Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 148

< Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
Village pump (policy) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191

RfC on schools' inclusion criteria

NO NEW GUIDELINES
There is consensus against establishing new guidelines that explicitly define separate notability criteria for primary schools, secondary schools, and/or post-secondary schools.
However, there is no consensus on whether schools should be exempt from the notability guideline for organizations (WP:ORG). Roughly half of the editors in the survey believe that all schools should be subject to WP:ORG, citing Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) § Schools (WP:NSCHOOL).
The other half prefer some variation of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes § Schools (WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES), which exempts "independently accredited degree-awarding institutions and high schools" with at least one independent source from WP:ORG. These editors also note that WP:ORG excludes "non-profit educational institutions" from its scope in its lead section.
As WP:ORG's lead section is inconsistent with its WP:NSCHOOL section, it is unclear whether the local consensus described in WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is supported by the notability guideline. Further discussion is required to reconcile this inconsistency. — Newslinger talk 05:14, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

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

Should Wikipedia have one set of criteria about articles on schools up to and including the high school level and a different set for articles on schools of higher education? (I.e. beyond high school, e.g. universities.) -The Gnome (talk) 12:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Background

This follows a series of discussions and RfCs in other pages, over the years. (See "Links to relevant threads," herebelow.) This RfC tries to take on the issue of school notability and inclusion of schools articles in Wikipedia slowly and piecemeal. It is posted here following the suggestion that the PUMP is the appropriate place for such a broad-policy question. Editors are encouraged to add to the link-sections below if they believe something is amiss.

List to relevant threads

List to relevant policies, guidelines, essays

Ping-o-mat

Notifying editors who got involved in past discussions:

Survey

  • No need - Both types of institution should be covered by WP:ORG. Blueboar (talk) 13:09, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No need every possible article which could ever be written is already covered by WP:42. If a SNG contravenes that principle, it is wrong, and if an SNG agrees with it, it is redundant. --Jayron32 04:55, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Remove distinction: they should just comply to WP:NORG. I'd also support removing the pesky exemption from CSD for schools that are patently non-notable. StraussInTheHouse (talk) 16:08, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Need: It is easier with some criteria that can be applied directly to avoid endless discussions about relevant articles that however gets a request for deletion or to avoid creating articles that are clearly not notable. Within sports there are criteria about which competitions or divisions give presumed notability to a player. For schools there are quite good criteria on Swedish Wikipedia (I know that each Wikipedia has its own rules.): sv:Wikipedia:Relevanskriterier#Skolor_och_andra_institutioner_för_lärande and sv:Wikipedia:Att_skriva_om_utbildning#Skolor_och_lärosäten. Hopefully Google translates them reasonable well, but here is a summary:
  1. Universities etc: Presumed to be notable
  2. Secondary schools: In some cases (old ..) presumed to be notable
  3. Primary schools: not notable (should be in the article about the administrative unit to which they belong, as well as the not notable secondary schools)
  4. School buildings: if built by some famous architect
The GNG is quite abstract, so there is need for concrete criteria. Per W (talk) 11:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No need, using NORG for both, per Blueboar/Jayron32. I will point out there have been past attempts to have school-specific notability guidelines, but these never gained consensus (per what Per W is describing). --Masem (t) 06:32, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Uncertain what to use for specific criteria, if any at all other than WP:GNG. I should however note that simply being verified to exist DOES NOT make any educational institution inherently notable enough to warrant a page. We shouldn't presume something is article-worthy just because it's a college/university/school. Perhaps WP:NSCHOOL could make a more explicit note of this. Snuggums (talk / edits) 06:36, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure if we do need a SNG for schools (I'm leaning towards yes), but I'd rather that we don't allow articles on every single secondary school. There has to be a cut-off somewhere. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 06:40, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes schools are not just ORGs they are a special kind of organization that attract articles. Everyone would like to see their high school and University on Wikipedia. Schools tend to produce notable graduates. They are important infrastructure like highways and town councils and they play an important role in building communities. Wikipedia does a public service by covering schools because it allows some verification that people are listing real schools on their resumes and not diploma mills. I believe every legitimate post sec degree granting school should have a page, while high schools and elementry schools should be covered within a page on their school district. If there is no school district (say an independant/private school) high schools should have pages and elementary schools not. I strongly favor a bright line rule like WP:GEOLAND rather than a fuzzy guideline that results in endless debates about the notability of this or that school, how reliable the sources are and so on. Why is school X notable while school Y across town in the same district is not? Sports and crime stories are going to decide notability if we have a fuzzy rule. Legacypac (talk) 06:41, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • "Everyone would like to see their high school and University on Wikipedia". While that may be true for most, I can recall cases at OTRS where teachers have contacted us asking for the article on their school to be deleted because it is a target for vandalism. Just the other day, I removed some highly derogatory content from Berachampa Deulia Uchcha Vidyalaya that had gone unnoticed for more than a year. This is partly why I think we should focus on quality over quantity with schools articles. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:09, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I lean toward "no need" but am open to being convinced otherwise, mainly because of the years of dispute history involving this stuff. In the views of those who think we need special rules for schools, please explain a) why NORG isn't good enough, and b) why it can't just be fixed in NORG instead of in a probably pointless WP:POLICYFORK that we'd be likely to merge anyway. On the above detailed proposition, I don't agree with Per W's summary. No secondary schools are "presumed to be notable". If one is very old and has a richly detailed RS track record, it is notable because of the RS coverage – it is demonstrated not presumed to be notable. I don't think even universities should be presumed to be notable, since various things call themselves universities that are not one. If something with "College" or "University" or "Institute" in its name turns out to be notable it's because we verified the RS coverage of it and demonstrated it to be notable, not because we presumed it was notable. Mountain ranges and heads of state are presumptively notable because of what they are, of their scope in the grand scheme of things. I agree that primary schools are presumptively non-notable, i.e., that it's going to take really strong RS showing to demonstrate that one is. That said, NORG seems to already have all this covered.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:53, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
    • Comment: Assigning qualitative attributes to higher educational institutions must be the work of sources considered by Wikipedia to be reliable; it's certainly not within an editor's scope of authority since that would be their own, personal judgement. In case no such third-party, independent assessors of higher-education quality exist, we have to decide what to do, in view of what SMcCandlish rightly points out above ("various things call themselves universities that are not one"). -The Gnome (talk) 12:11, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
      Definitely not an idle concern. I ran into this right before the wikibreak I just returned from (a religious, borderline cult thing that got permission to build a "university" in one country or another, but which is really an indoctrination farm and money-suction device). There is some coverage of it (though probably based on press releases by the religious group and/or the govt. that approved their permits and stuff); an editor unaware of the organization's nature might easily be fooled into assuming it really was an instititution of higher learning. This is very similar to all the charter schools being run by for-profit companies, just with a religious instead of commercial focus.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:30, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Clarification:
  1. Universities and colleges: Presumed to be notable
  2. Secondary schools (including defunct institutions): Presumed to be notable
  3. Primary schools: Some AfD's have been ridiculous and overzealous in squashing notability of some lower level schools that have achieved significant coverage. I am frequently astounded at the serial blindness of a certain class of editors who cannot see a long list of sources, obviously achieving the basics of WP:GNG. Instead they only see the hard gospel of a WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, with no room for reason.
Because we have that class of editor roaming the back pages of AfDs (looking to cause trouble), we cannot provide them any further ammunition for their arguments. No wiggle room, no further limitations they can misinterpret as an excuse to censor additional wikipedia content. I will note, on the many school articles I have tried to create or improve, I have not found the same consistent set of sources for school information that are available for other common subjects. Government lists are frequently years out of date and incomplete. Many sources are community generated and don't meet the standard of WP:RS. And the best sources for a specific school ultimately resolve back to WP:PRIMARY where your quality and consistency may vary. I know of probably a dozen or more large schools that have no articles and that have been that way for a decade. Why? The sources to create even the most cursory stub just aren't available to me or anyone else who looks. I've personally written to many schools suggesting they write their own article . . . make it a class project. Tell the world the story of your school and find the local sources to back it up. It has worked a few times, but most of the time it is ignored. With that inconsistency of sources, additional limitations to our criteria are not warranted or useful. Trackinfo (talk) 07:04, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Please see my comment just above yours. It's highly dubious that any of these things are presumed notable, certainly not below the university level and even that's iffy because not everything with that word in its name is a legit institution. PS: Deletion is not determined by a conspiratorial cabal of roaming troublemakers, but by general community consensus at AfD. If someone makes compelling arguments for deletion and no one can mount a compelling reason to keep then the article should in fact be deleted. You seem to be making an argument against Wikipedia operating the way Wikipedia operates.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:26, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No need A key problem with having different rules for different tiers of education is that the institutions within those tiers differ wildly. For instance, while US high schools seem to be huge, Australian ones tend to be relatively small (hence a major issue I have with editors who argue that high schools are automatically notable - maybe they are in the US, but not in Australia). The size of higher education institutions in Australia varies from about 73,000 students at Monash University to dozens at some private sector tertiary education providers, so obviously the same rules can't apply to all. WP:ORG does a good job, and there's no need to treat educational institutions in a special way. Nick-D (talk) 07:17, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Please close this before it becomes a huge mess like the last RfC on this issue some things are just best not talked about in a large RfC and are best found out through practice. Divisive issues where massive RfCs have consistently not reached any consensus are one of them. Also, NORG explicitly does not apply to schools as was part of the consensus adopting the new standards. TonyBallioni (talk) 08:38, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No point. This is a battle that was lost over a decade ago, and the notion that secondary schools of whatever size or importance are exempt from any notability standards or sourcing requirements is about as set in concrete as any COMMONOUTCOME on Wikipedia. Waste of time and breath to hash it out yet again. Ravenswing 08:42, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No. In actual fact, the criteria we usually use cover (a) primary and middle schools, and (b) secondary schools and tertiary institutions. We usually consider (b) to be notable and (a) not to be. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:46, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
@Necrothesp: where are the criteria that are used? --Per W (talk) 12:41, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No need - Both types of institution should be covered by WP:ORG. But it should be a good idea to get rid of SCHOOLOUTCOMES as it is too often misused as a policy to keep schools, even when horribly written and unsourced. The Banner talk 09:45, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree with TonyBallioni, and I think the specific line he is referring to in WP:ORG is The scope of this guideline covers all groups of people organized together for a purpose with the exception of non-profit educational institutions ... (emphasis mine). Mz7 (talk) 12:34, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
The problem with that highlighted sentence is that the ORG guideline subsequently goes into some detail about schools... in fact it has an entire sub-section devoted to them... so (despite the highlighted sentence) it is obvious that schools ARE considered within the scope of the ORG guideline. I think that sentence will need to be removed, but that is for another discussion. Blueboar (talk) 17:05, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, point taken. Mz7 (talk) 03:39, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No per Necrothesp's comments. Over six years ago I perused 100s of high school AfDs which I compiled in an essay and concluded that no matter what anyone ever says and how many RfCs and dramafest discussions we have, verifiable high school articles that aren't just a one-sentence piece of crap are almost ALWAYS kept. --Milowent • hasspoken 12:55, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Good survey! So a well-written article (with enough verifiable content) about a high school should be kept. Couldn't we then state somewhere that high schools are presumed to be notable? Then we can avoid lots of discussions. --Per W (talk) 14:39, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Note that the phrase "presumed to be notable" does not mean "is inherently notable". A presumption of notability simply means we should give a school article the benefit of the doubt... waiting to delete until we have done due diligence in searching for sources (per WP:BEFORE). Blueboar (talk) 17:05, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Cordless Larry: See, and that's exactly what I was talking about below, about schools in non-English speaking countries. We delete them because we don't have or can't read the foreign-language sources. But I can guarantee you such schools would have been kept if they were in Anglophone countries. In effect, if we insist on GNG for high schools we are institutionalizing WP:Systemic bias. --MelanieN (talk) 10:07, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
But if we can't read the sources, then I don't see what we can base articles on. I'm also not sure that the issue is about not being able to read the sources, because we have some regular school AfD participants who have the language skills necessary to read local sources, but rather that the sources often don't exist online, so we can't access them. Cordless Larry (talk) 10:10, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Cordless Larry: The only thing I've seen changing is that more articles are being created these days for high schools in far flung non-English speaking places without available online sourcing. Those have always candidates for deletion. When the "are high schools notable?!?" debate began 15 years ago with the VfD for Union County Magnet High Schools, editors were debating mainstream large American high schools. E.g., Jimbo Wales made the argument in November 2003 that Randolph School could have an article. No one would dream of sending something like that to AfD today. I screenshotted the article deleted via Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kishorchak Banamali High School, it was unsourced, there was no option but to delete. If someone wants to spend their time on wikipedia tracking down stubs to Indonesian and Indian high schools without sourcing, they will get them deleted.--Milowent • hasspoken 14:01, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, true enough about Kishorchak Banamali High School, which was pretty much my argument there too, Milowent. Some editors will still argue for keep even in such circumstances, however - including admins, which worries me. Cordless Larry (talk) 14:39, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Keep the current understanding: institutions of higher learning (degree granting) and secondary schools (diploma granting) should be presumed to be notable, if there is confirmation of their existence and status. This practice 1) prevents endless arguments because high schools and colleges, like professional sports figures, virtually always turn out in a search to have enough coverage to qualify, and 2) helps to get around our inherent bias against non-English-speaking countries, since even though coverage likely exists, it can be hard to find in the non-English press. MelanieN (talk) 17:24, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • (@MelanieN:, where is the current understanding? --Per W (talk) 18:52, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I sincerely doubt that the "current understanding" is that all high schools and above possess inherent notability. But I could be wrong. -The Gnome (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Keep as is. Agree with MelanieN on all issues. In fact I'd like to take her comment above and frame it somewhere. Hobit (talk) 18:08, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Different set lower than GNG (Thus NOT NORG) - Secondary schools and definitely accredited universities should be presumed notable status. Classifying them in with WP:NORG is wildly OTT and also sets them a higher level of standards to meet when the circumstances for those stricter requirements is less likely to occur. I haven't marked this as "Keep" like MelanieN since there is such disagreement as well as partial rollback from this position that "Keep" is itself a level of dispute. Nosebagbear (talk) 18:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No – GNG suffices. Nothing should be 'presumed' notable. If it doesn't meet GNG, it doesn't belong on Wikipedia. RGloucester — ☎ 03:33, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
On the contrary, there are many traditional and accepted special guidelines at enwiki that define notability in ways other than GNG - for example, WP:NACADEMICS. This is not a new or startling concept, it is long-established practice; see WP:SNG. There are many special guidelines for specific categories of article that "presume notability" if certain criteria are met - for example, playing a professional sport at the highest level. The rationale behind this presumption is that such people will virtually always be found to have received coverage that meets GNG, so let's just accept that and not get into thousands of individual arguments about it. The nutshell at WP:NSPORTS spells it out very clearly: "An athlete is presumed to be notable if the person has actively participated in a major amateur or professional competition or won a significant honor, as listed on this page, and so is likely to have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject." That is also the rationale behind presuming notability for high schools and colleges. --MelanieN (talk) 09:59, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Did you ever consider that perhaps I do not agree with the way such guidelines are used? I'm being asked this question in the context of schools, and in the context of schools, I do not believe anything other than GNG is required. We can discuss sport when someone opens an RfC on that subject. If a school does not meet GNG, it does not need a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is not a directory. In any case, like others here, I would also be satisfied by bringing schools formally under WP:ORG, if that's preferable. RGloucester — ☎ 15:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Um... folks... Schools already ARE covered formally under WP:ORG... See WP:NSCHOOLS. Blueboar (talk) 16:04, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
It seems somewhat ambiguous at the moment, given the "exception of non-profit educational institutions" caveat in the lead. What I meant is that I'd be fine with clarifying WP:ORG to the effect above. RGloucester — ☎ 16:21, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
For the sports-specific notability guideline in particular, it does not define notability in a way other than the general notability guideline. It provides guidance on when it is highly likely that the general notability guideline can be met with a sufficient search for suitable sources. It was discussed last year in this venue, and the closing statement once again affirmed this in the context of WP:NSPORTS (as has been discussed many times since, the closing statement overstepped in its broader conclusions for all subject-specific notability guidelines). isaacl (talk) 17:13, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
That's correct, and also applies to virtually all other SNG (subject-specific notability guidelines). There are a handful of divergent ones, like WP:NACADEMIC, and the level of consensus they enjoy is disputed. For the record, I think we need them in some cases when facts about the real world make it otherwise more difficult to have the articles we need – e.g. the fact that mega-influential scientists in their field often get no mainstream news coverage of any kind, just get cited thousands of times by other researchers. But it's a rare divergence from GNG. It will take a lot of community input to figure out whether such a variance should apply to a topic, and will require a community consensus that something is quite different about that topic. We've been over schools so many times I don't think consensus is likely to change in favor of doing so. They aren't different in any salient way from other organizations, other than they inspire some Wikipedians to consider them "important". (Anyone new-ish around here: see WP:Notability/Historical and WP:ITSIMPORTANT for how "include it because it's important" has been received by the community for the last decade and a half.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:56, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes: Need separate standards to facilitate discussion and consensus - Many of the comments above don't answer the question being posed, namely, whether there should be separate standards for high schools and post-secondary institutions. I think there should because it will facilitate a more focused discussion. Even for those think that WP:NOTABILITY, WP:ORG and other guidelines adequately cover the field, should recognize that others disagree and have reasons for that disagreement. Those reasons (and the objections to them) are, I think, different for high schools and universities, and it would be helpful to discuss them separately, acknowledging (at least) the possibility of different guidelines for each. My (admittedly brief) involvement and review of past attempts to reach consensus makes it clear that the differences make discussing any particular proposal more difficult.Federalist51 (talk) 21:36, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment There may be some validity to "schools being an important part of the infastructure". However living in Detroit, Michigan I live in a place where there have been several fly-by-night charter high schools, so I am less convinced than some that all schools that are at the high school level are notable. I also have seen way too many articles that have only been sourced to show a place exists survive on the theory better sources could be found, while no one even tries to find such sources. We need much clearer policies.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:22, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
    Agreed on both points. We have no policy or guideline suggesting that schools of any kind are presumptive notable, and a clear guideline (WP:NORG#Schools) stating the opposite, yet some AfD respondents persist in trying to presume their notability.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:56, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • No need for yet more bureaucracy and instruction creep and oppose the desire and intent to override clear consensus at AFD by shovelling on more and more red tape Atlantic306 (talk) 17:30, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
    If, instead of vagueness, some kind of "clear consensus" exists either way, it would be most helpful for the conduct of AfD participants, as well as for this RfC's progress, to have hard, arithmetical data. -The Gnome (talk) 12:01, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Of what? There's no doubt that we have a clear consensus; it's codified at WP:NORG#Schools. This is rehash is just another thing that needs to be listed at WP:PERENNIAL.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:36, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Atlantic306 claims that there is "clear consensus at AfD" (emphasis added], but this is previcely the root of the problem. Although WP:NSCHOOLS seems adequately clear (it's not entirely clear, since it asks for A or B or A&B), the recent historical record in AfDs shows that decisions can go, actually, every which way depending on who takes part in each discussion, what is the subject's nationality, etc. And this is how and why the quest for clarity started. The background is in the links in the Relevant Threads section above. It all has come down to whether or not the criteria should be the same for both high schools and colleges of any kind. And here we are. -The Gnome (talk) 13:59, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Firstly, I find WP:NORG#Schools already bizarre - how on earth would a school (or anything) manage to pass standard WP:NORG while failing GNG? At the risk of partially duplicating my most recent comment at the bottom of the general discussion section the clash(es) between AfD !voters and the general editing body is fairly evident on this topic, as noted above. I'm aware of the marginally consensus RfC and choose not to go against it, but disagree with it - thus I don't cast a !vote on multiple instances. I don't think there is a slippery slope of "the AfD editors are dragging the community" to move the notability requirements to some level lower than GNG/bizarre NORG. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:02, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Secondary schools not notable - These articles are a vandalism magnet and are all but impossible to check because sources are scarce and out of date. The articles contribute considerably to the OTRS workload and are a substantial share of the reverts performed by ClueBot and the various bot-assisted interfaces. There is little to suggest that they offer a meaningful draw to new contributors nor that the articles are themselves valuable to readers. Areas such as staff are particularly difficult, as it is common for the names of adminsitrators to be edited, and difficult to ascertain which of these edits are rare good-faith updates and which are students making themselves or their friends the new principal. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 02:31, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure how an increased vulnerability to a certain form of vandalism makes them warrant a lower or higher level of notability requirement. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:36, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

