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**{{ping|Justlettersandnumbers}} [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-proposal-extremely-bad-news-everyone-even-especially-wikipedia this article outlines the direct threats of the law to Wikipedia (and more generally why its a terrible idea)]. [[User:John Cummings|John Cummings]] ([[User talk:John Cummings|talk]]) 19:59, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
**{{ping|Justlettersandnumbers}} [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-proposal-extremely-bad-news-everyone-even-especially-wikipedia this article outlines the direct threats of the law to Wikipedia (and more generally why its a terrible idea)]. [[User:John Cummings|John Cummings]] ([[User talk:John Cummings|talk]]) 19:59, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
* '''Support''' Before it is too late. [[User:Yann|Yann]] ([[User talk:Yann|talk]]) 20:42, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
* '''Support''' Before it is too late. [[User:Yann|Yann]] ([[User talk:Yann|talk]]) 20:42, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
*'''Strong oppose''' - {{small|Copied from the recent proposal for a Net Neutrality banner, after reading much of this discussion (I can't say it any clearer than this). I'll note that something does not need to be "partisan" to be political by my understanding and use of the word. First definition at m-w.com: "of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government".}}<br />Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a platform for political statements supported by a majority of the few editors who happen to show up in a discussion on this page. That's regardless of the merits of the issues or how Wikipedia might be affected by them. We are Wikipedia editors, not political activists (although each of us is free to be a political activist off-wiki). In my view, this proposal should go the way of the proposal to show an anti-Trump statement before the U.S. presidential election. Furthermore, I think we should consider an explicit policy against using the encyclopedia as a platform for political statements. &#8213;[[User:Mandruss|<span style="color:#775C57;">'''''Mandruss'''''</span>]]&nbsp;[[User talk:Mandruss|<span style="color:#999;">&#9742;</span>]] 21:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)


===WAIT, how is this political?===
===WAIT, how is this political?===

Revision as of 21:18, 7 June 2018

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 
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New ideas and proposals are discussed here. Before submitting:


Proposal: A US-only CentralNotice in support of Net Neutrality

After two weeks of discussion, and multiple comments from both the support and oppose sides, regardless of any good intentions made in this discussion, with a near-even split in !votes (55 supports and 56 opposes as of this closure), it's clear that there is no clear consensus to post this at this point. I'm aware that I participated in this discussion, but given that discussion has slowed down and the !vote count, keeping this open longer would likely not have affect the final outcome regardless. Any further discussion is welcomed in the subsequent sections, which remain open. (non-admin closure). Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 13:16, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

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

Proposal: A US-only CentralNotice in support of Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality is the principle that service providers should treat all Internet traffic as equal, and not discriminate on the basis of origin, destination, or type of data. Net Neutrality protects people's access to knowledge by prohibiting internet service providers from blocking, slowing, or prioritizing data traffic for a fee.

The Wikimedia Foundation and several US Wikimedia affiliates have come out in support of Net Neutrality in the United States, as well as the efforts in Congress to keep the Open Internet rules in place. Just as the Foundation considers Net Neutrality as essential for access to knowledge, the Wikimedia community should realize that equal access to knowledge is important to our mission and knowledge equity and act accordingly. The concern is that if access to Wikipedia and/or its sources is slowed, or allowed only as part of a paid premium, this could gravely harm our fundamental mission to provide free access to knowledge for all. Any restricted access could reduce the quality of articles and reduce the diversity of contributors who create and maintain Wikipedia’s content. If access is limited in a way that restricts access to sources we use to create Wikipedia articles, that hinders our mission of delivering free knowledge.

This proposal is to gauge the community's interest in presenting a banner to US-based viewers of the English Wikipedia, which would show the importance of Net Neutrality to Wikipedia's mission and encourage further reading and action. A landing page with more details has been produced here. A proposed banner with expandable information is previewable here, with a preview of its unexpanded form as follows:


Free knowledge depends on net neutrality.
We are asking for your support.

