conditions is subject to immediate WP:CSD which can be set by any experienced editor (say, anyone with 1,000-plus edits over a period of at least six months). This measure will provide an enormous time save at AfD.
  8. Any stub that meets the conditions as a new article must be expanded within twelve months of creation to at least 1 kb RPS with complete reliable sourcing, such that it earns class=start. If not, it can be taken to AfD for the community to decide if it should be retained as a stub. Some subjects can, of course, be highly notable but with very little to be said about them.

This idea would doubtlessly be a compromise solution if implemented. I can see where opposition might come from but I think anything which cuts back on all the arguments at AfD is definitely a way forward for us all. Happy to discuss. Please ping me if you want to ask me anything. Thanks for your time. No Great Shaker (talk) 16:20, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

  • This is a non-starter. I can't see any scenario where human judgement at AfD is replaced by a strict set of numeric criteria. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:34, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
    Hello, Roy. What I'm hoping to achieve is a means of reducing the input to AfD, where so much time is wasted. Judgement would still be needed for the items which reach point 8. Thanks for your view, though. No Great Shaker (talk) 16:50, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I get the impression that many people editing here have never seen a print encyclopedia, such as were produced before Wikipedia put them all out of business. Most articles in any but the largest multi-volume encyclopedias were shorter in their final form than is being demanded here from the very start. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
    Hello, Phil. That's very true. I've still got a Hutchinson's encyclopaedia from the 1970s and most entries are just short summaries. Do you have any thoughts on what would be a fair minimum size, bearing in mind NOTPAPER? 250b, perhaps, for around 50 words? This is all just an idea, remember, and I'm only looking at feasibility. If there is none, then it's no go. Thanks for taking part. No Great Shaker (talk) 17:33, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
    @No Great Shaker, please go read WP:NOTPAPER, which says there is no limit to the number of articles (which is currently 6,913,984). It does not say that we should have lengthy articles (and never has). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
    I do not believe that any minimum size is appropriate. If we have an article that just says, "Albert Ouédraogo is Prime Minister of Burkina Faso", with a source, then it's a perfectly acceptable stub about a notable topic, which can be expanded after 10 minutes or 10 years or more, according to whether anyone wants to expand it. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:46, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
    I agree with Phil. Many times, readers only want to read the first sentence or two anyway (Who's that guy again? Oh, a major politician of... um, where's that little country?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Your proposal about destroying unfinished articles without even a discussion or a chance to improve them further, is, indeed, a non-starter. But even if we wanted a system that prioritized m:immediatism, your proposed rules are wrong. Consider, e.g., All content must be sourced per WP:V and WP:RS: I suspect that when you wrote this, you did not fully realize that "per WP:V", all content is not required to be sourced – ever, even if a Featured Article. In fact, "per WP:V", only three kinds of content need to be sourced at all; WP:BLP adds a fourth category of information. You can see the list of four items at WP:MINREF. If you write an article that says only something like Paris is the capital of France. France is in Europe. Paris is a large city. Most people there speak the French language. then "per WP:V", the necessary number of inline citations is zero. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback, WhatamIdoing. I take your points on board and I must agree with you. Btw, what you are doing is a good job. No Great Shaker (talk) 09:32, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Please close discussion. As nominator, taking a pragmatic view based on the feedback gratefully received, I don't think this idea is feasible as a proposed way forward. So, back to the drawing board, but this has been useful and it's given me some pointers for further thought. Thank you again to Roy, Phil and WhatamIdoing. All the best. No Great Shaker (talk) 09:32, 23 March 2022 (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.

?!

?! has no meaning behind it. or at least not for most people, for some people it means waiting for the end. what there waiting for the end of is unkown for now. should anyone find another meaning then that i would like to know what it is so please feel free to make changes or add to it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jevin clarin (talk • contribs) 03:48, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I suspect you have posted this on the wrong page, and/or on the wrong website entirely. Whatever you are trying to say, it seems to have no relevance whatsoever to the stated purpose explained above. This is not a forum for vague comments about random punctuation marks, it's sole purpose is the discussion of ideas directly related to how Wikipedia creates and maintains content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:05, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
@Jevin clarin: Looks like your comments are possibly intended for Talk:Interrobang? ––FormalDude talk 04:43, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Proposed additions to the Main Page

The purpose of this RFC is determine what sections should be added and removed from the Main Page. I have identified a few features missing from the main page which would make Wikipedia more interactive. Other editors are welcome to add proposals here. Interstellarity (talk) 20:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

This change would show that the purpose of the vital articles project is for readers and not editors.

Support
  1. Interstellarity (talk) 20:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. Oppose the WP:VA is more of a WikiProject than anything else. Whilst they are some of the most important articles, the VA list shouldn't be commented on from the main page. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:25, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
  2. Oppose. Not so quick. Community awareness is too low on WP:VA, there are oddities and niche perspectives. But consider. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:25, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
Neutral
Discussion

I'm always interested in what articles are popular every week and it might incentivize experienced editors to improve the articles.

Support
  1. Interstellarity (talk) 20:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. This sounds like a "trending" feature. Self-referential rankings like this don't belong in the mainspace. If you have it on the Main Page, I fear it will attract inexperienced editors, a spectrum of inept AGF edits and vandalism to the articles, and a lot more work for the experienced editors on presumably heavily-edited articles. – Reidgreg (talk) 22:50, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
  2. Oppose. Instead add a small discreet link to Wikipedia:Top 25 Report at the bottom of the In the news section. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:23, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
    had no idea this existed. Thank you for linking it. Star Mississippi 00:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
    Like with all things, the person who does it louder and later gets all the credit. [FBDB] casualdejekyll 07:47, 27 March 2022 (UTC)


Neutral
Discussion

Proposal 3: Add quizzes throughout the Main page

I think creating quizzes on Today's featured article, In the news, as well as Today's featured picture would be great because I like to test my knowledge to see what I know about the article.

Support
  1. Interstellarity (talk) 20:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
  2. YTKJ (talk) 18:45, 20 March 2022 (UTC) Yes, this sounds like a fun addition to Wikipedia.
Oppose
  1. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 23:18, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
  2. completely against the point of Wikipedia. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:21, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
  3. Oppose, per Lee. RudolfRed (talk) 20:24, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
  4. Oppose, per Lee.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:34, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
  5. Nah, but why nah? One, this would require some software work, and software developers are in short supply. If someone really wants to write a quiz extension lets see what it looks like first. If someone wants to write this as a javascript - lets see the example again. This would require volunteers to write and maintain questions and answers. Now, if some wikiproject really really wants to do this, and do it as a script, then maybe I'd be ok with it being an opt-in / onclick load gadget. But would want to see some proof of concepts on both the software and the process first. — xaosflux Talk 21:17, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
    A first iteration doesn't even need to be interactive: just have the questions and answers on separate pages. I agree before considering it for the main page, there should be a track record of the quiz creation process running regularly and smoothly. (I don't know if the Signpost is interested in a column like this; it could be a place to try it out.) isaacl (talk) 21:34, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
    The software already exists; see mw:Extension:Quiz. It's used at both Wikibooks and Wikiversity, and maybe other places. For the record, just because the software exists does not mean that it can be used on the largest wiki in the world. But if you wanted it (for any reason, not necessarily for this proposal), we could ask. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    Good to know there is an applicable extension. Personally I'd like see a consistent record of producing non-interactive quizzes and that there is an interested audience before requesting that an extension be installed. isaacl (talk) 23:20, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Neutral
  1. I like the idea in general. Quizzes are fun, and add interest. Even the NY Times has a weekly news quiz. But before we can consider putting it on the front page, the idea should be tested somewhere else to see how well it works. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:54, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
  2. Quizes, yes. On the Main page, no. Link from the main page? Yes, trial it. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:27, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
Discussion

Proposal 4: Add Browse by category at the bottom of the Main Page so readers can look for a specific article without using the search engine

There will always be readers that are not quite sure what article they are looking for. Having basic categories like People, Science, Technology, and Society would make the user interface more usable rather than using the old-fashioned categories.

Support
  1. Interstellarity (talk) 21:02, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. I don't think throwing a reader at Category:People is going to be very useful. The category system is decent for finding related low-level topics, but not so much for browsing such broad categories such as those proposed. — xaosflux Talk 21:20, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Neutral
Discussion
  • Wikipedia already has this, they are called Portals, but they have kind of diminished in visibility and importance over the years. I'm also not really sure it is easier than simply typing in the article or subject one is looking for in the search bar. 331dot (talk) 00:01, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
  • In addition to the portal links (which oddly enough you suggested removing), for desktop readers there is a "Contents" link in the sidebar that provides some navigational guidance. Perhaps this link should duplicated in a more prominent location. isaacl (talk) 21:28, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

General discussion

  • Interstellarity There are countless attempts to change the main page, but never consensus for them. I would urge you to better hash out ideas at the Village Pump first. I would say that quizzes are probably a nonstarter, this is an encyclopedia, not a gaming site. 331dot (talk) 23:18, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
    I don't mean to shoot down your ideas. But changing the Main Page of one of the top used websites in the world requires a lot of time and effort, usually from multiple people and more than an RFC. I would gently suggest that you withdraw these proposals from this page and discuss them at the Village Pump. 331dot (talk) 23:30, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
    @331dot I have moved the proposals from the main page talk to the idea lab so that they can be developed further. I have converted them to informal proposals so that they can be discussed. BTW, the reason why I suggested quizzes on Wikipedia is because Britannica, another encyclopedia has quizzes on the site. Why would people be against quizzes? Interstellarity (talk) 23:51, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
    Interstellarity Wikipedia is a user-built collection of human knowledge. It is not a place to test the knowledge of its users. I would not be surprised if there were outside websites that use Wikipedia information as a basis for quizzes. Built-in quizzes are a distraction and outside our mission. 331dot (talk) 23:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
    OK, I see now. It seems like Wikipedia leans toward providing the information and just an encyclopedia while Britannica is more of a multi-purpose website that's more than an encylopedia. Interstellarity (talk) 00:00, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, and that works for Britannica, because their mission is broader than Wikipedia's. One is not worse than the other, it's just different. 331dot (talk) 00:04, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
    And maybe Britannica has to do those other things to survive because we have outcompeted them in the niche of online encyclopedia.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:55, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
    I don't think anyone would stop you from creating quizzes in your own user space, if that's what you're interested in doing. Before it can be even considered for a prominent spot for readers, though, there should be a strong track record of new quizzes being regularly created, and a few people regularly assuming this duty. isaacl (talk) 21:24, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
  • We aren't an "interactive" website though. It would have been more prudent to get some input before creating an RfC. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:23, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Why does this have Support, Oppose and Neutral sections? Per the box at the top, this page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:56, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
    Probably because it was originally on talk:main page and got moved here.Nigel Ish (talk) 10:11, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
  • We already have a Browse by category function. It appears top right but is labelled All portals. It is currently proposed for removal. Certes (talk) 12:11, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    If Portal energy were put into Category page headers, that might be a good idea. SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:16, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Template for Old Style and New Style dates

There are many articles that use old style (O.S.) dates as opposed to new style (N.S.). I'm working on a few articles that use O.S., and I noticed that reliable sources often used one of the styles, or both. If exact dates are necessary, both O.S. and N.S. should be displayed using Template:OldStyleDate. However, if the dates aren't exact (years and months only), we enter a dilemma: months are also different with O.S./N.S. dates. For instance, if a certain event happened in October 27 (O.S.) but only "October" is displayed, readers and editors will be unsure as to whether the month is N.S. or O.S.; the date mentioned would be November 9 in new style, but, if an event happened in, say, October 10 (O.S.), it would still be October in N.S. (October 24). Using Template:OldStyleDate on each date only introduces clutter, and so is using explanatory footnotes of O.S./N.S. on each date, which WP:OSNS seems to allude to inciting in these circumstances. To resolve this issue, I thought of creating two templates akin to how "Template:Use dmy/mdy" works. My idea is "Template: Use O.S./N.S.". The latter templates, just like the former, should guarantee uniformity in articles that use either O.S. or N.S. instead of relying on messy explanatory footnotes and extensive use of the OldStyleDate template in events that occur prior to a calendar change. This idea is still in an embryonic state, and scrutiny is welcomed. Wretchskull (talk) 20:06, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

IPA Help passthrough

The (perceived) problem: Despite my best efforts, my brain refuses to memorize the IPA pronunciation symbols, so I often need to click through to the Help:IPA/English page (in a new tab) to figure out pronunciation. Flipping back and forth to decipher each symbol is both time-consuming and frustrating, especially with long or complex names.

Proposed solution: I propose that when clicking on an IPA pronunciation in an article, the original IPA from the article page should appear with the IPA help page, either as a highlighted static element near the top of the page, or a non-scrolling element that hovers above the page. This way, the symbols can be deciphered without having to jump back and forth between pages.

More technically, the original IPA could be passed as a urlencoded HTTP GET argument in the target URL, and the Help:IPA page could decide how best to display the source IPA (including any relevant localizations or user preferences). Although I've never looked at Wikipedia's code, it seems like it should be straightforward to automate the process of updating existing IPA->Help:IPA links to include the source IPA as an argument. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quiescat (talk • contribs) 15:11, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

On desktop you can hover your mouse cursor over the transcription to see tooltips like "/ə/: 'a' in 'about'". You may also use Þjarkur's IPA popups script, which seems similar to what you suggest. Nardog (talk) 15:34, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't know about the hover text! However, on a 4K monitor, trying to hover over a specific symbol is tricky at best (and, of course, it doesn't work on a touchscreen), I'm having some trouble getting the IPA popups script to work; I'll continue messing with it later. Thanks for the pointers. Quiescat (talk) 16:04, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
When I'm stuck, I copy and paste it to an external website that "speaks" the word for me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
There's a script that assists you in doing that as well FWIW (the site it relies on is pretty good too). Nardog (talk) 12:49, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Leadership Development Working Group: Reminder to apply by 10 April 2022

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
More languages • Please help translate to other languages.

Hello everyone,

The Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation is supporting the creation of a global, community-driven Leadership Development Working Group. The purpose of the working group is to advise leadership development work. Feedback was collected in February 2022 and a summary of the feedback is on Meta-wiki. The application period to join the Working Group is now open and is closing soon on April 10, 2022. Please review the information about the working group, share with community members who might be interested, and apply if you are interested.

Thank you,

From the Community Development team

Posting here following the original VPM announcement. I can see this working group functioning as a sustained idea lab of sorts.

The working group would benefit from the membership and participation of users who help generate and move ideas forward here. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Portal:Yoga

Hi, I am very much active in sa.wikipedia. I want to request you all if you create Yoga portal, it will be a great job. If you make it here, I will try to make in sa.wiki also. Please help, if you can. Thanks.NehalDaveND (talk) 01:55, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@NehalDaveND: Instead of creating a new Portal, I suggest you join the Yoga Wikiproject Wikipedia:WikiProject Yoga. RudolfRed (talk) 02:52, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't aware about the project. I will try to do it in sa.wiki. Thanks again. NehalDaveND (talk) 02:22, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Music genre discussion forum

I'd like a forum where you can post a song and have people discuss its genre. If this already exists, just link me to it. Wtoteqw (talk) 18:24, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

That would not be compatible with the policy at WP:NOTFORUM. - Donald Albury 18:54, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
@Wtoteqw: Because you posted this in other places as well, see WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:02, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Let the community decide about major new features?

