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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). 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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Wanted: a WP:LAWRS

I think that is it generally agreed that WP:MEDRS has been a success in keeping frivolous and questionable medical assertions out of the encyclopedia. As an attorney approaching two decades in practice, I can not tell you how many times I have seen mainstream media outlets reporting on legal matters from what I would call a Hollywood understanding of how the law works, rather than a practical legal understanding. This extends to understanding the burdens (or absence of burdens) for filing a civil claim or a criminal charge, the legal insignificance of "dramatic" witness testimony, and the importance of technicalities on which cases sometimes hinge. There needs to be an extra level of vetting for legal reporting to ensure that the sources used to support legal claims are not only reliable sources in terms of their editorial policies, but are also competent in their comprehension of the law. BD2412 T 23:55, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

There is already WP:RSLAW, which is an essay (like WP:SCIRS and others but not MEDRS). It seems pretty thorough, however it is almost exclusively focused on US law, practice, style, and RS. If you look at any topic dealing with ongoing wars for example, international law or various foreign jurisdictions get brought up all the time, which is entirely different and inevitably gets garbage sourcing in articles.

One could even have a more general RS overview about sourcing technical factual subject matter that could then be applied a bit more liberally across the board. (Just because RSLAW is US-only doesn't mean their guidance about sourcing isn't relevant to a situation when a British newspaper posts some dubious statement about how their law works -- the chorus is too often "an RS is an RS" and "it's just an essay".) SamuelRiv (talk) 01:28, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

There's also WP:HISTRS, which I think serves as a cautionary tale. They wanted to have use the best, most scholarly sources for everything, defining "history" very broadly and declaring that any subject that any historian ever wrote about was now a history subject and should only be sourced to scholarly works written by historians. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

The other side of the coin is that there are a lot of people who want to try to draw out the implications of a case from the court filings, including the decision (less a problem) and filing and amicus briefs (far more a problem). We should not try to get so far in to the weeds of writing about legal cases that requires using these sources save for what they say plain as face (such as reporting the holding and concurrences/dissents from the front matter of a SCOTUS case), and instead rely on third-party judgements as to what parts to highlight to a wider audience. Masem (t) 02:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Both LAWRS and a HISTRS policies would be awesome. Limiting history to historical scholarship is kind of a no-brainer. Law is tougher, though -- it's not as simple as limiting sources to scholarship because of current events -- but that's all the more reason to have guidance. Levivich (talk) 04:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Just because there's current events doesn't mean we should quote a non-expert assessment of how the law works, especially if it's patent nonsense, as is frequently happening now in our current event articles. Information from an otherwise-reliable news outlet that says such-and-such is a war crime is useless for WP unless it is doing so quoting an expert or by an expert reporter. (In some cases such quotes are implicit, as in they were interviewing such an expert elsewhere in the same article and then making a technical statement of fact later -- this is commonly seen in newspaper science reporting, for example.) This should be uncontroversial. SamuelRiv (talk) 11:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

A lot of current events legal cases simply don't have any reliable sources other than news media. Levivich (talk) 16:54, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

A non-specialist journalist can be an RS for what is factually happening. They are not an RS for interpreting technical knowledge into those events. So if a NYT beat reporter writes

"A man was arrested for biting a dog on 5th Avenue yesterday. Biting a dog is illegal under statutes prohibiting cruelty to animals. The prosecutor said they will instead pursue charges of jaywalking."

Sentence 1 is reliably sourced, while sentence 2 is not, because the reporter and editor typically have no expertise (that is claimed in this scenario) to be able to assess the law in that way. (Law is complicated -- it may not actually be cruelty to animals for the man to bite a dog because of some later legislation, or some obscure precedent.) Sentence 3 may be factual, but the word "instead" is linked to the reporter's claim in sentence 2, so it'd be problematic to quote. However, if the reporter was not just some beat journalist but was instead the NYT SCOTUS/legal correspondent, then sentence 2 and 3 would indeed be reliably sourced. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:54, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I have seen a fair number of cases where an article subject has been, for example, subject to a civil (but not criminal) proceeding for something like an FTC or SEC violation, had all but one count dismissed (or been found liable on only one count), and been reported on like they were convicted of a serious crime when all they got was a small fine for a technical breach. I have also seen plenty of reporting of dramatic civil case filings that went nowhere. I think we need to be particularly careful with how these are presented in BLPs. Literally anyone can file a lawsuit alleging a wrong and seeking, let's say eleventy-billion dollars in damages. That doesn't mean that the claim would withstand the scrutiny of anyone having any a modicum of knowledge of how the law works. BD2412 T 19:53, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

That points to a fact that if we do make a LAWRS, BLP is going to be a significant part of that, particularly BLPCRIME. Even if several media sources claim something prior to any conviction or sentencing, we need to take particular care to frame it or even if it is necessary to include. While BLP doesn't apply to companies or the like, the same principles should still be taken into account, too. Masem (t) 01:43, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how BLPCRIME would be require anything more than a passing reference to some general technical RS essay. There are verifiable biographical facts that a news outlet may report -- "he got arrested and charged with x crime" -- and there are technical evaluations that can only be made by qualified people -- "what is asserted in the indictment can be considered y which is a crime". It's the same BLP guideline as always. The main point of an LAWRS essay, as is the main point MEDRS, SCIRS, HISTRS, etc, is that most of the time even factual connections that seem obvious must have expert sources, because this stuff is usually more complicated than it looks. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:27, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a far deeper issue than BLPCRIME, though. I have seen plenty of articles where civil litigation was blown vastly out of proportion. Literally anyone can file a civil claim against literally anyone else, and can claim whatever they want in the complaint. Throughout civil litigation there are picayune rulings on the admissibility of pieces or evidence or minor points of law, with the parties jockeying to claim that any ruling won is a significant event. BD2412 T 22:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand yet what the proposed approach to Literally anyone can file a civil claim against literally anyone else is. Regardless of the legal merits of a given case, filing is an event that happened, it's in the public record, and if meets notability, then it meets notability. If the concern is that a media outlet may take an accusation presented in a filing and report the accusation as a fact, then I totally get that, yet I'm not sure that any media source that already meets WP:RS would do that, because they need to limit their own exposure. Is there a recent example of an article taking a claim in a filing and presenting it as a fact that we can look at? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 22:47, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

SamuelRiv, I beg to disagree. Identifying living people who have only been accused of crime (but not yet found guilty) is a widespread problem on Wikipedia, with many editors claiming that "because some reliable sources do it, we can do it, too". Some esp. American editors don't seem to grasp that such an identification is outright illegal in many non-US legal systems (e.g., in most of Europe). I've been battling this attitude first in Murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German, more recently in Killing of Wadea Al-Fayoume. It gives no pleasure to be seen arguing, seemingly, on behalf of a likely criminal. I would therefore consider having an extended, detailed guideline as incredibly helpful. — kashmīrī ^TALK 22:42, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Levivich, I disagree that Limiting history to historical scholarship is kind of a no-brainer. We don't need any sort of serious scholarship behind statements like "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States" or "The United Kingdom declared war on Germany in 1939, two days after the invasion of Poland". These are undisputed, simple facts; a school textbook for 12 year olds should be more than sufficient for being sure that we've got those right.

We also don't need to limit our sources exclusively to scholarly publication by historians, as has been argued by proponents of HISTRS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The difference is that MEDRS is universal, its the same for every person. When it comes to medicine we're all under the same jurisdiction per say because we're all human. There is no universality in law, especially at the level which you appear to want to pursue this. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

This is an important point but I'd say it's exactly the sort of thing that a LAWRS should explain. For example, just as WP:MEDORG explains the differences between different medical organizations, a WP:LAWJURIS could explain that there exist different legal jurisdictions and levels of courts (internationally and domestically). Similarly, in the same way that WP:MEDASSESS explains the difference between different kinds of medical papers, a WP:LAWASSESS could explain the difference between legal treatises, law review articles, lower court decisions vs. high court opinions, even with a section akin to WP:MEDPOP called WP:LAWPOP addressing the popular press and its Hollywood understanding of the law, and the difference between legal journalism and popular journalism. Levivich (talk) 04:31, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes you would need all of that and by the time you were done you would have a 400k byte behemoth (and likely a large number of country specific pages). You would also have created a scholarly work of significant merit, nobody to my knowledge has ever attempted a truly comprehensive overview of the entire global legal landscape... The stumbling block for most is customary law and antiquated idiosyncrasy (for example colonial laws still being in force long after the end of colonialism and the abandonment of such laws by the colonizer) which prevents the sort of claims you can make about the body in law that you can make about medicine. In medicine there is truth, in law there is not. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I said explain that there exist different legal jurisdictions, not enumerate them all :-) Levivich (talk) 20:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

• This is special pleading. Mass media sources such as journalism are obviously weak with any technical topic. But that's a general issue and so applies across all such topics – engineering, chemistry, linguistics, economics and so on. It's not clear why law should be picked out for a special policy.

Medicine seems to get special attention because bad advice can be life-threatening. But the same might be said of our coverage of military tactics, adventure sports, exploration, religion and so on. But everything on Wikipedia is subject to the same legal disclaimer,

WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY

Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate, or reliable information. If you need specific advice (for example, medical, legal, financial, or risk management), please seek a professional who is licensed or knowledgeable in that area.

In particular,

WIKIPEDIA DOES NOT GIVE LEGAL OPINIONS

Wikipedia contains articles on many legal topics; however, no warranty whatsoever is made that any of the articles are accurate. There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained in an article touching on legal matters is true, correct, or precise.

Nothing on Wikipedia.org or of any project of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., should be construed as an attempt to offer or render a legal opinion...

But a problem with these disclaimers is that they are hidden in the fine print at the foot of every page. If you dress up a topic with impressive professional sources and make it seem to be credible and comprehensive then you're passing off by making it appear that Wikipedia is high quality and reliable, when it isn't and can't be.

Andrew🐉(talk) 20:06, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I think you should review your last sentence in particular, because it contradicts the entire concept of an encyclopedia (or expository writing in general). SamuelRiv (talk) 20:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

No, you need to go read the disclaimers which are at the foot of this and every other page. See also Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Its lack of reliability is fundamental. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd be interested in seeing a draft to see how this would be handled differently from our existing policies. Mostly because I think the topic is fundamentally distinct from MEDRS and HISTRS in that (I believe) those guidelines were created to exclude sources widely and consistently recognized as unreliable, such as those claiming that Coca-Cola can cure cancer or that the pyramids were built by space dolphins. I'm not sure that the field of law has quite the same problem. Yes, there are sensational articles and dumb Hollywood representations, but I know that these issues exist for any field— ask me how many times the field of commercial aviation is routinely mangled in such— which is why we already don't cite action movies or certain tabloids as reliable sources. By way of example, today I ran across this article about a recent US Supreme Court ruling in a "popular" newspaper; are there any issues in that article which indicate that ordinary journalism which already meets WP:RS cannot handle the task of accurately reporting on topics of law? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 01:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there are sensational articles and dumb Hollywood representations, but I know that these issues exist for any field— ask me how many times the field of commercial aviation is routinely mangled in such— which is why we already don't cite action movies or certain tabloids as reliable sources. The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is relevant here. We all notice the places where general-audience media gets the technical details of our own areas of expertise wrong, and conclude "ah-ha! what wikipedia needs is more guidance on how to find reliable sources about widget manufacturing!" when in fact what wikipedia needs is for people to be more careful about source use in all fields. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

As I note in my previous examples, and you will see if you look at any articles on ongoing wars, an otherwise reliable source like the Guardian will publish something like "Country A uses X weapon. Using X weapon is a war crime under IHL per Geneva Convention IV." Unless that reporter is quality a RS on international law or is themselves a RS on law then that kind of statement cannot be cited in an article. However, such citations are seen all over articles on ongoing wars.

The reason for having subject-matter RS essays is because editors will time and again say "An RS is an RS." Even here, several commenters seem convinced that law is not sufficiently complex or nuanced (or, alternatively, it is too nuanced and nebulous?) to warrant such special consideration. This is why such essays are needed. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd call that "legal journalism" not "popular journalism." More broadly, I don't think the problem arises much for Supreme Court opinions -- they're always covered by legal journalism (such as that NYT article) -- but rather for lower court decisions, especially ongoing litigation. Levivich (talk) 18:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Also there's basically a working draft already in existence at WP:RSLAW, which makes most of the main points (albeit descriptive rather than prescriptive, as it's an essay). Levivich (talk) 18:30, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. I was happy to see that it has an important scoping principle right up front ("This essay is about sources that attempt mainly to state the law itself, and not about sources that attempt mainly to state the effects or impacts of the law") that goes a long way to allieviating my personal concerns about any future guidelines being unnecessarily complicated or restrictive. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 00:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• I've been thinking about this, and I've come to the view that for an encyclopaedist, law is generally an easier topic to write about than medicine. With legal topics, you can draw on published laws and published judgments, in which judges explain what the law is and give reasons for their decisions. (Diseases aren't so helpful.) I would say that a judgment that hasn't been overturned by a higher court or subsequent law, is a 100% reliable statement of what the law is in the relevant country. And because it comes from a judge, it's necessarily neutral and unbiased. (Pharmaceutical firms' statements about their products aren't so helpful.)
  With that in mind, I'd certainly agree that a LAWRS would be helpful, but I don't feel it needs all the force and rigour we associate with MEDRS.—S Marshall T/C 09:45, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  You've described maybe (a guess) 10% of what law is, and maybe 2% of the sourcing about law on WP. SamuelRiv (talk) 14:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  So we can trust North Korean judges? Its an interesting argument, but you clearly haven't thought all that much about this if you are still operating under the impression that every judge in the world is necessarily neutral and unbiased. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  As I said: A North Korean judgment that hasn't been overturned by a higher court or subsequent law, is a 100% reliable statement of what the law is in North Korea.—S Marshall T/C 17:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  With legal topics, you can draw on published laws and published judgments, in which judges explain what the law is and give reasons for their decisions ... I would say that a judgment that hasn't been overturned by a higher court or subsequent law, is a 100% reliable statement of what the law is in the relevant country. No! This is exactly the kind of misconception that LAWRS could clear up. Published laws and published judgments are primary sources for "what the law is" (at least in common law jurisdictions), and a judgment that hasn't been overturned is not a reliable statement of what the law is... there are all sorts of reasons why not, depending on what country you're in. I've run across this exact misconception before -- an editor who did not know what a circuit split was wrote an article based on a particular circuit court decision as if that decision -- because it hadn't been overturned by the US Supreme Court -- applied nationwide, when in fact, it did not. I'd say this is the exact kind of misconception that people have about the law that results in errors in articles. One thing I'd want LAWRS to say is: do not cite directly to court opinions for statements of the law, instead use secondary sources (like law treatises, law review articles, and legal--not popular--journalism). (Which is what WP:RSLAW already says). Levivich (talk) 18:32, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  In the US, each state has its own laws and its own courts. Even in the Federal courts, it is common for judges in different districts to issue different opinions. Only if and when the supreme court passes judgement is there a RS for the US law on those issues. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  Judges are expected to be neutral and unbiased, but in the US at least, there exists the occasional judge who operates as an overt partisan hack. Per WP:BLP (BLP adjacent?), I'm not providing examples. :) Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:22, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

• A judge's ruling is, most of the time, going to be a WP:PRIMARY source. A high-quality primary source, but still a primary source, with all the caveats that come with that. In particular, legal language can be fairly obtuse to a casual reader, an even experts can disagree on precisely what some precedent means; so discussing the law in any practical sense beyond a bare-minimum quote is going to require a secondary source, and for highly-controversial issues even a direct primary quote might raise WP:OR / WP:SYNTH concerns if it's used in a way that implies something that may not be directly obvious from the source itself. That said, I'm not sure we need something like MEDRS simply because, most of the time, the risk of harm is lower. There may be a few cases where a reader might get themselves in trouble by relying on Wikipedia for legal advice, but the vast majority of our legal-related articles are at a more abstract level than most readers are likely to involve themselves in anyway. --Aquillion (talk) 02:06, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

The problem with that is that what is and isn't a medical article and is under the scope of the medical sourcing restrictions is much narrower than what this would apply to. This hypothetical page is going to help the relatively few articles we have that are on purely law related constructs, but would not help at all (or would actively hinder) articles that are largely on people or events (which is what you point out) and would make sourcing for many articles impossible. I genuinely can't see what we could use as sources for the stuff you're talking about. Can we only say someone has been accused of a crime if it's published in a law textbook? There really is no way to rectify this without original research. There is no law equivalent of the kinds of sources medical pages would have.

And, as said above, medical consensus is consistent worldwide, while laws vary widely by country and subdivisions, and terms can mean completely contradictory things in different places.

The problem here is, Wikipedia reflects the press, and the press is often wrong about many things. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

•  Comment: I'm not sure a LAWRS is needed, but, as others have noted, I think it should definitely be clarified that statutory text or a judicial opinion is a primary source for legal writing, whereas law review articles and commentary on those decisions are secondary sources. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:51, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
• I like the idea of elevating RSLAW to a guideline, but I think that significant preparatory work needs to happen first. The page is a bit barebones, and law sourcing is not a light subject. I think it will be a challenge to condense what is really needs to be a full legal education into a guideline, but I think we could definitely do a better job than we currently do. If I have some time this month I'll try my hand at improving it. I think the page needs a discussion of international law (a tricky subject, separate from the law of individual countries), a paragraph/pointer to how Bluebook citation works, and some experts in the law of other countries to weigh in on how other countries might face unique issues. I also think a policy RfC might need to happen to clear up what seems to be the core issue here: when can an original decision be cited? I.e., is it a primary source? If so, when can it be used? How are we to treat secondary sources, which are rather varied in the law and have widely varying trustworthiness? I'm glad this discussion has been opened; I think there are a lot of sub-issues to be solved here first. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  This has caused me to find Wikipedia:Manual of Style/U.S. legal citations/Bluebook, which seems to have been forgotten about. But I think it might also be time to re-raise the issue of how Wikipedia deals with Bluebook citations. I've seen inconsistent use of Bluebook citations, and with no formal guidance on the subject, most users are probably not sure how to proceed. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Correction, there is formal guidance at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Legal, but its almost so insufficient as to be useless to anyone who doesn't own a copy of the Bluebook. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Different national jurisdictions tend to have a preferred style (which is what something like the BlueBook recommends to follow), and then there's a legal citation style for MLA, Chicago (not the open-access MaroonBook), Harvard, etc. For Wikipedia will we want, by necessity, source/reporter-agnostic citations, which is what many US jurisdictions have begun recommending or requiring (but some have notably not, or by law cannot). BlueBook is not an option -- among many reasons, their MOS is copyright.

  I have review notes of all this stuff from last summer when I was organizing a bunch of our legal citation templates and getting a CS1 extension coded. That said, citation styles are completely irrelevant to this discussion -- we're discussing RS for matters of law, not legal citations. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:59, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Of course Bluebook is an option. Editors can use any citation style they want, including styles whose official description is behind a paywall. See also Category:Bluebook style citation templates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  I recently brought a case article to FA, Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.. In § Decision, I cited secondary sources for each of the key holdings of the court's decision with additional citations to the pages of the court decision. In my view, if I had just cited the decision and wrote out my own interpretation of what the holding was, that would have been OR. I think in general, interpreting a court case is OR because litigants routinely argue over the meaning of a court's holding or attempt to distinguish them from other cases, and appellate courts routinely clarify their earlier holdings or resolve ambiguities. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:58, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  This seems to be the general problem with law – that it requires interpretation of natural language and this is often not precise or certain. But if interpreting the language of statutes and decisions is OR, then interpreting the language of secondary sources would be OR too. At some point, you just have to accept that texts mean what they say. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Here's some language from the US Constitution: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...." My question for you (and anyone else who wants to play): is Congress allowed to make a law that abridges free speech or the press? (By the way, this is not some matter of interpretation of language, but rather facts long established in US law.) SamuelRiv (talk) 23:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  The US Congress and state legislators regularly pass laws which are then found to be unconstitutional – here's a long list of them. US law is like Wikipedia policy – fuzzy and political. See WP:NOTLAW, WP:IAR, &c. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  By "can" I clearly meant "allowed to" under the Constitution. I don't know why you're linking WP meta pages here -- that response in itself should begin to indicate to you that you may be completely missing the point. SamuelRiv (talk) 11:12, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  Sameul, I'm unsure what your point is here. Instead of asking editors to answer a rhetorical question, just say what you want to say. As to voort's comment, I think they have a good point: many legal sources require interpretation, i.e. quality secondary sources such as journal articles. I like the strategy of citing both to the original case and a secondary source; that's also a good approach in some historical articles where you might cite both a contemporary source, and then a modern source which interprets that source. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 00:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  It's a concrete question with a real answer. It's a good way to illustrate why a lot of what has been argued in this thread is a bit absurd. As to your comment, this is already standard for how one cites any sources: case law is primary, so you cite a secondary source that reviews the primary, using any internal citation format, such as "SecondarySource, citing PrimarySource." This is not what the RSLAW essay is about. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:31, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  If your point is that interpretation of the free speech and press clause is not as simple as interpreting the language of the Constitution as written, then I agree with you.

  To respond to @Andrew Davidson's point, I think there's a distinction between interpreting a legal decision or a statute and reporting what a secondary source said, because I might read a decision or statute one way, but that reading may not comport with how RSes have interpreted those. For example, criminal law 1.01 might say "a person is guilty of x when they do y", but the courts may have interpreted that to mean "a person is guilty of x when the prosecution proves elements a, b, and c", even if 1.01 doesn't explicitly say that. Moreover, I might read the court decision interpreting 1.01 differently than the majority of RSes, or if I weren't a lawyer, I might misunderstand what that decision means entirely (for example, the word "reasonable" in law can have a very different meaning than how a layperson would understand it). It would be OR to advance my reading of the court decision interpreting 1.01 in a Wikipedia article, just with citations to the court decision and 1.01, rather than citing to available secondary sources summarizing those things. Indeed, we wouldn't even have an article on 1.01 or the court decision unless there were secondary sources establishing their notability, so why wouldn't we prefer using those rather than letting any editor on Wikipedia interpret those primary sources however they read them? voorts (talk/contributions) 00:44, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• A proposal: Given that there is some interest in this idea, but that it likely wouldn't gain any traction until there's a full-fledged proposal in place for a new guideline, I recommend that we close this thread for now and move conversation over to the RSLAW talk page, with notification to WP:LAW, and try fixing that up. I'm willing to work with CaptainEek and whoever else wants to join. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:56, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
  • @Voorts: I am amenable to that solution. I do want to be clear that my concern is not primarily with reporting on SCOTUS cases and federal statutes, but with sensationalized reporting on legal issues of ordinary BLP subjects. BD2412 T 13:24, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

    @BD2412 I agree that sensationalized law reporting is bad. But I'm not quite sure if that solution is distinct from "don't use bad sources" in the first place. Unless we're saying that lay reporting shouldn't be used for legal sources at all? Are you suggesting that any legal claim require citation to a journal, just as any medical claim requires a citation to a journal? I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but I think it might be harder to implement than MEDRS. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

    The complementary set of "lay reporting" isn't limited to academic journals -- that's absurd. Many times in this thread we've given examples of acceptable RS for law. For example, every major newspaper has a well-trained law/court correspondent, just like a (very few) news outlets have qualified science or data reporters. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:45, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  I agree and have added the page to my watchlist. Levivich (talk) 19:28, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

• Even if we have bright flashing disclaimers covering most of the page a significant number of people are going to take Wikipedia's word as gospel. After all many people believe what is written some drunken bozo on an Internet forum. This fact was recognised by the writers of WP:MEDRS and, because medical advice is often a matter of life and death, stricter rules have been applied for sourcing in this subject area. I'm sure that people can come up with some cases where legal advice is a matter of life and death, but it is rarely the case. Important, yes, but not that important. I don't consider the law to be enough of an exception to warrant a stricter guideline for sourcing than is generally the case. Of course essays can be written about sourcing in any subject area, and are often helpful. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  Urgency may be as valid as importance here. If a reader with a medical emergency discovers from Wikipedia that the recommended treatment is to stick beans up their nose, bad things may happen quickly before someone with a clue can intervene. If we give the reader poor legal advice, there is usually (though not always) time to seek a second opinion from a competent lawyer before acting on it. Certes (talk) 11:48, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I am not sure I understand a problem that needs to be solved (except for an expansion of WP:BLPCRIME to address civil litigation beyond WP:DUE). Reporting of any subject (not just law) could be excellent, adequate, or even misleading. We should always strive to find better sourcing, but I think we should err in most subjects towards inclusion and let the normal process of BRD work. (I strongly agree that WP:MEDRS is the exception to our normal principles). --Enos733 (talk) 22:58, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
  • BLP is the place where guardrails are most sorely needed, but there are plenty of articles on non-BLP entities that suffer from the same problems in portrayal of legal information. BD2412 T 04:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  My feelings are similar to Enos. It would be helpful to have examples where sourcing has been the cause of problems. In my (limited) experience reading through Wikipedia’s legal topics, the main problem seems to be that our coverage is lacking; my impression is that we just have fewer people with adequate legal expertise, so it’s just a question of man-hours.

  It may be worth considering areas differently—statutory law; criminal case law; civil case law; legal rules and principles; popular criminal trials—of course that last one seems to be easier to cover for the same reason that a new civil construction project is easier to cover than the novel engineering techniques that underlie it: there is just more coverage in digestible RSes when the public interest is there. The problem of bad mainstream coverage raised at the top seems a niche one, and I’m not sure how far a LAWRS would go to solving it. People who want to write about true crime topics are not the same people who want to cover legal topics.

