User talk:Shanes/Why tags are evil

Great rant

Great rant :-) --Elian ^Talk 14:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Spoiler tags

Well, I agree with your critique of the use of the vandalism protection tags. Those viewing Wikipedia solely for the purpose of reading are disturbed for no good reason, and these are probably the majority of visitors. Your "solution" that the tag should be placed on the discussion page does not seem correct, for now you are assuming that the majority of people who actually try to edit Wikipedia are familiar with discussion pages. I strongly feel that when an article is protected and a given user cannot edit for any reason, when he presses the "edit" tab he should be brought to a special page where an explanation is given why he is unable to edit the article in question. That would be the appropriate place for those tags, although once such a mechanism is in place the need for using tags is questionable (just using redirects to standard warning pages would seem a better solution).

On the other hand, I strongly disagree with your dismissal of the "spoiler tag" as unencyclopedic. I am sure you are correct that some uses of spoiler tags, such as the one you cite in "Romeo and Juliet", are either hard to justify or just wrong. But I think you are confusing "unencyclopedic" with "un-paper-encyclopedic". Yes, there are no "spoiler tag" warnings in paper encyclopedias. On the other hand, paper encyclopedia articles also don't have "Trivia" sections which could easily mention plot details of literary or cinematic works which are only vaguely associated with the main subject of an article. For example, if a famous scene of a famous movie is filmed in a particular location which is largely more interesting for other reasons, it strikes me as perfectly reasonable that there be a spoiler warning before revealing the details of the scene when citing it as an interesting but minor piece of information in the article about the location. See Agatha Christie for a spoiler warning which I feel is much more justifiable.

In fact, I would argue that the text-only spoiler tag is the kind of protection mechanism I'd expect in a paper encyclopedia and that information which is justifiably protected by such a tag in Wikipedia should by default not be visible until the user takes voluntary action (one obvious possibility being his clicking the warning). TheGoblin 19:54, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe there are any spoiler warnings in Encarta or the online version of Britannica. But I don't see why paper or not paper has anything to do with it. A serious encyclopedia doesn't have big spoiler tags in them IMO, paper or not. An encyclopedia is supposed to give information and shouldn't "warn" readers about having it. I'm guessing the reason we started having them here is that people editing these articles (on movies and computer-games in particular) are more used to reading online-forums and usenet-groups on these topics than they are with reading (or writing) encyclopedic articles on the same. It can also be seen in how people approach writing about fiction, they tend to write it from the fictional universe's perspective and it makes the article look more like some fan-site on the topics than an encyclopedia. This is a policy draft I support, but which I think will have a hard time for us to get widely implemented because it's too different from what people interested in many fictional universes are used to. Shanes 10:26, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't have access to Encarta or Britannica on-line, so I cannot check what their editorial policy is with respect to spoilers or spoiler tags. I also wonder how much information there is in these and other non-wiki encyclopedias about recent popular culture, the vast majority of which won't be interesting to future generations, and which is therefore perhaps not actually encyclopedic at all. Due to the way non-wiki encyclopedias have traditionally been written, they exclude the majority of information which is not already proven to be encyclopedic. Therefore I would be surprised to find in these encyclopedias the vast quantity of articles and references to popular culture which do exist in Wikipedia. This leads to a simple explanation why the non-wiki encyclopedias don't have spoiler tags: they almost never contain real spoilers (as you pointed out, references to plot details of "Romeo and Juliet" and other classics probably should not be considered real spoilers), and therefore never felt the need to adopt the spoiler tag from Internet culture. (E.g., when I searched for the quoted phrase "raiders of the lost ark" in Britannica without being registered, the three articles which came up did not include an article on the movie itself.)