Now maybe I'm wrong and I just always miss it, but my impression is that the WMF would often develop features with minimal community input, minimal community testing, doesn't give the community any real chance to consider possible alternatives and proceeds to roll out the new feature. For example mw:Flow which was quite the faceplant, cross-wiki uploads plague Commons with numerous copyvios to this day due to a flawed design, DiscussionTools which takes up bandwidth even if you've disabled it, the VisualEditor which isn't universally loved and I don't expect a poll before the Vector 2022 skin which (in its current state at least) has upsides and downsides over Vector classic. Damn, almost forgot about IP masking! (are we still in the dark about what that's actually going to be like?) What I'm thinking is that the community should be informed well in advance and there should be some mechanism to ensure major new features will be backed by the community, or at least not hated. The community should have a chance to prepare for it (like updating tools/bots/help pages) and suggest changes or alternatives. For example with Flow, the community could have rejected it before it made a faceplant. While IP masking can't be rejected as the motive for that is legal, the community could propose implementation details/alternatives which do exist. And brace for its introduction, of course. I'm just brainstorming here, am I making any sense? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:41, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

To shoot from the hip, whatever my thoughts on the rest of it, DiscussionTools is one of the single biggest improvements to the editor experience in the history of the project and the associated community outreach has been superb. Anyway, there's some information on ongoing projects on mediawikiwiki. I would say it could be updated/communicated more frequently, but perhaps it's already current. Enterprisey (talk!) 18:03, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't know.. maybe like apply to work for the foundation ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:58, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
also, which part of the community ? different parts always show up to different steps and different projects and always have different opinoins and generally ppl leave out those without 'community' voice —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:01, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
TheDJ, work for the foundation, that sounds like wonderful idea. As for which part, well I was just brainstorming. I suppose if the WMF was more responsive to questions that community members are already asking and if developers didn't spend 90% of their community time on Phabricator (which is largely disconnected from the community at large) and in Flow discussions, we'd be halfway already. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
As TheDJ alludes to, the community doesn't speak with one voice, plus design by large group conversation is often ineffective. On user-interface related features such as skins, there needs to be some liberty for new designs to be tried and tested, as learning from failure is important. I agree there ought to be a feedback loop, and in some cases, trials are appropriate. (I've not followed the progress, but I do know that suggestions were sought from the onset regarding IP masking, and most recently feedback was requested on different approaches.) Although focus groups shouldn't be the ultimate last word on design choices, as they're a small sample of opinion, it could be helpful for the WMF and the community to work together, at the start of the design cycle of a feature, on getting a suitable set of volunteers who could provide prolonged engagement during the development process. isaacl (talk) 21:36, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
Great idea. Like FRS but for WMF tech. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:40, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
I wasn't thinking of a notification service. I think for a given feature, the developers and community should agree upon types of users who could give useful feedback, and find volunteers who are willing to have ongoing discussions throughout the development process. This would allow the development team to have fast feedback cycles, enabling them to go through different options more rapidly. isaacl (talk) 00:49, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
The problem is that these people and more so their availability is highly unreliable. You can't plan around it, they don't answer fast enough, and they too are heavily biased. There have been plenty of WMF projects where WMF was nudged into a certain direction only to be recalled later by other volunteers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:09, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I was going to say more on that aspect but omitted it for conciseness. There is of course no guarantee that any selected group would remain engaged; it can only be hoped that at any given opportunity, someone in the group will respond. As I mentioned, the received feedback should be considered carefully as one source of comments and not treated as absolute truth. isaacl (talk) 15:25, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
To echo what Enterprisey said, at least for DiscussionTools, the WMF has been soliciting feedback on the tool here on the various Village Pumps, at mw:Talk pages project/Replying, and in Tech News since early 2020. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:34, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
Ahecht, if DiscussionTools is the result of working closely with the community I may have been wrong. DiscussionTools is nice on the surface, if you don't care about features, customizability or resources. It's more convenient than source editing, but in some ways (philosophically, no idea if any code is shared) it's Flow in disguise, just not exposing the "structured" part of "structured discussions" to the end users (us), which some may actually consider to be a good thing. My main concerns with recent developments: DiscussionTools can't be disabled. (you can hide the links but not actually get rid of them) For IP masking several users asked on Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 4#How we will see unregistered users what we will see instead of IPs and similar and related questions on Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 4#New IP Masking implementation updates available also remained unanswered. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:24, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
"you can hide the links but not actually get rid of them" This has more to do with the fact that we are going to more consistent Parser output for all users (less variance, hopefully one day, no variance) that with DiscussionTools. "what we will see instead of IPs" As far as I know that's exactly what they are figuring out right now, right ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:19, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
TheDJ, the kind of features that DiscussionTools adds can be accomplished with some very tiny extra HTML parser output instead of the massive bloat they implemented. From DiscussionTools that would be the data-mw-comment-end span tag. Their IDs are suboptimal but that's another matter, an ID is all you need in the HTML. IMHO the better solution is to actually fix signatures to become more machine readable, both in wikitext and when parsed, which would cause all required data to become part of the wikitext, and no parser adjustments would be needed. Somehow either nobody suggested this or they were ignored, either way, seems like a communication problem to me. And about IP masking, well, I don't know because the WMF developers don't have 2 minutes to state something like "the exact form of IDs for anons is not yet set in stone, the leading contender is X, we are also considering Y and Z" in a relevant WP:VPWMF discussion. @Certes: you keep better track of this than I do I think, please prove me wrong and tell me the WMF made a more informative statement since I last checked. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:50, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
I've seen nothing but only really watch Wikipedia; there may be updates on Meta or MediaWiki. Masking doesn't seem to be happening quickly, so I'm hoping that it will prove infeasible and go away. Certes (talk) 18:31, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Certes, you have (possibly unintentionally) demonstrated my point about the disconnect: I [...] only really watch Wikipedia. You are invested in Wikimedia, even knowledgeable about technical details and clearly interested in them, you're just not tuned into the channels the developers primarily use. You made three posts on Phabricator this year. Friction between developers and community would be expected when communication channels are not effective. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:50, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: As you may have read in Tech News, the WMF just announced its intention to impose a session-based system. I suspect that it will be trivial to discard session information and start again with a clean slate, forcing us to ban unregistered editors and cut off our source of new contributors. Certes (talk) 22:44, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
I see they say "We do acknowledge that deleting a cookie is easier than switching an IP, of course, and do respect the effects it would have." I'd like to know how they respect the problems this will cause. Doug Weller talk 12:50, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
you can hide the links but not actually get rid of them – afaik, that's because at Wikipedia scale, "don't split the cache" is like "don't cross the streams". ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 06:38, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Pelagic, why is this crap in the cache to begin with? It shouldn't be! (I'm not saying the links shouldn't exist, but they shouldn't exist in cache) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:40, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
I think you'll find that it's more complicated than that. AIUI anything and everything that is supposed to be in the HTML sent to an IP editor is supposed to exist in the cache. Having just one copy of each page in the cache is one of the reasons that the WMF does not have to hire thousands of engineers just to let people read. Running a site with this much traffic is not like running a little website, only with bigger numbers. Some rules of thumb just don't work when you extrapolate them to the level of half a billion page views every day.
(Anyone who really wants to know more might want to start reading at mw:Manual:Cache and wikitech:Caching overview.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:01, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
The reply tool is fantastic and was designed with lots of feedback from the community, I think it's a really good way of improving talk pages without changing the underlying wikitext structure. "It increases the size of the page slightly" is probably the most nit-picky feedback possible, anyone here could make a much larger change to the page size by adding a few images.
I don't think that the issue here is exclusively "the WMF doesn't get feedback", "the WMF gets the wrong feedback" is just as big of an issue. If you go and look at the original flow prototyping pages on meta/mediawiki I think the original focus group used to create the overall design consisted of 5 people who had never used a wiki before. Asking people who are (for want of a better word) completely ignorant about how consensus based wiki projects work to design one of it's most essential features is a recipe for disaster. The WMF seems to be so obsessed with recruiting new editors that they are willing to completely ignore the people who run the site on a day to day basis.
Final thought - they do seem to have gotten a lot better over the last few years (at least in terms of software development) and do seem to be making efforts to listen to the community, most of the big disasters were 5+ years ago. 192.76.8.70 (talk) 09:49, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Images one could disable or load on click/hover/whatever. I know many people here probably don't care, but shouldn't we take those who don't have unlimited data and 10mbps+ broadband into consideration? Some people are still stuck on 1mbit/s ADSL (or worse) or pay per megabyte, even in developed countries. (granted there are people who have no access to the internet at all, some not even to clean drinking water, but that's another issue) Now if the additional HTML was actually necessary to achieve the goal, that would be a fair argument. But it isn't. The HTML (just the HTML, don't get me started on the API call) that gets added currently is about 95% bloat. Actually I'm rounding down from 95.3%, this is not a number I'm pulling out of thin air. (if anyone has doubts I can share my homework) So if this is the result of close collaboration with the community, I was dead wrong thinking community involvement would improve things. (either that or it would have been even worse without the community involvement) And while I don't know about all the disasters from 5+ years ago, I know that structured data and crosswiki uploads are an ongoing train wreck. And here's another thing that worries me: mw:Talk pages project states Some features may involve introducing new wikitext. Although, any changes to wikitext will be limited to those that enable new features that benefit contributors. Features like replying to specific comments or watchlisting particular discussions. This could align with what I'm doing, but given the current state and direction of DiscussionTools I'm sure they'll find a way to mess it up, maybe even break my efforts in the process. And this Google doc from phab:T273341#7539540 worries me even more. There's the wikitext, which is easily publicly accessible and can easily be copied/forked/analyzed/etc and there'll be a shadow ledger which won't be so easy to copy/fork but the dependency on it will just keep increasing. The WMF developers still want wikitext to be something it's not. They still want Flow. Maybe that's what the community told them during the collab sessions, in which case I guess I'd have to eat my humble pie. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:33, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
"It increases the size of the page slightly" is probably the most nit-picky feedback possible, It certainly does. Examining the HTML that is served, I find that every single post has gained several hundred extra bytes, in the form of five extra <span>...</span> elements (one at the start of the post, the rest after the timestamp) and one <a>...</a> element (the reply link itself). This is present even if you have disabled the feature. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:10, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
As a point of fact, the [reply] tool was created as the result of the mw:Talk pages consultation 2019. During that five-month, multilingual, multi-wiki consultation, hundreds of editors shared their opinions about what should be built (and not built). @Alexis Jazz, I believe you were mostly editing at Commons then: c:Commons:Talk pages project 2019 was not especially well-attended despite multiple announcements and people linking to it in other discussions (e.g., [1][2][3]). Commons contributors mostly seemed to post at the central discussion rather than the project-specific page. The English Wikipedia's local page is at Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 1 and Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 2. Between the two discussions here at the English Wikipedia, I think we had something like 150 editors posting 900 comments – just in this one community. Overall, there were thousands of comments from at least 600 editors in at least 20 languages at more than 20 wikis. Since then, there have been dozens of discussions about specific details, at this wiki and also at other wikis. Multiple features inside the [reply] tool exist because volunteers asked for them after the project started, including the ability to add a custom edit summary and an extra button for adding the page to your watchlist. As for its success, I notice that SineBot has made fewer edits since this tool was deployed last Monday.
The visual editor, too, was requested by volunteers. The first request that I'm personally aware of was made in 2004 (i.e., before most of us here created our accounts). The decision to create a visual editor was taken during the original 2009–2010 strategy: process, which lasted more than one year and involved editors from around the globe. The idea of creating a visual editor was one of the most strongly supported proposals during those discussions. The visual editor was IMO deployed too soon, and they did not take my advice to deploy it at another wiki first (the English Wikipedia's articles have the most complex formatting, and therefore is IMO not the right place to begin deployment of any new article-editing tools), but these subsequent mistakes do not change the fact that this idea originated from volunteers. At this point, the visual editor is relatively popular, with half of newly registered editors choosing the visual editor for their first edits at this wiki (there's a far higher percentage at some other Wikipedias) and the visual editor being used approximately once for every two edits made in the 2010 wikitext editor here at the English Wikipedia. Even people who dislike the concept of a visual editor on principle would rather add, delete, or rearrange columns in a table by clicking three times in the visual editor than manually typing the wikitext code on each line of the table.
The original name for Flow was "LiquidThreads version 3". LiquidThreads was originally proposed by a volunteer, in response to the English Wikipedia's WikiProject Aircraft voting to hold their discussions off wiki. At that time, the WMF had zero staff. The first version was written by a volunteer. The conceptual shift from LiquidThreads version 2 (which is still used at Wikinews) to "Flow" (so named because it was meant to support a Workflow pattern built by local admins and tech volunteers, rather than being restricted to simple discussions) was the request to make it capable of handling Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Current (imagine a world in which ArbCom clerks didn't need to manually count the votes). IMO it never got far enough to show its real promise for managing workflows, but the goal was to extend existing, volunteer-conceived software to meet the needs of existing volunteers. Even in its limited discussion-only state, Flow has been popular in some communities (not, however, this one).
I would like to particularly encourage everyone here to offer the kind of "practical" feedback that Alexis suggests above. Yes, we're apparently stuck with some things, and other things are built because other communities requests them (or other parts of this community – the newcomers at the Teahouse probably benefits more from the auto-signing and auto-indenting [reply] tool than the regulars at VPT, after all). But I'm certain that, no matter which product is being discussed, that a clear articulation of needs and goals would be helpful and very much appreciated.
If you have any experience with writing a User story, then I've found that to be an effective model when talking to product managers. The idea is to say what you want to accomplish rather than how you want to accomplish it. To give an extreme, but hopefully illustrative, example, you want to write something like As a RecentChanges patroller, I want to know whether this new person is likely to speak English well, so I can share relevant advice (e.g., a link to WP:EMBASSY or a link to a help page written in the dominant language of their country) or As an admin calculating a block range, I need to know what IP range this vandal is using, so that I can block the correct range. What's not useful is As a RecentChanges patroller, I need to know the editor's IP address because that's how we've always done it. Goal-oriented stories sometimes result in magic buttons that say things like "☑︎ Block the nearby IPs, too". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Whatamidoing, I respect this deeper look into things. Some interesting stuff. As for the success of VE, in numbers I don't doubt it (and whatever is the default will gain market share anyway) but phab:T304303 should have never existed. Due to outstanding bugs that went unfixed for years (what's new?), Wikisource is saying "goodbye VE". Your text deserves a more useful response, but I'm still pondering where it all went (and goes) wrong. I think I'm slowly starting to see and getting some ideas. But that conversation can't be initiated by me (you'll have to ask for it), and VP idea lab might not be the ideal place for it, and it wouldn't be an easy conversation.. to put it mildly. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:09, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
The Editing team never deployed the visual editor to any of the Wikisources precisely because of the difficulty of integrating it into ProofreadPage. It's still in Beta Features, opt-in only, for everyone. The integration was always going to be a volunteer-led project. If the volunteers there aren't keen on it, that's okay, too. The visual editor was designed for Wikipedia articles, not to be all things to all people. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:52, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
I think the IP-masking reps have been making significant efforts to engage, but the change they're tasked with is fundamentally more distasteful to the communities than DiscussionTools, so they are stuck pushing it uphill. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 06:49, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Pelagic, they tried to engage, but when questions are asked (like "what's it gonna look like?") in response to that the WMF goes quiet. Even if they have no answers yet, just saying that would help a lot. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:23, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
I hear that the team is trying to set up a working version on one of the test wikis. My guess is that you can take a look at the first version in a few weeks. Since you'd need admin rights on the test wiki to see what the admins see, there'll probably be some sort of sign-up process. Watching their project page is probably the best way to keep track of when that happens. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:30, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Whatamidoing, I'm more interested in what I'll see as a user anyways. One of my scripts will need to be adjusted, but I can't do anything until I know what it'll be like. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:44, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
I imagine the interface will be similar for both. You might want to sign up. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:44, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Whatamidoing, no interface. I separate users from IPs with a regular expression. This will no doubt break. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:24, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment It may be worth having a discussion about whether there is a consensus to require the WMF to get a consensus to implement any significant change on the English Wikipedia, whether the change is technical or non-technical. BilledMammal (talk) 06:10, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
    As a note the IP Masking is now live on Test-wiki, but since test-wiki has no significant IP editing (and certainly none of the variety that we'll need it for) it's currently more for checking the very basics of it work. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:23, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Simple English Wikipedia

Simple wiki isn’t on the Wikipedia main page, and I don’t see it often in google searches. How is one supposed to find it?

(the proposal is adding it to the main page) – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 03:07, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

It is not the job of English Wikipedia to promote any other language versions, even Simple English. The decision to link directly to other language versions of Wikipedia from the main page should be based on number of articles and number of page views. Cullen328 (talk) 03:18, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
If a reader wants to find the Simple English Wikipedia, then they surely can type "Simple English Wikipedia" into the Google (or Bing) search boxes, or type the same text into the English Wikipedia search box, which yields Simple English Wikipedia, an article with an external link. It isn't tough. Cullen328 (talk) 03:24, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
I don’t mean the people who know it exists. If someone could use simple wiki, but doesnt know it exists, where would they find it? – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 04:51, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
I don’t know if this is the right place, but I meant wikipedia.org, not en.wikipedia.org. – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 04:47, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
This is probably a better query for Meta. Curbon7 (talk) 06:07, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@AssumeGoodWraith: It is in the Wikipedia main page, between Русский and Slovenčina. Where did you expect it to be? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:58, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
Any if @AssumeGoodWraith is talking about www.wikipedia.org - that is also limited to the biggest sites, and not something that the English Wikipedia manages. — xaosflux Talk 14:21, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
It's also in https://www.wikipedia.org/ provided that you click on Read Wikipedia in your language, it's under the 100 000+ articles heading between Română and Slovenščina. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:48, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
  • While I somewhat agree with Cullen328 that It is not the job of English Wikipedia to promote ... Simple English, I think there's also value in highlighting its existence on enwiki. I suspect a lot of people are aware that wikipedia comes in different languages, but relatively few are aware of simple. And the people who are its main audience are exactly the people who are least likely to discover it on their own with no help. From our governance point of view, yes, it's a separate project. But that's an internal detail which is irrelevant to our readers. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:26, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
  • @AssumeGoodWraith:, the glib answer to "How is one supposed to find it?" is "One isn't". It's not a good enough resource to be worth promoting. See the proposal to shut it down, which highlighted a lot of its problems (even if it didn't ultimately succeed). {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:11, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
    I agree. I was a bit dismayed to see someone linking to an article there in one of our articles. Doug Weller talk 16:28, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
    Dang, you beat me to it. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:16, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Distinction between C and Start-class?