LEARN WHY AND TAKE ACTION

The reason this proposal is being brought up now is that on May 9, a petition will be filed in the U.S. Senate to force a vote on a bill to block the FCC's December repeal of net neutrality rules. The bill currently has bipartisan support from half the Senators, and only one more vote is needed for the bill to pass in the Senate.

In general, Wikipedia should remain non-partisan and non-political; however, Wikipedia's own mission of free and open knowledge for all is a political one, and the community must support public policy when that policy is vital to protecting its mission. Just this week the German Wikipedia ran a banner to support European Union copyright reform; in the past, banners were run in South Africa in support of freedom of panorama, and banners were run in Australia to support fair use. This proposed Net Neutrality geo-targeted banner would be in line with previous community efforts to support policies in the best interest of Wikimedia.

Some may remember SOPA and PIPA, two other laws that would have radically altered how the internet is used in the United States in a way that negatively impacted our mission. A Wikipedia blackout and banner was instrumental in turning public and legislative opinion against these detrimental bills. We're not going for a blackout this time, but hope that a US-focused banner can direct attention to the issue and preserve Net Neutrality by promoting a grassroots effort to convince Congress to act.

Thank you.

Further reading:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gamaliel (talk • contribs) 19:00, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Survey: A US-only CentralNotice in support of Net Neutrality

