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RfC on secondary school notability

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Summary of the close, added 13:28, 23 February 2017 (UTC):

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The question asked in this RFC was whether extant secondary schools should be presumed to be notable. Numerically, the respondents to this RFC were about evenly divided between supporting and opposing that statement. However, this is a discussion, and not a vote, and what truly matters is the strength of each side's argument. The opposers have a strong policy-based argument. Requiring the GNG to be satisfied in all cases is a perfectly sensible position, and one that is consistent with all applicable policies. The arguments of the supporters were more mixed. Some arguments, such as "Schools are important to their communities", "Automatic notability of schools are how Wikipedia has always done it, and this has historically served us well", and "School articles are valuable as a recruitment tool for new editors" do not make much sense and were discounted. Another common argument was that removing the protections secondary schools have historically enjoyed at AfD would lead to a flood of mass AfDing. This is a concern to be addressed in a hypothetical implementation, but is not germane to the question of whether those protections should exist. These opinions were partially or fully discounted in our evaluation. The supporters did have some very good arguments mixed in with the poor ones. The argument that sources for secondary schools are more difficult to find than they are for typical topics because they are likely to be concentrated in local and/or print media is very valid. Additionally, the argument that removing the presumption of notability from schools would increase systematic bias is very strong.

Based on the discussion, we find that the community is leaning towards rejecting the statement posed in the RFC, but this stops short of a rough consensus. Whether or not the community has actually formed a consensus to reject the statement posed in the RFC is a distinction without a difference - Either way the proposed change will not be adopted.

Over the course of the discussion, the conversation expanded to include the proper role of SCHOOLOUTCOMES. Citing SCHOOLOUTCOMES in an AfD makes the circular argument "We should keep this school because we always keep schools". This argument has been rejected by the community. Therefore, while SO remains perfectly valid as a statement of what usually happens to extant secondary schools at AFD, SO should be added to arguments to avoid in AFD discussions. Rationales that cite SCHOOLOUTCOMES are discouraged, and may be discounted when the AFD is closed.

Because extant secondary schools often have reliable sources that are concentrated in print and/or local media, a deeper search than normal is needed to attempt to find these sources. At minimum, this search should include some local print media. If a deep search is conducted, and still comes up empty, then the school article should be deleted for not meeting the GNG - Editors are not expected to prove the negative that sources do not exist, but they should make a good-faith effort to find them. If a normal-depth search fails to find any evidence that the school exists, the article on the school should be deleted without the need for a deeper search.

It's worth noting that this discussion does imply that schools are special. We would expect an RFC asking "Should artists whose existence is verified by reliable, independent sources be presumed to be notable?" would be closed quickly and with snowballs. The fact that this was not the case for schools is telling.

It's further worth noting that a flood of AfDs following the addition of SO to the "arguments to avoid in AfDs" list is undesirable. Editors are asked to refrain from making indiscriminate or excessive nominations.

Signed

• Tazerdadog (talk) 00:09, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
• Primefac (talk) 00:22, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
• The Wordsmith (talk) 00:32, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
• Someguy1221 (talk) 02:47, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

---

According to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Schools, commonly referred to by its abbreviated link WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, "Most independently accredited degree-awarding institutions and high schools are usually kept except when zero independent sources can be found to prove that the institution actually exists". However, a number of recent AfDs on secondary schools have closed either with no consensus or with consensus to delete. The closing summaries of two of these AfDs, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eden English School Btl and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bal Vikash Secondary School, have included recommendations that an RfC be held on the notability of secondary schools. Following discussion of this at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Need for an RfC on schools' notability, there is agreement to hold this RfC, with the following question:

Should secondary schools whose existence is verified by reliable, independent sources be presumed to be notable? Cordless Larry (talk) 19:17, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Support. I am in favor of keeping and improving articles about accredited, degree awarding secondary schools as long as that information is verifiable through reliable sources. This has been standard practice during my 7-1/2 years of editing. These schools are important institutions within their communities and biographies of notable people often discuss their educational backgrounds including their attendance at secondary schools. An encyclopedia with well over five million articles certainly has room for such articles. If the existence of any given school cannot be verified, then I support deletion of such an article. One of the fundamental principles of Wikipedia is that it "combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." Providing articles about degrees awarding educational institutions is entirely in line with that goal, in my opinion. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 19:45, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support keeping status quo. Generally, high schools are important enough that there is almost always significant coverage in reliable sources, which may not necessarily be easily found on the Internet. A high school in the developing world could be widely covered in papers that have no online presence, and most AfD participants are Western and native speakers of English who would have difficulty locating those sources, causing systematic bias as US high schools are much easier to defend against deletion even though they are no more notable than their counterparts elsewhere. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:46, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Everything should be subject to GNG. GNG exceptions should be narrowly focused if made at all. If there are no reliable sources then there is nothing we can responsibly write about the subject. This is a particular problem with the thousands upon thousands of schools, academies etc in India but can be as bad with US schools as well. These articles are magnets for vandalism, promotionalism and BLP violations. Jbh^Talk 19:51, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Government websites and publications can be a source of reliable information on government-created entities despite not being independent, something which is not true for private organizations. That's why a town with a population of 3 in Wyoming is notable despite perhaps having only trivial mentions in reliable sources (e.g. a list of cities in Wyoming). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:58, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  The problem which arises is with private and for profit educational institutions. At a minimum these should be subject to WP:NORG. For what are considered 'public' schools in the US they can be mentioned in the article about the locality. One of the defining points of Wikipedia is that we are a tertiary source. Making exceptions to this may increase the number of articles we have but it does nothing to help the quality. I do not generally like GEOLAND since I think there is a qualitative difference between an encyclopedia and a gazetteer but geographic places generally do not pose the same problems with NPOV etc that schools do. Jbh^Talk 20:15, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  I would not be opposed to excluding private schools from this criterion. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:25, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  This s not quite quite accurate JB. We have G11 and G12 which are rigorously applied to promotional school articles. Other CSD criteria too whenever appropriate. It would be incorrect to say, for example, that all high schools are notable irrespective of any deletion criteria that can be applied. They are not immune from PROD either. I also live in Asia and I can safely say that only a tiny a minority of schools here are for profit, although the situation might possibly be slightly different in the very rich micro-states of Singapore and Hong Kong. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:02, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

  While Verifiability is a core content policy, the GNG is a guideline which does not apply in all cases. The exception that comes immediately to mind is WP:ACADEMIC. We often decide that an an academic is notable based on how often their work is cited by other scholars as opposed to the sort of coverage required for a singer or a fashion designer. Similarly, we keep articles about 19th century state or provincial legislators per WP:POLITICIAN even if the only readily available source is a mention in the legislature's own records. The GNG is important, but not all-important. If it were, it would be a policy rather than a guideline. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 20:27, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  I can see a GNG exception to public i.e. government run secondary schools but not for private/for profit schools. This RfC would allow a GNG exception for what are essentially diploma mills and businesses. I could support something which is more narrowly focused but GNG exceptions need to serve some articulable purpose which is a net benefit to the project. I do not see the net benefit here. Jbh^Talk 20:34, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Can someone please define "secondary school". Some of the explanation in the RfC opening comments and in the linked AfDs seem to be very US-centric. Eg: UK secondary schools never award degrees. - Sitush (talk) 19:58, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support I am sympathetic to the "GNG or bust" argument here, but I do think that keeping the presumption of notability for high schools is the best way to go here. Simply put: even if this RfC agrees on a consensus that schools must be shown to meet GNG, I have zero hope that this principle will be applied to secondary schools in the Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States. There will be arguments over whether or not the extensive local coverage counts, but it will likely be resolved in favour of the high school. The consensus of WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES will likely still be the de facto consensus for schools in these countries. This RfC was largely started because of outcomes of no consensus or delete for schools in South Asia. As has already been pointed out, it is likely that there is already coverage at the level that would be acceptable for secondary schools in any of the countries mentioned, it just isn't easy to find via a Google search. What you often find instead is proof of its existence on a government website, and that website might not even be the education ministry, it could be the agency in charge of elections because the school is a polling site. You also find sources about NGOs using these schools for events to immunize, teach reading, etc. These souces while scare confirm that the schools in question play the same role in their communities as secondary schools in nations where sources are more Googleable play in theirs, but they are hard to find. Making the standard be proof of existence and accreditation makes sense to me in order to prevent systemic bias, which undermine Wikipedia's credibility. I would happily !vote delete for a home school academy high school that has five students or something similar, but if the school is accredited, we should presume that it is notable and that the sources exist to expand it, even if they are not available online. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:06, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Schools in South Asia are generally all for profit institutions and we have to deal with promotionalism, NPOV etc. Making them de jure notable would take away even the limited ability we have now to fight the promotionalism. As for commercial institutions these schools should pass NORG. Jbh^Talk 20:21, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  I would be fine with a higher standard for for-profit schools in general, though I do think the locality matters (if the only school for 100 miles is for-profit, I would presume it notable.) That being said, I think there needs to be a distinction between private secondary schools and for-profit secondary schools. They are really two separate beasts. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:51, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Yes. And once we start getting into locality, we start making too many edge cases, until it no longer serves as a useful guideline. So I think it would be best to require evaluating private schools individually based on GNG. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:54, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Agreed that for-profit should be evaluated individually based on GNG, where I think the edge cases would likely go no consensus. Private schools I am fine with a broad exception. I don't really consider a boarding school set up by nuns to be in the same boat as a diploma mill designed to make a proprietor a profit. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:57, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Yes, however the 'boarding school set up by nuns' is not necessarily the typical private institution and making the distinction between what is a private school and what is a diploma mill or business can be difficult - Sister Mary's School for Deserving Wayward Orphans and Puppies may be run by Scammers 'R Us. It is just too hard to tell without independent reliable sources. Aslo, without reliable sources Wikipedia can be and has been used to legitimize such schools. See the whole mess related to WifiOne. Jbh^Talk 21:42, 8 January 2017 (UTC) Last edited: 21:48, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  And if Sister Mary's school can be verified to be a legitimate institution that is what it claims to be, then it should be kept. If it cannot be verified to be this through reliable sources, then it should not be. The question being commented on here is about schools with reliable sources, not schools that lack them. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:59, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  The issue in your statement is "...verified to be a legitimate institution that is what it claims to be." There is a a huge difference between an independent reliable sources that verifies that and the massively low bar of proof of existance which is what this RfC wants to make the standard. You typically need independent RS for the former while we often accept self published sources like school websites for the later. Jbh^Talk 22:05, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  The RfC is specifically addressing if Should secondary schools whose existence is verified by reliable, independent sources be presumed to be notable?. On the discussion about holding this RfC verifiability standards were brought up by at least a few editors, and I'm assuming part of the reason that Cordless Larry suggested this wording was because of that. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:13, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Hopefully I have worded the question neutrally, Jbhunley, and the RfC doesn't want to make anything the standard. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:15, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  @Cordless Larry: I should have said - 'should this RfC be closed in the affirmative' - I have no issue with the neutrality of the wording. Jbh^Talk 22:47, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  If there's a "massively low bar", then that is set by the current WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES essay. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:18, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Having a 'massively low bar' supported by an essay one thing. Promoting that to a formally community endorsed guideline, which this will effectivly do, is something else entirely. It removes flexibility and will codify a huge hole for commercial promotion. Jbh^Talk 22:47, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  I think the essay is treated like a guideline by many editors as it is, and debate about that is part of what led up to this RfC. Anyway, thanks for the clarification above. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:54, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

  Except that it's being used to justify creation of articles on secondary schools, rather than only used to prevent deletion of existing ones. While mechanically the process is the same, it is the case in point that it encourages editors to develop poorly sourced (read: primary, SPS, or locally-sourced only) articles on schools just because we tolerate them. --MASEM (t) 23:02, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Unlike some other items that we presume to be notable, such as senior politicians, there is little reason to believe that secondary schools are normally covered in depth in reliable sources that go beyond routine reporting in local media. The vast majority of such schools are WP:MILL organizations; there are thousands of them, they are distinguished only by such trivia as age or number of pupils, and are generally not of interest to people other than those educated there. Such articles are also often a magnet for WP:BLP problems and vandalism ("Johnny sucks!!!") because many pupils will want to "creatively" edit them; and we do not need another area of additional maintenance overhead with little benefit. Such schools should therefore not be presumed notable. The solution to the systemic bias problem identified by TonyBallioni should be addressed by deleting the many non-notable Western school articles instead of adding more non-notable non-Western school articles.  Sandstein  20:19, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Although schools are not covered often, they are important. The information just needs to be verified through reliable sources. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 20:28, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - Notability is a valuable guideline "to ensure that editors create articles that comply with major content policies" (WP:WHYN). On what do we base the content of an article if all we have is verification of existence? On what do we base an article if we have only primary sources? We inevitably become a directory of school facts and figures. A whole lot of schools are notable, and we should have articles about them, but there should be no inherent notability based on verifiable existence for any subject. I've seen a distinction made between "inherent notability" and "presumed notability", but they're functionally the same. If everybody goes into a deletion discussion presuming [that there's significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject], the burden is shifted from arguing for notability to arguing a negative position -- that such coverage does not exist (an impossible task, when the presumption is that the sources do exist, even if they cannot be identified). Guidelines that provide shortcuts via indications of notability are helpful, but in the end an article needs to go by core content policies (again, effectively outlined in WP:WHYN). To say something is notable is to say it's received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Otherwise, we don't have anything to base an article on that complies with NPOV, V, RS, NOT, etc. An editor simply saying "it's important; significant coverage in reliable sources doesn't matter" wouldn't fly if we were talking about an internet meme, delicatessen, or philosophical concept, so why is it ok to simply say "they're important; significant coverage in reliable soruces doesn't matter" for this subject? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:36, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose The claim that there are always sources for secondary sources omits the fact that the bulk of those will be local, showing little relevance to the broader world. And as a symptom of systematic bias, the only type of coverage that I've seen routinely that's non-local about these sources are in relationship to sports (specifically only American football and basketball), which really is more about the athlete than the school. There are undoubtably notable secondary schools, but we should not be working that these are notable by default for just existing. That said, in most cases, coverage of these schools can at least be mentioned in the readily-accepted city/town article that the school is a part of, and redirects can be used to avoid disruption. --MASEM (t) 20:45, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support Status quo. Going in a different direction now will be just too disruptive (besides which, multiple (every?) high profile biography has link to the subject's upper schools as do some (probably not high profile) locations, so look at it as adjunct (or multiple split) encyclopedic information if nothing else). My rank speculation is this was, back in the mists of time, partly done precisely to get upper students interested in editing, which may are may not be bad, but it is long since done. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:48, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose this is one of these walled garden notability things that has gotten out of hand and are turning some parts of Wikipedia into mere directories. But WP:NOTDIRECTORY. The other thing to keep in mind here is with the privatization of education there are more and more private or public/private charter schools and Wikipedia is (as always) something people abuse for promotional purposes. If a school fails GNG it fails GNG. Jytdog (talk) 22:11, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support current status quo (NOTE this is not actually fully supporting the proposal, since it requires that the schools also be verifiably independently accredited). Now, we need to emphasize that this does not mean that high schools are automatically in as some people seem to think, but instead that it's a case by case basis which actually requires research to determine. ansh666 22:34, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: That Wikipedia:Existence does not prove notability is the very reason we have notability guidelines in the first place. The most important one of these is WP:GNG, and for the vast majority of topics it is indicative of notability. Some good, carefully crafted, exceptions to GNG apply. But as Jbh points out, they should "serve some articulable purpose which is a net benefit to the project". No accepted exception to GNG sets the bar as low as this proposal would, in a manner which defeates the purpose of notability criteria: if it exists, there can be an article on it. That is the antithesis of notability, the purpose of which is to keep information on Wikipedia from being indiscriminate and in violation of various WP:NOT. We are not an encyclopedia when it comes to most topics but the WP:YELLOWPAGES when it comes to high-schools; we are an encyclopedia all around. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:28, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support notability for verified accredited high schools, whether public or private, to avoid bias in favor of US high schools, as opposed to private high schools in developing countries. There is no assumption of notability for unaccredited high schools.secondary schools, such as someone's home schooling operation for their own children. No presumed notability for schools which stop short of the US 12th grade or foreign equivalents, but in some cases one might find sources to satisfy GNG or WP:ORG for schools which stop short of grade 12. I have seen many hours wasted in fights about some county high school, but in the end sourcing could be found. But coverage of major newspapers in some states is limited in online free databases, and it is unreasonable to demand that within a 7 day AFD period editors have to drive to the state a school is in and search the state's major newspapers on microfilm in some college library to find the significant coverage which is inevitably there. And this is in an encyclopedia where projects argue successfully that every dinky railroad station, every tiny section of numbered highway, every person who played professionally in one game of a sport, and every hamlet with 2 families deserves an article. A public high school today typically is a major cultural institution serving a significant population area, at huge expense, and for a long span of years, and has a big formative influence on perhaps generations of students. Edison (talk) 23:39, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support I really see no case for changing the current status quo. This has all been gone into many times before, and the situation on the ground has not changed. -- Alarics (talk) 23:41, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• I beg to differ on your final point, Alarics. A number of recent AfDs have resulted in no consensus, and at least one, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arya Kanya Girls Inter College, Hardoi, was closed as a delete. Cordless Larry (talk) 23:50, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• It strikes me as rather desperate when the opponents of the status quo point to a single, solitary deletion as "evidence" that the consensus no longer exists. "It's in tatters" as one well-known school deletionist hopefully described it. Er, no! -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:44, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

• I've not described it as "in tatters" myself, and admittedly there haven't been many deletions, but there does seem to have been an uptick in the number of no-consensus closes. Cordless Larry (talk) 14:34, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Existence does not prove notability, Wikipedia is not a directory, and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of secondary schools many of which have nothing notable about them. I'm sympathetic to the arguments about how this reduces bias against non-Western schools, but I believe that can be better achieved without claiming every school is notable. Further, these pages of schools that are not notable or barely notable are not really of interest to anyone except students and faculty. There will be few page watchers and since they're prone to vandalism, it will likely stay there longer. High schools that are notable for alumni activities, outreach efforts, or superior skill in academic or athletic achievement are far more useful and more likely to be seen and maintained because of the attention they receive because of it (thus satisfying the GNG). We don't need thousands of permanent stubs. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 01:52, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't agree with WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. Every article should be judged on a case-by-case basis, as per the most fundamental notability guideline, WP:GNG. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 02:06, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per Sandstein. The support crowd seems to think we dare not challenge the status quo lest the braying masses attack us for deleting the article about their high school. That's not an argument for notability but a sad plea for a political carve-out. Let the notable schools pass GNG or NCORP. All the others can go. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:07, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. SCHOOLOUTCOMES has been a thorn in the English Wikipedia's side for too long. It, or at least the common interpretation of it, is wholly out of line with our notability guidelines, namely WP:GNG and WP:ORGSIG, the latter of which says:

  "No company or organization is considered inherently notable. No organization is exempt from this requirement, no matter what kind of organization it is, including schools. If the individual organization has received no or very little notice from independent sources, then it is not notable simply because other individual organizations of its type are commonly notable or merely because it exists."

  Per that guideline, verifiable information about non-notable schools should be included in articles about the municipality or district within which they exist. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, there's a longstanding precedent (of sorts) against nominating schools at AFD, but this should not be made hard policy. Apparently we're starting to see articles on schools of such profound obscurity that little to nothing beyond mere existence can be verified (and in some cases not even that). If we can't verify anything, then an encyclopedia article on the subject cannot exist. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 08:07, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support I think the current status quo works very well. It sets a very good threshold for assumed notability and it negates any systemic bias inherent in only including schools with strong references. The latter will tend to be biased towards fee-paying institutions which can't afford not to market themselves through the press. State schools generally won't have the luxury of paying someone or some entity to do PR for them, whereas fee-paying institutions will be strongly focussed on it. And it's not just schools where we do that. WP:FOOTY has strong inherent notability rules about football club articles. And they make sense. We also need to remember that school articles are often a first vehicle from young wikipedians. Deleting huge tranches of them as non-notable will only encourage vandalism and conflict in dealing with this future editors. No great reason to change. It's doing fine as is. CalzGuy (talk) 13:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I've been considering opening an RfC on this for some time. I find the use of this essay infuriating when presented by itself to argue for keeping articles on which no one can find any reliable sources. It's bizarre to me that we use the circular logic of 'schools are often kept therefore schools should always be kept' in these cases. Either "Secondary schools are always notable" should be enshrined in guideline/policy, or we need to stop using this essay argument at AfD. Sam Walton (talk) 13:14, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - per Jbh, Masem, and Sandstein. (I have to admit that typing that list of names together is a bit surreal...) Ealdgyth - Talk 14:43, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support, with emphasis on the whose existence is verified by reliable, independent sources. Secondary Schools are a special kind of institution, found in every major settlement around the planet, and play a key role in lives of communities and individuals. They can give beginning editors or readers of Wikipedia a familiar topic to read or edit to get the feel of the place. They are special enough to merit their own "notability" rule, so we should codify what has has been de facto pretty much the case until now (editors citing WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, even though that's only an essay). PamD 16:37, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. There are no exceptions for a lack of sourcing. Whether or not you call it the GNG, what we need is better phrased as "whether there is an overabundance of coverage in reliable, secondary sources to cover the topic in depth without resorting to unreliable, affiliated, or primary sources". I've seen very few cases in which high schools are independently notable from their parent grouping (the school district or town article) by way of sourcing. And even if they have coverage, those sources tend to be local papers—not wider interest. The standard for similar subtopics is to merge into the parent (the school district or town): a place where the article can be covered in whatever depth warranted by secondary sources. (And it can always split out summary style if an overabundance of sources on the school upsets the balance of the article.)

As for what this discussion is really about—as I understand it—the precedent of keeping all secondary school articles comes from earlier in WP history where some basic categories of articles were presumed notable just to save some time and nonsense at AfD (a decade ago... when it was a free-for-all of new editors, especially high school boys writing about their high schools). But AfD works differently now, and all AfD discussions are essentially about whether the sourcing exists to support an independent article—apart from some specific topic areas, mostly sports biographies and, e.g., "school outcomes".

This discussion is also about our article quality. When a topic is a valid search term—as all established secondary schools are—we merge its sourced contents to a parent article so that readers can find sourced information on it. But we do little good for our readers by serving secondary school articles absent of the Wikipedia sourcing standards that we apply to the rest of the encyclopedia. Unsourced articles invite cruft (an empirically true broken references theory), and set lower expectations for the standard of acceptable writing on Wikipedia. It's time to extend our universal sourcing standards to secondary schools, and accordingly, to cover more unsourced topics in their parent articles (merging as appropriate).  czar 18:28, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose I never understood why schools got a free pass at AFD. GNG and to a lesser extent SNG's work well for other articles and they will be fine in this situation as well. Many school articles I come across are nothing short of promotion as the only source of information comes from their own websites. AIRcorn (talk) 20:35, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Information that meets policy requirements should be kept. If there's not much, consider merging, but if the amount is too much for the merge target then split. They should only be deleted if nothing is verifiable to our standards. I'm not sure if this is a support or oppose - as articles may be merged whether notable or not. For many of these articles this probably means keeping the article but removing anything that lacks references. Peter James (talk) 00:04, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support until a viable alternative becomes available. The trouble with SCHOOLOUTCOMES as stated is that we're talking about different sorts of secondary schools as if they're all on the same level; some classes of schools, such as American public high schools, will pretty much always be notable as important community institutions, while other classes, such as some of the for-profit schools mentioned above, need to be evaluated on their own merits. Unfortunately, public vs. private isn't quite enough to separate these; in certain parts of America, private schools (and Catholic schools in particular) are held in a similar regard as public schools, while in other parts they aren't, and that's just the situation in one country.

The reason I can't support just getting rid of SCHOOLOUTCOMES without an alternative, though, is it would make a lot of vulnerable articles subject to deletion due to the current situation at AfD. The point of presuming notability for certain topics is to correct an imbalance between what GNG is supposed to mean (multiple, reliable secondary sources) and what it usually turns into at AfD (multiple, reliable secondary sources that will probably only be looked for online, by a handful of people who are probably from North America and Europe, possibly only within Google results unless someone with access to a paywalled database stumbles across the AfD, with a seven-day time limit at best, and subject to people arguing that "multiple" means a higher number than what you found or that local or even regional sources don't count despite that not being part of the GNG). Given how many high schools are in rural areas, making it more likely that archived print sources won't be easily accessible, or in countries that don't have the same internet presence as English-speaking countries in the West, these are particularly relevant concerns, and I'm uncomfortable throwing existing articles on schools into that mess with no precautions to avoid deletion on account of sloppy research. I've pulled too many articles from the brink of deletion on account of nominators, and subsequent !voters, who did a poor job of WP:BEFORE to trust the process to work for these articles, and if AfD gets flooded with school stubs after a change to SCHOOLOUTCOMES there may not be enough editors able to do the research to prove all the notable ones really are notable within a week. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of your point is that, because AfD has problems, we should ignore the GNG for schools. I'm sympathetic to your point about how this will impact the bias of our coverage, but I don't think we should be going around the GNG just to have thousands of permanent stubs. If anything, that's what the GNG is meant to prevent. It may well be the case that there are thousands of reliable sources on Example High School in Ruraltown, Statesota locked away in my grandmother's attic, but if no one knows that, we can't use the possibility that sources may possibly maybe exist somewhere but we just haven't looked hard enough to justify subverting the GNG. If sources can't be found to satisfy the GNG, it doesn't satisfy the GNG. Full stop. If sources are eventually found, it can be recreated. We shouldn't doom ourselves to eternal searching for sources because maybe we just didn't look hard enough. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 03:54, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

In secondary school AfDs, a common argument is that while sources are hard to find online, they must exist offline and at some point, someone with the necessary language skills could find them and use them to expand and improve the article. I'm sympathetic to that argument, but do we actually have any examples of school articles where that has happened? Cordless Larry (talk) 07:26, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

@Cordless Larry: On the Spanish Wikipedia (which lacks Schooloutcomes) I started es:Liceo Mexicano Japonés and got an AFD: es:Wikipedia:Consultas de borrado/Liceo Mexicano Japonés - it took a lot of effort to keep the article. While it was a Spanish-language article, many of the editors could understand English, but several were doubting possible notability until I got someone at University of Southern California to scan parts of a master's degree thesis which talked about the school. One of the other articles was in Japanese but had an English title/abstract. I have been a longtime editor since 2003 and knew the "process" on how to keep articles; a novice I think would have had much more difficulty, even if he/she spoke Spanish. Also, there was one editor who was trying to force a delete even after I presented source after source after source, and I really, really grew to resent that (and I wasn't the only one who felt that way). I think having SCHOOLOUTCOMES prevents these kinds of scenarios from happening. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:32, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose per Sandstein and SamWalton. Merely existing should not make a school presumably notable. Blackmane (talk) 03:43, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
• Conditional support - I would be in favour if the wording included "government accredited secondary schools". It doesn't matter if they are public or private. A stub with the school's name, location, private/public status, and grades accredited sourced to a government website, and an external link to the school's website if any, should be fine. Any promotional stuff or unsourced information can always be removed. About the academic example above: peer-reviewed journal articles have editorial oversight and also are reviewed by several independent experts, so if many of them cite a professor or researcher, that's a very large number of independent writers who agree that his or her ideas are important. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:50, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

That's a good-faith and plausible suggestion, except that in some countries it is not the government that accredits schools. In the United States there are six regional accrediting commissions which evaluate and accredit schools and colleges. Example: the Western Association of Schools and Colleges[1] is the accrediting agency for schools in California, Hawaii, and Guam, as well as foreign schools. I favor saying "accredited" but not "government accredited". --MelanieN (talk) 01:34, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