Hi! Are there any meaningful distinctions between these two assessment grades? What would be the disadvantages of merging them? Is there recent consensus on this matter?A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 08:42, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

There is no useful distinction in practice. The only downside to merging them today is that the whole system should be redone (separate assessments for different wikiprojects should go, for a start), and this merger just rearranges deckchairs. —Kusma (talk) 10:08, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
C-class was created through a discussion some years after the rest.
If you define "Stub" as <10 sentences, then "Start" is 11+ sentences.
If you define "B class" as multiple sections, each of which has at least one inline citation, then "C class" is less than that.
The difference between "Start" and "C class" is usually length and the number of citations on the page, but you can see the official definitions at Wikipedia:Content assessment. Some of the rating tools automatically provide estimates based on the Wikipedia:ORES system. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
I think my point is that I'm unaware of any use for the information encoded in the distinction between C and Start. —Kusma (talk) 19:48, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
C class articles generally only need a bit of work to meet B or GA standard. The projects target them for improvement. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:07, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
I think one of the questions to consider is in how many projects this actually happens. Things like proper B-class and A-class assessments work fine at the MILHIST project but are uncommon or poorly organised elsewhere. —Kusma (talk) 07:25, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
It makes sense to target the grade preceding B to improve for B level, but how different is that from targetting Start-level articles, Hawkeye7? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 09:52, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
The difference is that Start class articles would not have sufficient content, but C class could have enough. It is much easier to grade something as C, as B needs some assessment work and C can easily be determined by its size. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:33, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Roughly half of all MilHist articles are graded Start class; a quarter are C class and a tenth are B class. C class is very close to B; usually the only problem is a lack of referencing. How much work it is to fix that depends on how many references are missing. Sometimes there is just one; sometimes the whole article is unreferenced. Start class articles cover a wider quality range. Some are little better than stubs; they invariably lack adequate references, but usually also lack content, and often proper structure and supporting materials as well. As Graeme says, they are incomplete, and will require considerable work to bring them up to standard. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
@Kusma, the rating system exists because of Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. They wanted to create a subset of articles for offline use. Which articles? They decided that it would be good to include all the popular ones (page views), all the heavily linked ones (Special:WhatLinksHere), all the high-quality ones (quality ratings), and all the ones that various groups say are important (WikiProject priority/importance ratings). Consequently, there's a formula for determining which things to include. Two of those are encoded in WikiProject ratings. A top-importance FA will basically always be included. A "low-importance stub" almost never will. Differentiating between multiple quality classes lets them be a little more granular in their choices.
These ratings are used for other purposes. WPMED, for example, periodically checks to see whether we have any high-importance stubs, and brings those up to a better standard. You can see at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment#Statistics that all of our top-importance articles are currently C-class or better, and all of our high-importance articles are Start-class or better.
What people shouldn't do is assume that this system is really important. It's not useless, but nobody should treat it like a key system. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Yes, I am aware of that. I remember when a lot of WikiProjects were founded mostly in order to provide article assessments (some of the big country projects did not exist before WP1.0). A long time ago, I made most of the original "importance scale" decisions for WikiProject Germany. I have also tagged and assessed a few thousand articles. So I have produced a lot of this type of data, but I don't remember using it much, and I am no longer convinced this was worth spending time on. —Kusma (talk) 18:48, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
One of the admins who wrote an assessment script came to the same decision years ago, and deleted the script I was using at the time. It was temporarily inconvenient.
I think that we should consider ways of automating as much of the Stub- and Start- assessments as feasible. That would reduce the amount of time spent. I can tell you, for example, that nearly everything in Category:Unknown-importance medicine articles could be safely assessed by a bot. Does ORES say that it's a stub? Then it's a stub. Is the article about a person or organization? Then it needs |importance=low|society=yes. That would clear out a huge fraction of the unassessed articles without anyone spending any more time on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
Personal opinion: Instead of merging start and C class, merge stub and start class? casualdejekyll 18:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
This is one of my pet peeves. There's too many grades, with too fine gradations between them. What's the difference between "essentially complete" and "mostly complete"? Beats me. I can't for the life of me figure out how A differs from GA. A means "It's passed a grade-A review". GA means "It's passed a GA review". Is A better than GA, or the other way around? It's listed above GA in the chart, but it also says GA is not a requirement. But, B is specifically called out as less than GA. So, beats me.
I can't think of a single time when I've queried somebody who assigned a grade to an article I've written when I got back a useful explanation of why it was one grade instead of another. I'm not saying we shouldn't have a grading system. Just that 7 levels, with vaguely defined criteria, is too many to rationally expect people to accurately sort into. I've been in discussions where one person was arguing for Start and another for B, for the same article. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:35, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
A is better than GA. Most A class articles could pass FA. The important distinction is that A, B and C are project ratings, whereas GA and FA are Wikipedia-wide. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
I would suggest that in practice, B and C rating are not linked to projects for the majority of articles. Updates tend to update for all projects at the same time. CMD (talk) 04:48, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
Again, the only project for which this is true is MILHIST. No other project has the necessary manpower or level of organisation. —Kusma (talk) 13:16, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
In my experience, most assessments by regular assessors are much lower than the official definitions would suggest, & appear to be based entirely on length, which the criteria don't mention at all as such. They generally take no account of the size of the topic, and the information that is likely to be available. One can tell from edit histories that the "assessment" lasts only a few seconds. Hardly anyone takes any notice of them. Don't be afraid to self-assess. Johnbod (talk) 03:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
On MilHist, new articles tagged as belonging to the project by the creator or the new page patrol are automatically assessed by the project bot. Stub, Start and C grade assessments are based on ORES and our project review checklist, which provides the basis for ratings. Articles assessed as B class by the Bot are reassessed by the project coordinators. (The Bot provides a monthly list.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
I'd be very happy to have a bot auto-apply Stub ratings based on the ORES system. I've asked the ORES folks in the past to make lists of WPMED articles that are stubs but rated as something else, and when it says that an article is a Stub, the rating has always been accurate. Sometimes I think it slightly overrates an article on the border between Stub and Start, but it's really quite good overall. Some of the rating scripts have this built in now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
After studying content quality in communities like Wikipedia and through that developing the machine learning models that were the basis for ORES' article quality model, my take on the distinctions between some of the classes largely involves whether they follow the Manual of Style (MoS) or not. Both FAs and A-class articles are "complete", so an FA is an A-class article that has gone through FAC and through that follows the MoS. From my experience, MILHIST is the only project that really uses A-class, and so there's not enough of them to learn how to predict them well, which is why ORES doesn't have A-class. GA and B-class articles to me share a similar relationship with regards to the MoS.
It's relatively easy to predict the highest and lowest quality classes, something which ORES' training scores also shows. As @WhatamIdoing mentions, if it defines something as a Stub it's almost always correct. I suspect this is because the quality ratings in English Wikipedia are closely tied to the amount of content and references in the article, and with Stubs having little of both it's not a challenging task. The boundaries between many of the other classes are ones where it struggles, and I've also seen Wikipedians struggle with them as well. Whether an article is Start- or C-class isn't necessarily easy to determine, and the same goes for moving from C- to B-class. In one of our research papers we found a set of articles that were predicted to be C-class but labelled as Start-class by humans. Closer inspection of these found that the humans weren't following the criteria as defined at that time, meaning the machine learning model seemed to apply the criteria more appropriately. The criteria has since changed, and while we've also improved the dataset used for training ORES it still struggles with those intermediary classes. I'm not surprised to hear that it's overrating on the boundaries, that also seems to be my impression. Whether humans underrate articles and a "truer" rating is somewhere in between has yet to be determined ;)
I'd also like to mention the human aspect of having multiple quality classes and being able to receive confirmation that one's work is valuable. Improving an article a lot and then seeing the quality rating change is good. However, rating articles is a tedious task and I think everyone agrees that the quality ratings tend to not reflect the actual quality of the article (e.g. we accounted for this when collecting data to train ORES by identifying the first occurrence of a rating on the talk page). Our first paper about the ORES models argues that machine learning models like these should help contributors make decisions about what to work on. We did some initial experimentation with SuggestBot around this, but I think Wiki Ed has since done this much better in their dashboard where one can ask questions like "if I add two images to this article, what happens to its quality rating?" It's then possible to compare that to "what happens if I add a section with two paragraphs and citations?" and make decisions on what to work on. We're not at the stage where that's easily accessible, but the Hackathon is coming up in May and someone could take that idea and build a gadget.
Apologies for the long post, but this is my research area and it was fun thinking about this and writing it up. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 09:43, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
I've seen obvious cases of human under-rating; once, an editor marked a long, sourced article as "Stub" because there was no content related to a specific sub-subject. But I don't think that happens very often. Usually, I think it's a case of editors thinking that nobody will yell if they underrate an article, but someone might accuse them of Having Weak Standards if they overrate it.
@Nettrom, if you're feeling bored some day, I'd love to have a list of WPMED articles whose rating mismatches the ORES prediction by two or more classes. It might be difficult to differentiate between "Start" and "C", but if the page says "Start" and ORES predicts "B" (or the other way around), then the existing rating is probably wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:27, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Future discussion on improving our management of geostubs

Hi! Repeatedly in discussions people raise the issue that the amount of permastubs about villages due to NGEO is not being handled in the best way possible. While WP is not a paper wikipedia, there are various concerns that having a large minority of articles be villages in third-world countries where our own sourcing bias (see Geographical bias on Wikipedia) prevents us from improving many of these articles or preventing misinformation due to very high ratios of articles to geo content patrollers (the Iranian Well issue comes to mind, for example, and I expect there to be other less absurdly flagrant content mistakes). On the other hand, there is no policy against the existence of stubs even in a permanent state. Additionally, I think we can all agree that having information on developing world villages is beneficial both to our readers and companies that use Wikipedia for their services. With the increased success of Wikidata (as much as we might not admit that very often here), this "loss of information" fear from altering how we manage these stubs seems less reasonable (but still valid). I wonder as well if redirecting impacts the accessibility of this information.

With all this in mind, I was wondering if y'all could help by giving your thoughts on the issue, including past discussions I am not aware of or ideas on how to fix the problem. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:23, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

  • If you don't think there is a problem, you're opinion is welcome too! I'm trying to gather a wide range of opinions and ideas on the subject, as I think there's a lot we can do to improve these articles. Sadly these discussions tend to happen in highly contentious AfDs or partisan venues so we tend to lose a lot of the nuance I hope can surface in this discussion. BTW I don't think there's a problem with NGEO. Perhaps it could be highly different opinions on how WP:NOPAGE applies to geo stubs? Not sure. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:40, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
    • The median length of a page view is maybe long enough to read one sentence. This suggests that very brief articles are not a problem for at least half of our readers ("Oh, the Iranian Well is in Iran. That's all I needed to know. *click*"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
      • I wish there were stats on specifically the average length of a pageview on articles about locations - that would back up this argument more strongly. However, I do agree with you on this. casualdejekyll 19:20, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I don't see a specific question to comment on. North8000 (talk) 11:49, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
    • North8000 it's more of a vague brainstorm I guess? Perhaps the question would be "Are there issues with having so many geo permastubs on wiki?" with a follow-up question "If so, how can we fix them?" A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:57, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
      • We could redirect the stubs to lists, either a stand-alone list article ("Villages of Foo") or a list within the parent entity article ("Foo#Villages"), giving the same information as the stub. But that does not improve the quality of the information and may slightly discourage addition of content. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:10, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
  • The problem isn't information loss. There isn't valid information to be lost. It's about huge amounts of outright information error. Merging erroneous information doesn't correct or remove it, and we are still, this year, this month, this week, finding and researching and dealing with articles where the database dumpers gave us boilerplate "X is an unincorporated community" for things that were never communities. This is in the United States, where the aforementioned sourcing bias would have one believe that sourcing is strong. Some of the recent highlights have been "communities" that were actually toxic material handling sites in Utah that were deliberately sited many miles away from populated areas; "communities" that the source used outright said were railway stops and maintenance camps; "communities" that in fact were mines; and a "community" based upon solely the information in GNIS record #1742680 (see https://www.topoquest.com/place-detail.php?id=1742680). I rewrote Bullfrog, Utah (AfD discussion) roughly 3 weeks ago. Bob, West Virginia came up yesterday.

    If there's a problem with villages that cannot be expanded upon because there isn't much to say, which I am not sure there is, it is positively swamped by the massive problem of geographic articles that can never be expanded because they are outright falsehoods. Are there issues? Yes. This is the issue. Still.

    Uncle G (talk) 20:44, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

    • If the issue is that the article fails WP:V and thereby produces falsehoods, then that isn't an issue with the current policy. WP:DEL-REASON#7 is pretty clear that articles that fail WP:V can be deleted. The very issue you're describing is one of cleanup owing to sloppy uses of unreliable database sources by Wikipedians over many years who were largely acting in good faith.

      The purpose of Wikipedia is, in short, to provide a free, neutrally written, accessible encyclopedia to the world. Removing unverifiable information is part of that. But arguing that no good information would be lost by nuking all geostubs seems naïve; surely it's the case that we're going to wind up deleting valid entries. Much like copyright cleanup investigations, undoing these sorts of mistakes is going to be hard, labor-intensive work. Perhaps a WikiProject, a noticeboard, or a task force of WikiProject Cities could be created to patrol weakly sourced geostubs and to add reliable sources to them. Gamification akin to NPP/AFC drives could also serve as a model to get people invested in cleanup, with barnstars being awarded to participants based upon their actions. We might need a script to do this sort of "geostub patrolling", but it doesn't seem like this is going to be too technically challenging to get started on. — Mhawk10 (talk) 05:22, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

      • The issue is a huge amount of false information. Systematic false information. A. C. Santacruz's question was "Are there issues with having so many geo permastubs on wiki?", and this is the answer. There are, and it's this. It wasn't a question about policy, or about whether things like whether Wikipedia:WikiProject California/GNIS cleanup task force exist. It was a request for what the issues are, and this is the answer. And it's going to be the answer for a long time. Given the number of long-term participants in GNIS cleanup, versus the number of "unincorporated community" cop-out articles, there's decades of work here. Uncle G (talk) 12:17, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
    • @Uncle G, is your concern less about whether the place existed (e.g., a toxic waste area, a mine, a railway stop), but instead that you think it false to call these places "communities"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
      • It's a concern shared by a lot of people, and it's also about whether the place existed, because we've come across many that actually did not, such as the survey corners in Virginia. Independence, Uintah County, Utah (AfD discussion) is an even more extreme example, as not only did the place never exist we even have a history book saying that it never existed. Wikipedia has been proclaiming it an "unincorporated community" for over 4 years.

        "unincorporated community" is an information-free cop-out. Because the GNIS never made distinctions amongst "populated place"s, the database dumpers gave us everything as "unincorporated community". Some even went so far to give us "unincorporated community" for things that the GNIS did not call "populated place", such as "Bone Lick Post Office (historical)" which a database dumper gave to us as an "unincorporated community" of Bone Lick, West Virginia (AfD discussion) 10 years ago, and which Wikipedia has been proclaiming ever since. The consequence of all this is that "unincorporated community" is completely debased now. Every "unincorporated community" could be a database dumper giving us post offices, mines, springs, railway junctions, survey corners, or 3 roads near Salem as "unincorporated community".

        And, worse, people see all this and copy it, thinking that that's normal, even to the extent of countries that don't have the GNIS to mislead them. So Bridgend, Perth and Kinross becomes an "area" instead of the village and burgh of barony that it actually is, for example. Columbia, Tyne and Wear was just "in Washington" for 16 years, without any clue as to what it even was (Shoe shop? Statue? Roundabout?), to the extent that one editor couldn't find it at all.

        We have hundreds of thousands of stub articles that systematically do not give correct factual information about what their subject is, or indeed was, that do not give proper context enabling expansion by editors, and that egregiously mislead readers in many cases. And this is going to be the case for many years.