  As I think about it, digestibility just might be the biggest hurdle. I also think good coverage of law subjects is going to be harder than coverage of equivalent(?) med subjects. It’s just easier to write plainly about things that are subject to scientific inquiry, or generally statements of fact. (It feels somehow connected to the is–ought dichotomy…) And this will affect both the level of sourcing out there, as well as the average ability for editors to cover the topic here. — HTGS (talk) 01:34, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  One potential example is Rupperswil murder case, where the sources confused the not-at-all identical meanings of "child" and "minor" under Swiss criminal law. And questionable discussion of whether the perp could get paroled at some point. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  Several law articles cite only to the court decision in summarizing its holding and more broadly lack citation to law reviews or other scholarly sources. See, for example, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which was just listed at GAR. In § Implications for theories of executive power, the only source cited is a Glenn Greenwald article. Although that's arguably an RS since Greenwald used to be a reliable legal commentator, no article would pass GA today without citation to several law review articles on that section's topic and others. Likewise, the sections of the article describing the Court's holding cite only to the decision itself, which, as I have noted above, is basically OR. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  Then it sounds like our current policies cover it. That GAR appears (correctly) doomed without the need for any additional regulation. Most of the discussion here seems to be around OR concerns, so maybe the right thing to do is include legal decisions as examples of primary sources in WP:PRIMARY. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  I think the point is that it would be useful to have some sort of guideline since it's hard for someone who isn't a lawyer to write about law topics without knowing where to begin their research. For example, I could see a good faith editor trying to write about a legal case while only citing to newspaper articles and without looking into the legal scholarship for more appropriate sourcing. It would be helpful if one could point those editors to an effective guide for doing legal research. That said, I'm not sure this needs to be elevated to the level of guideline; it might be appropriate as an explanatory essay, for example. In any event, I think some of us have agreed to start working on the essay to clean it up, so I think it's premature to determine what could happen in the end. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

• Just improve WP:RSLAW to be less US-centric. If you think something like that should eventually become a guideline, then draft a version in a sandbox that is carefully rewritten in guideline-appropriate language and with a clear eye to not producing conflicts with other WP:P&G pages, then propose that version be made into a guideline and the old essay replaced. Good luck; most such efforts do not succeed, because after 20+ years we pretty much already have all the P&G we need. PS: I have redirected WP:LAWRS to the same target as WP:RSLAW since that's where it obviously should have already been going.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:26, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Finishing the ABOUTSELF ← SELFSOURCE ← BLPSELFPUB merge

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Re-drafted merge 3.

For a while now, we've been talking about how to merge WP:SELFSOURCE (in WP:RS) and WP:BLPSELFPUB in (WP:BLP) to WP:ABOUTSELF (in WP:V), since they're all three nearly-identical WP:POLICYFORKs of the same material. This has kind of stalled out over the holidays, and some additional input and "energy to get it done" would be helpful.

I think we've hammered out the desirable merged version as to which variants of which clauses to use from the three slightly divergent versions (favoring pre-existing policy language over guideline language when the difference is substantive, but favoring the more concise guideline language when it's simply a matter of how to express the same point). The sticking points, to the extent there are any, seem to be whether or not to do some grammar cleanup on the opening sentence, and whether to include a clarification reading "Author includes an organizational one, not just an individual.", to address recurrent confusion about that.

There was also a suggestion that the footnote from the BLP version (about self-published denials of wrongdoing) could be shortened to remove one of its statements, but this would be a substantive, not just merge-and-copyedit, change to the policy material. So I've suggested that be punted for later discussion. Same with regard to a question about whether the rule's point no. 5, "the article is not based primarily on such sources", is applicable to certain kinds of things, which I've also suggested reserving for later discussion, since substantive change proposals should be examined separately from non-substantive cleanup.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:17, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Disclosing anti-government actions by notable people

I'm not sure how concerning it may be, but amid modern tightening of screws by certain governments and regimes: do we have some policy or advisory that handles the disclosure of anti-government actions by wikinotable people considering potential government punishments in that regard and usage of Wikipedia as a searchlight for government retaliation? While it's probably ok to mention, e.g., wikinotable people who signed anti-government open letters and petitions, I don't know if some relevant regulation exists (similar to Voices under Threat for editors). Brandmeister^talk 20:37, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Since we are a tertiary source, wouldn't the source material already be available to the governments? Wehwalt (talk) 21:12, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, we should only be including such information after it's been reported on in reliable sources. At that point, the cat's out of the bag. If someone is trying to insert primary sources with such information, then yes, it should be removed and perhaps even be oversighted depending on the information. But I feel like our existing policies already cover that. Silverseren^C 21:15, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I would say that our BLP policies cover accusing someone of anti-governmental activities without it being well-sourced. Leaving aside opinions as to the government. No government's happy about actions against it, so we would avoid such things unless well-sourced. Wehwalt (talk) 21:28, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:DUE is relevant here - not every single statement or action over a person's life is appropriate to be covered in an article, and over-stressing undue details (whether anti-government or some other unpopular opinion - for example opinions on gender politics and the like) could cause problems for subjects (not necessarily directly from governments).Nigel Ish (talk) 21:31, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

It would be a mistake to categorize anti-government opinion as universally unpopular. You will find many places where such an opinions is the popular opinion. For example when polled almost every single American holds some opinion that could be characterized as anti-government. Heck in the US its currently popular for elected members of the government to hold anti-government opinions. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:46, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The sorts of places where you need to worry about that sort of thing are generally not the places which need to go on wiki to build a dossier on a dissident. Also government and regime mean the same thing in this context. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we tend to want to do the "dossier on a dissident" but we really only should include incidents considered anti-government that are reported by multiple RS as to avoid singular source inputs. Masem (t) 00:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, upon further thought the cat out of the bag came to mind, RS and WP:DUE aside of course. Brandmeister^talk 09:19, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Aren't multiple RS always required for that sort of stuff when its BLP? And if its not BLP I fail to see the issue. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:41, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Spongebob Squarepants is now freely licensed!

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Spongebob Squarepants is now freely licensed!

May a degrading slogan be displayed on a flag?

File:Ansarullah Flag Vector.svg is used in a number of articles as a "Houthi flag". One example: Riyadh Agreement#International reactions. As far as I can tell, it is not a flag, and IMO it is repugnant to display this slogan in Wikipedia indiscriminately due to its content. If there were to be a flag, perhaps the one displayed in Supreme Political Council could be used instead. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:46, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED. Your opinion amounts to comic book style political censorship of the kind we just don't do. So no. Hard no. Note that the Saudi flag also has an offensive slogan on it, are we to discontinue its use as well? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:54, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipiedia is also not for WP:THINGSMADEUPONEDAY, so despite your sneering contempt, the question of whether this is an actual flag or is just something someone installed on Wikipedia is worth looking into. Doing a Google Image search on "Ansarullah Flag" finds nothing similar, so one could understand not feeling it's a flag... and it's not as the term is normally used.

If you do an Image search on the term as it is described in its file (Houthi Ansarullah "Al-Sarkha" banner), one does find a few picture examples, but only one in which it seems to be being used as a "flag" (and there it is described as a picture of a slogan rather than as a flag); more commonly, its shown as a banner or poster. Whether it is the best choice for a flag image to represent a group is a fair question. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 23:45, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

The version you see here with their slogan on the white background is their flag, the slogan itself is just the words written on it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:19, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Source? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:20, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The image we are discussing here is literally their slogan written on a white flag... Did you think that it was on a blank background? Did you think that it was just a coincidence that they were all the same? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:29, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Okay, so you don't have a source, but you assume it's their flag. If I write "E pluribus unum" on a white piece of fabric, does that make it the flag of the United States? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:42, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I've bern following the Houthi movement for longer than I've been editing wikipedia. You're asking for a citation that the sky is blue which can be surprisingly hard to find... All I can really show you is it being used, typically its called the "Houthi banner" (the difference between a banner and a flag is immaterial for wiki purposes, it only matters to sexologists) such as this 2014 Reuters piece "At a People’s Committee checkpoint bedecked with a Houthi banner in Sanaa's Bier Abu Shamla district"[1] This CNN piece "Fighters loyal to the Saudi-backed government point rifles toward a Houthi banner on the outskirts of Hodeidah."[2]. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:10, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

You may mean 'vexillologists' not 'sexologists', but I suppose sexologists may also care about flags and banners.-gadfium 03:16, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Both can likely tell you why your flag is at half mast Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:26, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems to be a notable image/sign/slogan often used at protests, per Slogan of the Houthi movement. But I can't see anything official indicating that it is the flag that leaders of the Houthi movement have chosen to represent them as a group. If it isn't an official flag, it shouldn't be used as on on Wikipedia. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 01:56, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Besides for the fact that its the flag that the leaders of the Houthi movement use to represent them as a group? [3][4][5][6] Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:10, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not especially familiar with the Houthi movement nor can I read Arabic, but I'm not sure these photos are sufficient. I'm fairly sure that in order to call somethign the flag of this movement, we'd need to have third party reliable sources saying so. In a pinch, I'd even say a primary source like a website/statement of the movement leaders or spokespeople would be enough. I'm sure it can be difficult for movements like this, but we need verifiablility if we want to give some kind of official standing to symbols associated with a group. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 02:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Nobody has proposed that we call something the flag of this movement unless I'm missing something. What we are discussing is whether it can be used to represent them. We don't actually *need* even a single source to do that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:29, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

MOS:NONSOVEREIGN: if a flag is felt to be necessary, it should be that of the sovereign state (e.g. the United States of America or Canada) and not that of a subnational entity, even if that entity is sometimes considered a "nation" or "country" in its own right. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:37, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

And then note where it says that many editors disagree and not to try to enforce it universally? Seems like poorly written MOS. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:46, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Take a gander at War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) for how we normally treat these sorts of groups... AKA we use their self-declared flag, whether it be for the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, or the ISAF. Or try Belligerents in the Syrian civil war for a bewildering number of flags/banners of things other than sovereign states. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:56, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

• Offensive slogans are not uncommon on flags. To give an example from US history, both the First navy jack and the Gadsden Flag contain the slogan “Don’t tread on me”. This could be seen as offensive and anti-government. Yet the slogan is part of the flag nevertheless. Blueboar (talk) 23:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

  If you think something being anti-government makes it offensive, I'd say you deserve to be offended. --Trovatore (talk) 01:47, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If it is appropriate to display the flag of this movement in any particular article then it should be displayed as is. I dont think that the example given above is a good one, as I don't see why any flags should be displayed. I wouldn't say that the Saudi flag is anywhere near as offensive as the Houthi one. As a confirmed atheist I do not agree with its slogan, but it does not call for anyone's death. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:32, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

The example use would seem inappropriate under MOS:ICONDECORATION, as it doesn't add information, given that the country or group being represented is immediately named. (And because it's a banner and thus vertical in nature, reducing it to that height makes it unrecognizable, which is not so true of horizontally-oriented flags.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:05, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Flag-icons seem to be used in some other "International reactions" sections of articles on major events when that section is a simple bullet-list rather than paragraphs or subsections. DMacks (talk) 00:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If we can verify that this is indeed an official Houthi flag, then it should go in the article. We display the flag of Nazi Germany in their article and I can't imagine a more offensive flag than that one. Loki (talk) 00:29, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Except Houthi is not a nation, it's a political group. So if this is its flag, that might be appropriate on Houthi movement, but it makes it less appropriate when we are talking about the jurisdiction represented (Saada Governorate), much as if we were talking about something the Biden administration was doing, the proper symbol would not be the Democratic donkey, but the flag of the United States. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:16, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes... And when a political group takes power in a nation and makes their symbols the national ones thats what happens... Whether its the Houthi movement or the National Socialist movement. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:22, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

And again, I ask for source. It's really not that wild a thing to ask for. Can you find me a reliable third-party source that this is the flag for the jurisdiction? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:47, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I can not, the Houthis don't get that level of coverage where we would have significant coverage of the history of their flag... At least from non-primary sources. I think you'll actually have trouble with that for many jurisdictions. Also note that Saada Governorate =/= Houthis. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:16, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

NatGertler makes a good point: if we can't WP:V that this flag/banner/thing actually formally represents the organization who is speaking in this "reaction", then it doesn't belong on WP. If the group speaking is a government or at least whatever organization is nominally in charge, then that's what should be used. It's not POV to use a verified representation of the group. DMacks (talk) 02:37, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

We have lots of articles showing quasi-official flags. Black Lives Matter, Ku Klux Klan, Rainbow flag (LGBT), Kach (political party), Symbionese Liberation Army, Principality of Sealand, Rastafari. It's a rather vague concept. RoySmith (talk) 02:50, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but in an article that's about the group, the unofficial flag is generally one of the example items used to illustrate the group. That is different when it's used in other articles, where it serves as more of a stand-in for the group. For example, the flag that's used in the Black Lives Matter article is only used to represent the movement as a symbol in one other article -- an infobox in Proud Boys -- and that use is questionable. This despite the fact that we have about 50 articles that link to the Black Lives Matter page (not counting hundreds more that have it linked in a template.) I'm not sure anyone's saying this banner cannot be on the page Houthi movement -- but even there, there is not the claim that it is their "flag", just a display of their slogan. --Nat Gertler (talk) 06:44, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Actually, if you go to Proud Boys now, you won't even find the BLM flag there. I just removed it for reasons utterly unrelated to its flagness, officialness, or the proper use of icons; it was part of an item which should not have been there. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:09, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If we are using a flag to represent a group in this way (not just as an illustration in the article about them, but as an icon used across other articles), it should be unambiguously well-attested as an official symbol of that group in multiple reliable third-party sources. Otherwise, it places us in a non-neutral position of promoting a symbol rather than just recognizing others' use of it. If a flag isn't widely used in secondary sources, it won't be effective as a recognizable symbol anyway.--Trystan (talk) 06:12, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Whether it is an "official" symbol or not is irrelevant. What matters is whether it is commonly used in reliable sources (which may be primary or secondary) to represent the group/place/country/etc in question in contexts where flags of other groups/places/countries are used, the group/place/country/etc do not verifiably object to its use in such contexts, and that there is no other symbol that is unambiguously used more often in the same contexts. Thryduulf (talk) 10:50, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

To correct some misunderstandings expressed above: a) The Houthi flag can be easily found in reliable sources, for example being mentioned in the following articles: "Their flag proudly proclaims their slogan: 'God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, and Victory for Islam.'", "Their flag, which in Arabic says, 'death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews,' is routinely presented triumphantly without issue", "Houthi Banner on a Wall in Sana’a, Yemen, January 2015: 'God is great … Death to America … Death to Israel … Curses on the Jews … Victory to Islam.'", "The flag reads: 'Allah is the greatest. Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, victory to Islam'". And b), the Houthis use the flag all the time, for example during public protests (see example here), and on military equipment (Here the flag is put on a Houthi jet fighter). In one image here, you can see the flag on media released by the Houthis relating to the current Red Sea campaign. The flag is commonly used by the Houthis in civil, governmental, and military contexts, and thus should be used to represent them. Applodion (talk) 18:59, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems like that answers the question of whether or not it has recognition as their flag. The only remaining question is whether it is too offensive to be used, which correctly doesn't seem to be getting any traction here per WP:NOTCENSORED. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 20:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I would distinguish pictures depicting Houthi use of the banner from use of it by third parties to represent the Houthi movement (with a large majority of Wikipedia's uses being the latter). Based on the sources provided so far, it seems like the only two bodies actively using the flag as a symbol to represent the Houthis are the Houthis themselves and Wikipedia. I agree the offensiveness is irrelevant, but we shouldn't be cutting new ground in this regard.--Trystan (talk) 20:37, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Are there examples of other symbols used to depict the Houthi movement that present alternatives? VQuakr (talk) 20:51, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If there are no symbols widely used by third-party sources to depict a group, the alternative would be for us not to use one.--Trystan (talk) 20:55, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

But we have such a symbol, you've rejected the wide use by third-party sources in favor of a declaration that it needs to be "bodies" which use the symbol. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:26, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

In this particular case I don't know that the "third party" bit is terribly important. If an org uses a flag to identify themselves, to the extent of slapping it (as mentioned above) on the side of their fighter jets, that seems like strong evidence that it is a symbol that can be used to represent the organization. An affirmative rebuttal of "no, this third party uses this other symbol to identify them instead" is certainly not the only counter-argument to that, but it is a potentially valid one. VQuakr (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

...strong evidence that it is a symbol that can be used to represent the organization... Presumably, the Houthis want their banner to be widely disseminated and associated with them. If our sources aren't already doing that, I think it is non-neutral for us to lead the way. ...you've rejected the wide use by third-party sources... I haven't seen any use by third party sources, only pictures depicting the Houthis themselves using it. That is qualitatively different to the way Wikipedia has turned it into an icon used across many articles.--Trystan (talk) 22:00, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

We rarely cite encyclopedias in our articles. Why would we expect RSs to use icons in the way established within Wikipedia? That's not a neutrality issue, it's a style issue. Treating one org differently than any other by omitting their flag is non-neutral. VQuakr (talk) 22:09, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

News media use flags as graphical symbols all the time, and are therefore a good barometer of which symbols are well-established, and which symbols where our adoption would amount to novel promotion. One of the first considerations of any style issue is whether it supports the neutral presentation of information.--Trystan (talk) 22:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The Jpost source is an opinion piece, as is the MEI one ("the views expressed in this piece are his own.") The Small Wars Journal cite is a photo caption, which we sometimes treat as equivalent to a headline, and the phrasing of which indicates that this is a Houthi banner rather than the, The Critical Threats source (again a photo caption) recognizes an item in the photo as a flag, but not specifically the Houthi flag. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:55, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

As I said, one can easily find more sources than the ones listed above. For instance, the book Yemen Endures: Civil War, Saudi Adventurism and the Future of Arabia (p. 180, published by Oxford University Press) also discusses that the Houthis used banners adorned with their slogan from their earliest days. The Chaos in the Middle East: 2014-2016 (p. 244) also talks about their flag, stating that "the organization's philosophy is summarised with blinding clarity by their flag, which consists of five statements in Arabic [...]" before describing the Houthi flag. Yemen's Road to War: Yemeni Struggle in the Middle East also details the Houthi flag in Section 1.9.2. I could mention more examples. Applodion (talk) 23:13, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The first one doesn't quite make the statement we're looking for. The second one does, but its Amazon listing says it's published by Troubador, which is a self-publishing service, so I'm left with the question of whether Neville Teller is suffiiciently an expert for a WP:SPS, a question I won't claim to have an answer to. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 23:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Both the first and the third book talk about the Houthi flag, so I'm unsure why those aren't yet "the statement we're looking for". As you liked the second book's quote, however, I assume you mean a phrase like "... the organization's philosophy is summarised...". I found another source with a very similar framing: Political Musings: Turmoil in the Middle East (Chapter 3) states "The group has very clear objectives, which are spelt out on their flag in five statements, the first and the last in green colour - 'God is Great; Death to America; Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews; Victory to Islam'". This source is published by Vij Books which appear to be a reputable Indian publisher. Applodion (talk) 00:12, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm just going by your description; "the Houthis used banners adorned with their slogan from their earliest days"; nations and groups have used many things adorned with slogans that aren't their official jurisdictional flags -- military flags, Keep Calm and Carry On posters, etc. Something being a flag or banner they displayed is not the same as being "the flag of". -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:22, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

What I can find for Vij books at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard is just this one example of a book being considered, and it was judged not reliable in that situation. -- Nat Gertler (talk) Nat Gertler (talk) 00:27, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Ok, let's try some more examples. This pdf of an article from Bloomsbury Collections states "The omnipresent flag decorating the machinery of the Houthis' quasi-military wing renders the sarkha emblazoned with words and colors that emulate the Iranian post-Islamic revolution flag (Figure 11.1)" [the sarkha is the slogan]. In Chapter 1 of The Huthi Movement in Yemen: Ideology, Ambition and Security in the Arab Gulf, it is emphasized that "[...] the movement's slogan or 'shout' (sarkha), which appears on its flag [...]". This article by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung states "After all, the slogan printed on their flag is already reminiscent of the 1979 revolution and expresses the general aims of the militia: 'Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews, Victory to Islam!'" Applodion (talk) 02:46, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

• I think we may be missing the forest for the trees here. Before we discuss whether this flag icon is appropriate for use in the article, I think we need to ask whether ANY flag icons belong in the article. See WP:ICON which lays out when and how we should use flag icons. Blueboar (talk) 22:02, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

  Well, we're responding to a rather narrow question about racist slogans in flags. Where the flag should be used is a different discussion one that doesn't seem to make sense to me to be discussing here unless a change in policy is being considered. VQuakr (talk) 22:07, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

  The VP(P) isn’t just for discussing changes to policy (in fact, that is best done on the talk page of the policy itself)… it is also for discussing how policy should be applied. What I am asking is how/whether WP:ICON applies? Blueboar (talk) 22:39, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

  Looking at the first few pages its listed as used on, it largely isn't. It mostly appears next to the Houthi name on, say, a list of belligerents in a war or a list of bodies that use a given weapon. That is appropriate if the icon is later used in the piece. For example, 2023 Israel–Hamas war has a list of involved parties, each with an icon.... which is useful because there's lists of individuals and units and the Israeli flag is used to mark which individuals and which units are Israeli. But there are no Houthi individuals or units listed, so the icon does not serve as a key, merely a decoration. (This isn't 100% the case -- on 2023 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, the key is used.) We can argue whether if we have key icons for some groups, we should have them for all groups whether or not they are used. But in a place like the list of operators of the 76 mm divisional gun M1942 (ZiS-3), every group is given a flag in a purely decorative way, which is against WP:ICON.

  I should note that while this banner makes a lousy icon (its vertical format means that it's displayed at half the size of horizontal flags and it fades into gray infobox backgrounds), when used as an icon the text is unreadable (well, it always is to me, but at that size, to anyone.) This at least alleviates concerns that in these examples, the image is being inserted primarily to spread the message of its text.

  Overall, this becomes more a reflection that flag icon use on Wikipedia and what our guidelines call for are not in accord. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 02:40, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  Well... The conflict is also that the guideline is internally inconsistent... One part of the MOS appears to say only use the flags of sovereign states and another part says you can use any subnational flag you please as long as there is direct relevance. (MOS:FLAGRELEVANCE) seems to accurately reflect what we actually do in practice:

"Subnational flags (regions, cities, etc.) should generally be used only when directly relevant to the article. Such flags are rarely recognizable by the general public, detracting from any shorthand utility they might have, and are rarely closely related to the subject of the article. For instance, the flag of Tampa, Florida, is appropriately used on the Tampa article. However, the Tampa flag should generally not be used on articles about residents of Tampa: it would not be informative, and it would be unnecessarily visually distracting."

Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:20, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

One thing you'll run into is "everyone else gets a flag" situations, like at 76_mm_divisional_gun_M1942_(ZiS-3)#Operators, where there are two dozen entries, all but two being nations. Now in that particular case, no one should have a flag as it is not being used as a key. (The problem with relying on these keys can be seen in 2023 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, where there are keys for political and substate entities in addition to nations... but three of the entities are using , making the keying useless.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Less helpful, but not useless (it would only be useless if they were *all* the same). Overuse is absolutely an issue, but I'm not convinced that any use = overuse. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:29, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

• As a general matter, the answer to the question is obviously "yes", per WP:NOTCENSORED. However, in this particular case – which has nothing at all to do with offensiveness but with verifiability – there appears to be insufficient evidence this is a real banner/flag used by the Houthi militants. Its use as a symbol for Mohammed al-Houthi in particular at Riyadh Agreement#International reactions is clearly inappropriate. Its use at Houthi movement seems to be dubious; there's some hint of sourcing above, some of it unreliable, some less so but not necessarily sufficient. At least in the case of Mohammed al-Houthi in that table of Riyadh Agreement politicians, it should be replaced with the flag found at General People's Congress (Yemen), or perhaps the one at Supreme Political Council; they are actual flags adopted by the Houthi movement and better sourced, and he actually represents those political bodies.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:19, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

But in that context al-Houthi was not representing the General People's Congress, they were representing the pro-Houthi faction of the General People's Congress. So presenting him as the representative of the party and not a faction within the party would be clearly inappropriate (as well as nonsensical). If any flag is appropriate its the Houthi one, but perhaps no flag at all is appropriate. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:52, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:NCCORP revision discussion needs further input

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (companies)#Use of comma and abbreviation of Incorporated - a discussion (with some proposed revisions) to resolve apparent conflict between this page (with a {{Guideline}} tag on it but little community input) and various other guidelines and policies, including aspects of MOS:TM and MOS:INSTITUTIONS, WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE, WP:DAB, and the WP:OFFICIALNAME supplement, as well as the interplay between WP:RS and WP:ABOUTSELF. The short version is that NCCORP says to defer to "the company's own preference" on article naming (and in-text usage) matters such as whether to include a corporation-type designator, whether to abbreviate it, whether to include a comma before it, etc.; instead of deferring to predominant usage in secondary sources.

There has been significant discussion already, but it has stalled out completely over the holidays, and needs further input for resolution. Also some related discussion at a pair of back-to-back RMs at Talk:Mars Inc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Asking Advice About Giving Advice About Contentious Topic Protection

If another editor asks me for advice about their disagreement with the extended-confirmed protection of an article, where should I tell them to go to discuss the protection? I will explain the origin of this inquiry, but I am not asking specific advice about the case in point, but about all similar cases. A case request was made at DRN by a relatively new editor. The filing party had added some information to a biography of a living person. Their edits were then reverted by another editor, and the article was then placed under Palestine-Israel restrictions, including extended=confirmed protection. As a result, the new editor couldn't edit the article, and wanted the protection reviewed or appealed. I am not asking for advice about the specific article or its content dispute, because I think that the protecting admin was right. But what advice should I give in the future if another editor wants to ask about partial protection of an article because of a contentious topic? I could tell them to request unprotection at requests for protection, but that would just shift the question off to the admins at RFPP. I could say to discuss with the protecting administrator.

So where should an editor go to ask about protection of an article as a contentious topic? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you can say you think the protection is right (and explain why) and to discuss with the protecting admin, and failing that the editor can appeal the protection as per Wikipedia:Contentious topics#Appeals and amendments. Galobtter (talk) 02:10, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, even if the protection was removed, the new editor still can't make edits relating to Palestine-Israel. Galobtter (talk) 02:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

User:Galobtter - Thank you for providing the information on appeals. I did explain that the protection was right.

I assume that you mean that the user still is not allowed to make Palestine-Israel edits. Protecting the page also protects the user from making the edits that they are forbidden from making. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:52, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Transfer of user's sysop status

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.

---

Is it possible to transfer sysop status from one user account to another. For example if we have a case where someone originally have 3 different accounts on different wikis, say enwiki, jawiki, and jvwiki. Over time, this user gains a sysop status on two of three wikis not at the same time. At some point, this user wants to unify its sysop status from one wiki to the other, so it turns that he has two accounts where one of which has sysop status on two wikis. After all, is it possible? Sorry for my bad English, thanks. Natsuikomin (talk) 00:26, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

It's "possible" in that 'crats or stewards could remove the sysop group from one account and add it to another. The hard part would be in convincing them to do so. The person would need to have discussions on each different wiki, convincing each community that the transfer makes sense for them. Anomie⚔ 02:03, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by "make sense for them"? Natsuikomin (talk) 02:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

You would have to convince someone with the ability to create an administrator to do so. The tricky bit might be proving that the person who originally controlled an account when it became a sysop was the same person who currently controls the account wanting sysop. At any rate, that would be an issue for the particular project and the way they do things. Johnuniq (talk) 03:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Besides that, should he coordinate with local sysops, or can he simply make a single global request, say through Wikimedia to enable the transfer to be done on any wikis which its separate acccounts would be affected on? Natsuikomin (talk) 03:38, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

And regarding whether or not the two accounts are controlled by the same person, wouldn't the administrator simply delete the old account to prevent it from being used by other individual?

