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Proposal: Remove the topicons for good and featured articles

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.

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WP:SNOW closing this proposal as a clear consensus to keep topicons for good and featured articles. I find it very unlikely that consensus will change from here given the overwhelming !vote to keep. (non-admin closure) JML1148 ^{(talk | contribs)} 07:51, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

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We recently rejected a proposal that would put the vital article topicon on the page. Discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Archive_25#Proposal_for_a_VA_"top_icon". Some editors in that discussion said that they would support removing the good and featured article topicons as well. If either readers or editors are interested in whether they are good or featured articles, they can be found on the talk page. Interstellarity (talk) 00:30, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Support (remove GA & FA topicons)

1. As proposer. Interstellarity (talk) 00:30, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
2. Strongly support removing GA topicons. GA reviews are essentially random. It's just one editor reviewing it and there is literally no training or qualifications that the reviewing editor needs to have. To suggest a GA article has gone through any kind of meaningful review process is misleading the reader. All it means is someone else has read it. Exhibit A is the editor from a year and a half ago who had hundreds of GAs that turned out to be full of misinformation (and copyvio and other stuff, the editor ended up indef'd).

   I'm neutral about removing FA topicons. At least that process can be said to involve multiple editors reviewing it, and the FA folks take their FA reviews pretty seriously AFAIK (unlike GAs, which some take seriously but others don't). I don't think it matters much if the FA topicon is there or not -- I don't think readers know or care about that -- but GA should definitely go IMO. Levivich (talk) 04:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   Actually, I support removing FA top icons too. I'd forgotten that most FAs no longer meet the criteria. Levivich (talk) 17:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

3. I support removing both. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 14:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
4. - due to the fact readers have no clue what these mean and the fact the majority no longer meet their FA and GA criteria and 60%+ are mobile viewers don't even see them anyways. I can see how they are an incentive to get editors to improve articles though. That said I would slow down on rfcs that will go nowhere..... Time wasters.Moxy- 16:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
5. Our loyalty is to the WP:READER, to whom these icons—where they're even noticed, that is (on mobile view they don't exist!)—are merely inside baseball. Their real purpose to allow editors a chance to gussify their user, talk pages etc. Stick em a table on a subpage if you have to  :) ——Serial 16:58, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
6. As others have ably noted, these icons provide no discernible benefit to the reader. We would therefore better serve the reader by eliminating this visual noise. Frankly, we would probably do well to reconsider the centering of FA and GA work in general. The hundreds of hours it takes to nurse a single article through FAC would surely be better spent improving some of the millions of articles that have been substantially untouched for a decade or more. But in any event this would be a good step. -- Visviva (talk) 03:07, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
7. I don't think I've ever met a reader who knew we had FA topicons, let alone what they meant. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:24, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
8. The icons are not for readers. The 2004 article ranking system devised in Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team and still in use today needs revision to be practical. GA ranks are varying quality; FA ranks are easier to attain for less popular topics than highly read ones where they are most needed. Removing icons could be the start of recognizing that our quality reporting system is insufficient for meeting its objective. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:28, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
9. The top-icons lack context. I'm in favor of removing them or improving the top-icons to something that make more sense to readers. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:31, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Oppose (remove GA & FA topicons)

1. The topicons are useful for readers as indicators that an article has gone through some kind of review process. This is in contrast to vital articles which is editor facing information. Barkeep49 (talk) 00:40, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
2. I think all quality ratings should be shown, not just GA/FA. Analogous to maintenance tags, it's useful for readers to know how much they should trust what they're reading on Wikipedia. Moreover, topicons are unobtrusive and might have the benefit of converting a few readers to editors. As an aside, I think the distinction that's been drawn between quality ratings and vital article status is strained. Both are done through the work of a relatively small group of editors and both indicate something important to the reader about how the community has assessed an article. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:46, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   Why should a reader care about how vital wiki editors think an article is? The reader has their own ideas about how vital that article is to them in that moment and in general. The idea of showing all rating indicators is an interesting one in terms of helping readers clue into what they are. I'd love to see that discussed more. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:49, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   By that logic, I think one could say: Why should a reader care about that one editor came to the conclusion that an article is GA quality and 5-10ish editors—none of whom are necessarily subject matter experts—came to the conclusion that an article is FA quality? I'll make a note to return to the topic of showing all ratings after this discussion closes. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:55, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   I've had a similar thought before myself, but I've come to believe that in practice, the distinction between Start/C/B-class is often too poorly defined to be useful information to the reader. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 15:34, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   This is how I think about the distinctions: start is longer than a stub, but either not very well-cited or written, C is a start class article that's starting to meet some core PAGs, and for B we have clear criteria. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:41, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   Plus from my experience it is often not kept up to date as the article content changes. ― novov (t c) 01:58, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

3. Oppose. The topicons are useful, and have been this way for a long time. What exactly is the advantage of removing them? –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
4. Per Barkeep. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:59, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
5. Per Barkeep. I'm not sure how valuable fronting the lower ratings would be (they're often out of step with the quality of the article) but I'm not immediately opposed to adding them. Thryduulf (talk) 01:14, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
6. Oppose: It's good to show readers in an unobtrusive way that the article they're reading has been reviewed and is of quality. There is no benefit to removing them. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:59, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
7. Oppose: per Barkeep, however, the GA topicon was a bit confusing to me when I was only a reader and I wouldn't mind a reform. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 02:36, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
8. Why? I think it's a convenient way to show that articles are of a decent quality to our readers. It's not causing any problems. Elli (talk | contribs) 03:51, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
9. Oppose per Barkeep49. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
10. Oppose per Barkeep49. We should be making the icons more prominent, not less. Sdkb ^talk 07:03, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
11. Oppose: GA and FA symbols are no guarantee of any kind of quality, but it is one piece of information that media literate readers should be using to help them assess the reliability of what they read. These topicons may also be motivating to editors who put articles they have improved through GA/FA processes. — Bilorv (talk) 09:41, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

    +1 Sdkb ^talk 16:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

12. Oppose per all the opposers, but I'm mainly here to comment: I consider it a win that no one has even mentioned featured lists in this discussion or the previous one. The process basically works, and judging from the silence, it doesn't seem to be contentious these days. Congratulations all around. - Dank (push to talk) 15:32, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

    Featured lists should undoubtedly follow featured articles in this regard. If any decision is ever made to change or remove the FA icon, featured lists should get the same result. Animal lover |666| 16:38, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

13. Per Barkeep. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 15:33, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
14. The topicons are what first informed me of the GA and FA processes back when I was an unregistered lurker. I can imagine other unregistered users falling down a rabbit hole and potentially getting involved with curating content after seeing one of them. Also Barkeep49 presents another good rationale for keeping them. The Night Watch (talk) 17:22, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
15. Oppose We need to make them more prominent, not less. Sohom (talk) 17:35, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
16. Oppose per Barkeep and Bilorv. Moreover, just because mobile readers are unable to see them it does not mean we should remove them from PC readers (if anything it means that we should add them to mobile view).  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 17:43, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
17. Oppose per Spy-cicle. – SD0001 (talk) 21:48, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
18. Oppose, per Barkeep and Bilorv. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
19. Oppose Like voorts, I would not object to all ratings being shown. In fact, I use a plugin that does just that. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:51, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

    I use the same plugin, which is where the idea came from. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:59, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

    Link? Queen of Hearts talk
    she/they
    stalk 23:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

    May be referring to the Wikipedia:Metadata gadget mentioned below. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

20. Oppose - I agree with Levivich that the quality of the GA process can be inconsistent, but in practice I still find that they are almost always better than your average non-good article. Yes there can be stuff like what Doug Coldwell did, but the same goes for every other part and process of Wikipedia. Most readers aren't likely to grasp what the means anyway, in my mind it serves as more of a motivational little trinket for editors, and I'm concerned that removing the most prominent area where it's featured could decrease the impetus to improve content. ― novov (t c) 01:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
21. Not clear what the harm is, and if the only benefit is making people feel good about getting an article to GA/FA (by having a shiny icon on the article) that seems enough. Galobtter (talk) 01:58, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
22. Oppose. The provided rationale is extremely unconvincing - "some people mentioned it?" Lay out the case yourself if you believe it. Marking quality is fine (which is what FA / GA icons do), the problem with VA marking was - too many to list, see previous discussions. This proposal comes across as an extremely weak "well this one proposal was voted down, let's do the same thing in a separate vaguely similar area out of some misguided fairness." SnowFire (talk) 02:27, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

    RfC statements are required to be brief and neutral, and the fact that earlier discussions occurred at that RfC satisfies WP:RFCBEFORE. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:39, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

    • • @Voorts: The statement is expected to be neutral, yes. However, somewhere (whether in a separate section after the description, or in the nominator's initial !vote) there's expected to be some reasoning for why the heck we're voting on this at all and some sort of case to modify the status quo. The RFC creator gave no such explanation other than what I already cited that "other people mentioned it" and "readers can find out on the talk page" which is not conversant at all with the issues involved. People could propose random changes all day; why is this change being proposed? You shouldn't start an RFC as just a thought experiment, that's what a normal discussion is for. SnowFire (talk) 05:15, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
23. Oppose: Not causing any harm, and is a nice bit of encouragement for editors. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:46, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
24. Oppose If my GA/FA articles didn't get the topicon, I rather doubt I'd have even known they existed, or felt compelled to get my articles to that status. The badge is useful to readers, and a great inducement for editors. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 03:26, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
25. Oppose, mostly per voorts. We should show more of this, not less; readers deserve to know if an article has passed some quality gate. On the topic of substandard GA/FAs, yes they exist, no we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good. ~ A412 ^talk! 04:24, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
26. Oppose. This does not really seem like a good idea to me; if there's a bunch of crappy GAs we do not need to address topicons to deal with them. jp×g🗯️ 06:07, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
27. Oppose. I would prefer we go in the opposite direction and make the icons more visible and more intuitive. Readers will not know which one is more "trusted". —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:48, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
28. Oppose - Nothing wrong in letting readers know which articles are trusted and have underwent community review. The Herald (Benison) (talk) 09:14, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
29. also noting that I will support introducing FA and GA topicons to mobile and apps, but not supporting the entire removal of the badges. Toadette ^{(Let's discuss together!)} 16:58, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
30. Oppose. Do not see any positive from this action. On the contrary, will be some amount of value subtraction (if that is even a term). Ktin (talk) 17:49, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
31. Oppose The great majority of Wikipedia's readers are unaware that there is a quality scale. Indicators of article quality need to be more visible, not less. MartinPoulter (talk) 18:16, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
32. Oppose I'm piling on to say that FA and GA are very important tools for developing quality articles and qualifying articles should be highlighted. The icons are also a learning experience for anyone wanting to click them. Johnuniq (talk) 02:54, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
33. Strong oppose Might actually reduce the amount of FAs and GAs that will start coming out because there will be less motivation to do so. ‍ Relativity 05:31, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
34. Oppose The FA topicon linked to the first projectspace page I read. It probably contributed to me becoming an editor. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 13:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
35. The proposal might be an argument for a double-check system for GAN's, but it isn't a reason to remove the topicons. They at least show articles that have been through some vetting. Courcelles (talk) 14:21, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
36. Oppose The icons are an extremely powerful motivator to get involved and improve Wikipedia. It only works because they are shown by default. I'm sure it would be trivial to squelch display with a script for an opt-out option. GreenC 16:41, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
37. Oppose - articles exist for the benefit of the readers, no tenth editors. A reader has no idea how good an article is without reading a significant part of it; how vital it is requires little more than a definition. There is no need to tell a reader how vital an article is; there is much more to tell the reader about the quality. Animal lover |666| 16:36, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
38. Oppose - FA/GA topicons highlight Wikipedia's best content in-place. Readers shouldn't have to go to a talk page or a list somewhere else to see that the content they're reading has been reviewed and is considered Wikipedia's finest, and there is benefit to distinguishing it from content that hasn't been through or has failed such a review. Ratings below that level are part of a content rating system that's been dead in the water for 20 years (though projects still use it) and there's no point in highlighting it for readers since there are practically no standards to the ratings, but if you want to see these ratings when reading articles anyway you can enable Wikipedia:Metadata gadget (Preferences > Gadgets > Appearance). Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:26, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
39. Oppose These are meaningful, particularly FA. North8000 (talk) 17:28, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
40. Oppose These are important. SportingFlyer T·C 18:59, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
41. Oppose. The indication that an article has had internal quality-control is very useful to a reader. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:26, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

    Adding: I fully acknowledge that both review processes have serious issues, but the average quality of a GA/FA far outstrips that of other articles. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:29, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

42. Oppose. The topicons are an easy-to-find, yet also unobtrusive, way to indicate that an article has received (and passed) some level of vetting. The fact that they're visible in mainspace also means that they're relatively easy for readers to find and interpret as well, a benefit that would be lost (or at least reduced) if the indicators were kept confined to talk pages. (I also second the comments made by Barkeep, Bilorv, and The Night Watch.) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 19:33, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
43. Oppose per Voorts. Acknowledging the lack of professionalism at WikiProject Good Articles, the icons at top mean something. I'd suggest Wikipedia:Metadata gadget should be "on" by default because the readers are not savvy enough. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:55, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
44. Strong oppose per the commenters above. These are not mere decorations; the icons signify that the GAs and FAs have undergone their respective quality control processes, and are thus helpful to the WP:READER. If GAs and FAs don't meet criteria, then WP:GAR and WP:FAR are that way. The reader may not know what they mean initially, but they'll certainly know if they click on them - the solution is to make it more obvious that the article has undergone a quality control process, not less so. There are some valid issues with the GAN and FAC processes, but they are in no way relevant to the use of topicons. Epicgenius (talk) 15:34, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

    To add: I agree with Aaron Liu's rebuttal, below, as to the "randomness" of GA reviews. Any bad GAN review can be deleted, and any bad FAC/FLC review can be stricken through. My point is that the existence of bad reviews is not a good argument, in my view, for removing the topicons. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:07, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

45. Oppose. These icons bring more visibility to the assessment project, motivate editors, draw in readers, and are informative. Zanahary (talk) 16:52, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
46. FA/FL/GA is about quality while VA is about being on a list drawn up by a wikiproject --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 21:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

    FA/FL/GA are also a lkist drawn up by a project. The point is that they are about article quality whereas VA is a bout article importance. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:53, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

47. Oppose: The usefulness of these icons is different than the possible usefulness of a vital articles topicon. Also not seeing an actual reason listed for why we would want to remove these. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:37, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

48. the majority no longer meet their FA and GA criteria

    Then nominate them for delisting.

    GA reviews are essentially random. It's just one editor reviewing it and there is literally no training or qualifications that the reviewing editor needs to have.

    There are great guidelines for reviewing, and bad GA reviews can be overturned.

    readers have no clue what these mean

    I don't see any evidence of that, and having a tooltip and link seems obvious enough.

    I don't think I've ever met a reader who knew we had FA topicons, let alone what they meant.