In contrast, because of the nature of Wikipedia it is filled with information about popular culture such as recent books and movies, most of which without the lasting value of "Romeo and Juliet". Yes, these articles and references shouldn't even be in Wikipedia if we would judge their worth by the standards of non-wiki encyclopedias, but they are there. Not only that, official Wikipedia policy would seem to support their existence (m:Wiki is not paper, section "No Size Limits"). Spoiler tags serve a useful purpose because of this. TheGoblin 20:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Checking a few book and movie articles on the German Wikipedia, I can't find a single spoiler warning there. I wouldn't be surprised if the Germans have got this right as well. Maybe you will find this interesting. The vote/discussion there is quite contrary to the recent debate concerning the deletion of the spoiler template. --Lightlike 20:20, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! Very interesting, indeed. How the German speaking wikipedians and the English-speaking ones can have such different oppinion on this is striking. I have really no good explenation, but it must be a culture thing. Maybe german speaking people are more used to reading encyclopedias. I don't know. Shanes 10:26, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

What about icons?

I agree with you that the big boxy tags at the top are something quite atrocious. How do you feel about the little icons in the top right-hand corner? I can't think of any examples at the moment. But those, I feel, are unobtrusive and friendly, whilst still telling people something. They could link to a full notice explaining what they mean. What do you think about coming in the night and changing all of the tags into top-right icons? It would be quite easy to change the templates (unless they are protected). —Daniel (‽) 16:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, using an icon is fine with me. There were some concerns over the icons not displaying well in some skins, but I feel those are minor problems. And the icon version was used for some 10 days a while back, but it was all of a sudden reverted back. Shanes 18:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Using icons instead of the multitude of these template messages would in my honest opinion be a great idea that would make the encyclopedia more aesthetically appealing and less confusing to new readers. It'd be a huge project to undertake, though, wouldn't it? I mean, we already have the FA star, and the icon for the spoken word article, and the padlock for protection... but that's it, as far as I know. I personally wouldn't know how to go about implementing such changes, and where to inform people of them. Maybe I could apply WP:IAR and just DIY...--HisSpaceResearch 01:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The icon I had in mind when writing this way back then was just for protections. Now we have the {{sprotected2}} template that implements exactly this, so what remains there is just to make that template more widely used up to the point that the old {{sprotected}} box can be ditched all together. I haven't thought about icons replacing other tags. I've always felt that big boxes about how an article can be improved belong on the talk page along with other comments, suggestions and discussions about the article. But maybe your idea about having other icons in the article reflecting what is missing (wikifying, spell checking, missing footnotes, image requests, various "current" tags, etc) could be implemented as icons as well. This could be a compromise that might get support from both the people who like the tags in the article and those who don't. To make it look good, it might be best implemented by having a dedicated field somewhere in all articles which might need mediawiki-support to look good. The current icons you mentioned are just added through a javascript hack, and there are limits to how many we can have of those, and they also break some skins. Hmm, I like this. I feel Wikipedia is drowning in tags and meta-boxes now. Every possible article flaw has its tag, and people are spreading them around everywhere without any concern that it makes the articles look really bad. Shanes 10:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've experimented and have managed to come up with {{Original research2}}, based on {{Original research}}. Although {{Original research}} might be a slightly obsolete tag given WP:NOR has recently been superceded by WP:ATT, I am pleased with my experiments and seem to have got my new template to work successfully on Beavis and Butt-head and Fearless (Family album), two articles previously tagged with {{Original research}}. Now if anyone knows anything about Wikipedia bots, and I create more tags like this one, we could replaces all tags such as {{Original research}} with {{Original research2}}. I'll put it to the village pump, as I've said on my user page. Also, I don't know how to create new .svg files, which could be a problem with the {{unreferenced}} tag as one example which doesn't have its own picture to use as an icon in the top corner.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 02:52, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not getting much positive feedback from the village pump. They're all claiming that it's necessary for readers of Wikipedia to be notified by a big ugly box instantly, and that an icon in itself does not let people know the major problems with a page.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 04:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

And now they've all been deleted. Seems like the rest of Wikipedis doesn't think tags are evil at all.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 10:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Two out of three ain't bad . . .