In general I do agree that secondary schools should be considered notable - but there has to be a limit; if I, as a certified teacher, tutor three secondary students from the local high school in my home in the evenings, is my home a school which should have an article? I'd say it was more of a small business. Many people home-school their own children. Are they notable? "Accredited" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't say by whom; "with government-recognized accreditation" or some similar phrase would be more specific. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:08, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support, Considering only those schools taking pupils aged 11+ then the current situation seems to be accepted by most editors if one considers the total number of positive edits to such articles over time. As long as suitable references are available and listed correctly in an article then I prefer to maintain the status quo. I would be particularly concerned if the vote goes to the 'oppose' side that we suddenly find a huge number of deletions occurring. I appreciate that others have discussed this but it is still of concern as most editors will not be aware of this discussion. Paste _{Let’s have a chat.} 15:27, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
• Comment - While I'm normally in favor of WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, there's something that's bothered me for years, and as of now I'm not going to give an opinion on this discussion, I have to let this out of my chest. While it's fairly easy for schools in the United States and other Anglophone countries to receive coverage, the same isn't the case in developing countries. For example, in my country (the Philippines), only schools in the major cities tend to get any form of coverage, reliable or otherwise. In the provinces, maybe outside of Facebook, there may be little-to-no online presence for private or even public schools. I think this tends to be the case for schools in other countries as well. This made me think something like "is WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES too Western-centric as its standards are based on Western educational systems?" Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 16:08, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• The supporters of SCHOOLOUTCOMES often argue that it helps counter that bias, Narutolovehinata5, because it means that schools in developing countries are kept even if few online sources exist. Cordless Larry (talk) 16:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose And forbid SCHOOLOUTCOMES from being used in AFD discussions while we are about it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:46, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Support. The current standard is reasonably efficient, and removing it would result in an inordinate amount of time, energy, and resulting rancor as we debate (likely) hundreds if not thousands of resulting AFDs. This is not to say that carefully tailored exceptions could be carved out of the existing standard. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 18:10, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Please note that the concerns of massive timesinks of AFD noms is a point I tried to address in the section below, namely that we actually should avoid encouraging mass rushes of AFDs of secondary schools and use other processes. It is a very valid concern but we do have policy via WP:FAITACCOMPLI that would prevent that, and we should have a plan going forward if its removed. --MASEM (t) 18:15, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support as this counters the systematic bias that results in non-English speaking areas or developing countries that don't have online sources that can be read by people here. The sources are still likely to exist, even if they are not easily available. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• That's ridiculous. If we do that then we may as well abandon GNG entirely for vast parts of the world, and not merely in the schools topic area. That systemic bias exists may be true but we have to accept that some things (most things!) can't be fixed by WP alone. - Sitush (talk) 22:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support although to be liguistically correct, my answer to this excellently neutrally made RfC question Should secondary schools whose existence is verified by reliable, independent sources be presumed to be notable? should be Yes. Not only through the already tacit consensus as evidenced by thousands of AfD closures resulting in keep but also based on the arguments above in favour of maintaining the status quo, while pointing out for those providing inaccurate reasons to oppose, that OUTCOMES is neither a policy, nor a guideline, nor technically even an essay or opinion piece - it simply accurately documents a set of clearly evident long-time Wikipedia behaviours, and as such is indeed an acceptable a short cut to the rationale it represents without voters at AfD having to post a list of several hundred or a thousand examples. Not without reason either did the community reach a well established consensus that school articles may not be tagged for deletion per A7, and it was a Wikipedia founder's express opinion that high schools should be considered notable. Naturally G11 and G12 and other criteria remain valid in appropriate cases and should generally be rigorously applied if editing cannot resolve the issues. School articles are not exempt from PROD and where most school articles are made by SPA, deletion by PROD makes AfD unnecessary.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:10, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• I wasn't aware that Jimbo set policy or guidelines, and his opinion is of no more weight than mine or yours. Times change, and that OUTCOMES has become a self-fulfilling essay is all the more reason why we need to revisit it and address the underlying shortcomings that are now apparent and which make it problematic. - Sitush (talk) 22:13, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
• Thanks for your comment about the "support" versus "yes" wording, Kudpung. I see this as more about yes/no than support/oppose too. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:21, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
• It shoudl be noted that Jimmy Wales' comment about schools was in the very early days of the project, after which we have actually developed the notability guidelines that hold us to higher standards, so resting too much on Wales' comment doesn't reflect the changing consensus. Comparing schools to Pokemon characters is definitely apples-to-oranges, but at one point we did have articles for each Pokemon but since have developed a WP:POKEMON test to follow notability practices. There is no reason we could now do the same with schools. (And I would expect that if SCHOOLOUTCOMES is nixed, that we would have to re-examine CSD criteria for schools) --MASEM (t) 23:42, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Just like every other institution, a school-article should prove their notability, not their existence. And it should prove it with sources IN the article, not by assuming/gambling that sources exist. Schooloutcomes is one of the many locally (i.e. WikiProjects) invented excuses to circumvent the common rules for notability. The Banner talk 23:54, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support Following Graeme Bartlett line of thinking. I am though uncomfortable with making a definite statement on whether all schools in the 11 to 18 bracket should be considered notable but the alternative is far worse. Firstly, the current obsession with just testing against online sources, skews the debate in favour of a small number of geographic areas, and secondly while my personal POVs against non-state funded 'dame schools', crammers and grooming parlours does not mean that we should exclude coverage. But thirdly, the thought of nights of detailed arguments about whether a vanity funded academy is merely commercial placement or does have some notability.. doesn't bare thinking. --ClemRutter (talk) 01:18, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support I have always supported this tradition for multiple reasons, most of which have been articulated already. It recognizes that high schools and colleges virtually always receive coverage (and if it's purely local, what's wrong with that?). It saves enormous amounts of quibbling over what sources are acceptable and what aren't (if most of the coverage is about the football team, does that count?). It avoids systemic bias, as noted already by many (sure, American schools can always cite online references in English, but how many other countries can say the same?). To me it is like the SPORTS notability guidelines: if a person has played in a fully professional league, they get an article, no quibbling, no agonizing - because such players have virtually always received coverage, and with the guideline it isn't a matter of debate in each and every instance. BTW my understanding is that this guideline applies to "diploma-granting and degree-granting institutions", not just schools for ages 11 and up - thus ruling out middle schools, trade schools, etc. I would support adding "accredited" to the guideline, although it may not always be possible to provide a link to the accrediting agency and I would not require that. --MelanieN (talk) 01:44, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support status quo Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:58, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support If people would really like to double the amount of work at AfD, then a good way of doing it is to remove the practice of treating secondary schools as if they were notable. The practice that we do so is not an attack on the fundamental principle of WP:N or the GNG, but a question of convenience. In that connection, I have to mention the other half of the compromise : not usually treating elementary schools as notable. Before we had the compromise, I and others were quite willing to argue for their inclusion. Some of the arguments were successful, and I have a few hundred US primary schools in mind for which I could realistically try to write articles. The results will, as usual at AfD, depend on who shows up to discuss, as much as on the merits of the article. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I'm a long-term supporter of this rule for the reasons elucidated here. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:40, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support this seems to be the way the community generally regards the notability of schools so it it is appropriate to confirm the situation. Thincat (talk) 16:11, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose schools shouldn't get an automatic free pass at AFD, and merely being mentioned in secondary sources isn't good enough to warrant an article. Actual depth to coverage in such sources is also a must. We shouldn't ignore any instance were WP:GNG isn't met. In all honesty, this is why the mentioned bit above from WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is fucking bullshit. I also concur with Sandstein, Masem, The Banner, Jonesey95, and Czar. Snuggums (talk / edits) 20:32, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support with hesitation, because I've sounded off in the past about the lamentable quality of many school articles, which are often the last ones we would pick as models or training grounds for budding new editors. So I'm more bothered about what's in these articles than whether they exist at all. I hear those who are unwilling to make further exceptions to the GNG, but the fact is that with schools that bird has flown, long ago, and I can swallow a special status for schools similar to that for villages or pro footballers. The hope would be that once this special status is recognised and regularised, editors would be more willing to bring the articles up to standard. This means: trim promotion and non-neutral prose, trim excessive, trivial and evanescent detail, look for whatever useful information can be found in independent reliable sources, and watch out for those vandals: Noyster (talk), 01:04, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose any form of "inherent notability" for anything. Notability comes from being noted, no more, no less. Schools are long overdue for a cleanup, and in practice, many of them are not notable. There are certain cases where we really can presume every single example of something to be notable (US presidents, chemical elements), but it doesn't hold true with schools. Some are notable, some not. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:42, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support - not wanting to repeat what's already been said: briefly, I think the trade-off here between WP:SYSTEMICBIAS and GNG is acceptable. Eustachiusz (talk) 03:49, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - The GNG would be a much better tool for determining secondary school notability. I really never understood why secondary schools were given a free notability pass to begin with. If they can't meet the GNG, I don't understand how we could hope to write a balanced, encyclopedic article about the school. Wikipedia isn't a simple directory, after all. Kaldari (talk) 07:10, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support maintaining the status quo. We have had a compromise here for years: verified public and sizeable private and parochial high schools are routinely kept, while primary schools are routinely redirected to their school district or city unless solid evidence is provided to warrant keeping a standalone article. This has worked well for years, while saving us from many endless re-debates about the arcane subtleties of Wikipedian terms of art. "Notability" is not a goal in itself but a linguistic device for discussing whether something will improve the encyclopedia. I acknowledge that the boundaries have been tested and stressed by promotional, COI-driven articles about for-profit schools and a more focused discussion about best practices for handling those promotional articles may be in order. The rest are something we should keep and cultivate. The encyclopedia would certainly not be improved by delegitimizing the high school articles we have. This large category of existing articles is a positive not only for the readily-organized information the articles provide to readers and contributors, but also for its developmental benefits to the project: they are a strong component of the deep, worldwide, gazeteer-like coverage that is one of Wikipedia's best features and aspirations, and as PamD noted above they also provide a means of entry and connection to the project for many new editors. --Arxiloxos (talk) 01:06, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support the status quo. In its absence we will be flooded with malicious AfDs, and waste far, far more of editors time. We need more "automatic" notability decisions not less. Every silly fight that can be avoided makes the community look less .... silly. Jacona (talk) 01:12, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support keeping all secondary school articles for now. We might need to figure out a more nuanced solution for certain parts of the world where very limited verifiable information about schools is available. But I would certainly oppose a change to this rule, at least for developed Anglophone countries, where there is usually plenty of verifiable information about schools. I think further discussion about how to handle the different scenarios in different countries, culminating in an agreed subject-specific notability guideline, would be more productive than an all-or-nothing !vote. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:28, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support the status quo - While in theory WP:GNG should be applied to most subjects, User:TheCatalyst31 brings up a great point in how AFDs get difficult. Many people are not so educated, and they may not have time/money to comb through sources all the time. People get grudges if their content is deleted; nobody likes to work hard on something and see their work vanish. Even if the content is not well sourced or not notable, people feel that Wikipedia's not living up to the "Encyclopedia anyone can edit". Of course we shouldn't allow blatant promotionalism (especially from for-profit companies) and some subjects are just not encyclopedic. However as stated on the AFD of the British International School Lagos it often is possible to get info on schools, especially state-run ones. Maybe a better idea is to publish a guide on how to source info for schools in X country, how to find libraries, etc. Make a guide for high school students (the people who we need to recruit as editors, and in fact much of my editing is done for this purpose!) on how to write about their school: How to get sources, what style they should use, etc. I'm happy to start it myself, and for North American students, add how to use boundary maps to determine which communities serve their public schools. WhisperToMe (talk) 09:14, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
• Undecided – Of note is that per WP:FIVEPILLARS, Wikipedia functions in part as a gazetteer, and some gazetteers have historically included content about schools in them, such as in Chinese, Indian and Korean ones, among others (see the Wikipedia gazetteer article for more information and sources). For example, the Gazetteer of the Nellore District published by the Government of Madras in 1942 includes content about secondary schools and middle schools (see Google Books preview example, scroll down on page). The World-wide Encyclopedia and Gazetteer published by the Christian Herald in 1899 contains content about secondary schools (see example, pp. 1042–1043). Another example is the Alexandria Digital Library Gazetteer Content Standard (link), which includes schools in its formulation. More examples in addition to these are available in online searches.

Per the five pillars and Wikipedia's partial functionality as a gazetteer, it would be aligned with Wikipedia's core purposes to consider developing a guideline for secondary schools that are verifiable but otherwise not correspondent with notability guidelines to be merged into articles about the school district authorities that manage the schools, or to the city/town/village articles where they are located. Another idea is to merge such articles into lists of schools per geographical region, such as by county. Such recommendation could be added to WP:NSCHOOL if a consensus to do so were to occur. This would serve to improve the encyclopedia, and is also functionally correspondent with WP:ATD-M. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:29, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I am aware that primary and middle schools that don't meet WP:GNG already are supposed to redirect to their school district and/or a daughter article listing schools in that school district (for U.S. and Canada public schools), or to the locality (for schools outside of the U.S. and Canada and private schools) WhisperToMe (talk) 13:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

The problem with using the Gazetteer aspect is that this is only being applied to schools, and secondary schools at that. The argument if you want to got the gazeteer route is then we should be doing not only secondary schools, but also primary schools, government buildings (town halls, police + fire departments), parks and other similar areas, and potentially other features like churches. That line of logic gets very hairy very fast, for an encyclopedia. (If we were just indexing places and coordinates, as it what a gazetteer primarily does, this wouldn't be a problem, but we want more content than just name and coordinates). Practically, our implementation of being a gazetteer gets to the resolution of towns and villages and geographical landmarks recognized by an appropriate governing agency; anything more detailed than that falls outside of what we consider to be our gazetteer function. --MASEM (t) 17:28, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

My proposal above is only based upon secondary schools, not all those other topics. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 18:02, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

And my counterpoint is that while the logic works for secondary schools, there are buildings/facilities that are as equally important if not moreso than schools that would also fall under the gazetteer logic that we should track, but we don't. --MASEM (t) 18:30, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose SCHOOLOUTCOMES must die! It may have been usefull way back in the infancy of WP, but the way it is commonly applied these days has several negative consequences:
  • It privileges first-world, and more specifically American, high schools. This is a consequence of the (practically) unique obsession with school sport in American society. The smallest "Anytown High" is practically guaranteed regular coverage in the "Anytown Gazette" reporting on the appointment of the new basketball coach or the progress of the school baseball team in the state championship (even if they are ranked 236 out of 242). Contrast that with the situation in many other countries where even the barest hint of proof of existence can be hard to find - and then often only in the local language in a list on an obscure government website or a mention in a report or policy document. Thus it actually exacerbates the systemic bias of en.WP.
  • It is used as a weapon to summarily shut down anyone daring to question the existence of any high school article, regardless of the quality of the article or the merits of the argument. This is often counter to WP:BITE and WP:RETENTION of editors, particularly the scarce ones from underrepresented countries and demographics.
  • An SNG creates a presumption of notability, not the fact of notability. Any presumption that is not suceptible to testing and consequent possibility of rebuttal is not really a presumption at all. SCHOOLOUTCOMES is often used to basically forbid any testing of the presumption. Countless speedy deletions are rejected and AFDs are summarily closed citing it - a rather bizarre argument from authority. SCHOOLOUTCOMES thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - "high schools are notable because high schools are notable". Educational institutions currently protected by SCHOOLOUTCOMES should actually be subject to the much fairer (and testable) WP:ORG standard. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:38, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

SCHOOLOUTCOMES isn't a policy or guideline. It's a representation of fact. It won't die until the facts change and more editors !vote to delete or merge. CalzGuy (talk) 13:56, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

You're missing the point that it is used to actually prevent such !votes from happening, it has effectively shut down the debate. Like a dictator who was properly elected 20 years ago, who abuses his incumbency to prevent any subsequent elections that may unseat him. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:22, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

An essay has no power to prevent an AfD taking place. In fact, if you want an AfD to take place no one can stop you. What SCHOOLOUTCOMES does is to suggest beforehand that actually it's a pointless exercise. But if you want to plough that pointless furrow, no one here can stop you. But a lot of us may just step in and !vote to keep, and in doing so will sort of prove the point. So how would SCHOOLOUTCOMES "die" in any case? CalzGuy (talk) 15:40, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

You are proving the point about the problem of SCHOOLOUTCOMES with regards to secondary schools. It cannot be used to say "an AFD on a secondary school will be useless" and thus prevent anyone from filing an AFD. It cannot be used in an AFD to say "well, SCHOOLOUTCOMES says we don't delete schools, so this can't be deleted" (which happens all too much). The problem of SCHOOLOUTCOMES is that it is a leftover of pre-notability periods on WP. If it was being used properly, then at AFD on a secondary school, people would !vote keep by showing there are some secondary sources about the school (even if not perfectly at GNG-type levels, enough to give presumption of notability), or otherwise delete/merge/etc. Then, if it was the case that the near majority of such AFDs that "keep" was the most common result, then SCHOOLOUTCOMES would make sense. But that's not how it is developed or used anymore - its the catch-22 self-fulfilling cycle that is getting worse. --MASEM (t) 16:09, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Continuing the above thread: It is trivial to find concrete examples of SCHOOLOUTCOMES being used to shut down discussion. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Benicia High School, for example. SCHOOLOUTCOMES is specifically cited as the reason to keep the nominated article, completely shutting down discussion and effectively preventing secondary schools from being nominated for deletion. That is why this RFC is happening. More examples: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carman-Ainsworth High School, where there are many links to guidelines and policies, and all discussion is preempted by SCHOOLOUTCOMES; another good discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tenby International School, Penang (2nd nomination). I suggest that regardless of the outcome of this discussion, we should create or change a guideline around notability of secondary schools. The current situation is not tenable. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:18, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

CalzGuy, your first point has it exactly backwards. If we repeal SCHOOLOUTCOMES and return to a pure GNG standard, the systemic bias here will become much worse. As you point out, schools in America and other English-speaking countries do tend to have easily-findable coverage and are thus much more likely to have articles. Schools in less-developed or non-English speaking countries are much less likely to have such coverage and will get deleted or never accepted in the first place. One of the main benefits of SCHOOLOUTCOMES is that it helps to mitigate our bias against material from less developed and non-English speaking countries. (It does not eliminate it entirely because we still need confirmation that the school exists and is a secondary school.) --MelanieN (talk) 19:01, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Except part of that systematic bias is that these secondary school articles often weigh heavily on the use of local sources to support notability, which isn't really in the spirit of notability on a global encyclopedia. Local papers covering local schools lack true independence we want for notability sourcing (these can be used to augment that, however!) If AFDs were done in absence of SCHOOLOUTCOMES and considered the type of coverage these Western schools were getting, most of these would still be deleted because of that local coverage, which is a different way to approach fixing that systematic bias while meeting the notability guidelines we expect for any other topic. We need to bite the bullet and accept this is the case though. --MASEM (t) 19:08, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I intentionally add "local" content to Wikipedia because people care about their hometowns and want to introduce them to the world. It's a motive for editing Wikipedia that can be used to recruit people. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:09, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

While is one very very fragile step away from COI editing. There's a level of resolution we want to keep to avoid extremely localized topic for this reason. Articles on towns are good collectors for such information because that also fits our gazetteer function well. --MASEM (t) 20:17, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

@Masem: I think the public understands the natural desire for one to write about their hometown/what they like. Where COI is worrisome IMO is if it's a for-profit company (especially if they're paying you), or a BLP case, or a case where someone's sole goal is to make a topic look good. We need to give into inclinations of "I like this, so I'll write about it" without allowing it to go too far, or allowing for profit/professional PR motives/BLP issues from becoming a problem. If it's a teenager writing on Wikipedia for the first time just adding info about a hometown he cares about deeply, just give him a heads up on how to write objectively about where he's from, but if it's somebody working for a company doing PR ask them to do edit requests and not touch the article directly. @Masem: WhisperToMe (talk) 20:50, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

@Dodger67: I think that SCHOOLOUTCOMES actually makes it easier to write articles about schools in the developing world. In the U.S. it's easier to find secondary sources about U.S., Canadian, European, etc. high schools, and it's easier to find sources on them in English. If you're writing about a Japanese high school you may encounter a language barrier. If you're writing about an Ivorian high school, you may find evidence that it exists on a government website, or on the AEFE (if a French international school) or ZaF (if a German international school), but it may be harder finding secondary source info directly on the web. SCHOOLOUTCOMES treats all senior high schools equally.

I held a Wikimedia workshop at a Chinese university where I asked students to write about their high schools. I told them "why not check the newspapers for info on them" and they said they didn't think the newspapers had any info on their high schools. In my hometown the Houston Chronicle covers high school info regularly (and I'm not including routine coverage).

WhisperToMe (talk) 20:09, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Dodger67 - You have managed to get this 100% backwards. Schools in the English-speaking industrial world are virtually 100% guaranteed to pass GNG and articles on them will not be challenged. The effect on the stubby articles dealing with schools in the developing world will be immediate and massive — and guess what: nobody is gonna come to their aid. You have just made the opposite case, you need to either flip your opinion from oppose to support or to get real about what the impact is gonna be. Carrite (talk) 14:42, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Carrite I'm not at all convinced that most English-speaking industrial world high schools could genuinely pass WP:ORG or WP:GNG. The articles about the vast majority of such schools depend on a combination of firstly routine coverage of the "it exists" variety, such as government reports and database-like records such as proof of accreditation, and secondly mere local coverage in the form of local news media reporting on the school's basketball team, new principal, etc. If school articles did not have this "special protection" they have enjoyed over so many years we would have far fewer articles, even about American high schools. Now take the counter-example of Indian villages. Clusters of nearby villages tend to have a shared local authority for various purposes such as a clinic, post office, police station and other government services which may also include a small high school. The cluster of villages would also contain one or more temples. An article about the temple has very little chance of getting created, but if it does get written, it invariably gets deleted fairly quickly as not notable. However the article about the school, which arguably is just as significant to the community as the temple (or clinic), and based on essentially the same sources as the temple article, is permanently exempted from deletion by SCHOOLOUTCOMES. In my country, South Africa (which has a very well developed media sector, as large and active as many "first world" countries) I guesstimate that perhaps only about one hundred schools could genuinely pass WP:CORP or WP:GNG, and IMHO that's perfectly ok, because Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:30, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Pretty sure that WP:INDISCRIMINATE is about what kind of information - and more pointedly, the format thereof - we collect and not about which topics are or are not covered. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:08, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus If all one can properly source about a school is that it exists then the article about it is effectively a "listing", WP:NOTDIRECTORY is a better fit, you are correct. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:43, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support This is a tried-and-true rule of thumb that has worked effectively for the past decade, and works as well as the presumed notability for professional athletes and politicians. Rather than fight these battles one at a time, with the vultures trying to find a weak link to justify deletion of any all such articles, the presumption of notability allows these articles time to grow organically and have the available sources added. Alansohn (talk) 17:50, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • This is not true. Athletes and politicians have subject-specific notability guidelines that say if certain aspects are met, there is a strong likelihood that secondary sources can be found and thus we can presume notability via the GNG can eventually be met. That's not what we have with schools. Secondary schools have yet to be proven that if the school is accredited that secondary sources will exist to discuss the school within the scope of the GNG. Some do, some don't, but not with the high frequency that happens with athletes and politicians meeting NSPORTS or BIO. Even those that have been shown to have some type of secondary sources is generally based only on local sources, which begs issues of true independent sourcing (another GNG requirements). --MASEM (t) 17:58, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
    • @Masem: according to Wikipedia:Notability_(sports)#Basic_criteria there is presumed notability if the athlete "participated in a major international amateur or professional competition at the highest level (such as the Olympics)." which is what User:Alansohn is referring to WhisperToMe (talk) 20:11, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
      • Right: the logic behind that is that if someone has played at something like the Olympics, that there will very highly likely be sourcing about that athlete - most likely in the country's regional media - highlighting their career just prior for them leaving to the event. In other words, there's a good chance of getting this secondary sources (required by the GNG) because of this bar. All other subject-specific notability guidelines work on the same principle - they offer means of presuming notability in lieu of having immediate access to the sources that would certainly follow the conditions noted in the subject-specific guideline. This is not the case for secondary schools. --MASEM (t) 20:17, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
        • I think part of the reason why SCHOOLOUTCOMES was decided was that, in editing North American, Australasian, and European senior high schools, it was quite common to find non-routine independent secondary sources about them while less so for primary and junior high schools. As an editor of Houston articles I'd say it's not difficult to find secondary sources about most Houston high schools. The holy trinity of the Houston Chronicle, Houston Business Journal, and the Houston Press have given me info on Houston schools and neighborhoods. It's to the point where I could start articles on Houston schools on the Spanish Wikipedia, which does not have SCHOOLOUTCOMES (and for awhile was quite resistant to school articles). Also note most high schools in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, etc.) are government schools too, so it's not so much of a change. Now that South Asian schools are coming in, Wikipedia's confronted with a different set of rules.
        • One other reason why I like WP:COMMOUTCOMES for schools is that I know newspapers are generally only digitized until the 80s or 90s, and that means lots of articles that could help notability just aren't online.
        • @Masem: WhisperToMe (talk) 21:00, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
          • This is where two key issues exist in this debate:
          • First, we in the west do have these plethra of sources like local papers to cover schools. That level of coverage doesn't exist in many places in Asia, Africa, and South America, which is the systematic bias that we talk about.
          • Second, where there is this type of coverage, a (otherwise reliable for anything else) Houston paper reporting on a Houston school is begging the question if that is truly an independent source required by the GNG. If it were a Dallas paper, or a New York paper, far outside the school's region, that's different and would be sufficiently independent. But at the city level, that's different. Add in that the bulk of such coverage is usually either sports-related (inter-school sports), or related to "news" items like school levies, teacher strikes, or other things that would fail NEVENT, and this type of coverage is not sufficient for an encyclopedia beyond proving the school exists. If we drew that line in the sand as to distinguish notable schools, then we also address the systematic bias issue at the same time (though we'd still likely have more Western secondary schools as notable ones than others, but we'd not be including every secondary school). --MASEM (t) 22:09, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
            • 1. Yes, that's right. The systemic bias issue does affect schools coming from those regions. I think the current COMMONOUTCOMES then is a sort of protection for those schools since it allows those which verifiably exist to be kept despite not having immediate access to reliable secondary sources about the said school in English. A newspaper in Lagos may not be counted on to digitize their stuff like the Houston Chronicle.
            • 2. Usually the newspapers can be counted on being "independent" as the district staff don't own the paper and can't control it. There was a case where Seguin ISD tried to buy a radio station and newspaper which criticized it (and this is in a town way smaller than Houston), and obviously it led to an outcry. Anyway I count "routine" sports events (such as typical games) as routine news, while anything about a "first" (like first head coach, first ever playoff) would not be. Some events such as scheduled elections, "so-and-so was caught with weapons" (with no lasting effect on the school's operations), etc. would be typical news, while a strike that causes people to question whether the district is performing well would not be. For example I would not treat the information on a shooting at North Forest High School as "routine" since when it happened, the school extended the hours of its metal detectors.
              • An example of a "typical" school article with "local" sources I used: Cypress Park High School or Bridgeland High School which talk about the schools' openings and establishments, while Lamar High School (Houston) has a variety of sources and source types and in-depth commentary on demographic changes. Lamar already has a Spanish version, while I hope to establish both Cypress Park and Bridgeland in Spanish soon.
            • 3. I know there are countries with smaller populations than, say, U.S. metro areas like Greater Houston (at 6 million), and one thing I dislike about the French Wikipedia's "only national sources can confer notability" is that it causes a loss of information about communities in larger countries (like the U.S. or China) while smaller countries (like Djibouti, Malta) would get a pass.
            • WhisperToMe (talk) 01:57, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
              • Independence is not always measured by financial motives, although that's the easiest way to identify a dependency problem. To apply this to another type of article, in large cities, restaurants get frequently reviewed by local publications, but we do not consider those as signs of notability for the restaurant, because this is the function of the local paper to cover a local restaurant, thus creating a dependency problem. Same thing with secondary schools. And also why the problem is less an issue with universities and colleges that rarely serve just a single city or town. The Cypress Park is a poor encyclopedic article because it does not establish any notability within the scope of a global encyclopedia that cannot be readily covered in the town's article (details about population or current athletics are absolutely unnecessary , for example), as all the sourcing is local. And unfortunately this is the typical state of most America secondary school articles. That's why this is all a problem. --MASEM (t) 02:25, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
                • While I am aware independence is not always measured by financial motives, being local doesn't necessarily mean that the article cannot be "independent" of the subject. Even though a newspaper is asked to review a restaurant, it doesn't mean it's going to be a good review. Seguin ISD demonstrates that local media can be adversarial and ruckmacking just like their "national"/"global" counterparts. Also, in this AFD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/In the Sea of Sterile Mountains: The Chinese in British Columbia an editor made it clear that "independent of the subject" means that the people writing a review of an academic book need to be independent of the work/author(s) itself/themselves. I think a better reason why Wikipedia should not cover a "local restaurant" in most metro areas (exception may be a restaurant that gets a variety of reviews/coverage from a large number of sources, which only happens in major metro areas like New York, Tokyo, Paris, etc. - and because of, for example, the Houston area's size, there's momentum to write about "local" that wouldn't have momentum in smaller places) is "lack of non-trivial coverage" as usually the restaurants only get occasional reviews. Remember it's also the job of local newspapers to write what's going on in small incorporated places that automatically get kept as per gazeteer notability processes.
                • See Cypress Park as an example of an article that is just born... something that has the potential to grow as time passes and as things change. Lamar High has been open since the 1930s and the mass number of changes have been well documented. AFAIK it's the rule, not the exception, that inner city schools that have existed for a long time can have detailed, developed information written about them. Massive demographic changes happen to suburban schools as they age: I know Spring ISD (in particular Westfield High School and Spring High School in particular) has had massive changes, and as time passes it will become easier and easier to write well-sourced information on how those changes have affected the schools.
                • One thing I'd like to say is that being able to cover my hometown was one of the reasons why I became heavily involved on Wikipedia. Being able to write about the local cuisine, the culture (ethnic groups, religion, etc.), the neighborhoods (many sourced from the Houston Chronicle), and yes, the schools was something important to me. Once Houston topics became largely exhausted I turned to other metro areas: Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Paris, etc. and built up their local too: schools, ethnic groups, religion, culture, etc. I also created large numbers of international school articles to encourage participation from developing countries. The idea of writing about local is something that can still pull in editors; when I talk to Chinese college students about Wikipedia, I tell them that it's a place where they can write about their hometowns: the local food, the culture, the schools, etc. A new generation of teenagers from China, India, etc. can do what North American, European, and Australasian teens, like myself, did a decade ago.
                • While Wikipedia's goal is to be global, most people really care about their local. To remain vibrant and active, Wikipedia needs to encourage people, within reason, to write about the local, but teach them how to do it right. The local is like a puzzle piece, and all the locals add up to a unified global, the sum of the whole.
                • WhisperToMe (talk) 05:26, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
                • One other thing. Re: "details about population or current athletics are absolutely unnecessary , for example" - I strongly disagree on the first count, and disagree on the second to a degree.
                • 1. As we see from Lamar High School (Houston) and Woodrow Wilson High School (Dallas) demographic changes and information can be of great interest to statewide and national publications. In a day or so I'll add info about Muslim and Arab students to Fordson High School as that topic is covered heavily by RSes.
                • 2. In the United States athletics is a considered to be an important aspect of school, especially in the rural South. There are voices who believe it's too strongly emphasized, but it's a fact of life. However what needs to happen is this: kids should avoid routine coverage and focus on what's not-so-routine. Perhaps milestones in the schools' performances in statewide competitions? Maybe see if newspapers from outside the metro area talk about the sports team.
                • WhisperToMe (talk) 00:26, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
                  • What you are showing above is the issue of the systematic bias of the West, and perhaps more to the US. The US has multi-tier administration over schooling, and everything is being tracked at national and state levels (in part of trends like No Child Left Behind). Schools are important to local communities, and covered heavily in local papers. That situation does not exist anywhere else in the world - you'll get close in places like Europe, Japan, and other highly urbanized areas. Other countries lack any formal system, and where literacy is already poor, there's little coverage of the school. It's great we can document some of these US schools to this level of detail but a lot of it still comes down to local sources and databases (primary sources). If there was clear evidence we could that nearly equally for any secondary school around the world, that would be great, but that simply can't be done, in a manner that would meet WP:V. BIAS suggests not presuming all other schools are notable, but instead not given excessive coverage to those schools where lots of information could be found. Remember: we still have articles on every town and village in the world, and the argument that editors from their towns will be drawn to WP to edit about where they live still holds true with these articles, but its much easier to verify named places rather than specific schools at those places. --MASEM (t) 15:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
                    • @Masem: While it may be difficult/impossible for some regions/countries, I think the best way to get around "systemic bias" in this scenario is to ask editors of each language background/region how to find sources on a particular school in their language(s). I got assistance from FRwiki editors in writing Lycee Alfred Nobel (a school in the Paris area serving North African immigrant students), and Chinese sources in particular may have written info on particular high schools (though I don't know to what degree). I got help from editors of various countries to write Liceo Mexicano Japones (a private school in Mexico City serving Mexican students of Japanese heritage and Japanese nationals).
                    • Schools in urban areas of third world countries are more likely to get coverage than say in rural areas: getting info on a school in Nairobi is easier than doing so for one in the sticks. This is especially so if they are "international schools" affiliated with a foreign educational system. Some countries have formal networks/systems: AEFE of France, ZfA (I think) of Germany, and the Japanese Ministry of Education (for Japanese overseas schools). Last summer I wrote a series of "international school" templates and articles as a way of getting around systemic bias. That way every country has schools represented on Wikipedia.
                    • WhisperToMe (talk) 12:38, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
                      • France is not a problem country here; it is sufficiently urbanized to have well documented info on its schools. I'd except the same for North American or Western Europe nation where the degree of urbanization is high. It's places like China, Brazil, and India. And we've had editors from those areas try to find sources and they can't for secondary schools. That's always going to be the rub on schools in that you'll very much unlikely find significant details on schools from these regions, and thus would not be covered on WP. Since we can't make up sources to cover these, WP:BIAS suggests we should be much more discriminate on including other secondary schools. --MASEM (t) 14:51, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
                        • I would be interested in reading the discussions from those cases in China, Brazil, and India. Speaking of that, I found I was able to get sources for Lekki British School from Nigerian newspapers online, but I can imagine it's because the school's in Lagos. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:49, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Partial Support There are a small number of secondary schools that quite clearly meet notability requirements due to some unusual aspect of the school, whether that be historical/architectural significance, or just simple prestige. However, most of the secondary schools with articles on Wikipedia are more ordinary. I strongly believe that many of these "ordinary" schools nonetheless deserve an article due to their strong impact on their local communities and surrounding area, and the fact that many of them have enough coverage to write a quality article. This is demonstrated by the article on Amador Valley High School (which is a featured article about a rather run of the mill American high school) as well as by many of the 18 or so good articles on high schools listed at Wikipedia:Good articles/Social sciences and society. While I support the presumption of notability for many secondary schools, I believe that the requirements for assuming notability should be higher than simply proving that a secondary school exists. Preferably, I'd like to see a set of criteria that needs to be met before notability is assumed, sort of like what we do with athletes, songs, actors, films, ect. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 06:45, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support of course. All (okay, maybe 99.95%) of secondary schools in the US have plenty of coverage. I imagine the same is true in most developed nations. The main issue is when we can't find sources in less developed nations. And that provides bias issues and all sorts of other problems. Also, frankly, this is a reasonable thing for Wikipedia to cover. Finally, I really don't want to start hearing arguments that "this is just the kind of coverage any school would get" which I'm sure we'd start to see. Hobit (talk) 04:01, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose any category of articles being automatically notable. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:27, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Could you explain why? Hobit (talk) 15:31, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
    • I'd oppose inherent notability too, which we don't have on Wikipedia. We do have the presumption of notability, which means that for certain classes of articles, we presume them notable once certain standards are met. This can be argued against. As I have said in the past, I would very much argue against what in the US is called a homeschool group or homeschool academy that prepares kids for a high school diploma being considered notable. I'd also argue against many for-profit schools or possibly against some US charter schools depending on the nature of the organization and its role in the community. The presumption of notability just means that those !voting delete would have a heavier burden, and since notability is not a policy, its a guideline, consensus would be able to determine the cases where exceptions to the general norm do exist and where an article should be deleted. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
      • @TonyBallioni: Some categories of articles do have "presumed notability" - for example if they are legally recognized, "Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low." Wikipedia:Notability_(geographic_features) - Under current SCHOOLOUTCOMES you can still argue against, say, homeschooling groups (say "typical public high schools are protected by SCHOOLOUTCOMES but...) WhisperToMe (talk) 12:47, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
        • There is a critical difference between "inherited notability" and "presumed notability". The latter means that we are going to work on the presumption that the topic is notable enough for a standalone article but that can be challenged in the future if there is a reasonable case put forward that our presumption was wrong (in that no sourcing actually exists); this means someone would have to demonstrate their case along the lines of doing the legwork discussed in WP:BEFORE to show the presumption wrong. Inherited notability simply means that we would accept the notability of a topic due to its connection to a different topic, and that inherited notability thus can't be challenged. We don't do that at all, every topic has to stand up in its own. --MASEM (t) 14:48, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
          • I'm not sure I understand. We don't use inherited notability for secondary schools do we? I think Masem misread "inherent" as "inherited". EyeTripleE (talk) 21:23, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. One of the problems with "presumed notability" is that people here on Wikipedia attach different meanings to the term. To some, it means "automatic" or "inherent" notability, for which the general notability guidelines do not come into play. To others, it is simply shorthand for "it is reasonable to presume that the subject has received substantial coverage in multiple reliable sources, even if no one here on Wikipedia has uncovered them yet". As I look through the many opinions that precede mine in this discussion, I see that most of them reflect one or the other of these two very different notions. As for me, I'm inclined to view this question from a more practical perspective. Consider this listing from a reliable government source here. Does this single web page really provide the basis for 260 separate stand-alone articles, each of them consisting of the single sentence "{NAME OF SCHOOL] is a higher secondary school in the Malappuram district of Kerala, India" ? And that page is merely a subpage on the site shown here. Looking through the lists for each of the districts in Kerala (scroll down the page for the lists), you'll find that there are more than 2,000 such schools in Kerala, all of them source-able to this one site. Do all 2,000 get stand-alone articles? And considering that Kerala has about one-fortieth of India's population, are we prepared for 80,000 such articles? And considering that India has about one-sixth of the world's population, are we willing to have something on the order of half a million such articles? To me, that's just too large a number, hence my "Oppose" recommendation. NewYorkActuary (talk) 00:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Eh, that's probably less than the number of towns in the world ([2]) and those are all notable... Hobit (talk) 04:57, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Comment. I have just arrived here, and this is a lengthy discussion. Before I peruse it, I want to jot down a few initial thoughts. On the one hand, WP:ORG is exceedingly clear that No company or organization is considered inherently notable. No organization is exempt from this requirement, no matter what kind of organization it is, including schools. On the other hand, I have encountered AfDs where the participants almost blindly write "keep" comments about secondary schools, seemingly as if they were inherently notable. At some point, I remember making such !votes myself. I understand the argument that secondary schools are significant in their local communities and produce coverage that way, and I understand that this coverage can be especially difficult to find when the school is located in non-English-speaking countries (Wikipedia:Systemic bias). Nevertheless, I have tended to wish that there was more focus on evidence of coverage at these kinds of deletion discussions, rather than a blanket presumption that secondary schools are generally notable. Mz7 (talk) 05:37, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose -- Per Masem and just about every other opposition above. Additionally, we are not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS--notably, that of systemic bias of coverage of topics not in English. (That is not to say that we should not work to decrease it, but that it is not our purpose, which is to write an encyclopedia in English of topics which are notable.) --Izno (talk) 13:13, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose- There is not any such thing as inherent notability. It's not enough to merely verify that something exists, there has to be enough coverage to actually fill an article. Otherwise, we end up with an endless profusion of contentless microstubs. Reyk _YO! 14:08, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support Schools in English-speaking countries such as the UK are subject to independent inspection and testing. This provides a good body of source material and so we may safely presume that there's an adequate basis for coverage here. Andrew D. (talk) 13:28, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't knoe what's situation like in the West, but here in India, I'd say 90% of all secondary schools are not notable. In fact, even Wikipedia:Points to note while debating in WikiProject India related AFDs notes that Most of Indian schools fail to satisfy the WP:ORG and WP:GNG criteria.. 103.6.159.75 (talk) 14:44, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Partly per Sandstein and partly per those who say some version of no inherent (or presumption of) notability.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose along with some history: In many countries, such as the United States, almost all schools that have the "highest grade" of secondary education would easily meet WP:Notability if only someone would bother to do the research. It's ridiculous to delete such articles simply because those who would have the time or interest to update the article happen to miss the AFD. However, that is not true for all schools. Some special-purpose schools, such as "special discipline" high schools or "alternative education/self-paced" high schools in the United States typically lack sports teams, bands, and other things that generate the coverage needed to meet WP:Notability. If I see an article about such a school and I can't find enough in a Google search to show that it meets WP:N, I may send it to AfD and recommend it be merged into the parent-school-district article. I would expect such an AfD to succeed. Likewise, in countries where typical "high schools" do NOT receive enough press coverage to meet WP:N, they should not have stand-alone articles. The bottom line: If a school is likely to meet WP:N due to the type of school it is (e.g. academy, comprehensive, etc.) and treatment of that type of school by the press (e.g. extensive coverage of sports teams, etc.), then it should be presumed notable until proven otherwise. If there is no special reason to think it is likely to meet WP:N (e.g. it is a type of school where schools get scant attention from the local press), then the absence of proof along with a small amount of research by an editor seeking its deletion should be grounds to not presume it is notable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:56, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support - This is the consensus that has emerged and been observed for years. Overturning it will lead to an absolute onslaught of challenges by bored deletionists that will sink the AfD process beneath hundreds of lost hours fighting over sourcing to no good end. In a lot of ways I'm past giving a fuck about AfD already; it's a massive time sink. But, one more time, here is the rationale behind our wise WP:OUTCOMES on schools. High schools are centers of their local communities and should be viewed as inherently notable just like occupied places, rivers, highways, and professional athletes. The reason for this is because all of these have published histories of their construction, sports teams that are covered in the press are the site of extracurricular activities covered in the press, etc. The flip side of this is that elementary schools are presumed NON notable unless truly exceptional specimens, since there are many more of them, they are less central to their communities, and do not have the same impact in terms of published coverage of teams and events. The OUTCOMES consensus is a workable compromise between inclusionists and deletionists that has expedited AfD for YEARS. Carrite (talk) 14:37, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I want to stress on the "sink the AFD process" that the section below, we would absolutely need some type of grandfathering process and moratorium on AFDs of schools should SCHOOLOUTCOMES be nixed. In other words, the fears that AFD would be flooded by school AFDs is something that can be readily managed and thus should not be reason to keep SCHOOLOUTCOMES. --MASEM (t) 14:45, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

