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July 2021

Memory problems ;-)

Latest comment: 2 years ago12 comments2 people in discussion

I believe this is the second time I've told you what WP:PROPOSAL says about the location of guideline promotion discussions just this month. I'm almost tempted to propose a change the long-standing wording in that policy from "start an RfC for your policy or guideline proposal in a new section on the talk page" to "start an RfC for your policy or guideline proposal in a new section on the talk page and definitely not on any of the Village pumps or any other page, no matter what SMcCandlish tells you". Please try to remember this time so I don't have to go to that much work, 'kay? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

If that page's wording has come to conflict with the existence and purpose of WP:VPPRO, then either that wording needs to change, or VPPRO needs to be MfD'ed for closure as {{Historical}}. This is a WP:PROCESSFORK, and not an error on my part. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:19, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: See also salient part of 2015 close here (second half of last paragraph): "One may also argue that this needs a broader discussion/forum than this particular one; frankly I am surprised that relatively few people commented, but the lack of popularity of these pages was hinted at elsewhere on the talk page." This is not a new problem, and its entire and obvious solution is centralizing discussions that have potential site-wide impact, instead of continuing to sideline them on talk pages only 10 people read and without any further "advertising". WP:VPPRO exists for this very purpose, when it comes to guideline/policy proposals, though an alternative is (as I said, and as I did) posting notice there rather than hosting the discussion there. If you think I'm going to stop posting policy/guideline proposal notices to VPPRO, and policy/guideline wording or interpretation change discussion notices to VPPOL, where they belong, and suggesting – when I think it's in the project's best actual interests – that a particular proposal would be better hosted directly at Village Pump, then you are entirely mistaken. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:18, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I hope that nobody actually made a WP:PROPOSAL that Template:Navbox be declared an official Wikipedia guideline. Did they? Or is that an irrelevant example? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Note that my problem is with you telling people that if they want to a page to be tagged as a guideline or policy, then they need to have the RFC discussion itself at VPPR. I've got no problems with you pointing any/all relevant pages to such a discussion; the problem is with you saying "The discussion really belongs here" when the discussion is already in the correct place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

You're just repeating yourself, without taking into account any of the above. I won't repeat myself. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:37, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Do we agree on the following facts?

You believe proposals to tag something as a guideline should ideally be made at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) (with a note on the affected page's talk page).
The very first words at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) say "The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines..."
The Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines policy says the correct procedure is to "start an RfC for your policy or guideline proposal in a new section on the talk page" (i.e., not at any of the village pumps).

Is that right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

More or less. This is why I observe there's a WP:PROCESSFORK. The instructions of VPPOL and in that paragraph at WP:POL can't both be correct (at least not without clarification that either option is viable, or whatever). Statistically speaking, we know from long experience that hosting a guideline proposal at the talk page of the material attracts very little input but from the page's extant regulars and does not produce a very solid consensus, but rather a local one that is apt to be challenged later (or the alleged guideline widely ignored and eventually demoted again), while using VPPOL attracts a more diverse and larger set of editors and produces a stronger consensus. This effect can sometimes be somewhat approximated by "advertising" the proposal, if hosted at the material's own talk page, via VPPOL and WP:CENT. However, this still vote-stacks in favor of the proposal by regulars at that page, and the entire point of our P&G pages is that they are site-wide consensus not a local consensus, so there really is no up-side to hosting the proposal discussion at the material's own talk page. I don't feel that way about change discussions (rewriting a section, deleting a passage, adding a new line-item, etc.); VPPOL should not drown in comparatively minor change proposals. However, any such change discussion that is likely to affect a large number of articles should be the subject of a pointer notice at VPPOL. PS: I think I was mixing up VPPOL and VPPRO, if that's what you're getting at; VPPRO seems more for non-policy proposals (and non-technical ones, since VPTECH exists for those). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:34, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:VPPOL and WP:POL don't conflict if you interpret VPPOL as being for "discussing" a page but not for "holding the actual promotion RFC" (i.e., anything except the official RFC can happen at VPPOL, including discussions about whether to have that RFC, what it should say, whether it's started, how it's going, etc.).

WP:POL lists a lot of options for advertising those RFCs, beginning with both VPPOL "and/or" VPPRO. We are not having problems getting people to show up for RFCs about policy changes these days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:55, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

There is no reason to reach for an interpretation that RfC discussions are somehow not "discussions" to have at VPPOL (which in fact hosts many policy/guideline RfCs) when we know we get better results hosting the RfC discussions there. I'll just have to agree to disagree with you about turnout; I spend an unusual amount of time in policy discussions compared to other Wikipedians and trust my own judgment on this. Also, the entire WP:PROPOSAL section you're relying on begins with "One path for proposals is ...", so it is not exclusive or dispositive to begin with, only an example. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:59, 21 July 2021 (UTC); rev'd. 04:05, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Do you think you do? There are four "policy" RFCs open at the moment: 1, 2, 3, 4. I don't happen to remember seeing your name in any of them, but perhaps I just missed it. Even the least attended (a quite specialized subject) already has comments from eight editors, and some have dozens of editors commenting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Dwelling on my lack of participation right this second when I'm pretty obviously on a near-total wikibreak and barely checking in, versus 15+ years of my history here, is indicative of nothing other than this conversation has no productive purpose. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:55, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Addition of service award template request

Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hey man. I was looking at the service awards and noticed that for Journeyman Editor, there is a grognard template with a little red book. I was looking online about little red book and found out that it is related to Mao and communist China. Given that many people are not fans of Mao nor communism, I was wondering if you could add a template option, say for example, The Green Book of Wikipedia, in honor of environmentalism, without references to political or economic systems. --Thinker78 (talk) 16:57, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Lots of books have red covers. There's a difference between a little red book, and The Little Red Book. I don't personally have much interest in the specifics of those templates, and people have been prone to fight about them, WP:BIKESHED style. And environmentalism is just as much as socio-political viewpoint as communism (albeit on a different political axis), so your rationale isn't a neutrality improvement. I don't care if it gets changed, but I'm disinclined to make such a change myself. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)