Great rant, Shanes. I had never thought about these issues, at least, not nearly as consciously as you have. I totally agree with you on the protection and current tags, and I tend to disagree respectfully with you on the spoiler tags. Now here's my question: How do we make this happen? Are we vandals if we start moving these tags to, say, the bottom of the article? Unschool 16:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it vandalism, improving articles in good faith isn't vandalism. But it's likely that some of the people who like articles to start with these intrusive boxes will revert you and ask you to engage in never-ending discussions about the issue first and tell you that there isn't "consensus" for moving/removing them. I don't know if it is, but I know that the manual of style is clear about that articles should start with a sentence explaining the subject, i.e. not with a big box about how "current" the topic is or what the editing status on Wikipedia is for that article. There were lots of discussions about the use and look of the sprotected tag on Template talk:Sprotected a few months back, but it sort of died out after we had first reached some agreement on only using an icon, but then have it all being reverted back 10 days later and full-protected by the person who had made the box to begin with. I guess the people who make these boxes are proud of them, or something. We now have all sorts of "current" and "future" boxes. The latest I've seen is Template:In space, about how quickly the bio on some astronaut might change as the mission progresses. Yeah, right. I've mostly given up the issue myself. I just never add the tags myself, and when there are discussions about them, I voice my opinion if I feel up for it. But I tend to get rather angry when seeing people arguing for how great these tags are, so for the sake of my own well being, I try not to get too involved. Shanes 21:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

About spoiler tags on the German wikipedia

There is meta page on the German wikipedia about this. The general argument for prohibiting spoiler tags on the German wikipedia goes: A reader comes to an encyclopedia to learn about a certain topic and that it is very irritating to put tags in places where the editors suspects to be information the reader might not want to learn about. The simple solution: If you don't want to lead the reader into learning about the plot, leave the choice to the reader and simply put a headline that says "plot" over the section that deals with the plot, thereby giving all the neccessary indication in the form of continuous text the rest of the article should use as well. --84.137.60.59 14:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. Unschool 20:12, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Well said

This has to be one of the most sane, lucid, and well-considered essays on wikipedia editing etiquette that I have read to date. I wish we could just put it to a vote and make it happen. Jerry lavoie 17:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC) I am the user now called Jerry 16:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. How do we put something like this up for a vote? Where does this sort of thing get decided? Unschool 20:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

When, where and how to use various tags/templates are usually discussed on the talk page of the respective templates, or the relevant policy page. There have been previous discussions on the use of spoiler warnings on Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning, Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning/RfC and Template talk:Spoiler. The use of protection tags has been discussed on various pages, like Template talk:Sprotected, Template talk:Sprotected2, and Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy. In general not that much has come out of it, except the introduction of the sprotected2 template, which is great, but where there is still disagreement on when it should be used. For general information on how to make something a policy, see Wikipedia:How to create policy. Discussions over suggestions are often made on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), though I don't know how many people follow that page. Shanes 21:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Sprotected2

I'm glad to hear the creation of the Sprotected2 template I made has benefited you :) — Moe 00:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed it did! Thank you very much! Shanes 01:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Argh

You just spoiled Romeo & Juliet for me!

Sorry.. couldn't resist. Bellpepper 20:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Recent Discussion elsewhere

I was recently engaged in a discussion elsewhere with another editor, in which I asserted the logic and intent of this essay was pertinent to stacking of deletion and maintenance templates on newly-created articles. The article in question no longer exists (for good reasons), but I am left with a lingering concern about a lack of policy in regard to what I call template stacking. The article was a new one, obviously created by a new user who was not aware of our notability procedure. The article was not speedied or prodded (although it was a clear candidate for speedy), but rather put up for AfD right away. An editor reviewing the AfD thought it was a good candidate for Speedy, so in addition to !voting that way at the AfD, he added a CSD template to the article, below the existing AfD template. Another editor, also a visitor to the AfD, added a "an editor has expressed concern about..." template below the other two. The actual article was 1 inch in height on my browser (MSIE 1024x768), and the stack of templates was 3 inches.