        Uncle G (talk) 12:17, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

        There is a perennial problem of some early user fundamentally misunderstanding a particular concept, which then gets propagated out as other users then assume that it's correct - often well beyond English Wikipedia.
        One example that springs to mind is Unitary authorities of England, which is an article that uses the term "unitary authority" to both refer to a kind of local authority (which is correct), as well as the area which it controls (which isn't, but is a common shorthand for "unitary authority area"). This is a bit like using "council" every time you mean "county", and makes for extremely confusing reading. Worse, this has been wrongly repeated on numerous other Wikis - something that I only became aware of due to stumbling across a totally incoherent Wikidata item that was trying to represent both concepts at once. Theknightwho (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
        Looking at the Bone Lick example, how do you know that a US post office was placed in a location that wasn't – according to one or more of the reasonably typical definitions you would find in a dictionary – a community? Rural communities are real things. They might not be the kind of real thing that needs a separate Wikipedia article, but I don't think we should treat post offices and communities as exclusive entities. It seems more likely to me that if a place had enough people there to get a post office, there probably was a community there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
        It depends on your definition of community, but I think some collection of dwellings is required to designate a populated place. Post offices were often sited in isolated stores that were not near a populated place, as at Dudley Farm, or even in a farmhouse. Without some source telling us that the post office was sited in a populated place, I don't think we can assume notability. "Railroad stations" have a similar problem, as they were often just a shed or an open platform on a siding with no other buildings. Donald Albury 22:59, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
        Some railway stations were a fair distance from the community that they were named after. This often happened in sparely-populated areas such as northern Scotland, but it happened in England also - for instance Micheldever railway station, two and a half miles away from Micheldever. After the station opened, a new community grew up around the station - named Micheldever Station. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:44, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
        That reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) story that I heard. Someone asked why Tring station was so far from the town, and the answer was that it made more sense to put it on the railway line. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:39, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
        That's also told of one of the stations on the Settle and Carlisle line, possibly Dent or Garsdale. But in the case of Micheldever, the village is half a mile from the railway. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:50, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
        I was thinking of names that appeared on maps along rail-lines that were freight-loading points, and served local farmers rather than any populated place, of which there were many in the US before motor transports and improved roads came along. Donald Albury 13:43, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
        Right. In much of the US's "breadbasket", the post office would have been near the Co-op grain elevator, and the grain elevator was always next to the rail line. This might or might not be near an officially recognized town. You could still have "a community" (e.g., "the people with common interests living in a particular area") in that location even if you didn't have the kind of "homes placed close by each other" appearance that a city dweller would expect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
        No grain elevators around here. I have a list of 37 post offices that once existed in this county that I cannot verify were part of a community. I can find many of them on old maps, and a few even have GNIS entries. What I do not have is any other source for any community that may have been associated with a post office. Even if there was a community, it may not have been known by the same name as the post office. The U.S. Post Office would not allow more than one post office with a given name in a state. Many times someone would petition for a post office, only to have their preferred name rejected because another post office using that name already existed in the state. There are even a couple of post offices on that list that changed their names during the few years they existed, for which I haven't found anything about a community under either of the names. I have another 22 places (not P.O.s) that are/were listed in GNIS as populated places, some of which show on old maps, but for which I haven't found anything else. Without other sources, I think it would be wrong to assume that those places are notable enough to have articles in Wikipedia. Donald Albury 22:09, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I don't see it as a significant problem, although it would be good to raise the bar a bit. A 1/2 million geo articles is fine, 5 million wouldn't be. Geographic places are highly encyclopedic topics and also given extra emphasis in the Five Pillars and informally giving some allowance for that per Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works is IMO fine. I didn't separate these in my study User:North8000/Display but of the 27% of all articles being "geographic places,broadly construed" there were probably as many less notable things like tiny train stations and tiny bridges as there were small villages.North8000 (talk) 20:52, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
    • Considering that most of our geostubs cover a limited number of regions, I think this suggests that there is an issue; if we created the same density of articles for Asia, Africa, and South America as we do for the United States, we would have at least those five million geo-articles, most of them similar to the current average geo-article - an under sourced microstub. BilledMammal (talk) 04:48, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Geostubs break

  • Personally, I don't think we should have articles on places that are sourced only to a single database or list. If nobody has been able to find anything other than a database or list entry for a place, then, in my opinion, it has not been demonstrated to be notable enough to be included in Wikipedia. I have a lot of names on a subpage (User:Donald Albury/Notes/Alachua County communities) under my account of place names in the county I live in, that appear in a list of post offices, or on old maps, or in the GNIS, or mentioned in some otherwise unrelated source, for which I have not yet been able to find any other usable sources, and for which I therefore will not create articles. - Donald Albury 23:35, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
    • If nobody has been able to find: One of the things that we don't have is a way to say "I tried to find sources, and I didn't succeed." WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
      • I've been saying that quite easily at AFD for many years. The best thing that one can do is double-check and look; and if the result is negative that's what one gets to say. And it's demonstrably easy to say it on worklists like User:Hog Farm/Missouri attention needed. Uncle G (talk) 12:17, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
      • You, WhatamIdoing, just said it, so where is the problem? A statement like that can just as easily be made on an article talk page or in an AfD discussion or wherever it needs to be said. The real issue seems to be that there is no template for saying it and that it is not part of an automated procedure, which seem to be the only ways in which many editors communicate. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:43, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
        That's it. There's no structured workflow for that. So you see an article whose current version is below average, but you have no insight into whether anyone else looked at it. This starts with the Special:NewPagesFeed, which is set up so that dozens of NPPers can silently duplicate each others' work, until someone finally clicks a button to mark it as patrolled. (Oh, look, some IP caused Tasmania – yes, the island/state – to appear in the NPP queue. It's now the "oldest article" in the queue, despite having actually been in the queue for 29 minutes as of now.)
        But the problem extends beyond that: Nobody knows how many NPPers looked at an article in the queue and decided that it wasn't worthy of deletion, but for years afterwards, we have no way to know whether anyone tried to find sources, whether anyone tried to expand an article, etc. When Template:Orphan was a thing, we tried to reduce unproductive duplication of effort by marking them as "attempted" with |att=. I don't remember seeing any similar system for any other maintenance tag. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
        I would have thought that anyone remotely competent in editing an English language encyclopedia, and especially anyone qualified to do new page "patrol" (that's a horrible word that should be replaced by "review"), would be able to put together a sentence in English without there being a template or automated procedure to do it for them. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:56, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
        Unfortunately, "is able to" and "will actually" are two separate considerations. And even if you do, who says that all (or even any) of the subsequent reviewers will notice that you put something on the talk page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:20, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
    Agree there should be some way to clear stubs like "Imaginaryville is a place in California" with no other useful content. Such stubs offer very little information to the reader. 2601:647:5800:1A1F:B45D:61AC:E323:660D (talk) 18:33, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Could we say that all geostubs that meet certain criteria should be flagged for speedy deletion by a bot? Criteria could include some combination of
    • Has not been edited for two years
    • Has only one sentence
    • Does not include coordinates
    • Has no source, or only one database-type source
A fair number of valid entries would be removed, but very little information would be lost. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:30, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Deletion without manual review is basically never accepted. Also, how many articles do you think would be in such a list? I took at look at half a dozen articles about unincorporated communities (all in the US) just now, and all of them had been edited in the last 9 months. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
I suppose the gnomish edits tend to obscure real activity. So how about we dropped the "last edit" criterion and PROD the articles? The idea is to clear away stubs that say only "Foo is a place in Finland". Don't know how many of those there are. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:04, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps add "Is more than five year old". Aymatth2 (talk) 13:27, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
A more general concern, I don't think these articles should be mass-flagged for deletions by a bot. It would be better to create some type of speedy deletion criteria. 2601:647:5800:1A1F:B45D:61AC:E323:660D (talk) 18:35, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Frankly, this seems like a solution in search of a problem. There are certainly a lot of shitty geostubs created from databases without a lot of sources. Like, say, this one. Wow, what a pile of crap! What's going on with this stupid awful geostub now? Oh -- it's a FA. Wowzies. I've written 20 GAs from such geostubs. Thank God there wasn't an army of people running around the project CSDing all of them in the meantime. jp×g 07:03, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
    I definitely agree with you that a geostub CSD idea (or mass deletion) is terrible, JPxG. Geostubs range from Iranian wells to future FAs and the idea of removing hundreds of thousands of articles because they're short is completely contrary to wiki PAGs. I don't know what you mean by "this seems like a solution in search of a problem", though, as I started this thread just to get the views from many people on geostubs. Or are you responding to Donald? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 08:42, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Proposal

Thank you all for your comments, they have been very instructive. I'll work on a proposal for the next few days to see if there is consensus to change some guidelines to deal with some of the problems identified in this thread. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 12:24, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

What are the different types of geostubs, in terms of quantity and type of information? Has this ever been categorized formally? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 09:22, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
Geostubs will all be indirectly in Category:Geography stubs. This PetScan query lists all articles in this category to a depth of 5, which probably is not deep enough, giving 682,896 results. It runs very slowly. Probably better to start at the country level, e.g. Category:France geography stubs, A query for France, 5 deep, at https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=21772838, sorted by size gives 40,889 results, starting with the 260-byte Clément, French Guiana, which informs us that Clément is a town in French Guiana, and gives coordinates. OpenStreetMap has never heard of it and Google shows nothing but forest at the coordinates. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:33, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
Started proposal based on some of the comments here, thanks everyone! I might propose some other stuff at a later point to improve collaboration in the geo topic area but we'll see how this one goes. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:06, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Aguaxima, a plant growing in Brazil and on the islands of South America. This is all that we are told about it; and I would like to know for whom such descriptions are made. It cannot be for the natives of the countries concerned, who are likely to know more about the aguaxima than is contained in this description, and who do not need to learn that the aguaxima grows in their country. It is as if you said to a Frenchman that the pear tree is a tree that grows in France, in Germany, etc . It is not meant for us either, for what do we care that there is a tree in Brazil named aguaxima, if all we know about it is its name? What is the point of giving the name? It leaves the ignorant just as they were and teaches the rest of us nothing. If all the same I mention this plant here, along with several others that are described just as poorly, then it is out of consideration for certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a dictionary article or even to find something stupid than to find no article at all.

— Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie (1751)

My study (which classified 277 of 1,000 articles as "geographic, broadly construed") was not that granular, but I did pick up some impressions from reviewing those 270. Also from my New Page Patrol work:

  • One glaring stub example was non-notable train stations. For example, and editor takes a train line and makes an article for each little train station on the line.
  • The US geo articles tended to less stubby. Presumably because they are more familiar to English editors and also with ready access to sources in English.
  • Probably the most geostub articles on ones that look borderline on notability are from India. Probably because it's a huge country with lots of places and lots of potential editors most of which know some English. The borderline ones there tend to be very small populations, small and abstract units of government, and train stations.

Also, because a deletion at AFD requires "proving a negative" that suitable sources don't exist, and an English speaking editor is typically unable to do that for an article when it's in a country where the primary media are Non-english and so borderline ones tend to stay....not just due to AFD results, but also due to editors never even taking them to AFD for that reason.

Again, I don't consider the maybe 200,000 or 500,000 current geostub articles to be a big problem. Geography is a very enclyclopedic topic. The big problem is that that could easily jump to 5,000,000.

(BTW, just to make sure my big "277" doesn't mislead, "broadly construed" included edge cases like facilities and planets.)

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:45, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

For Category:United States geography stubs PetScan gives 130,527 results at 5 deep, 132,059 results at 7 deep, probably deep enough to get almost all of them, starting with the 261-byte Makaokahaʻi Point, a jutting headland on the south coast of the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. I do not know an efficient way to separate human geography stubs like villages, railway stations etc. from physical stubs like streams, hills etc. The United States has 4.25% of the total world population and 6.1% of world landmass. Perhaps it has 5% of world geography, giving 2,610,540 potential geostubs worldwide at the same level of coverage. But see Rivers of Lake County, California: there is potential to greatly increase the number of United States geostubs. We could be looking at over 20 million worldwide. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:46, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
Aymatth2 and North8000 I've done some initial research into the number of geostubs in proportion to geo articles for various countries at User:A. C. Santacruz/Research/Geostubs. The picture right now does not look very good... I'm not entirely sure how one would find the ratio of stubs per editor actively patrolling stubs for accuracy but I imagine it is unmanageably high based off this first impression. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 14:34, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
@A. C. Santacruz: I thought the ratio of stubs to real articles was much worse than you have found, so in a sense this is encouraging. Short geo articles do not bother me if they are accurate and give some useful information. But I suspect that in some areas there are no editors checking the stubs at all. See Clément, French Guiana. Does this place exist? An editor could waste a fair amount of time before finding that the French government Géoportail does show something called Clément at those coordinates. They leave the stub, even though it is useless. Then a few years later another editor repeats the check... Aymatth2 (talk) 15:57, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, the articles so far are from 3 very urbanized countries. I'll add India and Iran later, I expect those to be much worse. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 16:10, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
North8000 that study sounds interesting, where can I read it? In terms of quantity of information I was wondering like, if someone had ever gotten some data on like, the distribution of article sizes within geostubs and the such. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 14:42, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
@A. C. Santacruz: I have all of the data up at User:North8000/Display and am starting to add summaries etc. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:49, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Nested Tooltips

The tooltips feature is awesome when needing to quickly understand a word or topic. But what if a tooltip's text also contains something that needs to be understood? Enter nested tooltips. When a user hovers over a link and a tooltip expands, if there is another link within that tooltip the user can hover over that creating a new nested tooltip. A user can ctrl+click a nested tooltip to keep it from automatically disappearing when the user moves their mouse. This feature is exactly like the innovative expanded/nested tooltips in the game Crusader Kings 3 [1]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Contramonk (talk • contribs) 13:07, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://philip.design/blog/tooltips-in-tooltips/
@Contramonk: What you are proposing is not possible in HTML5. A tooltip is generated by your browser using the value of an element's title= attribute (try hovering your mouse over this text for example), and such values may not contain markup of any kind - least of all links. So it's a non-starter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:04, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
Nested popup help can't be done with the title attribute, but could be done via Javascript. But I wouldn't recommend it for general purpose use. Popups activated by mouse motion is a problem for those who have trouble with fine motor movements, and needs a different triggering mechanism on touch devices that doesn't affect the ability to select and follow links. On a site like Wikipedia that tries to be interoperable with as many devices and environments as possible, I also think less is more: if you find yourself wanting to nest popup help, you should re-think how the whole help text is written. isaacl (talk) 22:32, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
I find the popups to generally be annoying on my chromebook touchpad. Donald Albury 23:20, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Contramonk, I think you can get the functionality that you want by enabling WP:NAVPOPS. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Searching all of Wikipedia regardless of language.

Thought I'd throw this out again to see if anyone has any better ideas. If I want to search for a person on Wikipedia regardless of which language wikipedia they might be on, I have to go to google. Any better Ideas? For example, searching for "Noël Ottavi", there is no page at Noël Ottavi but is one at fr:Noël Ottavi Naraht (talk) 13:17, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Help:Searching#Other search tools claims that searching from the Main Page does that, and I remember seeing non-English results in the past, but it no longer seems to work. Certes (talk) 13:26, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
There is also Global search tool if you need some more options —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:10, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
For your Noël Ottavi example, I think the "missing" feature is a cross-project link to Wikidata. There it technically exists with an English-language label (wikidata:Q3345865), seems like it should come up on the right-hand side ("Results from sister projects") during a Wikipedia search. Then you'd click on that, and be given a list of Wikipedias with an article about that subject. Obviously this wouldn't solve every issue. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[ᴛ] 22:55, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Idea for account security and possible sock prevention

Yeah, I think we're done here. Steel1943 (talk) 00:21, 19 April 2022 (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.