It seems obvious to me that such an assurance would need to be in the original RFC proposition for contributors to take account of it. They don't seem willing to accept post-haste assurances that it won't happen. With all due respect to the original proposer, I wonder if the proposition itself is somewhat flawed, in that it doesn't provide alternative actions in case of opposition. CalzGuy (talk) 15:33, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

The lack of that consideration of process is why I started the section below. It really should go hand-in-hand. And even if it was the case that we didn't have process, the AFD issue would be something covered under WP:FAITACCOMPLI, that flooding AFD with school articles would absolutely not be appropriate. It would just be better to have an explicit process statement to know how we'd go forward if SCHOOLOUTCOMES is removed. --MASEM (t) 15:42, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Apologies for not including that in the question, CalzGuy, but that question was a result of discussion at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Need for an RfC on schools' notability and nobody suggested it there. I also think there's merit in keeping the question simple, and dealing with the consequences separately once consensus has emerged. Cordless Larry (talk) 07:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Don't apologise. I don't think it would have been an obvious thing to do. However, I do think that once this discussion is closed as "No consensus", as it undoubtedly will, we will then need to have another discussion on where to go next, as I think there is a consensus for some change. It's just a matter of figuring out what. CalzGuy (talk) 09:22, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Echoing Cordless Larry here that from the discussion about having the RfC, the question of process was not an obvious one at the time. As I have expressed below, I am of the view that anything short of a close in the affirmative here will require more work on drafting a process and then probably another discussion on where to go. I think the advantage in separating the discussions and keeping it simple is that it allows people to comment on the question of notability itself, which has never really been answered by a guideline, just SCHOOLOUTCOMES. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:32, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - Sandstein says it well, and plenty of others have added other relevant points. Consensus is not carved in stone and this project as a whole needs to improve upon the practices of its early days. - Sitush (talk) 01:11, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support - We keep high schools for very good reasons; not only do they influence the lives of thousands of people but they also play a significant part in their communities. To consider deleting articles on such significant institutions is, frankly, bizarre. Just Chilling (talk) 04:25, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Just Chilling We routinely delete churches, temples, town halls, post offices, hospitals, and many other institutions that also play a significant role in communities - high schools are the only "category" of such institutions that are specially protected. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:01, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Im just reminding you Dodger67 (and anyone else reading this, including the eventual closer) , that the RfC question is: Should secondary schools whose existence is verified by reliable, independent sources be presumed to be notable? OUTCOMES is not metioned and is therefore not the subject of this RfC. You can't ban its use. To do so would be to invite a list of several thousand AfD closures being posted on each new AfD as the documentary evidence that has produced the precedent. That said, 'churches, temples, town halls, post offices, hospitals, and many other institutions' are not, unlike schools' exempt from CSD-A7. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:55, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose, I can't see a pressing need to allow articles about schools in Wikipedia that do not pass WP:GNG. Private schools, for example, are businesses, and why should a business that happens to be a school be exempt from the usual requirements? Also, school articles are often a liability, attracting BLP issues like "teh sports teacher mr smith is a pedofile he likes little girls lol" in more or less eloquent forms. —Kusma (t·c) 09:53, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. I've been following discussion for several days now. I agree with the arguments put forth by many others. If there are insufficient sources to satisfy the already extremely low bar of GNG, what basis is there for an encyclopedic article. older ≠ wiser 12:02, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose We should leave this to the GNG. Some high school will be notable, some won't, but there is no justification for presuming that they will. The corollary is that we shouldn't presume that primary schools are non-notable. Ultimately what matter are the sources and whether they enable us to write a good quality article. Neljack (talk) 10:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

And how do we do that? One at a time at AfD. Hope to see you there, wasting 5 minutes per debate or more checking sources as we wade through the flood of new articles on elementary schools... Carrite (talk) 15:09, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. For me, WP:NPOV is the crucial policy. There are plenty of schools and degree awarding institutions - some of which are even accredited - that are of dubious quality. Without robust sourcing, we cannot maintain neutral articles. A school whose article is supported only by namechecks or reports in local media, may be completely out of line with the tone of the reports - and that could work in either direction. Multiple reliable independent sources is the only way to ensure we meet our core policies. Guy (Help!) 12:56, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support - the GNG argument is that secondary schools are presumed to be notable if there is evidence of their existence, because that condition has held up time and time again in many deletion discussions. Pick a school that exists, and there are very nearly always reliable sources about it somewhere. In a disproportionately large number of cases with secondary schools (versus other topics) these reliable sources are local or regional newspapers which do not maintain an online archive or have an online presence at all, but they can nearly always be located if someone is around to look. So it is reasonable to assume that all accredited secondary-level schools will pass GNG. Furthermore there's little harm in allowing these articles to exist: there's little cause for concern about undue promotion as the vast majority of these schools will be public, which is typically why articles on commercial organizations are subject to additional scrutiny, and other concerns can be dealt with through routine patrols just like every other topic. Requiring that sources be located for these articles will cause the school articles that are left to be biased toward WP:RECENTISM. (Of course we should prefer that sources demonstrating notability be included, but it is reasonable to assume that they exist; that's what all the supplementary notability guidelines are about.) Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:33, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Ivanvector, can you please provide links to AFD discussions that demonstrate your assertion above? (Pick a school that exists, and there are very nearly always reliable sources about it somewhere.) I have provided links above that show the opposite, that SCHOOLOUTCOMES is used as a self-fulfilling prophecy to shut down discussion despite strong arguments that point to real guidelines. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:55, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support - the understanding that secondary schools should be considered notable came about because experience shows that, with enough research, sources can be found for most such schools that meet WP:ORG. The alternative is to have a large series of AFDs to try to weed out the very few that don't; hardly a good use of anyone's time. One issue seems to be schools on the Indian sub-continent that tend to be poorly sourced. Google is a poor tool for finding sources on schools in non-English speaking countries. Very few schools on the Indian sub-continent, for example, have much of an Internet presence. We need to avoid systemic bias and allow time for local hard-copy and local language sources to be investigated in such cases. The Whispering Wind (talk) 17:18, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

• Rubbish. We're not primarily a social experiment and all this carping about systemic bias, using it as a way to avoid our encyclopaedic requirements, is just bleeding heart stuff. How much time should we allow? Do you have any idea how many false statements are made on articles concerning the Indian sub-continent? - Sitush (talk) 21:54, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support - as a veteran of the old days, let me tell you, we don't want to go back. As someone who participated in school AfD's back in 2004-05, pre WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, I can say unequivocally the status quo serves the project well. 1) I believe that it is an appropriate gazetteer use of wikipedia. Wikipedia is more useful for it. 2) It is a very useful training ground for young editors. 3) It is also a useful show-of-force deterrence for young vandals, who find their predictable nonsense knocked down surprisingly quickly, despite what their teachers tell them about wikipedia's unreliability. 4) It protects wikipedia from bias, both actual and apparent. It would be great if all WP:GNG decisions could be so objective. Going back to the old days will result in lots of American schools with lots of local WP:RS coverage staying in, with lots of Indian or other schools getting removed. This would be an accident of timing, plus a reflection of the different roles of these schools in different cultures. It would put well-meaning editors in the line of fire of accusations of prejudice. No one wants to spend their time here that way. 5) School deletion discussions never die. Again, this was the prior experience: when a school is deleted, its alums and students re-appear consistently to re-add it. Even if legitimately re-added, another AfD frequently re-starts. Again, we have better places to burn our calories. 6) The hope of deleting Western schools to limit bias is unrealistic. Secondary schools receive different coverage in different cultures. And our view/visibility of what is a WP:RS is skewed by internet access as well. This is just a bug in the practicality of WP:GNG. If we subjected counties and towns to WP:GNG, we would see the same bias between, say, U.S. and Indian towns; this is an ideal use of an objective, non-GNG inclusion criterion. Chris vLS (talk) 02:44, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I do not find SCHOOLOUTCOMES useful, in that it documents what has happened in the past, but seems to be picked up and used as an argument for the future or used in an AfD as an argument for keeping a school with no notability; because we generally keep schools is not an argument for keeping schools ~ that's circularity of argument, surely. In general, several people above ~ Sandstein, Reyk, Finnusertop, Wugapodes, Beeblebrox and others ~ have said it more clearly than i, but schools should have to prove notability to have an article, or we'll be making nothing more than a directory (OK, not "nothing more", but we'll be making WP more directory-like). Happy days, Lindsay^Hello 11:02, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as it seems to me to be addressing a secondary issue while not addressing a more important one, as the RfC here seems to be considering only the aspect of notability, which is not necessarily the only criterion involved. There is also the matter of whether there really is sufficient encyclopedic content for an article, which is being ignored in this question, and is probably the more important factor involved here. I have no doubt virtually every junior high school, middle school, and high school can have a good deal of somewhat crufty material added, and I myself know from current experience of looking through an old 1970's Who's Who of Religion that in that work there are a frightening number of bios listing (generally priests or nuns) as administrators or teachers at such schools. There is also the question not addressed here regarding how to structure articles on school districts. I've also seen a lot of bios indicating someone is the head of, for instance, a Catholic diocesan school committee. Coming up with a clear MOS regarding all organizations involved in secondary schools would probably be preferable. Such an MOS would also be able to deal with matters like school districts, diocesan school offices, etc., and I suppose regarding primary schools and their managing organizations (I've seen a lot of bios listing people as teaching in primary schools in the Who's Who too). John Carter (talk) 19:54, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support if for no other the reason than that the planning, building, and opening of a high school is such a significant undertaking and use of public or private funds, that there is bound to be coverage. Whether or not we can find that coverage is irrelevant. I also believe that WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES saves us all a lot of time and effort at AFD that would be far better spent elsewhere. The existence of these articles also furthers our purpose as topic valid for inclusion in an almanac. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 20:59, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

• Your rationale does not necessarily apply outside the developed countries, nor does it satisfy even WP:V, which needs multiple independent sources and not, for example, town council minutes. - Sitush (talk) 15:53, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

• Strong Support in keeping secondary schools notable - SCHOOLOUTCOMES eliminates having 30 high schools in the US with 1 in India. Schools cited by independent sources should be considered notable and my point of view is that even primary schools verified by 5+ sources should be kept and protected by SCHOOLOUTCOMES. SCHOOLOUTCOMES is a longstanding policy and as stated above around a decade old. The reasons outlined in the above 'Oppose' comments do not convince me. Voting 'support' on this Rfc is not about stating that all secondary schools should be considered notable but stating that all secondary schools that are verified by sources independent of the subject should be considered notable. Overall as per my statements above I support status quo with possible slight changes in favour of more schools to be considered as notable. J947 01:52, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support as long-term editor, I agree with others: let us keep the status quo, which has served us well. --David Tornheim (talk) 05:55, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose per the arguments given above by other users. The simple fact that a school exists does not make it notable. The notability of some subject must be proved by multiple reliable sources, and most of schools will certainly fail this. The current situation when schools are considered by default notable is illogical, and some users are 'abusing' WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES by creating some kind of articles (e.g. about schools with some 100 students) which are inadmissible in an encyclopedia, IMO. Wikipedia is not a directory. XXN, 18:34, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• Informal Support for African Secondary schools, Oppose for other territories: Secondary schools are essentially not news-worthy in many climes. They also lack competitive drive due to thier non-profit nature, as least from my side of the world. Most of what makes other institutions get reguslar coverage in relaible sources doesn't really apply to secondary schools. I'm not saying all educational topics must have this special treatment on wiki but I am of the opinion that an exception should be created for universities and secondary schools, which are part of the standardized mechanism in formulating the educational being of any individual. We don't expect to find multiple significant coverage for Nigerian secondary schools before accomodating them here.

One of my projects in my second coming on Wikipedia was to increase the number of notable and popular secondary schools on Wiki. I noticed that out of about 10,000 sec schools in Lagos/Ogun axis, where I'm based, there were only about ten with wiki articles. This isn't too surprising when you note that less than 100 of this 10k can boast of an existing website. The way these schools operate and are structured, there will always be limited coverage. Nonetheless, I started creating articles on the most popular and notable, especially the public ones. I have created Lagos State Model College Badore,Federal Government Girls College, Ipetumodu, Lagos State Model College Kankon, Lagos State Junior Model College Kankon, Lagos State Model College Igbonla, Lagos State Model College Badore, Landmark University Secondary School, Lagos State Junior Model College Badore, Covenant University Secondary School, etc. One of my secondary school schools even got speedied twice and a COI tag wrongly placed on it. It was funny to me because the school in question is one that all Nigerians are familiar with, because it was used to act a national series of immense popularity some decades ago. You can verify my statement yourself, if you know any Nigerian who's less than 40 years, just ask him/her if he has heard of Binta International School, I'm 98% sure that his response will be yes. Or better-still, ask any Nigerian editor on Wikipedia, the response will be the same. I really got angry by the COI tag that was placed on the article. I think we need to be soft on African secondary schools as long as the information is verifiable.

I went through many of the oppose votes and I think the fear is that they don't want Wikipedia to get clumped up with thousands of poorly written articles, which is an understandable position. This is why I will only support for African articles, because I know that will never be the case for them. The Nigerian secondary schools with minimal online coverage are essentially notable enough for inclusion on Wikipedia. I'm voting for this to be an informal policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darreg (talk • contribs) 14:01, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose – Nothing has inherent notability, as it says in the WP:N guideline, and there is no good reason why secondary schools should be excepted from the usual practice. RGloucester — ☎ 19:01, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support in the sense that the default should be to keep if the sourcing is thin but otherwise valid and that the proper response to a stub-like article on a high school should be to search for ways to improve the article before assuming that the subject is non-notable. My reasoning is that rival online encyclopedias, such as the Norwegian SNL has articles on the various high schools in Norway. Hence at least one competing encyclopedia considers this class of subject worthy of comprehensive coverage, and we should strive to be at least as comprehensive as that. Of course, if the sourcing is nonexistent and directory type-information is all that's verifiable, then an independent article would be too short to be useful. The school's existence would be better covered in the article on the town that the school is in. Sjakkalle (Check!) 20:59, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Conditional support I am generally a supporter of SCHOOLOUTCOMES. The problem with SCHOOLOUTCOMES in my opinion is that editors at an AFD simply quote it with a rational such as Keep per SCHOOLOUTCOMES. or Keep due to longstanding consensus that secondary schools are notable. This is actually incorrect because schooloutcomes says that an article about a school is generally kept if 1. It is an independently accredited degree-awarding institution and 2. at least one independent source has been found to show that the school actually exists. Both these are important and the burden of proof (that the school exists and is accredited) lies on the editors arguing keep. Yet somehow this is often ignored at AFDs, which ultimately creates resentment. I personally am fine with SCHOOLOUTCOMES as I think that unlike companies, schools do not send out press releases and get them published in some churnalistic media. It is also one of the first articles often edited by students (and often serves as the defacto sandbox) and I would rather have them editing these school articles, than going around messing with other articles. Many secondary schools also have alumni associations and it is helpful to keep a list of notable people who have graduated from the school. As schools can also be considered a building with cultural significance, they may be notable if we apply WP:GEOFEAT. As such, I am in favour of the criteria in SCHOOLOUTCOMES, provided it is strictly followed. (The burden of proof needs to be on the editors arguing keep). --Lemongirl942 (talk) 06:54, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, and tighten the restriction to exclude reporting on school athletics as indicators of notability. Why? Because it fails WP:INDY. Due to the popularity of schools sports (especially in the US but also some other places), local newspapers have a very strong fiduciary interest in a thick stream of coverage of school sports for local entertianment purposes, and this coverage tell us precisely nothing about why the school, as an institution, might be notable in some way. Also exclude local reportage on faculty changes as indicators of notability of the institution or the faculty member. Maybe even just exclude local coverage, period. Very, very few high schools are actually notable; when they are it is usually for something incidental (a particular tragedy or scandal that happened there), not because of anything intrinsic about the institution. The vast majority of the articles on these things should be pruned to the essentials and merged into the parent articles about their school districts, just like we do with junior high and middle schools, and elementary schools.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:59, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Support First, the collective wisdom of many years of WP editors, along with long-standing common practice, supports turning this into a policy or established practice. Second, in the real world, secondary schools in the U.S. are no more notable than those in Nigeria, Syria, India, or Egypt. Some flexibility is needed here in order to deal with the reality on the ground. First Light (talk) 08:10, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Support We don't need gray areas. There is a certain crowd here who gets a thrill our of exploiting any weakness (usually an inexperienced editor) and in the darkness of AfD, fecklessly remove content that affects a lot of ordinary readers. If there is a source reporting the existence of a secondary school; then the discussion should end. I will also put in a reminder of WP:BEFORE. If there are no sources and it doesn't google, then have at it. Trackinfo (talk) 08:38, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

• I Support that schools which are at least secondary and senior secondary should have at least one mention in some third party reliable website. If such school has no mention anywhere then, it must be recognised by the government of that country and must be 25 years old. Nowadays school articles which have no third party independent sources and established in less than 4 years ago are kept as WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. However dance schools, play schools, day schools, kindergarten schools, cooking schools, handicrafts schools, martial arts schools, should pass WP:GNG, if they are not established by the government. Marvellous Spider-Man 11:17, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose per WP:EXISTENCE, WP:INDISCRIMINATE, WP:NOTDIRECTORY and WP:GNG. This has been a sore subject with me for a while. There are far too many schools that would never pass notability that have stub articles we can't get rid of because of this idiocy. My experience has failed to provide any evidence that secondary schools all have enough RS coverage to justify an automatic presumption of WP:N. The one and only support I have read above that does carry some weight is DGG's which is essentially an IAR argument based on convenience. I concede that if we scrap the presumptive notability there will be an uptick at AfD which already suffers from chronic lack of participation. However, a lot of the articles I am thinking of could be dispatched via CSD A7, though we would have to remove the prohibition on educational institutions from the template. Further I strongly support prohibiting WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES from being cited in school related AfD's. -Ad Orientem (talk) 14:49, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per Ad Orientem, who pretty much said everything I was thinking. JudgeRM (talk to me) 19:48, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Comment. I've already registered my opposition above; I'm now simply looking to share two observations. First, I was curious as to how our opinions on this issue have evolved over the years. The earliest extant survey of community opinion appears to be the old "What's in; what's out" page. Prior to early 2006, this page collected comments on secondary schools and, immediately before being removed in May 2006, it had collected comments from 36 editors (as seen here). 16 of those editors called for the inclusion of all secondary schools, most by simply stating "In", but with a few who gave rationales that we today would recognize as assertions of "inherent notability". As for the other 20 editors, a few simply said "Out", but the majority were more nuanced. Their responses took the form of either "In, but only if ... " or "Out, unless ... ". The conditions specified by these nuanced comments sometimes were objective, but more often were not. The general notability guidelines did not yet exist back then, so nobody was citing them. But most of the nuanced votes were setting conditions that were consistent with WP:GNG, with some making arguments that today would be recognized as falling under WP:ROUTINE or WP:STANDALONE. To me, the most striking aspect of this old survey is that, after more than ten years of debate, we remain divided -- roughly 50/50 -- on the question.

I also looked at the evolution of the Outcomes page itself. After some minor adjustments in wording, the initial statement regarding schools was the one found here. This was expanded a bit in late 2007, to give detail regarding different types of schools (i.e., primary vs. secondary), as shown here. The big change took place in May 2009, with its changing of "in most cases being kept" to "being kept". The edit that made this change is here. Its edit summary cited this sparsely-attended discussion as the basis for making the change. That discussion was not the subject of an RfC and I could find no evidence that it was publicized anywhere other than on that Talk page. In early 2011, there was a brief attempt to declare "per se notability" for high schools, but there was an immediate objection and, in that day's flurry of edits (see here), something looking quite like the current version came into being.

These two observations show that there has never been a consensus on the treatment of secondary schools. At the very least, the Outcomes essay should be amended to reflect this fact. NewYorkActuary (talk) 20:17, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. The standard should be the demonstrated existence of sources showing the subject meets WP:GNG. No sources = no notability = no article. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 05:03, 6 February 2017 (UTC).