    I don't think a reader knows what "topicons" are either. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:45, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
49. Oppose Useful indicators of top quality. Curbon7 (talk) 23:05, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
50. Piling on. Same reasons as Barkeep. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:18, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
51. Oppose per Curbon7. - Master of Hedgehogs ^{(converse) (hate that hedgehog!)} 14:07, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
52. Oppose per Barkeep, Bilorv, Epicgenius, Aaron Liu, and others. I don't see any point in removing topicons; I find them useful and evidently a lot of others do too. Even if readers don't care about them (which I haven't seen any good evidence of, just assumptions), they're helpful from an editor's point of view. If I see a blatantly terrible article with a little green icon on the top right, that catches my attention and makes me want to either send it to GAR or fix it up. sawyer * he/they * talk 02:16, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
53. As primarily a reader of Wikipedia, I find the GA/FA top icons to be useful information. Removing them would do some readers a disservice, and there is no advantage to removing them. Senior Captain Thrawn (talk) 03:41, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
54. Oppose per above and because of throwing the baby with the bathwater. Brandmeister^talk 01:17, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
55. Strongly oppose Opponents of the GA and FA topicons claim they are visual noise, yet they criticize the choice to not include them in mobile viewing as proof the review process is wasteful. While Levivich is correct that the peer review process can be hijacked by sockpuppeting, they present no evidence that this is widespread to convincingly argue the review process' collaborative editing is a net waste. While the GA and FA criteria are no different from the normal aims of article editing, the pursuit of specific quality metrics encourages greater compliance. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 04:59, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
56. Oppose removal and Support addition of sitewide ratings for all mainspace articles and for all devices. The purpose of such a system is to indicate an article's quality to readers in advance, so they could anticipate whether an article is worth reading or not - or at least have a glimpse of what to expect. It's no different than rating systems for various things, like for movie, book, video game and music reviews. PantheonRadiance (talk) 06:10, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Neutral (remove GA & FA topicons)

• I suspect that the vast majority of our readers pay absolutely no attention to article ratings and their associated topicons. However, because I don’t think they harm the project in any way… I am neutral on the question. Blueboar (talk) 13:16, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

  If it helps 1% of the readers, that should be a good enough reason to retain them, unless they actually harm the site or reduce it's quality, at least for some readers. If it's 100% neutral for 99% of the readers, this should not weaken the fact that it helps the other 1%. Animal lover |666| 16:41, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

• I don't feel strong enough to sit on either side of this discussion. There are genuine grounds for concern about quality control and the ad hoc nature of the review process. It does seem that the topicons are very much inside baseball, so to speak. Nevertheless, despite the extreme example highlighted above (for which I have direct experience) I still think indicating some kind of independent review has taken place is worthwhile, no matter how limited in nature...I might have an easier time supporting this proposal if an alternative was being proposed. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 01:36, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (remove GA & FA topicons)

Barkeep49, as far as I know, we have no evidence that ordinary readers have any idea that those topicons exist or what they mean. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

That's probably true. But that's a reason to improve them, not remove them. Sdkb ^talk 07:04, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

This 2022 study might interest you, unless you're already familiar with it :) Shells-shells (talk) 07:32, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

We having no evidence for something doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true. Readers curious to find out the meaning of the icon would hover over it - it says "This is a featured article. Click here for more information". The click leads to WP:FA which begins with "Featured articles are considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer". – SD0001 (talk) 07:54, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

The vast majority of readers don't see these anyways because they are not displayed in mobile view. Moxy- 17:18, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

We can actually figure out how many people click these. I've created Wikipedia:Good articles* and Wikipedia:Featured articles* and changed the links in the template accordingly, so after a month or so we should have good data on how many clicks these get. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:36, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Great work....thank you! Moxy- 20:13, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Related to this: I wonder what a reasonable comparison would be. (If it's 1,000 clicks, is that a lot or a little?) I wonder whether it could be compared against the Portal: links that used to be at the top of the Main Page. We could scale it for page views (which I think could be obtained through https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/ for the FAs and GAs). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Skdb. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 08:16, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I've nothing against the topicons; I'd be happy to keep them just because they're useful to experienced editors, a nice reward for hard work, and traditional for the site. However, I don't think we should be making this decision on the grounds that we speculate that they're useful to non-editing readers, when

• we don't know that they're useful,
• we have a limited amount of evidence suggesting that they're not (or that the utility is very limited), and
• we know that most readers don't see them because 66% of page views are on the mobile site.

A month from now we will know whether those topicons get clicked on at any significant rate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I have occasionally told people who have questions about whether/when Wikipedia articles are reliable to look for the topicons. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 15:38, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Question: how often are ratings/topicons reevaluated and lowered due to subsequent crappy edits? Blueboar (talk) 01:53, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

There's WP:FAR and WP:GAR. Galobtter (talk) 01:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I think that a modified version of Wikipedia:Metadata gadget without the colored title text would make the most sense here. It shows the article assessment in an intuitive way and clearly indicate links for curious readers to read more about our assessment criteria. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:35, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy ping to WhatamIdoing. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:37, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I use and value that gadget. Also, I think it's Inside baseball (metaphor). Nobody except the tiny minority of high-volume Wikipedia editors cares about how we rate articles. Like: there are 8,000,000,000 people in the world, and maybe 8,000 of us care about the ratings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

On one hand, it's definitely an improvement over nothing, and should minimize confusion. On the other hand, topicons look better, and nobody might care enough anyways so that these who care would click on the icons to learn more... Aaron Liu (talk) 23:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Many editors have stated that finding out about the GA/FA process has made them motivated to contribute to Wikipedia. I think the article ratings should be made more explicit to the reader, but if we can't bother to improve the top-icons, then we should get rid of it. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:07, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• If we are going to remove an icon, I would hide the protection icons from logged out users (I don't see the benefit - they are anyways shown a "view source" button instead of "edit source" if they can't edit the article). That truly is inside baseball unless you actively try to edit an article. Galobtter (talk) 02:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

• Any argument about reader understanding of topicons applies equally to page protection topicons. Anecdotally, some years ago, in a former life, I was observing a high school social studies class in the American Midwest and the teacher, as part of a lesson on research methods, told the class that the lock icon in the upper corner meant that it was vetted. We should be discussing how better to present this information for readers, not its removal. The 2023 GA proposal drive agreed to start an RFC for options on making GA status more prominent in mainspace. I've also been a big proponent of requesting Foundation staff to run user testing on some of our community design norms, i.e., banner blindness or in this case topicon literacy. I can track down those requests if useful. czar 13:57, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

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

Adding move, create and upload protection locks to the top right corner

Relevant links: Wikipedia:Protection policy and Special:MovePage/Wikipedia:Protection_policy (To see what it looks like to try and move a protected page. non admins only). Originally posted at the village pump (ideas)

Currently, articles that are protected from editing have the relevant lock in the top right hand corner. Userpages may not have the relevant edit lock on the top right. With regarding edit protection, it will stay as it is but why don't we do the same for move, create and upload so that articles (other than user pages) require all types of protection to be shown on the top right. The lock icon will display in the same way shown in the protection policy page (linked above). With move protection, the only way to tell that the page is protected is if the move button is not seen (this article for example, doesn't have the move button for me, but it does have subscribe) with the possible exception for administrators as they can move any page even if it's protected. Even if accounts are able to edit semi and EC protected pages, the relevant lock is still there. But like I said, that will not change. Admins will also be able to see if a page is move protected from the green lock icon at protection policy page.

The only way to see the green (move) and blue (create/also known as salting) lock is if the URL was typed for some reason, like here and here respectively. (for ECP create protection this appears instead). JuniperChill (talk) 21:40, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Also, I forgot to realize most people (I think) replying to be are actually ECP, so please do not even try to recreate the linked page. I am not ECP myself (have ~260 edits). This is just an example of what it looks like for non ECP users to try and (re)create a salted page. You may wish to use an incognito tab to do so.

JuniperChill (talk) 15:57, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Support, though what's stopping us from doing this right now? Aaron Liu (talk) 16:03, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

{{Pp}} already supports move protection, it just needs admins to apply the template when they move protect a page. It cannot be used for create and upload protection as there is no page to put the template on. It might be possible to add the padlock icon to MediaWiki:Nocreatetext, but that seems redundant. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:12, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Comment {{pp-move-indef}} hasn't displayed a visible icon since 2009 [1], and visible display for {{pp-move}} was removed following this TfD because participants saw it as unnecessary bloat. Personally I always found them a little useful, even though us unregistered types haven't been able to move pages for a long time since it was still a quick indicator that a title was potentially contentious, but I can understand why it was removed. 184.152.68.190 (talk) 20:52, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with a lock icon for creation-protected pages if technically feasible (obviously not by placing a lock template on the non-existent page). I'm also fine with an upload protection icon although almost all files are at Wikimedia Commons and we don't need to invest a lot of time into improving the display of the few remaining local image pages. A move protection icon, however, is an unneeded gimmick that is more likely to confuse readers than to help the few editors who intend to move the page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:08, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Displaying a lock for move-protected articles would confuse far more people than it would help, I agree with ToBeFree. I'm ambivalent about displaying a lock for the other two cases. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 08:24, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Alternate proposal: What if we grayed out the move button and put a lock next to it? I agree with Daniel and ToBeFree that locking the edit button would be too confusing, but this could work if technically possible. QuicoleJR (talk) 21:40, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

IMO just greying it out would be enough. Putting an icon draws too much attention to it for an otherwise icon-barren menu. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:56, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

That is true. Greying it out would likely be enough. QuicoleJR (talk) 22:02, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@JuniperChill, Aaron Liu, Daniel Quinlan, and ToBeFree: What do you think of my alternate suggestion of simply greying out the move button? QuicoleJR (talk) 19:43, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Erm, I said one comment above in support of just greying it out. I suppose this proposal would be a strong recommendation to the WMF to implement such a feature. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:45, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. I missed that when checking who I needed to ping. QuicoleJR (talk) 20:24, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

That might be alright but then thing is, if a page is (edit) protected, then the lock is still there, even if they are able to edit it themselves. So that is why I proposed a plan to introduce the green move icon lock in the top right to be shown to all. Again, like with edit locks, the move lock will be there for all, including unregistered users and admins. If a page is not move protected, then the lock will not show even to unregistered users despite the fact that unregistered users cannot move pages anyway.

In addition, the pending changes protection (check mark) and semi protection (user icon) are both grey with the semi protect lock being slightly darker so all could be grey, but I still prefer it to be green.

The reason I propose those changes is because they are shown in the relevant links but the non edit protection locks are barely used. It also tells users that the page is protected (the move option should be visible to admins if protected) With regarding salted pages (see red link example for an example), the lock could be displayed within the infobox or even the top right, or somewhere before the 'This page is protected from creation, so only administrators can create it'. JuniperChill (talk) 20:02, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Actually, edit locks do not show up for users who can edit the article anyway, at least not on mobile. I have not seen them for EC-protected articles since I reached extended confirmed. QuicoleJR (talk) 20:26, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Mobile shows no padlocks whatsoever. Not all anons are mobile users. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:27, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

That is not true, I still see the lock over the edit button when I go to, for example, Brianna Wu. The colors are all the same, but it is there. QuicoleJR (talk) 20:29, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

That's a different thing. I was talking about the standard padlock images. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you are talking about now. I think that the padlock would be a type of topicon, and those really should be visible on mobile. QuicoleJR (talk) 20:37, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

If a page is not move protected, then the lock will not show even to unregistered users despite the fact that unregistered users cannot move pages anyway.

Then what purpose would the lock serve? Why would we want anons to see them? I don't think this or "it's not used much" are valid reasons to use them.

I still prefer it to be green.

The color of the padlock would not change.

With regarding salted pages (see red link example for an example), the lock could be displayed within the infobox or even the top right

What do you mean by "infobox"? If we can add it, it'd be ideally where padlocks usually are. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:28, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

I proposed it so that users are able to see if the page is move protected or not, just like edit protected. With regarding salted pages, I meant to add, they would also be on the top right if at all possible, otherwise I suggested the alternatives.

And with someone requesting move locks at WP:US/R, I think they must have read this. JuniperChill (talk) 20:43, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Why should someone who can't move any page anyways see if a page is move-protected? They can edit most of them, so edit padlocks are definitely needed. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:55, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

As a tangent, someone asked for a script for move locks at WP:US/R, so I made one. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:25, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

I think graying out the Move button is a bit dubious from a UX perspective. The warning on the Move page after clicking on the button is already quite clear. Trying to illustrate that a page is move protected prior to an attempt to move a move-protected page when it's such an uncommon occurrence seems to have very little if any benefit. The lock icons not being used often is a non-problem. And most users that want to move a move-protected page are going to click on the button regardless of the color. If you just want to gray it out for yourself, it would be possible to do that with some JavaScript that you could put into your common.js. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 20:44, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposal: Implement a community-based process for appointing CheckUsers and Oversighters

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

WP:SNOW, there's a clear consensus against this being a good idea. Galobtter (talk) 02:24, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

---

I propose that we implement a community-based process for appointing CheckUsers and Oversighters similar to how RFAs are run. Because these positions require a high degree of community trust, I believe consensus should be higher like in appointing bureaucrats and interface administrators. I believe in this way, the community has more of a say of who gets to be a CU and OS other than our current arbitrators who currently hold those positions. I would also be open to saying with arbitration approval. Interstellarity (talk) 13:57, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Support (CU and OS appointments)

1. As proposer. Interstellarity (talk) 13:57, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
2. (Moral Support) I'd love arbcom to be out of the CUOS business, primarily so that we can focus on putting people on the committee primarily on the strength of their dispute management skills. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:42, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
3. It might be good to take something off of ArbCom's plate. ArbCom has many responsibilities. SWinxy (talk) 17:42, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

   ARBCOM were elected on the basis that this would be one of their responsibilities. They can tell us if they think they've got too much on their plate. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:46, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

   Arbcoms tell us this year after year through their very slow action. Levivich (talk) 15:17, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

   If you look at what proposals come out of the committee to increase their productivity, they are almost always about streamlining case management and especially dealing with appeals. That none of them relate to CU or OS appointments should give you a clue that it's really not a significant aspect of their workload. Over the last five years, functionaries have been asked by arbitrators to evaluate 26 candidates for CU and 16 for OS (people applying for both tools are included in both counts), This is not a large burden. Thryduulf (talk) 15:27, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

4. Per nom and above, and also the arbcom appointment process has generated too many false positives. Levivich (talk) 15:07, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

   Please can you give some examples of these "many false positives" and explain how a different process would have produced a different outcome. Thryduulf (talk) 15:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

   That is an inappropriate question and you're old enough to know that Thryd. No, I'm not going to name the CUs/OSs who I think shouldn't have been appointed over the years. But for starters, the ones who were suspended or removed from those positions would be good examples.

   Arbcom elections and RFAs have also produced false positives, in fairness, but I think RFA has produced the fewest false positives (proportionately) of the three systems.

   But you really should be ashamed for asking for names. I'll give you one name: yours. That's not nice but neither is what you just asked me. Levivich (talk) 15:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

   OK, that wasn't a well phrased question. I was trying to understand what you meant by "false positive" (which you've now made clear means people who were appointed who you think should not have been) and importantly why you think an RFA-like process would have produced a different result. I will also follow-up your answer regarding me by asking why you feel I was/am a "false positive"? Thryduulf (talk) 15:43, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

   You know what I meant by "false positive": that people were appointed who shouldn't have been. You're not confused about that. What you are asking is for me to substantiate the claim, which is an inappropriate question, because it would require naming names.

   I never said I think an rfa-like process would produce a better result. The proposal is for a community based process, not an rfa-like one. I think rfa is terrible, hence my voting in favor of various reforms, consistently for years. I said I thought rfa produced fewer false positives (for rfa), but that's not the same thing as saying an rfa-like process would produce fewer false positives for CU/OS appointments. I don't know if it would or wouldn't.

   But I'm in favor of trying a community based system because it might be better than the current system. In general, I think community-based systems work better than representative-based systems on Wikipedia. ANI works better than AE. RFA for all its problems yields better results on average than arbcom CU/OS appointments (calculate the #-removed-per-#-selected ratio and you'll see a much higher % of CU/OS appointments are reversed than the % of RFA passes who are later desysoped, even though both are extremely rare).