General discussion

  • FYI, pings don't go above the count of 50. I'd guess the above ping-o-mat didn't get every one (I wasn't hit). --Izno (talk) 13:53, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Greetings, Izno. I'd appreciate any help from anyone in fixing this. I should note here that these were not pings per se but mere full-style usernames. Perhaps that helps. Thanks in advance. -The Gnome (talk) 14:02, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Linking to userpage is a ping, the above did not go through because the count is above 50. Instead of trying to fix that I would advise to just remove the section, it's unnecessary. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:27, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Would it work to break the list into smaller groups of pings? Blueboar (talk) 15:08, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but even then not in one edit. Each smaller group if they'll add up beyond 50 in one edit, it won't work. My rough count shows there's around 120 editors above; so you can ping batch of 40 in 3 separate edits. –Ammarpad (talk) 15:25, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, all. I'll get to it. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 07:03, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Sad to say, that probably didn't work. Each edit has to be signed - see WP:PING Note that the post containing a link to a user page must be signed; if the mention is not on a completely new line with a new signature, no notification will be sent. (Multiple mentions on the same new line with new sig are fine.) 92.19.25.230 (talk) 22:05, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, 92.19.25.230. I did the multiple, signed edits. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 06:28, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Ammarpad, IMVHO the issue is quite important and participants in past discussions on it should be informed of this RfC's opening. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 07:11, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
The Gnome's ping worked that time 8 mins ago. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:33, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the confirmation, Graeme Bartlett. -The Gnome (talk) 10:27, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't know if all the pings worked (I was notified) I just think you should have called it pingamajig. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 10:33, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Noted for next time, Ivanvector!   -The Gnome (talk) 13:13, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
  • An obvious thing, maybe, but if language is changed, we need grandfathering of existing school articles , giving them say, 2-3 years of time before they are treated under NORG/GNG under this potential change. --Masem (t) 17:13, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, 24 months is probably the way to go. My heart bleeds at the thought of having a deluge re-enter AfD. Nosebagbear (talk)
  • What is the driver in this discussion? What is the problem if a few less notable schools are included - are the servers running out of space? Policies and uniformity should support and enhance the information in the encyclopaedia, not reduce it. As a final aside; when I see the acres of text devoted to arguing fine (if not irrelevant) points I do wonder if the time could not have been better spent working on articles. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:31, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Greetings, Martin of Sheffield. Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are evidently not driven by web space availability; otherwise, we would have significantly fewer rules and guidelines. The "driver" of this discussion is quite clear, as one could see by diving into past discussions on the issue, linked above. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 09:44, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
You haven't explained why you feel the need to remove information though. It reads as if you are just trying to establish rules because you believe there need to be rules. Quoting conflicting policies as if they were reasons appears on the surface to indicate a bureaucratic rather than encyclopaedic approach. I would suggest that a better approach is only to disallow that which harms the encyclopaedia, and I have yet to be convinced that a few lines about an otherwise obscure school (which will of course be notable to many thousands of present and former pupils, parents and teachers) harms the encyclopaedia. Verifiability is important as a safeguard of our credibility but notability is a subjective assessment. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:02, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Greetings, Martin of Sheffield. I did not express any kind of "need to remove information." Where do you get that? (If what you say comes from a hard inclusionist perspective I will not entertain it much, thank you. It simply does not pay to argue with editors who insist that all information has a place in Wikipedia, e.g. "Come on, some stub article about a non-notable subject does not harm the encyclopaedia".) But, more importantly, if the policies are indeed "conflicting", as you say, isn't this a reason to resolve the conflicts and get clarity? -The Gnome (talk) 05:51, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
  • This is a perennial subject of discussion, and has been for a decade or more. Looking at the list above I see that it has been discussed at least three times in the last year, and this is a fourth. In one of those discussions, namely this one, the closers decided that even though the opinions for-and-against NSCHOOLOUTCOMES were about equally balanced numerically, the conclusion was to overturn that longstanding practice. Then people seized on that one (out of dozens) discussion and its barely-supported* conclusion to change the wording at various guidelines to say that, hey, secondary schools aren't presumed notable after all. Looking at the discussion here, I see that opinion is still about evenly balanced, and that many/most of us were not even aware that the longstanding guideline had been overturned on the basis of one RfC. This is immensely frustrating. How are those of us who care about this supposed to keep up? If I wouldn't have known about this discussion, either, except for the ping-o-mat kindly sent out above (thank you, The Gnome). --MelanieN (talk) 10:33, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
*Quoting from the closure: "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." --MelanieN (talk) 10:45, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I think we end up in the situation of the community as a whole is roughly evenly balanced, but of the AfD common editors there is a slight majority towards the "easier/assumed school notability" (by coincidence - I don't think the group is school obsessed). Now obviously AfD editors are supposed to follow community consensus, but at a minimum it discourages delete votes (I admit to sometimes just not casting a vote to avoid !voting in line with that RfC that I disagree with). Nosebagbear (talk) 14:54, 29 November 2018 (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.

Invitation to RfC

Hi all. I invite you to participate an RfC on English variety and date format. Szqecs (talk) 07:27, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Bans imposed as unblock conditions

Administrators often impose or suggest editing restrictions on blocked editors, either of their own accord or accepting suggestions from the editors themselves, as "conditions" to accepting an unblock request. We sometimes log these (see Wikipedia:Editing restrictions) as "voluntary" bans or as "unblock conditions" (or sometimes not at all). I think these sorts of unblock conditions are a good use of admin discretion, but I've realized recently that there does not actually seem to be any support for these sorts of ban in the banning policy. According to the policy (see #Authority to ban), bans may be imposed either by community consensus, or by admins acting under authority of the arbitration committee in designated topics (discretionary sanctions). They can also be imposed by Jimbo or the WMF but let's not get into that.

I propose that a bullet be added to this section, specifying that an administrator acting under their own authority may impose a relevant editing restriction (a ban) as a condition to a user being unblocked, if the administrator believes that such a sanction will prevent disruption related to that user's block. This would bring the banning policy in line with the blocking policy (see #Conditional unblock). Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Support if and only if the same with the agreement of the blocked user wording from WP:CONDUNBLOCK is included. Otherwise, you're giving individual admins the power to unilaterally decree what other editors may and may not do, which is a Really Bad Idea; except in the cases of the most blatant vandalism, it's rare to find any situation in which every admin will agree on what does and doesn't constitute disruption, so what you'd effectively be doing is giving a massive first-mover-advantage incentive for every self-appointed social engineer to impose their personal standards of what constitutes 'disruption' every time a ban appeal comes up. ‑ Iridescent 19:27, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
Just copy the appropriate text from CONDUNBLOCK, which is where this authority comes from. No need to reinvent the wheel. Also, agree with Iri on not giving individual admins the authority to ban without consent or ArbCom authorization. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:41, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Ian.thomson, I don't agree with If they don't agree to the topic ban then they must not be interested in contributing to the encyclopedia in general but specifically engaging in whatever behavior got them blocked in the slightest. If they don't agree to the topic ban, they may just feel that its scope is too broad or inappropriate, and may well feel that for good reason; I've seen some truly goofy topic ban proposals in my time, and having a single admin make the call rather than an AN/ANI discussion means the checks and balances of the rest of the community explaining why the proposed topic ban is unworkable won't be there. ‑ Iridescent 19:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
@Iridescent: Ok, what about the specification "if they don't agree to a perfectly reasonable topic-ban"...? Like, yeah, if someone is being disruptive at just (clicks random article) Paromitar Ek Din, a proposal to ban them from all articles relating to either India or movies would be extreme, but (depending on the kind of disruption) "movies by Aparna Sen" or "movies starring Rituparna Sengupta" or even just a topic ban relating to that one movie would probably be a good indication whether or not the user is too hyper-focused on that topic to want to be useful elsewhere. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:07, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
Sure, but it's fair to see their side as well, and if they have a reasonable objection to the topic ban we should treat it as such, even if we don't necessarily accept their proposed wording. To take a fictional but eminently plausible hypothetical, imagine editor Foo has spent most of their editing career writing about old cowboy movies, but then got sucked into Trumpian edit-wars and eventually got banned under WP:ARBAPDS. They appeal their ban, and the admin Bar agrees to unblock subject to a topic ban using the standard wording of all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people, broadly construed. Editor Foo complains that they can't accept this, since this definition will include Ronald Reagan and Clint Eastwood, making it impossible to return to their favorite topic of cowboy movies even though their edits there were universally accepted as uncontroversial. In this case admin Bar's initial complaint is completely reasonable since it's using standard Arbcom-mandated wording, but there wouldn't be anything vexatious about editor Foo refusing to accept it. (This kind of thing used to come up all the damn time back when The Troubles was still a hot topic—since virtually every person of consequence in Northern Ireland was linked to the conflict in some way or another, topic bans had the de facto effect of banning editors from anything historical or biographical.) ‑ Iridescent 20:22, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
I can't recall a wording for it (other than WP:COMMONSENSE) but I've been given mixed messages as to whether pages that cover multiple topics are treated as divided territory or the worst possible topic. There's some city that's a sister city to Jerusalem. When an edit war broke out in that article over whether Jerusalem is in Israel or Palestine, I got fussed at for citing the Arbcom DS for the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, even though everyone (except a few WP:SPAs) agreed that locking the page was necessary to stop the edit war (though I still don't understand why I was the first to lock the Two-state solution article!). Still, I've also seen plenty of cases where someone got in trouble for editing part unrelated to a DS of an article that was partly covered by a DS. If the topic ban is being implemented through this and not through discretionary sanctions and the editor has a proven history of improving cowboy movie articles (or whatever), the hypothetical admin should be willing to say "ok, you can still edit the parts of the Eastwood and Reagan articles from before they entered politics, except when they made political statements during their acting careers." (Looking a non-cowboy Arnold Schwarzenegger, acting careers after entering politics might too much of a gray area, though, IMO). Ian.thomson (talk) 20:46, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support with Iridescent's qualifier per everything Iridescent has said in this discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 20:48, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Too big a grant of authority to individual admins. Topic bans should require a community process. --Trovatore (talk) 20:56, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
    • This is already policy. All Ivanvector is suggesting is what amounts to a cross-reference in the banning policy. Opposing this wouldn't stop conditional unblocks. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:46, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • What Iri and Tony said. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:44, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • This is already policy, no harm cross referencing it at the banning policy as well. If the blocked editor is unwilling to accept the proposed unblock conditions, they have the option of waiting out their block (if not indefinite) or not agreeing, which will result in their appeal being declined, at which time they can request further review (whether indef or time-limited). Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:50, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
    • Indeed, unblock conditions can result from a negotiation of the details - e.g. tweaks to boundaries, clarifications, etc. (e.g. I recall one user suggesting a slightly different wording to avoid potential confusion between the plain English meaning of a word and the more specific meaning of that word as a term of art in the topic area concerned) and this is a Good Thing as restrictions both 'sides' are happy with are far more likely to be adhered to. Thryduulf (talk) 23:07, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Iridescent's version, to ensure this does not get out of hand. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 05:45, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Good points everyone! I think we're all pretty much in agreement with Iridescent. One last sticking point is that bans are meant to be community sanctions, but in this situation we have a ban imposed by an agreement of two editors (the blocked user and the unblocking admin). In my view such a ban should still require a discussion at a community noticeboard to lift the ban, the same as with other bans enacted by the community. That's basically current practice anyway, I'm just thinking about how to update the banning policy to match. Is there any opposition to that? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:23, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
    • @Ivanvector: I assume you mean adding a sentence along the lines of appeals should be made at AN? If so, what about time-limited bans? Thryduulf (talk) 13:43, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm thinking of adding a line item under "authority to ban" describing this situation, and in that case the appeal method is already in the policy. I guess the line item would need to specify that this sort of ban is to be considered a ban imposed by the community. Reviewing just now, maybe it's better for this to be a separate subsection (e.g. "unblock conditions") like how we have a "bans for repeated block evasion" section. As for time-limited bans, I don't think a distinction needs to be made. I personally don't do time-limited bans, the way I see it if there's consensus for someone to be banned then they need to actively convince the community to unban them in the future, but I do know that time-definite bans are a thing we do. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:52, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Iridescent's but not community ban lifting - I disagree in thinking that a community agreement should be required to remove the conditional partial bans. If nothing else, it makes no logical sense because of the existence of time-limited bans (as they'd be removed without any involvement of the community along the way so there's no fundamental community link to the bans). I would say the individual is entitled to appeal to either the admin or the community to remove an indef T-ban (et al) but that's their choice. I suppose any admin doing this could say "indef requiring community removal" but that would seem a bit iffy. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:22, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support with Iridescent's qualifier. We should never tolerate a WP:POLICYFORK once one has been identified.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:41, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Ivanvector's proposal seems to be a no brainer. I'll trust the community on the wording. - FlightTime (open channel) 13:10, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support' per Iridescent's version. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:43, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Announced that

Sonw close Just Fix it - FlightTime (open channel) 20:57, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

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

There needs to be stricter, or more visible, policy on the use of the sentence "On (date), (source) announced that" to start every new piece of information. For example, in Chevrolet Volt, "announced" appears 24 times. I found WP:ANNOUNCED, which is an essay by User:HuffTheWeevil. It is basically what I had in mind, but just shows the limited efforts of one inactive user. There is also WP:PROSELINE, which is another essay with the same basic idea, but does not include "announced" specifically. I feel like there are some users who just believe this is the right way to add new information to Wikipedia articles, rather than just stating the info as fact with a reference. A user warning/note template might help. --Vossanova o< 20:38, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

"Wikipedia articles should have compelling, well-written prose" is sufficient. We don't need to have a separate policy page for every possible kind of shitty writing out there. If you come across shitty writing; make it less shitty. WP:SOFIXIT is all the policy you need. You don't need pre-approval. --Jayron32 20:44, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
  • My gut instinct tells me to close this to save this onslaught that will happen but unfortunately I've been hung, drawn and quartered for closing here so shan't bother, Instead I'll repeat Jayron and say If you find an article that to put it bluntly is shit then FIX IT. –Davey2010Talk 20:48, 27 November 2018 (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.

Just a note, we have the same problem with "However...". But we can't regulate that tightly. FIXIT is the right response. If I see a bunch of sentences all starting with "However," then per wp:however, I remove all the "howevers", and rewrite as needed. That's pretty much all we can do. - wolf 06:55, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

When you know something, but no sources say it

The constitutional start date for gubernatorial terms in Alabama is the Monday after the second Tuesday in January. For 1911, this was January 16. However, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that, in their reading of the constitution, the current governor holds their office throughout the entire last day, i.e. until midnight. The next governor's term thus begins on Tuesday.

This is a pretty obscure ruling, but it does appear to be in force - a much more recent election's news coverage noted it: [1] In 2011, "Bentley under state law won't officially be governor until just after the stroke of midnight Tuesday morning.".

So, we have the constitution. We have this apparently still-relevant ruling. The problem is, no one seems to know about it. Apart from labeling the governor in 1911 as taking office on Tuesday rather than Monday, almost no sources bump the inauguration date to the Tuesday, always having it on Monday. Which would make sense, since that's what the constitution says, that's when the parties are, that's when the official swearing in ceremonies are... but technically, no matter what they do on Monday, the governor's term does not begin until midnight Tuesday.

So, when we have something that appears to be true - that in Alabama, gubernatorial terms end on Monday and begin on Tuesday - but no sources actually back this up (either because they're unequipped to, assuming that the end and start dates are the same; or, they are unaware of the court ruling), what am I to do? I shouldn't have the governors marked as taking office on Monday because that appears, legally, incorrect. But it would also technically be original research, right? Or at least unsourced? It also seems wrong to only do it for the two governors that I have explicit sourcing on this (1911 and 2011).

Any suggestions? --Golbez (talk) 21:50, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

How do you know the Alabama Supreme Court made this obscure ruling? -- GreenC 22:17, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
[2] specifically page 496. --Golbez (talk) 22:30, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Before anyone asks, I'm a Brit and haven't ever visited Alabama. That said, from your description and from the Birmingham News article there appear to be two separate things happening: inauguration day and the start of the gubernatorial term. Why should "sources bump the inauguration date to the Tuesday", the inauguration day appears to be Monday, it is the legal start of the term that is the Tuesday. I think you just need to be careful how you word things; be clear about the disjoint between the events. I'm assuming you are talking about List of Governors of Alabama, so I would suggest one or both of:
  • Add "The term of office starts on the day following inauguration." immediately above the table.
  • Add an extra column "Inauguration day" just before "Term in office". Possibly just use "Term" for the second heading?
Provided you are clear and reference your sources then this should not fall foul of WP:OR - all IMHO of course! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:31, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
"Inauguration" is just ceremonial, especially in this case. And this would double the number of sources I need, the problem isn't Inauguration being separate, the problem is lack of sourcing for the legal term start. I don't mind having one term end one day and the next term begin the next - that's how it's done in New York. The problem is, 99% of sources don't realize this, and have everyone's terms start and end on Monday. Literally the only sources I've found otherwise are: That news link; the supreme court judgment; a transcription of some newsletter from 1943; and the fact that Emmet O'Neal is always noted in sources as having taken office on Tuesday, not Monday. Yet, it does appear, legally, to be true - it's just that the people who write the sources don't know about it. --Golbez (talk) 22:37, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
As I've always understood it. Among the 50 states, it's only the New York governors & lieutenant governors, who begin their terms of office at midnight. GoodDay (talk) 22:41, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
And, apparently, Alabama. The difference is, New York makes a big deal of it (it being a new year's thing doesn't hurt), whereas Alabama seems to have forgotten pretty quickly about it, except for a couple reporters. --Golbez (talk) 22:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
Here's another 'strange' one, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper's term began (private swearing-in) on January 1, 2017, but his inauguration (public swearing-in) was on January 7, 2017. GoodDay (talk) 22:49, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Am I missing something? You actually DO have a few sources... You just don’t have a lot of sources. I am not sure what the problem is. Cite the sources you have. Blueboar (talk) 23:02, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
    • I have sources for two specific governors. The thing is, this almost certainly applies to all governors since 1911 - but no sources know that, they all have the Monday. So if I put in what I believe to be the correct date - the Tuesday - doesn't that technically count as original research? --Golbez (talk) 23:25, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
    If you're planning on changing all those 'taking office' dates for post-1911 Alabama governors & lieutenant governors? Such a change would include the bios articles of those individuals. A huge undertaking, which would likely be difficult to maintain across so many articles. You may want to start an Rfc on this matter, at a place you think best. GoodDay (talk) 23:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Given the pg.496 source and two other sources for 1911 and 2011. The Constitution has been amended and there is verifiable evidence per WP:V. Worse case include two dates with a "Note" explaining why the second date. Although unclear how encyclopedic it is, except for 1911 and 2011 since they were reported. -- GreenC 00:06, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes, we do have sources (at least three, two primary government documents and one secondary news source), and what's clearly going on is what was Martin said: "two separate things happening: inauguration day and the start of the gubernatorial term", and which Golbez themself pointed out in different words later. Inauguration is a ceremony; being able to issue gubernatorial orders and have them enforced is a legal matter. It's a bit like the "when does a century or millennium really start?" confusion (caused by lack of a year 0). People who paid attention knew that 2000 was not the actual most recent millennial year.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:54, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

"Increase" and "Decrease" in rank.

As discussed in Template talk:Infobox website#AlexaRank, currently some Wikipedia use "decrease" to indicate improvement in rank. For instance, If a website was previously ranked #10 in certain ranking, and it now become the #1 site in the world, then editors would put a   symbol next to the rank to indicate its ranking have been "decreased" from #10 to #1. However to me it seems like the interpretation doesn't make sense, as the ranking of the website was actually increased from the #10 to #1. Wouldn't it be better to use the   symbol to show the website gained places in ranking? C933103 (talk) 07:26, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Why not simply use “rise” and “fall”? Blueboar (talk) 12:27, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
The OP is saying that it's counter-intuitive to indicate an improvement with a "down" arrow. I would tend to agree. Not sure whether this qualifies as forum shopping, maybe a discussion notice here would have been better? ―Mandruss ☎ 13:12, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Strongly concur with C933103 and Mandruss. Furthermore, this is against MOS:ICONS. We never use icons in ways that can be misleading to readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:20, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Yeah it would probably be better to link the discussion back from the original talk page so that the discussion would be linked to anyone who are interested. The lack of people to discuss the matter (as well as actually talking about what can be done) on the template talk page was the reason for me to start this section to talk about this issue here. C933103 (talk) 16:35, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

"High rank" means a small number, and "top rank" means the first in rank. --NaBUru38 (talk) 20:31, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Standard usage seems simple enough;
  - eg: increase in net worth
  - eg: decrease in net worth
  - eg: decrease in traffic fatalities
  - eg: increase in traffic fatalities
More than 5 years later and there still seems to be problems however. It seems that rankings, such as Alexa, were an issue then and still are now. In most rankings, a numerical decrease is considered an improvement, or an 'increase' in the rankings. Going from #10 to #4, for example is considered an improvement, so a green indicator, or arrow, is used. As some see it as numerical decrease, they will use  . But since it's widely considered an climb or increase in ranking,   will be used. This can lead to confusion. The same can be found with other types of rankings, say "List of unsafest cars". An change from #8 to #3, is considered a downgrade or decline. A red arrow is used, and while it is again a numerical decrease, leading some to use  , it's considered a climb in the ranks, so   will be be used by many others. Another example that may cause problems is golf scores. Whereas in most other sports, the higher the score, the better, the opposite is true in golf. Anyway, short answer; I agree with the OP. (jmho) - wolf 13:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Agree with C933103 and Thewolfchild, etc. ...While you could kinda see "#10 to #1" as a numerical decrease - on these rankings "it's widely considered an climb or increase in ranking, [so]   should be used". Paintspot Infez (talk) 17:32, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

How can we gather a general consensus about it for the entire English Wikipedia about all these different types of ranks? I am not really familiar with all these procedures... C933103 (talk) 16:49, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Interaction between Page Mover and File Mover

Turns out, in order to suppress the redirect on a file move, you must also be a page mover. Page movers can't move files, and file movers can't move files without leaving a redirect. This doesn't seem terribly intentional, especially given that we haven't accounted for it at WP:FNC. (Actually, this is accounted for at WP:PMRC apparently.) So either:

  1. We should amend guidance at FNC, and do nothing.
  2. We should add the ability to suppress redirects to file movers.
  3. We should revoke the ability of page movers to suppress redirects of files.