Has there ever been an RfC or discussion to propose the following for new accounts:

  • A new account needs the following to be able to edit:
    • Needs to have a email address attached to it at all times
    • The aforementioned email address needs to be confirmed when added or changed
      • The email in the system stays as the previous email until the next/changed email is confirmed
  • An account's email cannot be changed while the account is subject to a block (to avoid abuse)

...ever been done? I have an idea formulating here, and this is what I have so far. Steel1943 (talk) 20:33, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Why add barriers for registered users when we still allow unregistered editors? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:47, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Only one of the two can be controlled to provide accountability. And only one of the two can get user access levels, especially confirmed/autoconfirmed; it makes semi-protection all the more useful. Steel1943 (talk) 21:01, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Interestingly there's a thread currently over at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) talking about how user data is toxic. I'm absolutely certain there have been several proposals for accounts to have a confirmed email address on this wiki, none of which I can find, but all of which obviously failed. What happens then, you set up a free email address for your account, then never check it again? -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:10, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Well, the thing there is the idea of not being able to change the confirmed email address while blocked. That prevents a user, while blocked, to attach a new email account while blocked, causing a obviously passable, but somewhat annoying, barrier of having to create a new email account (if they don't have multiple) in order to sock as an editor with an account. I think I'll read over that discussion on the WMF VP page as well. (But hey, questions like this is why I brought this here instead of just throwing this on WP:VPPROP since I had a feeling there would be some really good rebuttals to this right off the bat.) Steel1943 (talk) 21:20, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
I think the point here is that it won't stop sockpuppetry. Email services such as protonmail don't even ask for a phone number. If I put myself in a sockpuppeter's shoes, I'd just create a random protonmail account, with which I'll open a Wikipedia account and start editing. You don't even need to remember the email password once a WP account is already created. Having them to connect to an email won't be stopping them from sockpuppetry for which they must already be putting in a good amount of effort. Meanwhile some good faith editors not willing to connect to an email id would get repelled away from creating an account, as they can already edit as IP. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 22:11, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, it's not going to fully prevent socking, but rather make it a lot more inconvenient for sockmasters. It's kind of like a very strong deterrent. And in regards to "repelling good faith editors"; the idea here is to grandfather the current settings of every editor who already has an account prior to these types of changes being implemented. If they gamers grandfathered, editors without an email address could still edit without an email address, but if they ever wanted to add an email address, it would need to be confirmed, and then the editor would be subject to the non-grandfathered rules. And in regards to editors who edit as IPs socking: I'd imagine it's a lot easier to semi-protect an article than determine who's a sock. Steel1943 (talk) 23:13, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Accounts are global, blocks are local - I wouldn't want a block on one of the hundreds of projects out there locking up me from ever updating my email address. — xaosflux Talk 23:39, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: "Accounts are global, blocks are local..." Yep, I think we're done here ... that's the nail in the coffin I forgot about. I'm proposing this on the wrong Wikimedia project page, so all of this is kind of moot. If only all blocks were global, this may have had a chance of making sense. Steel1943 (talk) 00:18, 19 April 2022 (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.

Equity considerations for notability

Background on my thinking: I've been thinking about this topic for months, informed by creating 200+ articles.

Background on the topic: The world favors certain demographics, and disfavors others. Race, gender, nationality, sexuality and most social factors make it easier for certain people to get noticed, to get media attention. I assume I don't need to provide citations and links and that we're all agreed that there is bias in Wikipedia that is replicating or mirroring the bias in the world.

To define the problem: Wikipedia seems to, for the most part, see itself as neutral. The world is unequal, it's not Wikipedia that is creating inequity, we're just reflecting it. There are exceptions, such as the Women in Red project that is making a great effort to reduce gender bias. But modern thinking on equity is that being neutral is to be part of the problem. It's not enough to be not biased, we need to work to be anti-biased.

A solution?: So here's my concept of an idea that I really want editors to critique and hopefully improve: there should be guidance that allows notability criteria to be considered through a lens of equity. For example if WP:ARTIST says that to be notable, an artist needs to be in the permanent collection of multiple museums, but the artist is an Aboriginal women in Australia, maybe we could consider that being in the permanent collection of one museum could be a fairer measure.

If WP:AUTHOR needs multiple reviews in journals, but the author is a woman in a country that rank in the worst 10% for gender equity, we might relax the rules for her.

These examples are both inspired by recent articles for discussion debates that I've been in where we're holding everyone to exactly the same standard, utterly blind to the much higher bar that many people face based on their sexuality, gender, race or luck of birth.

Is there a way we can introduce equity guidance for a fairer wikipedia?

This is my first proposal, so please be kind if I have erred in any way. CT55555 (talk) 12:46, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

  • So, there are three different issues here. 1) Ignore the SNGs. They are beyond worthless, and give little to no useful guidance on what should and shouldn't be created as a stand-alone articles. You've highlighted just one reason, but the problems with the various SNGs are legion, and beyond the scope of this discussion to get into. 2) WP:GNG is a better measure of when to create a stand-alone article. It says, in essence "We need high-quality source material from which we can research a subject in order to build an article". Let's take your aboriginal artist. Pretend Wikipedia doesn't exist for a second. Where can I learn about them, their works, and their life story? If the answer is "I've got a bunch of great texts for you to read from", then yes, you have the basis to create an article. If your answer is "Basically nowhere", then how do we build a Wikipedia article about that person? 3) You are essentially correct on the equity issues facing Wikipedia, but there are better ways to approach this than writing about subjects for which there is no source text to refer to when building a Wikipedia article. The equity and bias issues with regard to Wikipedia article creation is that lots of great underrepresented topics do have lots of source text we can go to. Those topics are ignored in favor of, say, the standard DWEM subjects we often focus on. My advice is, instead of seeking to lower Wikipedia's standards so we can include poorly referenced articles containing lots of text that we have no means of verifying, we should instead focus on seeking out subjects that we could already be building articles about, but are not. --Jayron32 14:19, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    Trying to write articles about people without good source material is obviously a silly endeavor, because it would be difficult or impossible. I think the sort of logic I'm suggestion can only work with more shades of grey examples than someone with no body of works to draw upon. And I think my argument really is only applicable if we don't take your advice to ignore SNGs, because they do form the basis of many discussions/decisions at Articles for Deletion.
    So maybe an example where this could be useful is where an artist, for example, is mentioned a lot in good sources, mainstream media, or good books has lots of brief mentions about their poetry, book, film or play, but none are the depth of coverage we look for. So there is enough to make a profile, but it's pieced together from verifiable details. In that scenario at Articles for Deletion, the SNGs are the benchmarks and if someone has a piece of art in 1 or 2 national galleries, if someone's book is reviewed by 1 or 2 book reviewers, are the decision points on which articles get kept or deleted on.
    So if you and I could agree that SNGs are flawed but we should try to make them better, would this be an improvement to them, for this kind of scenario? CT55555 (talk) 14:38, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    So, the situation is this with the GNG, notability, and AFDs. It has rarely happened where an article is written that is well-referenced to the proper sources, is of sufficient depth and length, and then gets nominated for deletion, and even less rarely does it actually get deleted. 99% of the time, the situation happens that a poorly referenced, stubby article about someone, like say your Aboriginal artist, gets nominated for deletion, and then people who think we should keep the article either a) have to scramble to find source material or b) level accusations of bad faith and bias against people who nominated it for deletion. Neither are particularly helpful ways to build the encyclopedia, and it all stems from building an article in the wrong order. First, gather the sources, then write the article while citing the sources the whole way. rarely, if ever, does anyone complain when that happens. --Jayron32 14:44, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    Just for the record, none of these examples are about articles I have created. But I have been often been the person who scrambles to try to save articles. About bias, my reading of this is that all have bias, although I'd consider it counter-productive to point that out to an AfD nominator. Maybe I should make a proposal that points out the over/under representation of articles at AfD based on demographic data of biographical subjects :-)
    Anyway, although I think we're not agreeing on my main point, I do agree with your suggesting about just creating more articles about people on topics that are missing. I do welcome any examples of topics that you have to suggest. CT55555 (talk) 14:53, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    I agree that equity is a major problem. What I don't agree is that the problem is solved by allowing the creation of substandard articles. We solve the problem by creating better articles about under-represented subjects. Letting articles slide on lower standards of referencing and verifiability is not useful, and would only exacerbate equity problems, not ameliorate them. --Jayron32 15:50, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    I hadn't seen my idea thought that lens, but I take your point. I wonder if I'm looking in the wrong direction then and the answer is to incentivize or motivate others towards the creation of such articles. CT55555 (talk) 16:01, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    Incentivizing the creation of articles is the realm of various Wikipedia-adjacent organizations. As just one really good example, we have Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red, a group that works towards correcting gender imbalance in Wikipedia by creating high-quality biographical articles about women. There are various other things like Wikimedia chapters that work locally to build up Wikipedia editors from local cultures; by increasing representation of editors at Wikipedia, we increase the number of articles these editors will be interested in writing on under-represented topics. There are various edit-a-thons that are organized to help improve articles from many (often under-represented) topics. Ultimately, insofar as the problem of under-representation in Wikipedia articles is one of culture at Wikipedia, and not of policy, then we can only fix the problem through solutions of a cultural nature, like the ones I listed here (among others). Policy by itself can't fix culture. My argument is that the policy is sound policy when our goal is to create a high-quality, well-referenced, verifiable encyclopedia. The fact that that the culture among the Wikipedia community undervalues certain topics is not fixed by changing that policy. It's fixed by adding additional culture around inclusion and expansion of access and deliberately correcting the imbalance within the sound policy. --Jayron32 16:16, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    I am now wondering if you read all of my initial post... CT55555 (talk) 16:29, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    I have read your post multiple times. What parts of my responses have made you feel misunderstood? --Jayron32 16:39, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    When you told me about Women in Red when after starting post mentioned them. CT55555 (talk) 16:40, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    Gotcha. Yes, we both agree they are a good example. Sorry that I reached for the same example you did. It is hard to find a better group, and perhaps that could serve as a model for starting other ones. I did not mean to give the impression that you had not already recognized them, but I clearly did do just that, and that is all on me. Sorry that I did that. I should not have. Regardless, I still stand by the rest of my post; culture and policy are different things, and at Wikipedia we have broken culture. Policy cannot fix broken culture, and the hard work of fixing culture requires a different tactic. --Jayron32 16:48, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    By the way, Women in Red (which I am an proud and active member of), is producing biographical articles about women, using this month as an example, at rate of:
    5 per day (general, discounting upgrades), 0.5 per day (climate) 8 per day (via translation) and less than 0.5 per day (French overseas territories) Totaling about 14 articles per day.
    Of the 1.5 million biographies, 19% are about women. An equal world would mean about 765,000 biographical articles were about women, but only 285,000 are. We're 480,000 short.
    If Women in Red is our best fix, at the rate Women in Red produces articles, it will solve the problem in 93.9 years. That's assuming AfD stops nominating articles about woman at over double the rate it nominates men, despite the low representation of women on wikipedia, 41% of biographical articles about women nominated for deletion are about women.
    My hypothesis: we need to do a more, we need to move a faster. To me, a 94 year plan isn't good enough.
    Yes, culture beats policy, but culture changes as rules and standards are introduced. People didn't start wearing seatbelts until the law required them. We probably need to move the culture needle and the policy needle. CT55555 (talk) 21:03, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    As you led off, we should never expect 50/50 balance on male/female articles, because we know historically the coverage of women was far less then men, and that we should not be trying to correct the ratio by including poor quality articles. We can improve the ratio but it will never get a where close to 50%. --Masem (t) 21:48, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    Do you have a suggestions for how to get it higher than the status quo? CT55555 (talk) 21:52, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    @CT55555 I would also just note that That's assuming AfD stops nominating articles about woman at over double the rate it nominates men, despite the low representation of women on wikipedia, 41% of biographical articles about women nominated for deletion are about women. is not sufficiently clear. Heavily due to the work of both WIR and those who act in a similar vein without being part of the org, of articles created per day, a majority are about women. AfDs are always more likely to be about newer articles.
    Thus while there may well be an issue on the AfD side, what we'd need to consider it is if you can determine and write the like for like comparisons. E.g, for articles made in the last year, how's do the creations/nominations/actual deletions stack up, and how does that change in the 2-3 year bracket, and 3+ year bracket. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:36, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
    I think the point is that, while articles on males are given the benefit of the doubt, and never make it to AFD, articles on women are much more likely to be scrutinized at an unreasonable level. The fact that 41% of the biographical articles at AFD are about women, and yet a much smaller number of newly created articles are about women, means that on the balance, the same quality article about a woman will end up at AFD more often than if it were about a man. We had a particularly nasty case a few years back where a nobel laureate's article was sitting at AFD while they were winning the Nobel Prize. And even afterwards, people were still trying to argue that wasn't a problem... C'mon now...--Jayron32 11:47, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
    Here is a link to a peer reviewed paper that analysed a large data set of AfD nominations and concluded that that AfD process is incorrectly used for women's biographies significantly more than men's.
    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448211023772
    I found this at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia
    I think we're way past the point of debating if this is a problem and encourage you to join me in trying to imagine solutions. CT55555 (talk) 15:46, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
    Regarding that particular article, you might want to read Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-07-25/Recent research. Anomie⚔ 21:52, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
    If we were discussing an article, that response would considered a primary source, whereas mine was a published academic paper. So while I respect the points contained within it, I again plea that we move forward from the "is gender bias a problem" phase and into the "can we please work on solutions" phase. CT55555 (talk) 00:43, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
    Well, here's one idea for you, @CT55555: Many AFD nominations use Twinkle. Could we make Twinkle 'aware' of which articles are about women? If someone nominates a BLP about a woman, could Twinkle add an extra step/dialog box that says something like "Please make sure that you have done a proper WP:BEFORE search before sending this article to AFD"? (I don't know if it needs to have an explanation like "Articles about women are nominated for deletion about twice as often as articles about men, but they are less likely to be deleted.")
    My idea is that if there are an above-average level of nominations but a below-average level of deletions at AFD, then editors are sending some notable subjects to AFD. If we could encourage them to be a little more careful, we might get closer to the average (which means fewer articles at AFD, but a higher percentage of those articles being deleted). WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:04, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
    "Here's a paper" "That paper has already been looked at and received significant criticism" "But it's a published paper!" 🤷 Sure. People can get all sorts of crap published, especially in particular topic areas. Without better understanding of the actual parameters of the problem, I think we'll have trouble coming up with (non-politician's) solutions more specific than "interested editors should watch AfD to rescue articles they think can actually pass WP:N". But feel free to run with that one if you want. Anomie⚔ 11:24, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
    I would remind you that I am here asking people to suggest better solutions, soliciting critique, which seems quite different from the activities described in the politicians solutions article.
    Your quotes are not accurate and I request that you score them out. CT55555 (talk) 13:23, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
    Those "quotes" appear to represent a hypothetical dialog between two people, not the exact words said by anyone in reality.
    Of course, "received significant criticism" is not evidence of actual problems. Sometimes criticism looks more like the advice given in The Greasy Pole: "Some of the main conclusions have been questioned. (If they haven’t, question them yourself; then they have)." Even when a study isn't perfect, it can sometimes give us an approximate idea of reality. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
    I took a quick look at the ration of male to female subjects of articles at Category:AfD debates (Biographical) right now. I was able to determine the value of the P21 property (sex or gender) in Wikidata of 185 of them. 47 are female, 138 male. This is a gross oversimplification of course, but it looks like articles about women are still nominated for AfD more frequently than those about men. Worth looking into how those ratios work out for only living people, recently created articles, etc. Anyone interested in working on that? Vexations (talk) 22:24, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
    ^I couldn't agree more with what Jayron32 has saved here. Mysterious Whisper (talk) 16:00, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    I think that the bit about lots of brief mentions about their poetry, book, film or play, but none are the depth of coverage we look for. So there is enough to make a profile, but it's pieced together from verifiable details is one of the open questions with the GNG. If you have many short independent sources, but it all adds up to enough material to write a fair article, is that okay? Editors have different opinions, and we have never settled the question.
    Obviously, if you have a dozen sources, all of which contain only the fact that "Alice Expert is a cryptanalyst", then that's not enough to write a whole article about Alice. But if you have enough short sources to write a decent, non-stub article, then is it really a problem that one source provides "Alice Expert is a cryptanalyst" and the next source provides "Alice Expert wrote a book" and a third source provides the basis for "Alice Expert is an American", and so forth? Is it really necessary to have a single source providing significant coverage by itself? (WP:CORP claims it is.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    To follow onto what Jayron said, remember that the Various SNG provide presumptions of notability. If an SNG allows for an article based on an artist having works displayed permanently in multiple galleries, we are still going to expect in time that secondary sources with significant coverage will be found and added...if they can't be found, we'll still end up deleting the article. So this means it would be reasonable to consider slight allowances of weaker SNG passage for underrepresented people, but with the understanding we still ultimately are looking for significant coverage too, which is applied equally to all topics. --Masem (t) 16:09, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Have you reviewed WP:WHYN? The notability guidelines aren't just some arbitrary standard, they're the direct result of the nature of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. Changing the notability guidelines won't make it suddenly possible to write an article without sources to base it on, or to put it another way, changing the words on the page at WP:N won't change the fundamental nature of notability on Wikipedia. The general notability guideline is descriptive, not prescriptive.
    You seem to understand that it's impossible to write a decent article about a subject that doesn't have at least a small body of source material which the article can be based on. In your response to Jayron32's comments, you speak of "shades of grey examples" where there are enough reliable secondary sources to write an article about a subject, but that subject somehow still doesn't pass the notability guidelines. I'm willing to believe, as you seem to, that this is a thing that happens, although I'm not convinced that it's a major problem or that your proposal idea is in any way a viable solution. Can you provide some examples of this, ie, subjects with complete and well-written articles, based on reliable secondary sources, getting deleted at AfD on notability grounds? If you can establish, with evidence, that this is a thing that happens, and that it often happens to subjects that are underrepresented, and that it's a major reason why those topics are underrepresented, then you'll have my full support in finding a solution. As of now, while we can (mostly) all agree that there is a problem here, it seems like a lot of questionable guesswork is being done in ascertaining the exact nature of the problem and in proposing solutions to it.
    I'll also add that it's usually possible to include information from reliable sources on topics that don't warrant a standalone article somewhere in the encyclopedia, as part of a larger article. That way, the information gets included and published for all to see, Wikipedia doesn't get littered with perpetually-incomplete stub articles, and the reader experience is improved, because they get complete and detailed articles rather than many disjointed tiny ones. Mysterious Whisper (talk) 15:33, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    I thought this was the place to get a ball rolling and have other people build on it, suggest better ways. Have I misunderstood this space? CT55555 (talk) 15:41, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    You're in the right place: you have a the makings of a proposal here, but it's not yet ready for WP:Village pump (proposals). I've given my feedback on your idea. Specifically, I think a proposal to change the notability guidelines will be much more likely to succeed, and accomplish something worthwhile, if its presented in relation to WP:WHYN. I think it would be more likely to succeed if you present a strong case based on verifiable evidence rather than speculation, and I've suggested one form that evidence might take. I have also suggested another way to accomplish some of your goals. I now feel as though this isn't going to go anywhere, however, so I'll cease my involvement. Good luck. Mysterious Whisper (talk) 16:00, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    A body of evidence might take me a little while. If you are curious about the anecdotal story that was the trigger to me posting today:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jeannie_Pwerle CT55555 (talk) 21:53, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
    And another example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Munira_Al-Fadhel CT55555 (talk) 05:39, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
    A third example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Louise_Crisp_(2nd_nomination) CT55555 (talk) 05:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
I think you may be on to something. There are other measures of "notability" one might conceive of than the number of articles in newspapers that are "about" the subject. I think of that as "critical engagement by domain experts". For me, an artist's inclusion in a significant collection, is more important than a "profile" in Tatler, like something I just saw in an article: https://www.tatler.com/gallery/robyn-ward-exhibition-launch for example. Tatler knows fuck all about art, but the curators at the National Gallery of Australia are highly qualified professionals. We should consider their opinion more significant than that of a celebrity gossip writer. Another thing you could look at is how we consider interviews. We write often write them off as primary sources, but they can provide, and are sometimes the only source of important biographical details. Sometimes piecing together a biography from snippets and primary is possible, and common sense can prevail over blind application of guidelines. It's good those discussions can take place at AfD, and the outcome of those discussions should inform the guidelines that reflect practice, not the other way around. Vexations (talk) 16:54, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
  • I would like to see some discussion on how WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS factors into all of this (both positively and negatively). Blueboar (talk) 12:21, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
    I see that guidance as directed towards editors making decisions about individual articles, not systemic issues. CT55555 (talk) 12:26, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
    The positive side of RGW is that the closer we bring our biographical article ratio to 1:1 male to female (roughly), the better. There's always going to be a systematic bias from how historical reporting has gone one that will limit that we will never reach 1:1 but we can do better than we do now. Negatively, we do not want to weaken notability to try to improve our equity ratios to a point that we have stubs and start-class articles on women that show no likely chance of improvement and were only created because one source mentioned the person's name with some iffy signs of being important. There's the ideal equity limit we would like to reach, and then there's going to be a practical one, the one that we know we can actually create encyclopedic-quality articles even if short simply due to that systematic bias from sourcing that we cannot change. --Masem (t) 12:39, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Here's an idea: Improve participation at AfD. Here's a recent AfD I stumbled upon when looking at the list of women's biographies at AfD that I mentioned yesterday: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shawna Hamic. I have no idea who this is, but one participant? One? Not even the creator of the article cared enough, or knew about the nomination to do anything about it. For starters, new contributors need to be told about watchlisting the pages they create. Then, they need to find a peer group that can help them either fix the article, and present valid arguments at AfD for keeping the article without being accused of canvassing. This too, might be something we'd want to look at a bit more closely. How many AfDs close as delete with minimal participation? Do we need to introduce a quorum? Vexations (talk) 14:51, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
OK, this is fantastic. Combined with the suggestions about some prompts about gender equity when nominating, perhaps something about doing a real WP:BEFORE this could be good. Thanks for this. CT55555 (talk) 14:56, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Ping specific user groups