And if the administrator worries that the transfer could enable other unqualified person to have the sysop right, isn't it still possible to happen, for example a naughty current sysop gives its username and password to unknown person without having to make a request for transfer? Natsuikomin (talk) 03:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know and I think only a very small number of people would have experience with that. The rest of us would be guessing. Here, at enwiki, WP:RFA should be satisfied and I suspect there would be an uproar if a person were elevated to sysop without prior community scrutiny. You might try asking at WP:AN or perhaps one of the WP:ARBCOM pages. If trying that, post in one place only. Accounts are never deleted. Instead, an unwanted account might be indefinitely blocked or perhaps globally locked. An admin who was found to have handed out their password would never hold advanced rights again. I suspect indefinite blocks would be in order. Johnuniq (talk) 03:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. Natsuikomin (talk) 04:03, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Former_administrators/reason/renamed for prior cases. GZWDer (talk) 11:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

So, it's possible. I haven't found out how, but I will search for it later. Thanks for the help. Natsuikomin (talk) 12:08, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

These are examples from EN-Wiki, though. OP, am I correct in assuming that you would like to have sysop rights in all different language accounts you mentioned, but only passed the process for becoming one in 2 of them? Lectonar (talk) 12:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

No, I meant to say that I already have sysop status on 2 of 3 accounts (meaning sysop status on 2 of 3 wikis).

Note: I don't have sysop status on any wikipedia sites at the moment. It's just my curiosity about the possibility of such a transfer process. Natsuikomin (talk) 12:44, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I understood. And you want it on the 3rd too? Lectonar (talk) 12:46, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

No. Natsuikomin (talk) 13:06, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

We can only answer questions about the English Wikipedia here. To become an admin on this Wikipedia you need to go through WP:RFA, as explained at WP:Administrators#Becoming an administrator. It does not matter how many other Wikipedias may have given you admin status. Anything else should be asked at the Wikipedia concerned or at meta:. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:00, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know guys why some of you think that I was asking about how to become an admin on certain wiki site. All I was wondering about was the possibility of sysop status transfer. And all of your responses have explained it so well. Thanks a lot! Natsuikomin (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

If I understand right you're asking about having an account with sysop rights on a different wiki, while you use a legitimate alternate account to edit this wiki which is later promoted to sysop here. So then you have two accounts with sysop rights on different wikis, and you want to transfer your enwiki sysop rights from the alternate account to your main one. Sure you can, a bureaucrat would just remove the userright from the alternate account and add it to the main one. As long as we can verify that you control both accounts (probably we would run checkuser to check) I don't see why the request would be declined. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:48, 10 January 2024 (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.

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village Pump (Idea lab) § Workshop: draftifying

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village Pump (Idea lab) § Workshop: draftifying. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC to limit the inclusion of the deadname of deceased transgender or non-binary persons

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Names of deceased trans people

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Should the following be added to MOS:DEADNAME?

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their former name (birth name, professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be included in their main biographical article only if the name is documented in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person.

For pre-RFC discussions on this proposal, see:

1. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Deadnames of the deceased – yet again
2. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2023 archive#Proposal to split MOS:GENDERID from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography
3. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2023 archive#WP:BOLD restrictions on the use of deceased transgender or non-binary persons birth name or former name

This text was added boldly by different editors, originally in July and again in October, but was removed in December. 18:38, 10 December 2023 (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.

I have split this long discussion to its own page, because (a) it's only been open a few days, and we've already got 85 comments from 46 people here and (b) due to the number of large discussions, this Village Pump page is currently almost half a million bytes long, which is much longer than some people can effectively read and participate in. The new location for this RFC is Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Names of deceased trans people. Please join the discussion over there. Thanks for your understanding, WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia sucks" spam through Wikipedia

Main page: WP:ANI § Email spam

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Phil Bridger (talk • contribs) 19:06, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Now archived to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1145#Email spam. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 05:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Over-capitalization of NFL Draft

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles

RfC on the matter opened below, the moved to its own page due to length. Closing this original loose discussion, since someone in the RfC was confused about there being two threads open. (WP:TALKFORK).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:47, 12 January 2024 (UTC); updated: 17:36, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

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In you look at sources, "draft" is overwhelmingly lowercase in most relevant sports contexts, including NFL (see [7], [8]). Yet it's hard to get away from the capitaized "Draft" on wikipedia due to the large number of football-fan editors compared to the editors who want to respect our style guidelines (at least, the was my impression in past discussions). Is there anything to be done about that? I recently moved a bunch of "List of ** in the NFL Draft" articles to lowercase draft, as that context is one of the most overwhelmingly clear in stats, but before I got most of them done they all got reverted. Is another RFC the way to go? Other ideas? Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I've contacted WP:NFL about this discussion. GoodDay (talk) 05:04, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for that. Dicklyon (talk) 05:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

• Note The last related move discussion was closed in May 2023 at Talk:2024 NFL Draft § Requested move 27 April 2023—Bagumba (talk) 05:13, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for finding that clear lack of consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 05:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@BeanieFan11:, in reverting my moves to the "in the NFL Draft" articles, you wrote the current consensus is that the main draft article is spelled with an uppercase "D" - that should be reflected here. Can you share where you find that consensus? Dicklyon (talk) 05:53, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Until National Football League Draft is moved to National Football League draft, any instance of "NFL Draft" should have a capital D, particularly in article names. That's the only reasonable and consistent interpretation of Wikipedia:Article titles for this case. Everything hinges on how we name main article. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

A gaggle of editors from the American football wikiproject will stonewall any attempt to move any of these articles; RM process has too few uninvolved participants to overrule their false-consensus. The article title "National Football League Draft" is demonstrably inappropriate per WP:COMMONNAME (and WP:CONCISE) policy, and also fails WP:NCCAPS and MOS:SPORTCAPS and etc. [9] It should be at NFL draft, which is actually the common name by a wide margin – with d not D. Of the four renditions "National Football League Draft", "National Football League draft", "NFL Draft", and "NFL draft", the "National Football League Draft" one is the least frequent and "NFL draft" by far the most. (And that's without even doing anything to filter out title-case appearance in names of works and chapters/sections; i.e., the capitalized forms are being significantly over-represented in these search results.) The long version is barely attested in published material. But this means nothing if no one one but football fans who love capitalizing everything to do with football weighs in on the question. (Which shouldn't be a question in the first place. Dicklyon's moves should not have been reverted, because they comply with the policies and guidelines and the over-capitalization has no leg to stand on (it's unadulterated WP:ILIKEIT).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I suspect you'd get the same resistance in an RM at the NHL Entry Draft page, fwiw. Editors can't force other editors to agree to what they want. Thus they can't force such changes, if enough editor oppose. GoodDay (talk) 12:13, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Question, but this only applies to National Football League draft, correct? The 2024 NFL Draft and all other years should still be considered proper nouns as they are specific events. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 18:18, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

No. They are specific events, or processes, but not proper names unless maybe in the context of the TV show or something (e.g. "I got tickets for 2024 NFL Draft", or "ESPN got rights to broadcast 2024 NFL Draft", perhaps). Stats show lowercase dominant draft, same as in other sports. Dicklyon (talk) 18:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of where one stands on the issue, we should be consistent with the capitalization used at the primary article that these other articles are based off, which is currently at National Football League Draft. Until that article is moved, which there is not consensus to do based off past discussions, we are essentially in limbo and should be consistent, otherwise it'll devolve into edit warring. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

We definitely have a WP:CONLEVEL failure happening here, where a WP:FALSECONSENSUS of people devoted to a topic area are defying site-wide guidelines that apply to all topics, to get an over-capitalization result in their pet subject (against both MOS:SPORTCAPS and MOS:SIGCAPS, as well as WP:NCCAPS, and WP:COMMONNAME policy), all on the basis of a specialized-style fallacy, namely that various American-football-specific sources like to capitalize just about everything to do with football, while general-audience sources provably do not do this. Statistics this stark [10] do not lie. We have a problem that WP:RM, a process nearly no one pays any attention to, is regularly overrun by topic-specific editors after one of them alerts the related wikiproject, and the results end up being a predictable pile-on that ignores the large stack of guidelines and at least one policy, to just suit the preferences of the topical wikiproject participants; meanwhile few RM closers have the gumption to just discount their anti-WP:P&G and anti-source arguments and close in favor of the lower-cases moves, because the headcount majority crying for upper-case is apt to make WP:MRV noise about it and otherwise cause a bunch of drama. The RM process is palpably failing for cases like this; it is being outright WP:GAMED.

I'm skeptical that this can be settled any other way than with a broadly advertised RfC, tedious as style RfCs may be. If football fans are convinced they have on their hands some kind of demonstrable exception that just must be made to site-wide capitalization rules, then they are welcome to try to prove that to the community's satisfaction. This sort of thing has come up before many times (common names of species, capitalization of breeds and cultivars, etc.) that have festered sometimes for years, with a lot of editorial strife and disruption in sporadic, uncentralized debates, and were not resolved until broadly RfCed (here or at WT:MOS).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I suspect there'd be resistance as well from WP:HOCKEY, concerning pages related to the NHL Entry Draft, too. BTW the Major League Baseball draft page, was moved to its current form without an RM & with little input. GoodDay (talk) 12:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

The NHL Entry Draft stats are a good example of what happens when over-capitalization in Wikipedia influences the real world. It's not too late to fix it, as it's still not nearly consistently capped in sources, esp. independent sources. Dicklyon (talk) 18:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: You should either officially propose a move of National Football League Draft or accept that editors will (and should) try to be consistent with the capitalization used at that article. Otherwise this is, frankly, a waste of everyone's time. We'd just end up rehashing the exact same discussion happening here. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem with RM, mentioned above, makes it hard to get to a consensus in such cases. Maybe an RFC? Dicklyon (talk) 03:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

You could go the route of an RFC, but I don't really think there will be consensus on this issue either way. I suppose I'm asking what the goal of starting this discussion is. Are you planning to craft an RfC based on this discussion? Hey man im josh (talk) 03:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm seeking ideas; I had asked: "Is another RFC the way to go? Other ideas?". RFC was one idea supported. Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm not convinced there is an issue of overcapitalization, given that many editors are trying to be consistent with the main draft article. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:07, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

This is turning entrely circular. We've been over this already: the main article is capitalized, against WP:COMMONNAME and MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS and other considerations, because a handful of "give us capitals or else" football fans want it that way, and will en masse blockade any RM that tries to change it, producing a FALSECONSENSUS against guidelines applying to a "magically special" wikiproject. The problem is not that the main article says what it does, the problem is that RM is easily and badly gamable by a wikiproject who want a "pet" variance from guidelines that apply to every other subject, which is prevent that or any other related article from changing names, without wider community input that cannot be gamed by half-a-dozen people from a particular wikiproject.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Your best bet is to neutrally summarize all the pro and con arguments and counter arguments, and place them right after the brief opening RFC statement. Too often people are !voting without knowing all the factors, which is difficult when bits and pieces are scattered in other people's !votes. At least give those people who want to be informed a clear overview. MOS, esp. capitalization, can be quite nuanced. Some !voters that only see "NFL Draft" in their everyday sources, honestly don't know there are other options or why. —Bagumba (talk) 04:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

If someone can point out a pro-capitalization argument, I'd like to see it so I can include it. About the only thing we heard before was a multiply-repeated claim to trademark status, but that was pretty thoroughly debunked, I felt, with the only found "NFL Draft" trademark being for clothing items, like caps and tee shirts, not for the player selection meeting. Dicklyon (talk) 00:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that the NFL uses a capitalization for the term, but I'm not able to dig into it at the moment. For what it's worth, I personally don't really care either way, but I do advocate for consistency with the main article. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I imagine some !voters only see "NFL Draft" on ESPN, NFL.com—and even many (most?) newspapers—and just write off that non-NFL fans aren't following the NFL expert sources. —Bagumba (talk) 02:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If people are only watching ESPN, they'll see it pretty much always lowercase, and we wouldn't have this problem. On NFL.com, usually uppercase (but they sometimes forget to tell their headline writers, like here and here. Dicklyon (talk) 02:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

You're right about ESPN. Try CBSSport.com, which seems to regularly cap. (And I might be wrong re: the extent of newspapers)—Bagumba (talk) 03:11, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If you can't get consensus for a move, then there's no consensus for a move. It's a tautological statement, but it's also the core fact of it all. Not enough people agree with you. So what, move on and don't dwell on it. Also, can we not have presumptive and biased discussion headers like calling it "over-capitalization" when the point is to discuss if it is properly capitalized. oknazevad (talk) 02:16, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, we disagree there. It's clearly over-capitalized, with respect to our guidance and sources. The question is just what to do. Probably a central RFC makes more sense than an RM at the article(s), to get a more balanced participation. Dicklyon (talk) 02:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I think in order for you to get a 'green light' on the changes you're proposing? you'd first have to have an RM at National Football League Draft, with the result being - change to National Football League draft. GoodDay (talk) 02:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The meta-question on P&G RfC vs RM

In the RfC below, there's a whole bunch of discussion on the meta question of what's an appropriate venue for finding a consensus, when page moves are involved. The venue would be expected to bias the participation, with RM discussions attracting more editors that are watching the affected pages, and a discussion here or other central P&G place attracting more editors who care about policies and guidelines. Ideally, the relative numbers shouldn't much matter, as long as there are enough participants to get a good representation of the community's interpretation of the issues, and how best to resolve the question. That is, it's not a vote. However, the RM mechanism typically doesn't attract very many people who care about policies and guidelines, so it becomes hard to see a consensus when there are only a few such voices.

The last RM on this question found 10 in support of lowercase, based on policies and guidelines, and 10 opposed, mostly citing and repeating alternate factoids about the relative usage or trademark status. The closer was unable to see that the opposition was not at all based on policies or guidelines or real data, so called it no consensus. In the current RfC discussion below, we have lower numbers on both sides, but maybe over time we'll see more participation. So far not. I've listed the RfC at WP:CENTRAL, and another editor informed a large number of the affected articles' talk pages; and another informed a bunch of other sport WikiProjects. So maybe we'll get more participation from one side or both. Whether we do or not, I doubt we'll learn anything not already in evidence about the community's views. I guess it becomes a problem for a good closer.

I'm still open to other good ideas about how to resolve such things. The football editors who are afraid of losing their precious capital D are not happy about the RfC approach. Dicklyon (talk) 20:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I've an idea. Close the RFC & open an RM at National Football League Draft. Trying to bring about changes from the ground up, rather then from the peak down, merely causes (IMHO) chaos. GoodDay (talk) 20:27, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Weird metaphor, since doing things "from the ground up" is usually regarded as constructive and is a common idiom. I'm 54, and I've never once in my life heard the advice to do something "from the peak down".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:47, 12 January 2024 (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.

Removing Content from Talk Page

I have a two-part question about removing content from an article talk page. I have read the talk page guidelines, and I don't think that they clearly answer my questions. I am not asking about a specific case of removing content from a talk page, but two more general questions. I am trying to mediate a dispute at DRN where one editor has removed a large amount of material (26Kbytes) from an article talk page that had been posted by another editor. The author who is doing the removing cites WP:FORUM, WP:NOTHOWTO, and WP:OR. I read the talk page guidelines, and they are clear that removing material from a talk page should not normally be done, but occasionally should be done, but they provide poor guidance for gray area cases.

My first question is where can the editor whose material was removed discuss it? DRN is a noticeboard to discuss article content, not talk page content. If an editor had removed paragraphs from an article citing undue weight or balance or unreliable sources, we could have moderated discussion. However, removal of talk page content isn't what DRN is for. Where should the other editor or I go to discuss? I don't like to advise editors to go to WP:ANI; I'm a content mediator. My second question is whether the talk page guidelines talk page is the right place to discuss the lack of clarity of the guidelines about removal of content. I assume that it is the right place, but am asking. (I could say that I don't want my post removed, but that would be half-humorous and half-serious.) Robert McClenon (talk) 20:57, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Given the non-specific title of DRN, can't the DRN mediator mediate any on-wiki dispute? If you don't feel comfortable mediating a certain issue, can't you pass it on to another editor? Mediators need not be particularly specialized, or knowledgeable beforehand, in the nature of the content being disputed itself.

As to the Talk page guidelines page, I'd say yes, or at least just start a thread there now while you're fresh, and if someone thinks of a better forum you can move it later. It's about time the issue gets dealt with. I revert a lot of Talk page removals, and it often comes down to a fundamental difference of philosophy that guidelines could probably trod into. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the specific dispute, they're both newbies, so we can't assume that they know what's appropriate (unless one or more is a sock). Getting the page semi-protected for a couple of weeks might solve that dispute by leaving it to editors more familiar with our usual practices (@I dream of horses being already on the spot). Semi'ing the page would also help the remover stop exposing their IP address. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing - You say that the editors in the specific dispute are both newbies. Either you are looking at a different dispute, or you are looking at different editors than I was, or you have a different definition of a newbie than I do. I avoided naming the dispute because I wanted the advice to be generic rather than about the specific dispute, but I should have known that some editors would think that I was looking for dispute-specific advice, and dispute-specific advice is helpful, just not what I thought was important. I was asking about the ZX Spectrum_graphic_modes dispute, where the editor who removed the talk page posts has 37,000 edits, which I don't consider a newbie. If you were looking at the IP editor and the editor who filed the DRN dispute, they are probably the same person, who registered an account after making some IP edits. It was the experienced editor who removed the talk page posts. If you are looking at the Kapersky dispute, then it is true that both editors are new editors who are editing this article for the first time, but that dispute doesn't involve talk page removal. So which dispute were you looking at? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It turns out that I was looking at a different dispute at DRN, which involved two edit-warring accounts that both have less than 20 edits.

For this removal, I think the experienced editor is correct, and the former IP should be redirected to a site like Stack Overflow, or to a magazine that might be willing to publish an actual article written by the former IP. The removed content is not really about improving the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay. I thought it might be that. In the specific case, the Kaspersky article, which was the subject of the edit-warring, has been ECP-protected as a contentious topic. What I was asking was where or how to discuss disputes over talk page removal. You, User:WhatamIdoing, have offered your opinion in the specific case, that you agree with the removal. But how or where should talk page removals be discussed? One editor suggested that I treat the talk page dispute as a content dispute and offer to mediate it. Another editor offered the compromise of archiving the material. Are there any other answers? Sometimes I am not asking about a tree but about the forest. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry WhatamIdoing, but how is the removal in any way correct? Half the time the IP editor is referring back to changes they are in the process of, or have made to, the article. They are using the Talk page for one of the purposes we say to use it for -- explaining potentially contentious edits (like, say, if an IP editor started changing numbers around in the article, which are exactly the edits these Talk comments are explaining!)

We shouldn't be getting into the specifics of this particular dispute if OP is going to be mediating it anyway (and OP is not asking about the particulars of this dispute), but there you did. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@SamuelRiv, consider this bit:

"I think I have found a way to faithfully simulate the output image of the ZX Spectrum on a PAL TV. Of course, different TV sets produce different images, so it can only be an approximation. Descibed below is a much better approximation than the images currently displayed in the article. That's why I'm writing this, for anyone who has sufficient spare time, to use this procedure to produce a more realistic output images."

Does that sound like explaining anything about editing the article, or does it sound like hacking your own device at home? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like IP intends to describe a "procedure to produce a more realistic output images" which would be "a much better approximation than the images currently displayed in the article." In other words, how to make the images better, and in previous posts why the current images and descriptions are not accurate. I cannot comprehend how you get from this that it's about hacking one's home device -- "faithfully simulate the output image". SamuelRiv (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Sometimes these things can be "chilled out" a bit by moving the off-topic or otherwise inappropriate material to the most recent talk-page archive. It's "softer" than just a reversion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, User:SMcCandlish, for suggesting what sounds like a compromise about talk page removal, to archive the material rather than arguing over whether to keep it or delete it. That is a generic answer that is also applicable in this specific case. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I think that contents of a talk page are normally discussed on that same talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Amir Tsarfati

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.

---

Recently Wikipedi took down the page of Amir Tsarfati. This proves that Wikipedia, like most big tech,is antisemitic at heart. Amir is a real, and legitimate, person and personality. To remove his page is showing this organization is not independent at all, it is a left wing purveyor of Propaganda 2600:4040:4029:7400:DD60:2E56:7133:282B (talk) 20:37, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Nah. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amir Tsarfati is pretty clear: He does not pass the WP:Notability test (lacks in-depth coverage in independent reliable sources). There is no claim by anyone that he is not real, nor that he is "illegitimate" whatever that might mean. He's just some random person who has not attracted significant coverage in sources independent of his own religious and non-profit work.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I literally just posted an article on Reuben Oppenheimer this morning. BD2412 T 21:37, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Sulaiman Shah, a real, legitimate, person and personality was recently deleted. Presumably Wikipedia is Islamophobic too? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

If 2600:4040 had any connection to this person (or any other person or organization they wanted to have an article), then I'd encourage them to take WP:BFAQ#WHY to heart, especially the practical and helpful advice "to add to your own website a comprehensive list of any independent reliable sources, such as newspaper articles, which have been published about your organization. Such a list can help Wikipedia understand why you think your organization is notable" (emphasis mine). If you want to have an article about a given subject, then making it very, very easy for Wikipedia's volunteers to find Wikipedia:Independent sources about that subject is helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

is antisemitic at heart. Sigh. To prove that, you'd need to prove discriminatory intent. Otherwise we're being antisemitic when we delete any article about anyone who is Jewish, and Islamophobic when we do so about anyone who is Muslim, and homophobic when... 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Not to be pedantic, but in my usage at least wikt:at heart always takes the meaning of "at the core, essentially, foundationally", and not any moral/spiritual sense (for which I'd instead say "in one's heart"). The latter definition may have something to do with intent, but no clarification of what OP means is given, and OP used the term "proves" in the most colloquial sense. SamuelRiv (talk) 23:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I am a Jew and very sensitive to antisemitism. The OP reminds me of a troll grinding an axe. Cullen328 (talk) 09:51, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

He is. And I note that User:gidonb is among the people who gave a "delete" opinion in the AfD. Are you really claiming that that editor is antisemitic? Just that we delete articles about unnotable Jews in the same way that we delete articles about unnotable Atheists and unnotable Christians and unnotable anything else you care to mention does not make Wikipedia antisemitic. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:35, 17 January 2024 (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.

Utterly badly sourced business articles

I observed somewhere over a decade ago how Articles for deletion was often approaching People, bands, and businesses for deletion. This is still true today. I wonder whether we can relieve some of the pressure on the AFD process, and on volunteers, with a modification of policy.

Consider the likes of Industrial Fasteners Institute (AfD discussion) It has stood for 12 years (and a few hours!) with its only source ever being the business's own WWW site. Or there's Imagine Sports (AfD discussion) which has stood for 16 years with two "official web site"s and an "official blog".

Should we encourage a presumption of deletion, or perhaps greater use of the proposed deletion process, for articles on business where they cite no other sources than the business's own direct publications? We have the proposed deletion of biographies of living people process for biographies with no independent reliable sources, perhaps we need a similar mechanism for utterly badly sourced business articles, where we demand at least something other than company self-published histories and "about" pages.

(I'd agree with the deletion of business articles sourced to nothing other that the business's own publications, and press releases in other publications; but I think that that's another discussion. And similarly, I notice that people are addressing the undisclosed paid editing through other means. That's another discussion, too. It's the plethora of business articles that are basically vehicles for company website links that I think that we could address.)

Thoughts?

Uncle G (talk) 11:17, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• I'd agree. But it should apply to all articles about anything. Which is better, a badly-sourced article that might or might not be accurate but nobody cares enough to source it, or no article? Does WP:BURDEN not apply to article creation as much as to its content? Maybe we need a WP:NOEXCEPTIONS policy. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:49, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Many of the older ones are actually fine, they originated in the days when sourcing was optional but derived from respectable sources such as other encyclopedias. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
    • That claim is currently not verifiable, and the longer the cites stagnate the less tenable it becomes. Again, I draw your attention to WP:BURDEN. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
      • As I've said in various fora of late, if we all just referenced articles instead of wasting breath discussing how to delete them the encyclopedia would be a great deal better served. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:03, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
• Undersourced businesses are already prod staples, I don't think any more encouragement is needed, and there's a big difference between non-profit societies/organisations and for-profit companies. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I disagree. WP:N and WP:V apply equally to all subjects. RoySmith (talk) 14:52, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

After the recent changes to WP:NCORP, the standards for for-profit companies are higher than for non-profit bodies such as academic societies – which just have to be national/international in scope & meet GNG – rather than having to meet the new elevated standards for companies. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:36, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• "nobody cares enough to source it" includes those trying to delete it, in many cases. The "BURDEN" is WP:BEFORE. A lack of sources in an article does not mean there are a lack of sources. Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source for determining if a topic is notable. Many editors don't look beyond Wikipedia. This is a common problem at AfD. -- GreenC 15:07, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • That sword cuts both ways. Many editors have not gone beyond corporate promotional blurbs when creating articles, and not only is this a problem at AFC this is a worse problem in the encyclopaedia. Vehicles for corporate WWW site links like International Labmate Ltd (AfD discussion), which had even more external links to the company's various WWW sites in its older versions than it has now, are littered throughout the encyclopaedia. Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

That company won The King's Awards for Enterprise, the UK's highest business award, in 1996. It could actually be notable if one knew the right places to look for coverage. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The most slam-dunk case is articles on businesses. If the above example one went to AFD, it would be an easy fail or if there is advocate for the article they will need to quickly find and add GNG sources. But for those years nobody even questioned it. Sports articles are a lot tougher. Since in sports, coverage itself a form of entertainment (rather than the typical criteria to receive coverage) and has lots of fan clubs in Wikipedia, and whoever takes it to AFD will get beat up for not first searching for the missing sources. Edge case bands always end up as edge cases because there is a lot of edge case coverage situations. (interviews etc.) Finally, the typical mechanics of the Wikipedia system are that WP:Ver is a way to remove content and not directly a criteria for existence of an article. Theoretically, if GNG sources exist that aren't in the article it can be kept. So if it's a sports article with no substantive sources from a place when the media is non-english in a different character set, it's arguable that you need to have someone fluent in the language/character set to search to show no suitable coverage in order to delete it. Bottom line, I don't think that anything that speeds up the simplest cases is going to do much. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:35, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• This is why I asked specfically about businesses, and about a specifically identifiable set of business articles, at that. This isn't setting out to solve the world's problems, just to address one thing to see whether there's a way to make things incrementally better. And I think that there's a good case to be made that if we already apply the just one reliable independent source criterion to biographies, we can apply it to businesses. Indeed, we already do that and more to business articles at AFC.