My concern is that in such an early stage of editing, several outcomes could have occurred which are beneficial to the editor who created the article and all readers who happen to read the article during this time:

• The editor could have been messaged with relevant links to the WP policies on notability, and after reviewing them, he could have requested the CSD him or herself. The result would have been a non-bitten newbiee and no distraction to readers.
• Failing that, the article could have been put up for Speedy Deletion. If the editor disagreed, and put the hangon template on it, he could have had time to finish writing it and to make a case for inclusion.
• Failing that, the speedy and hangon templates could have been removed, and somebody could have used the PROD process. This would have included a single template on the article for a period of review.
• Failing that, the prod template could have been removed and the article could have been nominated per normal AfD procedures and templates.

Instead, the editor who added the article was never consulted, and a stack of templates arrived at his article in a short period of time. He probably got pissed off and went away forever, and any readers who went to the page would have gotten confused by the messages, and may have left forever as well.

So Shanes, I would like to ask you if the spirit and intention of your essay also apply to deletion process and maintenance template stacking?

Thanks, Jerry 15:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

The essay I wrote almost a year ago came mostly out of frustration for the many self-referencing tags that people put on top of articles. I strongly feel that articles should be about the article topic and that we should use self-references (i.e. tags not about the topic, but about the Wikipedia-article on that topic) only in exceptional cases. To communicate flaws or give suggestions on how an article can be improved should almost always be made on talk-pages in my opinion. That's what talk pages are for. But I do think AfD or CfD-tags should be in the article, as it clearly is important whether or not an article should stay on Wikipedia, and we need readers of the article to give input to the discussion. And the tag is only temporarily.

But I agree with you that tagging new articles just minutes after its creation is bad. We should give the editor some time to edit it first. Many editors, especially new ones, like to make small incremental edits to see how changes look. And if we start "punishing" the article with tags right after the first edit, it can indeed feel very discouraging to the editor. Not only that, but editing a very new article that someone is in the middle of creating and improving can introduce edit-conflicts which might be the single most confusing thing a new editor can experience. And, finally, if someone nominates an article for deletion because the first version was very short and didn't really attribute any sources or explain why the subject is notable, the very next edit might fix all these flaws and thereby making the whole deletion-reason void. So tagging new articles right away is bad for many reasons. And it is discouraged on various policy-pages as well. See for instance WP:CSD.

But to excuse some of the early speedy-taggers, patrolling new articles on Wikipedia is a rather tedious job, and I can understand why people who spot a very inferior article just tag it right away instead of waiting an hour (as they should ideally) before returning to see if the article has improved. So I can understand it, but it really is just laziness and we shouldn't be doing it.

So I agree with you. We should wait some time before nominating a very new article for deletion (exception for pure attack pages and very, very obvious prank/test-articles). And regarding tag-stacking new articles with various dominating "fix-me" and "this-article-sucks" tags that so many people like to spread around on top of articles, I'm very much opposed to them. Explain on the talk page instead, or send the editor a message about how you think the article can be improved. It's a bit more work, but it's much nicer and polite both regarding the new editor making his first baby-steps here, but also much more considerate to our readers who don't know what the word "Wikify" means, and who shouldn't be distracted by off-topic tags like that. Shanes 16:48, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Unschool suggested I read this page as he had seen similar thoughts which I have written. It seems that there are more people who agree on this issue than is at first apparent please see Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article and its talk page. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Spoiler

Note that there have been several efforts to get rid of the spoiler tag, and that most other-language wikis don't have one, and that many people such as myself use CSS to hide those tags. One of those perennial debates. >Radiant< 11:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Info Boxes

Good stuff .. I hadn't thought deeply about any of this but now it is mentioned I see that all these things must be banished asap onto talk pages or hidden away in disgrace.