Moved from WP:VPPR

Ping specific user groups, for example: @Administrators (pings a random administrator, in case administrator assistance is needed on a specific page) Viewer719/Contribs! 10:03, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Pinging a random administrator won't necessarily help much. You might ping an administrator who isn't very active, for example, or somebody who doesn't work with that particular area. You'd be better off posting something on the admin noticeboard, posting something on a forum best suited to the topic (e.g. if you need a page moved then try WP:RM/TR), or using the recently active admins tool. Hut 8.5 11:53, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Plus, there is already the {{adminhelp}} template to alert any admins monitoring that category. Regards SoWhy 12:09, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
I was recently thinking about the feasibility of a template that pings whoever's the most recently active admin, both from a technical perspective and a "is this a good idea" perspective. Nice that I stumbled over here at the time I did. For one, this is definitely the sort of thing that would require community approval - and probably moving User:Enterprisey/recently-active-opt-out.json to projectspace. For two, the current list uses API calls - Templates can really only work with stuff in the wikitext, though Modules do some ~other stuff~ which I can't comprehend even remotely.
All this is made moot by just.. going to the page and pinging the unlucky mop-wielder at the top? casualdejekyll 19:14, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Sending an echo notification to a random user would almost always send to a completely inactive user. — xaosflux Talk 12:22, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
information Administrator note @Viewer719: I moved this from VPR to VPI as it isn't really an actionable proposal as is, and would get shut down there. The idea and other possible work arounds can be further disucssed here, maybe some other ideas will come up. You mentioned a specific technical process - but can you explain what it is you would want to accomplish? — xaosflux Talk 12:24, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
We already have some ping templates for certain groups of specialists (DYK admins or FA coordinators). —Kusma (talk) 12:29, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
See Special:PrefixIndex/Template:@ for examples. —Kusma (talk) 12:34, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Removing the requirement to specify NAC, and allowing non-admins to close AFD's as "delete"

Challenging closures already states that a close will rarely be changed by either the closing editor or a closure review if the complaint is that the closer is not an admin. Given this, requiring non-admins to specify that they are a non-admin when closing discussions is not helpful, and contributes to the perception of adminship being a seen as a big deal. I note also that many of the best closers are not admins, such as Paine Ellsworth for RM's, and Mhawk10 for RFC's.

The possible exception to this is WP:AN and WP:ANI, as given the nature of the board whether an admin closed a discussion may be relevant.

Similarly, I believe it may be beneficial to allow non-admins to close AFD's as "delete", with a new CSD criteria to support that. This would be similar to the current process for RM's, which allows non-admins to close RM's even if they are unable to implement the move themselves, and would not be a significant change from the current situation where non-admins can close discussions as redirect. BilledMammal (talk) 06:02, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no formal requirement, and editors close discussions all the time without specifying if they are an administrator. Regarding closing deletion discussions as delete, it's a perennial question where the consensus to-date has been that it duplicates effort that the admin implementing the close would have to do in order to take responsibility for their actions. isaacl (talk) 06:27, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
There is a requirement to mark RM's that are closed by non admins, but you are right - it seems that is the only area where it is required. I didn't realize the deletion discussion was a perennial discussion (it's not listed at perennial proposals), but it seems that objection could be addressed by making the closure responsible for the deletion, with the admin who responds to the CSD only being engaged in non-controversial maintenance tasks. BilledMammal (talk) 07:32, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
Is there some XFD backlog that is beyond the capabilities of our current admins? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:39, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
It's not really a matter of questioning the capabilities of admins. It's just experienced non-admins who want to help whether or not there's a backlog, or it's about editors who want to gain more experience with an eye on becoming an admin someday. And it's about whether or not it's necesessary to declare oneself a non-admin when that's not really supposed to be much of an issue. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 08:42, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
To-date, the response to that has been that administrators are the ones who face consequences for their use of administrative privileges. Also frequently proposed is a user group with permissions to delete pages who could close deletion discussions. So far, community consensus is that the abilities to delete, view deleted pages, and block users form a core set of privileges needed to make decisions involving these actions. isaacl (talk) 07:52, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yes, that should be made clear. It is the closer who should be accountable for actions that result from the closure. My question, though never asked until now, has always been about the statement at Wikipedia:Non-admin closure that goes, For practical purposes, non-administrators should not take formal action in discussions whose outcome would require the use of administrator tools... – always wondered why? In all these years there has never been an instance where an admin has not helped me with edits, closures and with explanations when they were needed. There are always ways for non-admins to use the tools by getting admins to actually make the edits. That's an excellent way to learn the ropes here. While it is true that admins are always held responsible for their tool usage, it is ultimately the closer who is responsible for their closures and implementations, whether or not they actually have the tools. Thank you, BilledMammal, for bringing this up, because I doubt if I'm the only editor who would agree with this idea yet who wouldn't mention it until and unless someone else does. Guess it's the Wikignome in me. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 08:01, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
First off, thank you for the ping and the compliment; I'm flattered by your description of me.
Getting to the substance: there's an RfC that happened around 2013 which ended with the conclusion that the sole reason for overturning a request for comment can never be summarily overturned on the basis that the closer was not an administrator. There's not obviously any WP:IAR exception (if a user wrote X, and X is without substantial flaw, then a then it doesn't matter whether or not that user has a mop). When there's a substantial flaw in the closing summary, the only thing in my mind that matters is the substance of the writing, not the technical privileges that the user has. Even a panel of three of the most experienced administrators on Wikipedia had a close of theirs overturned after non-admin S Marshall succesfully filed a close challenge. This is not to say that the median admin doesn't have a good understanding of policies and guidelines—the median admin is much more knowledgeable about them the average non-admin—but it's to say that sometimes the experienced non-admin can get it right even when a panel of admins get it wrong. It's also that closing RfCs can be hard, even very hard, because of the vast span of Wikipedia policies and how WP:CONLEVEL comes into play. S Marshall is exceptionally adept at closing RfC's (I would say moreso than the majority of admins) and is not representative of the typical user.
With respect to deletion, it's technically possible to create a new usergroup that has access to delete articles but not block people. The current guidance on deletions, per WP:NACD is that Non-administrators should limit their closes to outcomes they have the technical ability to implement; for example, non-admins should not close a discussion as delete, because only admins can delete pages. This seems reasonable to me, since letting people without the ability to delete pages close AfDs as delete would simply add onto the CSD backlog. This doesn't seem like the most time-efficient way to do things; having one editor close a deletion discussion and a second editor do the deletion seems inefficient to me. The question I think that's worth considering in the field of deletion is whether or not we, as a community, want to have a role that allows people to delete pages but not to block people nor perform other sensitive administrator tasks. And, if we do, the extent to which the community should vet these users before they are granted the role seems like a reasonable discussion to have. — Mhawk10 (talk) 07:43, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
Having two editors involved in editing happens all the time. Can't tell you how many edit requests I've made, how many technical page moves I've requested, it happens quite a lot. I see it as part of being an admin means using the tools to help other editors to make improvements. If efficiency is such a problem, then the solution would be to make every editor an admin so they don't have to bother others to get their editing done. And of course, that's not gonna happen. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 08:12, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
I don't think that efficiency is the be-all-end-all, but from a segregation of duties perspective I don't see much of a benefit to having two separate people delete AfDs. In the current deletion workflow, an admin reads the AfD, makes a determination on consensus, and then actually deletes the page. There's even a nice script that lets people do this in one go. With two people, the non-admin reads the AfD and its comments, makes a determination of consensus, and then tags the relevant pages under CSD. A CSD-patrolling admin then comes along, reads the closure of the AfD to make sure it isn't insane, and then performs the deletion. There's a small benefit with the admin doing the whole thing in terms of total time used, since no work is really duplicated (although at the expense of a second set of eyes on the AfD closure).
The main thing that I think would come up is that deletion is one of the most fraught areas of the administrative side of the encyclopedia and the community (from my understanding) tends to want to vet people before they go around deleting articles wholesale in close-call scenarios. I also think that there would be less disruption (i.e. time and effort wasted from challenging bad closes) in the current process relative to one where Randy in Boise decided to close an AfD as delete where a merge or a "no consensus" was the appropriate outcome. And, as S Marshall points out below, there are some other systemic risks that would be amplified in the absence of a vetting process.
Having a role that allows a user to delete pages but doesn't allow them to block people seems to be tailored towards both direct workflow efficiency and preserving the existence of a thorough vetting process. The drawbacks I've heard for this idea are that this would lead to fewer administrators and that the vetting process could itself be inefficient (see: RFA disasters). — Mhawk10 (talk) 08:39, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
This isn't to say that the vetting process is perfect—it's not even perfect at stopping socks—but it's a risk reduction approach that is aimed at preventing bad people from getting advanced permissions. — Mhawk10 (talk) 08:44, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
All things considered, the vetting process does seem to work pretty well. In all these years I've only come across two admins who were "questionable", and I learned from them, too, anyway. And I think they learned some things, as well. The vast majority of admins (and probably all of 'em in this present moment) are knowledgable, helpful and trusted. Still though, I don't really understand how non-disclosure would help unscrupulous editors game the system. I don't see how an undisclosed non-admin who closes an AfD and slaps a SD on a page would in any way disrupt the system. One thing I DO understand is that there are some things we don't really want to talk about, because we don't want to give out any "bad ideas", so feel free to ignore that part of my response. My understanding of your and S. Marshall's ideas is not crucial to whether or not I love to edit Wikipedia. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 09:01, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
In terms of there are some things we don't really want to talk about, because we don't want to give out any "bad ideas" I'm not really sure what this is supposed to convey except WP:BEANS, but I feel like I'm missing something. Anywho, my comment you appear to responding to focused on closing AfDs as delete rather than the question of how to handle RfC/RM disclosures. I generally think that the tag at the end of the closures serve little utility. The main thing that matters to me is whether or not the summary fails to accurately reflect the discussion and/or appropriately ascertain consensus in light of relevant policies. With respect to these, the closing summary should be able to speak for itself. The only time where the user themself matters is if they've made an involved close. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:47, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
For deletion, while it would add the CSD backlog, I don't see it as an inefficient use of time; an admin confirming that an AFD has been closed as delete and deleting the article takes less time than determining consensus, closing the discussion, and deleting the article. BilledMammal (talk) 11:58, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
Guess the bottom line for me is, just because I'm a non-admin doesn't mean I can't get the job done. When I need the tools, I make a request for an admin's help. I make an edit request, or I slap an SD on a page after closing a deletion discussion. Of course the admin is going to check the deletion discussion to make sure it's proper, and that's expected. That's SOP. The vast majority of edits (thank goodness!) can be made by a non-admin without the help of an admin. And when necessary, a non-admin can, with the help of an admin, use the tools and make any edit on Wikipedia that's possible. As much as I don't mind declaring I'm a non-admin, I really don't see why it's necessary. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 08:29, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
  • We have some comedians, on Wikipedia, who would love to take it on themselves to close discussions with their own alternative accounts. Don't remove the disclosure requirement. It would be easily gamed.—S Marshall T/C 08:34, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
No thank you. Admins being closers of AFD discussions especially is one of the core things that makes an admin an admin. casualdejekyll 12:45, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I agree and I don't think anybody is trying to take these core functions away from the important things that admins do. Take a look for example at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:2022 West bengal Municipal election; that's an MfD, and similar things happen at AfD as well. They really aren't something that admins need to spend time on when there are so many much more important and difficult decisions we trust them with. Point is, what difference did my disclosure that I'm a non-admin make? There might be some small advantage to it, and it's just not that big a deal either way, so why make it necessary to disclose it? If there's something I'm missing, I'd love to learn it! P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 17:48, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
This seems more like an WP:IAR scenario than a scenario that actually requires a changing of the rules. casualdejekyll 18:44, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
  • I'm not particularly keen on this. I've closed a few AFDs when the article had already been deleted and it's just a matter of cleanup, but I don't see the point of having people close AFDs as "delete" when they can't carry out the action. It simply creates a different backlog for admins to monitor. Mangoe (talk) 20:28, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
    It also doesn't save any work. I'm not going to delete a page just because somebody told me to. By the time I've analyzed enough of the AfD to convince myself that the NAC delete request is valid, I might as well have just closed it myself. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:08, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
    In some cases it saves work, as in those already mentioned. In other cases, while it doesn't save work, if it's done correctly then it doesn't make extra work for you. This has the benefit of helping an editor prepare to be an admin, or to just gain experience as a closer. If it is done incorrectly, then the benefit is an education for the closer. Admins are crucial to this project; it couldn't be done well without them. One of their important jobs that I've seen most admins take very seriously is to educate me when I've messed up. Such errors and corrections have made me a better editor, a better closer, a better non-admin. Where would we be if all educators took the stand, "I might as well have just closed it myself"? If you've not found any errors, then you can take a second to commend the non-admin closer, and if you did find something amiss, then you can take a minute to educate the closer. Where exactly is the downside? P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 05:09, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
    @Paine Ellsworth it does take longer than it would otherwise: in the same way that a DRV review takes me longer than an AfD review. I'd need to review the AfD and a close. Sometimes that's 20 seconds extra, but often significantly longer. Any AfD that I needed to revert the close on would take significantly longer than a minute. Much longer, for the double check any reverted action gets, then the time to undo and reclose, then the comments to the editor.
    Now you can still feel it's worthwhile, but please don't understate the downsides. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:29, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
    To editor Nosebagbear: thank you for this! I don't want to do that; don't want to understate the downsides. This is an education for me. I can't possibly know all there is to know about being an admin, never having actually been one. So thanks again. In your mind, with a closer's eye on such downsides, how do they compare with the upsides mentioned here? From my point of view the comparison does still favor the nom's idea, just not quite as favorably as before I read your words above. How do you think the ups compare with the downs? P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 22:56, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Count me as one who thinks that non-admins should not close AFD discussions as delete - deciding on an action that they cannot implement. The person who makes the decision that an article should be deleted, and the person who actually deletes it, should be the same person, and should be someone who has been authorized by the community to make that decision. I agree with Roy Smith that by the time an admin has reviewed the "delete" recommendation and decided whether it is valid, they might just as well have been the primary closer. In any case, I don't see any real need for such a change. There does not appear to be a huge backlog of AfD discussions languishing for want of someone to close them, at least not where articles are concerned. Most discussions are closed on the same day they become eligible for closure, and the few that aren't are far too complex for a non-administrator to attempt. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:41, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
  • I agree with the above in that an AfD close as delete as a non-admin is redundant; currently it is not outright banned for a non-admin to close as delete, it is heavily discouraged, as Roy stated above it doesn't really alleviate administrator workload. The status quo works fine, considering the XfD backlog doesn't get full very often. Curbon7 (talk) 03:16, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
    I have performed a couple of non-admin delete closures. What happened in those cases was that the article was deleted by an admin for copyvio. The non-admin close was therefore just a formality to close the AfD. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:44, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, in this case where the article has already been deleted, usually as a speedy delete for some reason or other, then anyone can close the discussion, with appropriate explanation that the article has already been deleted and why. As you say, it is a formality. The admin who deleted it may not even have been aware that there was an AfD. -- MelanieN (talk) 14:41, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
  • On the first half of this, there should not be any requirement to tag a closure by NAC. I'm not sure when that practice begun, but it's just silly; any experienced editor in good standing should be able to close most discussions, and shouldn't have to wear the badge of shame for not being an admin when closing it. On the second part, notice I said "most". This topic comes up every so often, and I still (as I have every time in the past) think that there's no practical reason for a non-admin to close a deletion discussion as delete if they can't actually delete the article. Closing as "keep" is fine; they don't have to do anything. For a purely pragmatic and workflow-related reason, if you can't enact the results, don't close the discussion. Any admin who would delete the article would need to read and assess the consensus anyways (best practice to make sure you're doing it for a good reason) and at that point, they can close it as well. It saves no one any work for a non-admin to close a discussion as delete and then fetch an admin to do the deleting. It's cumbersome and not helpful to anyone. This has nothing to do with trust, it's just a pragmatic issue that it isn't helpful. --Jayron32 14:49, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
  • It seems there may be a consensus for removing the first, but no consensus for the second.
I think an RFC will be needed for to implement the first, and I propose the following question: "Should all requirements for non-admin closers to state that they are not an admin in their closure, such as at WP:RMNAC, be removed?" BilledMammal (talk) 03:05, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Bold list template