  So maybe we should close this hole in our standards and require that as a simple uniform minimum across the article namespace too: at least one reliable independent source in the article for a business. We decide that we don't host external linkfarms for corporate WWW sites for 15 years like, say, Forsythe Technology or Nisco Invest.

  Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• Nowadays, these wouldn't make it through our excellent if overloaded NPP process. The community might be minded to enact WP:CSD#X4: article about a business, enterprise, or product that was started before 2020 and has never had an independent source?—S Marshall T/C 17:51, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • If we can't get consensus to speedy new articles like this, then we're unlikely to find it for deleting old ones. —Cryptic 18:05, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  CSD is really not appropriate, because Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup, and therefore there is the potential for it to be legitimately contested. PROD should be sufficient.

  That said, I took a look at Industrial Fasteners Institute, mentioned at the top of the thread, and I have two overall thoughts:

  1. Wow, that industry is way more complex and interesting than I'd ever have imagined, and
  2. I couldn't find any sources (e.g., in Google News) that contain more than two consecutive sentences about the organization itself, though https://www.google.com/books/edition/Magazine_of_Standards/8Cw9AAAAYAAJ looks promising, if anyone can track it down.

  I can find sources for European Industrial Fasteners Institute (EIFI), which started a trade dispute a little while ago, but not as much about the (US) IFI. But I suspect them of being a case of WP:ITSIMPORTANT in the real world (like: they're actually important, if you care about things like whether a plane is likely to spontaneously disassemble itself while you're inside), and I'd suggest a "merge" (of this one stub plus a half-dozen similar organizations for whom a stub hasn't been created) to a List of fastener industry organizations or Fastener industry, rather than deletion.

  I was reminded recently that it's our official policy that more information (NB: information, not separate articles) is better than less. If we make a recommendation, I would like to see us recommend something that results in more knowledge. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I too looked at the fasteners article and was intrigued. Agree merging would be more useful than deletion.

Unless we want to purge almost all content on companies, a new speedy tag is not the way to go. I don't see why standard prod is not effective for old articles where the creator has retired? Are people mass-removing the prods? (I try to check the prod list from time to time but mostly tend to leave the businesses alone, as it is not an area in which I edit.) Espresso Addict (talk) 23:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

In 1976, the IFI instituted a proceeding over import relief for U.S. fastener manufacturers with the International Trade Comission.[11][12]. It's also necessary to search under its pre-1949 name "The American Institute of Bolt, Nut and Rivet Manufacturers"[13]. There's more out there than people seem to have found so far. Jahaza (talk) 04:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Can we get a list generated of company articles for which the only external link on the page is the company website? BD2412 T 04:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I imagine that would be tricky as it's not always going to be easy for a bot to identify that given only the article title. A list of articles about companies (presumably identified by presence in a category) that include external links to only a single domain would I guess be easier. There will be false positives in that list (e.g. when the only citations are to the same newspaper), but I suspect it will also be worth examining those articles for issues. There will also be false negatives (e.g. if an article cites megacorp.com and megacorpinternational.co.uk), and no such query will be able to identify when the article cites only regurgitated press releases and similar, however as long as these limitations are understood and presence or absence from the list is not treated as evidence of anything in itself I think the list would still have value. Thryduulf (talk) 12:32, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

If any article is longstanding but as poorly sourced as you state, I'd at least give them the benefit of a cursory search for RS, then prod it. Wikipedia won't be specially harmed if an ultimately notable business gets removed, as if it's truly notable, it will come back as a new article (or restored deleted article) with proper cites. But as someone who has seen plenty of this kind of junk, my emotional center says to "Prod away!". Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:06, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm doubtful that it's an entirely harmless action (what if someone's looking for that information during the interregnum?), and I'm even more doubtful that it will somehow come back as a new article with more sources.

As a side note, one of the distinctions drawn in the academic literature into whether users trust websites is between "trusting" and "finding useful". A Wikipedia article can be very useful to a reader ("Oh, I thought the account I was just assigned was an agribusiness customer, but it looks like they have a lot more business interests than I thought...") even when they don't really trust it ("...so I should probably check in with the previous account rep before I call them"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:12, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia is not a business directory, the lack of an article for a likely non-notable (or barely notable at best) enterprise will be harmless within reason. There's Google and the yellow pages and what-not to cover the rest. We don't have to host it. There's myriad notable subjects we're still missing so I won't lose sleep over prodded business articles. :) Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 04:00, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Who says that a poorly sourced article is "likely non-notable (or barely notable at best)"?

I believe that sending readers off to other sites (e.g., with worse privacy policies, or which might be secretly paid advertisements) is not harmless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

If something has been prodded, the prodder is supposed to have done a cursory search to see if there's hope for a subject being notable. Per AGF, I assume this happens most of the time. Also, the Wikipedia does not exist for being a web searcher's soft landing. I'm not buying into the scope creep. We're just an encyclopedia. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 04:14, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

• I totally side with encourage a presumption of deletion, not only when the only sources are directly related to the topic but also with articles that are loaded with obscure sources that seem purposely dredged-up to prevent deletion on what would otherwise be a totally non-notable topic. This seems to be a common hallmark of paid-editing. Just, in general, I wish we would be more strict with notability, especially for business-related topics, including questioning if sources are actually notable (eg, WP:CONTEXTMATTERS). Also despite WP:SOURCEACCESS some things like trade publications available only to a limited audience, etc., simply shouldn't count as reliable sources as they weren't generally available to the public as per WP:PUBLISHED. Ultimately, despite all the policy stuff, it needs to boil down to asking ourselves, "Hey, has somebody purposely scraped the bottom of the barrel to get this article to pass our notability standards?" If so, I think we should err on the side of deleting it; otherwise, we just accumulate promotional cruft. Historically, I think we've tended to side with keeping anything that is referenced with too little weight put on the quality of the references. We need a cultural shift that tighten the hatches. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

  Quite agree! Had just such a problem not too long ago. Prod'd an obvious promotional piece with very poor sourcing and dubious notability; wouldn't have thought it was controversial, but deletion was refused—now I'll have to waste my time and everyone else's on an AfD discussion.
  A presumption for deletion would be a help in such cases; and it would be justified seeing as the consensus is that notability standards are fairly high for businesspeople (see the relevant section in the special notability guidelines article). Few things bring the encyclopedia into disrepute as much as promotional and unencyclopedic editi§§ LegFun §§ talk §§ 20:00, 17 January 2024 (UTC)n g.

  @LegesFundamentales: this proposal is regarding articles about businesses not articles about businesspeople (who are already subject to BLPPROD). Viewing AfD as a waste of time is the fundamental philosophical failure that results in proposals such as this which are fundamentally incompatible with Wikipedia's core policies. AfD is the normal way to delete an article, anything else is the exception. There is no deadline, spending a week to make sure that we are not deleting something that should not be deleted is a good use of time. Thryduulf (talk) 10:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

• Do the whole bold Oppose. Nobody seems to have explained why Prod isn't enough for me to get behind this. I'd also argue it's a strawman argument, there isn't actually a problem beyond I don't like it that these article are in wikipedia. If they exist and have existed a long time it indicates they are doing something right and that consensus is to keep, as that's how consensus forms and works. If we need to change the rules to exclude them, what does that say about us? And how does it come to define Wikipedia? Don't we have enough articles that require copyediting to be worried about this, the top of my watchlist indicates a drive there? Wouldn't our efforts be better directed there than here? A look at Wikipedia:Backlog tells me over 400,000 articles need more refences. Could we better pressed finding them? I do wonder why I give my valuable time to this project, creating and salvaging, when so many people want to destroy that work. Sometimes I decide I no longer want to because of the negativity. Does that make Wikipedia better? Or should we strive towards consensus. Should we say we're at an even keel as things stand, the guidelines are balanced, in harmony, we know how to use them to achieve the goal, let's kill the backlogs then regroup on discussions such as these if merited? Hiding T 19:57, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

  I agree to some extent however business articles should be backed up solid independent evidence not just statements from the business website. My biggest gripe is editors creating forks when there is no need. Take House of Fraser. The company havestarted to create Fraser stores, and have announced that all stores will eventually go over to the new branding. An editor has created a news page Frasers (department store) which was excepted by a reviewer. But as per the owners, this is just a rebrand! We don't need to fork out something unless it's way to big or there is a genuine split off of the business. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 11:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, I get where you are coming from, but I think it's easier to deal with that happening with what we've got in terms of a ruleset/guidance now, rather than reinvent the wheel and add more potential issues into the pack. Hiding T 11:36, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. A presumption of deletion is not compatible with WP:NEXIST or WP:ATD or WP:BEFORE. It would be positively damaging to apply such a presumption to history articles about nineteenth century businesses; or to articles about businesses in industries that actually have some kind of fanbase (eg railway enthusiasts). The fact that independent sources are not cited in article does not mean they do not exist. James500 (talk) 14:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Trademark Symbol

I am trying to mediate a dispute at DRN in which a declared paid editor is asking to add the trademark symbol (TM) (actually the form in a circle) after the name of his company's product whenever it appears in an article. I looked in the policies and guidelines and the MOS, and didn't find a statement that we do or do not use trademark symbols. However, it has been my understanding that we do not use the trademark symbol, because it has a promotional quality, and that alternatives would include using a non-trademarked term for the product. Did I fail to find something in the MOS, or is the MOS silent on the subject? Should the MOS say not to use trademark symbols in Wikipedia articles? Could a compromise be to include a note in the article that that form of the name is trademarked? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:58, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

You're looking for MOS:TRADEMARK. MrOllie (talk) 03:00, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks says Do not use the ™ and ® symbols, or similar, in either article text or citations, unless unavoidably necessary for context. Pretty clear. Cullen328 (talk) 03:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I have dealt with a similar situation before, where one name of the subject was claimed to be protected as a trademark. Where that is the case, one solution is to just eliminate generic use of the claimed term from the article completely, and refer to the subject by its clearly generic name. Compare adhesive bandage and Band-Aid. BD2412 T 03:39, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Using a trademarked term is not a problem as we are not doing trade under it, not passing it off as applying to our product. Look at any newspaper, and you'll see trademarked terms referenced left, right, and center in the newspaper text, without the trademark symbols. It falls under trademark fair use. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 05:18, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. It was right there where I was looking, and I didn't see it. Thank you. Case closed and user blocked for legal threat. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:39, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The fact that we are able to use a trademarked term doesn't necessarily mean that it serves us to do this. The flip side of it is that even without use of a trademark symbol, we are effectively promoting the product with that name. If we were to replace every instance of paracetamol in that article with "Tylenol", it would probably be more recognizable to readers, but we would be implying that the brand is the only source for the technology. BD2412 T 14:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

It might be more recognizable to readers in the US, but as a Brit my reaction to your example was "of course everyone knows what paracetamol is, but what the [expletive deleted] is Tylenol". Phil Bridger (talk) 20:19, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

That's my reaction too. I was vaguely aware that Tylenol was a U.S. brand of a common medicine but didn't recall which one. Generic names are likely to be understood in more countries, whereas trademarks are often national. Certes (talk) 19:56, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Most of the drugs that I've looked up recently have the article under the generic name and redirects for trademarks. Consider Zytiga which is a redirect to Abiraterone acetate or Zometa which is a redirect to Zoledronic acid. I see that Tylenol is a disambiguation page that sends you to either Paracetamol or Tylenol (brand). Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:19, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem is that the generic term in the US is acetaminophen, not paracetamol, and most US readers will never have heard of the latter. To use a truely generic term, you'd have to use para-acetylaminophenol or N-acetyl-para-aminophenol, which even less people would have heard of. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:39, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I seem to have set everyone off at a tangent here. The bottom line is that we are not claiming that our product is the one trademarked, even when writing about other encyclopedias, so there is no need to use a trademark symbol. I think that issue was settled a few days ago. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

What a difference a name makes

Getting the name of an article right can sometimes make a big difference in readership. My example is the article Society of Jesus which from July 1, 2015 until August 22, 2022 was viewed 181 times per day. The name of the article was changed (with substantial opposition to the change) to Jesuits on August 23, 2022 and the article was viewed 1,685 times per day from then until January 7, 2024. I can't think of any explanation except the name change for the sudden increase in readership. Smallchief (talk) 14:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain of two things Smallchief: 1) that this is not the right place for this discussion and 2) that you have misunderstood how the pageviewer tool interprets redirects (this link may help). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:57, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain (1) I don't understand what you're trying to say and (2) if naming articles isn't part of policy what is? Smallchief (talk) 16:07, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

What policy discussion is this supposed to lead to? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:59, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

(1) What AirshipJungleman29 is saying is that the reason not many people were visiting Jesuits prior to 22 August 2022 is that the article was at Society of Jesus; if you look at the pageviews for that article from 2015 until the page was moved ([14]), you will find that it averaged 2,340 views/day. (2) There is indeed a policy regarding article names, but there are policies regarding everything on Wikipedia; WP:VPP is for proposing new policies or changes to existing policies and it is not clear what, if anything, you are proposing should change about our article naming policies. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:38, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

You can see the effect of the move quite neatly if you combine the two graphs - basically they just switched places overnight. The new page gets a higher proportion of its traffic through the redirect than the old one did, presumably because of links left at the old name, but the total is approximately steady for the two combined.

You can also see the effect of the pageviews including redirects - ie Jesuits plus all pages that currently redirect to it. This graph confirms no particular change in the traffic totals for that group of pages. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:50, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Smallchief (talk) 15:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the question is "Since most of our traffic comes from web search engines, should we consider SEO factors and Google ranking when we choose article titles?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:17, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

My answer would be: no, Wikipedia:Article titles is fine for helping readers find what they are looking for. Also, I think Wikipedia will outlast Google Search - we're already seeing how LLMs might make the "search results ranking" paradigm obsolete. No need to compromise our policies and guidelines at all, especially since we're already ranked #1 for a great many searches anyway. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 13:58, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

@Barnards.tar.gz, given that most of our traffic comes from external web search engines, are we actually "helping readers find what they are looking for" if we are not using article titles that are more likely to appear in external web search engine results? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I think WP:COMMONNAME gets us most of the way to doing exactly that. What more could we do? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 14:08, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Sometimes there can be a gap between article titles and what people are searching (for example when people search using misconceptions or non-neutral terms, or when a topic has more than one common name), however redirects can and do fill that gap. Thryduulf (talk) 16:05, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Popularity is not the only consideration. The popular ("common") name may not comply with the rest of Wikipedia:Article titles, due to issues like tone or precision. For example, consider The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The article is correctly titled even if the more popular version of the name is "the Mormon church". See also Myocardial infarction (not "heart attack") and Feces (rather than "poop"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:13, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:PGCHANGE and clarification of "widespread consensus" (may alter WP:CONSENSUS as well)

Currently, WP:PGCHANGE says this: After some time, if there are no objections to the change and/or if a widespread consensus for your change or implementation is reached through discussion, you can then edit policy and guideline pages describing the practice to reflect the new situation.

Should WP:PGCHANGE include an explanation, or else clarify the meaning of "widespread consensus" to mean the following:

For the purpose of this policy, "widespread consensus for the change" means that the discussion about substantive changes to a policy or guideline must be advertised sitewide to the entire community (such as through a request for comment and/or by posting at centralized discussion) and, after being so advertised, would reach consensus for the change.

It need not be the exact wording, but this would be the intended meaning. The possibility to edit policies and guidelines if there are no objections to these changes will stay. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Background (clarification of "widespread consensus")

A recent discussion about WP:ARTICLESIZE (a guideline) was closed as "consensus to change". But there were a few editors over there who opined that in WP:PGCHANGE (the policy about changing policies and guidelines), "widespread consensus" means that the discussion must be sufficiently advertised (preferably sitewide, as in with an RfC) and there be consensus. VQuakr went on to say that in a discussion about changing policy or a guideline, even a unanimous discussion with ~15 editors would mean little if it only remained known to those who cared about the guideline and did not appear as an RfC or similar.

I then asked DfD to help me out, and the one editor (Isaacl) who answered didn't say whether this was what the policy said but suggested that personally they would prefer to read it as asking for sitewide advertisement. Other editors (the majority of those people) wanted to avoid an RfC as it would be a drain on the community.

To be clear, I do not mean this discussion to overturn that closure (I don't have a horse in that race), but I do want to hear opinions on whether changing policies and guidelines is appropriate without an RfC, given the doubts that have appeared in interpreting that policy. I do not wish to comment about that discussion so as not to appear favouring either side of that discussion. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Survey (clarification of "widespread consensus")

• Oppose - I don't think the additional text works in the broader context of the section. A change can be made if no one objects. A single objection shouldn't neccessarily trigger the need for a site-wide RFC. Often the consensus can become clear through ordinary, widespread discussion, without the bureaucratic overhead of an RFC. There are some changes that should be put to such an RFC, but they shouldn't be mandatory in all cases that aren’t strictly unanimous.--Trystan (talk) 15:25, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as needless bureaucracy. A WikiProject talk page isn’t a valid place go get consensus, but a policy talk page obviously is Mach61 (talk) 18:28, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
• Reword. I think something is needed, but perhaps not this precise wording. What's really necessary is some sort of link to WP:CONLEVEL and an indication that you need a consensus commiserate to the level of the change you are making - minor tweaks don't require widely-advertised consensus, and sometimes may not require affirmative consensus at all if they're slight wording tweaks and nobody objects, whereas if your change would fundimentially alter the functioning of core policy then it needs consensus on a level appropriate for that massive impact. Currently, at least at a glance, the page doesn't mention that at all; there needs to be at least one link to CONLEVEL somewhere on the page, since understanding that policy is essential for any major policy change. (Especially see the second paragraph of CONLEVEL, which is central here.) --Aquillion (talk) 10:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  I'm ready to hear your proposal Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:32, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  A few months ago, Aquillion said that "an RFC on an article talk page is by default local, and any conclusions it reaches are local; that is the heart and soul of WP:CONLEVEL".

  This is neither consistent with what CONLEVEL says (it gives an example of an unadvertised, non-RFC discussion between a self-selected group of editors on a WikiProject's talk page that they claim overrides the views of editors on hundreds or thousands of articles) nor with how RFCs (the primary mechanism for advertising a discussion to the wider community, with the goal of getting comments from uninvolved editors) are understood by the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

  Indeedy. And those of who do more than a single trivial cleanup bit, like a top-to-bottom clarity and cross-referencing overhaul, tend to announce this on the talk page and lay out what we're doing and invite discussion (or even reversion). I do this all the time. We do occasionally get someone trying to make unconstructive substantive changes (add a new rule we don't need, flip a rule backwards from it original intent, subtly shift wording to help them win some petty dispute at an article, etc.), but this stuff usually gets reverted quickly if it's not discussed on the talk page and met with approval.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:15, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose at least in something like that form, per WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY and WP:CREEP and WP:EDITING and the intent of WP:P&G (particularly WP:PGCHANGE) in the first place. That said, I agree with Aquillion that the section should include a cross-reference to WP:CONLEVEL. If some suggestion to do an RfC or something is included, it should not refer to WP:CENT which is for high-profile things needing massive amounts of editorial attention and which are likely to affect a bazillion articles (or editors thereof). CENT is absolutely not for minor clarification or loophole-closure tweaks to P&G material. The more appropriate venue for "advertising" a discussion about something like that is WP:VPPOL itself. Editors who care to be involved in the formation of our P&G pages already watch this page, but the entire editorial pool do not need CENT browbeating about what is usually maintenance trivia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:01, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

  About a year ago, on the talk page of one of the core policies (NPOV?), an editor stated that (in their opinion) every single edit to a policy page needed prior discussion, if not an RFC. We pointed the editor to the history page to review the edits made during the last month or so, and asked them how many of those they would revert. The answer was "none". I don't think most editors understand how many changes produce no real change in meaning – a link here, a grammar tweak there, but no substantive changes. Few of us make substantive changes without prior discussion, and even fewer of us make those edits without the change being reverted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per Trystan. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 19:37, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose I guess, I tend to agree and want to support but consensus works by being a consensus, not declaring it to exist. If enough people don't like the change when it is made, you enter into Bold revert discuss, don't you, because the consensus wasn't as strong as first thought or has changed since you thought you had it defined. So, hmmm, sitting on the fence getting splinters maybe? Hiding T 20:02, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support - Significant changes to P&Gs should be (1) tagged {{rfc}} so they go through WP:FRS, (2) linked at WP:VPP to inform editors watchlisting/checking that page because they want to know about policy changes, and also because the VPP archives make a handy searchable record of sitewide policy changes, and (3) probably listed at WP:CENT (as should this proposal or any future one like it) although maybe CENT should be reserved for the "most significant" changes to P&Gs rather than every significant change. These 3 requirements should be explained at WP:PGCHANGE to specify exactly how widespread "widespread consensus" needs to be. I'm not wedded to the particular language proposed, but I support adding something like this to PGCHANGE. Non-significant changes like typo corrections, etc., don't need to go through the whole rigmarole. Levivich (talk) 16:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  (The Wikipedia:Feedback request service seems to be broken at the moment. User:Yapperbot hasn't made any edits for a month.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I heard Yapperbot is on a solidarity strike to protest Wikipedia's treatment of LLMs. Levivich (talk) 16:47, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose as proposed per Aquillion. Changes to P&Gs need to advertised in proportion to both the significance of the change and the scope of the policy/guideline concerned. For example, changes to the guidelines regarding infoboxes on articles about English counties don't require a sitewide discussion but substantial changes to WP:V do. Thryduulf (talk) 19:58, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (clarification of "widespread consensus")

@Szmenderowiecki: thanks for the well-thought out content above and the ping. I would say that the meaning of "widespread" varies depending on the scope of the impact of the proposed change. In the specific case of the article size discussion that prompted this, the group was discussing subsequent changes to other policies and believed that those changes would be subject to the consensus they had there. For the impact of the change they were proposing, their consensus was not widespread. I think we agree, though, that most changes to PAG do not need sitewide advertisement. The proposed change above effectively just kicks the can of when to advertise from the definition of "widespread" to the definition of "substantive". Ultimately, a judgement call will need to be made, and given that groupthink is more or less inherent in a collaborative environment, the reminder that a small team of editors (however internally aligned) shouldn't be making sitewide decisions in a vacuum will be met with occasional resistance. I'm not sure that's a problem that can be mitigated with a tweak to policy. VQuakr (talk) 16:53, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The "substantive change" thing is already in the policy. Before making substantive changes to policy and guideline pages, it is sometimes useful to try to establish a reasonable exception to the existing practice. Maybe this will be an issue sometime later but we can assume that typos, grammar, markup and general changes to wording that do not change the meaning of policy or guideline are non-substantive changes. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:20, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the proposed change to the text is the best approach. Often changes face objections by someone who raises no specific concerns other than suggesting that a request for comments discussion be held, which can lead to the degree of impact being exaggerated and thus deadlocking minor changes from proceeding. In the referenced discussion, I said that in my view, the affected community of editors should be given the chance to discuss and influence the proposed change. This may not require a site-wide advertising of the proposal. It will depend on the scope of the guidance and the proposed change in question. isaacl (talk) 18:24, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yep. Going through this right now with a bit of policy cleanup, which is being stonewalled by someone resistant to change (even basic grammar correction) simply for the sake of being resistant to change, as far as I can tell.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:21, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I guess WP:NOTAVOTE would apply in that case. If the best they can argue is that their gut feeling is wrong or that I just want to resist all change, then I think we can safely disregard this. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:19, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Since I closed the discussion referenced above, I guess I'll just note that of course I think matching a proposed change to an appropriate quorum will always be a balancing act. Those affected by a change should have the opportunity to share their thoughts about it. In this case, a table listed "rules of thumb" in two (intended-to-be) equivalent measures – word count and kb of prose. A discussion at the guideline's talk page concluded the second measure (kb of prose size) should be removed as potentially confusing and unneeded. How broad a discussion is needed for such a change? The guideline's meaning is unchanged, it's just now expressed in one way rather than two. Even if WP:PGCHANGE read as proposed above, I likely would have closed the discussion the same way, considering this to not be a "substantive change", and expecting no particular controversy. Ajpolino (talk) 03:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Been a part of that discussion, and it does seem to be stonewalled also by a single party. I think their argument amounts to a (rather impassioned and stubborn) disagreement that the change is non-substantive. They seem to feel that the change, while perhaps not altering the actual end-result size/length limits, will in some way strongly affect at least some subset of users' understanding of how to arrive at it, their sense of what it means in reality, or something to this effect. I don't agree with the position, for reasons given over at that discussion, but it doesn't seem entirely out of left-field.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC on capitalization in "NFL Draft"/"National Football League draft" etc.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles

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Regarding the capitalization in "NFL Draft"/"National Football League draft" etc., should it be capitalized "Draft", or lowercase "draft", in article text and titles? With what exceptions, if any? 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC) Dicklyon (talk) 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Due to growing length, this RfC has been split off, per request, to its own page at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:33, 15 January 2024 (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.