• Enough – this survey makes it very clear that support and oppose are not very different in number, and that there is no consensus. Close the survey and change modes to collecting ideas for how to move forward, if at all. Dicklyon (talk) 05:39, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

See WP:NOTAVOTE. Looking over this discussion it is abundantly clear that the Oppose arguments are heavily based on policy and guidelines while the Supports are largely silent on that subject. The reviewing Admin is going to have to weigh the respective arguments and determine if the various retentionist arguments outweigh our guidelines and policy. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:25, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support, because the alternatives are far worse. Secondary schools are the backbone of many smaller cities, and thus primarily generate interest in their local community. They are unique among local organizations in that they receive far more coverage locally than any neighborhood shop or municipal governmental department, yet they rarely receive regional or national coverage. If we repeal the existing guidelines for school notability, I predict that editors favoring deletion will use WP:AUD to bar all the local sources from consideration and use WP:ORGDEPTH to discredit any of the national coverage, since any national coverage is likely only in response to a transient event. Proving the notability of a secondary school will become absurdly difficult. Given that our readers have a clear interest in secondary school articles, I do not support the massive timesink that will be needed to defend these articles from deletion. Altamel (talk) 18:39, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose for many reasons all listed above in previous Opposes. I see no reason to override normal notability standards for schools. MB 19:16, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, pretty much entirely because of WP:EXIST. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:09, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose There's no reason why WP:ORG shouldn't apply to schools. The argument that secondary schools are automatically notable seems to be advanced largely by people from countries such as the US where those schools are typically very large. In other countries, such as Australia, the size varies a lot and many high schools (such as the one I attended) aren't even well known in their own city much less the subject of significant coverage in reliable sources. Nick-D (talk) 10:39, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support our policies and guidelines, oppose changes to our policies and guidelines based on this RfC  This is not a clear RfC.  Is this supposed to be a massive rebellion of GNG-centrism, or is this an intent to require two sources rather than one for OUTCOMES?  GNG is in such disrepute that an admin looking at a list of ninety references recently said that those were not enough to pass GNG.  DRV routinely protects "not notable", meaning "I don't like it", as a valid policy argument.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:02, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
• oppose and confusing wording Secondary schools should be deemed non-notable unless notability is proven by GNG and other ways. Merely proving that the school exists is not enough. Otherwise, we could be having a school that was closed a century ago and never very notable when it was around claim a WP article. Don't laugh, some 400 year old British members of Parliament who never did anything documented have WP articles. Automatic notability should not be around. If something is very important, it will be notable. Lakeshook (talk) 20:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC) Striking blocked sock !vote. Gluons12 ^☢|☕ 20:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC).
• Oppose. Sources should be reviewed and evaluated for notability. Systemic bias concerns can be alleviated either through an amended process specific to regions of concern (if that's actually necessary), or simply within a proper reasoned discussion of the article at hand. As per many above, I see no compelling arguments for exemptions for schools that are not process related. Scribolt (talk) 10:16, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support status quo per Cullen. High schools are regular magnets of media coverage no matter where you go. And from the sense of providing an almanac, high schools are obvious community centers of interest. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:41, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support, as better than the alternative. High schools are a great magnet for attracting new editors, and that's a good (Wikipedia-public) policy reason to support retaining the status quo. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 16:57, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Process to consider

Working on the presumption that this may close in opposition, there is clearly a concern about the status quo of school articles. As part of the consideration here, I would suggest that if this does close this way, that all existing secondary school articles should at least be kept and there should not be a rush of mass deletions per WP:FAITACCOMPLI to remove them. However, fair AFD challenges can be held, recognizing that OUTCOMES no longer is supported here. Where possible, editors should be encouraged to merge info about secondary schools into articles on the notable city/town/school system and redirects left behind, avoiding the AFD process and keeping past contributions. This avoids any aggressive, disruptive approach if this should as suggested and alleviate fears that thousands of articles will suddenly be sent to the void. It will take a case-by-case review of each to determine what should be done, in such cases, and that will take many man-months of evaluation. --MASEM (t) 17:51, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Given that the current 'vote' is 13:11 in favour of oppose, I would have to say I would hope that would be closed as "No consensus" rather than oppose, if it was closed just now. Having said that, I do agree that any change to consensus here, should not result in mass deletions. Rather, it should result in the development of a guideline, which may or may not result in deletions. CalzGuy (talk) 18:21, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not saying it will close "oppose", but I think we do need to broadly address the concerns of those !voting "support" that worry what would become of the articles that already exist. I think it is necessary to address what should or should not happen should "oppose" be the result as to alleviate some of those "support" concerns. By no means am I saying this RFC is done and over with. --MASEM (t) 18:38, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Masem: I'm wiling to start a guide on how to improve high school students to ensure that those that already exist can be developed as well as they can be. I've written many high school articles, mostly in North America but some also for international private and state-operated schools around the world. I actually encouraged Chinese university students in a workshop to start writing about their high schools, and this is a way to get Wikipedia to grow. WhisperToMe (talk) 09:16, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

• Echoing CalzGuy on it currently trending "no consensus". Regardless of how this RfC closes, even if it closes as support, I think SCHOOLOUTCOMES is no longer workable, and there will need to be further discussion on how exactly to implement the consensus here, or in the case of a no consensus close, to try to arrive at a guideline for schools that can achieve broad community support. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:27, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• I agree that there will probably have to be further discussion about where to go next, whichever way the RfC closes, but it's still early days - I can see this one running for a while. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:32, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• ? If this is voted down, it will just be another proposal not included in the guidelines. One does not make a consensus by people not voting for something, they make a consensus getting people to vote in favor of something. It will be as it always has been, the edge cases will sometimes get fought about, and the schooloutcomes out so that fights don't have to happen over and over again will be generally followed for the rest. The schooloutcomes thoughts and what gave rise to it are not going to magically disappear. The reasonable improvement from present would be to have a school sng: eg. 25 years, 500 students, acreditation, reference in such and such sources, etc., etc. but obviously that depends on someone really working on it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:45, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
  • The way this is being presented, if it passes with Support, then what is at SCHOOLOUTCOMES should be codified better at WP:NORG ("All verified-existing secondary schools are presumed notable"), removing the language at SCHOOLOUTCOMES as duplicative at least with respect to secondary schools. If this passes with Oppose, then the language at SCHOOLOUTCOMES should be changed to reflect that secondary schools are not presumed notable just by sheer existence. --MASEM (t) 19:00, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  I would go farther and say if this is no consensus SCHOOLOUTCOMES as something that can be referenced in AfD is in shambles, and there would probably need to be more work done on crafting a guideline that could get community consensus on schools. SCHOOLOUTCOMES has the somewhat weird place in AfD because the idea is that it represents a longstanding community consensus on schools. Anything short of a support close here would be a rejection of that idea. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  This RfC has already attracted far more comments than the average school AfD, so if consensus either way is reached here, then I would argue that it is more representative of the community's views than any assessment of AfD closes would be. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  No. Schooloutcomes is, as the name says, about outcomes, the only way to change that is actually have mass deletions at afd. (and really, no matter how many comment, you don't get a backdoor consensus by finding no consensus or opposition on specific wording of a new guideline, no one has ever proposed before, and never bothered to refine.) -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:17, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  Key is that SCHOOLOUTCOMES is an essay, and it has been used (or misused, depending on one's POV) at AFD to keep articles on schools as the sole argument. It's working on a catch-22 approach: "keep this article on a school because school articles are routinely kept", and allowing those AFDs to close without any attempt to show actual notability or additional sourcing. This RFC seems to be stating do we actually bite the bullet and say that secondary schools should be presumed notable and eliminate the catch-22 , or do we say they are not and eliminate the catch-22 the other way. And as Tony points out above, even a "no consensus" should lead to discussion about what to do about the catch-22 problem. --MASEM (t) 20:32, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  That's not a Catch-22, even if that word was not overly dramatic, it is another beloved bugbear of Wikipedia, 'consistency', and sure we generally really want to be consistent - to treat like, like - because that is a basis for being neutral and fair (until we are not). You do get a chance to discuss it every-time at Afd, but Afd like every process looks for both a consistent application, and the reduction of transaction costs (eg., don't have lengthy fights about the same thing, again and again). Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  But that creates the problem emphasized by the two linked AFDs: resting the argument against the deletion on an essay that describes a practice as to maintain that practice is a self-fulfilling cycle. The closures of the AFDs and the subsequent discussion show it is time to either cement that practice in notability guidelines or get rid of it as to break the cycle. --MASEM (t) 21:17, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  SCHOOLOUTCOMES has a bunch of other uses, including suppressing the addition/supporting the deletion-or-merge of numerous primary/elementary school articles. We need to ensure that this continues to be the case, whatever the outcome here. CalzGuy (talk) 20:16, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Good luck with that. The grand compromise between deletionism and inclusioniam would be flushed, the SCHOOLOUTCOMES essay reduced to nothing. Deletionists might think they're "upholding standards" and eliminating a bunch of really terrible articles about high schools from India, but what they are actually doing is opening up the floodgates for about 100,000 American and English elementary schools to have vapid fluff pieces with news about Mrs. Finley the principal and what is served for lunch on Fridays. You think I joke. Carrite (talk) 15:15, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

If SCHOOLOUTCOMES were to be eliminated, notability of schools would default to WP:NORG, and key in there is WP:AUD "On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international source is necessary." Now, we'd have to be careful ("This school is acredited by the state's board, so there's your one statewide source!"), the implication is that this should be a secondary source, not primary. But we have the language in place to prevent a flood of primary schools from being created because of that. --MASEM (t) 15:18, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: We can't get hung up on degree/diploma awarding as it is uncommon in many countries for secondary schools (attended by pupils aged 12-18 or some subset) to award documents like those. Stifle (talk) 14:38, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: Supporting SCHOOLOUTCOMES only because we're scared of the amount of work that would suddenly pop up if it is abolished doesn't make sense. Setting up a separate stream for such deletion discussions, so as not to block up the "normal" AFD stream is trivially easy. It will do no harm if we take months, or even a year or longer, to clear out school pages that might no longer qualify for inclusion. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:21, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Spoken like somebody that doesn't spend a lot of time at AfD. Carrite (talk) 15:18, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comment About two years ago, the notability requirements for planets was readjusted, which resulted in hundreds if not thousands of planet articles being nominated for deletion. I was working at AfD at the time, and can attest that going through all of these deletions was a bloody nightmare. However, the majority of the planet articles were non-controversial redirects since they lacked any coverage in reliable sources (or at least beyond a few trivial mentions that confirmed the existence of the planets). This meant that non-admins such as myself were able to substantially help with the workload. With secondary schools, I highly doubt this will occur. At least in the United States, high schools get tons of coverage at the city, township and county level. However, most also receive at least some coverage (of debatable worth) from sources at the state and federal level. There are going to be very few non-controversial AfDs, and the burden of closing them will fall on the admins. WP: AfD will likely be completely and utterly clogged for the foreseeable future if this discussion does not reaffirm the current consensus regarding secondary schools. (I’m not exaggerating here- we have articles on over one-hundred public high schools in the state of Iowa alone, which is roughly the twentieth least populated state in the US). Given this, I believe that some concrete steps need to be taken to keep wp:AfD functional. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 00:18, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree that the AfD process would probably be flooded with AfDs should this not close as support initially, but I also think Masem has a point that WP:FAITACCOMPLI does exist. The issue is how to deal with editors who would likely make WP:POINTy nominations afterwards (I have no one in particular in mind here, just a gut feeling.) I'm not sure what the best practical way to prevent that is if the RfC closes NC or oppose, but I also feel that the sheer volume of work that it would take for people to nominate a ton of schools would keep people at bay for a while, especially since I doubt this will close as outright oppose at this time (but who knows, I could be wrong and we have plenty of time left in the RfC.) TonyBallioni (talk) 00:43, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

As I said above, to my eyes, the primary issue regarding a lot of primary and secondary schools is probably not so much their notability as such, but whether there is really enough encyclopedic content to merit a separate article. In cases like this one, I think that there actually are probably quite a few relevant reference works relating to the topic, and they would, I think, probably be the best indicators of how we should proceed here. The primary question there being what content to have in articles on specific institutions, and what content to have in school districts, or similar bodies, and how much really encyclopedic content that leaves over for separate articles on specific schools in those bodies. Now, I myself wouldn't necessarily have any real objections to, for instance, articles on schools of any level, primary or higher, which seem to be one of the few or only schools (either at that level or higher) operated by a specific entity, like a church. But how to deal with content on specific schools as opposed to their governing bodies, where such include several similar schools, is another matter entirely. John Carter (talk) 21:11, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I would like to see some alternative policy to schooloutcomes created. I know for a fact that there are many secondary schools that there is a lot of encyclopedic things to say about, but that would probably end up at AfD is no replacement policy existed. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 07:03, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comment about closing - We're still a ways from the 30-day mark, but when the time comes what do people think about requesting a team of three uninvolved editors/admins to work together on the close, as is done from time to time on highly contentious matters. This is something that's come up so many times, and so often, and with so much history that it may be useful. Numerically, at time of writing, it's just about even between support and oppose, which may mean no consensus, but there are nuances, qualifications, interpretations, etc. that suggest something may come out of it. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:43, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Seconding. The notability of secondary schools has been a highly debated topic on Wikipedia, and there is a lot of nuance within the discussion that needs to be accounted for. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 21:05, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd also support that. SCHOOLOUTCOMES is aprox. a decade old, and anything that would change it in one way or the other would have a huge impact. Having a team of uninvolved closers seems ideal. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:13, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd support that approach too. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:34, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Done. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:42, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comment As I suggested earlier, I don't think there should be any outcome from this RFC other than a Nc close, as I think that, with all due respect to the OP, it asked the wrong question. We need an RFC that asks the right question, actually a positive change from observational essay to an agreed policy or guideline. The oppose camp see SCHOOLOUTCOMES as a pseudo-guideline being used to prop up non-notable additions to the project, while supporters see it as a description of the actualité of AFD. It would be much better to define what SHOULD happen at AFD rather than describe what HAS happened previously CalzGuy (talk) 07:14, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

That's what this RFC was intended to do, by posing the question if secondary schools were notable, which was what the various no consensus AfDs seemed to be disagreeing on. The argument from the keeps traditionally being that SCHOOLOUTCOMES has long established that schools were notable and the deletes being that proof of meeting GNG or WP:ORG was required in the moment. This RfC was intended to resolve that by asking the most basic neutral question possible. If it closes NC or oppose, I agree that more work will need to be done on a new guideline, but I think the reasoning behind this RfC was sound and that it was the right question to ask. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:24, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

The RFC is a single question to do with notability of secondary schools. There is much more required to be covered, and agreed, if a guideline (policy is probably OTT) is to come into play. For instance, there be nuances of geography, or of age of pupils, or of age of schools. Is a school notable if the building in which it is housed is notable? What about elementary/primary schools? What about all-through schools. This RFC is only about a single aspect of the whole. The discussion needs to be widened. CalzGuy (talk) 16:20, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

If the RfC does close anyway other than the affirmative, then yes, you are right. The point is that it wasn't entirely clear before this started that something more than a "yes or no" was needed here. All the advice provided was for a narrowly construed RfC which is why it was framed this way. If this is closed in a way other than "support" the closing statement and this RfC will be able to serve as a starting point for a future discussion and will allow those of us who want to take part in drafting it to consider points that I don't think would have been considered if this RfC did exist. Personally, I think a wider RfC would have been even more likely to lead to a NC close than this one if there was not a more narrowly construed comment period first. tl;dr: You're right moving forward if this doesn't close support, but I still think this was the right starting point. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:31, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

A 'No consensus' close will leave the status quo as is. It will be no different from a Support close because that's where we are just now. CalzGuy (talk) 06:33, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

We normally determine no consensus based on whether or not there is consensus,regardless of where it may happen to lead. Ay way, I think there is very clear consensus, far outreaching the result here--essentially no high school afd where the school clearly had real existence and was clearly a high school has closed as delete for lack of notability in the last 5 or 6 years. The argument that we must have sourcing for verifiability is of course valid as far as the verification of the facts in the article is concerned, but that's irrelevant, for meeting WP:V is a good deal less than the specific types of sourcing that shows notability. DGG ( talk ) 00:28, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Except that a point that is absent or underemphasized but core to this is how does WP:NORG's Audience guidance fit into secondary school notability. Many examples of "kept" secondary schools presented during this violate WP:AUD by using strictly local sources (that otherwise meet V/RS), but this point is never really brought up during AFD because you have a lot of people shouts "SCHOOLOUTCOMES". We need to get rid of SCHOOLOUTCOMES regardless of which way consensus falls, either by explicitly writing the allowance for secondary schools into NORG, or otherwise not given secondary schools that free pass at notability. I agree that this RFC doesn't answer that question but we now know better how to word it, including stipulation that if the "no free pass" is the agreed option, we are going to grandfather all existing school articles to avoid flooding AFD. --MASEM (t) 15:14, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• Assuming the closer has read this far, this RfC is as long as it is short, is as broad as it is narrow, and as skewed as it is straight - on two major points:

1. Schools don't 'not exist'. School articles are generally written about schools that exist. As coord of the WP:WPSCH for years (and genuinely active at it to boot), I've rarely come acrosrs a school being invented for the purpose of hoax. School articles may often sound somewhat promotional, but they ae mainly written by the children that attend them - or alumni and let's face it, most people are proud of their schools and without them they wouldn't be able to read or write or know that the world is not flat - let alone edit Wikipedia. Practically everyone on the planet goes to a secondary school with the exception of some remote developing regions. It's therefore fair to say that schools have an impact on society. On the other hand Not everyone has eaten in a small Mitchelin starred restaurant in the Netherlands that gets an article without so much as a nod, and doing so would not make them nutritional scientists, heart surgeons or astrophysicists. What's missing in this debate is rather a large portion of common sense - an expression we're not supposed to use on Wikipedia.
2. None of the opposers have any respect for the sensitivities of the dedicated editors and admins who have the burden the workload presented a) by new page patrollers who without a clue are allowed to tag articles and send them down various sewers of deletion or conversely let the clearly non notable or spammy for-profit high street cram school through. To oppose this motion would open the flood gates to the likes of those who with alarming regularity over the years now and again decide to send a bunch of school articles to AfD because between meals in their 'notable' restaurants, they have noting else better to do. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:22, 12 February 2017 (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.

...200+ comments, 24,000+ words, and yet nobody even mentioned the existence of WP:Notability (high schools) (a failed proposal, now tagged as an essay). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I believe that all of the points in that essay were raised above and discussed thoroughly. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:01, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• There should be a TL;DR summary of this close. My read is; secondary schools are not presumed notable by existance. SCHOOLOUTCOMES can be cited at AfD but may be discounted by the closer. Editors should make a good faith attempt to find sources in local media before nominating a school for deletion. A flood of school nominations in the wake of this close is discouraged. I am sure others took away something different so the closers should write a clear, citable/quotable summary so this does not spawn endless drama about what was meant. None of this is ment to detract from the hard work the closers put into this but this is a topic which needs more clarity than can be found by interpreting such a long closing statement. Jbh ^Talk 00:58, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Unless I am misreading this (it is a bit long and an executive summary would be helpful) Secondary Schools are not presumptively notable and SCHOOLOUTCOMES is discouraged from being cited at AfD. Further SO should be added to the list of arguments to be avoided at AfD. All of which said the closers seemed to also be saying that schools are different in an undefined way and editors should take a deep breath before sending school articles to AfD with an emphasis on due diligence and searches for sources. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:47, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Not helpful when the local print media is in Bodo. I don't know where this leaves us. Jack N. Stock (talk) 05:00, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Ad Orientem, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. I'll update the close with a summary to avoid further confusion. Jacknstock, references/sources do not have to be in English, so it kind of leaves you in the same position you were in before. Primefac (talk) 13:28, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

• Note I believe WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES should be edited to reflect this consensus change. Exemplo347 (talk) 14:43, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Multi-part RFC on Wikipedia:Recent years

Background: Recent Years is a set of editing guidelines for articles on events of global significance for an entire year, for example 2014. It is not binding on any other subset of articles pertaining to years that are not recent, such as 1865, or articles about certain subjects in a given year such as 2011 in Australian television, or 2011 in film and so forth. Recent years guidelines are not used as inclusion criteria for content anywhere else on Wikipedia, including the main page.

The issue this RFC aims to address is the fact that these guidelines were put into place and are maintained by a very small group of users, and indeed many if not most Wikipedians may not be aware of them at all, unless they try to insert material into an article on a given year (usually the current one) and suddenly find themselves faced with a number of new rules they never knew existed, being enforced by a small group of users who specialize in this area. Policy decisions in this area are sometimes made by as little as two or three users. It appears that the decision to make it an official editing guideline was made by a single user.

This is not intended to suggest that these users have been acting in bad faith, they have worked tirelessly to uphold what rules they have in an area of Wikipedia that seems to suffer from a lack of broad particpation. Constantly dealing with the same isssues day after day, year after year with little to no support or interest from the broader community can be understably frustrating.

For an idea of what these conversations are like and how many of them there are, see the talk page of any article on a year between 2002 and 2017.

Therefore, this RFC will attempt to mitigate some of these issues by calling for broader input on the rules used in recent years articles in order to make it apparent if the community at large supports them or not. Discussion will include the scope of the guideline, tools for improving awareness of it, and a review of some of the specifc points included in it, as well as the question of whether it should be a guideline at all.

21:45, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Scope of recent years guidelines

This has been discussed several times on the talk page of the guideline, but due to low participation a consensus is not clear and there is no set definition of what qualifies as a recent year. Should the scope be limited to:

• 2002 (the year after Wikipedia was founded) and onward (status quo at the moment)
• The most recent ten years
• The most recent 20 years, beginning with 2002 for now but moving each year after 2022
• Some other standard

Discussion of scope of recent year guidelines

• I personally think that the ten most recent years is a reasonable and manageable scope for these guidelines. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:08, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
• twenty years max ten years min I tend to consider anything older than 20 years history rather than recent events. I think having it apply to anything older than that is too broad. Likewise, anything in the last 10 years is pretty solidly "recent". Reasonable people will disagree about exactly where the cutoff should be, but I'd be in favor of any proposal within that range. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 01:04, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• 2002, but guideline should no longer be called "recent" years. It was "recent" when first proposed in 2009. Some guideline is appropriate for all years, and I believe the start year should be constant. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:22, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• 2002 for practical purposes, but I'd really like any year for which sourcing is available for this standards defined in the guideline to be met. Scribolt (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Scope:future years

Wikipedia already has articles for every year in this cenury, all the way up to 2099. Given that these will all one day come under the recent years guidelines as time marches on, should articles on future years be subject to the recent years guidelines? If so, how far into the future should the guidelines be applicable?

Discussion of scope:future years

• I'm not sure I really have a strong opinion on this, but I do believe it may be wise to have a seperate discussion on the issue of the usefullnes of articles about events that may or may not be relevant 73 years from now. Seems like a case of WP:TOOSOON to have articles at all on years more than 5-10 years into the future. That being the case I suppose that whatever we decide the scope is for the past could project forward into the futre as well. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:05, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
• I tend to agree that we shouldn't have articles for years more than 10 years into the future; until a few weeks ago, there weren't articles for years more than 50 years in the future; until a few days ago, 70 years. But I think the guideline should extend as far as we have year articles.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:28, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

When this is concluded I plan to open another discussion specifically on these articles, it seems a little nuts to have "predicted events" of little to no consequence that may or may not occur 75 years from now. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:51, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Maybe this needs its own discussion/RfC - many of these future year articles have no references whatsoever, and per WP:TOOSOON and WP:V they might need to be deleted at this point in time. And anyway, I agree it seems absolutely bizarre to have them. Triptothecottage (talk) 03:45, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree: a discussion needs to happen. There simply isn't enough reliable information about events beyond 10 years into the future to justify creating an article, & creating one beyond then is just too tempting for someone looking for an easy way to up their editcount. -- llywrch (talk) 20:38, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

• Short term Applies to all year articles in the future. Medium term Update the guideline to remove future events Long term discussion need as per above as to whether we should have future year articles and what they should contain.

My reasoning as being so harsh regarding future predictions in the year articles is mostly due to manageability of dynamic information such as this. Imagine NASA announce that plan to place a human on Mars in May 2025 attracting considerable news coverage. So, we have a future year with a significant anticipated event. Various Mars & Mars landing articles are created, updated by a large number of interested Wikipedians. The 2025 article is updated, presumably by the much smaller subset of Wikipedians who like to update year articles. Later on, the launch is postponed to July, generating less media coverage and the Mars Wikipedians are all over it, but we're relying a Year Wikipedian being aware of the new date and remembering that this exists in a future year article and doing it themselves.

And also, Wikipedia is not a calendar. Scribolt (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Recent years category/edit notice

Currently, the only tool in use for identifying articles within the scope of the recent years guidelines and advising users of the existence of said guideline is {{Recent years}}, a talk page template advising users of the existence of these guidelines and advising them to read them before adding anything. There does not appear to be a category or a standard edit notice to better organize these articles and better inform users of these specialized guidelines.

Shoud a category for identifying and organizing these articles be created? Should there be a standard edit notice attached to all articles bound by the recent years guidelines so that users who do not check the talk page first will still receive notification of these specialized guidelines? If technically possible, should all three be linked so that adding the notice to the talk page automatically adds the article to the category and generates the edit notice?

Discussion of Recent years category/edit notice

• A category seems rather obvious. It would only need to be updated once a year so it would be exceptionally easy to maintain. If the mechanism that would automatically link all three things is technically possible that would be helpful as well. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:12, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
• I think it should be a maintenance category, since readers wouldn't find our organization by applicable policies too useful. I think an edit notice would be useful, but I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. If there is consensus, I'd support automation. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 01:25, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Yes, there should be an obviously visible link into the guideline. Scribolt (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

The "three continent rule" for events

Current wording:

New events added must receive independent news reporting from three continents on the event. This is a minimum requirement for inclusion. Events which are not cited at all, or are not Wikilinked to an article devoted to the event, may be removed.

Should this rule be continued to be used as the minimum threshold for inclusion of an event in a recent year article? Is there a better metric that might be used?

Discussion of the "three continent rule" for events

• I think continents are a poor indicator for evaluating global relevance: something covered in the US, UK, and Australia alone would qualify. Number of countries might be a better indicator, though I'm not sure if it's the best. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:28, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
• I think it can be improved, but I'm in favor of keeping it until a solid improvement is proposed. I don't see the US, UK, and Aus example as a problem: coverage in all three shows that it's internationally notable for the anglophone world (which is what enwiki primarily serves). Going off number of countries would really privilege regional coverage over truly global coverage since countries close to each other will probably report on each other, and those should go in regional articles like 2004 in Europe. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 01:33, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Needs to be some proxy for international significance; possibly, an item which belongs in a regional article shouldn't be here. I'm afraid that would be subjective, and probably subject to as the current regime as argument. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:51, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• As per Wugapodes. Could be better, will do until its improved by those closer to it. Scribolt (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

"Ten languages rule" for births and deaths

The current rule for inclusion for births and deaths of notable persons are as follows:

Births:

Births are only to be included if there are Wikipedia articles in English and at least nine non-English languages about the individual in question.

Deaths:

The same criteria apply to deaths as to births, with the addition that the number of non-English Wikipedia articles is taken at the time of the person's death. Persons whose notability is due to circumstance rather than actual achievement (e.g. oldest person in the world or last surviving person of [x]) do not meet the basic requirement for inclusion.

Should these continue to be the minimum standards for the inclusion of births and deaths in recent years articles? Is there a better metric that might be used?

Discussion of the "ten languages rule" for births and deaths

• I think the inclusion criteria for Births and Deaths might be a little too high; I understand that it is intended to counter systemic bias (in past years, Births and Deaths sections were overwhelmingly filled with people from the Anglosphere or Europe; some of whom had no interwiki links at all), but I fear that in the process it might actually enhance systemic bias, since I presume in many cases people from the Anglosphere or Europe would have more articles about them in other Wikipedias than those from non-Anglophone or non-European countries. How about lowering the requirement: instead of at least nine interwiki links, how about lowering the required number to five or six? I would agree with the current guideline provided that it should apply to people from the Anglosphere, but more leniency should probably be given (maybe on a case-by-case basis) to people from non-Anglosphere countries (i.e. China, Japan, Brazil, Kenya, etc.) Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 16:43, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
• What if we used similar standards as events? Rather than interwiki links, it's based on how international the coverage is. Or combine the two? The death is reported on in at least three countries/continents and has at least X interwiki links. Perhaps 3 so that significant figures in developing countries whose wiki may not be very robust can still be included if they're notable enough for inclusion in, for example, English, German, and French wikipedias. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 01:38, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• I think the criteria may be too lenient.... The "three continent rule" has been subject to debate before. The existing rule is objective. Still, a feel for what difference there would be for different options would be helpful in weighing alternatives. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Lacking a better (more objective and/or easier-to-use) rule, I believe it is good enough, eventhough it's self-referencing in a way. Looking at the number of people included in the past few years, it could even be moved up a notch or two (i. e. 10 or 11 interwikis). — Yerpo ^Eh? 08:23, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
• Silly criteria - many well known people only have articles written after they die in a language other than that native to the person. And does the mere existence of some stub in some other language elevate the otherwise locally known to worldwide known. Most other language WP's have similar notability criteria to the English language one. So putting "Joe Blow was an Olympic participant" or "Joe Blow was a professional <sport> player" or "Joe Blow was a member of the legislative assembly of state/province" translated into French, Spanish, German, Scots, Simple, and whatever Google translate would spit out, with a citation to something to show notability, on 9 other sites achieves instant qualification. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 02:54, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
• Should focus on notability, not Wikipedia coverage (which sadly isn't always the same thing). No immediate suggestions though. Scribolt (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Recent years as an editing guideline

The Recent years page was created on January 5, 2009. After some discussion between about five users on the talk page, it was moved into project space and marked as an editing guideline one week later. This does not appear to conform to the usual process for elevating advice or essays to the status of editing guidelines. However, it has been used and basically accepted as the standard for articles on recent years since that time.

Should Recent years continue to be marked as an official guideline, relegated to essay status, or promoted to a policy?

Discusion of Wikipedia:Recent years as an editing guideline

• While I think more initial input would have been desirable, this has been used as an editing guideline for nearly eight years, so it should probably remain one regardless of how it got there int he first place, with tweaks as needed. Hopefully this discussion will attract more users to this area and consensus will be easier to determine in the future. vBeeblebrox (talk) 00:48, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
• There seems to be debate as to whether it should be considered more than a WikiProject essay. I think it should be a guideline, but I believe there would be pushback if it were made a guideline unless considered now to be an essay and promoted to guideline. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:56, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

It appears the tail wagged the dog on this one. Guidelines are supposed to be written to reflect best practices already in use, but in this case the guideline seems to have come first and dictated the practice. However, at this point it has been in place for long enough that it does seem to be the accepted guideline, and this discussion is drawing so little input that it looks like it will stay that way. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:13, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

• As per Beeblebrox. The guideline seems mostly sensible though and the improvements discussed in this RfC will help develop it further. Scribolt (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

General discussion of recent years guideline

Please leave any comments that do not fit in any of the above sections here.