   As for you personally, not really the place to discuss that nor a topic I care to spend time on, but for example this line of questioning was a poor choice. Levivich (talk) 16:02, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

   ANI works better than AE if this is your opinion, then I think I understand why we feel so differently about this issue. From my perspective, AE is a very significantly better board (for the situations where they overlap) than is ANI, which vies with RFA for the title of worst venue on the project. Thryduulf (talk) 16:50, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

   @Thryduulf: I'm sorry for personalizing this discussion with my earlier comments. I thought by personalizing this discussion I could make a point about not naming names and personalizing the discussion, but that was a dumb idea on my part in retrospect, my apologies. Levivich (talk) 05:29, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Oppose (CU and OS appointments)

1. I see no current problem with ArbCom selecting them, and this has the slightly greater risk of granting the power to the wrong people. Moreover, it could lead to a flood of premature self-nominations. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
2. I don't think there's a shortage right now? Mach61 (talk) 14:58, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
3. No clear motivation. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:18, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
4. Per WP:NOTBROKEN. Sdkb ^talk 15:39, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

   lol, that's a page about redirects. You're looking for the WP:AINT essay. Levivich (talk) 15:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

5. The last year in which CUOS were selected by the community (it has been done before) was a disaster for providing the relevant privileges. Izno (talk) 16:21, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

   The one from 15 years ago? That wasn't really a direct community process. It started with arbcom being able to veto any candidate and was then advisory in nature only. 15 years is a long time in the project, I'm not sure we should discard an idea based on such an old example. There are certainly things that can be learned from it - along with years of experience in how many other projects have been able to run CUOS elections themselves. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:04, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

6. The current process is that applications, which are accepted at any time, are scrutinised by ARBCOM, those that cannot be dismissed out of hand are passed to the functionaries to for scrutiny. Based on the feedback from functionaries and arbitrators' own discussions, applications that are clearly unsuitable are closed as unsuccessful, community input is sought for all the others. All the comments (arbs, functionaries, community) are then evaluated by arbcom and the successful applicants appointed. An RFA-like process would lead to mostly the same people being appointed as now, just with a greater likelihood of acrimony, incivility, and clearly inappropriate nominations and an increased risk of untrustworthy people being appointed. I'm not clear what problem this is attempting to solve. Thryduulf (talk) 18:07, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

   If that summary is correct (and I have no reason to doubt it) then it sounds like an ideal way to appoint people to those positions. Certainly better than any RFA-like process. Let's remember that ARBCOM is elected by popular vote. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:40, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

   Mostly - except that that is the general "routine" process, arbcom also can just appoint anyone they want if they pass with a 50%+1 committee vote (we see this the most when there is a request from a former funct.) — xaosflux ^Talk 22:02, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

   This is equivalent to former admins regaining the tools on request as long as at least one 'crat is happy to flip the bit. The only difference is that there is no written activity requirement to be regranted CU/OS (although there is to retain the tools). Thryduulf (talk) 22:33, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

   That process is also generally done in secret without requiring an opportunity for community feedback. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:17, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

   That the two are essentially the same was my point. Thryduulf (talk) 14:41, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

7. Thryduulf gives a good summary. I don't currently suspect that the CU/OS system we have is appointing the wrong people, and RfA is exceedingly toxic. — Bilorv (talk) 18:45, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
8. Oppose. I'm uneasy about making people go through the fiery pits of hell thrice total if they want CUOS. That aside, my bigger concern is the wider community's ability to judge whether someone is trustworthy enough to handle private information. CUOS isn't admin or crat, they're specific roles used to fulfill specific purposes. They carry no "social" value (no accountability requirements, etc.), and if someone who hasn't held an NDA role before asks for it, the whole thing basically boils down to "will this person invade upon privacy or leak personal information?". I sure as hell cannot answer that question. Can you?
   ...yeah, you probably can, because you've probably been here for 15 years or something. But you are not the only demographic that goes to RfX, and with this system it won't be any different.
   If the problem is that you want arbcom out of the way, then sure, I could potentially get behind that. But experienced, non-temperamental people need to make this decision, not the RfA mob. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 00:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
9. Oppose as I said in the RFA 2024 review @ proposal 15. I dare not to repeat the same statement. Toadette ^{(Let's discuss together!)} 07:28, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
10. Oppose What is the problem that has to be solved? The present RfA-process is quite a bit of mud slinging, so it only decreases the number of able & willing candidates. The Banner talk 08:53, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
11. Oppose per above. Solution in search of a problem, nothing is broken. -Fastily 09:51, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
12. The last attempt at community-based CUOS appointments was a total failure, and the current system is more than good enough. JavaHurricane 13:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
13. Previous attempts to try this have descended into a popularity contest and produced no useful feedback about the candidates' suitability for these specific roles. These roles do not necessarily need popular editors who avoid sticking their heads above the parapet for fear of not being elected, but trustworthy, active admins who know how to use the tools and deal with abuse within the bounds of policy. ArbCom appointments with community consultation strikes the right balance in my opinion. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
14. Oppose A very sensitive position (including being able to do real life harm to people) which has very specific proven-trust requirements. I'm more comfortable with some experienced (elected) people making that analysis and decision. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:23, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
15. Current system does just fine. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 15:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
16. Oppose A process "similar to how RFAs are run"? Good God, no. Also, per HJ Mitchell.-- Ponyo^{bons mots} 19:40, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
17. Not only is the current system not broken, the community as a whole is very poorly placed to judge an admin's skill at handling those areas that are mostly directly relevant to CUOS skills; revision deletion, SPI activity, deletion-related activity at RC patrol, VTRS activity, and more technical areas like edit-filter work. Non-admins cannot scrutinize most of this activity at all. While trust and judgement are important aspects of being a functionary, there's more to it than that. Community scrutiny is necessary but not sufficient, and the current system of the community being able to provide feedback is exactly what it should be. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
18. This seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:07, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
19. Arbcom managing this seems to be working well, and producing both enough permission holders to get the work done but not spreading access too widely. Arbcom is exceedingly unlikely to appoint any person the community expresses a decent amount of reservation in, and is aware of things the community is not that may make an individual unsuitable. Courcelles (talk) 16:35, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
20. RfA is a broken process as it is, leading in part to a shortage of admins. Doing the same for CUOS without improving the RfA process is asking for trouble, not in the least because CUOS deals with way more sensitive data and the community as a whole is ill equipped to assess trustworthiness. ConcurrentState (talk) 18:58, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

    In discussions about the low number of applicants for functionary permissions in the 2023 round it was noted that the shortage of new administrators was likely an influential factor. RFA's brokenness is the most significant reason for the shortage of new administrators. Thryduulf (talk) 15:05, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

    I don’t disagree in the slightest. I was just hedging to avoid nitpicking about all the possible factors that lead to a shortage of admins. ConcurrentState (talk) 19:28, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

    I was actually agreeing with you, just noting a downstream problem of the one you identified. Thryduulf (talk) 20:13, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

    Ah! My bad, I misinterpreted your comment. ConcurrentState (talk) 21:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

21. Solution in search of a problem. Sandstein 14:55, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
22. In agreement with Sandstein. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:17, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
23. The process often requires considerable privacy. ArbCom may have to learn, or deal with, very personal information of potential CUOS. An RfA like process is incapable of handling such sensitive issues. We already ask for community feedback for candidates. Why would we want more RfA, when RfA is concededly broken? (case in point: the concurrently running RfA RfC). If it ain't broke, don't fix it. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 05:14, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
24. Appears to be a solution looking for a problem. Stifle (talk) 10:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
25. RfA, while it might be the only method we've come up with for selecting administrators, is not such a glorious success that we ought to be using it as a model for anything else, at least not when the current system is perfectly functional. And there are substantial differences between CU / OS and admins - adminship involves a large number of often very subjective judgments on things like eg. whether someone is likely to continue to be a problem in the future and what sanctions are necessary to prevent this. CU / OS, by comparison, are much more rigid and technical - there is a bit of subjectivity around the edges, but not nearly so much, and it mostly comes down to very simple categorizing using a few straightforward rules. This means that while judgment is important for those roles it doesn't imply as much need for additional community trust. Admins need to understand, and be trusted to accurately enforce, essentially all of Wikipedia's policies and practices; CU / OS are each mostly about a much more narrow slice of it, and a slice that generally involves a bit less subjectivity at that. --Aquillion (talk) 00:46, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

    Have to be honest, but I think this is backwards in terms of how much trust is required. Admin actions can be and are scrutinized easily and regularly, that can't happen in the same way with CU/OS. OS is maybe straightforward in the way you describe though the information involved can be as sensitive as can be. CU, on the otherhand, is far from categorizing a few straightforward rules. There is a huge amount of discretion involved and judgement calls are regularly required in terms of whether a check has been justified and if it has whether the results indicate a violation of policies and guidelines. I also think most admins only operate in a narrow slice of the admin universe so they don't actually need to know every policy and guideline. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:56, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

26. RfA has serious problems and I don't think we want to replicate them to other processes. The current system for CU and OS appointments seems to work well, and allows adequate community feedback. the wub "?!" 16:55, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
27. Per Sandstein. ‍ Relativity 05:35, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
28. Oppose - CU and OS are both high-trust roles with real-world legal implications, with access to advanced tools to manage very sensitive information, which can do serious real-world harm to real persons and the project itself if they are misused. They are chosen by a committee which understands the purpose of the roles and evaluates individuals' aptitude and suitability for them, as well as whether or not a candidate fills an identified need. The community elects that committee, Arbcom, and community input is part of the appointment process. Making these specialized positions open to general election puts us at fairly serious risk from motivated malicious groups wanting access to the politically valuable information available; frankly it's already too much of a risk IMO that Arbcom members gain access to these tools through election. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:11, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
29. Oppose These roles have real-world legal effects and are required to sign an NDA. We definitely shouldn't elect them by popular vote. The current system works just fine. QuicoleJR (talk) 21:43, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
30. Oppose per Thryduulf finding only 42 CU/OS evaluations over the past five years, suggesting that the current system poses a minimal burden on ArbCom while avoiding the toxicity of RfA. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 06:45, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
31. Oppose for the nth number of good reasons above, plus ArbCom just started essentially open instead of timed applications - which was the big step forward needed in this process. Lets give it a chance to work. -- Amanda (she/her) 02:09, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Neutral (CU and OS appointments)

1. I'm indifferent at this point. Both systems appear to have their flaws and their benefits. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:55, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (CU and OS appointments)

Note managing access to CheckUser and Oversight tools is currently in the scope of the arbitration committee by policy. Changing this requires an amendment to the arbitration policy. isaacl (talk) 18:20, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

So that would be 100 petition signatures and a majority on an up and down vote? I believe that is what it was on the vote that removed any remaining provision for an appeal to Jimbo.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:06, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I didn't want to repeat the process since I linked to it, but mostly yes. An amendment can be also be proposed for ratification if it is approved by the committee. The majority vote to ratify must have at least 100 supporting statements. isaacl (talk) 20:38, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Maybe ... while changing the arbcom policy requires those hoops, changing the cu/os polices don't really. This would really need to be well supported to make the change either way (with more than enough support to do both). — xaosflux ^Talk 22:19, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the wording in the current arbitration policy has given sole responsibility to the arbitration committee for appointment of checkusers and oversighters. I agree that meta:Oversight policy states that local elections can still be preferred over appointment by the arbitration committee, and it could be argued that meta:CheckUser policy leaves the question open. However by ratifying the arbitration policy, the community agreed on giving this responsibility to the arbitration committee, as well as agreeing that this scope has to be altered via the arbitration policy amendment process. isaacl (talk) 22:54, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

It could certainly create one of those community consensus crisis sort of situations. Regardless, I certainly would want a wholesale cleanup of everything related, including the arbpol, if this were to gain traction. Realistically, I think this proposal should have gone through more development and leaves more questions open then the change it is trying to promote. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there would be a crisis. The stewards would have to ignore the English Wikipedia arbitration policy and accept community-requested assignments, and it doesn't seem to me that's likely to happen. I agree that it would have been fruitful to have more discussion to develop a rationale and proposed process. isaacl (talk) 23:24, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm inclined to trust the steward when he says such a situation with the stewards would create a crisis. Perhaps it would be resolved the way you suspect but perhaps not. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:07, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

In essence I agree with Xaosflux that the arbitration policy should be amended to align with community desires on appointing checkusers and oversighters. Thus I raised this need in my initial comment. In theory the arbitration committee could just agree to rubberstamp community appointments, but I think the community wouldn't feel satisfied by an approach that relied on the benevolence of the committee. isaacl (talk) 23:38, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

It would end up being a case if changing the local checkuser policy to allow elections were to be strongly supported by the community, and then there we to be an actual successful election - and how much of a counter argument the committee wanted to put up. This sort of change would certainly require a very well attended RFC for a project this size (where the supporters would likely already be over 100 as well). The best case would be that if successful a graceful transition from the current committee happened. I could see the stewards team stalling any appointment pending additional community deliberations over collisions between multiple policies. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:39, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Sure, that would be a reasonable approach. We might be thinking of different connotations for the word crisis. I agree that most likely there would be sufficient support to amend the arbitration policy at the same time. isaacl (talk) 00:03, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Likely - it certainly wouldn't stop people from reading or creating articles! — xaosflux ^Talk 00:11, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

This is a tangent, but if any of you are willing to take on these roles, please consider volunteering. I am worried that whenever m:IP masking/mw:Help:Temporary accounts gets here (not in the next few months, but could possibly be later this calendar year), that we might need more CUs than we have now, particularly during the first few months of the transition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:22, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Another point that I don't think has been made is that, particularly for OS applicants, one thing that is often significant is what the requests they've submitted have been like as this can give an indication of what their judgement will be like in assessing requests from other people. For example I likely would not support an application from someone who frequently asked us to suppress things that clearly don't need it, and I likely would support someone whose reports were almost always of things that do need suppression. However, editors who are not oversighters do not have access to this information (indeed when oversight works perfectly almost nobody knows it has happened). Thryduulf (talk) 01:11, 2 March 2024‎ (UTC)

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

Proposed formatting changes to the universal editnotice

 You are invited to join the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Editpage-head-copy-warn § New design. Sdkb ^talk 17:10, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Converting of the sandbox reset link to a button

Moved from Template talk:Sandbox heading

Hello! In case you're wondering, my suggestion is to make the "Click here to reset the sandbox" link go from this:

Click here to reset the sandbox.

To this:

Click here to reset the sandbox.