RFC on today's professional wrestling event

• Talk:Royal Rumble (2024)#RFC

There is a discussion about how MOS:FICTION should apply to the lead of Royal Rumble (2024). The professional wrestling is talking place today, and, as of yesterday, this is our 26th most viewed article[15], so I hope we can reach a speedy consensus. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 06:11, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

On a side note, wouldn't it be more NATURAL to have these articles titled 20XX Royal Rumble rather than Royal Rumble (20XX)? InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:27, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

RFC on inactivity requirements for interface administrators

Hello, an RFC regarding the inactivity requirements for our interface administrators has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators#RFC: Increase inactivity requirement. Interested editors are welcome to join the discussion there. Note: this has no impact to the activity requirements of general administrators. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 11:27, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding a policy bias against articles without sources

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The page is getting large, which is a problem for some editors. This discussion already had almost 150 comments and it was just added to WP:CENT to draw even more attention. Please comment at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles instead of here. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:52, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

---

Currently, there are over 114,000 articles on Wikipedia that contain no citations or sources, making it one of the largest clean up categories on the site. WP:WikiProject Unreferenced articles has been one of the main WikiProjects attempting to dig through this giant haystack in order to give as many articles proper sources. Unfortunately, a main obstacle to cleanup has been how stringent deletion policy is. If you WP:PROD an article, it takes a week to delete, which is fine, and can be reversed by anyone. The issue is that many of these articles are unsourced stubs with no indicated notability, an article that me and others would agree to be a uncontroversial deletion via WP:PROD. Many of these PROD's are contested and then must go through the possibly month long review process VIA WP:AFD. The conclusion to this process usually is delete, but I believe that a criterion should be proposed that biases an article in favor of deletion, which is not having any sources. If this is written into the WP:DELETE policy, then I believe that editors like me will have a much easier time combing through the massive garbage dump that are unsourced articles. Tooncool64 (talk) 06:39, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't our current policy effectively do that? Editors arguing for notability are already required to provide or attest to the existence of sources which support notability. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 07:09, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

True, but this is more directed at solidifying a valid reason for deletion, or a secondary reason, an article lacking sources, such that a PROD could say "Article fails WP:NGEO and WP:NOSOURCE", and be viewed as uncontroversial. Tooncool64 (talk) 07:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I think to some extent PROD will always be controversial. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that. I proposed deletion for this article [16] but the tag was reverted. The reason was supposedly that other elections later on are notable, but regardless, the problem is many of the earlier articles are unsourced and redundant, and many just redirect to the nominated Emperors' pages. Yr Enw (talk) 07:46, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Its not a great reason, but its nice that they gave a reason at all (none is actually required to remove a PROD). The next step would be opening a talk page discussion on notability, hopefully the editor who removed the PROD is willing to work with you to find sources and if not will be willing to support a move towards AFD. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I did talk page them, but they never responded. I get the need for collab, but often it can just become unintentional filibustering Yr Enw (talk) 09:19, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

What if the concepts of WP:BLPPROD were expanded to non-BLPs without any sources? At a minimum, a deprod could be required add one reliable source.—Bagumba (talk) 08:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

This might be the best option. I wasn't even aware of the WP:BLPROD policy myself, but having a similar policy apply to unsourced articles would allow for both one, editors to more quickly sift through unsourced articles, and two, editors who want to do specialized research to find obscure sources for articles that are proposed via this hypothetical process. If no sources can truly be found, reliable or otherwise, then it would be an uncontroversial deletion that would be able to avoid the lengthy WP:AFD process. Tooncool64 (talk) 08:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Brilliant. 100% support this.—S Marshall T/C 08:51, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Also support this. JoelleJay (talk) 20:16, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Support this idea myself as well. Let'srun (talk) 15:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, I don't. AfD exists for a reason: inclusion criteria are based on whether sources exist, and whether it's possible to write an article on a subject. They aren't based on whether Bill has time tomorrow afternoon to go get an interlibrary loan and then drive out to pick up eighteen books and spend the entire evening going through to frantically reference 53 articles before the guillotine falls. AfD lasts seven days. If an AfD is relisted because of lack of participation, it means that there isn't enough volunteer effort available to properly assess the article. If there isn't enough volunteer effort available to properly assess an article...there isn't enough volunteer effort available to come to a firm conclusion that the topic is non-notable. jp×g🗯️ 09:39, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If someone wants to re-create the article in the future with sources, then more power to them. It would be a soft-delete, allowing an editor to re-create the page. Tens of thousands of these articles have no reason to exist, no content, no usability for information. Like I said previously, Wikipedia is not meant for collecting items that exist. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, it's not meant to be a shoot-em-up game either -- the fact that deleting articles causes an enjoyable sensation on the back of the neck isn't a reason to do it. There are plenty of reasons why stubs exist. They're written by someone who had access to some information, or maybe to a lot of information, but who for whatever reason wrote a very short article; for the vast majority of them, it's completely possible to write something longer. If it's not, and the article is such a turd it needs to be wholly extirpated from the project, we have AfD, which sees approximately fifty nominations per day, with a turnover of somewhere around a week. In fact, we also have draftification, PRODs and speedy deletion -- that makes four separate processes by which stuff can be taken out of mainspace if it's bad. Why do we need another? jp×g🗯️ 10:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Bagumba, a proposal to establish the system you describe recently failed at an RfC a few months ago (Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 207#Request for comment: Unreferenced PROD). Curbon7 (talk) 08:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I can completely understand why many people where against this in the way it was worded. If an unsourced PROD were to exist, it would need to have at the very least a 7 day time limit, like current WP:PROD. The major reason I am in favor of something like this is because I believe, at the very least in 2024, articles on Wikipedia need to have sources, even if it is just one. No article would pass WP:AFC without sources attached. Tooncool64 (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that one out. After a quick glance, it seems it involved a new tagging process that people objected to, as opposed to just expanding a known process, PROD. The proposal just waved at a link, and some likely thought TLDR or made some wrong assumptions, and rejected for that reason. Not saying this would necessarily pass, but an improved presentation and concise pitch could go a long way. —Bagumba (talk) 09:18, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep. I tried an RfC on that. Snow-opposed. (Although the wording was really badly done, as I recall, so everyone was at least moderately confused.) 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 00:42, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

This is close to becoming a perennial proposal. Policy is the way it is a foundational principle of this project is that imperfect content is an opportunity for collaboration, not something that needs to be expunged. If you instead choose to look at articles that fellow volunteers have taken the time to write as a "garbage dump" and deletion as the preferred way of dealing with them, then of course you're going to meet friction. – Joe (talk) 09:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

My rhetoric might be harsh, but unfortunately, many of these unsourced articles are tens of thousands of one sentenced geography stubs, that may or may not even meet WP:NGEO, or tens of thousands of unsourced "Topic in Year" articles. If you are looking at these articles as part of a maintenance category, which they are, then you are forced to realize that many of these are not worth keeping, if for the very fact that they are unusable for information. Tooncool64 (talk) 09:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Clearly at least one person disagreed with you about that, or the articles wouldn't exist. – Joe (talk) 10:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the standards for creating articles was much lower back in the day. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

So what? Here are some "one sentenced geography stubs", generated as single-sentence stubs from a database: Chain Island, Tinsley Island, Bull Island (California), Kimball Island, Joice Island, Island No. 2, Russ Island, Atlas Tract, Empire Tract, Brewer Island, Fox Island (Detroit River), Spud Island, Hog Island (San Joaquin County), Fordson Island, Tule Island, Headreach Island, Stony Island (Michigan), Aramburu Island, Bradford Island, Van Sickle Island, Powder House Island. You will notice these are twenty GAs and a Featured Article, all of which were written from said stubs -- the "garbage dump" of which you speak. The issue is that writing things requires effort and skill: the solution is not to spend all day sitting around coming up with new ways to delete stuff. jp×g🗯️ 09:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

That's amazing how much hard work and care went into those articles! If an editor in the future wants to re-create an article that was deleted via this hypothetical process, it wouldn't be difficult. We do not need to hoard unsourced articles currently for the possibility in the future that they may be found to be notable. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes it will: our hypothetical editor will have to notice that something's a redlink (from where?), look through the deletion log, ask the deleting admin for a WP:REFUND, wait on a response, and then get it restored to their userspace or draftspace. This is a rather long and complicated process that, generally, only power users are able to do. What concrete benefit is brought by forcing them to go through this? jp×g🗯️ 10:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Or they can just...create the article themselves without going through REFUND... The difference between expanding and de novo creating a 1-sentence stub is like, the one minute it takes to create a 1-sentence stub... An admin could literally paste the entire REFUND of the text in an edit summary, it's not like we're talking about valuable starting material here. JoelleJay (talk) 18:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Creating a new article on a title that has been deleted before requires one to know that one is encouraged to recreate some, but far from all, deleted articles. The box that comes up for all deleted content is far from encouraging. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:13, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem in that regard is that the way PROD is set up collaboration is "encouraged, but not required." Why not require collaboration as a requirement of challenging a PROD? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The fallback collaboration option is a formal AfD. PROD offers some rare opportunites for lightweight deletions if nobody is looking or people agree and don't contest, but a WP:REFUND is typically possible. —Bagumba (talk) 09:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

TBH I think the ideal collaboration option is actually in between the two... A talk page discussion should be able to settle the issue the vast majority of the time... If the challenger was required to open a talk page section with their rationale (preferably in the form of sources) I think that would go a long way towards facilitating collaboration without the wounded feelings that jumping to AfD can cause. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Could not agree more. Tooncool64 (talk) 09:36, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I consider PROD a failed experiment at this point. The grey zone between CSD and AfD is just too narrow to support an extra process, and the awkward process (add a template, wait a week, keep checking back in case it's removed and you need to turn it into an AfD) makes it useless for anybody who's patrolling articles en masse. – Joe (talk) 10:03, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I would love to see some statistics on PROD... What percentage get challenged... What percentage of those go to AfD... What percentage of those survive AfD... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: what do you think of the notability tag? Also in the grey zone? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem is that nominating an article for prod takes a few seconds, and editors often nominate many in a short space of time. Finding a source will often take hours or more, and needs to be specific to the article in question. They are not symmetrical operations. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The creator of the article can take as long as they need to find sources, years even. There is no need to create the article in mains space to work on it, it can be done in draft or namespace . Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:15, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

No problem with requiring sources for new articles, but we're talking about the backlog of old ones here. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

There has never been a time when that wasn't true, its as true of the old ones as the new ones... If the creator didn't want them judged by mainspace standards they wouldn't have created the article in mainspace. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:52, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Requiring a source be added to dePROD an unsourced article would be ideal. JoelleJay (talk) 20:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

+1 Mccapra (talk) 22:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• oppose incredibly strongly. Merge and redirect them if you can't source them rather than run them through afd. Deletion isn't clean up. If the merger is undone, build consensus for the merge. Job done. There's no deadline. We don't need to constantly revise the rules to do the work, we just need to use the rules we've got to make Wikipedia better and coach the editors around us on the way to use the tools. Merge. Redirect. Build consensus that that's the right approach. Hiding T 22:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. Haven't we discussed this recently? The existing procedures (prod, then AfD if challenged) are adequate for removing nonnotable unsourced material. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• I think this is a bad idea for the reasons I've explained above. jp×g🗯️ 09:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This proposal is not compatible with WP:NEXIST or WP:ATD. The topic of an unsourced article is often notable. The content of unsourced articles is often accurate and verifiable. In fact, the content of unsourced articles is often WP:BLUE. James500 (talk) 11:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  “The content is often WP:Blue”… really? prove it! 😉 Blueboar (talk) 15:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  The article is so obvious, we don't need sourcing! Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

• So your suggestion is to merge unsourced material elsewhere...? JoelleJay (talk) 22:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If the info is unsourced, then we shouldn't be merging it anywhere. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Nah, part of the merge process is either sourcing what is unsourced or discarding it and improper for merging. This discussion is about entire erstwhile articles with no sources, not about snippets of text without sources in articles that otherwise are sourced.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Merge and redirect them if you can't source them is directing us to merge the unsourced content of an unsourced article into another article. JoelleJay (talk) 18:44, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree with Hiding, above. We aleady have the policies we need; what we lack is editorial focus to get the job done.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

My idea would be to increase the “unsourced article deletion” time to 60 days. Then I would probably accept it. 71.239.86.150 (talk) 20:08, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Should a special PROD category, similar to WP:BLPROD, be created for unreferenced tagged articles?

Should a special PROD category, similar to WP:BLPROD, be created for unreferenced tagged articles? Tooncool64 (talk) 06:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

This category for deletion would have four caveats.

1. Articles could be removed from this process by having at least one sourced attached to it, removing the unreferenced tag.

2. Articles held within this category would not be deleted until 30 days have passed, hopefully allowing editors ample time to go through these articles and potentially find sources.

3. This would not be an automatic process. Unsourced articles would optimally be only tagged for this special PROD after editors have looked for a source and have failed to find one.

4. This proposed PROD policy would not supersede WP:AFD or WP:CSD.

Survey (RFC for an unreferenced PROD procedure)

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles

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.

Latitude and longitude articles

Along the lines of #Do we really need over 600 articles on individual Samsung products? above, do we really need articles on individual latitudes? I stumbled across 85th parallel north, which led me to Category:Circles of latitude and Category:Meridians (geography), all of which (at least the ones I spot-checked) are 1) boilerplate and 2) completely unsourced. Is there any value in these? RoySmith (talk) 03:04, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

My inkling is "yes, but....". It feels very paper encyclopaedia to have these, a simple explanation of what they are and what they mean. A quick Google and there we are, this is what 85th parallel north means, which is the basic duty of a reference guide. If you're looking through the lens of "Wikipedia purity", I can see why you'd want to purge them all. It's another balance of argument question for me: if Wiki is a place you go for answers, here's an answer. doktorb _words^deeds 03:19, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Why can't we have two Circles of latitude/Meridians articles containing all the answers in one place? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia articles for every interesting number, which as it turns out there are a lot of. (And then once you find the smallest non-interesting number, then hoo boy are you in for some fun.) But enumerating all the integer parallels with an article as if there's something worthwhile to say? When you wikilinked that, I was expecting the article to say at least something even *mildly* interesting, like such-and-such town lies exactly on this parallel.

Auto-generated trash. At least the auto-generated asteroid articles had a tolerable excuse of 'at the pace of research, at any week a paper may come out that features asteroid 12345 as its centerpiece' -- and we still consolidated the asteroids into list articles.

Interestingly, these wouldn't even qualify for a list article: == List of parallels== ;1 ;2 ;3 ;4 ;5 .... Speedy delete all of them that say nothing beyond the obvious; consolidate the purely geography trivia ("X city is on # parallel"); keep the otherwise notable ones (38th, 49th, etc). SamuelRiv (talk) 03:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

What I'll say about "otherwise notable" is, on whose perspective? The line which cuts the Korean peninsula, the US-Canada border, certain no-fly zones; that's a lot of politics we need to tiptoe around. doktorb _words^deeds 03:49, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

On the perspective of reliable sources that have written about the specific latitude or longitude independently of the others. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:46, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Circle of latitude has a list of "Other notable parallels", although it appears to be not the Wikipedia definition and instead lists latitudes used in border demarcation. I wonder if most lines would even if covered be better covered in a consolidated article, for example this short article on these 'lines' in tourism mentions a few different latitudes (among other lines) within a wider context. CMD (talk) 05:18, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I've found these articles both useful and interesting. Although light on sources, their information is clearly verifiable. They might be borderline for a paper encyclopedia, but Wikipedia won't run out of paper. I see advantages to keeping them but little to be gained by deleting them. Certes (talk) 10:10, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

The proposal made is merging, not deletion. CMD (talk) 12:45, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Both options seem to be on the table. The original question was "do we really need articles... Is there any value in these?" Merger would create some rather large articles covering multiple topics. There's little overlap, unlike Samsung where we can combine the 1234A with the 1234B saying that they share the same features but the B model has a better camera. Certes (talk) 13:16, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree with the move for merging these into a large article/articles, a jumbo-sized table, etc. Over 500 individual, unreferenced articles provide minimal benefits that couldn't be concatenated into a series of clear and comprehensive tables. Kazamzam (talk) 15:21, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Just keep in mind that one big unsourced article isn't an improvement over lots of little unsourced articles. RoySmith (talk) 15:24, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. When space constraints allow it, it's much better to have all of the information where we can manage and maintain it in one place instead of having a bunch of forgotten stubs of questionable notability that only paint part of the picture. That's why we have WP:PAGEDECIDE. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:06, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

• My initial feeling is these are generally encyclopaedic, some of them are over 15 years old now and appear to have gone largely unquestioned, no AfDs since at least 2016, and there is some trivial usefulness to say 3rd parallel north. There's also some that will be clearly notable, for instance 15th parallel north needs a couple sources as it's been important in war, and 49th parallel north will be clearly relevant to North Americans. Instead of removal I think we should see how they can be improved, and only then either remove the ones we can't source or agree that these are all relevant as a set of articles. SportingFlyer T·C 12:28, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm curious to know which specific articles you spot-checked, @RoySmith:. pbp 14:03, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

That's a fair question. Based on what I see in my browser history:

• 85th parallel north
• 31st parallel south
• 84th parallel north
• 87th meridian east
• 97th meridian east

I also looked at these which, unlike the above, are useful articles:

• 32nd meridian west from Washington
• 27th meridian west from Washington
• 25th meridian west from Washington

RoySmith (talk) 14:49, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Compare 31st parallel north, for example. One thing I would caution you is that two of the three parallels you looked at are in the Arctic, where a) they are shorter in length than parallels closer to the Equator, and b) they are in an area that is almost entirely depopulated.

I'm inclined to believe that there is massive variability in the notability of parallels and meridians and that we shouldn't have a single predetermined outcome for them pbp 19:21, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

84th and 85th north should be merged to Arctic Ocean, just like 86th–89th are. Most of the rest could probably be consolidated into 5-degree chunks like the navbox is (as it is, they all violate WP:BIDI). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:53, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I've just taken a look at a couple, starting with 3rd parallel north as highlighted by SportingFlyer above; i think the key words are "trivial usefulness", as i struggle to see the point of those i glanced at: Of the six i opened, only 80th parallel south seems to give any useful information (the UTM zone thing). As for, "no AfDs since at least 2016", to my mind that doesn't show anything more than an acceptance of a situation like that of WP:OUTCOMES, where AfDs for schools effectively stopped because, despite general apparent acknowlegement that not all are notable, every secondary school AfD ended up as Keep, so no point in trying, thus i see it as a circular argument when applied here. Happy days, ~ Lindsay^Hello 14:57, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

That's just as far back as the geography AfD archive goes. I don't think it's necessarily acceptance of a situation since it's possible nobody has brought this up for being un-encyclopaedic before. SportingFlyer T·C 15:01, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

As with Roy above, I would appreciate knowing what parallels you researched. pbp 19:22, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

This does seem like something important that any reasonable encyclopedia or reference work ought to cover, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in their own separate articles. Merging them into a few as suggested would probably be a good idea, though there are definitely some with enough content to remain independent. 38th parallel north is an obvious one that comes to mind, as well as 49th parallel north. The raw data could be combined into the parent article, but having a Template:Main article leading to the independent one should work nicely. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 15:12, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

38th parallel north is an obvious one that comes to mind. I took a look at 38th parallel north. I assume you're talking about the Korea section. I went through that sentence by sentence and couldn't find any significant facts that aren't already covered in greater detail in Division of Korea and again in Korean Demilitarized Zone. 38th parallel already has links to those articles, which is exactly what's needed. RoySmith (talk) 16:53, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

That's true, but any page on the 38th Parallel should have at least a summary of its significance to Korea and the war (more space than the single sentence at Circles of latitude. However it doesn't seem like it would belong in a single page on all the latitudes, nor would linking to both those separate articles be great. Some duplication/summarization of content is necessary in an encyclopedia, but we can still safely reduce at least 90% of the redundancy for latitude and longitude by merging most into the parent article. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:20, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, sure, but this is the tail wagging the dog. The point of {{main article}} is to include a little context in a related article and provide a pointer to where you can get more detail. For example, Abacus has a section Abacus#Rome which links to Roman abacus and gives a summary of the major points in-line. The difference between that and the situation here is that Abacus clearly justifies a stand-alone article covering a broad topic, with a great deal of information about abacuses in general. In this case, the Division of Korea summary is the only content in 38th parallel north which is notable. RoySmith (talk) 17:39, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Merging them into one or two articles seems eminently sensible. I would like to think that the basic geographical facts would be sourceable to a good atlas. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:42, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

As far as what these lines on a map are, (1 degree increments of Latitude and longitude) IMO that would best all covered in 2-3 articles which would include sun visibility, which is the only content in many of these. And then we have a lot a special types of articles that are somewhat like list articles (whether or not they are called that) that group things together that are already covered elsewhere in Wikipedia. To be a bit usefully facetious, it's like creating a "Tuesday" article which covers all of the events that happened on a Tuesday. That's sort of what these are. Wikipedia provides very little guidance on these, and the little guidance that there is is scattered between policies and guidelines. IMO the criteria should be that a reasonable number of people would be seeking that particular grouping. (which is also common sense and indirectly alluded to in one guideline) IMO these articles fail that criteria. People aren't going to seek grouping based on what is near a particular 1 degree increment line on a map. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:54, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed these should be merged into a couple main articles. I cannot think of any general paper encyclopedia that would contain even a tiny fraction this info. Certainly not the WorldBook set I grew up reading. JoelleJay (talk) 21:25, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm curious what the active editors who created some of these articles think about the potential for a merge, so pinging Bazonka, Presidentman, and Buaidh. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

We already have List of circles of latitude that can be restructured as a merge target, and it shouldn't be an issue to create List of meridians. And if/when it's shown that any of them are independently notable (such as the 38th parallel north and the 45th parallel north), then the list can link to them. The 71st parallel south is not notable, and if it's not merged, then there's no justification to keep it at AfD. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

The lines of latitude actually get some fairly decent page views - some 50 a day, the 38th parallel north in the 300s a day. Meridians much less so. These pages also exist in a lot of different languages, albeit not all of them. I think my issue is that these clearly serve some sort of reference purpose, albeit trivial. SportingFlyer T·C 00:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

• In terms of whether a merged article would become unwieldly, currently the most notable latitude and longitude articles (and ones that will presumably not be in strong consideration for merging), Equator and Prime meridian, come in at under 2,000 words each. CMD (talk) 01:43, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
• Agree with the sentiments above that most can be merged into main articles. I'm not entirely sold that the relevance of certain parallels to borders inherently makes them notable (the discussion is very much about the borders, just because it's fixed on a parallel doesn't mean that the parallel is really what's the notable element) but at least there's something to say about those that will be clearly beyond just trivia. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:02, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I created many of these articles (thanks WhatamIdoing for bringing this discussion to my attention), and I certainly oppose a merger.

Each integral line of latitude and longitude is notable in its own right. Admittedly, some are less notable than others, but each of them is a significant feature shown on maps. People live on them, administrative borders and satellite orbits etc. are defined by them, and many of the lines' articles are referenced from other articles.

For example (to pick one at random) London Company says "The London Company was a division of the Virginia Company with responsibility for colonizing the east coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° N." Without the links to the parallels' articles, a reader might not understand what they mean, but now with a click or two, they can quickly be taken to a map showing the line, thus improving the understandability of the referring article.

Sure, the articles contain more than the sort of information than you'd find in a paper encyclopaedia, but that's not what Wikipedia is! I feel that setting out the list of countries, territories and seas that each line crosses is useful almanac information. Essentially, these articles have translated cartographic information into textual information. (Consider a visually impaired user who can't look at a map, but who can now interpret the information.)

It's been claimed that these articles are mostly unreferenced. This isn't really correct, although I agree they're not referenced in the usual way. All of the coordinates in the table link to a map, which is essentially a reliable reference source. (This has been discussed before and consensus was that it was OK.)

I should also point out that several of these articles have been to AFD before and the consensus has always been to keep them.

By all means merge the articles, but I don't think it will be possible to do this without losing useful information. Bazonka (talk) 16:47, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Bazonka, on Wikipedia, notable doesn't mean important or useful. The requirement is defined at Wikipedia:Notability. For something to be notable, there have to be reliable sources that give in-depth coverage to the specific topic of the article. So a map isn't enough to demonstrate notability. We'd need, for example, sources that specifically analyze the importance of 43rd parallel south in a way that isn't just a listing of all the circles of latitude. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:09, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I can see I'm going to have to dig out all of the discussions that have previously taken place about this, which all resulted in a Keep. Bazonka (talk) 17:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

TBUA, since "notable doesn't mean important", we don't actually need "sources that specifically analyze the importance". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

That's what I get for rewording my comment three times in a row. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:27, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

We've gone round these circles before, so to speak, and such "Wikipedia purity" gets us nowhere. Sometimes we need to remember that some facts are just pints doktorb _words^deeds 17:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

As far as many of the lines' articles are referenced from other articles goes, this entire thread started when I was reviewing an article prior to a FA submission and suggested that the link to 85th parallel north be removed because it didn't say anything useful. That led me to look more closely at 85th parallel north which led to Category:Circles of latitude, etc. I'll also note that These pages also exist in a lot of different languages, mentioned upthread, is WP:OTHERLANGS. RoySmith (talk) 17:21, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Here are some discussions in which deletion/merger of these articles have previously been raised and rejected (or at least reached no consensus): Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 29#Articles for each meridian/parallel, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another. I may have missed some others. Bazonka (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe this is an accurate representation of the situation.

• Virtually all of these AfDs that you've listed are part of a bulk AfD that was split into individual ones. Notice the timestamps; they're all concurrent.
• Speaking of the timestamps, this was 15 years ago.
• Next, look at the usernames. In nearly all of them, it's the same 4–5 people. Many of the comments are even copied and pasted from one AfD to the next.
• Most importantly, I don't see a single reference to GNG in any keep !votes in any of those AfDs. I don't see any of them offer anything remotely resembling a genuine reliable secondary source as evidence that these subjects have received significant coverage.