• I have a general question about this because I'm not at all familiar with the area - why do we have guidelines for recent years, but not year articles generally? It seems that these guidelines should cover all years, but perhaps there's a good reason for limiting them to "recent" years. Sam Walton (talk) 22:04, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

  This is because events, deaths etc are often added as soon as they have happened. As such the guidelines for Recent Years need to be more strict than Years in general. In fact, the guidelines for WP:YEARS are often either vague or non-existent making them virtually useless for Recent Years. DerbyCountyinNZ ^{(Talk Contribs)} 23:18, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

  Given that WP:YEARS is a WikiProject, not a guideline, it strikes me that it might be useful to turn WP:RECENTYEARS into a guideline on year articles generally, with a stricter section on recent years if appropriate. Looking through the existing guideline it seems sensible enough to to apply at least most of it to all year articles. Sam Walton (talk) 23:22, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

  I'm not sure that extending WP:RY to cover WP:YEARS is within the scope of this discussion but the main difference which would make this problematic is that the older the event or death the less likely the probability that it will be covered in readily available online resources. Coverage of Deaths in particular is skewed by recentism which would mean that a sliding scale would be needed to make the criteria work for earlier years. DerbyCountyinNZ ^{(Talk Contribs)} 04:31, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

  @DerbyCountyinNZ: Well I'd support more relaxed restrictions for less recent years, or years before a certain date (2000? 1900?), but I'm still not convinced that most of the points, or at least the structure of most of the points (with more relaxed criteria), couldn't apply to all year articles. Sam Walton (talk) 01:28, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  Agreed, they could. But this possibility needs to be advised to as many associated projects as possible because the cynic in me expects considerable pushback. DerbyCountyinNZ ^{(Talk Contribs)} 01:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  I expect pushback on even recent years. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:18, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  Following up on Sam's point, I think it would be more helpful to have a general years guideline, and make the recent years guideline apply to the current year only (with perhaps some buffer room a la WP:BDP, so 2017 is covered by the policy starting December 2016 and 2016 is covered until the end of January 2017). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:33, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

  I think a general years guideline would be a good thing to develop, but I think the recent years guideline fills a niche. Most things included at 1180 would not satisfy any of the criteria we're discussing here, while if we used the same inclusion criteria for 1180 at 2006 we'd have a terabyte long page. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 01:44, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

• Also, I discussed this in a WikiProject talk page years ago but the discussion went nowhere, so I'm raising this up again: what about persons with no publicly-known years of birth? A person keeping their age a secret from the public is fairly common in Japan, as well as among lesser-known celebrities in the United States. If the person is notable and meets the inclusion criteria for Births and/or Deaths, should they still be listed in date articles? For reference, this is currently being done in the Chinese, Italian, and Japanese Wikipedias. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 16:43, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

  My initial reaction is no, this would fail WP:V. Or perhaps you could show me an example of it being done, as I could be convinced if I saw it in practice? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:15, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

  @King of Hearts: For example, take a look at ja:2月13日#誕生日. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:26, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

  I'm guessing you're talking about the 生年不明 - 川田まみ、I've歌手 entry at the bottom of that section? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 01:13, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

  @Nihonjoe: Sorry about the late reply, but yes. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 07:01, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

  Oh, that's fine - but I thought we were discussing year articles only, not dates? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:29, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, I raised it here to see if the topic will get more discussion, as I had previously raised it in the WikiProject talk page but the discussion went nowhere. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:43, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

• I don't know quite what to do here, the idea was to get more users to comment on these things so we can say we have a consnesus one way or the other, but hardly anyone is participating. I put here instead of at RY itself and listed it at WP:CENT. That's about all I can think of, it's possible people don't want to bother getting up to speed on on what RY even is and are therefore just not bothering. Hopefully if this is here for a while it will get some more interest. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:19, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

• Either I wasn't aware that this guideline existed, or I might have but forgotten it for a long time. Either a navigational template or a sidebox template is needed to help people surf to the guideline. What about Template:Guideline list and/or Template:Wikipedia policies and guidelines? At least I can use category pages to browse guidelines. --George Ho (talk) 08:04, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikiprojects and admins

Is it appropriate for a wikiproject member to post on a wikiproject's TP asking for admin involvement on a related article's TP? Considering the most likely admin to see the request will also be a member of that project, it doesn't seem completely above-board. Primergrey (talk) 03:14, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

While there is a risk that an WP:INVOLVED admin might see the note and take admin action, it's not a large one: Just because you are INVOLVED in a WikiProject doesn't mean you are INVOLVED in every article that is under the auspices of that project. I think we can trust admins to know when they are INVOLVED and abstain. For example, if I were an admin and I was INVOLVED in WP:WikiProject Biography, by your logic, I should never take any administrative action on any biographical article. That is simply incorrect. We don't need to add more rules for admins, the existing rules and procedures for handling violations is adequate. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:49, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Pretty much that, INVOLVED is the relevant policy, but without context this question can't really be answered. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:50, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

By my logic? I am familiar with INVOLVED, as you obviously are with involved (the word). I never asked the question that you appear to be answering. I'm simply concerned about a request for admin intervention on a project page instead of at AN. If for no other reason than the optics of it. Nothing to do with where admins can or cannot act. Thanks for the condescending reply, though. Primergrey (talk) 05:51, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Admins in the WikiProject are more likely to undeerstand the issues in volvedwith th at WikiProject. That may be a areason to ask on a WikiProject talk page, in sttead of AN. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:09, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

It is unlikely to be problematic if the request is neutrally worded... "Edit warring is occurring at Article X. Some admin intervention would be appreciated" is fine, "User XXX is ruining our projects articles, we need editors to revert the additions and kill the suggestions on the talk page, and an admin should block him" is (at best) not an appropriate posting. EdChem (talk) 09:16, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

It's definitely not appropriate to canvass involved admins from a wikiproject to act as enforcers of the wikiproject's preferences at articles they claim "scope" over. Without getting into details and scraping scabs off of mostly-healed wounds, I have to note that as recently as 2014, one wikiproject was using "pet" admins to run what amounted to its own private anti-WP:RM process, speedily mass-moving articles to comply with the wikiproject's preferences and against site-wide guidelines about such titles, and bypassing all "outsider" opportunity to have any input. This activity was eventually stopped, but only after a drawn-out RfC (which focused on the underlying title formatting question, not the admin behavior, so to this date the admin behavior actually remains unaddressed).

We don't need any more "we're just going to get our own private admin mercenary force to deal with you" behavior out of insular, WP:OWN-ish wikiprojects.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:05, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

On the other hand there are some weird cases of vandalism that are only visible to those familiar with the project. Trying to explain the backstory to someone else is a lot of effort. WP:GER for example had a guy (IP hopping) who edited bogus municipal mergers. In the end only a global lock on some IP ranges put a stop to it, but must admins would have not immediately identified the vandalism. Agathoclea (talk) 22:22, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree that there is a big difference between going to an admin that is escentally in your back pocket and going to an admin that is knowledgeable in the subject area making them more likely to notice subtle vandalism.--64.229.167.158 (talk) 15:17, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Time for a fake news policy?

See also: § Alternative facts

How does the becoming-endemic phenomenon of fake news affect Verifiability? There is the worrying trend to manipulate video to change what people say as evidenced by tonight's BBC Newsnight report. Further, mainstream media outlets—otherwise considered here as reliable sources—are starting to fall for it and report it as fact (if they didn't actually invent it...). Even the British government are concerned. Won't fake news cause problems when adding apparently verifiable information to BLPs in particular? But then perhaps Mrs. Cambridge's fictitious dog has just become a humorous aside in the annals of the press compared with the alleged fake news surrounding the US elections and the aftermath? Shouldn't we have something in the Policies warning about fake news and how to attempt to handle it? Just a thought — Iadmc♫^talk  00:09, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

This is related to the discussion in the above "Alternative facts" section, but to me a lot of this boils down to two points:

1. We are not a newspaper and there is no rush for us to include information in WP, particularly if it is "hot off the press". Many news stories are easier to write about several days after the fact when everyone's got their stories straight.
2. Reliable sources are not infallable nor should be presumed perfectly objective or unbiased. As editors we need to have the ability to judge based on the larger world picture (which may include observing the situation from non-reliable sources) to know where the actual "truth" might stand, so that we can incorporate what reliable sources say with any claims/attribution statements. If a fact sounds fishy from a RS and they do not explain how they back up that fact, we should probably treat it as contentious. --MASEM (t) 00:50, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@Masem: Ah! Thanks for the pointer upwards. That seems to be dealing with my question, more or less. Just to say, your comments chime with my own thoughts. That's how I would deal with all new "news" stories, actually: body swerve for a week or so then source, source, source... OTOH, I tend to avoid stuff like that and leave it to others to deal with. I'm more into classical music which might be affected by this only if, say John Adams were reported to having said/done something as his article is a WP:BLP — Iadmc♫^talk  18:41, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

I raised an issue about the quality of "George W. Bush" bio page at Talk:George W. Bush#Quality of the article. Most of the references are news articles, yet the page is tagged as a Good Article. How would the whole "fake news" issue affect the bio page and other pages that primarily use news articles? George Ho (talk) 22:04, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho:Your point about the lack of anything other than news articles (mostly) is a good one. This could indeed be a problem, IMO. also see my reply to SMcCandlish, below re changing WP:RS — Iadmc♫^talk  08:24, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Also, I have primarily used news articles for TV-related pages, like Cheers-related pages. I occasionally used books, which lack good references about BLPs, like Ted Danson, Shelley Long, and Kirstie Alley. --George Ho (talk) 08:29, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree this is a legit concern, but it probably only requires a clarification to WP:RS guideline. As I see it, there are two fake-news issues:

1. Sites that masquerade as news sites but are simply fake news in intent. This does not mean every word they publish is fake news, and some of the most successful/damaging of these sites have made a point of mostly publishing legit but unimportant material then making all their big stories be fake, as a way to lull suspicions.
2. Fake news stories spreading into mainstream media outlets.

The first issue is already dealt with by RS requiring that a source be from a reputable publisher as one of the criteria for it being considered reliable; any known fake-news site, or an unknown site that seems to have some real and some questionable news, is already excluded. Where people try to include them anyway, we have WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:V, and WP:FRINGE to fall back on, and usual processes of weeding out PoV-pushing attempts to warp our articles.

The second problem is more serious. We have an a long-standing operating presumption that major newspapers and TV news programs in Western democracies, other than those with an established reputation for sensationalism and nonsense, are reliable sources. This assumption now seems increasingly questionable, both because of regurgitation of fake news, and because of increasing and well-sourced indications that quite a number of them are "playing ball" with political powers. So, some kind of adjustment to WP:RS is probably in order, to remove the assumption that news outlets are reliable for any topic that is controversial, and to treat them as only middling-quality sources by default, with every publisher/publication evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and that evaluation subject to change over time.

This re-examination and shift of approach has probably been a long time coming, and has been needed even before the recent US election cycle. Fox News, for example, has long been known to have an extreme right-wing bias and to air falsehoods, while similar-level claims can also be made of various far-left publications. It's not just about news. Our default blind trust of "other encyclopedias" goes too far. For example, World Book Encyclopedia (at least in the late 1970s through mid-1980s – I have not examined every edition) suppressed a large amount of information about the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, and other communist countries, and what information it did have on them read as if it had been written by the CIA's propaganda specialists. The more we get [back] into an age of "truthiness", "post-truth", and "alternative facts" (never mind the "Net of a Million Lies" effect predicted by Vernor Vinge), the more WP has to tighten the constraints of what it considers reliable. Especially as the editorial pool shrinks, public use of WP increases, and consequently both the ability to get away with skewing its coverage and the propaganda value of doing so rise simultaneously.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:54, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish:Should we change WP:RS then? No activity there since 2013, so it's probably about time, IMO. Since my present account is pretty new (I had to create a new one because I lost my log in for the old one), I'm wary of doing anything... — Iadmc♫^talk  08:20, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe the whole "fake news" panic started out with... Well, if Donald Trump didn't start the panic about "fake news", who else did? George Ho (talk) 08:32, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I have a horrible feeling ME on en:Wikipedia... — Iadmc♫^talk  08:40, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I would think the community should discuss the nature of the problem here in VPPOL for a while, then WT:RS could host a more focused discussion on what RS needs to say about the matter; I certainly wouldn't go rush to make major changes to our most central content guideline. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:40, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Fair point... thanks! — Iadmc♫^talk  10:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of otherwise reliable sources incorporating fake info, sometimes WP is actually the source of that fake info. See for example the problem I've been fighting for nearly a decade at Talk:Cardboard box#Sir Malcolm Thornhill, where the fake info from a drive-by editor ended up in two books already. Dicklyon (talk) 21:11, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

If there is to be a fake news policy or guidance I think it should mainly concentrate on how to get rid of such stuff. I remember the problem I had some years ago where a textbook said something just plain wrong and this person was insistent it should be in an article. Unfortunately there was no reliable source saying it was false - why should they mention it? It was eventually removed with an RfC. I can see some more minor bits of fake news having the same problem where they are manifestly wrong but the only sites that say so are some blogs rather than another reliable source. Dmcq (talk) 12:29, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I'd rather see a fake-news policy than a fake news policy. Dicklyon (talk) 20:51, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Support adding the hyphen per WP:PRECISION. A fake policy concerning news is not what we're after... ;) — Iadmc♫^talk  22:21, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I totally understand what people are saying here, but I hope if there is a revision of WP policy, this will still allow articles such as Spaghetti-tree hoax which was incredibly funny. DrChrissy ^(talk) 21:02, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I think this is already covered in the policies such as WP:Reliable sources: "Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process." Unfortunately a lot of the Knights Templar who cite these policies don't actually read them. Editors often argue it's in the New York Times, and that's all that matters. That's not the policy.--Jack Upland (talk) 21:27, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

And that was an April Fool joke revealed the next day and is attested as such in multiple reliable sources. Our problem is deliberate obfuscation of the facts and then the innocent/not-so-innocent regurgitation of those falsehoods which then apparently have to be reported as facts in Wikipedia since they are reported as such in our usual RSs — Iadmc♫^talk  22:21, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

That's my first point above: WP:NOT#NEWS and WP:DEADLINE are being ignored to try to make WP up-to-the-second with the news, which is becoming more and more a problem. This has been slowly building up as an issue with en.wiki before (we had to create NEVENT to help stem the tide of current event articles) and this whole situation between fake news and sensationalist reporting feeds that cycle in a very bad way. We need to have something in place to tell editors that if a story of questionable merit appears in the news, particularly with BLP, give it a few days before including. --MASEM (t) 23:28, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is WP:NOTTRUTH. This leads to editors claiming that the truth doesn't matter, only the sources. There should be room to have an argument based on fact-checking, rather than just the consensus of sources.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:52, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

But there is also WP:NOTFALSE. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:03, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I don't think I've ever seen someone cite that, but I have seen WP:NOTTRUTH cited countless times by the Knights Templar of Wikipedia.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:39, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Fake news is by no means a new thing. See for example Hungry Beast#Pre-broadcast marketing and in its first version. The only best protection is proper research and investigation. Something which many of our "relialbe sources" now fail to do with ever growing churnalism. Aoziwe (talk) 13:09, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

• I mostly stay clear of "news" articles, too much confusion for my liking, so I have no large experience about this, but... I think Masem got the main points, I highlight that most recent events which are not obviously notable and immutable (exeptions would be a death - the fact, not the details -, the Super Bowl score, and so on) should be on hold for a short while; we are not the news, Wikinews is, maybe we should cooperate more?... Nabla (talk) 14:11, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
  • No, that could only make things worse. If anything, Wikinews has an extremely poor track record at properly contextualizing news. It is very vulnerable to fake news, way more than Wikipedia; it is not out problem, and most importantly it should not become our problem by entering into some kind of cooperation with them. We've decided years ago to reduce to virtually nil our collaboration with them, removing all links to Wikinews from the Main Page / Portal:Current events because of the many issues that affected and continue to affect Wikinews (here's one of the many discussions on this). And trying to get rid of this problem (which is properly handled in the vast majority of cases) by redirecting users to a site that badly fails to handle this specific problem would be irresponsible towards our readers. As for putting not obviously notable event on hold, I think this is covered by WP:NOTNEWS (point 2), but this is often subject to debate. Cenarium (talk) 15:01, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
    • Wouldn't moving the efforts from making news here - where we do get decent "news" articles, and updates - to making news there, improve the quality of Wikinews. I do not know shit about Wikinews, I never ever read or write there, but if we have two sites, from the same organising entity, one aimed at the big picture (WikiPedia) one aimed at news (WikiNews) why are we making the news here? If Wikinews is beyond redemption, then it should be closed and maybe we should assume that WP IS also the news. Otherwise the discussion about NEWS/NOTNEWS will keep on for(ever?) a long time. Nabla (talk) 00:01, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• I think a core change that does have to be re-assert or added to policy is in regards to any contemporary or ongoing controversy that with the current situation in the media (the rising amount of "fake news", and the lack of objective journalism) that editors should be extremely cautious about trying to keep articles up-to-date on any opinion or controversial elements in these types of topics. We generally can write a more holistic picture a few days/weeks/months/years after the event(s) when the dust has settled and there's better look-back as to what is a broad and more academic analysis rather than news-reporting angles that can be used to judge the situation. We can still write objectively about those controversial events, but we should be trying to avoid too much opinion while the event is still controversial, or trying to apply elements like UNDUE to enforce or eliminate viewpoints in a yet-determined situation. There is no deadline to get these opinions covered in the article, and most of the time is better to get the big picture - which takes time - to understand how best to present the views and opinions in an encyclopedic manner. That also gives us the ability to judge "fake news", "clickbait", "churnalism", op-eds posing as news stories without the op-ed banner, and other problems from the journalism side with a better historical view rather than trying to match the press minute-for-minute. This doesn't change anything about policy or guidelines, just that editors respect them more, though I do think explanation of these issues needs to be discussed in an appropriate guideline or an essay.--MASEM (t) 15:33, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Do we also need a policy on the documenting of fake news in articles like the Bowling Green massacre?--Jack Upland (talk) 00:59, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Hyphen in titles of articles on railways of a narrow gauge

Should articles with "Narrow gauge railways" and such in their titles include a hyphen as "Narrow-gauge railways"? And is there any tweak needed to the guidelines at WP:HYPHEN to be more helpful in deciding such things? Dicklyon (talk) 05:58, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Neutral background

Many articles were moved in late December and early January to include a hyphen, and then after about four weeks were disputed and moved back. Discussions at various places left the matter unresolved, and an RFC was recommended.

Affected articles include but are not limited to the ones in this template, which works the same with and without the hyphen due to the redirects:

Other pages moved in early January to include a hyphen, but not explicitly disputed or moved back, include Narrow-gauge railroads in the United States, Narrow-gauge railways in India, Narrow-gauge railways in China, Narrow-gauge railways in Canada, Narrow-gauge railways in former Spanish Morocco, Narrow-gauge railways in former French Morocco, Narrow-gauge railways in Oceania, Narrow-gauge railways in South America, Narrow-gauge railways in North America, Narrow-gauge railways in Asia, Narrow-gauge railways in Africa, and possibly others. Presumably if this RFC has a robust outcome it will apply to these as well.

@Bahnfrend, No such user, Bermicourt, SMcCandlish, Cinderella157, Tony1, Necrothesp, Mjroots, Corinne, Checkingfax, Scribolt, Mandruss, and Andy Dingley: Pinging participants of prior big discussion at Talk:Narrow_gauge_railways_in_Saxony in case any of them didn't see the notices. Dicklyon (talk) 17:48, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

The case for hyphenation in these titles

It is standard practice in English to help readers parse phrases involving compound modifiers before nouns by using hyphens to hold the compounds together. As WP:HYPHEN states, hyphens are used:
3. To link related terms in compound modifiers: [Specifically, compound attributives, which are modifiers of a noun that occur within the noun phrase. (See hyphenated compound modifiers.)] – Hyphens can help with ease of reading (face-to-face discussion, hard-boiled egg); where non-experts are part of the readership, a hyphen is particularly useful in long noun phrases, such as those in Wikipedia's scientific articles: gas-phase reaction dynamics. However, hyphens are never inserted into proper names in compounds (Middle Eastern cuisine, not Middle-Eastern cuisine).

The application to the compound "narrow gauge" when used before a noun is clear: the hyphen helps the reader, especially the general or naive reader unfamiliar with the phrase, to quickly parse "narrow-gauge railway", and not have to consider whether the intended meaning of "narrow gauge railway" might have been a "gauge railway" that is narrow. This is common courtesy to help the reader, and has no downside or negative impact on any reader. There is nothing special about titles that would suggest a different style from what is appropriate in the text.

Sources are mixed on hyphen usage, since it is common practice for writers to drop such hyphens when writing for an audience that they feel is so familiar with the term-of-art phrases that they don't need help to easily read them. But in the case of "narrow gauge", which is well known to rail fans but less so to the general public, usage in books is actually a strong majority in favor of hyphen usage. See n-gram stats from books: [3]. Even if it were only 50% used in sources, it would be wise to follow the advice of our style guidelines and most external style guides and dictionaries to make it easier for the general readership rather than the specialists.

There is no ENGVAR issue here. Using the n-grams link above, but modifying the language domain from English to British English and American English, it can be seen that while the relative frequency of railway versus railroad changes enormously, as expected, the relative frequency of hyphen stays in a strong majority in both variants.

Dictionaries specifically list the adjective form of "narrow gauge" as hyphenated: dictionaries, [4], [5], [6], [7], [8].

Within specialist literature, the hyphen is still sometimes used, and in literature for the general public it is sometimes omitted, but it is better to follow standard practice and guidance than to be that random, and it is much better to help the general reader than to try to mimic the specialist.

Note also that in company names, signs, headings, titles, and such that are Title Case or all caps, it is more common to omit hyphens. So the appearance of these terms unhyphenated but capitalized should not be taken as evidence of any preference one way or the other.

Note that WP:MOS, including WP:HYPHEN exists to set a style and prevent style disputes so we can all get back to work on non-trivia. It did not prevent a battle in this case, but I think it is clear enough and probably does not need any particular amendment in this area.

Examples of titles with hyphenated compounds used as adjectives

Most Wikipedia titles involving compounds such as narrow body, broad spectrum, standard definition, short range, high speed, low pressure, small cell, large scale, wide angle, and such do use the hyphen in a way exactly analogous to what is proposed for narrow gauge. Examples:

• Narrow-body aircraft
• Narrow-bandwidth television
• Narrow-body righteye flounder
• Broad-spectrum antibiotic
• Standard-definition television
• Standard-type battleship
• Short-term memory
• Short-circuit evaluation
• Short-range ballistic missile
• Short-time Fourier transform
• Short-title catalogue
• Short-chain acyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase deficiency
• High-speed rail
• High-definition video
• High-pressure area
• High-level programming language
• High-altitude nuclear explosion
• High-frequency trading
• Low-floor bus
• Low-carbohydrate diet
• Low-cost carrier
• Low-pressure area
• Low-budget film
• Low-level waste
• Low-energy house
• Low-carbon power
• Low-frequency oscillation
• Low-power broadcasting
• Low-angle shot
• Small-cell carcinoma
• Small-signal model
• Small-angle neutron scattering
• Chevrolet small-block engine
• Small-scale agriculture
• Large-signal model
• Large-format slide projector
• Large-scale structure
• Large-group awareness training
• Large-cell acanthoma
• Wide-angle lens
• Wide-body aircraft
• Wide-bandgap semiconductor
• Wide-gamut RGB color space
• Wide-leg jeans
• Wide-spectrum language

Please respond to this opening case in the discussion section below, not here. Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

The case for no hyphenation in these titles

The phrase “gauge railway” by itself is meaningless. In fact, the only other modifiers that I can think of other than narrow are broad/wide, standard, miniature, and “out-of-” (however, no argument about using hyphens for the last one). Therefore, the argument requiring hyphenation is pointless, and this attempt to enforce one particular POV should be dropped in favour of common usage, which seems to vary slightly from one side of the Atlantic to the other. (This point was made in an earlier discussion, but Dicklyon now seems to be walking it back.) The suggestion made by the nominator that the average reader needs the hyphen in “narrow-gauge” for comprehension is pure and simple condescension. So in a word:
Oppose. Useddenim (talk) 17:33, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@Bermicourt, Bahnfrend, and Mjroots: This RFC is ready for an opening statement by someone opposing the hyphens. Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Side Survey: The case for not really caring one way or the other / The case for editorial freedom

because I don't. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:58, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support Optimist on the run (talk) 09:28, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Andy Dingley (talk) 11:49, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Bermicourt. Both variants are widely used in the sources; however, there is a much stronger regional tendency in US sources to hyphenate. So we should allow editorial freedom to choose, using the same approach that is used for ENGVAR, and not force editors to adopt one or the other. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support - this is pedantry at the extreme. People need to focus on more important things - it isn't as if we have a shortage of those. - Sitush (talk) 00:29, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Note that these should not be counted as opposing the proposition of this RFC, as these editors (or most of them) have put the oppose !votes already in the survey below. Dicklyon (talk) 23:41, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Note: that is disingenuous and highly misleading; we do oppose the proposal because it would force us to adopt one of the two common variants used by the sources. But thanks for alerting me to vote below as I hadn't, despite your comment --Bermicourt (talk) 20:14, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying your position, and you're welcome for my alert. I don't know why Optimist thought it a good idea to add this side survey, and I was certainly not being disingenuous in trying to call attention to the confusion. Please AGF. Dicklyon (talk) 21:08, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is the one wrong result. The reader is helped by consistency. These will alll be used in lists and categories, wherre consistency is particularly important. DGG ( talk ) 00:33, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Although someone really needs to table an amendment to *policy* that states where MOS guidelines are disputed by local consensus, uninvested editors should back away. I would also support any MOS-update that states Railway article terminology has to comply with Thomas the Tank Engine. While I agree in theory with DGG above consistency in lists and categories can be important - lists and categories are not the primary function of an encyclopedia. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:26, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

"Uninvested"? If you think anyone who has no especial fondness for a particular topic is uninvested, you're mistaken. Everyone working on the encyclopedia is invested, even those who participate in discussions by announcing that they don't care about the outcome. Primergrey (talk) 14:34, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I think someone whose presence at a railway article is only there to enforce a general usage MOS rule which may not be appropriate given the specific circumstances is uninvested in railway articles yes. They might be invested in the MOS... But ultimately no one outside of railway article editors and their readers care about the hyphen usage on railway articles. The world is not going to end if narrow-gauge is hyphenated. It really does not matter. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:14, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

"and their readers" is the important part. Dicklyon (talk) 15:16, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Being invested in the encyclopedia means being invested in all articles therein. To dismiss an editor trying to uphold site-wide style guidelines as "uninvested" runs counter to WP's stated purpose as a generalist encyclopedia. Also, "the world is not going to end if narrow-gauge is hyphenated", if true, is an excellent reason to support hyphenation. Primergrey (talk) 17:13, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support allowing both variants. Disputes can be settled by local consensus, after an examination of sources related to the specific railway or station in question. Yes, we will have a few difficult cases where the sources are not clear. Despite this, I think we should avoid adopting a "one size fits all" rule on this... because, whichever "rule" we adopt, we will simply end up with endless arguments about how our "rule" is wrong. In other words, we will end up with more disputes if we adopt a "one size fits all" rule than we will by allowing both variants. Blueboar (talk) 15:18, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Both variants should be allowed. There is no extra "clarity" here - both clearly and unambiguously refer to something to do with a railway where the gauge is narrow(er) than some standard - that is undoubtedly why usage without hyphen exists in substantial numbers across the English speaking world, and it is well within standard written English grammar to drop unneeded hyphens. The claim of "consistency" is without merit as shown by the fact that we do not demand everyone write like everyone else (especially on something so wide-spread, and on an issue where insisting is so obviously narrow-minded and bizarrely inflexible.) We allow such minor leeway (and, indeed much larger leeway) for very good reasons too numerous and too embedded in our system of writing (although an article should be internally consistent). Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:00, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose inconsistency and ambiguity – no editor is being compelled or even asked to help, just to not interfere when things are moved toward compliance with the MOS, in favor of the interests of readers. Bermicourt started this mess by interfering after all articles had been made consistent, pretty much without objection except for his on Narrow-gauge railways in Saxony which he reverted back to hyphenless form (as he has a right to revert bold moves); so we went to discuss on the talk page there, and while that was not going in his favor he went and moved the rest of the articles about European countries, none of which had been objected to for a month. This is pure disruption, bad for the reader, bad for consistency. So now we're here, on advice of the closer there, to decide. So let's decide. Dicklyon (talk) 21:08, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Bulldozing opponents might be fun in real life but it is extremely destructive at Wikipedia which relies on volunteers who maintain and build article content. Dashes are not as important as collaboration. Johnuniq (talk) 23:32, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

    Are you in the wrong section? Nothing about dashes is being discussed here. Dicklyon (talk) 00:11, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. As this proposition is inherantly contrary to WP:Consistency, which is stated to be a policy document and thereby does not permit such latitude. Cinderella157 (talk) 08:05, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

No, it is not. There is actually little support to make it apply everywhere. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support allowing both per Blueboar. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:19, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose – all "editor freedom" does is cause trivial content disputes and long AN/I threads. Laurdecl ^talk 08:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Main RFC Survey

Please Support or Oppose including the hyphen in the titles.

• Support. The list above clearly shows how it's easier for non-experts to pick up the word group if there's a hyphen ... not to mention our own style guidance and that of the style authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Tony (talk) 09:10, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose There is a view espoused by a handful of hyper-active editors here that styleguides mandate all uses of a particular phrase and that any single deviation from this is some sort of thoughtcrime. That is nonsense: language is simply not that consistent. Nor does WP policy follow such a line, instead we have WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NEOLOGISM which state that WP should follow the practice in use, not mandate its own claims and force them on top of reality.

There is a case for consistency with names that are created on WP. So I have no problem with "Narrow-gauge railroads in the US", nor even "Narrow gauge railroads in the US" (I really don't care what our "default styleguide in the absence of any external influence" says. But when the name is based on an external source, those sources should be followed, not the styleguide.