Page mover don't really have all that much to do with file mover, so I don't really see a compelling reason they should have such a serious interaction. They're governed by a totally different set of policies. Thoughts? GMGtalk 23:23, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

There's 403 file movers and 254 page movers. Seems page moving is the more exclusive right. But, take away the overlap (editors with both rights) and how many page movers are there that aren't file movers? How big a deal would it be to give them file mover? If an editor can be trusted with one, why not the other? Given the situation you've just outlined, it seems that perhaps the two should be bundled anyway. JMHO - wolf 23:49, 6 December 2018 (UTC) (non-file mover/non-page mover)
Personally I think that option 1 or 2 would be the best ones. Option 3 will only prevent page movers from cleaning up page move vandalism and thus make them no different than any other non-admin editor when dealing with that situation. Sakura CarteletTalk 23:56, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm a page mover, but not a file mover. Aside from a spree when I found and uploaded some missing music covers, I edit files so infrequently that it didn't strike me that I couldn't move them. In my opinion, bundle the two rights. Users who can be trusted with page moves beyond thresholds and subsequent redirect suppression should be trustworthy enough to move files as well. Plus, in this day and age when file vandalism seems to be growing (yes, I know much of it is linked from Commons), it cannot hurt to be able to rename local files. Say a sysop-protected noteworthy page has a redlinked file somewhere in the source (say, an infobox), and a vandal decides to upload something to get it to display there. Being able to drag the vandal file elsewhere before a sysop comes along could be useful in preventing this type of vandalism from displaying. Home Lander (talk) 04:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
I'd endorse merging the two rights and renaming the permission 'content mover' or similar (ideally as the start of an effort to streamline some of our permissions) but in the absence of that, I'd endorse the addition of the suppressredirect feature to the file mover group. Nick (talk) 08:53, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Deletion of redirects is a bad thing to be doing, particularly in the case of files. External sites link to our pages, often to provide attribution required under copyright licences, and this attribution becomes lost when a page is deleted after a move. Deletion should have been restricted to abusive names. Thincat (talk) 09:35, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
I mean, in the case of moving a file that mirrors another file on Commons, getting rid of the redirect is the whole point, and it's generally preferable to move local files only used by one project, rather than to move global files potentially used by many projects. At least in theory, all non-free local files should eventually get replaced by free alternatives, the vast majority of free local files should be moved to Commons, and if they're using non-free content from Wikipedia, then they're using the same fair use rationale that we are, and so attribution to us doesn't matter anyway. GMGtalk 11:15, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Meh, anyone who is active in both these areas should have no issue having a request approved at WP:PERM. — xaosflux Talk 17:12, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Question is, how many people are active in both these areas? I presume "I am a file mover and would like to suppress redirects on moves" would not be a sufficient reason for granting the PM flag. So I'm not sure why we should restrict a substantial bit of functionality and make those who don't qualify go and hat collect their way to a flag they may not want or use, in order to get a functionality on a tool they do.
I'm not sure there's really any other example of an interaction like this between unbundled rights. Although I have been trying to think of one. Best I can come up with is the god awful mess between extended uploader and file reviewer on Commons, where EU gives you the technical ability to upload and "review/not-review" files you can't review. GMGtalk 17:33, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Should have realizes how easy this would have been to Ctrl-F. Only 67 users are both file movers and page movers. GMGtalk 18:43, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Under what circumstances does someone need to move a file without leaving a redirect? Is the a common problem? Natureium (talk) 17:39, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Any WP:FNC#9 move where the file on Commons doesn't itself meet c:COM:MOVE. (Instances where the file on Commons met COM:MOVE would be happenstance and extremely rare. Normally the name is duplicated because they are both reasonable policy-compliant file names.) GMGtalk 17:44, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Another common case where you want to do this is where the file name mis-identifies the subject. In this case you want to rename without a redirect. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:45, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • @GreenMeansGo: This issue is simple but I think you complicated it by basing it on incidental interaction of two completely separate permissions. Let me simplify it: You found that the file mover group doesn't have (suppressredirect) and in some cases it's needed in moving file process. Then simply make a proposal to add the (suppressredirect) permission to the file mover group. With simple consensus, the change can be made within a short time. Cf. Recent addition of tboverride to page movers. But instead, you relied on incidental interaction to imply that page movers who are also file movers have unfair advantage over other file movers who are not page movers, because the former can suppress redirect in File namespace while the later cannot. While this superficially looks true, it's factually not true. The filemover+pagemover user is able to do that because they followed two separate processes (by requesting each permission independently) and then 'accumulates' right which allow them to move file and suppress redirects. –Ammarpad (talk) 20:19, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Well Ammarpad, you'll never hear me claim that I am not a functioning computer illiterate. Other than that, not really that it's "unfair", so much as it just doesn't make any sense. More so, since only 67 out of 403 file movers have page mover, I presume most don't even realize it's a thing. Only reason I noticed it is because I'm used to moving files on Commons where non-admins cannot suppress redirects, and I went "that's a pretty looking button I'm not used to seeing". GMGtalk 20:34, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
I agree it makes sense and I am not really blaming you. But just to clarify things. For instance, among the 3 options you proposed above, the last one one reads: 3. "We should revoke the ability of page movers to suppress redirects of files.". Now, what that shows? It means a user who have file mover and also page mover rights, they gained an "unfair" advantage over file mover who is not a page mover. And now here is a proposal to "correct" that by removing suppress direct(file) from them so as to "level" users who are only file movers and any one who gained both two permissions. (Please explain what that point means if I am not correct). That's why I told you it's incidental and I believe if you're to studiously compare each permission against one another you'll find more than this. Compare sysop and bureaucrat groups for example. A bureaucrat cannot grant IP block exemption but they can remove it. A sysop can grant it and also remove it. But if you're both admin and bureaucrat (what we normally have) then the rights will accumulate which now gives our bureaucrats ability to both add IPBE and remove it. But the abilities are coming for separate reasons. But I know this is just technical quibble, many users may not even know which permission allow them do this or that. So as I said, the simple solution is to make a proposal to add (suppressredirect) permission to the file mover group, then you give reasons why, but don't say because page movers have it and it's giving them power to suppress file redirects when they also have page move permission. They have that because they followed two processes, and any filemover-only can do so, or a proposal can gain consensus to add the right to the group entirely. –Ammarpad (talk) 21:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Honestly, when I noted that it wasn't documented at WP:FNC, my thought was that it may have been an unintended side effect of the both flags, and that there may not have been an explicit consensus to allow suppression of file redirects in the first place. I see now that I am wrong in that regard, and it was documented (counter-intuitively) at WP:PMRC. GMGtalk 21:18, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Option1 sounds to be the way to go. File movers should be able to get the page mover right to suppress redirects on request. However they should prove that they know the policy and how its use can cause copyright infringement, and therefore how to avoid this problem. Some comments above sugggest that some people do not understand the requirement of licensing. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:01, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
  • "Option 4": Page-mover is the far more dangerous bit and harder to get approved for. Any page-mover will qualify for file-mover, but not vice-versa. So, make page-mover include file-mover. Also do Option 1, and instruct file-movers who are not page-movers that they won't be able to suppress redirs (why would they normally need to?), but if there's a case where it needs to happen (e.g. because the image should be kept but its filename is a blatant policy violation), they should have a PM or an admin do the file move. That said, I have no objection to Option 2 if it's possible to limit FMs' redirect suppression to the File namespace; if it's not, then it would make FM and PM equivalent, and we don't want that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:26, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Option 4 as suggested by SMcCandlish - I agree as regards comparable authority/risks of roles. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:07, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
    @SMcCandlish and Nosebagbear: Okay, Option 4 is not in the original proposal, if I understand you both want the single (movefile) permission to be added to extended mover group. If that's the case may be there's need to make a separate proposal with clear details. There's request to make (movefile) available to all autoconfirmed users just like how move is but the bug stalled due to lack of interest. Limiting redirect suppression to the File namespace probably needs to be written from the scratch, as it doesn't seem any wiki is using redirect suppression which is restricted in one namespace.–Ammarpad (talk) 06:26, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
    Nah, people add missing options to proposals all the time, and they're often the compromises that end up gaining consensus. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY, and all 'at.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:58, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
    Okay, that's fair. –Ammarpad (talk)15:28, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Option 1, but Option 4 is ok too. Really, if you need to do both, ask for both perms. It shouldn't be a problem if you have a legitimate need. Natureium (talk) 15:37, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I agree that any page mover should qualify for file mover, as evidenced by the fact that less than a quarter of page movers are also file movers. There is simply no requirement for PM that a user have any experience at all working in file space, and file space is among the least-worked-on name spaces.
On the technical side, if I understand correctly, we cannot easily give FMs limited technical access to suppress only moves in file space, but if we add (suppressredirect) to FM, then that would give them the ability to suppress all redirects, which isn't really desirable either.
I mean, it might be a compromise to go with "Option 4.1" - add a policy exception that requesting PM for the purpose of suppressing redirects via FM is a legitimate need for the tools, and sufficient to grant them. GMGtalk 15:10, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
That would be effectively merging the PM bit to FM, at FM's lower threshold for editor cluefulness, responsibility, and need.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: What I was implying is that if it was technically feasible to incorporate the suppression of redirects into file mover, that they should only have the ability to suppress redirects in file space. Otherwise yes, it would largely be a merger of the two roles. While page movers also have the technical ability to override the title blacklist and automatically move sub-pages, to be honest, I've had PM for two and a half years, and I don't know that I've ever actually used either of these features. GMGtalk 14:54, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Option 4, with the caveat that some sort of mass message go out to page movers who were not file movers reminding them that file moves must generally meet one of the 9 criteria at WP:FMV/W, that one needs to check for conflicts with Commons file names, and that all uses of the old file name must be updated. (Disclaimer: as a Page Mover who is not a File Mover, I admit a small bit of bias on this issue) --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 15:01, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Remove resolution cap on screenshots (and other necessary fair use elements, if any)

I think having a screenshot to demonstrate how an application looks but essentially rendering it at an atrocious resolution is basically pointless. It's just a blurred image as far as a demonstration is concerned. I think we should lift the NFCC criteria from at least this particular case. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 17:10, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@QEDK: There is nothing to lift, is there? WP:NFCC just says use the smallest resolution possible, not a specific. If you want to stop the bot from resizing, tag the image with {{Non-free no reduce}}. Regards SoWhy 15:26, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
@SoWhy: DatBot reduces the quality as well as ensures there is no version to revert to, this means the only way is to upload a new version, essentially enforcing this, instead of it being a guideline. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 16:35, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
You can either request a WP:REFUND (ask an admin to revert the removal of the larger image) or reupload the image at larger size, then tag with the non-free no reduce tag. Do keep in mind there has to be good justificaton for the larger resolution (greater than 0.1 MP). If we're only using the image of the application to help identify how the application looks as part of the infobox or top of the article, it doesn't need to be pixel-perfect clear. --Masem (t) 16:45, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
@QEDK, have you any examples of an image tagged as {{Non-free no reduce}} which the bot is still reducing? If so, this sounds like a malfunctioning bot issue rather than deliberate enforcement. ‑ Iridescent 16:47, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
@Iridescent: I'm not sure if it did have the tag. @Masem: I'm okay with reducing the size insofar that the details of the image are visible, but if the resolution is reduced to an extent that it's essentially a tiny blurred picture, I don't think there's a value to adding the screenshot at all. What I was asking through this thread is that the screenshots be excluded from the NFCC criterion of reducing its size, since it basically takes away the entire point of having a screenshot in the first place. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 17:50, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
NFC only requires minimal use. The bulk of non-free images on WP are fine with a resolution that is less than 0.1 megapixels, and the bots that tag and reduce those are working on that principle. But we don't require all non-free images to be that small, and allow for larger versions as long as you have reasonable justifications for why the larger resolution is needed. You aren't going to be able to justify a 1080p full size screencap of WordPad, for example. The only problem here is that the bots will target any image > 0.1MP that does not have the above template on it; the bots are indifferent to the type/use of the work. --Masem (t) 18:04, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
NFCC does require minimal use, my point is it's not that we are using the UI for any other purpose other than demonstration, so it's still basically minimal use. What's required is a consensus to not have 200x300 screencaps with faded bits of green or blue act as a "demonstration". --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 18:28, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
That's not my point. Ignoring the function of the bots, if you upload a fairly large screenshot of a program and include in its rationale that it is larger than 0.1MP to be able to identify some of the discussed user elements/etc. within the article, that's fine, that meets with NFCC. The bots only come into play as they work invariant to what the type of image is (they aren't scanning the categories for example). If its over 0.1MP, they will tag and later scale down, because for 99% of the images on WP, this smaller size is fine. The bots are enforcing NFC without the wisdom of humans to recognize when it is a problem and hence why the "non-free no reduce" tag was made to allow humans to block the bot's automatic actions. But as for saying the whole class of screenshots should be except, that's just not true, because, again, a 1080p image of WordPad is excessive, so it doesn't make sense to tell the bots in general to skip over screenshots like this. --Masem (t) 18:35, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 
An example of what a screenshot should look like
An example of what a screenshot under NFCC looks like I'm not talking about an one-off example like WordPad in 1080p first of all. My reasoning is fairly simple, if screenshots are to be reduced in size, the least we can do is to have it in a resolution where the UI elements are distinguishable. It's not excessive to want a picture to be legible, I believe. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 06:17, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Lots of our WP:NFCC is foundation-level policy, and not necessarily open to change by local Wikipedia. Some of the policy is locally enacted, but are we sure this is? That is, is this the kind of thing there is no point in discussing, because the lawyers for the Foundation have already set this where it is to be set, and that we are unlikely to be able to change? --Jayron32 17:59, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Just to clarify, using a screenshot (even at its best quality) to simply demonstarte its interface is still fair-use. Secondly, WMF policy is to have a proper EDP (Exemption Doctrine Policy) and it has legal consideration, but is still changeable depending on community consensus, especially since it does not break EDP guidelines to do so. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 18:28, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Why we should be using Wikidata more

Why we should be using data from Wikidata (and in particular, Listeria) more; see Magnus' blog post: The Hand-editor’s Tale. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:20, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Has anything changed about how Wikidata operates since the last time this was asked about? If not, then I would still oppose. For all the reasons outlined many times before. Wikidata’s policies simply do not match our own. Blueboar (talk) 19:52, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
Oh good! Are we going to have an RFC to reduce/eliminate use of Wikidata? I'm on board for that. Alsee (talk) 21:35, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
Shouldn't we just remove that entire list ? I mean it's not as if the quality of it is any higher being maintained here locally. Also it sort of goes against WP:DIRECTORY and WP:SALAT doesn't it ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:56, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Please read the top of this page. The policy section is for discussing proposed policies and guidelines, or changes to existing policies etc. It is not for chitchat about or promotion of other projects. What is the policy or guideline you wish to discuss? Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:28, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

[Question] Using a A7 like criterion on drafts

Is there any support for creating an A7 like criterion for the speedy deletion of drafts such as Draft:Yara's club,Draft:Computub,Draft:Rapper Salh,Draft:Robert W. Forrest ? — fr + 10:55, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Short answer: no. Last discussion about that on WT:CSD was in July 2018 iirc. Regards SoWhy 11:08, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
I've tagged the Computub page as G6 ("Housekeeping"). Note also that G13 ("Page in draft namespace or userspace AfC submission, stale by over 6 months") can be applied if drafts are old enough. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:25, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
G6 is incorrect in these cases. The community has explicitly created rules when to delete stale drafts (in G13) and G6 should not be used to circumvent these rules just because one or two editors feel like it. Regards SoWhy 09:08, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Succession boxes

Are there any guidelines for when to use succession boxes, or more pressingly, when to not use succession boxes? As an example, Sam Rayburn has 10 succession boxes and George H. W. Bush has 16. I can't find any policy or guideline that can justify removing them, no matter how trivial. The relevant wikiproject (Wikipedia:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization) is largely dormant, and the few remaining editors are unlikely to support measures to limit succession boxes, no matter how reasonable. Are we destined for a massive pile of cruft? Is there any end to this webring-inspired madness? power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:27, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I would support the abolishment of succession boxes. The infoboxes can handle such political office tenure information, as can the Info templates. GoodDay (talk) 03:31, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
Stuff like oldest president, state of Union addresses, is just too much trivia. GoodDay (talk) 03:34, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't think doing away with succession boxes is the solution, and we really don't need to start another infobox war. I wonder if, for some of the larger pages, a collapsible succession box can be used instead. The {{s-start}} template can be replaced with {{s-start-collapsible}}. Would that help resolve the issue? Bradv🍁 03:35, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
  • The same issue exists with navboxes. It gets unwiedly when any and every succession sequence or list gets plopped down under ELs. I'd argue that if the position, award, etc. would not be expected to be mentioned in the leads of most bios, it does not warrant a succession/navbox.—Bagumba (talk) 03:48, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
  • " I can't find any policy or guideline that can justify removing them, no matter how trivial." There isn't a Wikipedia policy that articles shouldn't be shitty? If something makes an article shitty, then take it out. The policy that justifies the removal of shitty things from articles is WP:BOLD, which IIRC, can be summarized as "If something is shitty, make it less shitty. Please." You don't need permission to make things better. --Jayron32 13:09, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
    @Jayron32: Re a single case removal, I assume the OP seeks policy basis to win consensus in the inevitable BRD discussion; otherwise the BOLD edit would be a waste of their time. Re widespread removals of widely-used and long-standing content without prior community consensus, the opinion that you were making things less shitty will be a weak defense in a disruptive editing complaint. But feel free to prove me wrong, go forth and make things less shitty yourself. Show us how it's done. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Succession boxes... do people actually use these things? Do they even look at them? I never saw a need for them, they just seem to be needless clutter. - wolf 18:39, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
    • (1) yes. (2) yes. (3) Agreed if excessive. The two examples shown look to me to be excessive, and that for Bush is so well hidden that it serves no useful purpose. Consider though George VI where it helps clarify the "Emperor of India" and "Head of the Commonwealth". Even there though, I'm not so sure about the Masons and certainly the ATC and the Olympics could go. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:00, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
      • I've often found succession boxes to be an enjoyable and informative way to navigate the Wikipedia. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:54, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
    They are useful in some cases. For example, I have been known to use them when navigating a chronological list of things, like if I was working my way through a band's discography, it helps me to work through the list in order fairly easily, without having to flip back to the discography article itself. HOWEVER, some restraint needs to be shown for trivia sake. I mean, for George H. W. Bush, having a succession box for presidents of the United States seems like a reasonable navigation aide; perhaps someone is reading through the list in order, to learn something about the evolution of the office. I get that. But my goodness, there's an entry there for "Oldest living Vice President of the United States". That's not even remotely useful, and just clutters up the article. We have to draw the line somewhere. --Jayron32 19:01, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
    • Generally they're useful but "Chair of the Group of Seven", "Response to the State of the Union address" and "Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Texas (Class 1)" probably aren't. There's a line to be drawn between excluding cruft and acknowledging that some people have done a lot of stuff. I think the guiding policy here is WP:COMMONSENSE Cabayi (talk) 19:17, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
      • If everyone had commonsense, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We probably need some hard limit, or guidance for what sorts of things we want, like "No more than 3 boxes per article" or "Highest office held only" or something like that. --Jayron32 19:19, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
      • If only we could persuade people not to do more than 3 significant things in their lives... ;-) Cabayi (talk) 19:25, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
        • Significance is only relative. We can simply narrow it down to the three most significant things. --Jayron32 19:49, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
          • I've always thought the succession boxes biggest usefulness was for following the sequence of office holders. Under your proposal the chain breaks anytime an officeholder has held 3 more significant positions. For example John Major was Prime Minister, Chancellor, & Foreign Secretary - so his constituency would have a gap in its succession of MPs between David Renton & Jonathan Djanogly?? Cabayi (talk) 20:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
            • Fair enough, a hard limit of 3 is probably not the best implementation, but we also want to stop someone from adding "President of Washington High School Chess Club" into these, which is what is happening. Having flexible standards appropriate to the article in question is not the same as having no standards, and there needs to be some reasonable way we can keep useful succession boxes and eliminate the crap ones. And to be more specific than "don't use crap succession boxes". --Jayron32 18:51, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
              I have to completely agree witt that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I'd personally get rid of them. The vast majority I see duplicate information in the navigation templates directly below. Number 57 19:40, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

@RainbowSilver2ndBackup: has been adding Olympics material to the succession boxes of world leaders, concerning opening/closing ceremonies. IMHO, this is going to clog up things more. GoodDay (talk) 19:46, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