You're saying that we shouldn't merge these articles because ~5 people ignored the need for reliable sources 15 years ago, and you're presenting it as if this has been litigated over a dozen times. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:28, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep. Consensus can change, and 15 years is plenty of time for it to happen. Specific, focused merge discussions and AfDs are the best path forward. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:46, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll also note that most of the AfDs linked to above were closed by John254, who has since been banned as a prolific sock, with the SPI notes indicating that AfD was one of their areas of interest. That doesn't prove the closes were wrong, but it doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence that they were carefully considered. RoySmith (talk) 18:52, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:OTHERLANGS is a fine argument for AfD, but this is the second discussion in a couple weeks about the essence of what is encyclopedic knowledge... In reality we're really discussing whether the tables found on the Equator page showing what is on the equator is valid encyclopedic information or not, since it's both so obviously compiled and potentially useful. SportingFlyer T·C 20:04, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

SportingFlyer, did you look at "WP:OTHERLANGS" before you linked to it? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course I did, and I know the rule well: just because an article exists in another language or langauges does not mean it is valid for inclusion on the English wikipedia. But we're too narrowly focused on notability here considering Wikipedia is a gazetteer, and the fact other languages include this pure reference information as well should be a sign that it may actually be encyclopedic. SportingFlyer T·C 20:23, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

If you have an issue with WP:N, then make a proposal to change it. Simply deciding to create your own standard for notability is just going to cause problems. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:28, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

The fact we're a gazetteer isn't my own standard for notability. SportingFlyer T·C 20:34, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

What WP:5P1 says is Wikipedia combines many features of ... gazetteers, which often gets mis-quoted as "wikipedia is a gazetteer", which in turn seems to often get mis-interpreted as "anything related to geography gets an automatic free pass on WP:N" RoySmith (talk) 23:53, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

You're overstating that, it simply means that we require WP:V instead of GNG for certain types of geography articles, since you should expect to find an article on a populated place in an encyclopedia. That's sort of the crux of my argument here - you'd expect to find this specific subset of an article in an encyclopedia, which is backed up by the fact they're in other languages and have decent amount of daily page views. SportingFlyer T·C 10:45, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

The only overstatement is "we're a gazetteer" which simply is not true... We are in fact not a gazetteer, we just have some features of one. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:27, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

What encyclopedias are you people reading that have individualized coverage of every latitude/longitude degree or every populated place?! Encyclopedias have never been comprehensive directories, and having entries for items we don't expect to have any secondary coverage goes directly against NOT. JoelleJay (talk) 19:15, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:V is for confirming individual facts. The standards for the existence of an article can be found at WP:N. Particularly relevant is WP:NRV: No subject is automatically or inherently notable merely because it exists. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:20, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

There isn't a single policy or guideline that claims we're a gazetteer. There isn't even an essay that says this, as the one you're probably referencing only says WP contains certain aspects of gazetteers.
Other languages have wildly different concepts of what is encyclopedic and regularly include material that would be against policy here. That they have (what are likely often bot-generated or machine-translated) pages on any of these topics is irrelevant. JoelleJay (talk) 23:59, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Gazetteer... – Joe (talk) 08:15, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Bazonka (talk) 16:47, 25 January 2024 (UTC) gives good reasons to keep them as they are. The benefits outweigh the costs. Being a good navigational aid is a good reason for a page separate from the concept of notability. SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:57, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Like Categories, lists, and navigation templates, and disambiguation pages, lines of latitude and longitude are justifiable without reference to notability. Instead, could incoming links as justification as navigation aids. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That would make sense if you have all of them on one page, instead of spread out across hundreds of pages as if they were articles. Putting them all on one page sounds like a fair compromise to me. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: I've raised some procedural questions at WT:AFD#Mass AfD? RoySmith (talk) 19:17, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia is a gazetteer maybe just leave the pages alone and let them present gazetteer information to readers who seek it. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:56, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That is incorrect, wikipedia is not a gazetteer and never has been. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:31, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Ridiculous. If we all started thinking like that, we'd be overrun with articles about things that people want to read about. – Joe (talk) 16:54, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Per the AfD talk page discussion, I now propose merging these into 36 articles each covering five degrees of latitude, and the same for degrees of longitude. I would note that any selection of a number of pages is arbitrary. There is nothing that (technically) prevents us from having a unique page for every tenth of a degree of either, but we have stopped at whole degrees, so a block of five degrees with appropriate incoming section redirects would lead readers to a comfortably nested set of whatever information they were seeking. BD2412 T 14:18, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll support that when you open the RfC. BilledMammal (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

And which parts of the completely unsourced material would you merge? RoySmith (talk) 14:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

How would you present the maps? Just fatten up the line so it covers five degrees instead of one? The already existing articles are adequate in their intended coverage, and readers looking for these pages would in all likelihood search for a specific degree instead of a tenth-of-a-degree or five degrees at once. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:42, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

@RoySmith: There is a difference between what is unsourced and what is unsourceable. It is absurd to think that anything currently in these articles could not be sourced. @Randy Kryn: The maps are small, so I would include all five. If there's a hankering for one map, it could be delineated by color. As for readers looking for the page, if they are searching for a specific degree they will find it as a section. I doubt that any readers would be discomfited by this resolution. BD2412 T 15:26, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the problem here is the hard line between "everything must be sourceable!" and the very nature of these articles, which are easily verified and serve potentially valid navigational purposes (at least for latitudes - longitudes are a bit more arbitrary.) I've said it before, you don't need to quote someone in the newspaper to say that it's raining. It should be common sense that we don't necessarily need a secondary source to tell us where something is - that's the whole nature of the gazetteer prong in 5P... SportingFlyer T·C 16:17, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

You do in fact need secondary sources for that rainstorm to be notable, the vast majority aren't. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:26, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

How have you established that those new pages will meet our notability requirements? Groupings of give degrees would appear to be more obscure, not more notable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:34, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That's exactly correct. Grouping a bunch of non-notable things into larger collections doesn't make them notable. RoySmith (talk) 15:38, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Why groups of 5 rather than just group all the parallels together in one article and all the meridians in another? They still won’t be long articles, and we can group them in sections of 5 if you like. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure any WP:SNG covers this. WP:Notability (geographic features) is probably the closest, and I've posted a pointer to this discussion on the talk page. RoySmith (talk) 14:57, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

• The majority of such articles don't appear to meet either the GNG or SNG and as such should either be merged or deleted. Of course the real solution would be for the non-notable articles to have never been created but people decided to be incompetent/disruptive so here we are. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:20, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I think these just need to meet WP:V, though because of their geographic scope which is basically a given. They're clearly encyclopedic but present a unique sourcing issue.

  SportingFlyer T·C 16:14, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not familiar with any articles that just need to meet V, what would be the policy or guideline basis for that? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Secondary schools only need to meet WP:V. Oh, wait, we fixed that problem a few years ago. RoySmith (talk) 16:21, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Since Wikipedia:Notability is a guideline, "occasional exceptions may apply". We still don't have a bright-line requirement for subjects to meet the GNG (or for articles to contain an Wikipedia:Inline citation if they don't contain WP:MINREF material, or several other things that some editors like to assert in favor of their personal preferences). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I would note that the enumerated exceptions all have to do with deleting/merging an article which does meet the notability standards... Not with keeping one which doesn't... But IAR covers all eventualities. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:48, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Horse Eye's Back, please remember that all these articles were written by real people who took the time to contribute something to Wikipedia that they thought was useful, even if you don't agree. – Joe (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Hence incompetent... Which assumes good faith but a lack of competence. All of these articles will have to be cleaned up by real people, my sympathy lies with those who clean up the mess not those who take a shit in our collective hallway (even if "back in the day" taking a shit in the hallway wasn't seen as an issue or was even seen as a virtue). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:46, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I checked a few of these and those were created in 2008. At that time there was a presumption that geographical features were inherently notable. It is hardly represents a lack of competence for an editor not to anticipate future changes to our guidelines. Rlendog (talk) 18:57, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Is the argument that the editors involved were unaware of those changes and only learned about them in the past week? If you know you did something that is now not kosher you need to go clean it up, thats how good faith editing works. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  It's possible the argument may be that calling other editors' contributions to Wikipedia "shit" and accusing people of having "decided to be incompetent/disruptive" (emphasis added)—which is explicitly an attribution of destructive motive (saying other editors deliberately chose to be disruptive) and therefore not a case of assuming good faith on the part of the editors in question—constitute unproductive and even uncivil behavior. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 19:44, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Sure if one wanted to abandon AGF they could make that argument, just like if I abandoned AGF I could argue that you followed me here to harass me (can't actually come up with a plausible way for you to have gotten here besides for our recent interactions on other pages, I can just assume that your intent in stalking me was educational and not intended to deprive me of pleasure in editing). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  The Village Pump is a public page meant for many Wikipedians to read; it is a major venue for policy discussion, not a new or niche article with few links to it. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 22:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  And how did you find yourself here replying to my comment? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:28, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I'm just astounded you think the fact that someone would create pages about such an obvious thing to create an article about could possibly be considered a lack of competence. SportingFlyer T·C 17:54, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

  What would be astounding is if many of such articles survive AfD or a merge discussion. We will have to see I guess. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

  Folks, could we please cut out the personal attacks? There's room for people to have good-faith differences of opinion about whether these pages pass WP:N, and it's great that we're discussing that. But let's not sink to questioning the competence of our fellow editors. RoySmith (talk) 18:21, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

It's not a geographic feature, it's an imaginary line corresponding to a particular degree of a a particular coordinate system. And even the more substantial articles in question aren't really covering the ostensible topic. The are basically list articles of things that that imaginary line crosses. Like if I made an article that is ostensibly about 5:01 GMT and it consisted of a list of things that happened at 5:01 GMT....such is not coverage of 5:01 GMT. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:07, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

No more imaginary than a national border. BD2412 T 21:54, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

The vast majority of national borders aren't notable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:01, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

All national borders should be covered, just usually within another article. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:07, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Very true that not being notable isn't the same thing as not being worthy of mention anywhere. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:10, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

National borders are much much more directly impactful and much less imaginary. But nevertheless, even they are much less the topic of a separate article. North8000 (talk) 19:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

The brevity of these articles is disheartening not because the topics aren't notable, but because they are. Improvements to these pages are possible, as the parallels and meridians are treated in fields of geography and environmental studies. Searches for parallels on Google Scholar (for example, the 85th) reveal enough hits that it would suggest there are sources that could be cited to develop the pages, making retention plausible. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 19:32, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Going through all seven pages of Google Scholar results I'm only seeing passing mentions, where are you seeing significant coverage? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

What sort of significant coverage would you want exactly from a line of latitude? These are odd topics. SportingFlyer T·C 14:30, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Geographical articles generally have a rather low threshold for notability. I'd say that most parallels and meridians have more global significance than, say, Demidovo, Cherepovetsky District, Vologda Oblast. Certes (talk) 14:38, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Somebody took the time to name the town, build stuff there, and track the population.

Literally the only reason we're discussing the specific lines we're discussing, and not other lines like 49.5 north, is because they are integers. And as I note, there's some very good reasons we don't have a list of integers article. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:18, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

We should probably redirect that to List of numbers#Integers. Certes (talk) 19:02, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Please read my comment above on the notion of notable and/or interesting numbers, which is a matter of significance in mathematics itself. Indeed, the lede of the article you link also notes this, and the section you link is actually a list of SI prefixes. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:07, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course, not all numbers are notable. Being an infinite set, almost all integers cannot have a Wikipedia article. But that still leaves about 400 which do – not an unreasonable tally. Certes (talk) 19:27, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

This seems to miss the point that there are reasons of mathematical interest for a given integer to have its own article. On the other hand, the only justification given so far for having an article on most of these lines of latitude is that they are integers (in our arbitrary pi=180° angle measurement system). SamuelRiv (talk) 23:39, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Reliable sources use integer parallels and meridians because they are convenient. GNG follows reliable sources. James500 (talk) 18:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Any significant coverage that meets our normal standard for such. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:43, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Some of these also have cultural significance (at least locally), as evidenced by the various things you can find in commons:Category:Parallel markers by latitude. —Kusma (talk) 16:10, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

If these articles are merged, what would a combined article look like? With circles of latitude, for example, I'm assuming we would rewrite List of circles of latitude. Alternatively, if that's too long, we could do List of northern circles of latitude and List of southern circles of latitude. I see two ways we could do this. The first would be a standard table list. Possible columns would include name, solstices, intersections, map, and notes, where notes would be up to a paragraph of prose describing anything else relevant. The second would be a list where each entry has its own level two or level three subheading, with a paragraph of two or prose describing the main points and maybe each section having a map. Either way, if an individual line is notable, then the longer article can be linked as a Template:Main article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I just began a sample of what a table might look like at List of circles of latitude. (We might speedily WP:Draftify the article as a WIP, as it was useless in its current state anyway.) I did 1N and 83N, the latter being the northernmost integer line crossing land, thus having an article. Any land or seaform crossing much more than one degree of latitude (that is, North-South span exceeds about 150 km) should be omitted from notable crossings, imo. Alternatively, in the table, where multiple islands in a small archipelago intersect 1°0'0"N (for example), I just give the name of the archipelago. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:50, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

That looks perfectly reasonable to me. I like that if I was an exploratory sort of mood, I could use my browser's search (Command-F, etc) to look for places like Nias or Sverdrup. Or find all the entries that contain "island". Of course, it still needs sourcing, but I've been assured that "unsourced" is not the same as "unsourcable", so I'm going to AGF that somebody will add sources. RoySmith (talk) 22:05, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Geographic coordinates are linked to an outside map source, and the islands themselves to their main article. That is verifiable enough for a list. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:55, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

SamuelRiv I agree that listing the archipelago instead of every single island seems like an obvious choice. The other countries should still be included in some form though. For example, it seems strange to list the 1st parallel north without somehow mentioning Brazil or Uganda, among others. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:18, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Or you could just note there's the northernmost and southernmost points of Brazil instead of repeating every single country on every single table entry. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:47, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

That seems logical. Chile crosses (if I did the math right), 35 degrees of latitude. RoySmith (talk) 00:55, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

@SamuelRiv You're quickly going to run into WP:PEIS issues with that page as you fill it in, just like all the other list pages that include flags and coordinates. I'd highly recommend switching {{Coord}} (~1.5kb) to {{#invoke:Coordinates|coord}} (~0.8kb) and the various flag icons from something like {{RUS}} (0.5kb) to {{#invoke:flag|country|RUS}} (0.2kb) --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 01:40, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I vaguely remember this coming up once before on a page that used a ton of country flags. I seem to remember that there was a different set of flag icons based on svg instead of png that could be swapped in and that solved the problem. RoySmith (talk) 01:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

PNG vs SVG makes no difference when it comes to post-expand include size (and mediawiki converts SVGs to PNGs before displaying them anyway). The problem with a template like {{RUS}} is that it calls {{flag}}, which calls {{country data Russia}}, which calls {{flag/core}}, so the actual code to display the flag gets counted four times. When using #invoke: directly it only gets counted once. Same with the {{coord}} template -- since the template calls {{#invoke:Coordinates|coord}}, the code to display the coordinates gets counted twice compared with directly invoking the module. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Depending on how severe the issue is, I was thinking about a split to List of northern circles of latitude and List of southern circles of latitude or something like that, should the list get too long. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

My preference would only be to list notable lines to begin with and not every stupid integer pi-mod-180 arbitrariness. Delete the flags wholesale -- they're completely unnecessary. And move any further this discussion of work on this article specifically to Talk:List of circles of latitude.

I gave a template and regexp for quickly converting the individual articles. Merge them or no, those articles should and will all be deleted, for the reasons gone over many times by others. SamuelRiv (talk) 05:29, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Additional info: there are several redirects like Latitude 84 degrees N that imo usefully point to Arctic Ocean instead of the non-informative 84th parallel north article. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:53, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

And when we're done with this, we can start working on declination and hour angle :-) RoySmith (talk) 00:19, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

• I oppose the mass merger or other mass elimination of these articles. I have been watching this discussion for some time. Some of the parallels and meridians do satisfy GNG. James500 (talk) 18:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  No one is suggesting the merger of a parallel or meridian that meets GNG. The 38th, 45th, and 49th parallels north have already been mentioned above as probably warranting their own articles. If you think there are any others, you are welcome to prove it with examples of significant coverage of a specific parallel or meridian. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:16, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Lack of edit summaries

Every now and again, I see somebody editing an article I'm watching (usually because I've spent substantial time working on it) without an edit summary. If it's a drive by IP or a newbie, I don't really mind this, but I can think of one or two regular editors who make significant edits without edit summaries, and who then get mildly annoyed when their edit gets reverted. In that case, the edit was a good edit with reasonable intentions, but hard to work out from the text changed, so it gets reverted as "unexplained". Even disregarding that, I've heard the argument that "I don't need to leave edit summaries for simple typos"; well I've seen people change British to American English without an edit summary, and thought they were POV pushing instead of fixing a typo accidentally. I don't want to name names here, that's not really what I'm getting at.

I've seen discussions in the past about upgrading the edit summary information page to a formal guideline, without any real agreement what to do. Indeed, a salient point mentioned in this discussion was that edit summaries such as "rm bullshit" or "what a load of POV-loaded crap" are just as bad as none at all. I agree with that entirely, and would consider bad / uncivil categories just as bad as none at all.

So I want to see if we can get some formal agreement to make WP:ES a formal guideline, so the handful of people who can't be bothered explaining big edits can be aligned with everybody else. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I would oppose because it's a handful of people. Just deal with the people. Levivich (talk) 16:27, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like the remedy actually addresses the problem... You aren't just asking for edit summaries you're asking for expository edit summaries (for example not "Edit summary: CE" but "Edit summary: changed glaceir to glacier"). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:33, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Ritchie, have you considered the views in Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Automatically prompt for missing edit summary ? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Note the page you've linked to, Help:Edit summary, is appropriately written as an instructional page, so from a literal perspective I don't think it should be made a formal guideline. More generally, the page quotes a passage from Wikipedia:Consensus § Through editing: All edits should be explained (unless the reason for them is obvious)—either by clear edit summaries, or by discussion on the associated talk page. Although Wikipedia:Consensus is a policy page, this passage is more descriptive of best practice, rather than prescribing a mandatory behaviour. From an on-the-ground perspective, I agree with Horse Eye's Back that trying to enforce edit summaries will just move the argument to whether or not an edit summary contains an appropriate level of detail, or whether or not the reason is sufficiently obvious. Personally, I think well-written edit summaries are useful, even if just to help myself remember why I've made an edit, but I appreciate that there is a significant number of editors who don't feel the advantages are sufficiently compelling. isaacl (talk) 17:37, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm in favour of improving prompts that encourage edit summaries/make it harder to automatically publish without an edit (whether intentional/accidentally) but weary of creating WP:INSTRUCTIONCREEP. I do think many bot/automated messages could be improved by linking to policies/affected sections in their edit summary, but I wouldn’t want to start a policy argument. We defacto frown upon low edit usage in RfA and elsewhere already. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

For example "reply" as default edit message is very bad UI in the visual talk editor. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 13:01, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

This mania about edit summaries is downright silly. In some cases, it makes a lot of sense. For example, Special:Diff/1199699096 has an excellent edit summary which not only describes what was changed, but also gives the rationale behind the change and a citation to a policy to back it up. The edit summary for what I'm typing now will be auto-generated and probably say something like "reply", which is equally sufficient in this context. When I'm doing a lot of writing on a new article draft in my userspace, I do frequent saves with useless edit summaries like "more", and that only because I've got it configured to prompt me for one. Some people prefer to write new content off-line and copy-paste the completed article in a single edit. Have I provided any additional value by producing a detailed revision history with 100 edit summaries of "more"? Hardly.

I wince every time I see an RFA where somebody comments on a candidate's edit summary percentage. RoySmith (talk) 01:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Especially unfair because the edit software accepts comments as valid summaries, but the edit summary software does not. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Those aren't the scenarios I'm talking about. Rather, I'm thinking of making an edit to a featured article, which could be anything from vandalism to a good copyedit, but without an edit summary, one or more editors have to take time out to examine it to see if it's worth keeping or not. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Somebody needs to look at them anyway. Unless you're thinking you can count on the vandals to leave "vandalized article" as an edit summary and you can safely assume all the other edits are OK? RoySmith (talk) 15:18, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

So let's stipulate that you have to at least take a quick glance at each edit. The edit summary gives you some idea of what to expect, and if it's clearly different from what was described, that's going to get your attention. If there's no edit summary (or an otherwise "content-free" edit summary), then you miss out on the opportunity to suspect something is malicious based on an evident discrepancy between the content of the edit and the edit summary. Fabrickator (talk) 19:28, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Let me approach this from a different direction. I've been on wikipedia since 2004. There were pushes to get everybody to use edit summaries back then, and we're still pushing. If we haven't convinced people to do it in nigh on 20 years, what makes you think changing WP:ES from an "information page" to a "formal guideline" will have any effect? RoySmith (talk) 19:37, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

After reverting thousands of unconstructive edits over the years, the edit summary is the thing that I'm least interested in, because anyone can say anything in an edit summary. I instead look for things like zero-byte changes to popular articles by IPs or redlinked editors, and I have the popups extension that lets me see the change directly from the watchlist, a very low-effort way for me to examine the actual change rather than rely on a dubious edit summary. In fact, just a few minutes ago I reverted a change exactly like that, and while there was no edit summary for that change, it could have said anything and I still would have reviewed the change for the reasons given above. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 03:11, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I see this once again as "people should behave perfectly". They won't, they never have. Wikipedia inherently is resource intensive as an authoring and maintenance process. WP:BRD and all, it's kind of what a wiki wants! There is no perfection. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm with you on this. I think some of the concerns are expressed could be avoided—comments on talk pages plausibly require less robust of an edit summary (since there's an expectation to read the comment anyway), and I think saying "more" in a draft space edit summary is reasonable. But on articles in mainspace, I try very hard to fully summarize what I've done, to not only link policies a la WP:ALP but moreover explain why a policy applies, and why I've made an edit the way I have. I think this is a practice that would be healthy for our community to more clearly encourage. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 17:01, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Do we really need over 600 articles on individual Samsung products?

See here; over 300 of these are Samsung Galaxy models. I'm sure they're fine products and all, but an awful lot of these articles are on the short side, and an awful lot seem to be doing little more than listing the qualities of the product. There are too many similar examples to consistently handle this piecemeal, and too many articles for an individual editor to handle. BD2412 T 22:59, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

My feeling is that this is an awfully good time for WP:NOPAGE to be invoked and for articles of products of the same series to be merged. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:20, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

"an awfully good time" Edward pluribus unum (talk) 19:40, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

My position is that whenever there are many similar short articles, they should be combined into a longer article or list that covers all of them (see WP:NOPAGE and WP:HASTE). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:21, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks like many of those could be combined into larger articles and soec comparison tables. Lack of any discussion of individual models also begs why the need for separate articles. — Masem (t) 23:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's nuts. RoySmith (talk) 23:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the various comments about combining these up, but it's a lot. Is there a WikiProject or task force that would take this on? BD2412 T 23:53, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I was somewhat surprised at the arguments made here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samsung SCH-U470 and would gather mass action to be controversial, unfortunately. Star Mississippi 02:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It always is. That said, there is lower hanging fruit than that: Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018). CMD (talk) 02:24, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Let's take a look at that AfD. The first keep vote says he added two sigcov sources; looking at the diff, he added two links to listicles as bullet points in the references section and then coupled it with an WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. (least surprisingly of all, this person is a legacy admin). The second keep vote is just a plain WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. The third keep vote asserted that it meets GNG because of the listicles and because it has a "notable design". It was then closed as keep without relisting by another legacy admin. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This is a no-brainer for me. For starters, the year models like Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) should be combined. The differences between those models must be pretty minor. If we look at a comparable aircraft or car where there are multiple variants and years in a single model, there is nowhere near this level of content forking. That AfD was exceptionally weak. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep, that was my Surprised at the arguments made comment, although DRV would be fruitless as there was no other way to close that. I missed that OwenX was an Admin, however. Star Mississippi 02:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, the best option would have been to relist with a warning that WP:ATAs would not be given serious consideration when closing, and we really need to start clamping down on !votes that cite weak sourcing as GNG. Getting back to the issue at hand, there's really not much in terms of precedent for combining groups of articles, even though it's something we should be doing more often. I tried to do this with List of mass stabbing incidents (2020–present), but months later someone went back through my edits to undo all of the merges because "no consensus", so now in many cases the smaller pages duplicate the content on the larger page. That's in addition to the fact that most of these only have routine coverage and don't meet GNG in the first place. If such a combination were to take place with the Samsung Galaxy A7 articles, for example, what would the first step be? And what would the target article look like? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

The first step to merging the A7s would be identifying the merge target, which would probably best be Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), which is the oldest and was originally named Samsung Galaxy A7. The articles are short enough that they'd work simply as subsections of a model/edition section. There could even be a summary table as there is by year at Samsung Galaxy A series. CMD (talk) 03:58, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm puzzled by all this handwringing at the possibility of merges being opposed for not having consensus and what to do about it. The answer is simple: get consensus. Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers exists for exactly this purpose - make a proposal, advertise it here and at any relevant WikiProjects then after a couple of weeks (or sooner if it starts snowing) ask someone uninvolved to close it. If there is consensus for the proposal then go ahead and implement it, if there isn't then either just move on or listen to the feedback you got and make a revised proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 14:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this. The correct procedure in cases like this, I think, is to propose a merger at the relevant location and, if/when the merger attains consensus, perform the merges (and redirects - leaving categorized redirects, I would hope). The problems encountered previously, I suspect, result from using AfD as a venue - it is profoundly ill-suited to making the kinds of decisions required here. Newimpartial (talk) 17:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

What handwringing? I proposed a merge structure. This can be taken to PAG or any other board. There can't be consensus for a nonexistent proposal. CMD (talk) 01:18, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The ToF listicle, in addition to being a "use with caution" source and thus likely ineligible for NCORP, has all of 25 words on it, 6 of them being just the name. On what planet would anyone consider that SIGCOV?? And the Business Insider listicle has just 3 sentences, nowhere near SIGCOV. Is this another walled garden maintained by a small number of AfD participants? JoelleJay (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Probably, but that's true for most of AfD. You could find people to !vote keep on just about anything if it was mentioned in a local newspaper once. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Star Mississippi: The first objection raised in that AfD was that the nominated subject received far more news coverage than most Samsung models, which suggests that this will not be a baseline concern for most Samsung models. BD2412 T 15:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Not to take issue with any individual editor, but this is a great example of why AfD isn't a good venue for making decisions like this. The question shouldn't be anything like "which Samsung (phone) models are famous?" but rather, "what treatment of Samsung (phone) models serves the purposes of our readers and offers encyclopaedic coverage?". There is a constant tendency at AfD to answer the former type of question rather than the latter. Newimpartial (talk) 17:53, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree with what Newimpartial said. And because of that I think that a general discussion is a useful place to discuss this. Having a different 3-4 participants at each AFD decide is not the best way to do this. Also due to the complexity of the considerations, with input/influence from both wp:notability and wp:not dictating the best course. North8000 (talk) 18:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Newimpartial and North8000 here. The implied question at AfD is always "should the article(s) about this topic be deleted?", even if the nominator is actually asking something different or more nuanced. Accordingly people who think there should be coverage of this topic on Wikipedia will usually only !vote delete if the article is bad enough to require TNT and frequently this means they recommend keeping even if they would be happy with a merge, or even think a merge would be better. If you want to ask a different question, AfD is the wrong venue. Thryduulf (talk) 19:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Who's suggesting using AfD to combine articles? The AfD example just demonstrates that the most vocal people who want to keep the status quo generally don't understand or don't care about how notability is evaluated. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course not. How many of these actually receive non-routine SUSTAINED coverage? JoelleJay (talk) 22:30, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

More than 0 but less than 600. If you want a more precise answer than that you're going to have to look for sources. Thryduulf (talk) 22:32, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Too many phones for 1 article, too many phones for separate articles. With cars, they often separate into generations of models eg. Toyota Corolla third generation Toyota Corolla (E30). Do phones have generations yet? -- GreenC 01:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Most of those generation-specific car articles add additional context that wouldn't be feasible in the primary article. A lot of the articles listed in this discussion seem like permastubs; I wouldn't be opposed to some of these articles being merged. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 02:10, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

No one suggested only 1 article. Phones are sometimes referred to with generations, I guess. Edward pluribus unum (talk) 19:39, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Multiple proposed mergers seem to be needed. I think that initially only one WP:PROPMERGE discussion should be started, for one set of year models, perhaps Samsung Galaxy A7 /edit: actually, that would not be a good target; the targets should be figured out by studying the nomenclature at Samsung Galaxy A series/. If successful, that proces could be a template for subsequent mergers. The resulting article should be presentable. Merging is not about getting rid of articles, it's about improving content. The content, in totality, should become better, irrespective of how many articles it's divided across. That's also why AfD is bad for merging because AfD doesn't especially care about whether and how will the target article be improved by receiving content from other articles (AfD consensus to merge can be rejected at the target article and the added content can simply be removed with an argument that the target article has only been worsed by the addition [which can easily be true], and with PROPMERGE it can't be rejected at the target article because the discussion is held on the target article's talk page). Since this content work could be a lot of work, starting multiple proposed mergers at the same time is probably not the best. In principle, I support merging such articles per WP:NOPAGE; these products receive the same treatment as cars—see Opel Astra (Opel Astra F, Opel Astra G, Opel Astra H, ... all covered in the same article).—Alalch E. 11:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