Why do external names matter for the hyphenation of narrow-/ gauge? After all, there are very few of them (although the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways didn't hyphenate). Because this isn't just a question of hyphenating narrow-gauge, it's also the question of capitalising "Line" in "Heart of Wales Line". The two naming issues should have been raised in the same RfC. But whilst the narrow-gauge one is broadly linguistic and hardly appears in sourced proper names, the capitalisation issue certainly does. Yet if the easier narrow-gauge issue can be won, that then establishes a "precedent" for WP naming, including the case issue - when in fact, WP does not follow WP:PRECEDENT in such cases. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:04, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Every single time there is a hyphen/en-dash/em-dash argument is comes down to a small group trying to impose a Victorian image of linguistic correctness on everyone else. There is literally no difference in reading comprehension between the characters. It annoys the picayune and the obsessive but is ignored by the rest, if such differences are even perceived at all. The MOS and external style guides are not weapons to hammer other editors with, especially when worrying about near-imperceptible differences such as this. Even if the three versions of a dash or no dash at all are randomly mixed between articles, it absolutely won't matter except to a handful of Emersonian hobgoblins and certainly won't damage the encyclopedia. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:06, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support narrow hyphen. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 15:15, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support with obvious cavaets If the name is not proper, eg "Narrow-gauge railroads in the US", the hyphenated form seems correct and easier to read particularly if more modifiers are added "the longest narrow guage railroad..." is awkward but "the longest narrow-guage railroad" is clear). But if it is a proper name like "North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways" above, we should not force that style onto the name, and leave it as is, and editors need to take care in page moves to not force this onto the proper name. --MASEM (t) 15:25, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support – The hyphen is necessary according to the existing MOS:HYPHEN, and is the standard usage. Dicklyon's survey of reliable sources makes this very clear. RGloucester — ☎ 15:52, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as completely unnecessary. (See above for more.) Useddenim (talk) 17:36, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Grammatical clarity is a Good Thing in an encyclopedia, full stop. Most of the rest is generalized anti-MoS ideology and personal vendettas, which we could do with a lot less of. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:03, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support Miniapolis 19:21, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Hyphen is more grammatically and phonetically correct, it is necessary to convey the meaning of the title correctly. Χρυσάνθη Λυκούση 2001 (talk) 21:25, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support as normal English usage across national varieties, and an obvious boon to clarity. Nothing is gained for anyone by dropping the hyphenation. This is not TrainspotterPedia, and WP is not written in a quirky shorthand style for specialists and fans to use with other specialists and fans (who have no trouble understanding the conventional style with the hyphen, just a subjective preference against it in their own materials). This same basic issue comes up across many topics, and it all comes down to the same answer: we have our own style guide for a reason, just like every other professionally published, multi-writer publication. People will unproductively fight about style trivia indefinitely if not given a house style to follow. WP follows the WP style, which is derived from the most influential off-WP style guides. We depart from our own manual when reliable sources (including general-audience ones, not just specialized ones) are with remarkable consistency doing something different from what our style guide does, for a particular case or type of case. (You'll find this exceptions rule in various wording at WP:MOS, MOS:CAPS, MOS:TM, WP:COMMONNAME, etc.) The sources show no consistency in writing about railways, so that's the end of it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:06, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose See my arguments at Talk:Narrow_gauge_railways_in_Saxony. Bahnfrend (talk) 11:35, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose being forced to adopt a variant with a strong regional US following, when the rest of the world is neutral. Give editors the freedom to decide and let's not force an "either/or" that is not reflected in the sources. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:58, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support. The proposal seems very reasonable, is already consistent with established conventions, and I am unimpressed by the case against using the hyphen. Obviously in cases where "Narrow Gauge" is part of a proper name, we should use the WP:COMMONNAME. But the affected articles seem limited in scope to those where the title of the article is a descriptive title. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:46, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support - I agree with Sławomir Biały. I also find Dicklyon's statement above, which is not only written clearly and in a neutral tone but also is backed up with specific information, to be persuasive. To me, the most persuasive piece of information is that many Wikipedia articles use the hyphen in compound adjective modifiers. While I personally don't see the need for a hyphen in "narrow gauge", I do see some value to the encyclopedia in consistency of style, especially in article titles.  – Corinne (talk) 20:25, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support hyphenation for the benefit of readers. Standard English practice "on both sides of the Atlantic" as Tony notes and sources confirm, in spite of claims by Bermicourt that this is "a variant with a strong regional US following". (as nom) By the way, I just finished writing a book published by Cambridge University Press; their style guide differs from WP's in places related to things like heading case, quotation style, and other things, but on hyphens it's pretty typical of those we follow, including "Compound adjectives will generally be hyphenated if they precede the noun: short-term effects ...". Dicklyon (talk) 00:36, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support hyphenation. There is clearly no evidence that the un-hyphenated form is more prevalent. The hyphenated form is slightly less ambiguous and for a non-English speaking reader, it may possibly prevent a small degree of confusion in the future. Where possible, article names should be consistent in construction. The oppose arguments don't really identify any real benefits to the un-hyphenated form. Therefore, we should choose a standard construction and that construction should be with hyphenation (with the caveat that exceptions relating to proper names can exist as per Masem but the default position should be hyphenation). Scribolt (talk) 07:29, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support hyphenation. It is standard English to hyphenate in this way when the term is used as an adjective, which it clearly is. This is not an ENGVAR issue (I'm British, incidentally). -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:14, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support hyphenation per consistency and standard English practice. On the meta-issue: I don't really understand the substance of opposing arguments if there is one, apart from "we don't like it". If there are editors that exhibit "pedantry at the extreme" (call them "gnomes" or "MoS warriors" at will), why don't just let them if you really don't care one way or another? I will readily grant that enforcing MOS-conformance and consistency is not a high-priority task, but everyone freely chooses what to edit on a wiki. No such user (talk) 11:49, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support as concerned as I may be about being labelled a "hobgoblin", an "obsessive", or a Quixotic opponent of "thoughtcrime", I must cast my lot with hyphenation and its added clarity, particularly for some non-native readers of English. Primergrey (talk) 15:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose the proposal to remove editorial freedom and force editors to adopt only one two common variants; the one which is only predominant in US sources. It's not a grammatical issue, it's a sources issue. Please note, I'm happy for editors to use the hyphenated version if they choose, please give other editors the same freedom to use the very common unhyphenated version. Note also that the glossary published by the International Union of Railways to which most of the world subscribes, uses the unhyphenated version. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC) (Bermicourt already opposed above on 5 Feb)
• Oppose One-size-fits-all does not work for socks or collaborative projects. Wikipedia needs volunteers who do good work more than it needs MOS enthusiasts who care about dashes but not the articles concerned. Johnuniq (talk) 23:26, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support – The general English pattern of using a hyphen to make a compound work as a single adjective is appropriate here, especially seeing that this is the way it is most commonly done in books (per the n-grams), and in light of the linked dictionaries that list the adjective form as narrow-gauge and give examples of it hyphenated. Also, per our house style described in detail at MOS:DASH. {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 07:28, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support. While there may not be a clear case for improving clarity in every case, there are certainly cases where clarity is improved (eg British narrow gauge slate railways, where a consensus was recently reached for hyphenation and clarity was a significant issues with respect to this particular title). There is some value in consistent usage across the main space for titles (WP:CONSISTENCY) referring to rail gauges and within content: that is, that narrow-gauge is adopted throughout, and not just where it is appropriate for clarity. References to narrow gauge within an article that uses narrow-gauge as part of the title (for reasons of clarity) will inherently lead to inconsistency within an article that can most effectively be dealt with by standardising on the hyphenated form across articles. I note that WP:Consistency is identified as a policy document. This is the basis for my support. I see no strength to assertions of WP:ENGVAR and WP:RETAIN. This is ultimately a matter of clarity and then of WP:CONSISTENCY - if it is needed in some cases for clarity it should then be done consistently. The converse of consistently not using the hyphenated form would lead to a degradation of clarity in some cases. This is a proposition that is less acceptable than the alternative. I also note the article title Narrow-gauge railway was moved to the hyphenated form on 8 Feb 2015 by User:Anthony Appleyard. It is difficult to argue against hyphenation when the title of the lead article is hyphenated. Cinderella157 (talk) 08:00, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose It is enough to say, clarity is not improved - the contra claim, that maybe sometimes it might be improved (which is actually entirely doubtful) is a 'tail-wag-the-dog argument'. Cinderella links to a discussion that actually admitted no-one is actually confused. In standard English language grammar, dropping the hyphen happens all the time. Here, for these words, we know for a fact, that dropping the hyphen happens all the time. The "consistency" argument is just as absurd. It is stated above that there will be articles where we can't put the hyphen in the title. So, the consistency argument winds-up being 'I insist you use it everywhere (accept when I do not) because there is no real reason for me to force other editors to do this.' No, editor autonomy is a billion times more important then the silly, useless, hyphen, here .Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:25, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support: There's a good case that there's a (tiny!) improvement in readability, that our existing Manual of Style rules promote hyphenation for readability, and that on balance, sources hyphenate more often than not. Many of the opposing arguments can be summarized as "it doesn't matter", and advocate flexibility over strict adherence to the pattern. That seems an odd argument to me: flexibility and tolerance are compatible with supporting hyphenation: all that needs to happen is for those who prefer hyphenation to avoid browbeating users who happen to add unhyphenated versions of the phrase. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 22:39, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
• Opppose as restricting editorial freedom into a straightjacket. If we were actually getting paid to edit or if we had professional proofreaders who "finished" a page and then it never needed revision afterwards, we could induldge in this sort of MOS-minutiae. We aren't, so expecting it beyond the page is just pedantry. Go work on content. Ealdgyth - Talk 11:50, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. The benefit to our readers, if any, is too minor for this level of control to be worth it. Local consensus on these article titles is fine; inconsistency between article titles is also not that big a deal. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:22, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

The AT policy page has consistency as one of the five characteristics of good article titles. Primergrey (talk) 20:15, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

It also says "These should be seen as goals, not as rules", and makes it clear that the rules on article titles are for the benefit of readers. If I thought that readers would suffer in any way (by being unable to find the right article, or by being confused as to the topic of an article, for example) I'd agree we need to enforce a rule here. WP:COMMONNAME, which is the next paragraph in AT, says editors should reach a consensus, and includes "usage in the sources used as references for the article" as one of the inputs to that consensus. To me, this all means we don't have to have hyphens in these article names. If they already had hyphens we should leave them in; if they don't, leave them out until there's a consensus among editors working on the article that they should be changed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:06, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. The correct name should be used in all cases, and on the right hand side of the Atlantic that is without a hyphen in the majority of cases, and on the other side neither seems to be primary. WP:COMMONNAME is a policy, the manual of style is a guideline (and it should be a minor one at that). Thryduulf (talk) 15:18, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
  • This nationalistic assertion has been thoroughly debunked, with reliable (British) sources, repeatedly and in detail. Start here, at item #5. (Well, start first with the material at the top of the RfC that you apparently skipped.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:11, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support. This is already clearly in the MOS. I respect local consensus at an article or wikiproject to allow for variance from MOS, but I haven't heard a convincing argument on the oppose side. Sources seem to favour the hyphen. It's clearer and easier to read with the hyphen. Reidgreg (talk) 22:59, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support hyphenation, which makes an otherwise ambiguous term unambiguous. There is no such thing as "narrow railway" nor "gauge railway", so "narrow-gauge railway" is the proper way to go. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 15:11, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support hyphenation – there is absolutely no policy based reason to defy the MOS because of personal preference and it is absolutely not a good application of IAR. I also note that some of the opposers have cast their !votes twice to create an impression that this is somehow contentious. Laurdecl ^talk 03:13, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The MOS is not policy and the policy-based reason to "defy" MOS is in the MOS itself: ... it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. The MOS itself is contentious, as the 190-page archive of its talk page alone shows, so no false impression need be created. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 04:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support—with the common sense recommendation that proper names be exempt. Imzadi 1979 → 19:45, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• I don't really understand Andy Dingley's long opposing rant after he stated that he doesn't really care. In particular, I tried to be clear that hyphens are usually not used in proper names, so there should be no worry on North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways if it's the proper name of the subject of the article, and if it's not then it would be correct to fix the case, too. Dicklyon (talk) 17:38, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

  And that's the problem. You don't understand anything more than a simplistic one-rule-fits-all styleguide. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:09, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

  User:Andy Dingley, your posts are moving from low- to high-level irritability. It would be more productive if you were less personal. Tony (talk) 04:42, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

  Yes Tony, threatening people with Arbcom for disagreeing with them does tend to have that effect. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:26, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

  Andy, ignore it. You do good work on WP. You deserve to react calmly if the waters are ruffled. Tony (talk) 11:52, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

  I have no trouble at all parsing what Dicklyon is saying, which clearly indicates understanding of proper names and that a style-guide rule about hyphenation would not apply to one. It appears to me that the failure to understand or to be flexible is coming from the opposite direction, from individuals so used to and so personally invested in insider writing about the topic than they are unable to understand (or, much more likely, unwilling to concede) that they cannot force everyone else to write about trains the way a trainspotter would when writing for other trainspotters.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:50, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

  Well, it would make life a lot easier if you, Dicklyon and similar were simply banished from any discussions regarding MOS. Perhaps there are already restrictions - I don't know because every time I see such names at the Pump, ANI etc, I've tended to switch off after a few minutes of reading. - Sitush (talk) 00:35, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

  Thank you for lending credence to my comment about generalized anti-MoS ideology and personal vendettas. Your comment is not constructive. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:59, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

• I'd just like to chime in here, as I do every time I see an argument about small horizontal lines, to point out that this is a ridiculous, pointless dispute that matters only to the people involved. I would suggest you host any further discussion in the walled garden where the illusion that any of this matters is maintained and don't let the rest of us know what you decide. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:53, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

  matters only to the people involved - I would suggest that people generally don't get involved in things that don't matter to them, so you could say that about any issue, making it unremarkable.
  I'll also note that this is not about hyphen-vs-endash, nor about spaced-endash-vs-unspaced-endash, which could be somewhat more easily dismissed as trivial pedantry. It's about clearly identifying an adjectival phrase as such for readers who are not familiar with the term "narrow gauge". Thus, argument about small horizontal lines appears to miss the point in a knee-jerk negative reaction to a legitimate MoS issue. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:29, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

  Agreed. However, Beeblebrox raises a valid point, in that these disputes are about trivia yet become disruptive when pursued, and seem to come up again and again. The typical pattern is that an editor doing "gnome" cleanup work applying our naming conventions, style guidelines, and title policy will occasionally run into a faction who have a WP:GREATWRONGS / WP:TRUTH / WP:SOAPBOX position on one of these points of trivia, grounded in nothing but subjective preferences based on what deeply steeped insiders in the topic do when writing to other insiders in insider publications, and without regard for the needs or expectations of people unfamiliar with the topic. This camp will then tendentiously fight against guideline and policy compliance at WP:RM, one article at a time, for weeks, months, even years in hope of "winning" through attrition.

  That behavior pattern is obviously forum shopping, but RM has historically being easily system-gamed this way because of its lack of searchable archives and the difficulty of digging up previous related discussions as precedent. Last month, I raised this issue at WT:RM, and there is now a new search feature at the top of that page that should help to curtail this pattern of process abuse. However, until the administrative wiki-culture at RM shifts more firmly to shut down re-shopping the same trivial anti-guideline, anti-policy position over and over, the effective way to deal with it remains the WP:RFC process.

  The more RfCs that close in favor of following the guidelines and policies, and against special pleading and anti-consensus campaigning on a topical basis, the fewer such incidents will arise. These disputes consistently go in the direction of "just follow WP's own instructions on the matter unless the sources in the aggregate overwhelmingly prefer a variance" (since this is an actual rule found throughout MoS and at WP:COMMONNAME), and they go that way whether dragged out over 30 RMs or settled in an RfC. It costs a lot less editorial time to RfC it, and sets consensus-determination precedent that is easier to find and more persuasive.

  It's also proven more effective to RfC these matters at VPPOL rather than at WT:MOS, because on multiple occasions the result of RfCs at MoS have been ignored by those who didn't get their way and the issue has been re-shopped in an "anti-RfC" to try to overturn it here at VPPOL (ironically, the "walled garden" reasoning Beeblebox suggests should keep MoS disputes at MoS tends to have the opposite effect). So, just cut out all the middle-man processes and do the one that matters most, for any titles/style dispute that gets entrenched and affects more than a trivial number of articles, if a multi-page RM fails to resolve the issue (or it is not limited to title disputes).
   — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:50, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

• The opposition on this is grounded in two obvious fallacies: 1) that there is no comprehensibility difference, and 2) that the sources don't agree with the hyphenation. Both of these have been shown to be faulty. First, only someone already deeply familiar with the topic knows that a railway term of art is "narrow-gauge" (or "narrow gauge" as a noun phrase rather than a compound adjective: "this is a narrow-gauge railway" versus "this railway has a narrow gauge", a distinction most people learn in elementary schools or in their early ESL classes), but that "gauge railway" is not a railway term of art. The topic has many "foo railway", "foo railroad", and "foo rail" terms of art ("slate railway", "commuter railroad", "double-headed rail" etc., etc., etc.), so there is nothing obvious or intuitive about how "narrow", "gauge" and "railway" relate to each other in such a construction, except to experts. The very purpose of hyphenation of compound adjectives is to clearly link two words that form a single modifier, as distinct from independent modifiers (an "ugly brown dog" and an "ugly-brown dog" are not the same thing; I might have a magnificent, title-winning dog that someone feels is of an ugly-brown color, while if the dog itself were ugly, it wouldn't win conformance championships). Second, it's already been amply demonstrated that a) the sources in the aggregate do not prefer to drop the hyphenation, only specialist materials do so, and b) even those do not do it consistently.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:06, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

  The fact that the ambiguity and confusion are real is easy to see with a web search for "a gauge railway". Even our article on Rapla exhibits this problem (I just now tagged it for clarification). You see it at Getty Images, this illiterate blog, this funny page, and some that just fail to copy the gauge template contents when they mine wikipedia. Even some conference publications and articles. Same for "the gauge railway", like in "The width of the gauge railway is 760 mm" and "Additionally, the gauge railway line will feature". These are probably all mistakes, but they indicate that this kind of unfamiliar construct is not the easiest thing for editors and writers to understand and get right. The hyphen can only help. Dicklyon (talk) 00:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

There is no ambiguity and no confusion here. All of the links you have posted are very obviously nothing more than careless proofreading or editing errors, pure and simple. To say, as you do, that such obvious careless errors demonstrate confusion is like saying that the spelling of the word "Michael" is unclear and ambiguous because a lot of people misspell it as "Micheal". In other words, it is a grasping at straws, nonsense argument, which wrongly and disrespectfully treats Wikipedia readers as a mob of fools. Bahnfrend (talk) 11:33, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

If any editor took my remarks as treating them as fools, or otherwise disrespectfully, I sincerely apologize. My remarks were about the ambiguity in parsing unfamiliar terms, and pointing out errors that might have been caused by that ambiguity as seen by unfamiliar writers or editors, and conjecturing that that evidence supports the interpretation that there is real ambiguity there for those unfamiliar with the concept, while acknowledging that many of those are simple errors of transcription or something. It's OK with me if you disagree; it won't make me think less of you. But the ad hominem might. Dicklyon (talk) 17:31, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

• @SMcCandlish The only fallacy is that "arguments against enforced hyphenation are 'obvious fallacies'". First, the idea that you have to be "deeply familiar" railways to understand the term is an insult to the commonsense of the majority who don't need a grammar lesson to work it out. Second, the sources favour neither variant (we agree to that extent) except in North America, thus there is an element of WP:ENGVAR to this which simply reinforces the Wiki principle of leaving editors to decide for themselves as they had been doing happily for years, until this over-zealous, pro-hyphen crusade came along. Bermicourt (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Can't say I care that much either way, but as regards having to be deeply familiar and a specialist etc, I think it would have been sensible to ease off on the rhetoric and not post such thoughts until checked against a well-known not-that-specialist series of publications aimed at those who have not yet had the benefit of much schooling. If you Google "Thomas the Tank Engine narrow(-)gauge" it will be found that Thomas has "Narrow Gauge" Friends, except in WP where his friends are "narrow-gauge". Just saying....Rjccumbria (talk) 18:44, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Many of the Thomas books and other books by Awdry [9] [10] [11] [12] use "narrow-gauge engine", "narrow-gauge friends", "narrow-gauge railways" and "narrow-gauge rails" with the hyphen, but omit it when capitalizing as "Narrow Gauge". Pretty standard, and reported with links in the previous big RM discussion. Except this one gets mixed up and even uses the hyphen in capped "Narrow-Gauge Engine". Dicklyon (talk) 18:49, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

The Thomas books were first published between 1945 and 1972, and therefore cannot be described as a useful guide to present usage of hyphenation. Bahnfrend (talk) 04:09, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. It's hard to tell which are the ones written since 1983 by his son Christopher, which modern editions might have been re-edited, etc. Dicklyon (talk) 04:39, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

In any case (apologies for having taken a break from this, and for obviously failing to be adequately clear first time round what the point I thought I was making was), the point I thought I was making was not that "TtTE avoids hyphenation, so should we" (give me some credit, chaps!) , but that some of the rhetoric was OTT counter-productive shooting from the hip. Far from the un-hyphenated form being some arcane perversion known only to specialists, it is one potentially known to any child whose reading age stretches to Thomas the Tank Engine (mind you, they could probably also tell the difference between a diplodocus and an apatosaurus better than most grown-ups). I suppose we should be grateful that (as far as I am aware) we have yet to be told that hyphens are a mandatory requirement under health and safety legislation.

Do I see from the above that people who learned punctuation in the third quarter of the twentieth century will not have valid opinions on best practice? That could be just the excuse I need to slip away from this...Rjccumbria (talk) 10:12, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Whether sources from that era reflect current usage is orthogonal to what anyone's personal opinion is. Regardless, a) it's clear that the materials you pointed to mostly do hyphenate except in proper names (which is a common but not universal alteration), and b) waht writers of children's books do wouldn't tell us much about how to write encyclopedic prose; we learn that from academic versus casual style guides, and from what high-quality but general-audience sources do, and the answer is "hyphenate compound adjectives, either uniformly or possibly with the exception to not do so when there is no possibility of confusion" (an exception which does not apply here; Dicklyon already pointed to numerous cases of things like "the gauge railway" and "a gauge railway" in professionally edited material, where writers had mistakenly parsed "narrow gauge railway" as "a gauge railway that is narrow".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:36, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Bermicourt, your ENGVAR theory is completely refuted by stats from British English books. If there's a small difference in the proportions, it's likely attributable to the higher proportion of rail-specialized publications in the UK compared to the US. But it's still a good super-majority hyphenated there. Dicklyon (talk) 18:49, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

But you are uninterested in external sources and consider only the hyphenation styleguide to have any effect. You've just moved (undiscussed, naturally) dual mass flywheel to the hyphenated form, despite the unhyphenated form being universal in the drivetrain industry.[13][14]

You come here, presenting yourself as supporting the use of sources for one case (narrow gauge railways) when there is very little difference of opinion over that particular naming question, yet when there are other issues (such as capitalising "Line") that are contested, your behaviour is to ignore all sources, provided that you can find even one,[15] no matter how non-RS or poorly copyedited that coincides with your prejudical view to enforce the styleguide regardless. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:07, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

How many times do we have to go over this, Andy? I think I've covered this with you at least half a dozen times already, on three or four different pages now. "[I]n the drivetrain industry" = in specialized sources written by specialists to other specialists. WP is written for a general audience, not a specialized one. What do general-audience, mainstream publications prefer, and what to the style guides they follow (and on which MoS is based) advise, for such constructions? Hyphenation of the compound adjective. Only someone steeped in drivetrain lore has any idea whether the unhyphenated "dual mass flywheel" means a "mass flywheel" of a dual-construction nature (a "dual, mass flywheel"), or flywheel of a "dual-mass" sort (a "dual-mass flywheel"). Specialized publications sometimes drop hyphenation, commas, and other clarifiers because they are certain that their narrow, focused readership all already know the answer and have internalized this terminology in great detail. Do you really think we haven't already been through this same argument many times with regard to medical terms, legal terms, computer science terms, etc., etc., with the same result? Do you really think railroads are somehow raising a new issue here? They most definitely are not. This is time-sucking rehash of perennial "my topic is somehow a special snowflake" tedium.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:25, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Unless you three are now so close that you're claiming to speak for each other, I have little interest in what you've said there and am still waiting for Dicklyon's explanation of his moves.

Yes, there is an awful lot of ICANTHEARYOU: Dicklyon is dragged to discussions where he puts forward a reasonable case that relevant eternal sources should be taken into consideration; but then the way he acts, by continuing to make undiscussed page moves against such sources, is at odds with this. I make no excuse for seeing that the naming of an obscure drivetrain component should be taken from the drivetrain industry, the one place it's discussed authoritatively. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:27, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I do support the use of sources (that's where all info in WP comes from, and informs us about style, too), but I'm not an advocate of "follow the sources", a discreditted anti-MOS campaign from Pmanderson of years past. Where sources are mixed, as S has pointed out, we follow the MOS. In the case of the dual-mass flywheel, I'm seeing 6 of the first 10 book hits with hyphens, but that's not the reason I moved it. I moved it because it was unclear without the hyphen (except to the those in drivetrain business, granted). Dicklyon (talk) 15:51, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I held off on tuned mass damper, because I could not clearly determine which of the two meanings was intended, or whether both work fine. Books sometimes use hyphen, but not often enough to convince me that the small minority with hyphens are correct. So I left it, even though sources are a little bit mixed and I think the hyphen would probably signal the intended meaning better in this case. Dicklyon (talk) 16:05, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Bermicourt, please do not engage in circular reassertion of points that have already been refuted; it's just a frustrating waste of everyone's time. Dicklyon provided ample evidence already of real-world confusion that "a gauge railway" is a real term. This is incontrovertible proof from multiple publishers that people are confused on the matter (even professional editors and writers). Second, "the sources favour neither variant" is precisely the situation in which "just do what MoS says and move on" always applies automatically. This kind of scenario (and the habit of people to argue incessantly that their option is the One True Way) is why MoS exists at all. Only in the opposite situation, when the RS are consistently in favor of one particular option and it differs from MoS's default, do we not do the MoS default. This is also the WP:COMMONNAME policy, BTW, so you can stow any "just a guideline" handwaving: "prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources". Third, a slight alleged regional preference for one variant over another has nothing to do with WP:ENGVAR. Please actually go read ENGVAR. It's about norms of standardized English usage that have "strong national ties"; a slight leaning in one direction or another in dialects that each demonstrate both approaches, in practice and in style guides, is neither a dialectal norm nor a strong national tie, but exactly the opposite of both. But as Dicklyon notes, your nationalist assumption is false anyway, and the hyphenation is found aplenty in British materials, too. It's just not preferred in the trainspotter publications you are cherry picking to try to "win". I also have to point out that you can't denigrate the MoS and those who seek compliance with its MOS:HYPHEN provisions, out of one side of your mouth, while crying for the overextension of the MOS:ENGVAR part of it to suit you whims, out of the other. That's like being an atheism activist most of the time, but insisting on your devout Catholicism on Sunday when you hope a desperate prayer will be answered.

This is very simple: If everyone understands the form with the hyphen (even if some, due to familiarity with the term find the hyphen unnecessary for their own, personal, individual comprehension), but some people may not understand without the hyphen (even if you believe that number is small or you think they're ignorant), then the obvious answer is to use the hyphen, since it costs nothing and helps some readers, and helping ignorant readers become better-educated readers is WP's primary raison d'etre. That's all there is to it, and it's how encyclopedic writers approach every such question, from whether to break up a long sentence, to which word order to use, to whether an illustration of something may be needed.
PS: I'm going to laugh very hard if you make some kind of "inefficiency and bother" pseudo-argument about hyphens, after the amount of editorial time you have wasted fighting in vain over this trivia, and since a hyphen and a space take up the same room and require the same number of keystrokes.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:25, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

• Often, a 2-part compound word is written without a hyphen when alone, but as part of a longer compound it has a hyphen to show clearer what component of the total compound belongs closest to what. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:27, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
  • That's generally the distinction between the noun and adjective forms, respectively. This RfC is only about adjectival use (i.e., use as modifier of a noun). No one is proposing anything like hyphenating "narrow gauge" in a construction like "The railway has a narrow gauge".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:17, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Removal of POV tags

The current policy (Template:POV) is that a tag can be removed when a dispute is "dormant". This is problematic in at least two cases: (1) when the issue has been noted by several people episodically over a long time, but no one has fixed the article, (2) when editors who support the POV of the article refuse to engage in discussion and simply wait it out, rendering the dispute "dormant" after some lapse of time. On the other hand, case 2 creates a perverse incentive for challengers to keep arguing the point indefinitely to stop the discussion becoming "dormant".--Jack Upland (talk) 20:59, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

You have mis-identified the problem. The problem is editors who care but don't take effective steps to deal with it. In the first case, if none of the alleged supporters of the POV claim lift a finger to fix it, then the claim is dubious. The tag can be removed and any editor who just fights to restore it is better served by editing the article instead of fighting to preserve the tag. In the second case, if there really are editors who are pusing a POV by refusing to engage in discussion, then the editors who care need to use effective WP:DR to put more pressure on the silent holdouts to participate, and that failing the editors who care need to make an effective appeal to ANI or AE. If the holdtouts still won't reply to reasonable efforts at RS based discussion but edit war over the tag or status quo, they'll be blocked. So I don't see the problem. What article are we talking about anyway? Is it already under discretionary sanctions from the arbs? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:07, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

It wasn't a specific article. I've just noticed it in a number of articles. Ideally, editors should fix the problems they identify, but this is a voluntary project, and some of the problems are intractable. My question is: if there is a problem, why would dormancy fix it? No one would say that a lack of references is going to be fixed by a lack of discussion.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:24, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Many people who are - I mean, of course - 100% neutral freak out when articles are biased, and I mean obviously seriously any moron can tell biased. So they tag these articles POV for purposes of "warning the reader". Every single one of these editors are absolutely correct, obviously. ........... OK, you get the point hopefully. No one questions lack of sources because you look at the article are there aren't any sources. Regrettably to determine the existence of POV you have to read and think and can still reasonably disagree. I hear what you're saying, but it all stems from "if there's a problem".... IF there's a problem. Says who? Some drive by tagger wanting to "warn the reader"? And how do you tell the honest drive bys from the partisan? So in my view, we should nuke dormant tags and expect anyone who cares to invest energy in BRD to fix the problems. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:33, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

To give you a counterexample, History of North Korea was tagged since 2011 (not by me). Several editors had made criticism of its lack of neutrality over the years, but the tag remained until I removed it last year after putting hours of work into the article. No "drive-by nuker" removed the tag in the interim. But according to the policy one could have done because there were long periods of "dormancy". In fact, there was no dispute at all, because no one defended the state of the article. But why would any sensible person remove the tag in that situation? Who knows. But that is what the policy suggests should happen.--Jack Upland (talk) 21:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

A sensible person reads and thinks critically, and would recognize that there were problems, so even though the rules would allow tag removal, the sensible person you describe would leave it alone if they didn't have time or ability to fix the problems. A POV pusher who likes the status quo might remove it to push their POV. Such is life at Wikipedia. I have a lot of climate related pages on my watchlist. In that subject area we deal with this all the time. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:18, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

So why have a policy that encourages editors to do something that is not sensible? The policy should say: "In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant, and no outstanding issue can be identified".--Jack Upland (talk) 23:01, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

First, you're reading in "encouraged". It doesn't say that. What it does say is "In the absence of such a discussion, or where it remains unclear what the NPOV violation is, the tag may be removed by any editor." operative word "may". Not Should nor encouraged, just "may". Second, it doesn't include the part you wish because sensible people don't need the extra hand holding. See WP:CREEP As I read my own words Jack they sound a bit biting, and I apologize. Don't mean it that way. Just tired. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:11, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

The reality is that many editors are bureaucratic and love enforcing perceived "rules". I have seen several editors remove tags with the reason that there is no discussion or the discussion is dormant, NOT based on an assessment of the issues.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:17, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

How do you know unless you assessed it yourself? And if you assessed it yourself and found the problem, why are you posting here instead of fixing it there? See WP:SOFIXIT.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:59, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not clear how adding "and no outstanding issue can be identified" is going to be of much help. Who is going to judge whether an editor removing a tag added by someone without any talk page discussion should have identified an issue? Are we going to seriously consider sanctioning someone for removing an undiscussed tag because we think they failed to notice an issue? Doug Weller talk 10:05, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• To my mind, the removal of tags is simple... if an editor believes the issue has been addressed, or can not identify what or where the issue is, he/she can remove the tag. If another editor disagrees, and thinks the issue remains, the tag can be re-added. At which point, the two editors (and others) engage in discussion, and work together to resolve the issue. This is part of the normal editing process. There is no need to make additional rules. Blueboar (talk) 15:01, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Blueboar, I agree with everything you said, but I think the issue that was raised is the status of the tag when the discussion you just described does not occur. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:46, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Anyone can start a discussion. If you remove a tag, and someone else returns it... reach out to the other person and ASK them to explain what the problem is. Then work with them to resolve it he issue. Blueboar (talk) 16:49, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

But of course. And when they don't reply? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:53, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, there's no response to that. In response to Doug Weller above, no one has suggested "sanctioning" someone for removing a tag. But I think the issue needs some clarification. One of the things that led me to raise the issue was this at the Era of Stagnation page in 2013:[16] The editor misquotes the policy to say, " Remove this template whenever..." instead of "You may remove this template whenever any one of the following is true..." Overall, many editors seem to have a bias towards "nuking" tags. But why? Why are tags so bad? Will Wikipedia be better with less tags?--Jack Upland (talk) 22:51, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

One answer to "why are tags so bad?" From the reader's perspective—which surprisingly hasn't been addressed here yet—a tag is a red flag saying essentially that 'this article isn't reliable.' The way some readers think due to WP's reputation, they would add "...so don't bother reading it." So far so good, that's one of the reasons why these tags are placed. But most of the time, you click on the link to see the talk page explanation for the tag, and there is .... nothing. So what is the poor reader supposed to think? As an editor, I would guess that most of the time I see such tags, there is no explanation on the talk page, just a drive-by tag where an editor was too lazy to explain. At least half the time in such cases, I see no issues with the article, so I remove the tag. Because I'm thinking of the reader, and because I think 'lazy editor, if you want to put the tag back, then you owe us an explanation.' If they put the tag back, then they do owe an explanation, in my opinion. First Light (talk) 00:23, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

There's no dispute from me, that if there is no explanation forthcoming, it's OK to remove the tag. The issue I raised was dormancy, and I was particularly thinking of articles which have a low traffic.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:48, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

This is just normal BRD stuff. If a tag has been around on a article for a long time, the presumptive consensus is that it belongs there. If you remove it and others object to the removal, and can provide sane reasons for their objections, and you remove the tag again anyway, then you are revertwarring and need to stop. Yes, tags are a red flag to readers. This is intentional, and is their primary purpose. Otherwise we would only use hidden HTML comments and invisible cleanup categories. "It really cheeves me that there's this ugly PoV tag on my article" is an indication that a) you need to resolve the PoV problem (or whatever was tagged) and ask for help in doing so, and b) need to read WP:OWN and WP:MERCILESS – it is not your article no matter how much time you spent on it. It's our article. Some further points: Yes, you can remove a tag if you disagree with it or it doesn't seem to make sense, and that's fine if you don't get reverted or get objections raised to doing so. Yes, if you tag an article, you have a responsibility to make it clear why you did so and what needs to be resolved. It is best to do this with |, a repeat of that sentence in the edit summary, and with a talk page post going into more detail; only putting it in edit summary is not enough, since later editors are not going to see that in most cases. No, "the editor who placed the tag should fix the problem" isn't valid reasoning. If they knew how to fix it and had the time to do it, they would have done it instead of placing the tag. Aside from the primary user-warning purpose, that's why we have tags in the first place.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:26, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

However, Template:POV says: 'Do not use this template to "warn" readers about the article.' I don't see the problem with warning readers, but that's what it says.--Jack Upland (talk) 22:13, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

New policy that templates should be in English with English parameters

In recent months I have come across two separate templates that were written in German to facilitate the copying and pasting of Infoboxes from the German Wiki to the English Wiki: Template:Infobox Fluss (German Rivers) and Template:Infobox Schienenfahrzeug (German Railway Vehicles). I am really having a hard time understanding the logic behind having a template on the ENGLISH wiki where the parameters are in German. The argument in favor of this, that multiple editors have made, is so that one can easily copy and paste data from the German wiki. That is an absurd reason IMHO. You can't copy and paste the whole page anyway because it has to be translated. The same should be true for the Infobox. This whole infobox should be in English. I feel that this opens up a dangerous precedent as you could make that same argument with any page, in any topic and any language... For example, I would like to be able to copy and paste soccer teams from the Spanish Wiki... So do we now create a Template:Infobox football club that is in spanish so that I can copy and paste this data?