  • I'd support getting rid of them altogether. It seems that this is an outdated style still left in the system, which is better handled with either infoboxes, nav templates or in prose. --Gonnym (talk) 20:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
    Agreed, succession boxes have gotta go. GoodDay (talk) 20:12, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I have been using succession boxes from day one and honestly hate it when I find nobility, royalty, and politician pages without them. Infoboxes often only have a person's highest or most prominent title but not lesser titles that may be mentioned in the article, but not in any easy-to-see way. Also, article-only mentions for lesser titles often don't mention predecessors or successors, and there is sometimes no organic way to do so. For this reason alone, I think they should stay. As a historian, succession boxes can be much more helpful than navboxes, too. Not all noble titles have navboxes and even the ones that do can often appear very messy if there are a lot of people in them. I prefer the easy flow of a succession box to the often messy, incomplete, and less informative nature of a navbox. With all that said, I think they have become rather overused and they are also often used for non-successive items, which obviously is an unnecessary use. Many of the examples above prove that they have been misused and need some course-correction, but I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bath water. They serve a good and useful purpose, and their placement at the bottom of the page means that for many articles users do not have to scroll up to the top in order to navigate to the next item in the sequence (or the previous). I know I will continue to use them regularly and continue to add them to aristocratic articles when I make them, even if they have a navbox, because they do serve a useful purpose. – Whaleyland (Talk • Contributions) 21:57, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
    We need an Rfc on this matter. At the very least, these succession boxes need restrictions on their content. GoodDay (talk) 22:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I think succession boxes should only be used when we are talking a unique position that only one thing can hold at a time. So an elected position like the US president is ripe. On the other hand, Best Picture of the Academy Awards doesn't make sense, since the previous year's Best Picture doesn't lose that status; that's where a Navbox is better suited. --Masem (t) 23:19, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I also think they've been surpassed by infoboxes in most cases (and can be in all of them, except articles were a local consensus has staunchly resisted an infobox, which might call for a vestigial, lingering use of succession boxes – we don't want to lose the navigation entirely, just usually move it out of a clunky, ugly, early-2000s template). I note that succession boxes have already been deprecated for various purposes, like singles and album chart "successions" at song and album articles (and were deprecated and removed by RfCs, not by some rando going on a deletion spree). But, yes, to get at this more broadly, it would need to be an RfC, and this is surely the venue for it, though it should also be on WP:CENT because it would affect at least tens of thousands of articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:17, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose, but with caveats. The project is relatively inactive, because succession boxes have been fairly stable for years and there hasn't been any great need to change their format. The idea that they are redundant because of infoboxes is terribly misguided. This was discussed long ago, and the problem with that is that it either *increases* the visual clutter by moving it towards the top of the article, or will re-ignite the infobox wars by generating thousands of little squabbles over which offices are worthy to be placed in the infobox, or why the infobox needs an exception to whatever arbitrary universal guideline gets laid down for it. (Or to put it another way, if there's a comprehensive succession box out of the way at the bottom of an article, there's much less of a valid argument for trying to jam a bunch of trivialities into the infobox.) If we're looking to reduce clutter in that location, I'd argue that we should be trying to trim down navboxes instead. Looking at William de Bromley, for instance, the succession box links out to three thing for each office; the office he held, his immediate predecessor, and his immediate successor, all of which are likely to be relevant to the article subject. It's not at all clear why he should be linked to fifty-some other Deans of St Patrick's Cathedral, including Jonathan Swift, with whom he's never likely to be associated. His article is also an example of "proselist". (Really, in a sense, the article hasn't been written; what we're told about him is just his presence of various lists of office-holders.) Dissolving succession boxes is likely to return a lot of this proselist to articles; and for someone wanting to review an individual's political career, it's easier to look over a large succession box than to either read proselist or pick out appointments here and there throughout the prose of a well-written article. In short, they are less obtrusive than trying to put their information in infoboxes, more easily comprehended in this form than by dispersing records of office held throughout prose, and more focused and relevant than navboxes.
That said, I'm strongly in favor of restricting their uses to something closer to the original intent: tracing the succession of individual office-holders to an office that is more or less continuous. Cabayi and Masem make good arguments here. I think Masem's formulation is an excellent one, and I agree that a lot of the "unofficial" offices (things like Father of the House of Commons), or United Kingdom precedence (where being immediately adjacent to someone else isn't the usual point of comparison) aren't really worth tracking in these succession boxes. I've been leaving these along because I thought people wanted them (even through I don't find them useful); if that may not be the consensus, I'm happy to participate in RfCs removing elements like those from succession boxes, and I'd encourage doing so as a means of paring them down.
"Clunky, ugly, early-2000s template" isn't really an actionable aesthetic critique, but the succession boxes do have a lot of whitespace and full-sized text. I think all of us would be grateful for any suggestions and CSS examples that would make them more attractive. Choess (talk) 17:24, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I would also endorse deprecating or restricting succession boxes. Most of those in the articles listed are duplicated in the infobox or text, are accessible in the relevant article to those interested, or simply aren't that important (like the order of precedence for current US officeholders - pointless and needs frequent updates). On the other hand, are the successor and predecessor always necessary in the infobox? That can get cluttered and putting them at the bottom may be better if we discourage them at the top. Reywas92Talk 00:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I say get rif of succession boxes and replace them with template navboxes. Far more useful. GiantSnowman 19:14, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I support the use of succession boxes, especially when they give some idea of context, in addition to illustrating a line of continuity. An example of this came to my attention with a recent removal [[3]] at Rosa Parks. In that case, Ms. Parks was listed in "Succession of people who lay in state at The Capitol Rotunda." In this case she was preceded by Ronald Reagan and succeeded by Gerald R. Ford. A singular honor for a civilian at any rate... The now missing succession box provided that context. I am not sure why the editor who removed it was so entrenched in their position, but I was not willing to argue about it. Hamster Sandwich (talk) 02:24, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Choess, above. I, too, not only appreciate presentation of this info discretely in succession boxes, but also use them a lot to quickly locate successors to an office prior to or after the individual whose page I'm on. If their use is reduced it should not be for offices that have a statutory or well-known traditional period of incumbency: "following" and "succeeding" are not synonyms for this purpose, and succession boxes should focus on the latter. Nav boxex serve too many purposes for this function to become an add-on.

Replace succession boxes with template navboxes

Template navboxes are more informative & aren't limited to immediate predecessors/successors of the bio's subject. GoodDay (talk) 05:10, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

  • Oppose Being "informative" isn't just about the quantity of information delivered to the reader, but its relevance, which is why policies like WP:INDISCRIMINATE exist. The relationship between an office- or title-holder and their immediate predecessor and successor is much stronger and more relevant than that between holders of the same office a century apart. The typical navbox sacrifices an important piece of information (the dates during which a person held office) to make a large number of mostly irrelevant connections to temporally distant people.
To give an example, if I've been learning a bit about Sir Thomas More, some of the questions that might naturally arise are "Who preceded him as Lord Chancellor? Did his official performance contribute to More's high reputation for judicial efficiency?" and "Who replaced More, and how did he accommodate the King's religious policy?" The links provided by a succession box facilitate answering these questions. I can't see how to justify linking from More to, say, Lord Brougham without an incredibly contrived and unnatural question. Choess (talk) 17:37, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Question Does anyone have a handy example of where a navbox provides the same information as the succession box? I wouldn’t be opposed to the change if we retain the ability to navigate as Choess outlines above. I, too, use succession boxes this way, and like Hawkeye7 I find it an enjoyable way to train-of-thought my way around interesting articles. I wouldn’t want that functionality to be lost, but if we can provide that in a more modern format then I would be okay with that (but I don’t also have no problem with them staying as-is, either). CThomas3 (talk) 04:25, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
Here's an example of a template navbox. GoodDay (talk) 16:41, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. In many cases, a simple succession box is better than a template navbox. Sometimes a navbox would be small enough that it would be mostly whitespace. Consider Charles Lawrence, 2nd Baron Trevethin, who has a succession box for his title of Baron Trevethin and Oaksey, a title with only five holders. Also, sometimes a succession box is less confusing. Consider the fourteenth-century king Eric Christoffersen of Denmark; the relevant navbox has four sections with a total of fifty-six individuals, which means that you take a little bit to find Eric and his successors, while the succession box for King of Denmark makes it trivial to know who preceded and followed him. Even worse for Emperor Go-Uda, the 91st of 125 Emperors of Japan; the template is necessarily huge, while a succession box showing nobody except Emperor Kameyama and Emperor Fushimi is nice and simple. And finally, as noted above, succession boxes typically provide a little extra data, such as dates in a position (1274-1287 for Emperor Go-Uda), that generally doesn't appear in a template. I'm not saying that succession boxes are always needed ("Latest born Vice President to die" seems extraneous, for example), but getting rid of all of them would be a bad idea. Nyttend (talk) 20:10, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: changes to the Rollback policy


I am proposing to remove the fourth (edits by blocked or banned users) and fifth (widespread edits judged to be unhelpful) bullets from the "when to use rollback" section of this guideline, and replace with explanatory text explaining that such reverts are permitted if an edit summary is provided, and strongly discouraged otherwise. The rationale for removing the two bullets is slightly different but very closely related, so this is one RfC rather than two. 17:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

For the blocked or banned users bullet: many sockpuppets of banned users make edits which are not clear vandalism (see WP:BANREVERT) and it may not be obvious to the majority of our editors that any particular user is subject to a ban. Allowing no-edit-summary reverts in these cases invites drama, whereas if the reverting editor instead uses an edit summary such as "reverting edits of banned user so-and-so", that's easily justifiable and avoids the drama.

For the "judged to be unhelpful" bullet: nobody should be using the rollback function to mass-revert "judged unhelpful" edits anyway, the policy already dictates that an explanation must be provided but does not mandate an edit summary, which is counterintuitive. Why are the edits "judged unhelpful", and how is the average user to determine that an editor engaging in mass rollback is reverting "unhelpful" edits versus just repeatedly pushing the button indiscriminately? This also invites entirely avoidable drama.

Both of these are certainly cases where reversion is allowed by various policies and guidelines, but in both cases the guideline already advises editors to explain or be prepared to explain what they're doing. The Rollback function should only be used in cases that don't need to be explained, like vandalism that everyone knows is vandalism including the vandal (within reason). When a editor does have a legitimate need to mass-revert many edits under one of these criteria, admins and non-admins alike can install a script similar to User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/massRollback.js which allows semi-automated mass-reversion with an edit summary. In these cases, the edit summary needn't be anything more complicated than "reverting edits by banned user <username>", or for widespread unhelpful edits, "please see <page where a general explanation is provided>". For users not comfortable installing/using a script (which is not complicated at all), they can ask someone who is; we could make a userbox for this purpose.

  • Support as proposer - I expect that the text to replace these two bullets will be debated throughout this discussion so I haven't proposed any text specifically. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
    Related to the last bit I've created Category:Wikipedians who use mass rollback. I don't have graphics software on this computer but I can do up a userbox later. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
    Wasn't massRollback.js originally written by someone who was banned for sock puppetry? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:01, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
    Not as far as I know, but a fun bit of wiki-trivia if true! Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 04:10, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
    Ivanvector, the code shows the original is at [4]. Sure enough, see [5]. Home Lander (talk) 04:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - Per nom. - FlightTime (open channel) 18:05, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The problems come when there is no explanataion anywhere. I don't think there's anything wrong with using rollback and explaining the decision on an appropriate talk page. I don't think we've ever had a problem because someone explained their rollback somewhere other than in an edit summary. UninvitedCompany 18:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support yes, if we have to tighten the criteria—by writing it down—then so be it. ——SerialNumber54129 18:14, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • In the interest of denying recognition, personally I would prefer that any edit summary not require the name of a banned user to be included when mass rollbacks are being done. Perhaps editors performing these rollbacks could create a section on their talk page and link to it? isaacl (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
    Or just "revert edit by banned user" without a username, in cases where WP:DENY is preferred. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:43, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - Completely agree with this proposal and the tightening of the criteria, It's all common sense really or it should be anyway. –Davey2010Talk 19:01, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per the below - I was under the impression we were talking about 1-2 socks who's made a few edits but if we're talking about someone who's racked up hundreds of edits then no a summary shouldn't be used and it's the same for when someone uses the Twinkle unlink button, There's pros and cons to this policy but if we're looking at a bigger picture then yeah I can't see it working. –Davey2010Talk 17:29, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
    Just to clarify, you're saying that when mass-reverting prolific socks, don't use an edit summary? At all? I know DENY is a thing, but no summary at all is desirable? (Noting that if you use standard rollback, an automatic summary of "undid revision <diff> by <username of sock> will be generated anyway) Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:34, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose there is nothing wrong with either of those bullets, and nothing to be gained by making it harder to revert widespread actions that did not have consensus. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose, certain banned editors can rack up hundreds or even thousands of bad edits before being noticed. Cleaning up after them should not be made more tedious as a knee-jerk response to one admin being overzealous with mass rollback. —Xezbeth (talk) 20:29, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose #5. I recently cleaned up after someone who accidentally used Twinkle's unlink feature inappropriately; there were ~100 reverts to do. I didn't bother trying to learn how to use mass rollback, but having the option to just click a bunch of rollback links made life a lot easier. I could have used Twinkle to do it, but then I would have had to muck about with my settings so that I didn't get a bunch of junk added to my watchlist. Having extra rules about it that would have restricted its use would have been no bueno. But Neutral on #4. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:48, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
    • Same example I was going to point out. I think judged to be unhelpful to the encyclopedia is too broad and could be open to misinterpretation, but there's a clear use case for this sort of thing. Perhaps replacing it with disruptive to the encyclopedia? Likewise with item #4, and but be prepared to explain this use of rollback when asked to isn't particularly helpful. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:19, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose Keeping edits by a banned user encourages further disruption. The only thing worse than that would be to glorify their name by putting it in the page history—a quick WP:DENY is the best response. People will find ways to be unhelpful regardless of what the rules say. Johnuniq (talk) 22:14, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - all sorts of good reasons already noted above. As for the comment about recognition... wp:deny is just an essay, and not a particularly good one, so I don't see why some people tend to treat it as gospel, but I don't see it as being significant factor in this proposal. - wolf 22:19, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
    • As I said in my comment, it is my personal preference to deny recognition of problematic editors. I did not claim that this is a policy. My suggestion is that this preference be accommodated in any modifications to the guidance on using rollback. isaacl (talk) 03:48, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
      • Okay, but you weren't the only one to mention "deny". Don't make this about you. - wolf 07:00, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
        • My apologies for any poor wording. I was expressing a personal opinion in response to your statement, without making any claim to holding a definitive opinion. isaacl (talk) 18:20, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - While I understand the desire to tighten up the policy, I don't think this is the best way to go about it. Rolling back edits of banned users disincentivizes sockpuppety, and in many cases, reverses damage that is done by those editors. In the case of edits judged to be unhelpful to the encyclopedia, there are cases where a rambunctious new editor makes a large volume of the same type of unambiguously bad edit (for example, a style change contrary to the MOS). In those cases, it is economical to simply rollback all of the edits. I've actually used that one myself, after posting my explanation and my intent on the misguided user's talk page. The current policy seems to work pretty well, but it's not designed to work in gray areas cases.- MrX 🖋 22:29, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I oppose any change in any policy which makes it more difficult to delete the edits of banned or blocked users. I also see this as a slippery-slope which will eventually end up in de-fanging rollback, a very useful tool. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: a solution in search of a problem. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:25, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. For #4 we already have policy/guideline "be prepared to explain this use of rollback when asked to". I don't see evidence that this is being flaunted so badly we need to revise the guideline. And others have spoken well to #5, plus its text includes "you [must] supply an explanation in an appropriate location, such as at the relevant talk page"; again, this covers the reasons given by the proposer without necessitating the awkward proposal. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. In cases when block-evading accounts are rapidly making edits, rollback can be a very useful tool in counteracting them quickly, even in non-vandalism cases. Requiring an edit summary in these cases only slows down the reversion of disruption. Home Lander (talk) 03:22, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose I hope you don't take this personally, but @Ivanvector: as a CU you should know how many LTAs and sockpuppets go through SPI and make edits that have to be reverted en masse (think spam, promotional fluff, POV-pushing socks that aren't "vandalism" necessarily). I can also tell you that many m:Global rollbackers and stewards will likely be caught up in this proposal as rollbacking edits like this across wikis from cross-wiki LTAs is generally accepted. --Rschen7754 07:27, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
    • I don't know why you'd think I would take offense to your comment, but thanks. Yeah, I've been around SPI for several years, and I've had enough editors land on my talk page demanding explanations or threatening blocks that I don't take anything for granted with respect to rollback. These "grey area" rollbacks are not as universally acceptable as we think they are. For folks who do work in these areas and mass-revert often, using one of the scripts is far more convenient than individually rolling back what can be hundreds of edits, plus it allows an edit summary. In fact there are many ways to execute a rollback with an edit summary these days. I do realize there are users who won't or can't install a script, and situations we can't anticipate, that's why I suggested the change to "discouraged", not "prohibited".
    As for DENY since it came up: when I'm reverting socks I don't want to tag I use an edit summary like "rv sock". It's a trade-off, though. Over the years I've had numerous messages like this: "I see you reverted an edit as so-and-so's sock, well a new account made a similar edit, can you take a look?" Whereas if I do a mass revert with a blank summary I just get "turn off your bot".
    Anyway we might as well leave this open for a bit even though there are flurries in the forecast, there are good comments here. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 11:36, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
    I'd agree the scripts are better (Writ Keeper's in particular is wonderful), but to use the WK script example, even though it allows one to enter an edit summary, it is still a use of the system's rollback feature, and would arguably be caught up in this change. I've never user Twinkle rollback for anything so I can't speak to that one. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:43, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose with the deepest respect for Ivanvector, I unfortunately disagree with him here. MassRollback of socks is sometimes necessary, and depending on the case, going through every contribution individually simply isn't a good use of time (I have an xwiki sock at ar.wiki who adds uncited BLP data to soccer biographies that I'm thinking of right now.) Rollback is extraordinarily useful in these circumstances. It doesn't have to be automatic, admins and editors should use their judgement, but it is a legitimate use. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:35, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
    I don't think we actually disagree, TB. I haven't suggested that massRollback shouldn't be used in these situations, only that an edit summary should be provided. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:29, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
    You can't provide edit summaries with rollbacks. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:34, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
    FYI you can't provide an edit summary with a single edit rollback. Mass rollback (or at least the one I know of) does come with an edit summary option before saving the edit. MarnetteD|Talk 23:39, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
     
    MarnetteD and Headbomb, actually per Wikipedia:Rollback#Additional_tools one can provide a summary with an individual rollback, but in a way that I find convoluted compared to just using the middle Twinkle rollback option and typing a reason. Home Lander (talk) 00:41, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
    Thanks Home Lander. I wondered if that was possible. As I read about it convoluted is a good word for it. MarnetteD|Talk 00:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
    Various things are called "rollback" but if they allow an edit summary they are imitations and are not really rollback. Johnuniq (talk) 01:25, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment - I've reflected on this over the past few days and read the views above. I'm not sure what other tools/scripts are available, but the 'mass rollback' allows an edit summary when mass reverting, and use of that should be encouraged/obliged. That also literally zaps everything on the contribs page (last 50, last 100, last 500 etc.) However, not everyone will use that - others will use traditional rollback (one click) when, for example, perhaps an editor has made a series of goodfaith but poor edits interspersed with good edits, meaning mass rollback is not appropriate. That doesn't allow a bespoke edit summary. In those cases, I think a talk page post explaining why is sufficient. GiantSnowman 12:12, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment: It seems to me that much of this discussion would become moot if there was an (optional) edit summary (pop-up?) box available when the Rollback button was clicked… Useddenim (talk) 01:16, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. I don't find the arguments against this compelling at all; they boil down to "give me convenience or give me death". For the first of the sorts of cases, we do not generally auto-rollback every single thing that a sock does, but it does happen sometimes, especially when it's too much work or too iffy to determine which 1% of what some disruptive editor did might not be disruptive. It really can be very unclear to "sideline" editors why something got reverted if no edit summary is provided. I've ended up dis-reverting some edits for this reason. In the second kind of case, it really is too grey-area to be going around silently using the rollback tool. The proposer is correct that having to use an edit summary is already implicitly in the rule anyway, since "explanation" is required, but there is no other means of providing it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Rollback should not be used when an edit summary is needed. —Eli355 (talk • contribs) 01:15, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose I usually use Rollback in combination with Twinkle warnings for the fifth criterion. I would find it a big haste to have an edit summary for every single revert. funplussmart (talk) 13:22, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - rollback is not something that is used lightly and is needed at times, when dealing with socks or editors who are only here to be disruptive (especially in mass). Good judgment is to be used. Further, if someone, whoever these unknown sideline editors are, ask, then it can be explained to them. And one can always leave a message on someone's talk page as to why it has been done. Kierzek (talk) 21:48, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose if someone has to revert a hundred obviously inappropriate edits then it isn't reasonable to expect the editor to write out an edit summary for each one, and people aren't going to. As long as it is obvious why the edit qualified for reversion then rollback is reasonable. For reverting edits made by a banned user the account has typically been blocked indefinitely as a sockpuppet, so it will be obvious to anybody who checks. Hut 8.5 22:48, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

RfC: blocking the admin who blocked you

I’ve opened an RfC at Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#RfC:_blocking_the_admin_who_blocked_you. All are invited to participate. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:37, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

RFC on notability of rivers

An RFC is open at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers#NRIVER proposal regarding notability policies for rivers. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Citation styles

Closing this discussion now that discussion has waned. Result: The consensus is against this proposal. Thanks to all who participated. Neutralitytalk 17:55, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

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


Should Wikipedia:Citing sources have an explanatory guideline with a set of accepted citation/footnote styles, with the lists of allowed formats and structures to be decided by future RfCs? Jc86035 (talk) 18:12, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Survey (RfC: Citation styles)