While at the topic of "hundreds of short articles for a series of very similar entities", I would like to draw some attention to solar eclipse articles in Category:Annular solar eclipses and other similar categories. The consensus of AfDs like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solar eclipse of February 25, 1914 seems to be that it's fine for them to be sourced to NASA databases or local news reports from the time these eclipses occurred on. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 11:37, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Ugh, has no one read SUSTAINED, PRIMARY, and NOTNEWS? What an awful AfD... JoelleJay (talk) 15:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Plus NOTDATABASE, which is what addresses "hundreds of short articles for a series of very similar entities".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:07, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

The only thing that makes this currently a viable conversation is that the techie crowd hasn't caught on yet. No, we should not have an article on every version of hardware or software, but they're so prolific it's often a fiat accompli. It's often just too much time and effort to get rid of them and ends up being a net negative. GMG^talk 15:48, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I agree with many people when I say that these articles must be merged with one another and to eliminate the clutter these articles create. Edward pluribus unum (talk) 15:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

A lot of these are low-end models that don't really meet GNG. There are as many "cheap" Samsung phones and tablets as there are cheap Windows PCs and Chromebooks — of which only a few have articles. Really, only the flagship models (that's the "S" and "Note" series) should have standalone articles. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:19, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Strongly agreed on all of that. Though, as noted above, there are too many for one article, so it would have to be a split-up WP:LONGLIST, by one criterion or another.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:09, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Mockup-merger as a proof of concept

@BD2412: What do you think about this: User:Alalch E./sandbox/2017 edition of the Samsung Galaxy A series? It is a merger of Samsung Galaxy A series#Galaxy A (2017), Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017), Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017), and Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017). (There is some repeating prose that can be trimmed; this is intentionally a minimal-effort-proof-of-concept [edit: I subsequently did some obvious trimming after all]) —Alalch E. 12:33, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I am wondering if there isn't some way that we can consolidate those lengthy infoboxes. There is some repetition of information in them. Perhaps a table comparing properties of the the three models? BD2412 T 14:34, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

That's the first table, in the overview section. Those tables are in Samsung Galaxy A series. It could be expanded with a bit more information from the infoboxes. —Alalch E. 14:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

If we can trim those infoboxes by half, that would be great. BD2412 T 14:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

That isn't possible, I fear. This is the standard set of phone specs, and it's really the specs that people look for. If we stick with infoboxes, this is how they have to be, I think. —Alalch E. 14:52, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, nothing is impossible. We can make a custom infobox if needed. What if we used one of these infoboxes for all three, and just put specifiers within the parameters for the different models, where there were differences? BD2412 T 14:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

We could make a "multi-infobox" along the lines of Special:Diff/1196804364 ... —Alalch E. 15:03, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd also point out that specs that only exist in the infobox shouldn't be there at all. We already have more complete technical specs lists in article bodies. If someone is trying to fit every single thing about a phone in the infobox, they're doing it wrong, and it's that practice that should change. There's plenty of other places readers can go to get that info—we're not a product catalog. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with that in principle, but if there are infoboxes, they should contain the usual, expected, set of specs, because that's what the reader cares about. All of those specs. There is no doubt that if we leave out almost any spec that is currently in those infoboxes, it will be perceived as missing information, and will not lead to reader satisfaction. Information can be made to match across the prose and the infobox by propagating information from the infobox to the prose too. The solution is to have the complete infoboxes or no infoboxes, but then perhaps have some other template with a similar purpose. But truncated infoboxes, templates that are these cellphone infoboxes, but contain significantly less information, aren't realistic at all IMO. —Alalch E. 15:23, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I suppose you can argue this is a WP:IAR situation, but huge swaths of Wikipedia are structured against "reader satisfaction" because we cannot be everything to all readers. This is not an all-or-nothing situation where any minor detail is so crucial its removal harms the article.) If you feel that way, you should be bringing that to a wider RfC, because right now you're absolutely arguing against MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:56, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm leaning toward removal of the infoboxes, because it's all or nothing in this specific case. These will be really crappy infoboxes if shortened by as much as a third. Edit: What is your opinion on User:Alalch E./sandbox/2017 edition of the Samsung Galaxy A series in its current state? —Alalch E. 17:07, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@JoelleJay: What's your opinion on this draft that is intended to replace the three articles? —Alalch E. 16:26, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I think it's good, would certainly !vote to merge those articles into it if it went to a merge discussion. JoelleJay (talk) 19:35, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is generally a good plan. WP would not tolerate this level of fragmentation about trivially different products, a number of which do not individually pass GNG, and the majority of which are low-end consumer junk, in any other subject, such as every identifiable sub-model of HP, Dell, and Lenovo PCs, or every known LG and Samsung and Panasonic TV, stereo system component, and other electronic device. The cell phone crowd has just somehow "gotten away with" ignoring WP:NOT#DATABASE, for far too long.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:13, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I have mainspaced the draft and redirected the phone articles to the edition page based on WP:PAGEDECIDE and there being a massive WP:OVERLAP. I will not do this on a mass scale with the other products, meaning sequentially in a relatively short period of time, but over a relatively long period, I think that I intend to proceed with this scheme of merging. —Alalch E. 20:51, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like a +6 Plan of Goodfulness.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:31, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

If someone is trying to fit every single thing about a phone in the infobox, they're doing it wrong for phones, it's so widespread as to be the ingrained practice, unfortunately. Enough so, that changes to {{infobox mobile phone}} may be warranted DFlhb (talk) 22:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Nice mockup. Yea, please merge thoughtfully per Alalch. – SJ + 02:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Sex and gender distinction in policies

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived: This idea is not developed enough for a proposed policy change yet. It may be helpful to talk about your idea at the Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab). If you do so, please consider starting with an example of one existing sentence that you think should be changed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

---

Firstly, sex and gender are completely different things.

Just because an individual has a penis does not mean that they are male.

Just because an individual has a vagina does not mean that they are female.

Besides genitals (external sex organs), sex is defined by presence of many anatomical structures such as gonads (internal sex organs e.g. testes, ovaries), accessory reproductive organs (uterus, fallopian tubes, cervix, prostate, etc.), sex hormones, secondary sex characteristics, etc.

I know that without context, anatomy should not be mentioned in all articles.

But differences between sex and gender must be stated.

Male ≠ man

Female ≠ woman

Intersex ≠ non-binary

This is because sex and gender are different things.

It is possible for people to be born without any gender, and they are called agender people.

But it is impossible for people to be born without a sex.

Secondly, the usage of "male" to refer to the "man" gender, and usage of "female" to refer to the "woman" gender cannot be justified, because if it were, then "intersex" could also be used to refer to "non-binary", but it isn't. There is no valid reason for such ambiguous usage of words, since it rather causes confusion to readers.

It is WP:VAGUE and confusing to use words, that generally refer to sex, to refer to words that generally refer to gender.

This ambiguity in usage of words, for sexes and genders, is rather discriminatory, and, to be fair, transphobic in some cases.

Thirdly, I propose that all relevant policies be rewritten to accurately differentiate between sex and gender.

The policies that will be directly affected by this proposal include, but not limited to, the following:

• WP:WAW
• MOS:GNL
• WP:GNL
• WP:GNLP
• MOS:GENDERID
• WP:GENDERID
• MOS:DEADNAME

The policies that may be indirectly affected by this proposal include, but not limited to, the following:

• MOS:BIO
• MOS:LEAD
• MOS:LAYOUT

— CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 06:42, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

First, the sex/gender prescriptive language isn't that widely used. West & Zimmerman's suggested language never really caught on. Today we tend to use AMAB/AFAB more than female man / male woman.

Second, when has this ever led to confusion among editors interpreting or implementing policies or guidelines? We don't need to fix anything that isn't broken.

Last, many trans folks use man/male and woman/female interchangeably as is the norm in English. It is incorrect to insist that failure to adhere to the prescriptive languaige is transphobic. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:56, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir:

For the part that is about language:

In articles, language should be objectively respectful for everyone. And that includes everyone.

For the part that is not about language:

many trans folks use man/male and woman/female interchangeably as is the norm in English

This is not about language. This is about the scientific differences between sex and gender.

Sex is anatomical and physiological, but gender is not.

Failure of language to adhere to objective moral standards is discriminatory. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 18:25, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

It appears to be very much about language and your preferred definition of certain words, which is not reflected in how English is used or understood. Many words have multiple definitions, "male" and "female" among them. For "male". Merriam-Webster has sex in definition 1 a), gender in definition 1 b). The Cambridge Dictionary lists gender before sex. Oxford Learners puts gender before sex.

There may be situations where we need to be careful to be clear whether we are referring to sex or gender, but in many cases such distinction is either clear from context or makes no practical difference. A newspaper may run a run-on sentence about a baseball player who was run down while running the bases and therefor failed to continue his run of having scored a run in seven consecutive games, but as long as we can understand the word in context, a word having multiple meanings is not an inherent problem. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 19:31, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

@CrafterNova - Regardless of my or your thoughts on how things should be, the insistence that sex/male/female refer only to anatomical or physiological traits is not widely accepted and generally limited to academic venues. Additionally, prescriptive language is usually not respectful (e.g., insisting on he/she instead of they) and to say that people cannot use male to mean man is prescriptive and limits people. My comment that you say is "not about language" is indeed 100% about language. Reflecting their colloquial use, many trans folks use male/female to refer to gender. Insisting that they cannot do so is discriminatory, not an "objective moral standard". EvergreenFir (talk) 20:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree with your analysis of the language... and even if I did, I am left very uncertain with what changes you are calling for. You seem to be concerned about the terms "male" and "female", but then you point to MOS:GENDERID and MOS:DEADNAME as examples of things that need changing. Not only do neither of those sections of MOS:BIO use the terms "male" or "female", but they actually aren't two sections -- they're two pointers to the same location. And as that section is part of the MOS:BIO page, it's not clear what you mean by that the section must be changed but the page on its own may only be "indirectly affected" (although the whole of MOS:BIO does indeed include the term "female", as part of the phrase "Where a female historical figure is consistently referred to using the name of her husband".) WP:GNL is not a policy, nor is WP:GNLP, nor WP:WAW, nor WP:GENDERID -- they're all just essays. The only things gendered in MOS:LAYOUT is a reference to Winston Churchill as a "British statesman" (and to the best of my knowledge Churchill was a man in every working definition of the term) and a reference to Wikipedia having "sister projects", which I suppose could be degendered but I suspect doesn't go to the heart of whatever it is you're calling for. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 07:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@NatGertler: You are right. These changes are not limited to policies, but also essays, Wikiprojects, and many other types of pages.

I have tried gathering support for this proposal earlier, and have been doing for some weeks.

However, I live in an area of my country where there are very few Wikipedians, if not none at all.

I tried discussing similar changes on off-wiki social media Wikipedian and Wikimedian groups; some say it's "too infeasible", some disagree, and many do not engage in such discussions. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 18:44, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Please be extremely cautious of off-wiki canvassing. EvergreenFir (talk) 20:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Rather than just saying that policies should be changed, I think if you want to win editors over you're going to need to propose at least a few specific changes so that editors know what you explicitly have in mind. DonIago (talk) 07:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Doniago: You are correct.

Perhaps such changes may require an RfC, but I'm willing to consider other options before creating an RfC, such as third opinions.

We need participation in this discussion from many editors of all sexes, genders, and sexualities, to reach consensus that is neutral in points of view, and does not conform to social norms. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 18:31, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Could you clarify what you mean by 'neutral' in the above? Do you mean 'neutral' per WP:NPOV (i.e. "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic"), or 'neutral by some other standard - because if you mean the former, I'd have thought that it rather implies 'conforming to social norms', or at least, giving them a great deal of weight. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:52, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump: Social norms are often discriminatory because they generalize people's personalities, which are unique in case of every person. No person should have to conform to social norms because such norms restrict rights to freedom of people who are ethical and have good intentions. Hence, social norms are not neutral, and consensus should not conform to social norms.

Hence, I intend the meaning of "neutral" here to be "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on topics" as well as non-conformity to social norms. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 15:00, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

So, "neutral so long as neutral does not happen to conform to social norms, in which case something else"? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@NatGertler: What do you mean by "in which case something else"? — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 16:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

You seem to be positing that we should apply our standard rules unless the result conforms to social norms. It would be one thing to say we should not take conforming to social norms as a goal, but your phrasing suggests that disconformity should be our goal ("We need[...] to reach consensus that[...]does not conform to social norms." "consensus should not conform to social norms" "meaning of "neutral" here to be [...] non-conformity to social norms." Setting non-conformity as a goal rather than just as a likely outcome of true neutrality is non-neutral. It's stacking the deck. It's like saying I want to know the height of the average man, but I'll disallow any answers between 5'1" and 5'8". I don't know what the "something else" would be, I just know that the language you are putting forth appears to call for something else, if vague.

But then, there's a vagueness to your proposal that seems to be causing difficulty for those who wish to comment on it. Perhaps your suggestion might gain more traction if you could come up with a concrete example, Here's sentence V in article W that has the problem X, which could be addressed if we added language Y to MOS:Z., something like that. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

There are controversies within controversies in this. For one thing, there is considerable dispute about the terms "male" and "female" (specifically as being terms for sexes not genders, with "woman/girl" and "man/boy" being the latter, except of course to those with a denialist, transphobic bent, for whom the latter are also sex terms). And AFAB/AMAB is also controversial, because these terms originated in the sex assignment of biologically intergender babies, and describes a process of somewhat arbitrarily "assigning" a child to a particular sex category on the basis of whichever seems the closest fit based on detailed diagnosis (and largely in response to rather binary bureaucracy, which expects either F or M on a birth certificate). This is a process that doesn't apply to non-intersex babies, who are simply observed to have either female or male genitalia, not subjectively "assigned" something dubious. But the AFAB/AMAB terminology has been borrowed to mean something completely different to a subset of people, something highly socio-politicized. WP has to take care not to pick up and promote usage that is found primarily in activism materials and some journalism following them, but which does not agree with mainstream scientific usage and other writing that follows that.

Anyway, I agree with above comments that this "proposal" is too vague to very meaningfully evaluate. If there are problematic policy statements, they need to be specifically identified and some specific revisions to them suggested.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

RfC on MOS:LEADLENGTH/Wikiproject Consensus

Hey everyone, per the recommendations on the RfC page, I'm posting a link to the RfC I opened on DOY articles and their lead length here. Here's the brief version of the question for the RfC:

Should the leads of Days Of the Year (DOY) articles be expanded to comply with MOS:LEADLENGTH/WP:FLCR or should those policies be modified to create an exception for DOY articles per the apparent consensus against changing DOY leads?

Link to RfC

I added a expanded explanation of the question on the RfC page so please go there to get a full understanding of the issue. Cheers, Dan the Animator 02:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Make registration required for editing

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The person who started this discussion is now blocked by the Wikipedia:CheckUsers. Anyone who is interested in pursuing these ideas can take it up elsewhere (e.g., at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

---

I propose that registration should be required to edit articles, even if unprotected. Here are the reasons why:

1. With enough resources and dedication, malicious individuals can locate an individual through an IP address.
2. With the exception of VPNs, a computer's IP address changes frequently, meaning punishments to an IP address are useless.
3. The reason cited above means IP addresses can vandal unprotected articles, with punishments providing useless

Plus, the accounts should be associated to MAC addresses instead of IP addresses, while also keeping these logs only available to CheckUsers. HedgehogLegend (talk) 17:55, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Prohibit unregistered users from editing Selfstudier (talk) 17:59, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

The proposed IP masking will solve some of the problems above, though it will create others. Once that has stabilised, I suggest revisiting the question of allowing anonymous edits in the light of our experience of vandal-fighting in the new environment. Certes (talk) 20:46, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

I used to support requiring registration to edit Wikipedia. There have been attempts to start competitors to Wikipedia that did require registration, such as Citizendium. After seeing those projects fail, I've changed my mind. Donald Albury 20:46, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

With enough resources, malicious individuals can identify many a logged in user as well, as many of us put all sorts of information about ourselves in our discussions, on our User page, etc. I don't think it would take folks long to figure out who I am. Is that to be banned too? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 20:52, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Windows has a built-in setting to randomize one's MAC address, so using that instead of IP addresses won't stop ban-evading. And Wikipedia already has a nuclear wave-of-IP-hopping-vandals-defense set up (which I know about because I've lived through it...). 2603:8001:4542:28FB:4851:ABD7:411A:D43E (talk) 03:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC) (Send talk messages here)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2603:8001:4542:28FB:4851:ABD7:411A:D43E 2806:104E:13:F79F:2C05:2DEC:7939:B48A (talk) 06:04, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

One of Wikipedia's biggest problems is "Sockpuppetry" - users who created multiple accounts. The amount of resources needed to deal with sockpuppetry is much higher than anonymous users. Requiring all people to have accounts in order to be able to edit would probably make sockpuppetry a bigger problem. Additionally, one study shows that over 75% of all anonymous edits are "good-faith" - intended to help Wikipedia. And probably many of the current users started out editing anonymously, and would never have started editing if this wasn't an option. So we probably would lose more than we'd gain by disallowing anonymous editing. There is probably no step we can take to reduce disruptive editing which won't also reduce good editing; we need to find the right balance, and allowing anonymous users to edit is probably the right balance. Animal lover |666| 19:38, 19 February 2024 (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.

Requesting page protection

See also: WP:RUSUKR

I request extended-confirmed protection for the page 2014 Odesa clashes since the page is easily affected by POV espesially on the section #Trade Unions House fire. PoisonHK _{Sapiens dominabitur astris} (talk • contribs) 12:46, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

PoisonHK, WP:RFPP is usually the best venue to request page protection. Sincerely, Novo Tape^{My Talk Page} 17:27, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Noted, thanks. The page is now protected. PoisonHK _{Sapiens dominabitur astris} (talk • contribs) 17:30, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

COI Tagging Disputes

I have a two-part question, but what I want here is an answer to the more general question, which is a policy question, rather than the question about an article. The question is, in general, what if any procedure is or should there be for deciding whether a {{coi}} tag on an article should remain or should be removed. The slightly more specific question is: If editor A has applied a {{coi}} tag to an article, and editor B, who is not the originator of the article and is neutral, has removed the {{coi}} tag, but editor C has reapplied the {{coi}} tag, what procedure should or can be followed for deciding whether and how to remove the tag?

My own opinion is that tagging disputes are stupid unless they can be restated as disputes about how to improve the encyclopedia. For instance, if the {{tone}} and {{npov}} tags have been put on an article, discussion should be about what changes should be made to the wording of the article, or, if necessary, what paragraphs should be removed from the article. A problem sometimes occurs when a reviewer puts a tag on an article, but is not ready or willing to explain exactly what changes they want made. How should disputes about the {{coi}} tag be dealt with? Should the tagger be expected, when asked, to explain what changes should be made? Otherwise, what should be the procedure to move forward?

In the case in point, one editor put the tag on the article, another editor removed the tag, and a third editor restored the tag. Should the restoring editor be expected to identify changes that they want made? Is there some other procedure for resolving whether the tag should remain?

The specific case in point is Kessel Run. I accepted Draft:Kessel Run into article space in October. Its author had forgotten to tag the draft to indicate the conflict of interest of being employed by the organization. The article was then tagged. I re-reviewed the article, and said that I would have accepted the article if it had been tagged for {{coi}}; I would have removed the tag based on my judgment as a neutral reviewer. There has been discussion at the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. Another editor removed the tag. A third editor has restored the tag. So my question is how will the decision be made as to how long the article is tagged.

I am really more asking about how a dispute over a {{coi}} tag should be maintained or removed is decided rather than about the specific article. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:22, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Is there a reason this can't be discussed and resolved at the Talk page of the article in question when such a dispute arises? DonIago (talk) 06:33, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, DonIago, I've reviewed this, and I can see that we're way past that. Here's a link to the COIN noticeboard thread.

We Wikipedians are rightly leery of editors who have a conflict of interest, but I wouldn't agree with the more hardline people on the COIN noticeboard. Tags of any kind aren't forever -- I feel that when any independent, experienced, good faith editor decides to remove them, they should come off. I think that in cases like this, where the tag removal is subsequently disputed, the burden is on those arguing to retain the tag to identify specific issues with the article that justify its retention.—S Marshall T/C 08:58, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Every tag on the article should be temporary with a defined point at which it can be removed. That end-point could be time-based (e.g. the topic ceases to be a current event, etc) or when specifically-identified problems have been fixed (e.g. unsourced content is verified or removed, copyedits have been made, a discussion about disputed material has concluded, etc). If specific, actionable issues with the article cannot be articulated then the article must not be tagged. "A contributor has a COI, the article needs to checked for neutrality" is actionable because once the article has been checked it can be removed and, importantly, must be removed. If the check identifies specific issues that the person doing the check cannot fix then and there (for whatever reason) then those specific issues can be tagged, but it/they must replace the generic review needed tag. An author having a COI does not automatically mean that what they wrote is biased, it just means that they are not in a position to determine whether it is or is not biased. Thryduulf (talk) 12:39, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

There, exactly my position and perfectly articulated.—S Marshall T/C 15:43, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Well put. North8000 (talk) 17:33, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Thryduulf, User:S Marshall. I think that both of you are saying what I started to say about tags, and why tagging disputes should be disputes over article content. As to the specific issue, the {{coi}} tag has been removed again. I don't think that my general question has been answered yet. What should be the procedure if the {{coi}} tag is applied or reapplied by an editor who does not identify specific issues? What can be done in such a case? Thryduulf and S Marshall have restated a concept about tagging, with which I agree, that tags should be temporary. So my question is what should be done if one or more editors persist in tagging or retagging in a way that does not have a defined characteristic for untagging? As User:S Marshall observed, the case in point was about tagging with vaguely stated concerns and no specific removal criterion. How do we address persistent non-specific tagging? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:59, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Suggest pointing the dissenting users to this discussion? They might have thoughts and reasons they want to share.—S Marshall T/C 18:30, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Discussion.

• If a tag is removed that you think should apply, clearly state on the talk page why you think that, being as specific as possible and remember that the issues must be actionable. If you cannot do that, then the tag does not belong on the article.
  • The existence of a (potential) COI and/or (potential) (undisclosed) paid editing are issues with editors not article content, you must identify specific, actionable issues with the article.
• If a tag is added that you think should not be. On the talk page, ask the editor(s) adding the tag to clearly state the issues with the article per the above bullet. If possible, give details about what checks you've done, any issues that don't require tags you've identified, any issues you've fixed, anything that might be controversial but you believe is fine, etc.
  • If no editors respond within a reasonable time frame, then remove the tag with a link to the talk page section.
• If you cannot reach agreement then seek additional opinions (3O, RfC, etc).
• If someone continually adds or removes a tag against or in the absence of consensus this is a behaviour issue, follow standard dispute resolution.

Thryduulf (talk) 18:38, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

• To make this short… The procedure is: Go to the article talk page and start a discussion. What happens NEXT depends on what is said (or not said) in that discussion, but Thryduulf outlines several options. If necessary, call in non-involved editors for a “3rd Opinion”. Blueboar (talk) 18:57, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Speaking of the general case only:

• We care about COI because we care about NPOV, full stop. Wikipedia is not a children's game of Mother May I?, in which only editors with approval get to edit. The COI guideline exists to prevent biased articles. It does not exist because we want to main the ritual purity of an article. If the article's contents are neutral – as defined by the relevant policy, not as perceived by an individual ("but the article only says nice things about this business, so it's obviously biased") – then there should be no concerns about COI.
• Therefore, the first thing to do when seeing such a tag is to find out whether there is a problem with neutrality. This may be obvious (especially if you have some knowledge of the subject matter, and consequently you just happen to know that Sal Scandal is only notable due to scandalous behavior, all mention of which has somehow been omitted from the article), but as a general rule, this tag, like all other NPOV-related tags, needs to be accompanied by a discussion on the talk page.
• If there is no discussion on the talk page, then any editor who is personally unable to identify the problem is justified in removing it boldly/immediately/without discussion.
• Any editor who wants to restore the tag needs to post an explanation of the neutrality problems on the talk page ("C'mon guys, Sy Scandal is famous for scandals, and this article makes him look like as innocent as a newborn babe. We should be citing this source about the noodle incident, and that news article about the dramatic exit from the drama company, and this magazine about the family fiasco, and...") NB "an explanation of the neutrality problems", not "an explanation of my emotional reasoning" nor even "an explanation of why I think this other editor's username indicates a connection to the subject".
• From there, it's a "straightforward" consensus-oriented discussion (and related Wikipedia:Dispute resolution processes), noting that anyone removing such a tag should not be entirely surprised if the removal is opposed by an editor. Two common cases are POV pushers (either pro- or anti- the subject, and sometimes motivated by nothing more nefarious than their belief that they understand the subject better than anyone else), and editors who are invincibly convinced that nobody would ever create this article/write that content unless they had a COI.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these tags should be temporary – preferably very temporary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I think your approach to COI is a little too tactical (maybe thats just in this context though)... By my understanding COI functions on both a tactical and strategic level, even if every single edit is on its own unobjectionable a number of unobjectionable edits across multiple pages can have the combined strategic effect of unbalancing wikipedia. That is much much harder to spot than edits that are individually problematic which is why the community has endorsed the systematic disclosure of COI for editors who wish to edit those the topics with which they have a conflict of interest (which nobody is required to do). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:31, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Every tag on an article must related to specific, actionable issues and must be removed when those issues have been resolved. There is nothing "tactical" or "strategic" about this - either the article is neutral or it is not. If you believe an article is non-neutral then you need to be able to say why you think that. "An editor (might have) had a COI" does not make an article biased. It is a reason to check whether the article is neutral, but once that check has been done the tag must be removed. Thryduulf (talk) 19:35, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

"but once that check has been done the tag must be removed." you can't mean that. Surely if the check finds the article not to be neutral and the COI issue to be real the tag must *not* be removed? I also think you're forgetting to WP:AGF, you are required to assume that whoever placed the tag had a good reason even if you can't see one. Just because you don't see a neutrality issue doesn't mean there isn't one, someone else may be smarter or more knowledgable about a topic area than you. Your suggested editing style makes sense for a demigod, for a human being it would be disruptive. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:08, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

If the article is non-neutral then tag it as non-neutral - the COI tag is irrelevant as the check for neutrality has been done. Tags on articles must relate to specific, actionable issues. If you think there is a neutrality issue that someone else hasn't seen, then you need to explain what the specific, actionable neutrality issue is. It is the responsibility of the person placing the tag to ensure that the reason it has been placed is clear to other editors. Thryduulf (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand this argument, it seems like you are opposed to the existence of a COI tag? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:30, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

The COI tag says (paraphrased) "This article has had contributions from someone with a COI. This means it might not be neutral, but it is has not been checked yet." Once a check has been done then we know one of two things - either the article is non-neutral (in which case it should be tagged as non-neutral so readers know that it does have NPOV issues) or the article is neutral (in which case no tag is needed). I'm not opposed to the COI tag as long as it is used correctly and not as a badge of shame. Thryduulf (talk) 23:56, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Checks are not always conclusive, just because a check has been conducted doesn't mean that we know either of those two things. Again what you lay out would make sense for a demigod, it doesn't work with human beings. Take you and I for example, neither of us has the competence to detect NPOV issues in the vast majority of contexts because we simply don't have the subject matter expertise which would allow us to discern subtle issues. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:55, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

True, but the lack of omniscience is also true (perhaps even more true) for the mere mortal who tagged the page in the first place. Should we keep the inconclusive and unproven allegation against a contributor, just because no editor has conclusively proven the allegation to be false? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:16, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

What most decent human beings do is AGF and either move on without removing or engage in a discussion before removing the tag. I also think that framing it as an allegation is unkind, it isn't any more an allegation than many of the other tags are. Just because there is a potential COI doesn't mean that any nefarious activity is being alleged, the vast majority of COI editors aren't malicious they are simply ignorant of our requirements in that space. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:03, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

"Assume good faith" means "assume the person screwed up on accident and is not part of a conspiracy to destroy the last shreds of your ability to cope with the garbage that gets dumped into articles". AGF does not mean "assume that whatever unproven allegation made by the tagging editor is probably correct and/or more knowledgeable than you". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:33, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• I see two main contexts here... One where the editor removing the tag is challenging the validity of the COI identification itself and another where they are challenging its relevance to the article as currently written. IMO those are entirely different scenarios, in the first one it would be incumbent on the editor removing the tag to discuss it either on the talk page or at WP:COIN. In the second I think most of the time a simple explanation in the edit summary ("No longer applicable, article has been cleaned up" or similar) is all that is needed. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:26, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  The existence (or not) of a COI is independent of and irrelevant to a tag on the article. Every tag on an article must related to actionable issues with that article. If someone believes that an article's neutrality needs to be checked, then that's fine but the tag can be (and should be) removed by any neutral editor after they have checked the article and either (a) found no issues, (b) fixed the issues they found, or (c) tagged specific issues that they can't fix. Thryduulf (talk) 19:32, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Its not irrelevant to what tag is on the article, for example if someone agrees that there is a NPOV issue but disagrees with the COI allegation. They would then remove the COI tag and replace it with a NPOV tag or whatever else was needed to address the actual issues. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:34, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's "(c) tagged specific issues that they can't fix". The {{POV}} tag requires an explanation of those "specific issues". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:19, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

No it does not, there is no such requirement. All it does is request (not require) that you make one and to make no/no suitable explanation a valid reason to remove the tag. In a similar vein COI editors are requested (not required) not to edit mainspace, but they almost all do... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:07, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

From the template's documentation page:

"You may remove this template whenever any one of the following is true:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved.
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given.
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant."