Hi there. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this but I'll post anyways. A few months ago, I created a template in my sandbox. It takes a list of items and creates a list where the terms are bolded, but not the commas, for example: foo, bar, or 123 . The idea being, this saves editors from having to type '''foo''', '''bar''' etc. during source editing, or having to manually precisely select each comma to unbold in visual editor. An example where the template would be used is in article leads, where bolded alternate names are given. I haven't moved it to template namespace because 1) I don't know whether the template would be useful, 2) I don't know if a way to do this already exists, and 3) I don't know if I've implemented it efficiently, since I'm not very familiar with template code. Asking for thoughts on the template. Thanks! — Mcguy15 (talk, contribs) 23:05, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@Mcguy15 That could probably be implemented more efficiently with a few lines code in a Lua module (and it would work for an unlimited number of list entries), something like:
return { main = function(frame)
	args = {}
	for i, v in ipairs(frame.args) do table.insert(args, v)	end
	conj = "'''" .. (#args > 2 and ", " or " ") .. (args.conj or "or") .. " '''"
	return "'''"..mw.text.listToText(args, "''', '''", conj).."'''"
end }
The code can be simpler if you don't need it to produce Oxford commas. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 03:54, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Wow, that's super cool, thanks! Definitely better than my bodged way of doing it. I'll try to see if I can figure out how add that to {{bold list}} later. — Mcguy15 (talk, contribs) 04:22, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Hey, @Ahecht. I tried implementing the code on Module:Bold list and invoking it at Template:Bold list, but it doesn't seem to be working. Would you mind checking whether I implemented it incorrectly, or if it's a problem with the code? Thank you! — Mcguy15 (talk, contribs) 19:29, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
@Mcguy15 That module, as written, only works directly from an {{#invoke}} statement. If you want call it from a template instead, you have to change the frame.args to frame:getParent().args on line 4. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:19, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Thank you — Mcguy15 (talk, contribs) 20:22, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Oh! This was unarchived. I followed the advice of the person who archived this thread and created {{Bold list}}. — Mcguy15 (talk, contribs) 04:19, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Help drafting a WP:RFA RfC

Idea has now been submitted as a formal proposal Nosebagbear (talk) 09:01, 26 April 2022 (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.

Hi! I want to make an RfC suggesting that vote counts for ongoing requests not be displayed at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship as it influences editors before reading the nominations and questions, and similarly propose that the tally included at the top of every RfX be added below the Q&A of the candidate (as opposed to the top, as is currently done). How can I best word such an RfC? Should two RfCs be made rather than one, and if so should they happen concurrently? — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 09:22, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Page version of last RfA showing what I mean. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 09:24, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Honestly, I don't see how this will accomplish much. People react to the content of other people's votes, not to where the tally is. If you want the tally to have no great effect, you need secret voting. —Kusma (talk) 09:34, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
I don't think it is some ground-shaking proposal that will completely change RfX, but I do think that it can have a strong subconscious influence on editors. Yes, editors will still be affected by the tally when they vote, but I think they should at least read the nomination and Q&A with as little influence from groupthink as we can. It's a small change, really. But I think it's a positive one that doesn't take much effort to implement so I want to get the community's opinion on this. I'd just like some help with wording the proposal before I bring it up ^u^ — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 09:56, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
On the other hand, showing the vote totals helps respect editors' time. Often, I'll glance at an RFA, see that my input isn't needed, and save myself some time and effort. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:21, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
ScottishFinnishRadish by vote totals do you mean a count of all votes made or the current division of S/O/N? — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 14:38, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Both, as well as the time left in running. Ratio is important, as well as the total votes. I prefer to look towards the end to read both sets of arguments and see if I have anything constructive to add or say, which I normally don't. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:04, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
I don't think removing the "remaining time" is a good idea. Some editors are only on every few days and it will help them know if they have time to come back to it. — xaosflux Talk 15:21, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
I was talking only about the S/O/N counts, I don't see any way removing the time indicator being beneficial at all, Xaosflux — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 16:04, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Not sure this would achieve the subconscious effect you're looking for. Even if we remove the vote count from the top of the page, wouldn't editors be able to easily glean the vote count by looking at the numbered list of votes in each section? Even if we change the numbered lists to a bulleted list, for example, it still seems like it would be pretty easy to estimate the quantity of votes by looking at the sections. Mz7 (talk) 18:43, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes but that would be after the nomination and Q&A. The information would be available, just not presented multiple times before you even read the nomination, Mz7. I'm not suggesting the information should be hidden or something, just that the first impression an editor gets of an RfX should be the nomination and the Q&A. Reading votes after having read the nom+Q&A seems better as you are not reading the Q&A having already partly made up your mind about the candidacy. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 20:01, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
My fear with RFA is that far too much weight is given to the nominations and the Q&A section already, and far too few editors actually check the candidate's contributions. Rather than removing the S/O/N numbers, why not just add an edit notice to the effect of "please don't vote in an RFA unless you've spent at least half an hour checking the candidate's edits". ϢereSpielChequers 21:21, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers that sounds like a great idea! :D I'm not sure "at least half an hour" is the exact wording that would be best in that case, but that's why IL exists — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 21:28, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Even that can be tough, depending on what editing people do. Someone could spend a half hour going through my edits and just see a couple hundred answered edit requests. That doesn't really show the articles I've created.
Maybe, rather than answering a bunch of questions, a candidate puts together a sizzle reel of diffs? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:52, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
"Sizzle reel"? I hadn't heard that before, SFR. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 22:54, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, rather than someone digging through my answering 180 edit requests as "Not done," I'd rather give them a list of the things I do when I have the time. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:00, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
It's a public relations term; the sizzle of cooking food doesn't affect its flavour when being eaten, but looks enticing. isaacl (talk) 23:04, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
That's essentially what is being asked in the question on the candidate's best contributions to Wikipedia. isaacl (talk) 23:04, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
The biggest problem we currently have at RFA is that we don't have an agreed criteria for adminship, so potential candidates are in doubt as to whether or not they'd pass, often until they are ludicrously over qualified. Hence the pattern of the few successful RFAs being nearly unanimous supports. Agreeing that criteria, or rather getting a concensus that a particular de facto criteria exists, is nigh on impossible. Part of that is that we don't require consensus for a particular test such as too deletionist or too inclusionist, we don't even need 50%. It doesn't require 45% of the !voters to consider a particular position or candidate is too deletionist, too inclusionist, too tolerant of incivility or too much of a civility police position and an RFA tanks. Of course there is another solution, we have several experienced nominators who know how to assess whether a candidate is suitable and would have an acceptable deftness of touch with the delete and block buttons to pass RFA. But how do we persuade more community members to approach such nominators? ϢereSpielChequers 10:20, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
I agree completely. A big problem is that recent RfCs have the appearance of rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. Take WP:RFA2021: it correctly identified a number of problems with RfA, but did almost nothing to rectify any of them. My feelings is that RfA will reach a tipping point at some point in the future, but until then nothing will be done that will make much of a difference. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 11:24, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
I appreciate other editors also brainstorming minor changes that could help improve RfX but I would appreciate if I could get some help drafting an RfC on my proposed idea. Remember that IL is not where one would vote on the idea, so please don't start dismissing it entirely. Just help me draft it :) We can discuss the other ideas at the same time, of course. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 13:22, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
I have started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#RfC_on_display_of_vote_totals. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 22:43, 25 April 2022 (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.

Improving ways for editors to indicate they are open to adminship

What are some ways we could improve the options available for editors to indicate they are open to going through an RfA? — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 19:52, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Change the name from RFA to VFA (Volunteers for Adminship). Like some other fields, the best candidates are characterized by "Willing to serve" rather than "I want it". North8000 (talk) 20:20, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
North8000 WOW! That's actually such a great idea I hadn't even considered it. I imagine people might be opposed to change just because it's not status quo but I think your suggestion makes a lot of sense. "Request" feels very uh can I pretty please have tools. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 22:06, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
That's a pretty brilliant reframing, North8000. Schazjmd (talk) 22:11, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
That renaming neatly moves the emphasis from gaining a privilege to taking on a duty, which might help to encourage good candidates. Certes (talk) 22:21, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
No thank you. Why? Well then we'd have to move all the current "Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/USERNAME" pages to "Wikipedia:Volunteers for adminship/USERNAME". And it isn't a problem worth solving. We were doing fine with RfA, we don't need to change it. We have promotional articles on this website, and here we're worrying about the name of a venue for discussion??? This just wastes time that could be used to like, improve the encyclopedia? If this was on the main proposals area this thing would be spammed with opposes, I bet you. Cranloa12n / talk / contribs / 00:28, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
CAT:RFA informs us that there have been roughly 5,000 RfAs throughout wikihistory, successful and unsuccessful. That's a lot for a single person to move around and maybe enough to just get a bot to do it, but hardly grounds for outrage on its own. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 06:48, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Per Dr. Duh. It's a matter of hours if done by a bot, which wouldn't waste anyone's time. From what I see in the latest draft of Administrators' newsletter, we are on track to losing 5 Admins to inactivity this month, and gaining only 1 new Admin. A net decrease of 4. So far in 2022, we've had a net loss of 4, 6 and 1 Admins per month. Back in the 2006–08 period there were an average of more than 1 RfA every day to replenish the ranks. Now it's about 2 every month. Administrators do a very important job in maintaining the project. *If* a name change or anything else has the potential to change the picture, we should seriously consider that. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 07:55, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
No. Rfa will not become better just because we decide to change its name. It will still be the same vetting, the same opposes and supports. Again, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Cranloa12n / talk / contribs / 13:05, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Well, will it be worse, Cranloa12n? — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 13:09, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
No, but it's a pointless change. Cranloa12n / talk / contribs / 13:11, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Cranloa12n if you wish to oppose a future proposal feel free to do so, but IL is to draft ideas and brainstorm. Not very useful to discourage editors from an idea because you don't see benefit nor harm from the idea in my opinion. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 13:39, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
There is nothing to draft here. The proposal to change the name is simply redundant. Cranloa12n / talk / contribs / 13:41, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
if it ain't broke, don't fix it General consensus for a few years now seems to be that it is indeed broken. Anomie⚔ 15:48, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
The process is broken, yes; but its name isn't the root cause of that breakage. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:44, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
User:Ahecht/Scripts/massmove could move them all in about 5 hours if you just pasted in the list and let it run. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 03:13, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Half a Scorsese movie, Ahecht! :D — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 09:02, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
There's nothing in the idea that requires retrofitting history or renaming everything that happened in the past. Schazjmd (talk) 15:42, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
@Cranloa12n Why would we have to move past RFAs? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:20, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
It's hard to indicate you are open to an RfA without appearing to be a hat collector. I seem to recall one prominent editor had a list of things that would disqualify someone from being an admin, one of them was having a userbox such as {{User wikipedia/Administrator someday}} on their user page. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:22, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
VfA could be either of two things. It could answer Ixtal's question by being a better precursor to RfA than the userbox. Alternatively, it could be a rebranding of RfA, which might solve an important related problem. Certes (talk) 23:19, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
I like the idea of the whole process being rebranded. Even though it doesn't (of itself) change anything (yet) about how admin permissions are assigned, that one word difference in the name casts it in a different perspective. And maybe that different perspective might lead to more of us being more open to other improvements to the process. Schazjmd (talk) 23:34, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
In the dark ages, people who were ready for adminship could just self-nominate and pass RfA. —Kusma (talk) 07:02, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Some editors are in the odd position that they could have passed RfA 5–10 years ago but, despite continuing to improve gradually, wouldn't now. I'd like to think that is due to increasing numbers of better-qualified candidates, but the admin count doesn't support that theory. Certes (talk) 20:06, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
My theory is that some highly qualified non-admins (who should probably be admins) subconsciously apply the "I am better than the candidate and I am not an admin" standard in the wrong way: instead of running for RfA, they make it hard for others to pass. —Kusma (talk) 08:41, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

The "unsolvable" no-new-admin problem could be solved easily by three relatively easy changes:

  • Something like that above that shifts the ground so that it makes it clear that volunteers are saying "I'm willing to serve" rather than "I want it"
  • Organize RFA/VFA discussions to shift discussions more towards reviewing for needed qualities rather than the random gauntlet that we have now
  • Strengthen the advice that is already weakly in admin guidance that it's expected that only more experienced admins should be doing the really heavy duty stuff like blocking experienced editors. Without that, the mop really IS a big deal and so reviewers place a very high bar accordingly.