"many people such as myself use CSS to hide those tags" - how would this work? (I know about CSS but not wiki-wise.)

Could something equally eloquent be written on the topic of info-boxes which seem to me to be worse still as they are a permanent feature of the article and often leave no room for anything much on the first screen except the contents tag ... and what about that too ... I would like it to disappear when I 'hide' it, not sit there in full view albeit diminished. -- roundhouse 14:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

There are usually instructions on either the particular template page, or on its talk page, on how to add a line to your personal wikipedia css-file to hide stuff. But I don't like hiding these things myself. I am writing this encyclopedia for the readers and want to see the articles as the vast majority of them do, i.e. with all the default stuff in there. Us hard core editors removing tags and boxes just for ourselves, because we can and know how, while everyone else will have to see them wouldn't be us eating our own dog food.

Regarding info boxes, I can see the same problem there. But the issue is more complicated. It's rather normal for an encyclopedia to have boxes in articles that separate out key information. It usually makes the article easier to read and, well, look nicer. Some encyclopedias use this layout more than others. How much they use it, i.e. how much information is put in fact-boxes instead of (or in addition to) information in prose, is an editorial decision. But info boxes on top of articles should be kept small and only for a very limited number of key data. The beginning of an article is the most important and read part, and we should use that space wisely. I often argue that wikiprojects should have more power (it's the best way for us to scale, IMO), and if, say, wikiproject Dog Breads comes to an agreement on how infoboxes should look and what they should contain in articles on various dogs, I'm fine with that. But often wikiprojects have overlapping articles and they disagree on how infoboxes in articles should look and be structured. And there's also the issue of presenting a consistent look across all topics. So it's complicated. Shanes 16:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

A suggestion...

Great point. Obviously helpful as an editor, but from the point of view of a reader I can imagine it being quite annoying. In fact, before I started editing Wikipedia (August 2006) there were far less of these round.

Anyway, I have a suggestion: Perhaps do your idea of smaller icons or maybe just make it so that they are only visible (like HTML comments are) on the edit page, not the article (with the possible exception of unsourced articles, really current events, and some others -- which should be made less intrusive like you said). Personally, I think that the spoiler warning should stay. --Jatkins (talk | contribs) 16:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Regardless, I assume that this would require a change in the Manual of Style, and that we can't just not add tags. But hiding them from all users (unless css class="very important") with CSS is a great idea which I hadn't though of. --Jatkins (talk | contribs) 16:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

New Cleanup Icon

Shanes, your wonderful rant continues to make waves. User:Notmyhandle has now created a small icon to go into the upper right corner and replace the hideous cleanup tag. Please take a look at it, and then, assuming you like it, go to Template talk:Cleanup, and leave a supporting comment. Unschool 14:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I made a whole string of icons like that one and the templates were ALL deleted in a TfD discussion.--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 07:24, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Comments and caution

I pretty much agree with you. I think the protected pages and current events are the same issue. Spoilers is completely different issue and I happen to more or less agree with you, but I don't think the problem is that they are self references. The problem is they are needless. If in the film, This is Not A Real Film the murderer is John and you find that out in the end then the plot summary should not mention it at the beginning. Film criticism is different because critics will mention the parts they find to be important and you should always expect there to be spoilers mixed in. If articles are written properly then it shouldn't be a big deal. But, it's still a separate issue from the first two.

But, here's why I think your first two are correct. Vandalism needlessly assumes the person will edit. Instead, having view page sources and if they click that there should be a clearly visible message saying why they can't edit. That way only editors are shown the message. Over time people will realize that view source = can't edit. For current events if they people are actually reading the articles they know it's a current event.