Is it possible? - Master of Hedgehogs ^{(converse) (hate that hedgehog!)} 13:51, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that it's possible, although that question would be better asked at WP:VPT. The more interesting question, that belongs here, is whether it is desirable. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:10, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

This new design is eye catching and could be more user friendly. Ktkvtsh (talk) 04:24, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

How about <div class=plainlinks>[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit&preload=Template:Sandbox+reset&summary=Reset+sandbox&oldid=596189391 {{Clickable button 2 | '''Click here to reset the sandbox''' |link =no |color = blue}}]</div> which renders as

Click here to reset the sandbox

See [2] and the subsequent diff. I'm on mobile right now so no idea about how it works on PC. Sincerely, Novo Tape^{My Talk Page} 17:58, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

I did it. - Master of Hedgehogs ^{(converse) (hate that hedgehog!)} 01:07, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea, and it seems more user-friendly. It draws more attention to itself, but I don't think that is a problem. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:46, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree, I think it's better for users new to the sandbox to have it emphasized that you can reset it. Pksois23 (talk) 09:09, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Reworking Sandbox Heading

Hello! I am requesting that {{sandbox heading}} be changed to this:

Proposed sandbox heading text

<center><big>'''Click on the "Edit this page" link above to experiment!'''</big></center><center><big>'''Please leave this heading alone'''</big></center> Welcome to the sandbox! Anybody can edit this page and it is automatically cleared regularly (anything you write will not remain indefinitely). You can either [[Special:EditPage/Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 211|edit]] the source code ("'''[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_211&action=edit Edit source]'''" tab above) or use [[Wikipedia:VisualEditor|VisualEditor]] ("'''[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_211&veaction=edit Edit]'''" tab above). Click the "'''Publish changes'''" button when finished. You can click "'''Show preview'''" to see a preview of your edits, or "'''Show changes'''" to see what you have changed. this page is cleared regularly, feel free to try your editing skills below. <span class="plainlinks clickbutton">[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_211&action=edit&preload=Template:Sandbox+reset&summary=Reset+sandbox&oldid= <span class="mw-ui-button mw-ui-progressive">Click here to reset the sandbox.</span>]</span> If you are logged in, you can access your personal sandbox: "'''[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Mypage/sandbox&action=edit&preload=Template:User_sandbox/preload Sandbox]'''". [[Wikipedia:Misuse of the sandbox|'''DO NOT''' place promotional, copyrighted, offensive, or libelous content]] in sandboxes.<span style="font-size:85%;">''For more info, see [[Help:My sandbox]]. New? See the [[Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia|contributing to Wikipedia]] page or [[Help:Introduction|our tutorial]]. Questions? Try [[Wikipedia:Teahouse|the Teahouse]]!'' [[:Category:Wikipedia Editing Aids]]</span>

Should this change be made? - Master of Hedgehogs ^{(converse) (hate that hedgehog!)} 18:31, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it should be changed to this version. 23.245.44.64 (talk) 18:34, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Support. This makes the reset option more visible. It might make people pay less attention to the heading, but I doubt it. Sincerely, Novo Tape^{My Talk Page} 16:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Noting that I've left an invitation to this discussion at Template talk:Sandbox heading. All the best. ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 19:35, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Creating Disambiguation page

The page “People’s Publishing House” is redirecting to a Beijing based People’s Press.

please remove this redirect and instead create a disambiguation page of “People’s Publishing House”, so that other pages with similar names, for example “People’s Publishing House (India) can be listed on that disambiguationmpage. Pallav.journo (talk) 10:20, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

If they really are of equal importance then a two-entry disambiguation page may be the best solution. However, the new article you created, People’s Publishing House (India), currently has only one primary source and may be at risk of deletion. Even if the new article remains, People's Publishing House may be retained as a primary redirect if the Chinese state press is deemed much more significant than a private company. Certes (talk) 10:48, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Make Todays Featured List appear exactly every 3 days instead of 3-4 days

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I'll ask it here.

Something that I've always been confused about is why TDL has a schedule where one list will appear three days after a list and then the next list will appear 4 days after instead of just three days again. I don't see how this could be for "we could run out of unique lists" purposes because there are over 3100 lists that haven't been featured on the main page.

So I propose that Todays Featured List should appear every 3 days instead of every 3-4 days on the main page. Onegreatjoke (talk) 00:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Today's featured list, it's because TFL appears Mondays and Fridays, aligning with days of the week. That seems to work fine, so I don't see a need for a change. Sdkb ^talk 08:12, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. Keep it on Mondays and Fridays! Bduke (talk) 05:20, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

I think the "every Monday and Friday" pattern makes it easier for people to know when to look for it than your proposal would. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:23, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

If you want to have more TFLs (no idea whether that is a good idea or not), just go for three times per week. —Kusma (talk) 17:09, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, amn't i the fool! I can't remember how long we've had TFLs and how long i've been reading them, years and years though, and until this moment i have never realised that they are on a schedule; i have always just scrolled down the Main Page wondering if there'll be a TFL. Boy, do i feel stupid embarrassed today, ~ Lindsay^Hello

Sources: clarify that they may be on a linked page

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 wish to seek to change the wikipedia policy WP:SOURCE. Currently this states "Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." in the section Responsibility for providing citations. I propose amending this with the additional sentence "Sources may be contained in a linked article."

 RATIONAL FOR THE PROPOSED CHANGE

I believe that requiring sources on every page brings a number of problems: 1) it is onerous and inefficient and discourages linking relevant articles to pages, especially for new editors: 2) the relevant article may include more sources, mentions of the article might only include one, so anyone looking for useful information might not see it; 3) in a rapidly moving field sources may be updated in an article but that might be missed on linked pages. In any case it is easy for anyone to click on the link to see the article with all relevant sources. Hewer7 (talk) 13:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I'm not too familiar with how things work here at the village pump but I believe policy changes should be discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).

CanonNi (talk) 13:30, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. But I thought I saw that proposals should be discussed here first? Hewer7 (talk) 13:39, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

You are trying to change a existing policy, not create a new one, so WP:VPP is the correct place. CanonNi (talk) 13:40, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. Hewer7 (talk) 13:48, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

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

Feedback sought for proposal to drop archival bot notice params from Template:Talk header

Your feedback would be appreciated at Template talk:Talk header#Proposal to drop archiving params. The {{Talk header}} template has no control over Talk page archiving, but it does have four params used to generate a "bot notice" in the header box which says something like: "Archiving: 90 days" (plus a tooltip with more info). It's just a string displayed in the header, which may or may not reflect what the actual archiving period is. A recent change to Template:Talk header automates the generation of this string directly from the archive config, rendering the four Talk header params unnecessary. Imho, they should be deleted from the template in order to prevent misleading bot notices in the Template header box when the given params get out of sync with the config. More details at the proposal discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:43, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Template:Talk header is a highly visible template, so I've added {{subst:DNAU|3|weeks}} to this discussion to give it sufficient time to air. Mathglot (talk) 10:37, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

GeoHack preference

The GeoHack system offers a choice of about two dozen map applications. I always choose the same application, but I have to make that choice every time I use GeoHack. It would be nice if my choice could be saved in a preference setting so that whenever I click on a coordinate I go directly to my preferred map app instead of having to again select which app. Sbowers3 (talk) Sbowers3 (talk) 14:13, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Same. jp×g🗯️ 17:38, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Magnus Manske is listed as one of the maintainers for mw:GeoHack. He might know whether a bit of .js or something could solve this problem. If he isn't on wiki in the next couple of days, I suggest taking this question to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) instead of asking here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Showing "Redirected from" notice at top of section

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T360255

When one arrives at an article via a redirect, the page is rendered with an additional line saying "(Redirected from [...])", directly (?) below the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" byline below the article title.

For most of the many redirects that target sections of articles, instead of entire articles, that means that this line isn't in view, which makes little sense to me. After all, if the page includes any {{redirect}}-type dab templates, those are placed as section hatnotes, not article hatnotes, which makes a lot of sense.

Why not show the notice below the section title, either instead of or in addition to where it is now?

- 2A02:560:5829:B000:7D78:FB68:39A:4A28 (talk) 16:22, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a good question. The notice linking to the redirect is useful as a way to get to the redirect page. and it informs the reader why they are at a place they would not expect to be, but it should be displayed where it can be seen, and preferably where it is most relevant, which would usually be at the redirect target. At the section header would be appropriate for R to section. Not sure about R to anchor. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:03, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Ah, yes, anchors, good thinking. Their essential invisibility tends to make me fail to consider them more often than not. In this context, I recken that's probably fine, though, because keeping the thing itself hidden but then implicitly or explicitly drawing attention to it in a visible notice would be a bit weird, even if there were a nice space for it.

That said, I suppose a generic phrasing like "(Redirected from [...] to this location)" would work for both, or even all three, cases. That'd leave the space issue to be solved.

- 2A02:560:5829:B000:7D78:FB68:39A:4A28 (talk) 22:46, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Good idea. Cuts down on confusion. How it would be implemented is another question. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 17:17, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

+1 Good idea. I'd suggest filing a task on Phabricator to get some developer attention. Sdkb ^talk 18:19, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I've noticed that. Thanks for proposing this. Donald Albury 18:54, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This would've been a perfect technical wishlist submission if they hadn't just gotten rid of the technical wishlist. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:41, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Definitely "in addition", rather than "instead of". At the very least, this would help editors whose muscle memories have them press Home when following a redirect to a section. jlwoodwa (talk) 04:57, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

There is a counterargument to be made, using the same scenario: If, after jumping to the top of the article, for whatever reason, one decides one wants to go back to the redirect's target location, again for whatever reason, the proposed change adds a new way to do that - Ctrl+F "redirected". Works either way, of course, but a bit better when there are no duplicates elsewhere.

Ah, but now that I imagine myself doing that, selecting "redirected" in the notice at the top, then Ctrl+F, then just hitting Enter once or twice may be even more convenient than typing it in. Never mind!

- (OP) 2A02:560:5829:B000:99D:3DCE:4DAE:FDB (talk) 14:19, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I totally support this idea, you should definitely file this on Phabricator! Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:50, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I will just mention that it works completely differently on mobile. Here, no matter where it sends you, a notice appears for a few seconds at the bottom of the screen, and then disappears. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

I occasionally want to Rcat redirects. When I'm redirected to a section, I have to scroll all the way up and click the link. I would like it if it was just there, too. SWinxy (talk) 14:28, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Tracking categories template proposal

I propose a new design for the tracking categories template which is used to mark category pages as tracking categories. If I am not mistaken, we can group tracking categories into three groups:

1. Core tracking categories (core to MediaWiki)
2. Extension tracking categories (added to MediaWiki by extensions)
3. Template/Module tracking categories (implemented by templates/modules)

I believe that the third group is the largest of the three. Such tracking categories are used to track missing or invalid parameters in template transclusions amongst other things. They are not integrated into the MediaWiki instance and are therefore not listed on Special:TrackingCategories. In theory, it is possible to have tracking categories which are manually included on pages the same way content articles are manually categorised, but I am not aware of such tracking categories.

The aim of this proposal is to add some technical clarification to the template but also simplify its use. I find the current template clumsy looking and over-engineered in its 3-in-1 approach (i.e. certain templates can be transcluded if certain parameters are used. Why not just transclude them explicitly on category pages instead if they are needed?). To complicate things further, there is a template called Maintenance category which can convey the respective messages of the templates Tracking category and Container category. I shall refer to templates that transclude others based on parameter usage as combination templates.

I therefore propose the following:

1. That a redesign of Tracking category (demonstrated below) be adopted.
2. That one template be used for each purpose instead of combination templates or a mix of combination templates and individual templates per the current practice.
3. That the template Possibly empty category be deprecated and its message conveyed instead by Tracking category. It should be obvious to any administrator not to delete tracking categories, but it can be stated that tracking categories may at times be empty or even most of the time.
4. That the combination template Maintenance category be reduced to a simple message box for those maintenance categories which are not tracking categories.

Core tracking categories

This is what the template could look like on the category page Pages with template loops.

This is a tracking category which MediaWiki expects to exist. It is used for the maintenance of the project and may be empty occasionally or even most of the time. Its name is localised via the message Template-loop-category.

The transclusion code may look something like this:

{{Tracking category
| message = Template-loop-category
}}

Extension tracking categories

This is what the template could look like on the category page Pages with syntax highlighting errors.

This is a tracking category which the extension SyntaxHighlight expects to exist. It is used for the maintenance of the project and may be empty occasionally or even most of the time. Its name is localised via the message Syntaxhighlight-error-category.

The transclusion code may look something like this:

{{Tracking category
| message = Syntaxhighlight-error-category
| extension = SyntaxHighlight
}}

Template/Module tracking categories

This is what the template could look like on the category page Articles needing coordinates.

This is a tracking category which the template Coord missing expects to exist. It is used for the maintenance of the project and may be empty occasionally or even most of the time.

The transclusion code may look something like this:

{{Tracking category
| template = Coord missing
}}

If the tracking category is implemented by a module, then the parameter name module would be used instead. If the editor is lazy and only puts {{Tracking category}} on the page, then the template should simply say: "This is a tracking category which is expected to exist. It is used for the maintenance of the project and may be empty occasionally or even most of the time."

Each category page should go into further detail about its purpose. On core and extension tracking category pages the information would most likely be included on the pages themselves but in the case of template/module tracking categories the information would most likely be transcluded from dedicated templates.

Thank you for your attention. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 01:02, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

How would you handle tracking categories like Category:All articles with unsourced statements, which are expected to exist by a fairly long list of templates? Anomie⚔ 12:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

This is a tracking category which many templates expect to exist. It is used for the maintenance of the project and may be empty occasionally or even most of the time.

{{Tracking category
| many_templates = true
}}

The number or nature of the many templates should be stated on the category page itself. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 20:31, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Re your idea to combine "tracking category" and "possibly empty category" based on the idea that tracking categories shouldn't be deleted, dated categories like Category:Articles with unsourced statements from July 2022 don't fall under that generalization. Once their month has passed and they've been emptied, they're deleted. Anomie⚔ 12:20, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

This is a tracking category which the template Citation needed expects to exist. It is used for the maintenance of the project and should be deleted once its purpose is served.

{{Tracking category
| template = Citation needed
| delete = true
}}

The purpose of the category and how long it is expected to exist should be specified on the category page itself. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 20:31, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Should (some or all) of Renamed user g5s6n3yi8z7g08cs's unapproved bot edits be reverted?

Thread: Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#Fully automated edits without BRFA - Request for assistance

Summary: Renamed user g5s6n3yi8z7g08cs made unapproved automated edits performing various tasks over the course of a couple months using PAWS. Some of the tasks should perhaps be mass-reverted. Pppery made a list of them in the other bot runs section. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 01:41, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

AI for WP guidelines/ policies

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 propose following 2 things, either one or second.

Proposal 1: Create AI for Wikipedia by taking existing model and feeding it the guidelines and policies. This will make it easier to find relevant policy. Example: I ask AI for any policy regarding 'using notably' or 'words to watch' in articles, and it comes back with WP:EDITORIAL. There are already AI's like pdf readers, which you can feed on with pdf and ask questions on it. Make AI optimized search, for reasons that are struck(still valid) before.(Added on 18/3/24 by ExclusiveEditor)
Proposal 2: Proposal 1 + Giving AI more AI feel, by letting it become more than better search engine, by becoming suggestion judge for small situations. Example: You editors are creative, you may add one.

Note: AIs like SIDE seem to help, so will this which may be easier to build. But couldn't find discussion for one like this. The proposed proposals may be amended for better use. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:08, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
(Note: AI is supposed to complement search) ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 13:59, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Re proposal 1, ChatGPT can already answer this question decently. Presumably its training data includes pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:17, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@Barnards.tar.gz: ChatGPT requires email for registration. But it also has that 2021 bias, and couldn't list any policy/ guideline's specific article. ChatGPT is more like proposal 2, but that makes it erroneous. It's also third party, so it may not be fed with new ones and also combine non-wikipedia related data it is fed on with its response, which will make it even more erroneous. Proposal is to simply feed an AI on Wikipedian data only and program it to link specific policy it found the info on. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, new data like various discussions going on ANI, Village pump, IANB etc. could be fed to AI so as to decrease discussions on already discussed topic, a user is not aware/ couldn't find about. Currently only search method is using Wikipedia search within specific category which could produce innumerable irrelevant matches, and there are numerous categories too. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:29, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@ExclusiveEditor You seem to assume that we want these things and that they are good. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:38, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@Cremastra: I assumed that this shall help, or else I wouldn't have proposed it. We may not need it, but it's worth considering the potential advantages such an AI could bring, taking into account factors such as efficiency, accuracy, accessibility, and standardization all throughout Wikipedia it could bring with community's grace. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 09:41, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like a solution looking for a problem. You only get familiar with current expectations by doing more editing. Awesome Aasim 01:23, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@Awesome Aasim: WP:CHOICE. While practicing editing is important, AI tools can greatly enhance the editing process on Wikipedia by providing valuable assistance, improving accuracy, and streamlining search. They are designed to complement human editors, not replace them. ExclusiveEditor (talk) 10:09, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• No for several reasons. 1) We already have a search capability, as well as numerous other features like lists, disambiguation pages and redirect shortcuts to help guide users to find what they're looking for. 2) The risks of AI misinterpreting, hallucinating, or otherwise giving users inaccurate information about policy is non-trivial. 3) Because our policies are wiki articles themselves, they too are constantly evolving; without constantly updated training, the AI would forever be operating from an outdated understanding of what our policies actually are. 4) This is not really within the purview of a single project to pursue nor is it likely to gain broad consensus across a wide variety of projects and languages necessary to make it worth the effort and cost. The scenario you're describing is better suited as part of the MediaWiki interface. 5) I suspect there are also non-trivial concerns about license compatibility as well as ensuring an open-source software/tools stack for this. 6) Where is this model going to be hosted? Who is paying for the compute time? The foundation? Some foundation-adjacent entity? Donations? A private research institution? There are too many unanswered questions and this proposal addresses none of them in a way that shows sufficient time and thought was put into making this a realistic suggestion. AI is not a "magic bullet" solution to problems that you haven't validated actually exist; nor that it is a product fit for what this community actually wants. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 04:26, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  The risks of AI misinterpreting, hallucinating, or otherwise giving users inaccurate information about policy is non-trivial. Is this referring to an AI generating freeform text, or referring a user to a certain page? I think that this program should probably be restricted to answering in links. I don't see a reason to believe the AI would consistently get that much wrong, or get it wrong more than a user. AI is not a "magic bullet" solution to problems that you haven't validated actually exist; Beyond a shadow of a doubt, people have trouble searching for policies and boards. Half the time I use Google Search. Overall, there seems to be unharnessed potential, which could make newbies stick around or make learning and navigating between policies, past and present, easier. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Swatjester: 1) The stance is like 'We have candles, why need bulb?" The very reason I proposed this is that it is really difficult for a non-experienced user (even a mid-experienced user like me having 3000+ edits) to find relevant policy, and sometimes not sure if there exists any for it even with the legacy tools. To be clear, there are numerous similar policy pages, and it is difficult to find out where the exact guideline is located and it takes lot of time if not hours finding one. Also even, forums avoid/ aren't sure of such questions as they themselves find it hard to locate sometime (not sure).
  