  • Tentative support. Allowing virtually any citation/footnote style to be used can be unnecessarily confusing for contributors, especially new users: while various citation formats are widely used in the English-language publications of many disciplines, and there is obviously good reason for different formats to be used in Wikipedia articles, obscure styles and little-used templates like {{ran}} can make it more difficult for contributors to add to the articles in which they are used. The lack of guidance has also resulted in a lack of consistency in reference group names, mostly for footnotes and primary sources ("note 1", "notes 1", "n 1", "‡ 1", "a", "A", ...). Jc86035 (talk) 18:12, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support as long as there is a documented mechanism to review adding additional styles as needed to the list. Ideally, certain more obscure formats should indicate which topic areas they should or should not be used on. --Masem (t) 18:26, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, per Masem. If any style that is currently used in a topic area is being discussed for inclusion on the list then editors working in that topic area should be explicitly invited to take part in the discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 18:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support – there needs to be a centralized plan to learn how the different styles work, and to suggest not using odd variants. Dicklyon (talk) 18:49, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
Who determines whether a variant is “odd”? Blueboar (talk) 19:07, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
@Blueboar: per the opening post in the RfC, which styles are allowed, which are not allowed and which are allowed only in certain areas will be determined by consensus of future discussions. This RfC is only about establishing the framework so as to avoid objections to specific styles being on one or another list don't derail the whole lists (if there is a consensus for the lists) and/or to avoid wasting time discussing which should be where (if there is consensus against the lists). Thryduulf (talk) 20:52, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • This is a huge can of worms - while there is probably some benefit in reigning in some of the more "unusual" citing standards, this has the potential to result in a lot of bad blood and pain if not handled perfectly. We have WP:CITEVAR for a reason .Nigel Ish (talk) 21:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support The standards should be stated and a move made towards the preferred style, and all those variants can be gradually converted to something that looks and works in a consistent way. Failure to use the styles is not necessarily and problem for the editor or article, but instead an opportunity to get it done in a better way. Certainly for FA standard there should be a preferred citation style to use. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:36, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Questions:
  1. is this meant to require citations being added in specific formats? We've always accepted plain text or bare URLs as references, as long as enough information is provided to identify the source;
  2. is this meant to be a sitewide requirement policy, or just a best practice/manual of style? I.e. are we going to start trying to sanction editors who use a different citation format? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:04, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
My impression is that we "accept" almost anything, but that we also advise converting to a recommended and consistent style. We even have bots trying to to that for bare URLs for example. Style guidance points the way to go, but doesn't hit anyone over the head for not going that way. Dicklyon (talk) 19:10, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
My reading of how this is proposed is when we are talking an article at GA or FA. An article is progress is going to likely have a lot of variation in style, include bare URLS, which is fine - our citation approaches are highly complex and not easy to parse. But once you start talking quality, then a consistent style, and ideally one supported by consensus should be used. Certainly early on in an article's development, editors should be aware of what citation style to go for to minimize the pain of updating all the styles at the point of GA/FA. --Masem (t) 21:05, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Ivanvector, Masem, and Dicklyon: No, this probably shouldn't be a requirement – the actual policy change might be something like "please use these styles and formats; if an article doesn't use a listed style or a listed format then the article may be changed so that it does". I've changed the RfC question (it originally said "include a list of", which would have been inappropriate for a policy). Jc86035's alternate account (talk) 11:25, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Much better. As per Dicklyon we need to accept poor references, particularly from newbie editors, and then seek to improve them. It doesn't take much effort to bring up a bare URL and generate a {{cite web}} or {{citation}} and the associated <ref>/</ref> or {{sfn}} reference. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:39, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
I guess I don't know what's proposed to change. It's already recommended (and best practice for featured content) to be consistent within an article. Is the proposal just for making a list of suggested citation styles? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:24, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose. WP:CREEP. Violates the spirit and principle of WP:CITEVAR. I use non-code Chicago Manual of Style footnotes. Honestly, we are lucky if bare URLs get filled out at all, and editors who use ReFill don't even give the date or publication of the citation. There are variety of stylebooks for citations, and even the more revered ones vary between themselves. There's no reason to force people to choose from a list of "allowed" styles. This is just going to lead to more trouble and edit-warring. We can certainly give examples/samples, but to enforce a list of "allowed" choices is just asking for trouble, and edit-wars galore. Softlavender (talk) 11:52, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Even stronger oppose. We have over 2000 different citation templates, all of which are currently "approved", plus all the non-template hand-formatted citations. I would support it if we picked a single wiki-wide citation format and deprecated all others, as the short-term disruption of mass conversion would be justified by the long-term stability of an end to arguments over WP:CITEVAR and confusion about which style to use on any given article, but I can't see anything good coming of a proposal to allow whichever small handful of editors bothers to turn up to an RFC to unilaterally decide that some of those 2000 templates are "approved" and some aren't. (Aside from anything else, if there will still be more than one "approved" citation style, how do we decide to which of those we're going to convert all the articles using now-banned styles?) By causing the huge disruption of a mass-conversion, without the benefit of a unified citation style at the end of it, this is just going to cause a huge amount of bad feeling for no apparent benefit. And when I say "huge disruption", I mean it; the most commonly-used citation template, {{cite book}}, is used on approximately 1,000,000 articles, meaning that even if we settled on this as the standard going forward it would still mean 80% of articles would be non-compliant and need to have their references reformatted. ‑ Iridescent 12:10, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    Most commonly used is actually {{Cite web}}, on 3 million pages. I think you're exaggerating the number of articles that don't use citation style 1 references - a lot of pages that don't use it have bare url references or simply don't have any. TBH I think we should settle things down to using CS1 for formatting references - it is the de facto standard and what visual editor and reftoolbar use - and a choice of citing references using <ref>...</ref> or using {{sfn}}; but the acrimony generated through doing that is probably more work than worth it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:43, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    Also, Iridescent, vast majority of the "2000 citation templates" are just {{Cs1 wrapper}}s (or external links templates like {{Britannica}} and other things that are not really citation templates) - not a different style. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:55, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    I'd think it obvious that we're talking acceptable citation template families. There's probably a dozen plus variations of "cite web", but that's all one family. Same with CS1 references. --Masem (t) 05:46, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Softlavender. We are still not at a position where references are provided when they need to be. Laying down standards of reference formatting will exacerbate the situation as new editors will give up rather than jump through what they see as unnecessary hoops. Nthep (talk) 13:30, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    99% of new editors if they are formatting references, use Citation Style 1 (which of course will be an allowed style); nobody is suggesting that new editor's edits should be rejected or that the first thing that new editors should be explained to is what citation style to use. Like with the MOS, it would be mainly experienced editors who fix edits to make them conform with the style. New editors are anyways explained how to/told to use {{cite web}} etc. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:49, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    New editors would continue to drop in bare URLs as they do now, most of them being unaware of or apathetic about any relevant guidelines. What we're debating is what happens if and when those are cleaned up. The effect on new users is thus zero. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:23, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Iri and SL. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:36, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Getting rid of obscure styles to make it easier for new editors editing those pages and for consistency across Wikipedia. This really wouldn't affect the vast majority of edits, editors, or pages, but only the few thousand pages that use things like {{ran}} or in text parenthetical citing (which are IMO very reader unfriendly); at-least initially, we can allow a broad range of styles with the exception of some obscure ones. The amount of articles that use things other than Help:CS1 and Help:CS2 and such is quite small. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:25, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The purpose of a citation is to point the reader to a source which verifies our content. As long as a citation does this, it is acceptable. The style is irrelevant. Blueboar (talk) 15:24, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support wp:citing sources is a guideline not a policy so it doesn't force anything at all, those arguments don't make sense. Guidelines are routinely ignored if editors wish. The purpose of a guideline is to show best practice. A list of best practice citation styles is not only a good idea, why isn't it there already. -- GreenC 15:37, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. A wide variety of citation styles is in use in the academic and publishing worlds, and we accommodate that here relatively peacefully. We have help pages on referencing for newcomers and these can be improved. But forcing an "approved list" of citation styles on Wikipedia seems like a recipe for creating conflict where there is little at the moment. I feel the proposed RfCs on which styles to "allow", with the goal of eliminating some editor's favorite ways of citing sources, would create an Infobox-like situation. StarryGrandma (talk) 16:36, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    Comment. Adding or linking Wikipedia:Citing sources to a guideline clearly explaining the easiest ways add references with the current state of our tools would be a good idea. (Visual Editor has improved considerably for example; one can now see the references in the reference list after entering them.) A single RfC could be held to decide which methods to recommend there. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:04, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: The purpose of citations is to make it possible to verify content. Consistency within an article is much more important to that end, and also good for other reasons. Yes, we can speculate styles that are strictly speaking consistent but totally absurd (say, Bluebook in a non-legal article, in CamelCase, encoded with ROT13, and all the punctuation swapped for emojis) but I'd assume that good-faith editors don't do such a thing. As for obscure citation styles hindering the addition of content out of fear of messing up with the existing WP:CITEVAR (yes, merely a guideline as pointed above, but one with a super strong consensus and observance)? I'm not sure if I buy that argument. Editors are supposed to WP:BEBOLD and add content and let others iron out the wrinkles that they don't know how to fix. I see (and fix) articles with slightly inconsistent CITEVAR all the time precisely because editors have added content even if they didn't know all the intricacies of that article's citation style. On the contrary, I've never seen anyone actually complaining about not contributing content because they didn't know how a citation style works. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:53, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I think this RFC might be the wrong question--I don't need to make an RFC to get permission to ask certain questions, I should just ask those questions. I would rather see us start to chip at the problem instead of a massive RFC to ask about giving carte blanche to deprecate or retain certain citation styles (and I'll throw "formats" in too). Why don't we figure out whether we should use vertical citations first? (And if we do, where we should, or could.) That seems like an easier question to answer. --Izno (talk) 18:58, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    Sigh... We have had that discussion (over horizontal vs vertical) multiple times in the last few years... the result was consistently that both are acceptable. Blueboar (talk) 19:14, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    Not really, and certainly not at that page. A handful of "format versus kind of citation" type discussions, but never anything which would give concrete guidance to "use vertical citations for everything" or "use only in WP:LDR" or "do not use within prose". I'm not looking for "can we use it?" only, I'm looking for "when?", and that's never been answered, though I think there's a common sense answer at this time that everyone probably would settle on and agree to add to the guideline if they would only discuss the point. --Izno (talk) 19:31, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    Either way, that's just one example. There are other questions we could sensibly ask of the same sort that still bypass this overarching RFC that just don't need permission to be asked. --Izno (talk) 19:38, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - It's quite possible for the community to establish a minimum set of citation styles that will suffice for most known cases. More freedom than that doesn't decrease edit-warring, it increases it. Most editors will respect a content guideline even if they disagree with it, for the sake of site-wide consistency. The project has established an arbitrary "Wikipedia way" for everything from article titles to order of article elements, I see relatively little edit-warring in those areas (except in edge cases not clearly addressed by the PAG), and there is little question that the encyclopedia has benefited from that consistency. Editors accustomed to using title case in titles and headings adapt to sentence case when editing Wikipedia, and so on, and this is not an excessive burden for members of the most adaptable species on the planet. This situation is no different.
    There are PAGs that are obsolescent, and many that are unnecessarily complex. If the community would put some ongoing effort into reduction and simplification of existing PAGs, WP:CREEP would be far less of an issue; we would simply trade bad PAGs for better PAGs. I support that. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:16, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose, per Nigel Ish. As he said, we have CITEVAR for a reason. SarahSV (talk) 22:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per everyone above - If the source is adequate and does the job in verifying whatever that claim is then that's perfect in my books - The style is all but irrelevant. –Davey2010Talk 23:18, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Softlavender and Iridescent. Beyond the obvious WP:CITEVAR issue, implementing this would be a nightmare. There are literally thousands of different citation styles in common use around enwiki, just a list of them all would be a massive undertaking, let alone a brief guide for every single one. And, frankly, I'm just glad when an article has citations, even if they're just bare URLs. Nathan2055talk - contribs 08:14, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Izno: If anyone wants to close this RfC early for asking the wrong question I'm fine with that, although I'm not sure what should happen afterwards. Jc86035's alternate account (talk) 08:38, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose for now per WP:CREEP. I haven't seen a situation where this policy would be needed. --Jayron32 12:05, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Question The proposal does not appear to me to be a change to policy, but a mere suggestion that preferred methods by presented. The !votes seem to be addressing something much stronger. Would this explanatory guideline require of particular formats? Would it prohibit the use of some formats? Jacona (talk) 15:35, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
    • The proposal appears to suggest a "suggestion" now, with more detailed and prescriptive controls coming later as a result of follow-up RFCs. Of course one danger is that editors will take any suggestions, however mild, as policy and use it to force changes through.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:48, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Solution looking for a problem. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:54, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose This will make editing Wikipedia much harder. —Eli355 (talk • contribs) 22:15, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP, and the eloquent arguments above.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 23:57, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Iridescent; unless we're establishing one house reference style based on CS1 (possibly with the option for WP:HARVARD referencing) this is a lot of work and extra policy for no benefit. The exact details of MLA v. ASA formatted refs don't need to be established anywhere on-wiki; if somebody really cares they can check the official book. This also seems like a bad way to try to deprecate some of the 2000 ref templates; if that's your goal I'd advise a separate thread at WP:VPI. power~enwiki (π, ν) 05:22, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Absolutely yes, but in specific terms: Namely, either WP:CS1 or WP:CS2, or any citation style codified in a reliable source on citation styles. But no more people making up their own weird nonsense, the personal pseudo-style. (Or, they're fine to make one up, but others are fine to change it to something legit).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:39, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - per CREEP. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:42, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP and WP:CITEVAR. rchard2scout (talk) 10:10, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support: The same way that good fences make good neighbors, guidelines to regulate how we do things make things work more smoothly and reduce conflict.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:47, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
On the other hand... just as bad fences can end up causing neighbors to fight, bad guidelines can cause more disputes than they resolve. Blueboar (talk) 00:26, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CITEVAR, WP:CREEP, and the Law of triviality. The purpose of a citation is to satisfy WP:V, and as long as the citation contains enough information to find the source and verify the claim, the style in which that information is unimportant. We have a hard enough time getting new editors to use citations at all, adding another page they have to read and more rules they have to learn isn't going to improve anything. Ping me when we start an RfC about the color of infoboxes. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 00:56, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)#RfC on using US or U.S.

  You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)#RfC on using US or U.S.. -- Whats new?(talk) 05:38, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion about adding guidance on external links to media outlets of record

Hi everyone, I just wanted to flag this discussion I just started, since it seems like an important unresolved policy question that could use some attention from experienced editors. Any thoughts are appreciated! - Sdkb (talk) 22:19, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Workshopping: Integrate draftification into the deletion policy

This is not yet a fully-fledged idea but I want to spitball a little bit here. Current policy is vague or non-existing on when to move articles from mainspace to Draft-space without consent of the article's creator. The current explanatory supplement's whole guidance (WP:DRAFTIFY) reads:

The aim of moving an article to draft is to allow time and space for the draft's improvement until it is ready for mainspace. It is not intended as a backdoor route to deletion. As a matter of good practice the editor moving a page to draft should mark its talk page with the tags of any relevant projects as a means of soliciting improvements from interested editors.

While there are instances when this is beneficial to the project, preserving content that might otherwise be deleted, in many instances such moves can result in a "stealth" deletion of content, especially if the original creator is no longer active. As such, I wondered if it might not be better if we integrated the process into WP:DEL, specifically WP:ATD-I (or better WP:ATD-D). A possible new wording might be:

Articles which have potential, but which do not yet meet Wikipedia's quality standards, may be moved to the Wikipedia:Drafts namespace, where they may continue to be collaboratively edited before either "graduating" to mainspace or ultimately being deleted. As a matter of good practice the editor moving a page to draft should mark its talk page with the tags of any relevant projects as a means of soliciting improvements from interested editors. Draftification may occur if

  1. The creator requests it and no other editors have significantly contributed to the article (same threshold as with WP:G5),
  2. as a result of a deletion discussion,
  3. at the discretion of any uninvolved administrator after an article was tagged for proposed deletion for a week, or
  4. at the discretion of any uninvolved administrator if the article is eligible for speedy deletion; any uninvolved editor can request this using the {{db-draftify}} template.

In my mind, editors would no longer move the article to draft themselves but instead use a template (db-draftify) to alert admins to potential articles that could be draftified immediately or tag them for PROD and the reviewing admin can decide to draftify instead if they believe the problems could be overcome by editing. This ensures that only articles are draftified that would otherwise be eligible for deletion, eliminiting the "stealth deletion" risk that exists under the current (lack of a) policy, while still allowing potentially useful articles to be kept in draftspace.

The db-draftify template could work similar to {{db-move}}, also providing admins a quick link to perform the move, e.g.:

Potential tag

Admins could still decide just to delete the article if they believe the problems cannot be overcome by editing. This might slightly increase the workload for admins but decrease the BITE-risks associated with unilateral draftifications by ensuring a second pair of eyes before any move occurs. Again, this is all very raw and not a complete, RFC-worthy proposal, so feel free to explain to me why this is a stupid idea. Regards SoWhy 15:22, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