North8000 (talk) 01:22, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Given how hard we've been trying to fix RfA for a decade now, I feel like there's no way the fix is going to be easy. The main problem of RfA recruitment at the moment is not that editors are "willing to serve" but afraid of looking like they "want it"—rather, the problem is precisely that many qualified editors are not "willing to serve" in the first place because of the intense and stressful scrutiny you have to endure at RfA in order to serve. It seems like your second bullet point is trying to offer a solution to that, but at the moment, it's a little vague. The English Wikipedia currently has no official standards for what qualities are needed to be an administrator—RfA right now is mostly a free-for-all of editors applying their own views of what the necessary qualifications should be. Defining the necessary qualifications more rigorously does not strike me as an easy task—I suspect the RfC will result in no consensus, at best. Anyway, to answer the question presented by the thread, if you are interested in becoming an administrator, the best way to indicate that interest at the moment is to reach out to someone you trust on this list (either on their user talk page or by email) and start a conversation. Mz7 (talk) 08:28, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Mz7 I wonder if you could also contact people in that list at random? It might be intimidating having to "pick" one (or a few) of the names on the list. ORCP has a similar vibe but also has some hat collector stigma (at least if you read some of the comments on leeky's recent RfA). — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 11:13, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ixtal: Hmm, yeah, I can definitely see how it can be a little intimidating. My recommendation would be to see if there's anyone on the list that you've had good interactions with—even if only once or twice. Alternatively, if you've never interacted with any of them, try to see if there's someone on the list that you've seen around and have a generally good impression of. I would also recommend reaching out over email. Messaging privately could make it easier for the person to provide more candid feedback, and even if they don't offer to nominate you now, this would put you on their radar for the future. Mz7 (talk) 00:41, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Oh Mz7 I don't plan to run, hope my comments above didn't lead to that interpretation. I still have a few years of learning and improving to do, and adminship is not necessary for me to contribute productively. I know for me at least there's a few people in the list who I interact frequently with so I'd ask them, but other editors that are not as big of a metapedian as I am might be intimidated by all the big names. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 06:41, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Mz7 All good points but IMO so are mine. BTW, I was not thinking of trying to define qualifications and turn RFA/VFA into an RFC. I was imagining a softer change. Just list some needed qualities and provide suggestions to comment on those overall. The real test case isn't recent RFA's which is mostly people who have 100% kept their head low their whole wiki-life. The real test case will be someone who has been experienced and active and has not kept their head low. If we ever get one..... North8000 (talk) 13:13, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
I disagree that recent successful candidates have kept their heads low their whole wiki-life. Looking at the last five successful candidates, I think that's somewhat fair for 2 of them - Colin and Modus. But Blablubbs is/was all over SPI, Firefly is/was an arbcom clerk, and Sdrqaz has never been shy about expressing their opinions. I am not sure what conclusion to draw from the "near unanimous support" or "withdraw" that we've seen in the last 8 or so months but I think it's a bit too glib to just say they've kept their heads low and that's what distinguishes them from those who didn't pass. FWIW, the idea of having formal qualities for admin was discussed a fair amount in WP:RFA2021 and ran into some real opposition I think you'd find that difficult to pass. The RFA/VFA piece is the most intriguing thought here but also feels like something that would have an impact at the margins, to the extent it actually does any change, in terms of how the reframe would impact voting.
If people want to change RfA, the idea of temporary adminship and admin elections both were closed at RFA2021 as having the chance to pass in a modified form. I hope someone would think about trying to get one of those ideas across the finish line. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:05, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
That's not quite how I meant my post....my fault because it was too short to explain. But vaguely speaking, the more experienced that they are the more likely that they will encounter stuff at RFA that would discourage them from volunteering. North8000 (talk) 12:27, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
The proposal could put us in the strange editors make public their wish to be admins, but once they become admins you can't tell that they are unless you look through RfAs. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 09:18, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

In an alternate universe...

I just found myself wondering what would happen if all editors who met X number of edits and Y years here with a clean block log were automatically given the tools with the understanding that they were under no obligation to use them unless they wished to...but that if they wished to, it was incumbent on them to pursue how to do so appropriately...along with more of a 'guilty until proven innocent' approach regarding potential misuse of the tools, since something that's so freely given should be freely taken away if there's concerns. In other words, if someone opened an ANI case, an editor would lose access to the admin tools until the ANI case was resolved in their favor, or they'd lose the tools in the same way as they might be subjected to a block. In a nutshell, take the claim that adminship should be no big deal to perhaps its farthest extreme. I can't imagine this would ever happen, but I found it a compelling thought experiment. DonIago (talk) 17:55, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Doniago, see Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Automatically grant adminship to users with a certain number of edits or time editing. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 18:06, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Fair enough! DonIago (talk) 18:10, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
That's actually not that far off from the VERY early days of Wikipedia. The first crop of admins were people who asked nicely. As long as you were relatively experienced, the process was much less involved than it is today. Given the relative growth in editorship, readership, and size of the 'pedia, that's understandable. --Jayron32 18:24, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
I do wonder what the real worst-case scenario would be if adminship was given out under those parameters. Yes, experienced editors can and do get into trouble all the time, which is why removing the tools would need to be simplified as well, but theoretically one would hope an editor with that level of experience would at least be making good-faith edits. Anyway, I doubt this kind of radical reworking will ever see the light of day (again). As a completely objective example (coughs), I have a clean block log, and I've been editing long enough that it's hard for me to believe that anyone would really think I'd abuse the tools if I had them. I think it's more a question of whether I'd ever use them for the kinds of editing I tend to focus on. DonIago (talk) 18:49, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
The yearly admin stats go back to Wikipedia:Successful requests for adminship/2003. In there, you will find many instances of "/0/0" in the tally column, indicating 100% support. But look closer - quite a few have less than 10 supports, one of them even has a tally of 1/0/0. It was so easy in those days. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:49, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
More to the point though...did those admins who passed so easily prove at least as competent as those who were subjected to more scrutiny? If the majority of people who would become admins via an automated process would be perfectly competent, then there's a reasonable argument as to why do we have an RfA process that's essentially gatekeeping and if anything making it more likely that those who are expressing an interest are those who "want it" (because you need to jump through the hoops to get the tools)? What's the goal of the RfA process? DonIago (talk) 13:23, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
I think that the intent and role is sound (review process to give someone the tools and the roles). But in it's current state, it also does harm. By the numbers, it has made defacto criteria for being an admin "got in a long time ago when it was painless and easy" North8000 (talk) 14:00, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
I wonder how it would impact Oppose !votes if it was explicit that one shouldn't be opposing based on single incidents or vague fears, but rather strong beliefs that someone as an admin would do a bad job, and that they needed to exhibit a clear pattern of problematic behavior. DonIago (talk) 14:41, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
It doesn't really matter. If 45% of the oppose votes are total bullshit, they still stand, and sink a candidate that would otherwise make a good admin. There is no mechanism for "making" people vote based on valid criteria. You can have one person vote "Oppose, the candidate smells funny" and then 100 other people chime in with "Oh, yes, I agree that they smell funny, I also oppose" and there's no reasonable mechanism to stop that. --Jayron32 14:47, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Isn't the whole point of !voting supposed to be that arguments are discarded if they're baseless? If what you're saying is the case, then either someone isn't doing their job by discarding the meritless !votes, or the system really is very broken. DonIago (talk) 14:50, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, but in practice that only works for when there are only a few of such arguments. Repetition legitimizes, and when a large number of people oppose for a bullshit reason, it really doesn't matter if the reason is bullshit. It starts to look legitimate from the appearance of consensus on the matter. Unlike an AFD, where bad votes sometimes lead to the wrong results and we can do a quick re-run, a bad RFA can have an un-recoverable affect on the candidate's relationship with the Wikipedia community. A small number of people who have an axe to grind can sink an otherwise stellar candidacy, and the chances of that person never applying for RFA again, indeed of even leaving Wikipedia for the harassment are high. The issue with "not a vote" discussions is that, at the volume of commenting that happens at RFA, it basically is a vote. --Jayron32 14:57, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
If what you're saying is true (not to impugn your honesty!), then it sounds as though it either needs to be acknowledged that RfA is a vote, or the process needs to be rewritten/strengthened to bring it back to not being a vote. DonIago (talk) 15:03, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
It seems from my conversations with people that at this point it's already an open secret that it is a vote, but it is not entirely clear how much of a problem that is (see Arbcom elections for example for explicit votes that are very legitimate). — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 15:05, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Any time you present people with a binary option, like "support" or "oppose", it's a vote. We can pretend all we want that it isn't a vote, but once you make it an either/or issue, then it is a vote. We can say it is a weighted vote, where particularly good or bad rationales can swing the weight of the vote one way or the other, but it's a still a vote. One possibility is that you get rid of the "support/oppose" mechanism, and just require people to write their opinions out freely. However, if you got rid of the terminology, it's still "do I think this person should be an admin or shouldn't they", and you just make it harder for someone to assess whether the support is strong enough to grant someone the bit. I mean, look at any RFA. Most of the support votes are equivalent of "Yeah, they'd do a good job, give them the tools", which contains no real rationale for voting, it's just a restatement of the concept of support. But if someone gets 250 of those kind of votes, and like 3 highly detailed opposes, are you really saying that we want that RFA to fail? --Jayron32 15:55, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
I agree completely, Jayron32. That's why it kind of confuses me when editors really are serious about no-rationale opposes but have no issue with no-rationale supports. It's kind of strong-arming people into giving vague comments when it's just a vote. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 16:17, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Well, the reason why no-context opposes tend to be ignored is that the vote is really "Can you think of a good reason why this person shouldn't be an admin?" If one cannot think of such a good reason, then they should get the bit. --Jayron32 16:21, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Well if you cant articulate why you think they deserve the tools why give it to them, Jayron32? — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 16:42, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Did you even read the nomination??? The nominator literally wrote several paragraphs why the person deserves the tools, AND there are often co-nominators who also have laid out a convincing case why a person should get the admin bit. If I concur with the nomination, then it needs nothing more than my agreement that the nomination is sound. The case for giving them the tools has been made before I even gave my support. I don't need to repeat it, do I? Whereas a person who opposes the nomination without context doesn't have anything to cosign or endorse in the same way a support vote does. --Jayron32 17:12, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Woah I hope I didn't sound passive-aggressive in my question above, Jayron32. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 17:29, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
You told me I needed to articulate a reason for my support in order for it to be valid. I was trying to explain to you why that wasn't always necessary. To repeat the extensive nomination statement that accompanies an RFA with every support vote is onerous and unnecessary. Whereas oppose votes don't have an similarly detailed rational to cosign. You told me I was doing something wrong because I didn't "articulate why you think they deserve the tools" (your words, not mine). I was flummoxed because such a statement would only be made by someone who clearly didn't know that RFA nominations are always accompanied by at least one, and often several, independent nominations that lay out that articulated reason. --Jayron32 17:33, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
I appreciate the explanation for why it isn't necessary to articulate supports, I was just surprised by the tone of the message. I didn't entirely understand why you implicitly believed there was no issue with blank supports and I'm glad you explained your perspective to me. I perhaps came off a bit weirdly in my question. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 17:50, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Me as well. Sorry to have misread your tone. It is hard to interpret tone when reading text. Mea culpa. --Jayron32 11:18, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Arguments are discarded if baseless when the discussion is assessed as a whole. Under current RfA procedure that does not happen unless bureaucrats get involved, AFAIK. — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 15:04, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Each commenter has the freedom to determine what factors they will consider to evaluate a candidate. With English Wikipedia's consensus-based decision-making traditions, one's viewpoint can only be considered meritless if there is a consensus. It's difficult to do this for most opinions, since they usually consider multiple factors. (In the past, I've proposed focusing the discussion on the individual pro and con arguments, so consensus could be found for or against each, but there hasn't been much support for this change.) isaacl (talk) 15:47, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Easier to Understand User Guides

Hello!

I recently joined Wikipedia and if I'm honest, getting started has been a nightmare. A lot of this site relies on HTML/Sytax which is not user friendly. Additionally, all of the help pages are hard to reach and difficult to find. Many of them are not written in a way that is understandable to a new user. I think we could best amend this by introducing user guides formatted in visual way. This would be digestible to an individual accustom to the functionality of those sites. Perhaps video tutorials which show a user exactly how to create a new article or use a feature, an article written book-style that links to all avaliable help pages, and less reliance on HTML. I know this would take a ton of work but it would invite more users to Wikipedia without the hassle of googling each help page and digging to learn all of the terminology before entering. CherriGasoline (talk) 04:29, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

@CherriGasoline, see Help:Introduction for a newer tutorial on editing Wikipedia that includes the Visual Editor. Many of our welcome messages have not been updated yet and just link to using the WikiText editor. StarryGrandma (talk) 19:43, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Improving WikiMarkup Editing Platform

Current Editing Interface

Editing played a major role in the formation of our Wikipedia, and it continues to, in the growth of it. People can edit Wikipedia in two ways: WikiMarkup or VisualEditor. Now, both have their pros and cons.


WikiMarkup Has:


- More features

- Professional editors are used to it

- It is a major part of WikiCulture


but


- It is a giant mess.

- It is intimidating to newbies

- It therefore makes an impression that Wikipedia is hard to edit, and scares away people with valuable information, who can contribute here.


But, that doesn't always need to mean that newbies have to hide in the shelter of VisualEditor, who now can only provide so much. If this Markup becomes more organised, less intimidating and makes a good impression among people (it is easy, but feels hard), I believe we will see more editors coming to contribute.

Unfriendly Notepad HTML

This also reminds me of HTML, during the early days of the internet. HTML was edited in a very unfriendly Notepad. Nothing is color coded, you can barely see where are the opening and closing tags, and things were a mess.


But then came the range of more comfortable editors. Notepad ++, and many more came with a new design, one that had light and dark modes, one where different tags were color coded, one where it told you where the opening and closing tags were, and most of all, corrected errors. (unclosed tags, etc.).


I propose the same for WikiMarkup.



Regards, Narutmaru . To contact me, visit my Talk Page. 09:42, 27 April 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Narutmaru (talk • contribs)

A very (crude) attempt at making a mock image.
Regards, Narutmaru . To contact me, visit my Talk Page. 09:55, 27 April 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Narutmaru (talk • contribs)
Narutmaru, I brought this up recently in a different thread which was also started by you, but you may have missed my response. What you're looking for is Wikitext editor syntax highlighting, which can be activated with the press of a single button.
On a different note, your signature seems to screw with the autosign bot, as demonstrated above. Probably shorten it somewhat to avoid this. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 10:53, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Is my signature ok now? Narutmaru(Talk) 11:23, 27 April 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Narutmaru (talk • contribs)
Narutmaru, still isn't, by the looks of it. I suspect the many superfluous spaces (every single one in this string: [[ User: Narutmaru |Narutmaru]][[ User talk: Narutmaru |(Talk)]]) may have something to do with it. You can either delete those, or just revert to the standard signature by blanking the "Signature" field in your account preferences. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 11:58, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
@Narutmaru: Lose all of the spaces, except for the ones outside the links and the one in "User talk". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:37, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Time Machine

I'm aware this would take enormous effort and time, but it would be a really cool and useful feature. Imagine selecting a time period or year, and all historical articles detailing people, places, or things that were in existence at the time, (perhaps excluding the 1950s onward), would reflect the current state of affairs in a country: Who is the current ruler, what territories were yielded/taken, etc. For example, I put in 984 A.D. I type in Richard I of Normandy. It returns something like this: "Richard I (28 August 932 – present), also known as Richard the Fearless, has served as the count of Rouen since 942." So on and so forth. Again, I realize this would be a monumental task, but I think it would be an invaluable research tool, simply to get an idea of the way things were at the time, rather than sifting through "Richard I (28 August 932 – 20 November 996), also known as Richard the Fearless (French: Richard Sans-Peur; Old Norse: Jarl Rikard), was the count of Rouen from 942 to 996.[1] Dudo of Saint-Quentin, whom Richard commissioned to write the "De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum" (Latin, "On the Customs and Deeds of the First Dukes of Normandy"), called him a dux. However, this use of the word may have been in the context of Richard's renowned leadership in war, and not as a reference to a title of nobility.[2][3] Richard either introduced feudalism into Normandy or he greatly expanded it. By the end of his reign, the most important Norman landholders held their lands in feudal tenure.[4]" Please discuss. Lincoln1809 (talk) 00:08, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

It might be possible with a semantic wiki. -- GreenC 00:54, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
This sounds extremely fun, but would need to be somehow automated to be useful (so, another vote for the semantic wiki idea). Also, random but: if this is the kind of world you dream of, you might like playing the Europa Universalis games. Rileyzzz (talk) 23:58, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Plenty of hunting accidents on ITN, I'd imagine, Rileyzzz! — Ixtal ⁂ (talk) 16:37, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
It might be possible with Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions, but I doubt it would be their first priority. Certes (talk) 12:33, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
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