  2) As of now, i go with what Mebigrouxboy says.
  

  3) That's the other primary reason I am proposing this. Assuming that a constantly evolving policy may make the "AI" old, seems like saying editors have super power of going though entire policy updates within less time AI is updated. AI may help editors know what updates are in guidelines.
  

  4) This is just a tool. I may be wrong, but it is not even a major update like enforcing new vector design on IP editors/ readers. Just a sidebar for easy searching, and policy updates will do it.
  

  5) Wikipedia itself would not have got the success, if it was not launched due to such considerations. Solving the problems is necessary to establish anything.
  

  6) I am not considering myself eligible to answer questions related to financial side, as it dependent on what the community and foundation decides and how this proposal evolves. ExclusiveEditor (talk) 10:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  If we're going to use that analogy, your suggestion is like switching from candles to incandescent bulbs, without having addressed why the lighting difference matters, what type of lamp we're going to use, whether the power grid can support it, and who's going to pay for the electric bill. I stand by all of my points -- your idea is incomplete, premature, and lacking sufficient detail or information to be executed on even if there was consensus that it was desirable. You can't simply handwave away critical considerations like "who's going to pay for this" and "is this compatible with our open-licenses and our mission" as trivialities that we'll figure out later. That kind of techbro fastspeak won't fly here. We are the 7th most popular website in the world; even small changes here can have drastic impacts on millions of people. The burden is on you to show that you've actually given the serious consideration and planning due for a change that would affect people in that magnitude. Until then, you don't have a proposal; you have a fantasy. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 15:35, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Swatjester: I presented my ideas here (on proposal) as conjectures, indicating that they are open to improvement and further development. This allows for collaboration and the exchange of ideas among editors. The proposed proposals may be amended for better use. Also I believe that just because I did not elaborate every problem we may face with this, doesn't make it useless, and it could further be developed. However, I assume your point to make sense, and would like to further detail my proposals. And yes, we are one of the most visited website, so we should not be stagnant with the influx of improvement we are capable of. ExclusiveEditor (talk) 17:28, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• An AI that can instantly forward you to the correct venue for a dispute, find help pages for any question, or search the archives of boards, and other capabilities mentioned above would be a massive benefit to editor QoL. A proof of concept might be possible by creating a custom GPT on the ChatGPT store. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 04:24, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  I agree, this would be nice. Since training / fine-tuning AIs on volatile user-provided data is a hot area of research and product development at the moment, I don't think it would be a wise use of Wikipedia funds to get involved just yet. It feels like we would just be duplicating work that is being done elsewhere. At the current pace of development, I would expect that production-ready open source systems that do this are not far off. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:03, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Machine Learning Team already seem quite busy. Sean.hoyland (talk) 16:23, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support. It could really help finding policies when you forget the name or just don't know it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nononsense101 (talk • contribs) 16:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• This proposal is in essence about creating a better search tool. It could be a good project for a university computer science department. If you know anyone with appropriate connections, or any developers with available resources who might be interested, perhaps you can suggest it to them. isaacl (talk) 17:14, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, AI optimized search tool is the first and foremost thing I proposed. Other things can be discussed within the community. ExclusiveEditor (talk) 17:31, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  I think you need to first find people with appropriate experience and resources who can work on this type of project. This will allow them to engage in any discussions and thus guide them down more productive paths. isaacl (talk) 17:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Isaacl: Okay. Can you tell where could I search for such people who may have related experience? Thanks, ExclusiveEditor (talk) 17:46, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  Sean.hoyland gave one pointer above to a Wikimedia Foundation team that might be able to give some pointers or advice. You can also look at the foundation's pages to find other potential contacts. Think of everyone you know and if they have any related experience or connections to those who do, and if they might be receptive. isaacl (talk) 18:59, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Support proposal 1. Happy to be invited to join this discussion. By way of introduction, I am a new editor who has done some deep diving into AI as well as algorithmic and data biases. As a newcomer, I can say that navigating Wikipedia's trove of policies and guidelines can feel very daunting. I’ve read posts in the Teahouse from new editors who say they feel paralyzed due to their fear of being criticized for doing the wrong thing or making mistakes. As such, being able to get easy access to policies would help to reduce policy breaches, support retention of new editors, and help create a “psychologically safer” environment for all editors. In my experience with AI and LLMs such as ChatGPT, they are very efficient when they are dealing with well-defined inputs for a request. A set of Wikipedia policies and guidelines would be an example of well-defined inputs. Generally, when LLMs stumble into "hallucinations", it tends to be when they are tasked with open-ended topics such as “blank sheet of paper” requests where they need to create something new with no prior input other than their own information. HerBauhaus (talk) 13:37, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Feel like this is an unnecessary way to teach policy (and it's just asking for issues). We should avoid AI in general, and instead we should be improving new user onboarding so that we don't need this solution. Support AI in a very limited form

vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 03:34, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

@Vghfr: Proposal 1 is AI- optimized search. Proposal 2 may better suit your oppose. Also the proposal 1 is not asking for issues as it is already evident from my and others(response above yours) experience that new wikipedians do face lot of issues when it comes to make even the slightest edits, and WP:CHOICE finally. We are not a company, but encyclopedia's community which should be not conservative in approach of helping Wikipedia's editor base growth in fears which make no sense.ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 14:27, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, got trigger-happy when I saw 'AI.' I could see it working if it was used as an addition to the search. Something similar to how Bing uses Copilot to summarize search results. We would just have to be careful. vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 21:52, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Strong Support - I'd find it so useful to find policies and guidelines, as long as the AI is only used for that and is not involved in anything else around Wikipedia. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:46, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

• Absolutely not - The state of the art of AI does not have sufficient quality assurance to be able to operate in such an open-ended domain as Wikipedia policy and guidelines. This proposal is begging for trouble, and there is currently no time frame for when AI will reach this level of sophistication beyond a useless guess of "maybe in a few years at best". _signed, Rosguill ^talk 14:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Rosguill:No, I never deemed the proposal to be the way you are thinking, I myself may have opposed such proposal. I proposed for an AI optimized search for Wikipedia's policy and guidelines. There are lot of chatbots out there (including ones made on small budget) which could answer question based on web results in real time by 'searching' on internet, but the Wikipedia(AI-opt-search) work would be simpler even in term that it is just based on internal pages of just Wikipedia. In other words, right now Wikipedia's traditional search is 'Google', and I propose something like 'perplexity.ai' but much less sophisticated and easy to build. Also this would complement the search and may not be major change, it is proposal 2 which may suit your oppose. Regards, ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 14:20, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  I still think that this is a solution in search of a problem, and that it will in fact find several new problems if implemented. The same concerns of lack of reliability apply: how do we know that the chatbot will direct people to the correct p&g page given a query at runtime? What dataset of queries and responses could we possibly train it on? How will the AI know how to balance essays, guidelines, and policies, or how to recognize an essay that nevertheless has broad buy-in from the community and is a guideline in all but name? How would the AI know how to adapt to IAR, to contradictory essays and guidelines, or to the fact more broadly that our documentation is descriptive rather than prescriptive of Wikipedia practices? There is no publicly-available dataset that we could train an AI off of that would even begin to address these use cases. I am raising these concerns as someone with several years of professional experience in AI research. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:14, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Rosguill: Your have very valid points of concern. I think that this could be implemented step by step, whenever the community and foundation feel ready. There are lot of proposals in this discussion itself: First two are the proposals I presented, then a new one is too just let the already existing search engine get AI optimized, other is to make 'policychecker' (spellchecker but for WP policy... which(idea) is at least worth exploring), then we have something like Wikipedia Library type, difference that it provides access to some third party model like ChatGPT fed with p&g which could be used in a while, etc. I have even posted an example of basic AI which we could think of in first step. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:32, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• I have put some thought into this and I do think there could be merit for a tool to help new editors see their revision draft is violating a WP policy prior to submission. That isn't necessarily a "WP Policy chatbot" but probably something more akin to a spellchecker but for WP policy. If it could cause a new editor to fix their bad edit before another editor had to deal with it, it could make things better. That said, the model is only a small part of what would be needed to make this work, a bigger aspect would that the UI/UX that makes it seemless for a newer user while not annoying experienced editors (maybe make it opt in?). CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @CAlbon (WMF): Maybe we could add that in 'beta features'. Proposal 2 or related would surely be more complex idea than 1, but it will increase the overall efficiency and quality of articles produced/ or edits. However 'AI' is the "popular" term so I used it, but the real solution would be to somehow reduce the pressure of getting 'edit wrong due to policy/ guideline' fear from new editors, because those who have such worries are the ones who are most dedicated. And it may surely ease the navigation process like gps did. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:10, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, I do think helping new editors overcome the hurdle of their (and everyone's) first edits often being pretty rough. Structured Tasks can help with this, but the "policychecker" idea has merit, at least as an exploration. CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @CAlbon (WMF): In editing energy and telecommunications articles, I've noticed that several key editors who made significant contributions have left Wikipedia, likely due to criticisms or disputes. These criticisms, not always expressed in a civil tone, have highlighted issues in their newly created articles or edits such as subjective language, the inclusion of original ideas, and potential plagiarism. Implementing a "policy checker" for articles before they "go live" could greatly reduce such friction, helping to retain passionate contributors. HerBauhaus (talk) 14:24, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is a really good insight. Thanks for sharing the example. CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

• Unnecessary – It'd be a big hassle for Wikipedia to implement such a proposal and, at least to me, seems like a pretty unnecessary thing to do, since there already are such third-party tools. If anyone wants to use them, they should feel free to do so (and accept responsibility for any error), like with any tool. I don't oppose the idea though, I just see it as another solution to a problem that already has (or is close to having) a solution. Gedditor (talk) 16:15, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Gedditor:Specifically proposed for new editors (and in extension can be used by others). Some newbies don't even know Wikimedia projects other than Wikipedia exist, being aware of third party tools seems improbable. I don't think hassle can be the reason to deny working on (discussion), which may result in at least a minor change which may make it a process easier (and yet efficient) to edit for Wikipedians. Also I don't think any 'third party tool' or any 'tool' is currently better than Wikipedia's own "search engine" which is not very effective, I very first proposed, and even if any exists, they mostly are highly unreliable. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:30, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think that things shouldn't be done because they are hard to do. I just personally think that it's not worth it. I'd say I'm neutral on this issue. If such a feature is implemented, good. If not, that's fine too. Just wanted to add my opinion here :) Gedditor (talk) 16:43, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose – Don't think this should be an official tool. I support any unofficial ones that people want to build. I've personally built a GPT with access to all Wikipedia namespace articles concatenated into a single file. Go ahead and ask it about Wikipedia rules and guidelines and maybe it will actually give an accurate answer. – Kjerish (talk) 04:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Kjerish: Okay, great! But it requires ChatGPT plus. Maybe somewhat like Wikipedia library, WM could give us any one such model's access. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 13:11, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed! Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - First and foremost, I understand and respect your vision to expand Wikipedia but I fear that AI (such as ChatGPT) is not to the level that it should be. I understand that AI has been around for quite a long time, but only recently has it been ignited to the public and is used through numerous high-end companies (such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, you name it). I oppose this because Wikipedia is about humans checking the article. And yes, it would make it go faster, but it will make mistakes and those mistakes could time consuming for an individual (or a community) to resolve them. I think we should pilot it to a few selective articles rather than making it public to the entire Wikipedia articles. I think it's a great idea, no doubt, but we should be cautious when it comes to making it public for all without really piloting it. I have a couple more opinions on it, feel free to reach out if you want to. Jack Reynolds (talk to me | email me) 15:05, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  First of all I appreciate your civil tone. I understand the lack of confidence on currently available AI platforms, and that implementing it site wide may bring issues, increasing the overall time to solve. But for that you said Wikipedia is about humans checking the article, I would also point that we have bots, which do not directly edit and cross check the articles (as a dystopian editor-less Wikipedia may have, and I oppose this), the bots have proven to be very effective in side tasks other than automating repetitive tasks. Bots like ClueBot NG are active examples. AI has wide applications, and I think that there are lot of applications to it on WP too, to some I oppose just like you, but others, like AI optimized simple search, or beta tested policy chatbots are some I have eyes on, as they rather than replacing existing resources, would only complement them. And as they say it, something is better than nothing (being added), especially when it is promising to look at. I would also like to know 'more opinions' you mentioned to have. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 15:37, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: For those who oppose major change related to AI, the ai need not take a very inclusive part in Wikipedia's working for now, but a simple AI search like this would really ease the problem:

User: I am editing person's article, but she has lot of names, I want to write all of them, what I do?
 WP AI: I found the following results:
 1.MOS:NAME: The guidelines talks about various cases in which the subject has Anachronistic names, Changed names, Multiple changed names, Pseudonyms and stage names, Hypocorisms, Nicknames etc. .....

or something I have seen many editors not knowing about:
Editor: I added name of subject in Hindi in information box at right side, but somebody removed it and warned me. Why?
WP AI: I found the following guideline regarding the usage of Indic script (which the Hindi language is predominantly written in) in infobox:
 WP:INDICSCRIPT: The guidelines says that per a consensus at 2017 request for comment, the use of Indic sript in India related articles is to be avoided for multiples reasons listed below:
1).....
2)......
3)......
This could be the possible reason that your edit was removed. For more information, you may ask the editor who reverted your edit for a response.