Here is where I have problems with where this is going... the proposal for the small cleanup box. The cleanup box tells readers about the state of the article. Yeah, it's also to tell editors to fix up the page but this is important for the reader to know as well. If a page needs to be cleaned up then readers should know... just like if there are concerns about references or neutrality readers should also know. The goal in this policy should be to do the least damage. Use section NPOV / unreferenced tags when possible. But some things readers should know because while they are self-references the provide the reader important information. We don't want readers to be misled by pages. I think it's clear that NPOV and unreferenced should stay. Cleanup and wikify aren't as important for the reader but I still think they provide a service... so, I don't want this feeling of "make Wikipedia look professional" lead us to remove notices which serve to inform readers about problems in our articles. They don't need to the article is protect and they don't need a neon sign saying it's current. But they need to know when an article is dirty, inaccurate or otherwise. gren グレン 03:08, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, see comment from me with same date-stamp. LeProf.

Canute the Great - TAG

I just want to say I appreciate your descision to remove the tag here. I thought it was goin to have to be a featured article or something before the tag was taken off. I can assure you I will continue to add references as they become available to me. Hopefully by the end of the summer: as far as my references go. Lets just say - Its certainly good to see the lack of citations box no more. I might suggest an article class system (with perfect in the regions of the year 3000). This could be an editor notice, or maybe a notice at the bottom. At the top info boxes if anything discourage contributors and readers alike (generally). Once again... regards!!!!

WikieWikieWikie (talk) 20:16, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

^{Did you see?}

^{Shhhhh, don't tell anyone, but have you looked carefully at WP:LEAD lately? I can't figure out who snuck it in and why, but take a look at the references section. Unschool (talk) 02:39, 27 October 2008 (UTC)}

The biggest victory yet!

Shanes, I can't believe I missed this discussion until it was already over! Saw it on the Signpost, and wow, it's just one more example of how you were totally ahead of the curve. You are the Michael Jordan of Wikipedia. Thanks! Unschool 06:39, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

That is good news! I didn't know about that discussion either. The Future-templates are/were among the most stupid and annoying ones, and they were everywhere. Glad someone finally stepped up and did something about it. Shanes (talk) 07:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Woot Woot!

Great article, IMHO. I was just noticing some heavily tagged articles earlier today. One of the reasons I love Wikipedia is for it's lack of adverts. And many/(most?) tag boxes resemble adverts. Especially in terms of how they affect the flow of the avereage reader. While some may, at times, be useful and relevant article pages, many which refer to editorial functions 'under-the-hood' should stay there. 'Under-the-hood' that is. Edit pages, Talk pages, and perhaps User pages but not Article pages. Or at least not at the top. Following or in a sidebar perhaps.

Well, that's my bit scribbled in the dust of this page.

Thanks Shanes,

--Kevjonesin (talk) 18:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, as a professional, and regular editor, I simply disagree

Tags are one of the few ways to alert readers that the material that they are about to encounter should be approached with suspicion. If wikipedia editors in general do not wish articles to be viewed with suspicion, they should organize to stop tolerating the rampant abuse of WP principles, esp. of POV and citation, the latter abuse flying in the face of academic understandings of plagiarism (which includes lifting of ideas, see also WP:Plagiarism). Allowing multi-year presence of sentences, paragraphs, and entire sections of factual (non-common knowledge, non-segue) material to appear without citation must end, and without tag messages, there is little hope to stimulate change, or to prevent our intellectually misleading readers until change occurs. To allow this travesty to continue is to say "trust us, this is true", and a tag is often the only way to alert the reader that they might be foolish to do so. I write this comment as a regular editor in the sciences, who teaches and publishes in the standard press, but who cannot allow students to use Wikipedia articles in the sciences for the inaccuracies and misattributions they very often contain (see article Refrigerant), and/or the poor standards of intellectual honesty that are maintained (see article Species), and so poor examples of science exposition that they indeed are. LeProf. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.179.92.36 (talk) 14:26, 5 December 2013 (UTC)