How often does it happen that a draftified anything becomes useful again? What is the maintenance overhead from all the draftified articles? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:26, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
I do think something needs to be done about draftification. Scripts make it easy, and without a submitted AfC tag, there's no guarantee anyone will see it again. The hidden deletion is an issue, especially as it can be done by a single editor; most of R2 is "cleanup" after draftifying. My first instinct was concern about swinging too far the other way, that nothing can be main->draft without qualifying for deletion, but this is really just the default way things were done for ages: CSD delete, author wants to improve it, sysop puts draft in userspace. I can't say I've thought too deeply about this as written, but it looks good for the most part. Some numbers would help get an idea for what this would entail. I presume most would be A7 stuff, but certainly not all of it, so this (and associated templates) would need to be flexible. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:26, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
BTW, by "G5 standard," do you mean to exclude banned editors or is it a typo for G7? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:28, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
By G5 standard I meant thew "no other editors have significantly contributed to the article" part, i.e. creators shouldn't be able to request draftification if the article has been edited by others significantly (the same way that banned user's pages can't be G5 deleted if they are not the sole (significant) contributor. Regards SoWhy 18:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
I think that we could benefit from a more clear standard on what state an article should be in to be eligible for draftification, but the template proposal requiring an admin to move it to draft is a step backward. Natureium (talk) 00:01, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • As a new page patroller, I use draftify a fair amount when I come across articles that do not clearly pass notability requirements but that likely could have sources available to improve them that I wouldn't be able to find in a brief internet search. I try to be careful to not draftify articles whose initial editors appear to be inactive, but this is hardly a foolproof system, and more importantly this isn't official policy so it does bear amending. My concern is that this proposal will add unnecessary work in the form of more articles going to AfD when they could have been resolved without bureaucracy. As a potential counter-proposal or amendment, I'm wondering if we could create a workflow where draftify procedure continues as it exists now, except that draftified articles which are not edited in X amount of time get automatically sent to AfD. This would prevent articles from slipping through the cracks, without frontloading work at AfD in scenarios where editors are available to work on the article. signed, Rosguill talk 00:13, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't see improvements here. We don't need admins approving every draftification. Draftification is fundamentally a WP:BOLD move, and the editor can undo it if they wish by recreating in mainspace or by moving it back. The only thing that needs to be clarified is that it is for pages that don't meet mainspace criteria yet, but might in the future (don't draftify junk). If a reviewer makes a mistake, nothing is deleted and can be easily reverted by anyone with autopatrolled status (the minimum privileges allowed to create articles anyway). As for 'stealth deletion' concerns, only pagemovers can move without leaving a redirect, and the bar for getting pagemover privileges is reasonably high and generally given only to trusted users. In all other cases an R2 redirect will be left behind where it will be brought to an admin's attention who can review the action. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)(click me!) 00:43, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    • R2 (as with all SD criteria) should be used for clearcut cases that fit the bill. R2 is not "delete this but only after reviewing this other page for notability and deciding whether you think it'd survive A7, prod, or AfD." If you think an article needs an admin's attention who can review the action, draftifying and R2-ing is not the way to get that. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:06, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • The current system is very exploitable. Draftification, in practice, is effectively non-admin backdoor deletion. I'd support this proposal as written. At a minimum, I think we need a mechanism to ensure that every draftified article either meets a CSD criterion, or has an opportunity to be discussed formally. I'd also like to see a clear set of standards for draftification. In fairness, draftification has not usually been a problem, and has cut down on some bureaucracy. I'd love to see a percentage of how many draftified articles get re-established into mainspace. If that number is in the low single digits, we can regulate draftification as deletion. If it's more than say, 20%, we can carve out a unique ruleset for it. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:09, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I strongly support an option for draftification of articles that have potential to be improved and exist as regular articles. For articles that are reasonably subject to improvement, this is the place to do it. For articles for which some set of editors believe they should be kept because improvements will be made, this gives them an opportunity to basically put up or shut up. bd2412 T 01:26, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    If the alternative to draftification is deletion, then draftification often makes sense. If the alternative to draftification is retention, then the article is a net positive in mainspace, and should not be draftified. Is this a reasonable line to draw? Tazerdadog (talk) 02:48, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    If, in an AfD, there is no consensus to change the status quo with respect to an article in mainspace, then I would agree that the article generally must be retained. bd2412 T 03:24, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't see that much of an issue with the current status. I do a bit of work on NPP, and if I've draftified 50 articles over the last year I'd be surprised. In my mind, WP:DRAFTIFY isn't that ambiguous. It points to a particular, very specific, set of circumstances, which if met, can lead to draftifying. There are two roads which lead to draftifying, the first of which includes 3 steps, and the second of which is pretty specific regarding COI. I think that if the community feels that there is abuse the solution is to be more stringent in giving out the right, than by changing the existing process.Onel5969 TT me 02:06, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    The wording is imho clearly ambiguous. "it is ready for mainspace" can be interpreted as "contains a bare minimum to survive" as well as "looks like a good Wikipedia article". Since draftifying currently does not require any oversight, problems with mistakes that happen usually are not caught. For example, on my daily CAT:CSD browsing, I found this move (I am deliberately not pinging the editor in question because it's not about their action but the underlying problem). Coordinated care organizations are a type of government-created organization that is clearly notable in one form or another with a lot of sourcing easily available through Google (e.g. "Coordinated+Care+Organization" "Coordinated+Care+Organization" "Coordinated+Care+Organization" "Coordinated+Care+Organization"). Yet, this was now a draft, not even tagged with {{draft}}, lounging in Draftspace.
    Wikipedia's main reason for success always was and is that such articles were seen by casual readers who then felt compelled by the "edit" button to fix some problems they identified. This can only continue to work if draftifying is restricted to cases where such editing is not likely, which at minimum requires oversight over such moves. Regards SoWhy 08:41, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) Hi SoWhy - not trying to argue, but while your quote above, "it is ready for mainspace", is in the lead of section 1.5 in Wikipedia:Drafts, if you look at the detail of the section, it goes far beyond that simple statement. "The page is obviously unready for mainspace", is then backed up by the 3 examples, each of which drills down in specificity. In looking at the current guidelines, it must meet 1, 2 and 3 in order to warrant draftifying, or #4 all by itself. 1, 2 and 3, in turn are further expanded upon. Is this as airtight a case as some of our notability criteria? In some cases, no, but in many cases, much more so. In the example you reference above (the original of which I can't see because of the RevDel), the move to draft was warranted, as the stub clearly qualified for G12 deletion (as shown by the RevDel, although I agree that was not the move that editor cited when making the move). Moving it to draft, allowed the editor to work on the article and remove the copyvio, as opposed to simply having the article deleted. I would posit that your example actually shows the value of draftify, as there was an issue with the article, it was draftified, the issue was resolved, the article was improved and then moved back to mainspace. I will say this, the editor who moved the article does not have pagemover rights, hence they would to have had to manually add the draft template (it is automatically down when you use the pagemover tool). Perhaps moving to draft should only be allowed to those who do? This would provide some modicum of oversight, while not adding to the existing backload of admins. Onel5969 TT me 10:46, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    The problem, however, is that Wikipedia:Drafts is not a guideline or policy but essentially a type of essay. And the criteria it stipulates are partly the problem, as it stipulates that draftification for example can occur if the topic is "plausibly notable", the creator is inexperienced and not actively working on it, which basically amounts to removing notable topics from mainspace that no one is likely to care about anymore before G13 comes. It also says articles can be draftified in cases of COI editing which is not backed by the policies the page claims to explain.
    Moving something to draft the creator is still actively working on for a copyvio is imho not warranted because it adds another unnecessary step (that said, removal of the copyvio would have left a viable stub anyway). As for workload, as I noted above, this was only a rough idea. The point is to add a second pair of eyes to the process, so requiring a pagemover to check the article might work as well. Regards SoWhy 11:11, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Draft space was created as a staging area for new contributors who were unable to create pages in the main article space. It should be tightly restricted to this because it is already overloaded, with a process time measured in weeks/months, and so can't cope with any more. 99% of the articles in Wikipedia's mainspace are of less than good quality and so the idea that imperfect articles should be moved into draft space is absurd. See the recent GCTA AfD for an example of this. That's a complex technical topic which has been in mainspace for over two years. It has about 50 sources and yet several editors wanted to push it into draft space to resolve a dispute about supposed synthesis/OR. Draftspace has no special properties which would facilitate such dispute resolution and would tend to make matters worse by limiting discussion to the warring parties, contrary to WP:OWN. As the topic is notable, the likelihood is that another entry would be made in mainspace and then you'd have a content fork. Draftification in such circumstances is clearly disruptive and contrary to Wikipedia's fundamental principles. It should be forbidden. Andrew D. (talk) 10:28, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • As for the OP's proposed text, note that this is suggested as an update to WP:DRAFTIFY. That page is described as "...an explanatory supplement ... This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines ..." So, it's like WP:BEFORE – a counsel of perfection which is widely flouted and ignored because its status is unclear. Having such multiple levels of policy and process is complicated, confusing and counter-productive. Multiplying these levels makes matters worse and so should be resisted per WP:CREEP and KISS. As such developments tend to harm the project by exasperating incumbents and deterring novices, they should be deprecated and dumped. Please delete draft space in its entirety and save us all a lot of grief. Andrew D. (talk) 10:54, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    Actually, it is suggested as an update to WP:ATD which is part of the deletion policy precisely to make the status clear. Regards SoWhy 11:12, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    I didn't grasp that on a first reading and so take your point. But I am quite well versed in deletion policy. If I have difficulty following this, imagine how hard it will be for newcomers. Wikipedia has become overcomplicated and we should be rolling this back, not refining it. Andrew D. (talk) 11:27, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Draftification is a flawed concept. It should never have been introduced. Either an article is non-notable or notable (by your judgement). I am sure nobody thinks that a article is both notable and non-notable at the same time. In case it is notable, improve it, tag it for improvement, if it isn't, PROD it or AfD it. Why consign it to eternal oblivion and deletion just because you are too lazy to open a few more windows, but still want to review more articles ? No article is perfect and even our featured articles cannot be called perfect (in the literal sense) so, should all articles be draftified ? The draft namespace is a fig leaf, a broken process which allows Wikipedia to still use the tagline 'the free encyclopedia that anybody can edit'. It should never be used as a holding-cell for these so called 'im-perfect' articles and I absolutely oppose any attempts to formalise this informal non-admin deletion startegy — fr + 11:13, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    I'm happy to support any such proposal but so far the community has not been in favor of that, so this proposal attempts to at least minimize the problems. You are welcome to start an RFC to forbid draftification altogether. Regards SoWhy 11:31, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    I am aware that I am probably in the minority regarding this idea..... — fr + 10:47, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I find myself strongly in agreement with Andrew Davidson and FR30799386; but not adopting the proposal leaves us with a status quo where articles are being moved to draft and "stealth deleted". We need to do something about that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:21, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • "Stealth deletion" is a tricky phrase here, because it easily runs the risk of our words confusing our meanings. Deletion is deletion, and not BOLD editing, because of the bureaucratic barrier to undo the action. Draftifying on the other hand is BOLD editing, because it's a decision that can be made by pretty much anybody (although with more mess if not a page mover or sysop), and can then be undone by pretty much anybody (although with more mess if the XNR isn't suppressed or deleted).
The problem in my mind with drafts is that, while anyone can work on them and improve them, people seldom do, because by virtue of the fact that we do not allow XNRs from mainspace, no one really knows they exist. What I would prefer as a solution to that problem is a system that incorporates some implementation of "draft-space-WikiProject-categories", that function as a marker so that something like AAlertBot can notify relevant WikiProjects of pages within their scope that have been created or moved to draft space. This would function the same as AAlertBot already notifying projects of relevant articles that have been nominated for deletion/GA/DYK. (I believe User:Ritchie333 already implemented something similar for Women in Red, but I'm not sure where the link is.)
Overall, I think it we want to implement a solution, we should prefer something like this, a technical addition with the goal of facilitating collaboration, rather than erecting another bureaucratic barrier that makes more busy work (i.e., work other than creating and improving content), and at the end of the day, serves to make our system even more esoteric and increases the knowledge-based barrier-to-entry for new editors. GMGtalk 11:55, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
But is moving viable content to a different namespace with different rules and no easily visible access not the very definition of making "our system even more esoteric and increases the knowledge-based barrier-to-entry for new editors"? Regards SoWhy 12:01, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
There are always going to be edge cases where draftifying seems like the best alternative. Obviously, if someone is draftifying clearly appropriate content ready for mainspace, or if someone is sending copyvios and attack pages to draft space, that's a COMMONSENSE problem that needs to be addressed on an an individual level.
But thinking about the issue tactically, if "stealth deletion" is the hill you aim to take, you can attack the "deletion" part, and try to implement substantial new sets of rules that place a substantial additional sustained burden on admins and patrollers (both groups that are in short supply already tasked with constant backlogs), and which requires substantial changes in organizational culture to succeed.
Alternatively, you can attack the "stealth" part. This requires technical implementation for sure. Categories for drafts need to be created and populated, AAlertBot needs to have the ability to sort them, and the AfC script needs to be updated to automatically remove them upon acceptance. However, once implemented there is comparatively little sustained burden to support. Categorization only takes a few seconds and pretty much the whole process can be automated or semi-automated.
But what you buy for that implementation is first accountability for patrollers who are draftifying articles, since project members are presumably in the best position to judge whether content is appropriate or not. You provide a useful tool for WikiProjects to improve existing drafts (and potentially avoid another Donna Strickland), and you also provide a tool for content creators to be directly involved in page patrolling and AfC, both areas where process-editors (for lack of a better term) generally dominate, and content creators have little regular participation. GMGtalk 13:51, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't see any benefit of requiring admin approval for moving incomplete drafts to draft space, but I see plenty of downside like reducing the quality of main space, added bureaucracy, and consolidation of power by the few. As I have said before when similar proposals were floated, if six months is not enough time for an article to be improved to our minimal stub standards, then it's doesn't belong on Wikipedia. We will survive it's absence. I am also concerned that this would be used to inappropriately decline draft moves by a couple of admins who routinely decline CSDs citing an essay that they wrote. (I guess we could call that stealth decline). We have to remember that admins do not necessarily have better judgment than non-admins. They have simply passed a review of some self-selected editors in the RfA process.- MrX 🖋 12:22, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    When people are saying that incomplete articles are "reducing the quality of main space", one should remember that's how most, if not all, articles started. For example, these are the first versions of some of the TFAs recently featured on the Main Page: [6], [7], [8]. I'm pretty sure that if draftspace had existed back then, someone might very well have draftified one of those citing "not ready for mainspace" despite the fact that, as Andrew points out, policy explicitly says that lack of quality is not a reason for removal from mainspace (which draftification is). The point was this: Since moving to draftspace removes a page from the view of 99% of people (i.e. casual readers with no understanding of how Wikipedia's processes work), such a move is, from an outsider's perspective, a deletion. As such, the decision to perform such a move should lie with those who are also tasked with the deletion of pages. Vague concerns over "admin abuse" are not a valid argument either since, like with deletion taggings, editors can always nominate an article for XFD if the draftification is declined (nothing stealthy about it, since the article is still visible in mainspace unlike when moved to draftspace). Regards SoWhy 13:19, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    You seem to be assuming that readers primarily access article to improve them. What about readers who access article to learn from them, or to get verifiable, factual information? The latter's needs are often unmet. We're not talking about article that are incomplete in the sense of not being GA or FA; we're talking about articles that are not written to a minimum standard to even know if they are about verifiable, notable subjects. I dispute that an article about an obscure, probably non-notable, subject would be improved in any meaningful way if it were left in article space. It sounds nice, but I don't think it would bear scrutiny. I made a similar argument here, with some evidence. For the record, I did not mention admin abuse. My concerns are about a small handful of admins who have opinions about deleting articles that I believe doesn't align with the norm. That's OK. They should have a voice to, but so should editors who have demonstrated sound judgement in this area. - MrX 🖋 17:24, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
    As I noted above, many articles started off as sub-par but were improved over time because anyone could contribute. While I admit that this happens less than say 10 or even 15 years ago, it still happens. And I don't assume that most people access articles for that reason; I assume that a significant number of people will, when faced with an obvious error and a large edit button, fix the error. We have tags to warn casual readers that an article might not be helpful in all regards already, so removing the article from the view of those, whoever many, editors who would want to improve the article is not within the spirit of the project. As for "obscure, probably non-notable" subjects, I made this proposal with subjects in mind. Anything about a clearly notable subject should not be draftified anyway, however bad the article is, because WP:IMPERFECT is longstanding policy. Your link talks about edits to pages moved to draft; my point is that moving to draft is exactly what slows down or prevents such edits to occur in the first place.
    As for "admin abuse" (note the quotation marks), the whole point of the proposal of codifying draftification into a policy is to have a widely supported rule that will make it easier to identify and handle problematic actions. Regards SoWhy 20:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Definitely support the idea in principle, too many articles are draftified due to "experienced users" misinterpreting WP:MINREF as somehow requiring references for all articles, or inline citations for all BLPs (when it only requres them for direct quotes and contentious material), and then what usually ends up happening is that the page creator forgets about the article (as either they've stopped editing or they think they've already done their job in creating the page), and then nobody else is informed of the draftification, and then who knows whether the admin that sees the eventual G13 thinks its worth saving or not. Many of these draftifieed articles would be kept at AFD and would be better off in mainspace, where they will eventually be improved. Iffy★Chat -- 13:01, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I would oppose the proposal as written, as a solution in search of a problem. Being part of NPP / AfC gives one a different prospective on draftifying. Actually, NPP is the project that's more backlogged, at ~4000 articles (Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers), while the AfC backlog is ~1250 drafts / 3 weeks: Category:AfC pending submissions by age/3 weeks ago. Regardless, I would invite editors here to join either of these projects and help out with the backlogs. Draftifying is really an insignificant tool in the "toolkit"; I'm not seeing a lot of issues from its use. --K.e.coffman (talk) 04:33, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Does a draftyfing add any sources? Certainly not. A page in the main space may be developed, a draft will perish. An AfD may mobilise coauthors, draftyfing won't.
Why existing unsourced pages are acceptable, new ones are moved to Draft space without any control?
I have started to create pages linterlinking existing pages. I believe that such pages are better than red links or nothing. Their references exist in linked pages and copying the references isn't creative, anyone is able to check them. But I have been criticised, so I don't any more.

Xx236 (talk) 10:15, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

  • Oppose - There is a nasty tendency where admins basically bully new article creators during the drafting phase to improve their articles to their own idea of what a good article is, rather than just to meet the basic criteria (WP:GNG, WP:NOT etc.), and if the editor then boldly moves their article to the article space the admin then responds by AFDing the article. If you want to see an example of this happening see these six AFDs 1 2 3 4 5 6 all of which were raised by the same admin against articles started by the same editor and then boldly moved to article-space by the editor. The result of the AFD process for all but one of these articles was "Keep", with the remaining one being a likely merge. I have no faith in the draft process if this is representative of what goes on there. The article space allows for the involvement of other editors at an early stage and is a much healthier environment for article creation.
An additional point is that a very important thing about AFD is that AFD is NOT clean-up. If it is possible to save an article then you should just go ahead and do so. Indeed, if it is possible to save an article it won't be deleted at AFD because of WP:NEXIST. Draftifying an article subverts that by turning AFD back into a clean-up process. FOARP (talk) 09:24, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

2nd RfC: The Daily Mail

The latest Daily Mail RfC is about to close. If anyone reading this has input on this, now is the time to participate in the RfC.

See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#2nd RfC: The Daily Mail. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:48, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

RfC announce: Do alternative medicine practitioners have a conflict of interest?

Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#2nd RfC: Do alternative medicine practitioners have a conflict of interest? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:01, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Is lack of sourcing an accepted reason to remove notable subjects from mainspace?

Okay, this is somewhat related to the proposal/idea above (#Workshopping: Integrate draftification into the deletion policy) but since I keep seeing it more and more, I hope we can clarify this regardless of the outcome of that discussion. I'm referring to moves (using the MoveToDraft script) that cite as reason "Undersourced, incubate in draftspace". From my understanding of the editing policy and the core notability guideline, articles about notable subjects should be kept in mainspace if improvement is possible. Yet, I keep seing moves like this (just a random example), where clearly notable subjects with literally thousands of easily accessible sources are removed from mainspace (with some admins then blindly removing the redirects without checking the move's validity). Is this really consensus now? Because then we should change those policies and guidelines I mentioned to reflect that. Regards SoWhy 12:15, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Since the random example, that you presented here, is the draftify move that I did 18 days ago, I would like to take part in this discussion. The article, that is moved from mainspace to draftspace on the grounds of undersourcing, is valid in my opinion and as per WP:DRAFTIFY because draftspaces are meant for improving the articles that can survive an AfD. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material and the draftspaces give them total opportunity and space for the draft's improvement until it is ready for mainspace. Moving an article to draftspace does not indicate that the subject is non-notable. An article shouldn't be moved to draft space on the grounds of notability. WP:NEXIST is irrelevant here as notability is never questioned. Regards Hitro talk 15:15, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
WP:DRAFTIFY is not a policy or guideline. It claims to explain policies but contains language contrary to policy, including WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM which says we (including you) should fix problems, not remove them from view. Any article about a notable subject, no matter in which state the article is, should survive a correctly argued AFD because surmountable problems (like missing sources in the article) should never be grounds for deletion. But, as I said, I noticed such moves often (not just by you, which is why I didn't mention you by name, to not single any one editor out), so I'm beginning to wonder whether the policy and guideline I cited still reflect consensus when people violate them constantly without reproach. Regards SoWhy 16:04, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
Yes, it is one of many possible reasons for moving something to draft space, but it shouldn't be the only reason if a cursory search shows that the subject may be notable, or if the article otherwise conforms to minimal article standards. Isolated examples in which editors judge the content differently does not really make the case.- MrX 🖋 20:53, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
I would only move a clearly notable article to mainspace if it was clear the article was an unsourced BLP that seemed clearly notable, but that I couldn't easily source, OR if the BLP was an attack piece that couldn't easily be cleaned up. In other situations where notability hasn't been established but notability is likely, for instance, a WP:TOOSOON article, I'd have no problem moving it to draftspace. Not sure what the general consensus is at the moment, though. SportingFlyer talk 22:34, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
BLPs that are unsourced are pretty likely going to get PRODded; I really encourage you to move them (back) to draft space until they're sourced. If they're supposedly easily sourced, then source them immediately before moving them to mainspace. Risker (talk) 04:02, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Unsourced BLPs should not exist in mainspace at all. There's a reason we have a special deletion procedure for them. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:09, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
To be fair, I don't think I've ever moved an unsourced BLP to draftspace. Just pondering the scenario where, for example, there's say a sports player who clearly passes a SNG but has no references in the article and the references are likely to be in a foreign language. SportingFlyer talk 04:25, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
If it's in mainspace, it should be deleted under WP:BLPPROD (I would actually prefer this to moving to draft for a few reasons with a BLP). If it's in draftspace, it should be kept there until referenced. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:27, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
If it's in mainspace and a quick Google search finds sufficient reliable sources, shouldn't adding these sources be preferable to both deletion or draftification? Regards SoWhy 08:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Very obviously yes. Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia that anyone can edit, including you. If you can see a way of keeping an article, then do so. The default should not be draftify or delete. FOARP (talk) 08:39, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
My example is Draft:Świdnicka Street, Wrocław. The street is one of the most notable ones in Poland.[9] I haven't found English language sources. Will the Polish langauge sources help you?Xx236 (talk) 10:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Foreign language references are still references, there is no requirement that references be in English.FOARP (talk) 08:39, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment unfortunately, in my experience of doing NPP, people wanting to write new articles can be very lazy and the number of top-quality NPPers is limited. While in an ideal world NPPers would finish off other people's articles when they're notable topics, and I do genuinely try (you can see my patrol log for examples), we do just have to say to people "it's up to you to put the references in" or they're just going to do it again and again. However, one problem with draftifying is that people may not know how to un-draftify and just lose interest. As a third way to try to reduce conflict (and this is just me) my approach basically is to play good-cop and say something like "you know, if you don't finish it off, I'm worried that someone might delete this". You can read some template messages I have ready to go for this kind of situation here. Blythwood (talk) 00:27, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC: authority control

FAILED
There is consensus against expanding the authority control template to include links to non-databases. However, given that consensus can change, I have also assessed the individual discussions regarding implementation of any such expansion (questions 2-5), so that, if a future RfC finds support for the expansion of this template, the views expressed here are not ignored. However, given the consensus against expanding the template, each of the subsequent discussions is, at least currently, moot. Any questions about this close are welcome. This was a (non-admin closure). Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 05:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

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

This RfC concerns the function of {{Authority control}}.

  1. Should the authority control template link to websites that are not primarily databases (i.e. websites where the primary content is not a database structure)?
  2. If non-databases should be linked to, should any particular groups of external identifiers be excluded from the template based on the type of content (e.g. news, open wikis, TV broadcasters' listings, social media, ...)?
  3. Should the template link to databases/websites where anyone can edit or add content without a moderator's permission, such as MusicBrainz, IMDb and Discogs (and including sites like Twitter, where the relevant identifiers are user account IDs or post IDs)?
  4. Should the template link to websites which are not operated by governments or non-profit organizations, such as YouTube, AllMusic, Quora and the New York Times?
  5. (added afterwards) Should a new template be created to show other external links (those not to be included in the authority control template) from Wikidata?
  6. (added afterwards) If such a template is created: (a) should it be a navbox, a bulleted list, or a comma-separated or horizontal list (like fr:Modèle:Bases musique); (b) should it group links by their content type; (c) should it only show selected groups of links based on a parameter's input (e.g. news websites, social media, ...); (d) should it accept local values for external identifiers (as opposed to only allowing Wikidata data); (e) should the format "Website: ID" or the format "Website" (or a different format) be used to display links?

Jc86035 (talk) 09:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC) (edited 12:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC))

Background

This subsection was written by the RfC initiator (Jc86035) and drafted with input from others. You may prefer to read other opinions first.

{{Authority control}} is Wikipedia's authority control template, and is used on about 900,000 pages. Most identifiers are automatically transcluded from Wikidata. Wikidata has about 3,443 external identifier properties, and {{Authority control}} uses 54 (1.6%) of them.

In previous years, there has been some discussion on Template talk:Authority control regarding adding other types of external links. However, none of those discussions have resulted in changes to the template.

Currently, all identifiers except those for MusicBrainz are (to my knowledge) for non-commercial authoritative bibliographic databases. I (Jc86035) added identifiers for MusicBrainz, Discogs, AllMusic and IMDb last week, on the grounds that there was already a MusicBrainz identifier (which was added in 2013 by Legoktm). I was able to do this because I am a template editor and did not get reverted by another template editor. The four aforementioned databases are either user-generated or commercially operated, and are less clearly "authority control" than the other linked databases. KokoPhantom contested my addition of the Discogs identifiers on the talk page. (I have since removed the new identifiers except for the MusicBrainz ones.)

The Russian Wikipedia's version of the template ("Template:External links") has a rather larger variety of external links, including identifiers for Twitter, GitHub, Anime News Network, IGN, Find a Grave and Encyclopædia Britannica Online. (However, they are all shown separately to the "authority control" section.) As an example: Judi Dench#External links (on this wiki), and on ruwiki. (The Russian Wikipedia's template groups identifiers into "social media", "photo, video and audio", "thematic sites", "dictionaries and encyclopedias" and "authority control". On Dench's article only the latter three are shown.)

Survey (authority control)

Questions 1, 3, 4 and 5 are intended to be yes/no questions. It might also be appropriate to answer "only noncommercial websites" for question 3 and "only user-generated websites" for question 4.

If consensus is in favour for questions 1, 3 or 4, then the template would most likely be changed to show non-authoritative links in different sections (as in the Russian Wikipedia's template), and new identifiers would be added for those categories based on the results of the RfC, \and based on further discussion (likely at the template's talk page). The template's name may stay the same to avoid confusion. Depending on the consensus for questions 2 and 3, the MusicBrainz links may be removed.