References

-- ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:17, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: I anticipate little benefit to the Wikipedia project. Clarinetguy097 (talk) 17:10, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Clarinetguy097: And how do you? ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 17:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Wrong page? This seems like a request for software rather than something that needs consensus. Any volunteer may create a user script or Toolforge tool that uses AI. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Novem Linguae: User scripts are add-ons that are commonly used by experienced users, while new editors are often unaware of them. Even mid-level editors may naturally find them uncomfortable to use. While volunteer-created scripts or tools are valuable, official integration ensures widespread accessibility and consistency across the platform. So I propose a direct integration of this feature in Wikipedia's interface, and so I started the discussion here. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 12:19, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

• Conditional Support. Using ChatGPT to augment the wikipedia search engine isn't a good idea. It hasn't been tested enough, isn't built for searching, and doesn't like certain queries (medical, legal, political, and anything containing the phrase "root access"). If Wikimedia wants to build its own AI to help with searching, however, then I do support this. DarklitShadow (talk) 21:49, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: The Financial Times is just doing something similar with their internal content. We may do the same with Wikipedia's internal pages and (maybe conversations/ discussions also) for editors (especially new) as I already proposed. AI already serves Wikipedia's content for readers, with this editors may benefit from something similar for sure. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 07:29, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Using ai to help users find policy pages seems fine, but asking it for advice when it comes to editing conflicts seems like a poor idea. We already have the teahouse and help desk, and the likeliness of ai giving an incorrect answer is high. Industrial Insect (talk) 16:20, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

@Industrial Insect: AI (if build in chatbot form) would not be asked doubts/ queries regarding existing policy known to editor. At max, AI will be given a problem faced by editor and AI will suggest pages which may be related to editor's problem. Reading the policy/ guideline page and deciding next move is solely editor's responsibility and choice. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 17:30, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose An AI interpreting the policies and guidelines is simply asking for trouble. Nor is there a need, as pointed out above, to force anything official right now given that user scripts exist and the WMF may be carrying out its own research. CMD (talk) 16:48, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Chipmunkdavis: No, no!! Never in my any statement have I ever mentioned that AI will come and interpret policy and suggest editors the next move. Sorry if I am being too expressive as lot of editors here are having same misunderstanding. Ok, so simply as it goes, AI is for new editors, so user script better be kept out of frame, also WMF does not look to have been actively sorting out in something specific before this proposal as seen in CAlbon (WMF)'s reply above. And to the troubles which we may face in this, first we have to start somewhere, second that implementation could be step by step. This cycle is just like an unemployed being denied a job because of lack of experience which he will never get without a job which he is being denied. The ending was not reply to you specifically but rather to the discussion as whole. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 17:38, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  Also, at max, AI will be given a problem faced by editor and AI will suggest pages which may be related to editor's problem. Reading the policy/ guideline page and deciding next move is solely editor's responsibility and choice. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 17:40, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  You gave a very specific example of an AI hearing a generic problem and deciding what guideline it thought applied. That is interpreting policy. Your example also specifically includes a suggestion of the editor's next move: "For more information, you may ask the editor who reverted your edit for a response." CMD (talk) 17:43, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Chipmunkdavis: How can any AI/ algorithm work without interpreting its query and relate it to the search results. What you mean by 'interpretation' is the vary backbone of any AI that I could propose. Otherwise what is difference between current search bar which just cares to match the words you enter? The 'interpretation' I consider wrong is that WP AI is given specific cases by user, say related to NPV, and the AI presents a 'solution' rather than simple 'AI optimized search' that too based on its own 'interpretation' of WP:NPV just like there are different interpretations of Bible/ Quran. The last line For more information, you may ask the editor who reverted your edit for a response. is just a simple advice which may be made compulsory for AI as a disclaimer for issues related to 'warnings for unknown reason'. If you still oppose the idea, please list the reason and I will try to be more objective in answering those. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 21:33, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  As I suggested earlier, I feel continuing to try to discuss your proposal without the involvement of those who are experienced and ready to start planning development isn't the best way forward. At present, this is discussion is about a hypothetical project where there are reasonable doubts about its viability, which means there isn't any impetus to work towards refining the scope and objectives. I think the proposal needs to have more concrete resources and expertise behind it in order to get better feedback. isaacl (talk) 20:36, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Isaacl: I have indeed invited dozens of editors shown to have expertise/ special interest in AI or its branches since you last suggested. We even have the attention of director of machine learning at WMF. I will try to expand this over now, streamlining its focus as you said. Thank you. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 21:36, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  I apologize for being unclear: personally, I do not recommend that you expand this discussion further. Instead, I think you should let those who are interested in planning development to drive the conversation, so that they can use their expertise and constraints to help direct further discussions. That will make it very concrete from both their perspective and the community's. Thanks for getting more people involved. isaacl (talk) 21:46, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Side note, it's unclear what is meant by "AI" in the proposal. Wikipedia has long had AI (it's search bar). I'm assuming the proposal meant generative AI. Strongly against that. Such is a black box with a mind of it's own. We don't need it to be presenting its creations as policies/guidelines or as interpretations of them. North8000 (talk) 18:15, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  @North8000: Firstly, AI here does not directly indicate to generative AI, rather it may be complementary. Secondly, the first and foremost thing I propose(d) is AI in search bar, not just as significant as it looks on paper, but practically useful. It is the present 'tune' I say, that as anyone says AI, first thing in mind is ChatGPT and its fuzzy mistakes and/or the wrong hands that image making 'AI' hallucinates. Artificial Intelligence is much more that this, and I am sure many of you are clear to this. Now what if I assure you that the AI will make equal or lesser percent mistakes than ClueBot NG in terms of overall damage to Wikipedia? My point is that I am sure if I had proposed inculsion of bots to Wikipedia (assuming they weren't involved yet) I must have met a fierce resistance than I am getting now. By AI, I don't mean hallucinating ChatGPT or an AI which will make Wikipedia human editor-less but a algorithm that will better serve the knowledge gap regarding 'policies' and 'guidelines' to new editors, so they can edit without fear of getting 4 warnings quickly and blocked, all because they never knew what they were doing wrong. If you still oppose the idea, please list the reason and I will try to be more objective in answering those. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 21:26, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  "Now what if I assure you that the AI will make equal or lesser percent mistakes than ClueBot NG in terms of overall damage to Wikipedia?" That's a big if you've got there.

  On a side note, if somebody's getting four warnings, they're obviously not somebody who's going to go to the effort to search for policies at all. Clarinetguy097 (talk) 16:59, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose solution in search of a problem in my view. JavaHurricane 10:39, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

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

Advertising sister projects

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 run a period of banners (one or multiple weeks) encouraging readers to use and edit sister projects? (previous discussion)

• See examples here.

Please note that this is a discussion regarding whether Wikipedia should do this in the broad sense; detailed arguments like "I don't like the suggested banners" or "but we shouldn't promote [this project I don't like]" should be saved for later discussion. Please respond to the idea in the RfC statement. Thank-you, 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 18:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Notifying participants in previous discussion: @Aaron Liu, Harvici, Commander Keane, WhatamIdoing, Theklan, The Wordsmith, and Vghfr:

Notified: meta:Wikimedia Forum. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 19:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Survey (advertising sister projects)

• Yes as proposer. As I wrote previously:

Sister Wikimedia projects have a lot to offer readers, and as one of the most viewed sites on the internet (globally!) we should help introduce readers to these resources. As you know, other Wikimedia projects include a dictionary/thesaurus which includes translations; a travel guide; a library of digitized public domain texts that anyone can download or distribute; a travel guide; a media repository; and many others. The sister project links are currently buried far down on the Main Page, and are especially distant for mobile viewers who make up an increasing share of our readership. Why would we not want to help readers discover some of the useful resources our sister projects have to offer?

🌺 Cremastra (talk) 18:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes. In particular the Wikiquote sister project has quite a few relatively uncontroversial articles (e.g. Karl Marx) that receive almost no views at all if compared to their typically much less substantive WP page. If not for public figures, for intellectuals, especially politically controversial ones, promoting some of their own - such as, of course, their best critics' - quintessential paragraphs should really be the standard approach!

For one thing then, yes, introducing a specialized, somewhat larger banner for this precise purposes that e.g. hovers under an infobox closer to the top of the corresponding WP article rather than at the very bottom, would really do WQ some justice. (*cf. a recent discussion, where a special "featured articles" modality was, however, discerned as a likely prerequisite for all of this though...) Biohistorian15 (talk) 15:28, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

• No. Several of the 'sister projects' are worse than useless. At least one is run in a manner entirely contrary to the stated objectives of Wikipedia. We should not be encouraging them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:18, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

  @AndyTheGrump: They're Wikimedia, not Wikipedia. This is the exact Wikipedia-is-the-best-and-most-important-project conceit I've been talking about. And I wonder which project you object to— Wikidata doesn't follow our notability guidelines, Wiktionary clearly violates WP:NOTDIC, Wikisource has no citations at all (!) Wikifunctions is just a bunch of code or something, Wikivoyage goes against WP:V and, to a degree, WP:NPOV… I could go on. Judging other projects by Wikipedian standards in nothing less than absurd. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 19:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

  I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words into my mouth. I am under no illusion that Wikipedia is 'the best' anything. It is however, the only online encyclopaedia that has any significant readership (thanks in no small part to Google), and is thus worthy of critical scrutiny. And I'm not judging the other projects by 'Wikipedian' standards, I'm judging them by the standards of someone who considers Wikipedia structurally flawed, even if its objectives are worthy in the abstract. The projects I refer to are in my opinion worse, in several ways, but mostly of little significance. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:58, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

  AndyTheGrump, could you please expand on how the projects are worse and the project that is run in a manner entirely contrary to the stated objectives of Wikipedia? — Frostly (talk) 21:14, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

  At least one is run in a manner entirely contrary to the stated objectives of Wikipedia. Which project is it?

  You first say that we should not encourage our sister Wikimedia projects because they go against Wikipedia objectives, and then you say that you aren't judging them by Wikipedian standards. I don't understand. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:40, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

  Is it your intention to get into long-winded discussions with everyone who participates here, or just the ones you disagree with? AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:11, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• Yes, provided it is limited to a few projects. Some of our projects are of limited interest to the average reader (Wikidata, Wikispecies and Wikifunctions) and others aren't in a state where it's worthwhile directing users to them (Wikinews). I think that such a campaign would be best served by a focused group of 3 or 4 of them that is more able to effectively direct attention their way. ― novov (t c) 02:32, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. Banners steal our readers' attention. By distracting them and taking them off task, we slow down them learning what they're here to learn. Ads make people stupider. We should display as few as humanly possible for as little time as possible.—S Marshall T/C 02:37, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• No for the same reason I don't like banner ads for donations or dishwashing soap. You diminish the encyclopedia by pasting ads for things that are completely unrelated to the topic they are searching. First and foremost, the READERS matter, and this diminishes the encyclopedia by putting information in the way of what they came for: verifiable facts about a topic. We aren't here to promote anything, including ourselves. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 07:27, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• No as per above. Banner ads do not benefit the encyclopedia, which is our primary concern. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 14:12, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is the kind of self-centredness that is detrimental to the Wikimedia project as a whole. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 17:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

  I could just as easily say that proposals like this one are detrimental to the English Wikipedia because they consume editor time that might otherwise have been spent improving articles. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 01:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  By that logic, every proposal here is detrimental because they take time away from editing articles. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:55, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  No, a proposal that seeks to improve the encyclopedia is not a detriment. This, however, is a proposal that diminishes the encyclopedia, which is why I opposed it. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 16:28, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Yeah, obviously: it's common knowledge that enwiki's love for sister projects is... lackluster at best. Thank god we're not in charge of creating new projects, because otherwise there wouldn't be any. But raising awareness for sister projects raises the probability that we'll be able to help someone find what they're looking for (like, say, a quote or a definition) next time they need something. Maybe they're looking for that information right now, and don't know where to find it! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 16:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• I don't think this is a good idea, beyond directing users to all Wikimedia sites in general. If English Wikipedia starts choosing individual sites to promote, and thus selecting ones not to promote, failure to promote a site will be seen as a negative endorsement. This may have an unduly discouraging effect on the expansion of the related communities. I am wary of putting English Wikipedia in a position where it can determine the success or failure of other Wikimedia sites. isaacl (talk) 17:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• No There are far fewer reasons to do this than not to do this; some of the reasons that I can think of off the top of my head include NPOV & not wanting to have to look into the editorial practices of other projects. JuxtaposedJacob (talk) 00:45, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  NPOV only applies to articles. If we start interpreting it that strictly, then we're going to need to delete a lot of essays... 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• No. I have seen no convincing argument why and how this would benefit the encyclopedia. Also per Isaacl · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 11:32, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• No. The purpose of Wikipedia is to be an encyclopaedia, not to recruit users for other projects. If the Wikimedia foundation thinks they need more users elsewhere, they can do their own advertising. Modest Genius ^talk 12:03, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Modest Genius: Ah, so we don't want to actually help readers, we just want them to read the encyclopedia? 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:32, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  How would showing readers advertising possibly help them? Modest Genius ^talk 12:02, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  See Queen of Hearts' comment below. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:19, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. leeky puts it perfectly. Most readers don't know what on Earth a Wikivoyage is, when in reality, it could be exactly what they're looking for. Queen of Hearts ^she/_they^talk/_stalk 20:30, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• No largely per Isaac. If we do every project, we're making a lot of noise for very little benefit. If we select only some, we functionally decide which projects we endorse (and which we don't by omission). Neither is a particularly good outcome. I also think banner campaigns are over-used in general and not a good way to support sibling projects if that's the goal. It's indiscriminate and for the majority of readers completely useless given what they're here to learn about. Why show a reader a banner about wikispecies if they're here reading about the Andromeda Galaxy? I don't see the benefits outweighing the costs. — Wug·a·po·des 20:46, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes per leeky. General support for the idea, without committing to doing all of them (after all, we can't say too much about the Incubator, Meta, etc.). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:39, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No - Advertising (especially in banner form) is annoying and intrusive, distracting and wasting of screen space. It doesn't matter how noble or sororal the entity being advertised. We already link to the sister projects in the main page (left panel and bottom) and we routinely mention relevant sister projects explicitly from articles where applicable (many articles include templates linking to specific pages on Commons, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary) and link inline where appropriate, most often via images. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:40, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No, good points above on the value of ads and on being cautious with the power of en.wiki within the WMF ecosystem. On a pragmatic note, a general link to go look at WikiSource or WikiData or even WikiCommons is of any use. How to contribute to those is opaque at best. If these resources are promoted, it should be through specific useful ways, such as our practice of including relevant WikiSource pages in See also sections (occasionally they pop up in infoboxes too). CMD (talk) 07:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes, as leeky put it. Other sister projects are very well what readers may be looking for, like WikiVoyage or Commons. There should be an option to opt-out though. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 12:59, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No to all forms of distracting and inappropriate advertising. There will always be sound and moral reasons behind any banner campaign - I'd like us to allow various charitable banners which fund-raise to help starving children, or prevent climate change, etc. But Wikipedia was set up not to be such a platform, and so it seem highly inappropriate and immoral and incestuous that we don't allow banners which may improve or even save people's lives, but will allow banners purely to inflate the traffic flow of various WikiMedia projects. If there is an appropriate need to link to another project, that is already done within articles, such as via External links. SilkTork (talk) 14:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No per SilkTork. Besides, a lot of people, both editors and readers, are already frustrated by the endless, huge banner ads that get foisted on articles every December, grubbing for money for the WMF. We don't need to add to that. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:37, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  These are going to be normal-sized. It seems more useful than displaying edithon notices to readers. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:14, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

• No due to banner blindness, and due to the fact that just because a project is a sister project doesn't mean it's a good project. I just don't see the value in telling readers about other projects. BTW, I also would oppose a banner that encouraged people to edit this project. I'm generally opposed to taking up screen real estate to try and recruit readers, let the readers read in peace without distraction. BTW, the way to let readers know about sister projects they may find useful is "inline," the way we do it now, with those boxes/links/hatnotes/whatever-you-call-them that say, e.g. "full text is available at WikiSource," or "there is an entry at WikiData," or "there is media on Commons," etc. It's better to put those more-targeted notices in the place where they'll matter. Levivich (talk) 17:18, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No as conceptually wrong. Very, very, VERY few people, even linguaphiles, are hardcore "let me sit down and read the dictionary some" types. Similarly, even people who love reading books aren't going to be enticed by "oh hey, let me go to the local library and pick some books at random" from Wikisource or Wikibooks. And yet that's precisely what these suggested banners provide: essentially a link to the front door of the library, or to a full dictionary. What is far more effective is a relevant link for a word or topic that the reader has already shown themselves interested in, hence them being at an article in the first place. So something like The_Red-Headed_League#External_links having its first EL being to Wikisource? Great. The reader is interested in the topic, here's a link to where you can read the story on Wikisource. Or disambig pages including a prominent Wiktionary link, especially for less-used words or foreign terms like Anabasis. There's an argument we should link sister projects when relevant more aggressively, sure. That might be a good way to spend time. But these banners don't have any relevance, and therefore aren't useful. SnowFire (talk) 20:19, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
• No. Unnecessarily distracting and annoying. Stifle (talk) 12:04, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes, but with opt-in, because banners can be annoying.--OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 01:08, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