Additionally, why are you copying and pasting data from another Wiki?? Other Wikis are certainly not WP:RS... Now I want to be super clear here, before anyone WP:ABF, this has nothing to do with being anti-german or anything like that! What this actually grew out of was me converting Infoboxes to use {{Infobox}} as a base. I had a hard time with these two templates because the parameters were completely foreign to me (not speaking any German myself).

My goal here with this policy request is to establish a firm policy around whether or not foreign languages can be used in Infoboxes. There are obvious exceptions and this is not a debate about whether we are using "color" or "colour"... but I feel strongly that having entire Infoboxes written with all parameters in a foreign language is not good practice for an English Wiki.

If the decision is made to implement a policy that all Infoboxes should be written in English, then I will commit to converting not only all templates that are in a foreign language, but also to converting all transclusions. I don't think the fact that these transclusions already exist should be part of the discussion as to whether or not they should continue to be used. I should also say that if there are certain individuals who feel the need to continue to copy and paste templates from foreign language wikis, I don't see any reason that custom templates cannot be written that once substituted are converted to their English equivalent.

I also want to be clear that this discussion is NOT about merging templates. There are separate conversations about whether Template:Infobox German railway vehicle and Template:Infobox locomotive should be merged (for example). That is NOT the topic here! This is simply about whether or not to use foreign language in the Infobox.

I look forward to hearing discussion on both sides. --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 19:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

To clarify (no opinion in here).

1. On dewiki there exists template de:Vorlage:Infobox Schienenfahrzeug, with parameters like |Steuerungsart=. It is used in de:DR-Baureihe 01. All fine so far.

2. Now an editor starts sister article en:DRG Class 01, and copy/pastes the full infobox wikicode from that article. That is, de:copy/en:paste. The new article here is not broken, because enwiki has {{Infobox Schienenfahrzeug}} (a redirect to {{Infobox German railway vehicle}}), with parameter name, exactly: |Steuerungsart=. Then the editor goes offline for a while.

3. So {{Infobox Schienenfahrzeug}} has all these German language parameter names, this RfC is about. Of course, for |Steuerungsart= it shows label 'Valve gear'. But not all parameters in dewiki have clear English meanings. That is: apart from the correct language translation, there is also the meaning/definition to 'translate'.

4. Two editors want to improve. One goes to the article, and does not read German (parameter names), so cannot edit. The other one wants to improve the template, but can not research the actual meaning or definition of an obscure German-language parameter. The improvement fails.

5. This RfC purports to have these German language parameters translated, resulting in a set of English language parameters in that same template. With this, the simple de:copy/en:paste will not work: and editor (or a bot?) will have to change parameter names.

-DePiep (talk) 20:08, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Contrary to what you claim, what you wrote here strongly conveys an opinion. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 23:56, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

CFCF Then point it out or strike your remark. -DePiep (talk) 00:49, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Again, Carl CFCF, please do point out what you so "strongly" see. If you do so, I can improve. But I am not to guess your thoughts and opinions. -DePiep (talk) 21:13, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:Bermicourt

Regrettably Zackmann08, albeit I'm sure in good faith, has misunderstood the point of these templates and the huge benefit they are to translators and to Wikipedia as a whole. The issue is not that we should have a proliferation of foreign language templates in article mainspace on English Wikipedia; of course, we should not. However, it is very important that we allow the existence of infobox substitution templates that can handle foreign parameters in order to help editors build the encyclopedia. Let's take a German example. There are thousands of mountain articles that exist only on German Wikipedia e.g. for the Alps. The process is this: the body of the article is translated and created on English Wiki; the infobox is imported from German Wiki 'as is' but, thanks to the substitution template, Template:Infobox Berg, it displays immediately and automatically in English; finally, within 24 hours a bot comes along and substitutes the template with its English equivalent. Thus we have an English infobox in the English article. The German infobox only exists in the article for a few hours. Check the links to Template:Infobox Berg - there are none in article mainspace; they've all been substituted.

Of course, translators could sit for hours tediously translating the same old German parameters and data manually into English to achieve the same result as the above. But why, when a clever substitution template and a bot can save all that time? If you're not a translator, you may not care that you're wasting masses of other editors' time. But I've translated over 4,000 articles and this process is an absolute lifesaver. Without it, I'm outa here. I'm not going to waste time on repetitive stuff that I know can be done automatically. That's crazy. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:40, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

You'd be right, Bermicourt, if that bot existed for {{Infobox Schienenfahrzeug}}. It does not sound fair that you AGF-blame Zackmann08 for that omission. In fact, you are supporting this RfC proposal by admitting that these parameters should be translated (by a bot and within 24h). Rephrasing this RfC: do you agree that when no bot is available, this de:copy/en:paste should not be done? (Note that you rely on a bot as an argument; however we cannot enforce someone to build such a bot). BTW, let me note that in the long run Wikidata is supposed to make this issue moot. -DePiep (talk) 20:22, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

@Bermicourt: you're right actually... I don't think I DID understand the use case here... I also think DePiep hit the nail on the head. First, I was not aware that such a bot existed and that the flow worked the way you described. You will note that I did not mention Template:Infobox Berg which, as your pointed out, has 0 transclusions in the mainspace. I did however mention Template:Infobox Schienenfahrzeug with 313 tranclusions and Template:Infobox Fluss with 288 transclusions (obviously safe to assume some of those are testcase/sandbox but the majority are in the mainspace). I would like to clarify that I have ZERO ISSUE with a template in the flow that you described, where it is short lived and replaced by an English equivalent via a bot. If the same were try for Schienenfahrzeug and Fluss I would have no objections. I do appreciate you explaining the use case. I did not fully understand that and having you shed some light on it helped tremendously. Given those comments, what are your thoughts on the following.

1. Foreign language templates (that is to say templates that have all params in a foreign language) should not be transcluded in the main space UNLESS there is a bot that comes behind and translates them to an English equivalent.
2. For these templates that DO get cleaned up, such as Template:Infobox Berg, lets create a new {{Ombox}} that is placed on these templates that says something along the lines of "This template exists to facilitate translating from <insert language here> to English. While the template may existing in an article for a short period of time, it will later be converted by <botname> to use <other template name>." This will serve a few purposes. First, helps group these templates together but secondly it will help prevent a rekindle of this debate down the road by saying very clearly that while the template has no transclusions, it is still very much in use. (I know that the {{substitute}} template covers this a bit, but this will go more into depth.
3. For those templates that do NOT have a bot (Template:Infobox Schienenfahrzeug and Template:Infobox Fluss for example), lets get a good policy in place for making these bots happen. I have a bit of bot experience and am happy to help!

Thanks again for chiming in. You really helped me understand this issue. --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 20:58, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

dePiep it's a fair point and I don't think I meant to blame Zackmann08 for the omission. Zackmann08 - d'you know what? I'm really impressed by your response - it's constructive and helpful. I'm frustrated that some of these templates haven't yet had the "Infobox:Berg" treatment. Trouble is, I'm not expert enough to make it happen! --Bermicourt (talk) 20:05, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

@Bermicourt: thanks for your response. Glad we can work together on this. Most of the commenters below have not bothered to read the discussion at all, just the heading and immediately objected. Do you agree with those three points for policy? --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 20:07, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

@Bermicourt: thanks for your response. AFAIsee, only three editors are actually working on ths (Bermi, Z08 and me). Others I call "Armchair !voters" -- those who are not involved in the actual maintenance. Everybody can say 'keep it and make a bot to do it' for free. I don't know where this ends, but we'll meet & improve again. -DePiep (talk) 21:08, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to learn how to create the substitution template and implement the bot, maybe by starting with a simple case (not Infobox:Schienenfahrzeug!). We could then apply the same process to others. But meantime we should draft some guidelines and see if we can get them accepted on the relevant WP page. --Bermicourt (talk) 18:14, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:Jonesey95

This can be read as a reply to #Opinion by User:Bermicour

There is already a bot that does this template substitution. See User:AnomieBOT/docs/TemplateSubster and Category:Wikipedia templates to be automatically substituted for details. You can find many foreign-language substitution templates in that category. The hard work is programming the template in question to replace foreign-language parameters with English-language parameters when it is substituted. This has already been done for many templates. I would support a policy stating that foreign-language templates should not exist in mainspace pages for longer than it takes for a bot to do the necessary substitution. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:04, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Jonesey95, could you specify how this works out with the two example templates (500+ transclusions today)? By now, we all see the bottleneck with the availability of a bot/automate/subst in this, of course. -DePiep (talk) 21:47, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

It would work roughly like this:

1. Someone adds code to the template to allow it to be substituted and converted to its English-language equivalent. Example code is readily available in templates in the category that I linked above. See this edit to Template:Internetquelle to see an example of this conversion.
2. The {{Subst only}} template is added to the documentation, as in this edit to Template:Internetquelle/doc.
3. User:AnomieBOT substitutes all of the existing transclusions. The bot will also subst any future transclusions that are added to pages.

There are a few other nuances, like adding subst-specific code and forcing the bot to start the first batch of conversions, but that is the basic idea. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:35, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Jonesey95, in this section you have said all that needs to be said, except possibly that there should be more emphasis on the need for the author/translator to immediately subst the template (the bot only being there as a backup in case said author/translator forgets to subst it). There is also a possible problem in that AnomieBOT won't subst any template with more than 100 transclusions unless listed at User:AnomieBOT/TemplateSubster force, so we need to get consensus for that. The rest of this RfC, with only a few exceptions, is just time-wasting. --NSH001 (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:NSH001

Let's start with the important bit: Document the template properly. The documentation should make clear that the template is meant to be substituted. It should be substituted immediately by the translator/creator of the article, and the bot is only there as a backup in case the editor in question fails to do this. Once substituted, we have a normal infobox, in English, perfectly translated from German (or whatever language it's allowing for). No problem whatsoever. But until these templates are documented properly, we're bound to get a steady stream of red herrings like this one being posted by well-intentioned editors. --NSH001 (talk) 22:22, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

@NSH001: I think you make a great point about documentation. I'm not sure these are redherrings though. It is not clear to me that everyone IS in agreement that Template:Infobox Fluss (for example) SHOULD be substituted. I certainly think it should and agree with you 100%, but I think part of this discussion is to ensure that is the consensus and then to document it. --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:27, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

No, this is definitely a red herring. The authors of these templates, from the outset, fully intended them to be substituted. They make no sense otherwise. They're there purely to save time and effort for article translators. It's just a particularly egregious example of the endemic failure of template editors to document their wonderful templates properly. Wouldn't be very difficult to code up a little template to produce the appropriate warning message, and transclude it in all the documentation pages for these templates. --NSH001 (talk) 22:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Fluss substitution, but are you saying NSH001 that Schienenfahrzeug just should be subst:-ed an everything is fine? Well, that subst does not exist. You are pushing a non-existent solution. -DePiep (talk) 23:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry my bad, I didn't check all the templates in detail. Template:Infobox Schienenfahrzeug is indeed not subst-able. It should either be re-writtten in subst-able form or deleted. Doesn't affect my main point. The solution is to fix the problem, not more policy creep. Worth pointing out that it would probably take less time to fix the problem than arguing over it. --NSH001 (talk) 23:58, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

re NSH001. (Then does Fluss have a subst:? Why must I ask at all?). No need for your gratuit solutions. -DePiep (talk) 00:42, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@NSH001: I'm trying to have a constructive discussion... Doesn't seem like you are interested in such... --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:19, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:Someguy1221

The whole complaint seems like unnecessary policy creep to me. It does not appear that anyone on Wikipedia is arguing the foreign-language template should be kept in favor of actual or hypothetical English-language templates, and the foreign ones are apparently getting replaced where an English version is available. The end result of banning this shortcut would simply be to make good content disappear, just because it's not perfect. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:21, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

@Someguy1221: No one is suggesting banning anything... This is a discussion around whether or not having foreign language templates is helpful or not... If you actually read the discussion and supporting material you would have seen that the foreign ones are NOT getting replaced a lot of the time. THAT is the discussion. If you aren't going to actually read the whole discussion, then don't just read a bit and jump to a conclusion. --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 00:59, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I read the discussion. Did you? No one has argued for foreign-language templates being kept in perpetuity. No one thinks they are ideal. Everyone would prefer they be replaced as soon as possible. If you didn't want a ban (which DePiep supports below, I guess you didn't read the whole discussion), what's the point of codifying that in policy? Someguy1221 (talk) 01:48, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I do support a ban. As I described. No reason to blame Zackmann08 for that. Now what was your question? -DePiep (talk) 02:03, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:DePiep

I fully support the aim of this RfC. We should not allow foreign-language templates (that is, foreign language parameter names & definitions). In practice, this means that examplary templates like en:{{Infobox Schienenfahrzeug}} that are not converted into English should be forbidden. (Of course and clearly, this allows for a bot or subst Übersetzung, being complete & correct). -DePiep (talk) 23:53, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:CFCF

I entirely oppose the aim of this RfC. We already have policies in place, such as WP:ENGLISH & Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English that concern mainspace content. Templates are used outside mainspace and are often employed outside mainspace. Additional criteria are solutions in search of problems and policy creep. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 00:03, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Both links you provide are about mainspace ('articles should be in English': duh). Please post again when you did get a read, or at least a gest, of this RfC. -DePiep (talk) 00:35, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@CFCF: did you even read my opening to this discussion??? Your comments do not address the issue at hand and indicate you didn't even bother to read the material, just the headline. --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 00:57, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by Od Mishehu

The foreign language templates may exist, only provided that they are always substituted, not transcluded. This may be enforeced by a bot, provided that the bot actually runs on each transclusion intorduced, within a few hours. Dodumentation for tese templates must also make it clear that they should only be substituted. There is no reason we should have 288 transclusions of {{Infobox Fluss}}. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

OK. Now the point is, that such a bot does not exist for Fluss. What next? -DePiep (talk) 21:01, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:Agathoclea

I oppose the aim of this RfC. While I strongly agree that those templates should be substituted or bottransformed I disagree with the aim of the RfC to ban the use of such templates while due to the difficulty of producing such a transformation is not yet possible. This would place an increasing burden on content creation without providing any benefits.

• It does not benefit the reader, as the output is already in English,
• It does not benefit the mono lingual editor, as they will not be able to verify any information against non English sources (with parameters in the source language they at least can make an educated guess)
• It does not benefit the multi lingual content creator, as it will waste significant extra time in matching parameter names.

The often sported argument that this allows for unsourced material to be introduced is, at least in the content area I have been working in, bogus, as information is sourced. Obviously the editor should also provide the source of the material (which again is of no use to the mono lingual editor). The template that sparked this discussion is originally sourced from government publications and that information can be easily confirmed. So all in all I feel that the political benefit of destroying non English parameter names is in no proportion to the practical benefit lost. The issue will be temporary at any rate, because eventually Wikidata use will solve the problem for us anyway. Agathoclea (talk) 17:24, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

well,

• It does not benefit the reader, as the output is already in English Sure. But we are encyclopedic, so that reader must be able to trust the info. How do you (we all) know the English wording is OK?

• It does not benefit the mono lingual editor, as they will not be able to verify any information against non English sources (... educated guess) — Eh, so being unable to read & check a source is a reason to keep it???
• It does not benefit the multi lingual content creator, ... extra time in matching parameter names -- well, that is what translation is. You are somehow saying "translation does not benefit the translator".

All in all, we need Uebersetsung (great German word), not a blind copy/pasting "translation". -DePiep (talk) 21:29, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually according to your argument we will not need any translation at all as you will never be able to verify if the translation is correct. Neither would we allow print sources. But current policy does allow the use of non-english sources, current policy allows for print sources regardless. What you call blind copy/pasting "translation" is actually the way to ensure that each term is transferred correctly. That way only the validity of the data needs to be checked. You find it difficult converting the template into a selfsubstitung template but you expect editors to waste at least am extra half hour per article on the several thousand that either have no data yet, or are missing on enWiki altogether. With more to come, as even deWiki by no means even close to being complete in this category. As to other points you raised. How do you (we all) know the English wording is OK? You might never know, but we do know in the case of a templated translation because any error can be fixed in a central position to allow for consistent translation. The risk of error is far higher in a every-man-on-his-own approach. being unable to read & check a source is a reason to keep it??? - Maybe you should reread the statement. I was saying the people who only can read (and hopefully comprehend) English should be able to verify the data if the parameters are in the same language as the sourcematerial. Minor point - not enough to stand in the way of an automated transformation but showing that an outright deletion while such a transformation can't be done, is utterly pointless. "translation does not benefit the translator" - Deliberately wasting translators time is not benefiting the reader either.

As I said at the outset automated transformation is the desired outcome. If at this moment in time that is not possible yet, I am arguing that the aim of this RfC - outright deletion - is damaging to Wikipedia. The third option would be to wait until Wikidata catches up. Its a bit like the question of how much you will spend on repairs on your old car if the new one is already ordered. But you would not scrap the old banger ahead of time. So far the beauty of the English language Wikipedia has been, that it brings in information that otherwise would never be available that detail in English, which is in stark contrast to the rising xenophobic approach today. Do you really want us to go in that direction? Agathoclea (talk) 16:09, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:Nabla

(unsure why this is in this format, but... when in Rome...) There should not be foreign language templates in mainspace. If used as translation tools (bots translation, auto-magically-translated-subst'ed-templates, whatever!) fine. But if they sit in mainspace they become unhelpful and unwiki because they make the next editors' task much harder. Helping the translation does not trump regular editing. Nabla (talk) 10:38, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Opinion by User:Unscintillating

• Oppose  This proposal may be a bit like proposing that English dictionaries should not have words in Latin, and that the proposer will translate all the Latin words if we agree to get rid of them. 

  How will Template:BAB-Dreieck be translated?  "Dreieck" translates as "triangle", but has a technical meaning as a T intersection of autobahns.  The answer is that it doesn't need to be translated and should be considered an extension of English for use on en.wiki autobahn articles.  Nor should we rename Template:Internetquelle, which is used to port references from the German Wikipedia.  The template stops working if renamed.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:05, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Short opinions by those who don't need their own whole subsection

• Oppose. Even if this were a real problem, it would not be addressed by a new policy; this simply doesn't rise to policy level. We have bots to resolve this, and if a new templates needs to be added to them, then that's the fix. Yes, we don't want new templates unrelated to translation, to be created in non-English here, and this happening is rare, and quickly resolved (usually by translation, unless the template is redundant or pointless).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:31, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

African American, Afro American, or either

There is an article African Americans. For someone of such background, Is it OK to pipe [[African Americans|Afro American]] or should it be directly linked to "African Americans"? Is there policy on this? If so, I would like to get a link. An anon was piping Afro American (can't remember the article now) which I thought was strange, but couldn't find any policy. I have seen this several times over 20k or so edits I've viewed. My watch-list is near-full, please ping? Thanks Jim1138 (talk) 22:39, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jim1138: I don't know that there is a policy, but nobody says "Afro-American" anymore, so that seems like a term we should avoid, espescially given the charged nature of such terms. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:20, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I'd concur with that. Standard usage today is "African American" and other terms should only be used in direct quotes. When speaking in Wikipedia's voice, just use the unpiped link. --Jayron32 16:42, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

But be aware that this is not universal; "Afro-Caribbean", "Afro-Cuban", "Afro-Brazilian", etc., remain in common usage, as do parallel constructions with other prefixes. There's only a "charged nature" with "Afro-American" (which, like various other terms like "Colored", was once the preferred one; that too is not universal, and "Coloured" with a somewhat different meaning is still used in various parts of Africa).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:35, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

That may all be true, but the OP did not ask about Afro-Cubans. --Jayron32 16:23, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

RfC on the use of edit filters against unreliable sources

Posted here: Wikipedia_talk:Edit_filter#RfC:_use_of_edit_filter_against_unreliable_sources. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 13:52, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Pre-creating users for editting event

I would like to know (a) whether I'm allowed to pre-create usernames for attendees of an editing event and (b) whether I'm allowed to pre-qualify them for auto-confirmed status (probably using WP:HOTCAT edits in the new pages feed)? Yes, I've had Wikipedia:Account_creator a couple of times for events, but I'm looking to front-load all the work. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:35, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stuartyeates: how are you planning on getting their information in advance of the event? — xaosflux ^Talk 20:44, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:NOSHARING. Preforming edits to pad their accounts is a problem. It violates policy, and if we need to review their edits in the future then we expect all edits on the account are attributable to one person.

Pre-creating zero-edit accounts and having them change the password... well at that point I think it's just messier for them to change a password than it is to simply create an account themselves.

Is there some particular reason that autoconfirmed is an issue? I haven't been to an event, but there's generally not a lot that new accounts can't do. And presumably whoever is running the even is at least extended confirmed and could preform occasional support edits. Alsee (talk) 02:20, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stuartyeates: making edits as other people is not allowed. An admin can flag accounts as "confirmed" to skip the intial if they are identified at an event (or possibly before). — xaosflux ^Talk 02:42, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

• Deliberately bypassing the requirements for confirmation with a whole group of people who don't know what they are doing strikes me as a singularly poor idea. If we were going to allow it, the proper way would be to request early confirmation at WP:PERM, but the answer would almost certainly be no. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:06, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks everyone, message received. I'll put my thinking thinking cap on to see whether there is another way to do what I want to do. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:16, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Future years- how far is too far?

See Category:Years in the future

This is a follow-up on the discussion of the recent years guidelines further up the page. While looking into that mater, I discovered that we have articles on years in the future, going all the way up to 2099, and articles are future millennia going all the way up to the 10th millennium. In addition to general information about predicted astronomical events and so forth, these articles contain speculative material as well as useless minutia such as what software may stop working properly 75-8,000 years in the future. While having articles for years in the immediate future seems reasonable, having articles for years that most of us will not even live to see, and cannot possibly predict, seems .... well frankly it just seems a bit silly. Should we develop a policy that prohibits articles on some future years? If so, what should be the cutoff? Beeblebrox (talk) 23:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

• Depends on the circumstances. For instance the Olympics are rarely cancelled, so based upon the assumption that a worldwide nuclear holocaust doesn't break out, its likely that they will continue ad infinitum. Nonetheless I think that the absolute limit should be 25 cycles of the activity (such as 25 FIFA cups, Olympics, etc), or else 100 years, whichever comes first. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 00:13, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I'm talking about the articles on the years/millennia themselves, i.e. 2075 or 7th millennium, not articles on specific events. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:55, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@Lazyges: 25 cycles in these examples does seem even a bit too much. What actual, verifiable, relevant information could be available today about the 2116 Olympics for example? Having an article on an event about which precisely nothing is known is blatant WP:CRYSTALBALL. And, by extension, having articles about years the same time away is predicting the future. Triptothecottage (talk) 05:08, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Most of the material in these articles is speculative (or cruft about fiction set in the future), especially once you get past 1 or 2 years. I would suggest that we limit future year articles to at most 10 years in the future. And I would say only 1 century or millennium in the future. Otherwise, it quickly gets into WP:CRYSTALBALL territory. Kaldari (talk) 03:21, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comment — it is very silly. For example, in 2050 were told that "Sexual encounters between humans and sexbots will outpace intrahuman sexual activity", and this claim is repeated twice. I'm not sure that a policy could deal with this, but I certainly think articles that serve no useful purpose should be deleted. I disagree with Iazyges's comment about the Olympic Games. The modern Olympic Games only started in 1896, and, yes, several have been cancelled. I don't think it is likely that they will continue "ad infinitum". Nothing ever does. And until the host city is announced, there is very little we could write on the Games of that year. We really can't predict that far ahead. These future year articles seem to be a depository of trivia: scheduled events, random predictions, policy targets, and mentions in fiction. This seems to be totally pointless.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:25, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• Well, but what's wrong with those example articles, 2075 and 7th millennium? Here we learn useful things. At 2075 we learn that Mary Shelley's seminal The Last Man takes place in that year, and that is not the sort of thing that inspires me to go "Well, we can't tell our readers that! They must never know!". Why remove this information from the Wikipedia? Who does that help? 7th millennium tells us that Mars occults Regulus on August 25 of 6727 (I for one can't wait) and you can take that to the bank.

Granted, these articles are not very useful, but that applies to many of our articles. Just now, working in Category:1966 songs, I've read The Brigands (band) (band may not have existed) and Ajax Hup Hup Hup (human words do not exist to express how ineffably marginal this article is). So why pick on the future? The future, unlike the past, hasn't done me any harm. Herostratus (talk) 04:05, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Looking at a few past year artuicles which I can link to specific works of fiction (2004, 1968, 2001) I see nothing about such works of fiction. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:17, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Generally, in fiction sections do not belong in year articles. They add nothing to the reader's understanding of the actual year. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:34, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

That's your opinion, and fine, and its defensible. But it's still just an opinion. How to "understand" a year, or any concept... we can define that broadly, or narrowly. To say "a reader's understanding or even apprehension of X cannot ever be enhanced by describing how writers of fiction viewed and used X"... I dunno. That could be true I guess, but its certainly not a statement of settled objective fact. It's an opinion. Since it's just an opinion, I would tend not to make it an enforceable you-can't-do-that rule. Herostratus (talk) 07:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, this was codified into the editing guidelines at WP:RY several years ago, but it is unclear if those guidelines would cover articles on future years as there is no defined scope for them. (if your interested, a discussion of what the scope of RY should be is still active further up this very page) Beeblebrox (talk) 07:26, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Well "Recent Years" is not the same as "Future Years" so I don't know how applicable any of that is. (I do note, regarding User:Od Mishehu's point, that "In fiction" sections are supported for past years; 1984 has one).

Generally, I'm not finding the level of argument at the discussion you point to above as being particularly rigorous. There's some general grumbling along the lines of "Seems like" it's too soon to have articles at all on years more than 5-10 years into the future, or "seems a little nuts" to have articles like this, or "we shouldn't" have articles like this. With no actual reasons given (except that they are created as "easy way to up their editcount", and people please don't make insulting "arguments" like that). So far it sounds like it's a matter of "I think these articles are silly", which the solution is "then don't work on or read those articles".

What I want to know what is the actual problem you are trying to solve here. You want to erase existing information and prevent other editors (who apparently do find working on these articles interesting and useful and are willing to volunteer their time and energy to do it) from creating these articles. What I want to hear is "It will be a service to our readers to erase and prevent these articles because _____________." "If a reader should, for whatever reason, want to look up the year 2247, it will enhance his experience here if we don't have such an article, because ___________." Tell me what goes in the blanks. Herostratus (talk) 08:21, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I don't think that argument amounts to anything.--Jack Upland (talk) 11:55, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

The problem as I see it, is that the less eyes and interested parties there are on an article, the more likely it is to contain errors (intentional or otherwise) and not be updated when predicted events, don't transpire as they should.

"It will be a service to our readers to erase and prevent these articles because they contain nothing that couldn't be contained in another, better maintained and controlled article, category or list and is therefore less likely to be wrong."

"If a reader should, for whatever reason, want to look up the year 2247, it will enhance his experience here if we don't have such an article, because the decision making process that ensures that accurate, well presented and verifiable information that resulted in them having to access the content in slightly different way also means that many other things that readers might want to look up are also not there, such as gossip, propaganda and errors." Scribolt (talk) 15:16, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

"them having to access the content in slightly different way" means "them not finding the information". You can't put the reader's mind in a straitjacket. I don't find to be compelling arguments like "Anyone who is interested in that astronomical phenomena can look at the relevant article"; that fictional events in 2110 should be found in the articles for those works of fiction, not gathered together in a year article, and so forth because no one is going to access them that way. We don't know how or why people want to access information. We are not paper so its cheap to present information in two different places, organized in two different ways, to catch different ways people are approaching a question.

Maybe the reader is writing a story set in 2110 and wants to see what other story writers imagined that year would be like. Maybe they saw a fact about 2110 event and got curious about other possible events in that year. Maybe they are just browsing diffidently though future-year articles to distract themselves from what Jenna said last night. Maybe they are settling a bet. Maybe they want to figure out the average year of the end of of the world in fiction. Maybe they remember a book set in 2110 but can't remember the title. Maybe they're idly curious about what's going to be happening when their daughter turns 100. Or any number of other things which I can't even think of -- and neither can you.