Question 1 (linking to non-databases)

Should the authority control template link to websites that are not primarily databases?
FAILED
There is consensus against adding links to non-databases within the authority control templates. (non-admin closure) --DannyS712 (talk) 05:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

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

  • Yes. There are many valuable websites (e.g. news websites) which organize their content by topic, and showing these links would enable readers and editors to find more information than Wikipedia has, if desired. Also, many websites with a more specific focus may already have their own Wikidata identifiers, such as World of Physics ID (P5064). Jc86035 (talk) 09:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No there should be a separate external links template if this is planned.Otherwise it sounds like we are trying to provide a box for the "organised internet" which could conceivably go on almost forever. The AC boxes are already monstrous and we should keep them narrow and focused for the benefit of readers. --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:15, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No The purpose of authority control is the organization of bibliographic data, and so the template should link to databases which can give bibliographic information and additional information. It's an organizational tool, not a list of links to sources. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 02:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No per both of the above. I'm not particular hostile to the idea of a separate template for this expanded use, especially if it might reduce the actual footprint of "External links" sections, and regulate their input in some way so that the output is more consistent. If it were templated, it might even help in some future ways in patrolling for spam (e.g. auto-detect inclusion of certain domain names that are often junk or copyvio links, etc.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:11, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. We're not a directory, and this template is intended for authority control not "everything on this topic anywhere on the internet". Nikkimaria (talk) 03:30, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
    • What a tiresome straw man argument. No one is asking to link to "everything on this topic anywhere on the internet". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:17, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. AC should be an understandable tool for providing reliable bibliographic data. The linkfarm monstrosity in the Russian example is not something to emulate. KokoPhantom (talk) 16:30, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. Out of scope for this template. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 17:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. AC is for bibliographic data, not link farming. Kaldari (talk) 20:49, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. The template should link to a small group of reliable, high quality, relevant, non-commercial, non-wiki databases. Even without things liks musicbrainz, it has way too many useless links (for enwiki readers) already, links from national libraries which are not in English and not in a language or country relevant for the subject, but which happen to be an authority control. Links which are added by default should be very, very limited. Wikidata is the perfect location to function as linkfarm for all these, from the truly authoritative to the near-junk ones (Quora?); enwiki should restrict this to much less than we have now, and excluding the "not primarily databases" is a good start. Fram (talk) 11:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
    • The language or location of the target site is irrelevant to the purpose of comparing authority control identifiers. I do believe that this has been explained to you previously. Your reference to Quora is a straw man, as it is not included in {{Authority control}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:17, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
      • This has been explained to me previously, and I still disagree that "the purpose of comparing authority control" is something enwiki should be used for. We have Wikidata for these kind of purposes, that's the difference between that general platform and a text encyclopedia like enwiki. Wikidata is multilanguage, enwiki is single language, so the "language or location of the target site" is immediately relevant. We have general rules not to include similar non-English links when we have comparable links in English, but for AC this may not apply? Why? Quora is not a strawman, it is included in Wikidata as an identifier. What should be included in the template authority control is exactly what we are discussing here, and giving examples of identifiers which are available on Wikidata and could easily be added to the template, but which I (and most of us) do not want to see included in enwiki, is definitely not a strawman argument. Please don't answer to me if you have nothing constructive to add. Fram (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
        • Then you are in the wrong venue. Good luck taking {{Authority control}} to TfD. Interesting, though that you - wrongly - seem to think this is about Wikidata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:39, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
          • Please don't answer to me if you have nothing constructive to add. Fram (talk) 11:06, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
            • I am happy to state categorically that I won't ever answer to you, under any circumstance. I take it you've not taken the template to TfD, after all? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:42, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No - Agree with Fram. This is not what the AC template is for. Blueboar (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment: The questions is badly phrased What does "not primarily databases" mean? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:17, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
    • @Pigsonthewing: I tried to write it somewhat succinctly. Some websites (like MusicBrainz) are "primarily databases" in that what Wikidata links to is more data; and some websites (like Twitter) are not "primarily databases" in that what Wikidata links to is a page hosting something else that is not easily parseable or not primarily or particularly useful as data. Jc86035 (talk) 09:00, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No That would be stretching the point of the authority control template a bit far. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 01:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No As per Fram above. Not in scope. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:09, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No, generally. Certain exceptions may apply; see store for details. --Izno (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. Please read Authority control#Authority records and files: this template is meant to contain an article's record in various authority files, and non-databases can't possibly be authority files. Nyttend (talk) 22:49, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment how do we feel about things like ODNB IDs? And for heritage buildings, their listings on their country's heritage listing website? I think both would be great things to drive off the authority control template, as those links are already uploaded onto Wikidata but nobody knows it's there. Blythwood (talk) 00:16, 2 January 2019 (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.

Question 2 (exclusion of particular groups of identifiers)

If non-databases should be linked to, should any particular groups of external identifiers be excluded from the template based on the type of content?
PASSED - MOOT
There is consensus in favor of this proposal, meaning that, subject to future discussions, in general there are some groups of external identifiers that should be excluded. What the groups were was not discussed, but there is agreement that they could be discussed in the future; in other words, not all databases are guaranteed to be linked to. Future discussions can determine what, if any, consensus exists to exclude specific groups. However, in light of consensus against including non-databases (see question 1), this issue is moot. (non-admin closure) --DannyS712 (talk) 05:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

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

  • None that I can think of, although it's worth noting that it would be technically possible to e.g. only show Facebook username (P2013) if there are no other identifiers to be shown (in its section or overall), as it may be considered unnecessary or even dubious if other identifiers are readily available. Jc86035 (talk) 09:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes the AC template should point only to items relevant to the subject matter of the article, regardless of the technical means to achieve this, and not a potpourri of every available item. --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:17, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Non-databases shouldn't be linked to. I agree with Tom above, it should point to things relevant to the subject not every possible item about them (hence why the links should only be to databases). This template shouldn't turn into a database of databases. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 02:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Maybe. I'm not entirely clear what this is asking and what use-cases might be, so I'm not willing to say "no" to the very possibility of being exclusive. I do agree with the "not a potpourri of every available item" reason offered immediately above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:13, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes, see my answer above. Fram (talk) 11:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes - Completely agree with Tom, Wigapodes and SMcCandlish. If Wikidata wants to be a database of databases, fine... but that isn’t appropriate for WP.en Blueboar (talk) 14:04, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. The question is vague, and this is not something that can be decided at a general level. Whether or not a specific site should be linked to by the template is a matter for discussion at Template talk:Authority control. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:26, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes In a general sense, not every identifier is likely to be appropriate or should be displayed, but that is a case-by-case decision. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 01:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes Per Tom/Wugapodes. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:10, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Not generally, no. Local consensus for this template seems fine. --Izno (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes. If we do this, every instance of the template should have one non-database link: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/resource/228_authfile.html, which will teach users what an authority file is, what it does, and what one does with it. Nothing else, because this link will demonstrate the foolishness of linking anything other than authority records in such a template. Nyttend (talk) 22:52, 17 December 2018 (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.

Question 3 (openly editable and user-generated websites)

Should the template link to databases/websites where anyone can edit or add content without a moderator's permission?
NO CONSENSUS - MOOT
In general, there is no consensus to add links to "openly editable and user-generated websites". However, given the lack of guidance on what this would default to, I'm incorporating Nikkimaria's suggestion into the close, given that the entire question is moot in light of question 1, and that their suggestion is most compatible with current policy: As a general rule no [links should not be added], although it may be warranted in specific cases. If this does pass it should be implemented only (a) in accordance with WP:EL and (b) with explicit per-link consensus. (non-admin closure) --DannyS712 (talk) 05:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

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

  • Yes; we've already been linking to MusicBrainz with this template for more than five years. Even if we're not going to use them as sources there is nothing inherently wrong with supporting other open wikis, and linking to user IDs is already done on many pages through the numerous external link templates (e.g. {{Instagram}}, which uses Instagram username (P2003)). Authoritative identifiers are also not error-proof, so being able to corroborate information from more sources would be valuable. (Of course, the relevant data has been present in Wikidata for some time, but almost no one actually reads Wikidata items.) Jc86035 (talk) 09:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No The template should point to reliable bibliographic data. User generated and openly editable information is not that. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 02:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes. We're already doing it, and these are not reference citations or anything like them. This is an external links template, so anything that would qualify to be in an articles's EL section is permissible here (possibly with the "databases only" limitation in question 1 above, which is a utility matter not a "who wrote it and do I like them" matter). Various sites like MusicBrainz, Discogs.com, and IMDb are plenty reliable enough to be useful as ELs, we just don't cite them as sources because they are WP:UGC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:06, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
    • Expanding this to include "anything that would qualify to be in an articles's EL section" would be the result of a "yes" result on the first question, but for the moment that's not what this template is actually for. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:30, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
      • That's why I clarified with 'possibly with the "databases only" limitation in question 1 above'.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:57, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • As a general rule no, although it may be warranted in specific cases. If this does pass it should be implemented only (a) in accordance with WP:EL and (b) with explicit per-link consensus. This passing shouldn't be taken as open license to add every wiki under the sun. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:30, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. AC is defined as links "to bibliographical records on worldwide Library catalogs". Readers have a rightful and reasonable expectation that such links will be reliable. KokoPhantom (talk) 16:49, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes it's a delusion that worldwide library catalogs are perfectly reliable. They copy from each other, and they copy from WP. Other sources can be just as reliable. DGG ( talk ) 02:17, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No, see my answer above. The reasoning that because the Library of Congress is not perfectly reliable, we should also include open wiki's is rather alarming. Fram (talk) 11:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No - not reliable. Blueboar (talk) 14:07, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes. In the case of MusicBrainz, for example, it's common throughout the industry, and bodies as august as the BBC use and link to it. It is not as though this is being used to assert notabilty. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:11, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes In general and especially for MusicBrainz. Identifiers aren't meant to serve as reliable sources, and other community-driven projects can provide valuable additional info on a topic. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 01:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment. The Yes votes all say that AC links don't need to meet the requirements of WP:RS. But does the reader see it this way? The special box, the restricted template editing, the very name "Authority Control": these all convey a level of confidence in these links that is betrayed if they turn out to include amateur databases and Wikia-style sites. Not only will readers be confused, but think how hard it would be to convince editors not to cite user-gen/amateur material when it's attached to the bottom of every page. We need to hold on to the concept of "library catalog" as it is commonly understood, or else drastically revise all the AC documentation to make clear what it means on Wikipedia. KokoPhantom (talk) 17:30, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No per Nikkimaria As a general rule it should be no. With scope for specific exceptions after appropriate discussion. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:12, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • If there are any such sites which actually meet the definition of an authority control, sure. Color me skeptical, however. --Izno (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. Something like Findagrave or IMDB would be useful, and on principle I'd want to include them, but the problem is that anyone can repurpose the page completely and thus cause our link to be wrong. Consider a page on such a database for "Theodore Roosevelt"; one person might write it to cover Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., the U.S. President, but another might replace it with data for Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., his son, and move the president somewhere else. If we found the president and linked his record to our article on him, and then he got replaced with the son, our record would be linking to the wrong individual, and we'd have no way to know that it was wrong until someone followed the link and detected the error. (This is why it's important that we have a feature that automatically updates Wikidata when a page gets moved.) We should only be linking databases that have a reputation for stability. Nyttend (talk) 23:01, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Probably yes-although I'm well aware of the limits of external databases, I think that readers can understand that when they leave Wikipedia they're moving to a different website that may have different content and moderation standards. Ultimately, most articles on movie people do have an IMDB template, so what that means is ideal practice is to have 1) an IMDB link on Wikidata that nobody knows about, 2) an IMDB link on Wikipedia that everyone is going to click on anyway but has to be created separately. I think it's too much: one authority control template is so much simpler. Blythwood (talk) 00:12, 2 January 2019 (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.

Question 4 (commercially operated websites)

Should the template link to websites which are not operated by governments or non-profit organizations?
PASSED - MOOT
There is a weak consensus in favor of this proposal, meaning that links may be added to "websites which are not operated by governments or non-profit organizations". However, in light of consensus against including non-databases (see question 1), this issue is moot. (non-admin closure) --DannyS712 (talk) 05:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

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

  • Tentatively, yes, since we already do this through a large number of other templates, and automating it through {{Authority control}} would allow this to happen more effectively for the appropriate identifiers. Not every corporation's website counters the Wikimedia movement's goals, and we happen to use some of them very often as sources anyway. Jc86035 (talk) 09:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Meh Only when necessary. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 02:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes. Not being a charity doesn't magically translate to "untrustworthy". The publishers of about 99.999% of what we cite as reliable sources are for-profit entities. (And being governmental doesn't make something magically trustworthy either.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:05, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
  • no, see my answer above. Adding such links individually on articles, okay, sometimes. Adding such links by default to every article possible, no thanks. We should limit the links of external links, not try to maximalize these, and certainly not add commercial websites by default. Fram (talk) 11:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • It depends - Fram has it right. That said... The real question isn’t governmental vs commercial... the question is automated linking vs manual linking. Blueboar (talk) 14:12, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes of course. We - rightly - have no general prohibition on linking to or citing commercial sites, and this template should be treated no differently to rest of Wikipedia in that regard. Whether or not a specific site should be linked to by the template is a matter for discussion at Template talk:Authority control. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:22, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes Just because a site is primarily commercial doesn't mean it's somehow untrustworthy as a source of authority control info, but this is also a case-by-case decision. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 01:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Whether a site is commercial in nature is irrelevant to whether it is an authority control. See also my answer to question 3. --Izno (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes. If it's a standard authority file and it's stable, why not? Nobody suffers if a solid commercial authority file is linked, and leaving out a link to such an authority file would be harmful (at least to a small extent). I can't think of anything immediately that I'd suggest linking, but maybe that's because I'm not a cataloguer. Nyttend (talk) 23:04, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No This question is malformed and any consensus on it should be nonbinding: The quality type of authoritative database is academic, not governmental or nonprofit. As for commercial databases, they should only be used when no equivalent source from the other types are available. Free-market commercial databases are prone to giving undue weight to valued clients and products while suppressing competitors and dead weight. Though they may have utility in certain situations (decided on a case-by-case basis), it's unrealistic to think sales-based databases like Amazon or iTunes can be considered the same as a real library catalog. KokoPhantom (talk) 20:22, 31 December 2018 (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.

Question 5 (separate Wikidata external links template)

Should a new template be created to show other external links from Wikidata?
FAILED - MOOT
There is consensus against this proposal; any such links added should not have a separate template from the current authority control template. However, in light of consensus against included not-databases (see question 1), this issue is moot. (non-admin closure) --DannyS712 (talk) 05:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

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

  • Yes, if those links shouldn't be shown in the authority control template. This would allow us to better organize external links and have useful links be displayed on more articles. Jc86035 (talk) 12:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes, conditional on Questions 3 and 4, of course. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:57, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. We're still not a directory, and blanket linking of this sort would not be in accordance with the external links guideline. With the possible exception of official websites, links should be considered on an article-by-article basis; even links that are commonly used may not be universally appropriate. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:47, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • In theory, per Jc86035, and if it would help limit indiscriminate link-dumping into articles. We have needed to re-think our approach to "External links" sections for some time now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:43, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
    • if it would help limit indiscriminate link-dumping into articles - how do you anticipate it would do that? I don't think it's feasible for example to say that only ELs in this template could be included, as there will always be some ELs that are useful but not covered by properties on Wikidata. If anything a template of this type would increase indiscriminate link-dumping. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:29, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
      @Nikkimaria and SMcCandlish: Presumably there wouldn't be too many external links not allowable in Wikidata (given that official website (P856) can be and is used)? Usually the reasons for not allowing identifier properties (and it seems very rare for there to be no consensus for them) are "this identifier isn't stable", "this website enables copyright infringement" or "this is a search string and not an identifier", which seem broadly in line with our external links policy. There are also described at URL (P973) and described by source (P1343), which the proposed template might or might not handle (the ruwiki template uses P1343 for some Russian-language encyclopedia articles which have their own Wikidata items, and possibly some other sources). Jc86035 (talk) 10:11, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
      Passing through "described at" as a catch-all would definitely increase indiscriminate link-dumping, and EL definitely excludes more than just copyvio and search strings. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:28, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
      I meant more that in a navbox-style template the material would be compressed, so if someone added the same thing in big, long form to the EL section we'd delete it. We'd likely also have grounds to delete similar links that don't add anything useful (e.g. if the template already produces something for looking up a book at Worlcat, we'd delete any additional book-lookup links).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
      I agree that the links displayed would be more compressed; I don't agree that in most cases there would be fewer of them overall. Far more likely we'd end up including multiple similar links that don't add anything useful, as part of the template. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:25, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No, please no. Something like Find-a-Grave or Quora is acceptable for WD, but almost never for enwiki. Creating a template that adds these automatically if they are included in Wikidata would be terrible. Fram (talk) 11:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
    Yeah, that does seem a bit over-broad.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
    @Fram and SMcCandlish: Of course there would be some editorial discretion (there are hundreds of sports websites that I've never visited which have Wikidata properties, for example), but if something is the only available external link for an obscure topic then we might want to use that anyway (e.g. have a group of websites to be used on every page, and if none of those are available then use whatever other websites are in the template). Bear in mind that despite the existence of thousands of identifier properties, even important topics will only have a few dozen at most, mainly because of identifiers being specific to a given field; Douglas Adams (Q42), for example, only has 84, and we might preemptively exclude many of those for (e.g.) not being in English and/or being redundant to an entry in a better database. Jc86035 (talk) 13:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No - A better solution is to simply have a linkbox pointing to wikidata, similar to what we have for wiktionary. Blueboar (talk) 14:16, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No. More clutter for readers. A single link to Wikidata would suffice, while editors continue to add and remove external links by consensus. KokoPhantom (talk) 16:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No I don't believe it should be necessary to make a completely separate template. Separate sections in the existing one, like ruwiki does, would be best. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 01:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • No Not a link farm. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:13, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • In the same vein as {{authority control}}? No. Our current sampling of external links templates is sufficient for today. (At some point in the future, there may be a better way to provide links on English Wikipedia.) --Izno (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2018 (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.

Question 6 (design and function of external links template)

If such a template is created: (a) should it be a navbox, a bulleted list, or a horizontal list; (b) should it group links by their content type; (c) should it only show selected groups of links based on a parameter's input; (d) should it accept local values for external identifiers; (e) what format should be used to display links?
PREMATURE - MOOT
Determining the design and function of the potential new external links template was overwhelmingly decided to be premature. In light of consensus against having a separate template (see question 5), this issue is moot. (non-admin closure) --DannyS712 (talk) 05:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

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

  • I'm not sure about these so far, but yes to (b) and (d). I'm not sure about (c) but it might make sense, for example, to manually disable social media links for those who aren't alive (although as with a lot of other facets of the template it might be more appropriate to do this automatically based on the data). Jc86035 (talk) 12:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Premature firstly, we haven't agreed this should occur. Secondly, I think it's best that this is brainstormed a bit more on a local venue rather than a site-wide RfC. --Tom (LT) (talk) 12:54, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Premature. Let's just decide if the template should exist. Bike shedding it will drag down the whole process. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:56, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Premature. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:47, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Premature.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:44, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Premature, see my answer above. Fram (talk) 11:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Premature - Per the above Blueboar (talk) 13:52, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Premature Don't count your chickens... — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 01:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
  • As above, not like {{authority control}} or other navboxes. (Particularly, the mobile exclusion of navboxes seems like a decent reason to reject the navbox format for external links.) As for the other items in (a), it should be either bulleted or horizontal. (b) Generally. (c) No? It is not obvious to me what is in mind here. (d) No. That's 0 value. (e) I favor removing the ID. It's not value add for most (heck, not value add for anyone). Bots should be consuming Wikidata and human readers don't care about anything except the website of interest. --Izno (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Premature but this is definitely something that should happen sooner rather than later. Wikipedia articles currently have an extremely awkward mix of ways of linking to sister WikiProjects and other websites and databases, some of which display on mobile and some of which don't. We need a standardised way, especially for mobile users, to make sure that these links are displayed in a coherent way and easily understandable. Blythwood (talk) 06:48, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion (authority control)

A comment: I think that if we do expand the scope of the Authority control template here at en.WP, or implement a parallel "External links" template based on Wikidata, we would do well to consider dividing it into sections, similar to the ru.WP example given above. It does not make sense to me to jumble up links to Worldcat with links to Twitter, for example; links of different types should be separated into sections. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:39, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Yes, this would most likely happen (as I think I mentioned somewhere up there), since it wouldn't really be accurate to call the new identifiers "authority control" anyway. Jc86035 (talk) 14:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
I agree with above. Split into two. --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:18, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
That works for me, too.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:07, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
The implementation of a parallel EL template isn't a question in this RfC at the moment, so I think we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:34, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
@Jonesey95, Tom (LT), SMcCandlish, Nikkimaria, and Wugapodes: I've added questions 5 and 6 to address this. Jc86035 (talk) 12:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: Please also ping the people who've already opined on the previous questions, to make them aware of the additions. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:47, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
@Nikkimaria: I believe I notified everyone who actually commented in the RfC before I added the questions; regardless: notifying Izno, Fram, Deryck Chan, KokoPhantom, Littleolive oil and Pigsonthewing that there are now two more questions. Jc86035 (talk) 09:43, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Note that the issue of using MusicBrainz IDs in this template has already been discussed, recently, where there was no consensus to cease using them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:05, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

  • Delete the authority control template. We don't need it, as we now have Wikidata, and if WMF adopts Curlie (former DMOZ), then we won't even need external links sections anymore. Kamafa Delgato (Lojbanist)Styrofoam is not made from kittens. 18:01, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment I think that, at a minimum, it would be good to widen the authority control template's role to link to relevant entries on respectable, respected sources and directories. An obvious one is the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ID, for instance. You can cite this in the sources for an article, of course, but this makes it much harder to find. The authority control template is very useful for research and not well-known enough. Many new articles I review, even ones from experienced contributors, don't have it when it would be a benefit. Blythwood (talk) 00:07, 2 January 2019 (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.