  Possibly opt-out? Of course users should have the right to opt-out of showing the banners. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

  Rather than asking readers to take an action to see banners about other Wikimedia sites, we may as well just ask them to visit another page to learn about other Wikimedia sties. isaacl (talk) 01:28, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• No. The current central banner system is somewhat sufficient for this purpose. Even if we want to work on the sister projects, one has to be cognizant that every project has different levels of maturity and sets of social norms. We shouldn't be the ones pushing ourselves and sensibilities over to the other projects. If so, can the targeted project take on an influx of editors who are bringing a foreign set of norms and sensibilities over to their projects? As one who occasionally straddles between English and Chinese Wikipedias, as well as commons, I can say that it takes awhile to pick up the norms of the individual projects, an effort that would likely be significantly longer than the run on the banner. If the other projects would like to have us and other projects to contribute, have them to come up with their own campaigns, banners through the central banner system, and processes. If anything, I think improvements in other parts of the interface may be more feasible, for example a better call-out to translate the article if it is known that the viewer is good in a certain language, or call outs somewhere to contribute to wikivoyage if somehow we know if the viewer is actively editing in geographic based articles, Wikisource if one is editing articles related to manuscripts or other types or texts and printed materials. – robertsky (talk) 12:25, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
• No Banner blindness is bad and getting worse. Also, I cannot say that I endorse all of our sister projects; forcing the community to vote on who we endorse only ends in disaster. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:31, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
• No. First of all, banners are bad, and encyclopedia shouldn't advertise anything. Second, because there are fewer readers and fewer editors, some projects are not really useful, and it's not en wiki aim to improve other projects. Artem.G (talk) 22:04, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
• No to banners for non-Wikipedia good causes. Raise awareness for sister projects where relevant, do not use banner ads. —Kusma (talk) 10:03, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
• No ~ considering how blind banners make people, how useless (and even antagonising) much online advertising is, there is no way to consider this a good idea. Happy days, ~ Lindsay^Hello 12:03, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
• No Banners don’t actually do much besides annoy people, speaking from personal experience. I want people to help sister projects grow but banners will likely have the opposite effect. Dronebogus (talk) 20:09, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
• No per Dennis Brown and CaptainEek. - Dank (push to talk) 04:25, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
• No I agree that more should be done within wikipedia to "help readers discover some of the useful resources our sister projects have to offer", but I don't think that banners is a good way to do it. Some user research is needed to figure out productive ways to embed links to other projects in wikipedia content so that they are useful to the reader without being intrusive. spintheer (talk) 04:33, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  ways to embed links to other projects in wikipedia content — We already have many templates (see Wikipedia:Template index/Sister projects) for this purpose. Of these, Commons is probably the most frequently used. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:30, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• No per Wugapodes and because banners are an inconvenience to readers. I can't get on board with advertising all the sister projects, and picking which ones to advertise seems wrong (and will probably get bogged down in a huge no-consensus RfC anyways). Toadspike (talk) 11:09, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
• No we should be trying to reduce the number of banners not increasing them. That said I add {{commonscat}} to a lot of relevant articles where we have more images on commons than in the article. I'm not against adding relevant links to our sister projects at the end of articles, but at the top? I think the only time we should do that is where the Wikipedia article is a disambiguation page for a word that has a wiktionary definition. ϢereSpielChequers 10:03, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

General discussion (advertising sister projects)

The main page already has a large section, Wikipedia's sister projects. Why is something else needed? Schazjmd (talk) 19:55, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Those links are hard to find and do little. Especially for mobile readers, they are unlikely to be actually seen. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Adding 'sister project' banners is inevitably going to make other content less likely to be seen, given finite screen sizes. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I think there inevitably will be tradeoffs with inclusion of any type of content. — Frostly (talk) 21:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

And how much space will the banners take up on mobile screens? Donald Albury 20:08, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It depends what the final design is. Presumably the design used for mobile will be much smaller than that for desktop. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:09, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

If banners were approved and shown, how would you determine whether they were worth the effort? Schazjmd (talk) 20:11, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

One could look at siteviews of projects, number of edits made, number of active users... and see if there was noticeable change. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• Related discussion: Those here concerned about excessive banner use (or, conversely, wishing we'd use banners more) may be interested in discussion about the appropriateness of displaying the banner for Ukraine's Cultural Diplomacy Month globally without any geographic targeting. Sdkb ^talk 21:16, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

During the brainstorming session for the 2021 RfA review, I suggested having regularly scheduled volunteer weeks, where editors representing different initiatives could host "open house" activities to engage potential volunteers. I didn't pursue the idea, though, since there was almost no interest expressed. However if it were to occur, it would be an opportunity for editors from other projects to set up open houses to publicize their work. isaacl (talk) 21:36, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe rather than banners for individual projects, there could be a banner about sister projects in general linking to a page that transcluded {{Wikipedia's sister projects}}, had a paragraph overview of each project, links to any welcome portals on that project, and links to any coordination or other related groups on en.wp. Thryduulf (talk) 22:17, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Whilst I'm not necessarily opposed to focusing on other Wikimedia projects, personally I prefer a venue that is open for any initiative looking for more participation. There are a lot of areas on English Wikipedia that could either be helpful to more readers, if they knew about them, or could use more participants, if they were drawn to help out. isaacl (talk) 22:24, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Some years ago Search was changed so as to show matches in some other projects, my edits in those other projects have greatly increased since then. I don't know if search also does this on mobile as I never go to Wikipedia on my smartphone. But it would be interesting if we could see stats as to how this has helped WikiBooks, WikiVoyage et al. ϢereSpielChequers 10:14, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

It probably does on the website since mobilefrontend is mostly a different skin that uses the same engines. It definitely doesn't do that on the app, though. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:33, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

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

Is it time for a new design for the main page?

Hi, Wikipedians,

I believe it's time to consider updating the design of the main page. I'm not certain when the current style was implemented, but it seems to date back to 2006 or even earlier. Nowadays, there are numerous modern and colorful box templates available that could give the page a more contemporary look. What are your thoughts on starting this initiative? After all, the main page represents our entire community. I understand that changing a familiar style can be challenging for many users, but it's part of the natural cycle of updates.

Best regards, Riad Salih (talk) 02:50, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Ain't broke, don't fix it. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:02, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

+1 It still looks good on Desktop and even on my phone, in Monobook and Minerva. Everything is in one column and the content is very readable.The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:03, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Yea, the main page is good enough ^{(there could be some changes however)} mer764KCTV5 (He/Him | t • c) 04:05, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

This contradicts the well-established community consensus of “ain’t broke, let’s break it and pretend we might fix it later”. 216.147.126.60 (talk) 20:52, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Fair, true, and appropriate.

I agree. ProofCreature (talk) 18:24, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Agree. The main page as it is is beautiful. Pksois23 (talk) 09:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

You may want to review Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Redesign the Main Page. Anomie⚔ 03:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedians don't like change (see above), so it's not going to happen without a lot of work, but I do agree that it's time for a redesign. Since the last major attempts a decade ago, responsive design technology has advanced enormously, a new design system has been rolled out across Mediawiki, and we got a new default skin. All of this makes the main page look particularly dated and out of place in 2024. Ideally, we'd proceed by asking Wikimedia's design team to lend us their expertise and create something new – subject to community-agreed goals and constraints but not a crude yes/no vote on using it (which would inevitably fall afoul of the "change is bad" phenomenon). – Joe (talk) 07:36, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Riad Salih You could probably get consensus for the general idea that the MP should be changed, but the consensus would break down over what specifically to change it to, as everyone has their own idea about that. As noted, this is a constantly made proposal. The best chance of success would probably be to propose incremental changes, one at a time- a wholesale redesign would never gain consensus. Even a small change would take much work to convince others to support and implement. 331dot (talk) 08:53, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

"We don't like change" says the group of people who made over one billion two hundred million changes to a single website. :-) —⁠andrybak (talk) 04:18, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Change for the sake of change!
People can contribute and don't wish for anything they don't change to not change. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:10, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

One idea that might get approval is moving to a single column. The current layout was well designed when pages used the whole screen, but there are very few words on each line now that we have two thin columns shoehorned into a narrow stripe down the middle of the screen with an acre of empty white space either side. Certes (talk) 10:17, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

The white space is probably from the skin you are using. It looks fine in legacy vector. Easier to change the skin to something that you like rather than change the main page for everyone RudolfRed (talk) 01:41, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

From a purely selfish viewpoint (which is allowed, as this is an aesthetic matter), I want the main page to remain unchanged. I use Vector 2010, and everything looks just fine to me. However, the vast majority of readers don't have the luxury of setting that preference, and are stuck with wide blank sidebars. Certes (talk) 09:51, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I use the full width view of new Vector, but when checking it on the narrow width, it looks fine to me. A little narrow perhaps, but not nearly constrained enough IMO to obviate the advantages of a two-column view. ― novov (t c) 08:33, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

VECTOR2022 should just be reversed. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 18:35, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

As Joe Roe said, Wikipedians are usually a little less open to change than a cube of iron. But do you have any specific ideas? 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 13:17, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi @331dot @Anomie @Certes @Cremastra @Joe Roe @Mir Novov @Pppery @RudolfRed @

What do you think, for example, of the design of the main page of the Spanish Wikipedia? Or the Portuguese version or Turkish?

Regards Riad Salih (talk) 10:39, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I kind of like the Spanish version, but Vector 2022 forces the text to wrap in a weird way because it's so narrow. The Turkish version is pretty similar to en.wiki's, and wouldn't be much of an improvement. I also looked at the Chinese MP (fine, but too white) the French one (I quite like it, actually), and and what I believe is the Slovakian one, which I also quite like. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:58, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

@Cremastra Yes, I do agree with that, especially the Slovakian one. However, you know we still need ideas from other contributors, which can be challenging. Nevertheless, I will make an effort to advocate the idea of changing the main page design. Riad Salih (talk) 14:19, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

With all due respect, the gradients in the Slovakian one make it look very dated, like an early-2000s PowerPoint template. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:15, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the Slovakian one is too dated. I don't see any problems with the Spanish version under vanilla V22. Maybe swap POTD with On this day for slightly longer line lengths for the latter, make Other projects full-width (and maybe unbox it), and of course adapt ITN to our format, but I don't think the Spanish version needs any more changes. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:25, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I would concur that it's a good idea. IMO, some of the other Wikipedias have Main Pages that put enWP's one to shame. But as others have stated, good luck finding something that everyone can agree on. ― novov (t c) 08:38, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Is there something particular you feel is a problem with the current design? – Teratix ₵ 09:17, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that it’s probably best to make changes one by one, so that consensus would be more likely. Like one change per discussion. 71.239.86.150 (talk) 16:01, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Redesign it, but in a way that removes ITN and DYK. Both are massive investments for very little return, and much of the content they display is low quality. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:50, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Fucking excuse me? How the heck are the articles that we've vetted low quality? ITN gives us some global perspective and is one way readers could keep themselves up to date in current events. DYK makes everything a bit more fun for everyone and trivia is fun. Both highlight our utility as an online encyclopedia and good work on our behalf. Removing it would make no sense at all. It has worked, it is working, and it returns. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:51, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@Aaron Liu: The problem with opening remarks such as Fucking excuse me? is rather that they invite a retort along the lines of, yes, well, "fucking excuse you".

Regarding the gist—How the heck are the articles that we've vetted low quality—I think what Thebiguglyalien might be getting at is that simply undergoing a vetting process is insufficient; it is the quality of the vetting that is important, and so by extension, the quality of those doing the vetting. If, for example, ITN and DYN undergo a lightweight review which is perhaps keener on filling slots and reducing backlogs than ensuring the integrity of the main page, then it would be unsurprising, in some eyes, if these processes came under extra scrutiny, hein. Some might also argue that trivia—however much "fun" it is—is incompatable with an encyclopedia that aspires, where possible, to serious scholarship. HTH! ——Serial 16:30, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed explanation, though I don't think the vetting that we do is low-quality. At least at ITN we do a pretty big referencing pass.
I also wonder what you mean by "hein". A dictionary search shows that it is 1. surprisingly not German 2. Dutch for death 3. French and Portuguese for "huh?". Is that last one what you meant? Aaron Liu (talk) 17:10, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

@Aaron Liu:, indeed, I know no German or Dutch! But yes, a "huh" because I wasn't speaking for myself on the quality of the vetting, merely that it's a view (among others, of course, as you point out.) Cheers, ——Serial 17:14, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

User:Cremastra/MP looks fine to me. What do you think of the changes here? 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:49, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the work, but unfortunately I don't like it very much:

1. I don't know any good ways to fix this, but flushing the Welcome banner's text to the left leaves a lot of blank space in the rest of the box, making it feel weird.
2. We already have a search box; we don't need another one.
3. The third column has line lengths that are way too short in the limited width. That makes the excessive space to the right of the descriptions all the more jarring. And that is in my version of V22 enhanced with my private styles. Under the normal limited width all the columns have line lengths that are too short and the sister projects' descriptions run off the page.
4. Something feels wrong about the concept of giving that much prominence to our sister projects. Wikipedia readers are hardly gonna go there and this introduces a lot of colorful icons that clutter up your attention. Previously it'd only take attention when you scroll/look down and want to dedicate attention to it.
5. Lots of useless blank space under the third column.
6. Probably a bug, but Other areas of Wikipedia appears twice.

Aaron Liu (talk) 03:02, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

User:Cremastra/MP: using Galobtter's design for the main portion. I think a large prominent search box on the main page is a good idea, though, as opposed to a redundancy. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 16:59, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

That does look much better! Combining the search box with the first box seems alright, though maybe I'd use the tagline "Search free knowledge". I'd also recommend making the globe logo stick to the bottom of its box, replacing the whitespace between the first two boxes with a horizontal rule, and maybe put the occasional banner before that rule with a white background. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the search box, but I like the top banner otherwise, especially the logo in the bottom left. Galobtter (talk) 01:09, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think WPAds should be isolated. Maybe it could replace the search box.