Ergo, discussion is required. The prescribed punishment, if you fail to meet this requirement, is that the tag can be removed by anyone (including IPs, the accused editor, the jerk who follows you in the hope of proving that you're a bad editor – anyone). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the near-unanimous main point above is that after the article is checked for COI-driven issues and any of them found are resolved, the tag should come off. The above sort of presumes that an article content issue has already been perceived. I'd like to add that in reality there is an additional very-short term use/reason. Which is when there is an initial concern about the presence of a COI situation. This may trigger simply a closer look to see if there are COI-driven content issues, or providing wiki-guidance to the possible-COI editor, and to heighten awareness of the possibility at the article. I think that this "second reason" should last only a few days, but I think we need to acknowledge it. If it was strictly about already-determined NPOV issues in the content, we'd just need an NPOV tag and there would be no need for a separate COI tag. North8000 (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed; I think this summarizes the overall thrust of the thread well, especially what Thryduulf and S Marshall articulated, which I agree with. If I also put it in my own words: a COI tag flags that an article may have issues and invites a review (by a user without that COI, of course). If a review reveals there's an issue, like unsourced content or a failure to meet NPOV, that tag should be applied instead of COI; if there is no issue, then the potential for issue that the tag flagged is resolved, and it's appropriate to remove the tag. These tags being temporary makes sense to me. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 18:02, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree. It's possible that in some COI cases the article will deserve a tag other than the {{POV}} tag (e.g., {{third party}} if the editor only cited the subject's own/preferred sources), but I would expect {{POV}} to be the most common problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:22, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Is trying to write in a language you don't speak any better than vandalism?

I often browse the Iñupiaq version of Wikipedia (ik.wikipedia.org), and from it have I learned an amount of the language that is so small that you could only see it under a microscope. I will confess that, with some help from copy-and-paste, I wrote a very short article about my hometown. This article seems to have been accepted by the wiki's main contributor, a guy from Portugal (I think).
Browsing through the wiki, I have found that the majority of Inupiaq Wikipedia was created in this way, and practically nobody on the wiki speaks the language well, (hence all the level-0 and level-1 "Babel" tags in everyone's userpages, and the fact that so many pages are less than a line of text long.) There also seems to have been many pages created by bots, and the grammar seems to be fairly inconsistent. I know that Inupiaq is written in a few different dialects, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of the grammatical inconsistencies are just these "beginner's mistakes."
I'm pretty sure that this sort of stuff happens frequently on other versions of Wikipedia a lot as well. Is this all just basically glorified vandalism, or are we doing these small versions of Wikipedia any good? POSSUM chowg (talk) 17:24, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

This has happened before; see Scots_Wikipedia#Controversy for some background. Generally speaking, I don't think it's a good idea to contribute to projects to which you don't have at least a reasonable grasp on the language, even if it seems straightforward. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Seconded; I wouldn't call it vandalism because that has a very specific definition that includes the intent to do harm, but it's not a good practice. Speaking from personal experience on other projects, even conversational familiarity with a language can sometimes be insufficient for adequate article-writing (let alone discussions of policy and other more nuanced aspects of editing). For relatively rare languages like Inupiaq, inexperienced contributions can paradoxically further lead to the marginalization of the language by poisoning the well for machine learning models that would otherwise want to use that language's Wikipedia corpus as a training dataset. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:34, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

You make a very good point, Rosguill. I have pretty good conversational Polish - I have used it most days for over 40 years and can pass for a minute or two as a native speaker if I stick to small talk - but I wouldn't presume to be able to write an encyclopedia article in the language. That's a language that has plenty of native speakers, so they can do perfectly well without me, but when it comes to some of the "smaller" languages we may be better off having no Wikipedia at all rather than a badly written one. Btw wouldn't this thread be better on Meta? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:15, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I know about the whole scots wikipedia scandal. It's kind of a funny story. But as long as we don't have anyone who actually speaks Iñupiaq or anything else on this wiki, the chaos will continue. (See ik:User:Algunpersona123453 for more information.) POSSUM chowg (talk) 17:39, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I third the sense that it's not a good practice to contribute to projects in languages on which one doesn't have a good grasp, though I also demur from calling it vandalism per se, since the definition of vandalism in Wikipedia policy is an intent to do harm. It can, though, be very disruptive. I remember a Wikipedia conversation I was involved in a while back when someone offhandedly said more people should contribute in different languages because it was 'easy' to do with Google Translate. It wasn't the focus of the thread, so it didn't get taken up further, but that attitude seemed very casually presumptive as well as ignorant of the complexity of languages, even if it was good faith. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 19:24, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

To answer the headline question: yes its better than vandalism because there is no malicious plan or end goal behind the disruption. Is it almost as bad and almost as frustrating? Yes... But you can't treat them the same at all because one is operating in good faith and the barrier to their participation (language competence) is remediable. Be kind and patient but firm with such editors. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:41, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Alright guys, thank you for your replies. I never intended to get serious on Inupiaq Wikipedia, and I should probably return to working on Chinook Jargon Wikipedia (a language that I actually speak decently.) POSSUM chowg (talk) 17:50, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

It's not vandalism because it's well intentioned, but in some ways it can be worse. If a vandal replaces an article with ur mom iz poop, I am unlikely to mistake it for a reliable source. If someone writes something which looks authoritative but is wrong, especially on a topic on which I am clueless, it might carry more weight than it deserves. Certes (talk) 18:13, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's kind of scary (but also funny) to imagine. What if very few people spoke English, and someone was writing in some mock version of the language the whole time? Like this: Ast the spinkly dagers charkly crangest wan spooth, micks quashest hilthily ungst mong for dawvens. It's complete gibberish, but nobody would be able to tell since so few people would speak the language. POSSUM chowg (talk) 18:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

This is pretty much exactly what happened on the Lallans Wikipedia (Anglo/Scottish language). There was a Signpost article, and lots of press coverage, like this. Not good, & most of the WP version had to be reverted/removed. There is a tool out there that shows where contributions to the various language wikipedias originated, and for most very small wps Brazil was a very large, often the main, point of origin, even for Asian or African languages. Johnbod (talk) 18:47, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Could I possibly see the tool? POSSUM chowg (talk) 20:08, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't that tool need checkuser rights to tell where a logged-in user is? Isn't that a little dangerous? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, can't remember where it was; It might have been here, now dead. No, it doesn't/didn't - it only gives total counts. Johnbod (talk) 22:41, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@POSSUM chowg, I'd like to suggest that you continue helping that wiki. I'm a long-time supporter of the Haitian Creole Wikipedia. I don't speak the language. I also don't speak French, which would be helpful for that particular language. And I can still do good work there.

Things you can do with no language skill, or only the tiniest bit, include:

• Fix wikitext problems. I don't need to know a single word of Haitian to remove deleted photos from w:ht:Kategori:Paj ak lyen fichye kase.
• Revert obvious vandalism by checking Special:RecentChanges regularly. For many small wikis, it is possible for one person to check every single edit in a few minutes. (Ikwiki had an average of 2.4 edits per day recently.)
• Update very simple numeric facts. For example, turn an existing statement about a country's population 20+ years ago into a statement about the country's population more recently.
• Add sources to existing content. Most small Wikipedias cite very few sources. (There are no citation templates at that wiki; leave a note on my talk page if you think they'd actually be helpful.)
• Add photos of people or things. Use a very short, simple caption that you can copy and paste from the article. Yes, it might be nice to write "Joe Biden strolling through the Rose Garden after a meeting about tax reform in 2023", but play it safe by using just "Joe Biden" (in the local spelling/script).
• Attach isolated articles to the correct Wikidata items. Add {{Commons}} or {{Commonscat}} to articles.
• Add links between articles. With 536 articles at the moment, you may not have enough articles to do much (e.g., is there an article for City?), but link what you can. You might build lists to get your incoming links. For example, w:ik:Uvinituraq could be put into a list in w:ik:Kalivaurnia, under a heading that means ==Cities==.
• For that wiki in particular, update "Template:New" with a list of the newest articles, so they will appear on the Main Page.

If you can do the more technical and routine things, then perhaps people who speak the language better will be able to focus more on article creation. Surely there's a class of teenagers somewhere that would like to practice their skills by writing a simple article about w:ik:Taylor Swift. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:26, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Make Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science

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

---

This is a proposal to promote the WP:PROJPAGE essay Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style (MOS:COMPSCI or MOS:CS for short) into an actual MoS guideline page, at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science. This isn't suitable for WP:RM because it entails a change from {{WikiProject style advice}} to {{MoS guideline}}, and recategorization as part of MoS.

• This "guideline in all but name" has been remarkably stable for a long period of time, and is actually followed. I.e., it already is used by consensus as a guideline.
• It is written in guideline-appropriate language already and does not need substantive revision, aside from removing a handful of self-references to WP:WikiProject Computer science (or user essays therefrom).
• It is consistent with other topic-specific MoS pages such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics (though much less detailed, which is surely a good thing).
• It has various "MOS:SOMETHING" shortcuts to it which are accepted in use and treated like any other; a 2022 WP:RfD to delete them closed with a consensus to keep.
• Most of our topic-specific MoS pages originated this way, as wikiproject style advice pages and were moved to be integrated into MoS later.
• A competing essay, now at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computing (failed proposal), was firmly rejected by consensus (even proposals to keep a few elements of it were rejected), while the page under discussion here was kept and praised.
• If promoted, it definitely should be part of MoS as a site-wide guideline, not something held within a particular wikiproject (per WP:CONLEVEL and WP:POLICYFORK); same as with all the other topic-specific MoS pages and naming-conventions guidelines already.
• This should not be interpreted as a proposal to elevate any other wikiproject style essays. Those that were viable have already been merged into MoS, and the rest seem to be disused and even problematic (though some might be reparable). This is the lone straggler, and I meant to nominate it years ago but forgot or pushed it off.
• Having wikiproject style essays laying around as neither incorporated into MoS nor deprecated as {{Historical}} or {{Rejected}} is a hazard; cf. this RM in which a non-admin closer incorrectly came to a "no consensus" decision when people cited a wikiproject essay that contradicts both MOS:& and WP:COMMONNAME policy, as if the essay was coequal with side-wide article title requirements. Policy-forking often happens at pages like that essay (since corrected) when they are not part of MoS and thus don't get watchlisted by the guideline-shepherding editorial pool.

PS: MOS:COMPUTING, MOS:COMP, WP:MOSCOMP, and perhaps a few other shortcuts that currently point to the failed proposal should be usurped to redirect to the "new" guideline after the change. PPS: I have had almost no input into the page myself other than minor cleanup.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:54, 12 January 2024 (UTC); rev'd. 18:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Survey (MOS:CS)

• Support as nominator, of course, and willing to do whatever cleanup is needed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support seems fine, generally in favor of making it clear what pages are actually guidelines (with consensus support) and what pages aren't. Galobtter (talk) 21:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support. A good summary of what we currently expect for computer science related pages. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 05:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

  Neutral per Red-tailed hawk's comment below. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 04:57, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support This page seems to provide very useful advice, especially the Style guidelines section, and it would better fulfill its purpose as a community-endorsed guideline. However, the concern below about the Design patterns subsection linking to a rather messy Wikipedia article about a book should be fixed first. Toadspike (talk) 12:36, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy is just an essay and we can treat essays with contempt -- but this is an essay too. Its unexceptionable bits are in effect re-asserting what's already implied by some PAG or other, which means we don't need to elevate it, and where it might contradict some PAG or other I'd remember what Caliph Omar supposedly said: “So if these books all agree with the Koran, they are redundant and thus can be burned. If they disagree, then they are heretical and thus should be burned.” Peter Gulutzan (talk) 20:42, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

  Your dislike of an essay I mostly wrote, and of Koranic commentaries, don't really seem pertinent to this matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:15, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I said "can" not "do", and Omar's an analogy. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support Guidelines are just that, guidelines. I think this reflects consensus on how CS pages are structured with the caveat that pages that do not conform can and should exist. Sohom (talk) 11:00, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support I still don't find the design patterns guidance helpful, however I don't write CS articles and those who do have apparently had no problem with the instructions. Appreciate SMcCandlish being so responsive to stated concerns and for doing all of this work. Schazjmd (talk) 13:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
• Neutral I also don't find the current design patterns guidance helpful, and I gave two specific examples below of how the given advice conflicts with two existing articles of prominent design patterns. I'm not concerned about having to retrofit those articles, so I put myself in the shoes of someone who is going to look at the MOS for the first time and found that I wouldn't know what to do and that there aren't any good on-wiki examples provided to help me understand. But I'm not involved enough with editing in that area to get too noisy about it. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 23:55, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  Post-closure note: This appears to have been resolved via discussion below and edits to the material. Further changes needed should be proposed at WT:MOSCS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:46, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support. No objections from me. SWinxy (talk) 17:14, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support; I do not have an objection to this. –Gluonz ^{talk contribs} 16:40, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support: useful subject-specific guidance for standardisation (particularly the pseudocode treatment). I can see it helping newcomers and used to resolve disputes. I'm not sure how much I like the example articles given (some have issues like technicality of the lead, unverifiability or indiscriminate detail), but these can be improved over time. — Bilorv (talk) 15:56, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

  Post-closure note: Will open a thread about this at WT:MOSCS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:46, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (MOS:CS)

I find the statement The article should start with an introductory paragraph (or two) to be in a bit of tension with MOS:LEADLENGTH, which explicitly recommends larger leads for larger articles. If promoted, would this advice be removed, or modified to be in line with the general lead length guidance? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, any glitches like that would have to be normalized to agree with central guidance that governs it, like LEADLENGTH in this case. I figured I would probably miss something or other in going back over it before nominating. We don't tolerate WP:POLICYFORKs, so any such issues would have to be ironed out.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done Fixed. Also updated the lead paragraph example to agree with the current version of the selected article.[17]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:56, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Some of the example articles seem to be outdated or aren't actually best examples we have in those subareas. For algorithms, binary search is a featured article on this topic, compared to Quicksort which is B-class. For programming languages, Python is C-class, and IIRC the best we get on programming languages is Rust, which is a GA. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 16:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Which other examples did you want to replace with which? Happy to do it, or you could just have at it. I don't think replacing the examples with better ones (or updated versions of the same ones, when quoting examples) would be substantive (i.e. no WP:PGCHANGE concerns).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done with regard to those two.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:02, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Many computing articles date from the early years of Wikipedia when sources weren't required; in particular if material was in textbooks was not thought necessary to provide sources. The result is much unreferenced material in these articles, which is becoming problematic. The proposed guideline says

It is quite important for an article to have a well-chosen list of references and pointers to the literature.

Can this be made more in line with current policy? The math guideline says

Per the Wikipedia policy, WP:VERIFY, it is essential for article content to have inline citations, and thus to have a well-chosen list of references and pointers to the literature.

StarryGrandma (talk) 23:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done, though in more specific terms [18] that reflect the policy better (inline citations are only required for specific sorts of things).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I like that better than my suggestion. I am a member of the decreasing number of editors who believes "likely to be challenged" means "likely to be challenged as incorrect" rather than "likely to be challenged, even if correct, because there is no inline reference". StarryGrandma (talk) 05:15, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

One would certainly hope the former continues to prevail.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:30, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the current version is an improvement over the old version, but I don't think that either Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style#Concluding matters or Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style#Including literature and references should be in the page at all. Neither of them say anything unique to the subject. They are redundant with existing guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Will look into it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Not sure I suspect this revision, also to address primary/secondary concern raised by Sohom Datta below, will do the job. The new version focuses on source matters as they pertain to the subject. I basically can't address both WhatamIdoing's delete-the-section idea and Sohom Datta's improve-the-section idea simultaneously, except by trying to improve the section sufficiently to resolve the desire to delete it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk and StarryGrandma: Anything else to patch up?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:32, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

If this is to become part of the MOS, can we drag ourselves into the 21C and get rid of the insane prohibition on using binary prefixes? Adding a short paragraph would be sufficient to explain the difference between and to note that the SI prohibits the use of decimal prefixes with a binary meaning. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Would be a substantive change and something to propose in a separate RfC (also advertised at WT:MOSNUM, where this has been argued to death for over a decade). It's been a while, so it's vaguely possible that consensus could have changed on this question, though I doubt it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I fear that you are right in the assumption that the usual suspects would pile in and the sheer number of !votes would guarantee that nothing is done. It's really quite odd how we have metric measures forced on us by the SI enthusiasts - until - something that the SI bans but they like is mentioned! Maybe try again in another decade. :-( Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Related discussion has opened (by someone else) at WT:MOSNUM#Added_MOS:BINPREFIX.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think including a "overview" section is something that I have seen in a lot of CS articles. Most articles will call this section a "background" section and what is being described as a "motivation" section is normally included with the history section. (Also maybe we can give a example of such usages of background sections (I'd personally say Small_set_expansion_hypothesis or maybe Cross-site leaks ?)

I'd also like to see some discussion on the use of self-published wiki/book content/blog posts from primary sources in the references section. (for example, referencing a blog post/ from the Rust development team is fine when specifically describing the internal architecture of the Rust compiler, or the motivation behind a specific issue with language design of Rust, however, it is discouraged in most other cases for example when describing Rust benchmarks or the features that set it apart from x language etc). Sohom (talk) 15:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

On the sectioning matter, probably need to look at what GAs/FAs in the topic are doing and see how to update that material a bit. On the primary/secondary point, can you suggest some specific wording to use?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

 Partly done [19] (also to resolve issue raised by Toadspike, below). Haven't yet addressed the primary/secondary point, and another editor below wants to remove the entire section in question as not specific to the topic. There may be some kind of compromise solution; will look into it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done entirely now [20] – Added the primary vs. secondary distinction, and generally revised to address WhatamIdoing's concerns above about the material being too redundant with existing guidance, for not being specific to the topic, and thus the entire section being worth deleting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

If I were to start writing a CS article, I'd be seriously confused by Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science/Manual_of_style#Design_patterns. It's one sentence that links to an article about a book; is the article the example to follow (even though it's tagged for layout issues)? Or am I expected to get this book to learn how to format an article about design patterns? I think that subsection either needs to be expanded to be more descriptive or removed. Schazjmd (talk) 15:30, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

This well known book follows a very specific pattern when describing each design pattern See the entry about "Abstract Factory" I think following the pattern used by the book is what the guideline is talking about here. Sohom (talk) 18:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, @Sohom Datta. I think this subsection would be more useful if it provided a descriptive summary of the pattern used by the book. Schazjmd (talk) 18:13, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

The Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides ("Gang of Four") book (1994, O'Reilly; also 1995, Addison-Wesley) is findable online in full text easily, but it's unclear whether any of the copies are legit (I'm skeptical). There are "cheatsheet" summaries available on various websites, similar to citation-style cheatsheets findable at various universities, etc. There are a lot of such patterns, and our page would get long if it tried to address all of them, so referring people to the book, to our own article on it and the specific-pattern articles we already have, and to some good cheatsheets, are likely to be the best we can do. The patterns themselves might actually call for additional mainspace material, i.e. expand on what's covered at Design Patterns#Patterns by type and the articles linked therefrom, but that's an separate article-development matter. A similar book with a similar title by Pree (1995, Addison-Wesley) is available for free reading via IA [21]. Weirdly, IA does have the 1998 CD-ROM that goes with the Gang of Four book [22], but not the book itself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Then at least can we say explicitly to follow the examples in the book? Just linking to the article about the book, "The classic GoF format is a good guideline for the structure of an article describing a design pattern.", is decidedly unhelpful. Schazjmd (talk) 20:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that seems easily doable, and I might link in a "cheatsheet" as a ref.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done This should do it. I ended up no linking to external "cheatsheets" since most of them seemed to be based on our own articles, were too rudimentary to be useful for our purposes, or were language-specific.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:52, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

As a reader with basic familiarity with the subject of design patterns (i.e. I took Ralph Johnson's class in the '90s), I'm still confused as to what the advice really means. I chose two of our pattern articles at random, flyweight and builder, and the structure of those two articles is rather far afield from structure provided in the GoF book I have open in front of me right now. For example, GoF intentionally dedicates a section in each pattern explicitly listing which other patterns a part of common interactions, and the two articles here that I reviewed do not do that, instead sometimes wikilinkng to other patterns as part of the implementation details. Another example is that GoF dedicates a separate section to concrete examples of real-world usage for each pattern, whereas I didn't see any of that in these two random articles. I'm aware that we can't just copy the book and am not claiming that the structure is even worth adopting, but it's hard to connect the structure of these articles to the recommended references given in the MOS. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 02:37, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

It might just be that the material in that part is too old and/or aspirational, even with my attempts to reconfigure it. Maybe it should either be changed to a looser "see these books for good examples of how to write about design patterns" advice, or just removed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:55, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I think relaxing the language would be a good improvement. I think there's room for future improvement where the guidance includes what basic information to include, much like the other sections about what to include in theorem and language articles, but for now, loosening the language would address my concerns. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 23:43, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done Belatedly (after RfC closure) switched "should follow" to "should draw on" in reference to the GoF and other sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:41, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm a little confused as to what "motivation" means – is it supposed to be the purpose of the software/algorithm? This isn't, to my knowledge, a common definition of the word "motivation", so I would appreciate if better wording or a parenthetical clarification could be found. It was also unclear on my first read whether "motivation" referred to the motivation of the article's subject (purpose of the software/algorithm) or of the Wikipedia article itself (along the lines of a "this article will explain..." sentence, which I think is unencyclopedic). Perhaps

It can be helpful to have a section on motivation or applications in the informal introduction

could be supplemented with

It can be helpful to have a section on motivation (purpose of the subject) or applications in the informal introduction

Other solutions would be appreciated. Or maybe someone will be able to explain why this isn't an issue at all, such as by providing evidence that this usage of "motivation" is common in computer science writing. Toadspike (talk) 13:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done Fixed [23] (also to resolve issue raised by Sohom Datta, above). "Motivation" was just someone's unusual idiosyncratic wording, and not some kind of standardized jargon usage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk, StarryGrandma, WhatamIdoing, Martin of Sheffield, Sohom Datta, and Schazjmd: I've addressed (to the extent I can) the issues reported above. If there aren't more to raise, then some additional explicit support comments above would be good, so there's a better consensus record here. There are some parts of it that could use more concise wording and other non-substantive tweaks, but anyone should just go do it. I'm hard-pressed to find more substative changes that really seem necessary.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:04, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I have a slight qualm with the instruction Write the article title and any alternative names in bold in light of WP:AVOIDBOLD, which could also apply depending on the title.

Separately, and in general, I think the WikiProject style guide is quite good, provided that it's treated as a rough tool. Some other parts of the MoS are often cited by editors as if they are pseudo-policy, and as such I'm a bit queasy on !voting support on something with such an explicit suggested structure for an article unless there's some language added to the top of that section indicating that the "suggested" structure is not required. Adding a final sentence to the first paragraph of the "Suggested structure of a computer science article" section like Please note that the following structure is merely suggested; computer science articles can be structured in other ways if the authors of the page desire would work to ameliorate those concerns. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:24, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

 Partly done @Red-tailed hawk: MOS:BOLDTITLE and MOS:BOLDSYN are necessarily exceptions to MOS:AVOIDBOLD. You didn't just now notice this did you? "Suggested" already means not-required, but I added such a codicil, in more "guideliney" language [24].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:29, 2 February 2024 (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.

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion § RfC: enacting X3

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion § RfC: enacting X3. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 17:38, 7 March 2024 (UTC)