Manually confirmed new users are prevented from creating articles

Hello, there is a discussion open at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_permissions#"confirmed"_users_can_no_longer_create_articles regarding a technical configuration that is preventing manually confirmed new users from authoring articles. Please follow the existing discussion if you are interested in this or especially if you are aware of any prior discussions where this access change was requested. — xaosflux Talk 04:15, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

RFC on capitalization of prepositions

The consensus is against the initial proposal.

There is a consensus for the alternative proposal at #Alternative proposal: selective capitalization:

  • Apply our five-letter rule except when a significant majority of current, reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently capitalize, in the title of a specific work, a word that is frequently not a preposition, as in "Like" and "Past". Continue to lower-case common four-letter (or shorter) prepositions like "into" and "from".

Cunard (talk) 05:44, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

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

Should we change the wording at MOS:CT to explicitly allow capitalization of prepositions containing four letters? Calidum 12:56, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

  • Support change. Currently, the MOS states "prepositions containing four letters or fewer (as, in, of, on, to, for, from, into, like, over, with, upon, etc.); but see above for instances where these words are not used as prepositions," should not be capitalized. However, multiple move requests in recent years have been decided decisively in favor of capping four-letter prepositions, because our policy on article titles requires the use of commonly recognizable names, and four-letter prepositions are commonly capped in the real world. See past move requests concerning Star Trek Into Darkness, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Girls Like You and Hurts Like Heaven for examples. Note, I am not suggesting we require four-letter prepositions be capped in all instances, merely that the MOS be silent on the matter per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CREEP, to avoid having repeated RMs on the matter. Calidum 12:56, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
    • @Calidum: could you please clarify exactly what new wording you are proposing? Is it just changing "four" in the existing wording to "three" (and then fixing the examples)? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:19, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
      • @Peter coxhead: that would probably be the easiest way to do it. Alternatively, we could add a third bold heading along the lines of may/may not be capitalized depending on common usage and include only four-letter prepositions in there. Calidum 13:39, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
        • @Calidum: these aren't quite the same; there needs to be a clear and precise proposal if there is to be a clear and precise decision. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:08, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
          • My preference would be to determine capitalization on a case-by-case basis instead of having a strict rule, per CREEP. So, to clarify, I would propose including “Four-letter prepositions may be capitalized depending on usage in independent, reliable sources” in the MOS. Calidum 16:42, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
    • This is basically a proposal to invalidate WP:CONSISTENCY policy. And "to avoid having repeated RMs on the matter"? That's backwards. This proposal would guarantee constant RM re-litigation of long-settled article titles. It is not possible for it to work any other way. The fact that we have a tiny handful of exceptions to an MoS rule is not a "problem"; it's implicit in what guideline means here, in contrast to a policy. To quote from WP:P&G: "guidelines ... are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." MoS itself re-iterates this. Opening thousands of RM discussions to try to do original research to prove "from" or "From" on a case-by-case basis by doing iffy statistical analyses on source usage of every title with that word in it would basically just be lighting editorial productivity on fire to watch it burn. I've addressed the other problems with this (misrepresenting RM results, trying to convert WP:UCRN into a style policy, etc.) in other comments below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:22, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - I generally feel that MOS has a range of bonkers views on capitalisation that clashes with general usage, of which this is one subset. We almost always go for "most popular (unique) name" for titling, so this seems a logical change. There doesn't seem to be an actual substantive (in the sense of improving user functionality) on the other side. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:00, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - We should always use the common name, and it the common name is capitalised then so should the article name be. FOARP (talk) 10:47, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support as per Calidum's rationale. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:20, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support per the nom and all of the above. This would solve the odd-looking article of Stephen King's Four Past Midnight - Four past Midnight - which has been a point of contention regarding this topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:43, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, with one important caveat... when determining commonname based style, we must always base it on usage in reliable independent sources. Blueboar (talk) 14:04, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose changing the status quo for 19–34 prepositions without good reason for each of them. We need more than an "example" for three prepositions that are the most controversial. Listed below are all four-letter prepositions in the English language with examples of enwiki articles, according to Wiktionary, without those present in zero articles. The rare ones that I didn't bother to check because of too large number of occurences are strike-through'd. wumbolo ^^^ 15:57, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
Click "show" on the right to open.

ajax

amid

anti

bout

came

come

down

from

gain

gone

half

hoff

into

less

like

near

onto (maybe not)

outa

over

pace

past

plus

post

sans

save

than

thro

thru

till

unto

upon

vice

vpon

with

    • Your concern is noted, but I’m not proposing a hard and fast rule for all prepositions. Rather, I’m proposing to eliminate a hard and fast rule and allow flexibility. Calidum 16:42, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
      • Should we change the wording at MOS:CT to implicitly allow capitalization of prepositions containing four letters? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacknstock (talk • contribs)
  • Oppose in favour of the proposal below. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:35, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose in favor of the alternative proposal below. The nominator's premise is quite false; the vast majority of such RMs have done exactly the opposite of what Calidum suggests, and have instead followed MOS:5LETTERRULE, as expected. We do have a handful of RMs that have gone against 5LETTERULE (which is okay, since it's a guideline not a policy). Most have been bloc votes by fans of the works in question to favored four-letter-preposition capitals, to mimic the cover of the work; these are results that conflict with WP:CONSISTENCY policy and which are probably temporary and would be erased in later RMs (though see alternative proposal). In a few cases, there are genuine exceptions for special WP:IAR-worthy reasons, as in Star Trek Into Darkness, where "Into" is serving simultaneously as the beginning of a subtitle and as a mid-phrase preposition, a play on words. The above proposal would impose a style found in almost zero style guides other than those for news journalism (and WP:NOT#NEWS policy is clear that WP is not written in news style). The alternative, selective, and sourcing-based proposal below does not have this problem, and is consistent with how we already settle matters where RS, for a particular subject (e.g. a specific work), are at odds with the MoS default. Nor will the alternative lead to an explosion of RM relitigation of thousands of titles of our articles on published works with any four-letter preposition in their names.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:24, 27 December 2018 (UTC); revised: 14:22, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The reason we have this nightmare is that we have a length rule for prepositions in the first place. The Chicago Manual of Style's rule is that prepositions that are used adverbially or adjectivally are capitalized, all others uncapitalized. Only a grammatical rule will solve this problem. Adjusting the number of letters is arbitrary. --Bsherr (talk) 19:59, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
    CMoS uses "academic style". That is, all prepositions – even huge ones like "alongside" and "throughout" – are not capitalized "when used as prepositions" if you want to put it that way. This is the style used in many academic journals; it's virtually never used outside of them. Far more editors would object to it than to shifting from the five-letter rule we adopted from mainstream book publishing, to either the compromise proposal below, based on source usage for particular topics, or another arbitrary rule like the four-letter rule used by many news publishers. Then again, our extant "just use the five-letter rule" position is WP:NOTBROKEN in any way, it's simply not the personal preference of a handful of editors who don't seem to read anything other than entertainment news. I.e., they don't appear to frequently encounter or notice titles of much other than pop-culture stuff like Four Past [sic] Midnight and "Do It Like [sic] a Dude" (and some of them even want it to be "Do It Like A Dude" to mimic the single cover). If they read more broadly they would know that most publishers do not capitalize that way, but they never seem willing to absorb this fact. De-capitalizing every preposition will simply make them lose their minds and go to war about it perpetually until the end of F'ing time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:40, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
    Our rules already permit capitalization of short prepositions if they are used in a verb phrase, which is often the same as used adverbially. So that's good. I'm generally concerned about deferring to "common usage" on style matters, because it turns every copy edit into a poll, and while I see the value in compromising contested decisions that way, I don't know how one can efficiently make everyday editing decisions without a talk page discussion on every capital letter. I have to think about this. --Bsherr (talk) 22:46, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
    In more precise wording, a word that is sometimes a preposition is not a preposition when used as a particle in a phrasal verb or as an adverb. It's the same issue as the "preposition when [not] used as a preposition" wording above. Not understanding that a word can serve multiple grammatical functions and isn't one function masquerading as another (a linguistic impossibility) is much of why typical RM respondents have difficulty understanding how to apply MOS:5LETTERRULE.

    Anyway, this common-usage fallacy is problematic for the very reason you point out (and thus contrary to WP:CONSISTENCY policy). It's mistaking WP:COMMONNAME for a style policy, when it says nothing about style, has never been interpreted as a style policy except by editors who wish it were one (including the opener of this RfC). WP:AT and the naming conventions guidelines defer to MoS on style matters in at least a dozen places, and RM decisions are made every single day based on application of MoS. Every attempt to elevate any style matter to the policy level has been met with stern opposition by the majority of the community, so "basement conversion" of AT into a style policy while no one is looking would never be accepted. The entire CONSISTENCY policy, for one thing, would be nullified, because every single article title on WP would be re-styled to match the stylization preferred in a bare majority of the RS identified for it at any given time. This would also thwart WP:AT's central purpose, which is title stability; people would continually be cherry-picking different sources to try to re-style the titles of thousands of articles, and whoever that week had more patience for digging up sources that preferred their stylization for this topic or that would WP:WIN that week. I'm hard pressed to think of a more disruptive and editorial-productivity-wasting alley to wander down. And it would spawn an entire class of "style warrior" editors who did little constructive on WP but devoted all of their time to picking subjective style fights. We already have too many of those (about half a dozen, not counting the ones already topic-banned or indeffed).
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:36, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

  • Too vague – I get that there's some sentiment to "allow capitalization of prepositions containing four letters". But where's the guidance in this? Does every four-letter preposition now generate an RM discussion to see how many editors want to change it, or should we rely on some consensus guideline, as we usually do, to make most cases uncontroversial? The handful of exceptions we have seen should be carefully considered, and a guideline that captures the logic behind them should be formulated. I think that's what SMcCandlish is trying to do below, so let's study and see if we can accept or improve that instead of jumping on the vague one. Just saying let's let sources vote (through editors) is certain to give rise to uncountable numbers of preposition debates. Our typical strategy is to articulate a preferred style (e.g. as we have done with lowercasing four-letter prepositions) and then articulation a rather tight rule for exceptions, such as when sources consistently or overwhelming avoid doing it as our style would suggest. Then hopefully most prepositions won't need to be discussed. Dicklyon (talk) 00:34, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose—per Dicklyon. Tony (talk) 01:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose as this would mean "from" would be capitalised, which is not current usage. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:48, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose very strongly (and in preference to the below). Making it too vague as in here would create more disputes not less (every instance of a four letter preposition in a title would be allowed to be litigated), while more explicit guidance for an exception as in below would only allow disputes in narrow cases. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:16, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose as contrary to English usage. What advertisers and Hollywood flacks do is of no concern. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:25, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose – We are under no obligation to replicate corporate abuse of the English language, or other forms of puffery. The proposed change is asking for trouble, is vague, runs contrary to the principles of this project, and compromises the integrity of our MoS. On the other hand, I find Mr McCandlish's proposal quite sensible. RGloucester — ☎ 06:03, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per SMcCandlish et al. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 15:42, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Alternative proposal: selective capitalization

I was coincidentally already drafting this and running it by some MoS and AT regulars:

  • Apply our five-letter rule except when the vast majority of RS capitalize a significant majority of current, reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently capitalize, in the title of a specific work, a word that is frequently not a preposition, as in "Like" and "Past". Continue to lower-case common four-letter (or shorter) prepositions like "into" and "from".

The consequences of this, both pro and con:

  1. MOS:TITLES would need an edit to integrate this exception.
  2. We would have less WP:CONSISTENCY between article titles.
  3. Titles of particular works would be rendered in a style that matched more sources about those works. However, this would almost always apply only to pop-culture topics – the entire source of capitalization of prepositions like "past" and "like" in titles of works is entertainment journalism, mimicking the "marketing capitals" on the album covers and movie posters; the same works' titles as rendered in academic journals will still use "past" and "like").
  4. We will not throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the original proposal does. That proposal would force the minority and fandom-based preference for "Into" and "From" over the lower-case preference of the majority of editors here, and of the majority of real-world professional writers, and of most style guides, and of the majority of RS about particular works which are not recent pop-culture product.
  5. We lose one distinction: "like" or "past" versus "Like" or "Past" in a title clearly indicated that the lower-case versions are prepositions and the upper-case ones are not ("Like" would generally be a verb, and "Past" either a noun or adjective, depending on construction). Hopefully context will make it clear which is which.

The original proposal would simply guarantee continual dispute about this rather arbitrary bit of style trivia for the foreseeable future. This alternative proposal's basis is that it's better to end the dispute with a sourcing-based compromise about a certain subset of words, in specific titles where the sourcing backs a variance from the default rule.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:24, 27 December 2018 (UTC); point 5 added: 13:46, 28 December 2018 (UTC); wording revised to address issue raised below: 01:04, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

  • Support, as the kind of compromise that's already compatible with MoS's "vary from what MoS's default is when the sourcing consistently does so for a particular case" approach.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:24, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support—seems the best way. Tony (talk) 01:28, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support as solving quite a few RM disputes, with I believe "like" to be the single-most disputed word. Still leaves cases like Spider-Man: Far From Home, but those are rarer. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:16, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support in principle, but it might be nice to not exclude the "Into Darkness" thing. Dicklyon (talk) 06:01, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
    • That one's already covered by a footnote at MOS:TITLES, as a special case. It doesn't apply to Spider-Man: Far from Home, which has simply been over-capitalized with "From".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:17, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support – As above. RGloucester — ☎ 06:03, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, yes, this seems to be the best way forward, and the most likely to avoid prolonged disputes (although clearly nothing will ever appease a determined minority). Peter coxhead (talk) 13:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Almost Support but the word vast should be changed to large. Vast means very large, like an elephant compared to a mouse, while large still gives room for consensus to form. Spider-Man: Far From Home is probably the one well-known example that would stand out most (as long as the Four Past Midnight short story collection is finally given its correct title, what an incorrect way to use the term 'consistency' - for in fact there are no sources which lower-case it yet still some editors have claimed it should be lower-cased). The unreleased Spider-Man film's title still must stand the test of after-release sources, but using "vast" in any new RM will give a likely-to-be-ignored, thus misuse, of this wording. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:06, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
    • My original wording above was "pseudocode" of sorts, a statement of the general principle. I hadn't word-smithed it into guideline language yet. I've injected a revision to make it more like the wording MoS already has about when to make exceptions (it's especially important to be compatible with the wording at MOS:TM, since both guidelines are going to apply simultaneously to any major pop-culture work, e.g. a superhero or sci-fi franchise movie; we can't have two guidelines contradicting each other about the same subject). [Pinging previous commenters who commented between the original and the revision, in case the revision doesn't suit their views: @Tony1, Galobtter, Dicklyon, RGloucester, Peter coxhead, and Randy Kryn:.] Re tying this to specific titles like Four Past Midnight and Spiker-Man: Far From Home: I do not accept that condition. Under the current MOS:5LETTERRULE, the Spider-Man RM's closure in favor of "From" was a mistake, a violation of WP:CONSISTENCY policy, and I have absolutely no doubt that it would be overturned in a later RM (because we've been over this before, e.g. with "Do It like a Dude" and many other cases; when a fannish bloc vote is absent or weak, the RM always goes in favor of what the guideline says). However, the entire point of this alternative proposal is actually to permit variances like that, simply to avoid repeated, time-sucking editorial dispute over trivia that no one really cares about. The idea that there's any kind of WP:RECOGNIZABILITY problem is of course absurd, and some would prefer "like" across the board, and some would prefer all four-letter prepositions capitalized. This is a reasonable compromise to end some strife we don't need to pursue. That said, I refuse to tie it to any specific article title and the community's ultimate consensus about that one work; that would just be petty and subjective, and I will not go there. It would be especially silly in this case, because the Spider-Man film's title may well change by the time it is released, and it may never be released.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:48, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
I would suggest using the wording of MOS:CAPS: 'consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources'. RGloucester — ☎ 16:18, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
A good write-up and intent, and anything to eventually get rid of the Stephen King monstrosity (he'll probably write a 1,200 page novel about the RMs someday). I can't sign on to 'consistently' if it means always, as there are usually outlier sources who can keep a name lower-cased here just by the lack of long-time professional copy editors who may miss an incorrect name now and then (a friend who worked on the copy desk of a major newspaper for 30 years is now driving a cab after "cutbacks", i.e. "let's hire the recent high school graduate at a fifth of the salary", but I digress). Randy Kryn (talk) 17:50, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
I tweaked it again, to use the exact wording from MOS:TM, plus the word "current" (because we've had attempts to WP:GAME things like this with obsolete sources). It's the same meaning as the main MoS wording, though uses "significant" instead of "substantial". I don't think anyone's ever tried to argue for them to be interpreted differently. If they ever do, we can just edit them to all use the same word and nip that silliness in the bud.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:04, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment: I fear that the proposal would not result in fewer discussions, just in different discussions: Is word X frequently not a preposition? Is source Y reliable? Is source Z independent?
Nevertheless, I think the proposed change is acceptable for "like" and "past", but what about other prepositions, e.g. "over"? It is frequently not a preposition (think of all the phrasal verbs: carry over, freeze over, hand over, pull over, take over etc.), and I'm sure there a many sources that capitalize "over" in titles like Bridge over Troubled Water or Bullets over Broadway. Should we thus capitalize "over" in these titles, but at the same time lowercase "into" and "from"? That doesn't make sense to me. Darkday (talk) 12:22, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
No proposal about this sort of thing will make sense to everyone in every situation and please all parties. What we really should do is probably stick to the simple five-letter rule, being a compromise that's served us well. However, it may be worth trying out this alternative compromise to see if it reduces dispute. It will not be possible to erase all dispute, only reduce or increase it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:36, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion: capitalization Of prepositions

Looking at one example of the rule being applied, searching "four past midnight" in "four+past+midnight" Google Scholar one finds that every academic source there has "Four Past Midnight" not "Four past Midnight", which would definitely point towards removing this as a rigid rule as one argument for it is that academic sources do lowercase things much more often; if nearly no sources whether in books, journalism, or academia use certain capitalization then that makes Wikipedia stick out and look strange. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:13, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

I was unaware of the previous discussions concerning the King novel, but those discussions are a great example of the "But the MOS!" mentality some have that this RFC is attempting to address. Calidum 14:35, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC announce: Commas in DYK

Wikipedia talk:Did you know#RfC: Commas in DYK --DannyS712 (talk) 23:49, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Church Names

I am not sure if this is the right place for my question, but as this is basically a policy question, I'll try here: Is there a policy concerning church names and how to write the "St."?

Like: Do we write "St. John's" or "St John's" or "Saint John's"?

I would assume that the way the church itself spells its name should generally be first and foremost as a guiding rule, but what about church names from other languages which have been translated into English?

Like here we've got a muddle of St John's (Norwegian: Johanneskirken), St. James's (Norwegian: St. Jakob kirke), and also Saint Paul's (Norwegian: St. Paul kirke).

To make matters worse, it's not being handled consistently within the articles either. The article St John's Church, Bergen, for instance, uses St. John's Church throughout the text. --87.150.15.136 (talk) 17:24, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations is the guidance on this. Excepting cases where reliable sources use another format, follow MOS guidance. The MOS states that both St. and St are common, though have a close tie to one or another version of English. It also recommends spelling out the full word in most cases to avoid having to decide between styles. --Jayron32 17:41, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply... but to be honest, I find neither of those pages very helpful. The MOS seems to allow all three, so the long and short of it seems to be "do whatever you like". Which means we end up with pages like those I linked to above where all three appear within one page, and some are even used interchangeably for the same church in the same article.
I don't really see how the varieties of English come into play here since we are talking about non-English churches. To me at least, it doesn't seem to make much sense to say "we should use American English for this one and British English for that one". Or does that depend on who happens to write the article? --87.150.15.136 (talk) 18:04, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
What spelling and style appears in an article at any specific time often depends on who is workin on it - which can indeed mean that spelling and style can become inconsistent. Most editors simply write - without worrying about style or spelling - leaving it to others to follow on after them and fix any errors they might make. Yes, we do want consistency within an article, so feel free to follow on and fix things to make it consistent. Most of the time no one will object. If someone does object, then go to the talk page and discuss it. Don’t insist... see if you can find compromise. Blueboar (talk) 18:47, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
O.k., I made a suggestion on the talk page of the article with the inconsistency within the article.
Seems like there isn't anything we can do about the blatant inconsistency on the categories page then? --87.150.15.136 (talk) 19:33, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Well, you could discuss it at the relevant project pages, and see if a consensus can be formed to be consistent at those specific articles ... but policywise, no. We accept all the variants. Blueboar (talk) 20:36, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
O.k., thanks. No, that is definitely more fuss than I would want to go through.
I just happened to hit on that page and thought it looked sort of ugly, but I certainly don't intend to spend a major part of my time fighting over those kinds of purely cosmetic changes. :-) --87.150.15.136 (talk) 21:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, the general principles are 1) Be consistent within the article (use the same style in the title and everywhere in the text) 2) Use the style appropriate to the variety of English being used in the article (in articles about British subjects, use BrEng, in American subjects, use AmEng, for all others just keep it consistent and obey whatever was there when you showed up) and 3) If a specific Wikiproject wants to harmonize all the articles of a certain type with a consistent style, they can set up their own reasonable style that usually follows an existing style tradition. However, excepting those cases, rules #1 and #2 are the only guiding principles. --Jayron32 13:36, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Oh, and Rule #0: WP:BEBOLD. If something bothers you, fix it, and if no one objects, you're fine. It's only if someone else thinks you did it wrong that you need to fall back on the other principles. --Jayron32 13:37, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_148&oldid=1171579446"