Also, any ideas for how to eradicate that awkward gap below the image for the first box? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:20, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

There has been consensus to remove portal links, so the "Look through content portals" part should be omitted. ObserveOwl (chit-chat • my doings) 09:05, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I think the portal links should be omitted, especially since previous consensus is to do so. Also, I don't think that the Wikipedia Ad should be present, and I'm not sure about how the logo is presented. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:39, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

@QuicoleJR Oh, I just put in the ad for fun. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 18:49, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, ok. Still, the portal links need to go, and I'm not sure why we only display 1/4 of the globe logo. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:51, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean about the globe logo. The logo is visible on all pages. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 18:55, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I mean the corner of the globe that you placed next to "Welcome to Wikipedia!" QuicoleJR (talk) 21:32, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's common across Wikipedias, e.g., see fr:. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 21:56, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

It looks cool Aaron Liu (talk) 01:56, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

If we modernize it, I suggest we make it like eswiki's (which happens to be adapted from ruwiki's). It's OOUI, modernized and is in a familiar layout, though I might make the "other projects" part full-width. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I quite like eswiki's, but I would only change the style, and leave how ITN and etc are formatted as is. But, strongly support changing the "Welcome to Wikipedia" header Pksois23 (talk) 09:06, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I like the eswik's too, clean and simple Riad Salih (talk) 11:40, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I like it too Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:42, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

eswiki looks really good vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 13:44, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I think people will support a new main page design as soon as they're shown a new main page design that they like. I would encourage people who are so inclined to create and share mockups of new main page designs. Eventually someone will make something that enough people like. Levivich (talk) 17:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

BTW my 2c: make the main page, en.wikipedia.org, look much more like www.wikipedia.org: a minimalist interface, with a prominent search bar, to which I'd add prominent display of TFA and FP. Like maybe FP centered at the top, search bar below that, and TFA below that. But I'm no web designer though so I'm not sure exactly how that should all look. Levivich (talk) 17:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

This, but for WikiProjects, which are largely bland and uninviting. This is something I've felt for a long time, but have just now worked up the courage to say... so be nice. heh. (but isn't it obvious?) Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 07:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by a wikiproject redesign? Aaron Liu (talk) 12:34, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Too complicated to go into here. Probably best for discussion at the WikiProject Council. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:01, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Good luck. This is going to be harder than Vector 2022. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:35, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane I will quote you :"Ignore all rules and be the change that you want to see" so Idecided to take the initiative to make the first step. Riad Salih (talk) 00:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

And what would that be? Aaron Liu (talk) 00:26, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Is it possible to have, say, the current main page visible to users with the Vector legacy skin, but a main page similar to eswiki's for Vector 2022 users? This way we could keep up the "modern" look for Vector 2022, but keep the "legacy" style for Vector legacy. I just don't know if this is technologically feasible. ‍ Relativity 03:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

The current main page has no problems to view in Vector 2022. That said, it should be possible with CSS selectors. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

• I am dubious Why? No clear argument for why this would be desirable. Can we be sure it would not lower general accessibility depending on the device being used to access the site? I am not adamantly opposed to sprucing things up a bit. But the oft quoted adage "if it aint broke, don't fix it," definitely comes to mind. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:43, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
• I think where previous proposals have failed before is in trying to do many changes at the same time (e.g. changing the emphasis of different parts of the main page while also restyling it). Anyways I have a modest proposal, under the principal that less is more and that the boxes around everything is the most dated part of the main page, at User:Galobtter/sandbox/Main page. It could do more work from someone who actually knows how to design (I like ptwiki's main page header a lot and that could be incorporated), but all I did was basically remove unnecessary (imo) styling. Galobtter (talk) 06:13, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  Hey, I like that! Zanahary (talk) 06:34, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  I like that! It's simpler but clearer. Although something seems a little off with the header box, the lack of border makes it feel poorly-defined to me. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 13:45, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  I like it, but I think the margins around each section need to be a little more generous if there are no borders. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 15:17, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  I also like this. While we're at it, maybe align DYK with On this day Aaron Liu (talk) 16:26, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  That's done manually by admins each day since aligning depends on how much content is in each of the sections. Galobtter (talk) 23:17, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  Can't we add padding to the bottom of TFA, like ptwiki seems to do? Also the manual alignment doesn't seem to be working for me Aaron Liu (talk) 23:47, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  I like a lot of that, but (at least on Desktop on MonoBook) the colored section headers only seem to have a thin border on the bottom and nothing on the other 3 sides. Much better than the es.wiki one linked above, which is visually clean but seems to lack any sort of flavor. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:42, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  I think the border's supposed to be like the heading's border.
  I believe that whatever we think about the rest of it, we should adopt the first box of the eswiki/ruwiki main page. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:52, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  colored section headers only seem to have a thin border on the bottom and nothing on the other 3 sides is intentional - I wanted to have a simple header style rather than having an unnecessary box around the headers. Yeah, I liked ptwiki's a lot more than eswiki's, which is probably technically the "best" in terms of modernization but is too bland. Galobtter (talk) 23:17, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  My proposal would be to change the boxes to a very light gray and then remove the border. 71.239.86.150 (talk) 18:20, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  @Ahecht I added 1px of margin, which was missing since I removed the 1px border. It looks ok to me now, although you might be right that more margin is needed. @User:Cremastra I stole the box shadow from ptwiki - what do you think now?

  I want to avoid doing more with this, since I think that's where previous proposals have failed - people want some of the changes but not others so it ends up a whole mess. And since at least some people seem to like this, I might try to put it up for RfC soon, but want to make sure there aren't small tweaks needed to what I've done. Galobtter (talk) 00:24, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  I'd support it at the RfC stage, but unfortunately I doubt it would pass. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 00:40, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  Another idea would be to use light gray rounded rectangles, because rounded rectangles are a very common part of modern web design. 71.239.86.150 (talk) 13:47, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  Yes they're common but Wikipedia and mw:Codex, our design language, never use them. That would be completely alien to the rest of the encyclopedia. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:43, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  I have a visceral dislike for rounded rectangles, possibly because they are now so prevalent. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:49, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Probably, yes it is time, however the problem is not to change the design, it is how to herd the cats without them canabalizing themselves. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:14, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  What is that graphic metaphor supposed to mean? Aaron Liu (talk) 22:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  When you try to get a lot of people to make a decision together, they often spend more time attacking each other than they do collectively moving in any productive direction, if I understood the metaphor correctly. Levivich (talk) 23:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  What's needed is a brainstorming RfC process like is currently being done for RfA. This gives an opportunity for a variety of ideas to be suggested and we can then see what sticks. For example, I'm most interested in structural change -- amending the section order and content so that the featured picture and ITN swap places so that ITN can expand coverage of its recent death entries. Issues like this can't be resolved by the editors who maintain the individual sections and so an overall mainpage forum is needed. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:33, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think expanding coverage of RD entries is needed much, and the POTD often needs a dedicated row due to its image size.
  We're currently kinda designing some layouts, so a more formal workshopping process should begin when we have more proposals. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:01, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  If you go to one column, you won't have to worry about balance. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:17, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  That would be wasting a lot of space. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:06, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  No, that would be allowing the text and images to spread across the screen instead of being cramped into tiny corners. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:19, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  Why would we need all the text and images to spread across the screen? They don't gain anything from being wider. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:41, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  You don't think that a larger image and prose that isn't chopped into tiny sections that resemble the old "See spot. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run." children's books would be useful?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 01:51, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  As I don't have a childhood, I'm not sure what you're talking about.
  We do not have an overabundance of blurbs, blurb words, recent deaths or DYK hooks. Besides size limitations, there's a reason newspapers separate every single article into columns. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:59, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  As a mobile user, I quite like the one-column design. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:41, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

  The most popular view or Wikipedia is the mobile one and that's already one column. We should therefore be designing and optimising for that as the primary interface. The balance issue is absurd in that it often causes ITN admins to remove news entries -- form rather than function. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:31, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

  Remind me what happened the last time a bunch of editors thought Wikipedia was optimizing for the mobile view. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

  The most popular editing view for Wikipedia is desktop, not mobile. Alienating the site’s most essential users is a serious risk to take. If there had been no way to revert the Vector 2022 and recent line height changes, I would have been strongly alienated from Wiki and contributed way less. Zanahary (talk) 23:58, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

  Most editors are not allowed to edit the main page and so we have a frozen format which is alienating too. What's needed is a process for making changes which allows the main page to evolve. Perhaps there could be an annual update. During the year, there would be a beta test version to trial proposals and then a confirmation and release process at the end of each annual cycle. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:37, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think we'd need to change the main page every year. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:00, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  I agree. Maybe changing every 3 years would be a better idea. 71.239.86.150 (talk) 21:34, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  I feel like we should only change it if we should, not force a change every 3 years. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  I think we'd need to establish a list of a couple potential designs, and start an official RfC Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:49, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  An RfC which would unfortunately fail. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 19:46, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Cremastra Not necessarily, there's quite a few people in this thread who would support that idea. That's also what the purpose of an RfC is: gather consensus, and if it is a quick-fail, so be it. What do others think? Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 19:49, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  At least your (and Galobtter's) small upgrade would probably pass. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:03, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  I wouldn't bet on it. :/ 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:10, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

• This proposal may have met with a more favourable response if the proposer had suggested some concrete ways in which s/he would like the Main Page changed. I do have a suggestion, and that is we could include a box listing some of the new articles in Wikipedia in Wikipedia: Main Page. I do not know how many new articles are created on Wikipedia each day, but it could be dozens, and we only need to list a handful of them to make the Main Page show Wikipedia is a developing project. YTKJ (talk) 22:16, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  nominally, that'd be DYK. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 22:18, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  But not all the articles listed at DYK are new articles. I was hoping some recent change patrollers could enlighten me as to how many articles are likely to be created on Wikipedia each day, to know whether my suggestion is tenable. YTKJ (talk) 22:21, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  DYKRULES require the article to be created, expanded fivefold or made GA this week. That's basically articles which are either new or newly worth featuring. A stub which occupied the title of this week's good work for a decade shouldn't block it from DYK. Certes (talk) 22:30, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  That's a great idea! I support it Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 22:18, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  And most of those articles are probably pretty bad. DYK fills that role, and DYK is at least slightly vetted. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:19, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  A DYK hook can be extracted from nearly every article that satisfies DYK's very basic criteria. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:50, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support a redesign With V22 rolling out, the main page has become quite squashed, with very short line lenghts, tiny images, and a general bloated feel. It would be great to redesign this, probably by stealing ideas from other editing communities. The Spanish Wikipedia design would definitely get support from me, but I think we can make this into a more responsive design, so that we can use modern screen sizes more optimally. There are two columns, so the arguments for V22 giving up screen space are not transferable. Easiest is probably taking one small step at a time. Is it possible to widen the main page in V22? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

  Since I've noticed that many people prefer the Spanish version, I believe we should focus on structuring this discussion more effectively now. Riad Salih (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yep. We should start a prototype and maybe an official RfC once we have a good example of what it'd look like. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 18:49, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

  Would creating styles in the template namespace just for a sandbox in userspace to include templatestyles be an abuse of the template namespace? Aaron Liu (talk) 19:11, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

  Nevermind, there's Template:TemplateStyles sandbox! Aaron Liu (talk) 19:15, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

There is already a different Main Page on the app

Nobody ever seems to mention this, so I think it might just not be generally known -- seriously, go look if you don't believe me -- there is a different Main Page on the app with completely different sections that are not put together by the editing community. It has totally different stuff, some sections are missing and there are sections that only show up on the app's main page, et cetera. jp×g🗯️ 05:03, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Not really? The sections are Featured article, On this day, Featured image, Most visited articles, and Random article. It's not totally different by any means, and I don't think it needs consideration when we think about a main page redesign. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:28, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

So is someone going to let the people at DYK and FLC know that they were deemed unimportant and removed from the main page, then? If this is just being done unilaterally by the fiat of app developers, does it really matter what the community decides should be there? jp×g🗯️ 15:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

It matters, because most people use the website. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:42, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

If consensus determines that there are specific objections to the landing page in the mobile app, that discussion can be brought to developers for changing it. — Frostly (talk) 02:54, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@JPxG to be fair, unless I'm really misreading things it should be noted that almost nobody looks at the Main Page using the app, so fussing over that isn't a big deal. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:37, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@Xaosflux That's because the app doesn't use the main page as its landing page, and that's what JPxG's talking about, though I consider it irrelevant. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:29, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

When it comes to modern design, the Wikimedia Foundation understands that initiating random discussions here on Wikipedia can be challenging, as it is difficult to satisfy everyone, and people often resist adapting to new changes. Riad Salih (talk) 22:14, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

And thereby decides it has the authority to unilaterally override the community? While I don't really care what the app does since I don't use it the principles there are fundamentally wrong. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

It's not possible because the app exposes all the versions, so, how will you decide which style to use? If you ask each community separately, it will take years to reach a consensus. Riad Salih (talk) 22:24, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Proposal: Add a link to the WP:Contents page either on the Main Page itself or on the mobile sidebar

I found that it is very hard to get to the WP:Contents page in mobile view. Instead, I would have to search for in the search bar and go into desktop view to access it. I am proposing that we include this page somewhere on the main page. No opinion on where to put it on the main page, but my first thought would be to put it the other areas of Wikipedia section. Please comment with your thoughts below. Interstellarity (talk) 00:21, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

There is a link to WP:Contents/Portals already there. Having both that and WP:Contents would probably be redundant - which one is more useful on the main page? Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 00:47, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I would support a swap from the portals link to the contents link. Interstellarity (talk) 01:10, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

The portals link was added to that box as a small concession after we decided to remove the more prominent portal links at the top of the Main Page. I'm not saying that's a reason to keep it, but just historical context you should know.

I think there's a larger underlying problem here of it being difficult to access sidebar links in mobile generally. Some links are justifiably not present there, as they relate to tasks better done on a desktop, but the contents page seems useful to everyone. I'd like to see an effort to push the developers to refine the links there. Sdkb ^talk 14:42, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't use either Contents/Portals or Contents regularly, but it seems that they are fairly equivalent, and the Portals look much nicer and have more links. I don't see the point of replacing the Portals with Contents alone – @Interstellarity, could you please explain why you find Contents more useful than Portals? Toadspike (talk) 10:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

@Toadspike: Sure thing. The contents page is the main gateway for browsing Wikipedia. While most people search for a specific article, it would be helpful for people like me that like to browse Wikipedia. On mobile, the contents page is not easily accessible compared to desktop so I think in this way, we can make it more accessible in mobile. The contents page has a lot of ways to browse Wikipedia by category. Whether people like overview articles by category like looking for some wars going on in the history section or looking at vital, good, and featured articles, it's a great way to be able to browse what Wikipedia has to offer. I hope you consider my reasoning and that you understand where I'm coming from. Interstellarity (talk) 12:57, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

I understand these goals, but I think WP:Contents/Portals does basically the same thing, and seems to work on mobile as well. Toadspike (talk) 14:23, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:Contents is the second link in the sidebar. If that doesn't appear on mobile, that is a problem with the mobile view not the Main Page. We shouldn't add redundant links for desktop users just for the convenience of mobile users, especially for such an obscure and little-used page (the page views tool shows it is the least used link in that part of the sidebar). Incidentally, the correct place to suggest changes to the Main Page is T:MP, not here. Modest Genius ^talk 11:15, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

To your last sentence—not necessarily. The last major mainpage redesign (Removal of portal links from Main Page) was proposed and passed here. In any case, I suspect this page is much more watched. Aza24 (talk) 04:22, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Bring back the Book Creation Tool.

The Book Creation Tool was an amazing, fantastic, super useful tool. It is an obligation to bring it back. Cheers. MikeYahooCom (talk) 05:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@MikeYahooCom Do you have a link to what it would look like/an old documentation, so we have more detail on what it'd be about? Cheers Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:29, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@MikeYahooCom @Cocobb8I believe Special:Book was removed from Wikisources because it was broken and redundant to a newer tool, but it appears to work on enwiki (see Special:Book) 😸 Cremastra (talk) 13:56, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@MikeYahooCom, to be more specific, go to Help:Books and click on the link in this section. You can enable the tool and it will appear at the top of pages you are reading. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:19, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and the advice. But it used to be that you could aggregate topics/chapters and download all of them in PDF in the format of a PDF book, just by clicking download. It would download it and create the index, with page numbers and chapters. All of it in one unified PDF document.

It really was a great tool for creating, in seconds, a PDF book of topics you liked including an index, page numbers and all.

Really never understood why it was eliminated. MikeYahooCom (talk) 01:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@MikeYahooCom: The Book: namespace was removed more than two years ago, see Wikipedia:Books. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:16, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately (that relatively little used) feature was provided by a 3rd party and that 3rd party wasn't able to keep that integration up with the changes of Mediawiki and Wikimedia for 8 years, after which it broke and there is no easy way to restore or rebuild that without significant investment. (i'm not blaming the 3rd party, I'm pretty sure it wasn't exactly sustainable on their end either, they haven't even updated their website since). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:00, 10 April 2024 (UTC)