You are OK with telling all these people "Well, we could tell you this stuff -- in fact, we have these articles now -- but we're not going to. Instead, how about you Google it and take 15 minutes to find it and maybe never find it". I'm not on board with that. That's not how to make the internet not suck.

I don't see any "gossip, propaganda, or errors" in these articles. A lot of them have unsourced assertions, but that's general Wikipedia problem. I looked at bunch of these articles at random. They're fine. Herostratus (talk) 16:55, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Herostratus. I take your point to a certain extent. I wasn't claiming that the future year articles contain gossips, errors or propaganda, more that the reasons why I think we should be careful about providing content in articles such as this are the same reason that other articles don't contain them (well, hopefully not for too long). And whilst I agree that it would be nice to present all of the information in every single way that someone might want to access, I disagree with your statement that this is a the unsourced nature of these articles is a general Wikipedia problem. It's a problem that is magnified when we replicate information in so many places that there aren't enough editors to monitor, protect and update them. At some point we have to say, is the benefit of providing this information in this format outweighed by the risk that it's going to be wrong or outdated. I chose 3 years at random and I don't think they're fine.

2057: 1 unsourced claim of a double solar eclipse in a calendar year, 4 star messages reaching their stars (reference in their articles), an unsourced claim that the m6 toll contract will expire then, a 2008 natgeo prediction that the worlds oil supply is going to run out (dynamic information), the 2057 in fiction section and 2 infoboxes, one entirely in red links and the other filled with 2057 in various calenders.

2034: A partial lunar eclipse in September (sourced), a supermoon (sourced) the release of Alberto Fujimori (sourced but dynamic) and Switzerlands phase out of nuclear power (sourced, but dynamic). Plus year in fiction and date conversion infobox.

2021: India plans to conduct its first space flight (sourced to a 2015 article, dynamic info and almost exact example I used in the earlier RfC), some cicadas will emerge (sourced), and Costa Rica's pledge to become carbon neutral (dynamic info, sourced to a 2008 article). A red linked infobox.

So, the only reliable information that can be provided in these articles (that is not dynamic and unlikely to change and thus become outdated without anyone knowing) are the astronomical events and the year in fiction. Who is going to update the progress of Costa Rica's carbon neutral pledge? We shouldn't be have this kind of crystal ball gazing in something like this. So, is the best way of presenting what's left to have an article about a year? Or have articles, 2021 in fiction, 2021 astronomical events etc. There's probably some fancy way of having a category (novel set in 2057) that then have a list. All of these options seem to be better and more reliable ways of presenting this information. Scribolt (talk) 07:49, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• I could probably populate future years endlessly with significant events from Astronomy alone (total exclipses, regular comets etc) - obviously not every individual year, but easily past 100 years in the future. It cant hurt making a guideline that states FY's should only contain facts not fiction or speculation. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:23, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you could, and that would be pointless. Anyone who is interested in that astronomical phenomena can look at the relevant article. For example, Halley's Comet returns every 75-76 years, so you could create articles indefinitely. Pointless, but probably right (until some cosmic mishap befalls our feathered friend). With regard to scheduled events: pointless, and often wrong. With regard to fiction: pointless, and totally trivial. "1984" is an obvious exception, as the book was named "1984" and was still considered relevant in that year.--Jack Upland (talk) 12:47, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

If the argument 'its pointless' on wikipedia as a method for exclusion was considered valid by a majority of editors, I estimate the article count would be sitting at around 1-2 million instead of 5+. Given its entirely subjective, there is probably a middle-ground here. (FWIW, I dont disagree scheduled future events are pointless, just that people do seem to find them interesting and relevant.) Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:55, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there's any other method. Do you think there would be any point in extrapolating astronomical events into the distant future through year articles??? I don't think you do. Part of the problem with these kind of discussions is that it is trying to put "objective" rules onto "subjective" subjects. I think the ultimate answer to "Who does it hurt?" is "Wikipedia". You create more and more articles with more and more trivial content, and these are patrolled by fewer and fewer editors. It is an empire that can't be defended. The legionaries just left Hadrian's Wall.--Jack Upland (talk) 13:10, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Well quite, but I think we reached that point 3 million articles on roads ago... So arguing that this is some sort of extra step in pointlessness seems futile. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:18, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

So fighting futility is futile? I might as well become a Vandal.--Jack Upland (talk) 13:29, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

• Either remove the future year articles or enforce a strict no predicted future events policy within them. For the reasons I cited in the original RfC (dynamic info not being updated, Wiki is not a calendar). I can just about see a justification for predictable astronomical phenomena, but even that would be better off in the parent article, or a category or list). FWIW I've got nothing against the future year articles per se, it's just that they contain nothing but predictions, which I do have a problem with. Scribolt (talk) 15:16, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• Ten years is a reasonable limit. The scope of global changes in a decade means that no events can be predicted with certainty. In 1991, people were talking about peace breaking out; in 2001, they started talking about the War on Terrorism. And I don't think that many events are scheduled that far in advance. While some people make good predictions, most people make bad predictions. Wikipedia is not equipped to differentiate between the two. That would require some complex meta-analysis — and it still could be wrong. Wikipedia's policies and structures do not allow us to choose one expert's opinion over another, or synthesise various opinions and data. The predictions in the future year articles are just a random and somewhat bizarre selection of citations. Even if they're right, they don't give a coherent picture of the future, and they're likely to be all wrong. We can't tell readers what the world will be like when their daughters are 100. We just can't.--Jack Upland (talk) 21:55, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• I don't think there's any particular need for a crackdown on these articles. Articles about years in the far future seem to consist mostly of discussion of how the year has been portrayed in fiction, and where individual forecast events are mentioned it tends to be things that are virtually certain to happen (astronomical events in particular) and the occasional forecasts which are more speculative are still made by credible sources. The mere fact that events take place in a far future doesn't mean we can't write high quality encyclopedic content about them - take a look at Future of Earth, a GA which discusses things that won't happen for billions of years. We don't currently have articles on individual years beyond about the 2090s, when there starts to be too little content about each individual year to write them, I think that's a reasonable standpoint. Hut 8.5 22:06, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

The Future of Earth reflects the state of current science and talks of probabilities. Assigning events to future years creates a false perception of certainty. Astronomical events can be predicted with a level of accuracy, but even astronomy can be wrong. Supernovas were originally thought of as new stars, and Pluto was recently thought of as a planet. More mundane predictions are notoriously prone to error. See:[17] It's OK to put these opinions in a book, column, blog etc, but they don't belong in an encyclopedia article because they are simply idle speculation. And for every opinion, there's a contradictory one. While the articles might be limited at the moment, I predict that if unchecked they will continue to expand. The compilation of lists of random mentions of a particular year also falls under WP:INDISCRIMINATE.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:50, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jack Upland as you may know our, standard for inclusion is WP:VERIFIABILITY not certainty.--Tom (LT) (talk) 20:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia represents to its readers what the current thinking of reliable sources is on each subject. If those sources decide that something is certain (or virtually certain) then we are justified in representing it like that. I don't think predictions of astronomical events like eclipses or occultations are remotely comparable to the other things you cite - people have known how to predict them with a very high degree of accuracy for centuries, and they certainly aren't comparable to speculation about immortality. If you can find any vaguely suitable source which casts doubt on the credibility of these astronomical projections then please do share it. Hut 8.5 22:19, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

You have both misread what I said.--Jack Upland (talk) 22:27, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• I don't see any reason to remove them, if they have useful or interesting information. Benjamin (talk) 12:35, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• I also don't see any reason to remove them, I find the current content interesting. I don't see the benefit to removal. --Tom (LT) (talk) 20:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: I think you could make a strong case for deleting several of these future year articles, so I don't support including articles for every year from 2017 to 2099, but I don't think there is an underlying problem with all of the articles. I think we should treat each article on a case-by-case basis. — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 19:29, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• There are plenty of predictable future events (comets returning, leap years, etc) that can be sourced. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:49, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

But do we need an article for every leap year to infinity???--Jack Upland (talk) 07:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

$100 in cash to any editor who can break my record in March.

In March of 2012, I challenged myself and set the all-time record as Disambiguation Hall of Fame Bonus list champion (the bonus list includes all disambiguation links from disambiguation pages with four or fewer incoming links). The record I set is 4,936 bonus list links fixed in a single month. Since then no other editor has even come within a thousand fixes of my record. I therefore offer a bounty of one hundred dollars in cash to be awarded to any editor who can beat this feat in the March 2017 disambiguation contest. That comes to about two cents per edit, bearing in mind that the fix must be correct and has to stick. Five years is a long time for an editing record to stand. Let's see what happens. bd2412 T 04:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I used to deliver newspapers for about $0.01 each, nearly 50 years ago when a penny was worth something. Your offer of $0.02 per edit is not very motivating. So I'll join in matching your offer, $100, in cash, check, paypal, or whisky, for each and every editor who beats your record; and I invite others to join and up the offer, to see if pennies and dollars motivate. Dicklyon (talk) 04:43, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! You may want to cross-post this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#‎$100 in cash to any editor who can break my record in March. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:03, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Huh, I hadn't realized that the WP:Bounty board is closed.

I wonder whether User:Nick Number might be able to win the prize here. (Also, you should probably provide links to the list, so that new editors can figure out how to get started.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid this type of incentive runs counter to my personal ethics and system of motivat...wait, did someone say whisky? Nick Number (talk) 20:38, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Actually, I meant to post this to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), where it fits more naturally. As for links, Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links should provide the necessary guidance for newbies, although I can't imagine such a contest being won by someone who isn't at least a lightly seasoned disambiguator. Also, note that the bonus list winner is invariably one of the top three finishers for the month, and will therefore also win a t-shirt from the Wikimedia Foundation. bd2412 T 00:20, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Removing the Grandfather Clause for BLPPRODs

Interested editors may comment at: Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people#RfC: Remove the grandfather clause?. -- Tavix ^(talk) 20:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Time limit for Template:Empty section and Template:Expand section

At Wikipedia:Templates for discussion, I have now suggested that {{Empty section}} (along with the preceding header) and {{Expand section}} should be removed after a certain time limit, mainly because they don't seem to actually result in expanded sections in the long term. Please share your thoughts there:

• WP:Templates for discussion/Time limit for Template:Empty section and Template:Expand section

Mikael Häggström (talk) 06:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment on the guidelines regarding "joke" user categories

Wikipedia talk:User categories#Request for Comment on the guidelines regarding "joke" categories

You may wish to participate in this RfC in relation to the question of whether WP:USERCAT should be amended to say that Wikipedians should be allowed to add "joke categories, categories pertaining to likes that do not directly address the encyclopedia and other categories not covered in the list of inappropriate categories. (e.g. Category:Wikipedians who are "out to get you" and/or your garage band)". WJBscribe (talk) 19:45, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment on the guidelines regarding "joke" categories

There is a Request for comment at Wikipedia talk:User categories#Request for Comment on the guidelines regarding "joke" categories. The proposal is to remove "irrelevant likes" and "jokes" from the list of inappropriate uses categories and add them to the list of appropriate uses of categories. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for comment and contribution to a Wikipedia guideline on page protection

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.

---

Request for contribution and comment on WP:PPG

Hello Wikipedia people :). I would appreciate some comments and contributions on a Wikipedia guideline for the protection of pages found here at WP:PPG. Any edits and or talk which positively contribute to this guideline would be greatly appreciated Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 13:42, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I still think that our protection-policy page here would be the right venue to discuss this. I'll post a link there. Lectonar (talk) 13:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

edit conflictAs you know, there is already a protection policy. Why is a guideline needed to document reflections on this policy? That is, who needs additional guidance on protection and what additional guidance is not already captured in the policy? The outcomes of the three-prong test proposed seem to be covered better, and in less subjective terms, in the policy it references and the rest reads like a personal essay about distaste for the whole process. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 13:49, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

@Lectonar: Thank you, I really appreciate you doing that for me. Also @Eggishorn: I have seen that many admins are over eager to use page protection so I am seeking some remedy to it. Hopefully this proposed guideline will open some constructive lines of discussion on how to approach the issue. The current form of the policy is not working otherwise there would be less page protection going on and more proactive admins using other tools to effectively deal with problems which might otherwise result in page protection. I have no bias against page protection being used but only when required as it offends the spirit of WP:5P3. Furthermore, I believe this is reflected in the WP:PPG but I’d appreciate any comments or contributions you have which might make it more balanced. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 14:11, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• I think it's a fine personal essay, and I'm not saying that I disagree with its spirit, but I don't see this as becoming enshrined as a formal guideline. WP:PP is sufficient as it is. --Jayron32 14:15, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

  I agree with Jayron32; the problem imho being mainly that different admins interpret and implement it differently (admins discretion). Protection policy as it is is well written and of course represents the consensus that has been built over years and years. For what it is worth, I think too many pages are protected too quickly, but with editors and admins being in short supply, it is difficult to keep track of all our more than 5 million articles (+ Wikispace-the subpages), so sometimes protection is the lesser evil. Lectonar (talk) 14:23, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Before editing the guideline or even commenting on the details, there should be a demonstration that the guideline is needed and addresses a current situation. Guidelines are supposed to be broad reflections of a large portion of the editor base. The proposed guideline, and the premise that informs it above, are really personal opinions. The premise: "I think the admins are wrong and here's what they need to do." is always going to be a difficult one to justify. You will need to point to actual evidence in order to sustain that premise. Not mere anecdotal or individual cases-type evidence, but larger bodies of data. Has there been a sudden upswing on page protection? Are too many requests for page protection accepted? What is "too many" in that context? Are IP editors complaining with any change in frequency about not being able to edit protected pages? Is the backlog as requested edits growing? If it is growing, is it because more requests are made or that fewer requests are handled? Not all of these questions need answering, but they are the type that have a bearing on the need for a guideline. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 14:38, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• Strikes me as windy and legalistic, with many odd word choices ("contempt", "totalitarian"). What's the need? Also, I think it's a poor idea to allocate shortcuts to early-stage proposals that may never gain traction. EEng 14:46, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• There seems to be some ambiguity about the proper use of template protection. The policy quotes that it can be used on “high risk” content however, this is subjective. As you have mentioned, @Lectonar:, it is one of those things which can be widely interpreted. Considering that editors relinquish their contributions on Wikipedia to the public domain and that anyone can edit Wikipedia it seems rather counterintuitive that a policy would allow for pre-emptive protection of content including Templates without first having been disrupted. It seems to give a clause or loophole which can be exploited to protect content on Wikipedia without having a tangible risk being demonstrated but rather allow for protection based on the speculation it is high risk. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 14:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• Which template do you need me to fix? If you tell me the template and the part you need me to edit for you, I'll see what I can do. --Jayron32 15:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

And this detail can of course be discussed at WP:PP. Lectonar (talk) 15:02, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @EEng: | Fear of change is dangerous Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 15:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• Not when the change is from a useful, concisely-written document to what you have there. Then it's not "fear" but blindingly good common sense. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:13, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to summarize what I'm seeing: In about 80 minutes, the premise has gone from, "We have a real problem," to, "I think the admins should do this," to, "Just don't fear change." Is that about right? Because I'm seeing less and less evidence of a need as that line of arguing progresses.Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:21, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: @Eggishorn: When something isn’t working then you can either keep trying to make it work with a protectionist onslaught of bureaucracy or opt for a change of perception and try to overcome the challenge with progressive and meaningful adjustment. Whichever way you look at it, reverting to a point another editor made, the constant decrease of editors and administrators makes over-eager page protection implementation more appealing to resolve issues as a matter of convenience but it also puts us further away from being an open Wikipedia which anyone can edit. This essay / guideline / proposal or whichever semantic terminology one would adopt for it brings about discussion and a press for meaningful adjustment to how things are currently working. Furthermore, the statement I made in relation to change was not exclusively referencing this matter. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 15:29, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee: You say our protection policy isn't working. Prove it. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:33, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: Go to the page for protection requests, click history then look at the recent accepted requests. From there evaluate yourself which of those requests have resulted in the protection of a page which did not need to be protected in order to protect it. Furthermore, take a look at template protection requests and how they are accepted. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 15:38, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee: Actually, that's your job as you are disagreeing with an admin's judgement, how they interpreted protection policy, or the policy itself. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:42, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

edit conflict

Asking @NeilN: to produce your evidence for you is exactly the kind of anecdotal or case history-type evidence that shouldn't be used to justify the premise here. Before engaging in attempts to fix a problem, I like to know a problem exists. You have re-iterated your obviously strenuous opinion that it does, but that is, again, your opinion. Is it a widely-shared opinion? We don't know. Is there a "a protectionist onslaught of bureaucracy"? We don't know. Is there a challenge that has to be overcome? We don't know. Vague handwaves towards the five pillars aren't any help in answering any of these questions. "Anyone can edit" does not mean "Anyone can edit any article in any way without any repercussions." There have to be actual reasons to make restrictions on editing, true, but those reasons are already there in the policy you yourself linked to. There equally have to be reasons to undercut restrictions, and personal preference is a poor reason for doing that. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• "Contempt", "dystopian", "totalitarian". Congratulations on getting me to not take you seriously. In any case, the checks and balances you propose (alternative remedies, consideration of the severity of disruption) are already largely woven into the policy, except that you make them unhelpfully legalistic. BethNaught (talk) 15:45, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
• @BethNaught: @NeilN: Guys, I think you are underappreciating a certain factor here and that is while I spend some time writing things for Wikipedia, I write at about 80 – 90 wpm and am just casually jotting things down while I am working on real life business. I don’t have the luxury of time to dedicate to endlessly seeking out diff links to prove that Wikipedia’s protection policy isn’t working properly when I have already told you which places to look. It feels like I am in a piranha tank with editors eager to prove their points without doing much themselves but express hot air. Things like “Congratulations on getting me to not take you seriously” just make me reluctant to contribute further. There are two screens at work here and Wikipedia is on one of them, but not for long now as I have other things to be doing than argue semantics. Anyone who can be bothered to check out the recently accepted page protection requests might be better informed as to why I think there’s a problem. I must do work which I am paid for now so you guys enjoy. Sorry if you feel I made an invalid point. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 16:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

It's disrespectful of your colleagues' time to submit something you just casually jotted down while distracted by something else, especially on an important policy matter. And the 80-90 wpm explains the excessive verbiage. EEng 17:53, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi. I think you can go to WP:VPIL to incubate your idea. Also, you can question the policy at WT:protection policy or the process at WT:RPP. --George Ho (talk) 16:09, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee: "editors eager to prove their points without doing much themselves but express hot air" - I think you've very accurately expressed the problem here. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:17, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
• @NeilN: Are you trying to | bully me? Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 16:30, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee: How can it be bullying when I quoted your own words? Also, tip: Being asked to defend your point of view or arguments (or even being told plainly you're wrong) is not bullying. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:34, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• Instead of merely condemning swimming in a tank of hot-air breathing piranhas (and ain't that a mental image to treasure?) or make bad-faith accusations, may it not be productive to consider why there is resistance? Assuming there is a problem and then assuming others will provide the evidence of that problem isn't the way most productive debates proceed. I dare say, it isn't how most business decisions at successful companies work, either. I get that work life restricts ability to produce research which is why @George Ho:'s Idea Lab suggestion is a good one. On the other hand, why not revisit this later, when you do have time, and provide support for the hypothesis that the RPP process is broken instead of just becoming dismayed over other editors not instantly agreeing with your assessment of the RPP process? Just a thought. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: I don’t know if you asserting a perception of something makes me wrong because it differs from your opinions. However, I will say that, Neil, you are using your position of authority or power to marginalize and condemn my opinions in an aggressive way hence why I proposed it to be bullying, but I don’t assert it as an absolute, it’s just how I feel. Regardless, if this isn’t your intent I am sorry, it’s just the perception I am getting from you. @Eggishorn: This is a very well balanced comment which you have just made and I will return to this and do what you mentioned when I have time, thank you. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 16:40, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee: I haven't told you you are wrong. I have asked you to provide evidence to back up your assertions. Vague hand-waving is not providing evidence. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

You guys. I think we need to move on before the discussion gets heated (and then closed or hatted). George Ho (talk) 16:51, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• Page protection is dystopian and can be counterproductive especially when used without merit. Are there any examples of this? I'm not doubting it's happened but I don't see a significant pattern. It has also been my experience that most admins are reluctant to protect a page unless there has been significant, ongoing disruption. What would be an alternative for, lets say, persistent disruption by several IP ranges or newly registered accounts? Warnings frequently go unheeded, otherwise blocks wouldn't be necessary and neither would page protection. Chrissymad ❯❯❯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 19:30, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• there is literally no chance we are going to replace the community-created protection policy with one users hyperbolic rant on the subject, so we can probably all jst walk away from this discussion right here and now. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:41, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• Feedback, as requested: I disagree with nearly every word in that essay, which is more like a rant against common best practices on protecting pages. Those practices are based on experience with long-term disruption. Page protection should be handled on a case-by-case basis, just as is currently being done. I propose that essay be moved to userspace since it reflects only the views of a single editor, and consensus here is clearly quite strongly against the opinions expressed. First Light (talk) 08:11, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @First Light: There are plenty enough logical fallacies in this discussion let alone having the religious flocking in. Do you want to expand on what you disagree with and why? Also, moving to userspace is not the only option for essays which reflect minority views, they are converted from proposed guidelines to essays. Also if you have read the discussion comprehensively you would note that there is consensus against it being a guideline but not an essay. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 08:23, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee:"Relgious?" That's a comment I don't understand. If you are referring to me, the vast majority of my GAs, DYKs, and 300+ articles created are plant articles. Does that mean I'm a plant? I also edit religion articles of all kinds (eastern and western religions), though I would definitely not define myself as "religious." I'm also not a saint, even though I've edited several articles about saints :-). Anyways, if I were religious, or a saint, or a plant, would that be reason for dismissing or belittling my views? Regarding what I disagree with in your essay, I'll just take the first three sentences, since I don't have the time to respond to every sentence. 1. "Wikipedia page protections are, by their nature, in contempt of Wikipedia:5P3..." Well, no. Those five pillars include basic policies like NPOV, Reliable Sources, not a soapbox/advertising/anarchy, no plagiarism or copyright violations allowed, respect and civility. Far from being in contempt of the five pillars, page protection supports the five pillars. Your sentence #2: "Page protection is dystopian and can be counterproductive especially when used without merit." Dystopian? definition: "an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad." Protecting encyclopedia articles from long-term vandalism/advertising/soapboxing/copyvios/anarchy/plagiarism is "unpleasant or bad?" I disagree. I think it's quite pleasant and good. And real, not imagined. Real people (BLP) need protection quite often, as do many other topics, from vandalism/etc. Regarding "... counterproductive especially when used without merit." Editors need to explain the merit of page protection before the page is protected by an admin. Enough said. Your sentence #3: "Applying any form of protection to a page de facto removes the technical ability for anybody to be able to edit content which damages Wikipedia as it can inhibit useful contributions." There is much more damage due to the long-term vandalism/advertising/soapboxing/etc. that page protection prevents. And no, there is no de facto removal of the technical ability to edit content. Editors can still suggest changes on the talk page. Many do just that. It's quite productive, it engages editors in discussion, productive edits are done, vandalism/soapboxing/etc. is prevented. Page protection is a win-win situation. I won't get into the rest of your proposed policy, except to say that it's not just a minority view. It's essentially your view, a very personal essay. I think it should be moved to userspace. First Light (talk) 13:31, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Call for vote

• @Chrissymad:, @George Ho:, @NeilN:, @Eggishorn:, @Lectonar:

After having spent some quality time reading through replies, I have identified that many editors would like substantive evidence that a systemic problem exists with the current page protection process. Thus, I move to a vote on the following motion:

Every day for 31 days I will go to the page protection page and note the following data:

1. Total number of template requests made by type of protection requested

2. Total number of accepted requests made by type of protection requested

3. Total number of rejected requests made by type of protection requested

4. Total number of accepted template protection requests with the reasoning being stated to be “high risk template.”

5. Total number of requests accepted by time span protection is implemented

6. Total number of requests accepted for content with 1 - 2 users engaging in misconduct* on the article

7. Total number of requests accepted for content with 2 + users engaging in misconduct on the article

Alternative option As NeilN suggested one could conduct qualitative research with a defined rationale as to why I found an article necessarily protected or unnecessarily protected. For example, x amount of articles protected of x the y amount are unnecessarily protected in those 31 days.

• Misconduct would have to be further defined as edit warring or vandalism.

The rationale behind this form of collection is that I have concluded that by providing diff links it will not only be overbearing in respect of workload required to substantiate the claims I have made but it may unfairly single out any single administrator and open them to personal scrutiny. This would result in an objective bias being created in the discussion. I would also like to request other editors input in the data values collected and other propositions for this research. Thank you. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 03:41, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

None of the four points you propose to collect data for will show a systemic problem exists. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:44, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

@NeilN: Propose another set of data which might more accurately reflect a systemic problem exists? I have also added some data sets. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 04:01, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

To expand, evidence must be qualitative as well as quantitative. That is, you can say, 750 protection requests were accepted during a month. But then you have to analyze each one of those protects and say which ones were unnecessary or unnecessarily long and why. If there's a significant percentage, then propose changes that would curb those unnecessary protects. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: The problem is analyze each one of those requests and say which ones were necessary or unnecessarily long is rather subjective when used for research. Unless there is a distinctive definition for what would make a page protection necessary or unnecessarily long that is widely accepted. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 04:10, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• Sure analysis can be subjective. But raw numbers are useless with regards to determining whether or not there's a systemic problem. So there's 750 protects (and don't forget protects are often done without a request at RFPP). So what? Maybe all 750 were justified. Maybe 400 were (in which case... systemic problem). My point is, you need to show there's a problem with the protects themselves, not the number of protects. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:20, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: I could always conduct qualitative research with a defined rationale as to how I determined if page protection was necessary or unnecessary? Furthermore, doesn’t the rights log allow for filtering out page protection? Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 04:30, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• Of course it's subjective. There's no avoiding that. This discussion is a complete waste of time. You haven't even provided anecdotal evidence that there's a problem. EEng 04:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• @Wiki-Coffee: Use the rationale every admin is supposed to use - WP:PP. And if you disagree with that, state specifically how it could be improved. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:36, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @EEng: I have provided an account, not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research in my body of text which I have wrote above but you would have to read it to know that (body of text being the discussion before this one on voting for research. I could just technically conduct the research without consensus however that would prove useless especially when users like NeilN have just proven they can contribute very positively to the discussion and result in a positive change of approach. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 04:38, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I can't even parse your first sentence, so I quit reading. EEng 04:43, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: I think the policy WP:PP Adequately sets out an accepted standard for what constitutes a necessary page protection and what does not. I don’t think the goal of this research is to invalidate any part of the PP however, I would like it to show that the page protection policy is so far widely interpreted that it can result in systemic unnecessary protection of pages. An example would be the clause in the PP for the protection of templates which says any high-risk template can be protected. This, on the face of it, seems to be systemically used to indefinitely protect template pages without first having any vandalism occurring to them. Another issue I have recently faced is that administrators seem eager to sysop protect pages to force discussion on the talk page. Clearly the policy in its current from is not preventing that as it wouldn’t be happening. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 04:47, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee: High-risk templates are high-risk because any disruption on them could effect thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of pages. Vandalize one page and you vandalize one page. Vandalize the right template and you could cause millions of readers to be exposed to that vandalism. As for full protection, there are times where that is preferable to blocking multiple editors who have temporarily lost their wiki-sense. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:57, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: But that notion defeats placing trust in the editors to be able to edit Wikipedia. It offends the spirit of WP:5P3 and which is embodied in Wikipedia’s own slogan the encyclopaedia anyone can edit. With respect to hesitance blocking editors, then a warning might be the more effective option rather than offending Wikipedia’s core principles? Sysop protection seems to me something that should be used sparingly not as a mere convenience to prevent the need to take other less-disruptive actions against an editor? The point here is to show that there is an increase in unnecessary use of page protection privileges and that increase will not stop unless something is done to curve it. The burden of proof is on me to collect data to reflect that problem exists, as I know it does. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 05:06, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee: You might want to read the essay Wikipedia:AGF is not a suicide pact, inspired by Jimmy Wales. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 05:11, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Less coffee might help too. EEng 05:16, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: Dogmatically engaging in protectionist fear-driven actions is the folly of all great things. To contravene your core principles of freedom and openness for the ideal of protectionism and censorship foregoes all notions or expectations of freedom. If the very foundation of what you are aiming to protect is based on freedom, then you are ravaging those foundations and thus protection of what you are destroying is meaningless. If there is indeed any way you can protect a process inherently rested on freedom of those who make it be without foregoing any of the freedoms themselves this way ought to be the most logical means to keep both the foundation and those who protect it equally balanced. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 05:27, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Wiki-Coffee: You say they're dogmatic actions, I (and probably most of the community) say they're pragmatic. And don't forget anyone can still effect change on protected pages by using edit requests. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 05:37, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: If they are indeed pragmatic, then one would be able to evidence objective proof that sysop protecting a page to force discussion when less totalitarian means are available is more practical than those alternatives. I would argue that this form of protection damages Wikipedia’s public image, that is it gives an impression it is not able to be edited by anyone and that it prevents useful edits for the duration of the sysop protection. Whereas, so far as I can see, the only practical benefit for the administrator is not having to warn specific disruptive users or take further actions against them if required. Surely warning or preventing editing from disruptive editors is more practical than preventing the whole of Wikipedia and the public from editing a page? Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 05:46, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• My comments were mostly directed towards your objection of preemptive protection of high risk templates. Preemptive protection is a pragmatic solution. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:33, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @NeilN: On another note you have stated “I (and probably most of the community) say they're pragmatic.” If you have used “and probably most of the community” to give weight to your argument, then I would find it rather ironic if not contradictory that just moments before you gave me a link to Wikipedia:AGF is not a suicide pact which suggests “Wikipedia is not a democracy.” How would placing weight on the suggestion that the majority agree with you bare any consequence if Wikipedia is indeed not a democracy. Wiki-Coffee ^Talk 06:01, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• I think you missed the most relevant part of that essay - "this is not an experiment in anarchy". That is, we don't just keep our pages wide open, tell the world, "hey, do what you want", and hope for the best. The community has developed a set policies and guidelines over the years that in part set up pragmatic editing restrictions that help with our goal of building an encyclopedia (I think you've lost sight of the fact that we're not a dogmatic experiment in editing freedom on the Internet). That's what I meant by "most of the community" as these restrictions developed through community discussion. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:33, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Page protection arbitrary break 1

[unnecessary personal attacks redacted]

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.

Elections for NPP/NPR coordinators

Voting for coordinators has now begun HERE and will continue through/to 23:59 UTC Monday 06 March. New Page Review and its Page Curation is a core MediaWiki extension. The process of expertly vetting all new articles is a critical issue needing a couple of 'go to' people. The coordinators will do their best for for the advancement of the improvement of NPP and generally keep tracks on the development of those things. Coordinators have no additional or special user benefits, but they will try to keep discussions in the right places and advance negotiations with the WMF.
Please be sure to vote. Any registered, confirmed editor can vote. Nominations are now closed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:28, 22 February 2017 (UTC)