  • I'm puzzled by the assertion that "net neutrality is not in the interest of the global Wikimedia movement". Wikipedia Zero was a necessary step in countries where the situation is not ideal and net neutrality is not in place, but I doubt anyone participating in that would trade real net neutrality for a workaround like WZ. The Foundation (was in charge of WZ) has publicly come out strongly in favor of NN, so they seem to think it *is* in the best interest of our global movement, as do many in the Wikimedia volunteer community. Gamaliel (talk) 19:21, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a political reality in the states, the Foundation has to support net neutrality , but as a large player in the online marketplace, we are much more likely to benefit from Net Neutrality not existing than be hurt by it. We are the website run by a large organization that people complain about getting preferential treatment. The simple fact is that by our size and reputation, the ability to get preferential treatment from ISPs could actually help our mission of spreading free knowledge. We aren't the small startup website that someone is running from their home. We're an international organization that is the 5th most visited website in the world. People could use us as the reason to oppose Net Neutrality if they were trying to set up rival projects. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • We should look beyond the end of our own noses and support what is right. The possibility that Wikimedia may not benefit from net neutrality should not prevent us from supporting it. Surely an open Internet is more important. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • You don't get an open internet by giving government censors more power. As Reuters points out, "The FCC ... has introduced a so-called 'general conduct' provision in the latest version of the rules ... In the general conduct provision, the FCC will say that Internet providers’ actions cannot be harmful to consumers or content providers ... "A 'general conduct rule,' applied on a case-by-case basis with the only touchstone being whether a given practice 'harms' consumers or edge providers, may lead to years of expensive litigation to determine the meaning of 'harm' (for those who can afford to engage in it)," the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a net neutrality advocate, said in a filing submitted on Thursday."' --Guy Macon (talk) 14:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Net neutrality is key to the interest of the global free knowledge movement of which we're a part - Wikipedia's birth would never have been possible without it, and we'd be foolish to forget that.--Pharos (talk) 21:04, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • With that statement made—which is exactly the opposite of what existed—I don't think the US Net Neutrality law is what you think it is. The free market has driven the internet in America since the inception of the net. Why would you want to give the government more control now when nothing is broken? GenQuest "Talk to Me" 19:18, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then start a PAC or other advocacy group and lobby for it that way. Using an organization that has in the past benefited from the lack of Net Neutrality around the world to lobby for Net Neutrality in the United States is a bad idea. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:19, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whether it's the problematic grammar or the confusing line of thought, I don't understand your point. I'm not trying to be argumentative – I honestly don't understand it. Care to clarify? -- Fuzheado | Talk 19:24, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • For whatever it's worth, former WMF General Counsel Mike Godwin has in the past defended zero-rating alongside net neutrality. For lack of a better summary, it's an important nuance. I haven't asked him lately, but at any rate, even if you do think W0 and net neutrality are at odds, W0 is done with, so this shouldn't be a concern. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:38, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: The Internet is not broken, and does not need to be "fixed" by giving the US government more control over the internet. The recently repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules adopted a vague but sweeping "general conduct" standard that gave the FCC the power to crack down on perceived bad behavior by internet providers without providing clear guidance about what would trigger enforcement. Wikipedia was built on internet freedom, not government regulations. Please at least try to read and understand the reasons who so many people oppose this: [1][2][3][4] --Guy Macon (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Guy Macon: I actually wrote a large comment below that explains that the net neutrality rules were not just enacted in 2015. The FCC simply codified what they had been doing for twenty plus years. The Trump FCC's repeal was not simply a rollback of the Obama FCC's rules; it also took away other things as well, such as the FCC's ability to enforce anything. epicgenius (talk) 16:52, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • You are wrong. From our article on Net neutrality; "U.S In April 2015, the FCC issued its Open Internet Order, which reclassified Internet access - previously classified as an information service - as a common carrier telecommunications service; i.e. a public utility. But on December 14, 2017, the Commission, which was led by Chairman Ajit Pai, voted to partially repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order, classifying Internet access once again as an information service." At no time in the previous twenty plus years did the FCC classify ISPs as common carrier telecommunications services / public utilities. Prior to 2015 the FCC always classified ISPs as information services, and all regulation was done according to the rules for regulating information services. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:12, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Look, I'm not going to argue with you, because obviously we have different opinions. However, your rebuttal is a straw man argument, because Title II wasn't my argument; the FCC's net neutrality enforcement was. Look at Net neutrality in the United States#FCC attempts at enforcing net neutrality (2005–2010). The FCC did try to enforce net neutrality (anti-throttling) against Comcast, and this is where it got them. Title II was a result of Verizon's similar suit against the FCC, which ended up in a dispute over whether the FCC had the power to keep enforcing its regulations. Title II only reclassified the ISPs so the FCC could continue to enforce these laws. Nothing happened to the enforcement process itself until Ajit Pai stepped in. The 2017 rollback took away the FCC's ability altogether to enforce these statutes; whereas before 2015, the FCC could still enforce the statutes against ISPs. All of this is according to the Net Neutrality in the US article. epicgenius (talk) 18:19, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: The Internet is not broken, and we should state that we are in favor of keeping it that way. And this proposal is not similar to the previous one at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_147#Net_neutrality that asked people for overt political action; this one just encourages support for the principal. Dicklyon (talk) 20:38, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Dicklyon: There's a huge red button saying "Take action" linking to a page asking for "your support" and "your voice" to preserve Net Neutrality, as well as linking to a tool for contacting members of congress by phone, email, and Twitter. I think that counts as "asking for overt political action". --Yair rand (talk) 21:10, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support --denny vrandečić (talk) 20:52, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - net neutrality regulation is a partisan issue, with the left arguing that regulation is necessary and the right arguing that the same state of affairs can be achieved without regulation and that unnecessary regulation in this area is more harmful than good. I personally think that regulation is good here, but we aren't the internet wing of the Democratic party and I don't think we should be taking a side on this American political issue. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:07, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • No partisan issue is supported by all of one side and opposed by all of the other. My point is that this is a political issue and we shouldn't be involved. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:36, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Ajraddatz: It actually isn't as clear cut as "the left supports net neutrality and the right opposes it". Some Democrats have voted against net neutrality legislation in the past. Conversely many Republican citizens support such an action. I elaborated on this point in a comment below. epicgenius (talk) 16:52, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Of course. As I said, partisan issues are rarely support entirely by one side and opposed entirely by the other, especially in the American political system which is characterized by weak party discipline compared with parliamentary systems. But from what I can see, there is a clear Democratic position and a clear Republican position here, and I don't think we should be involved. Political matters are for the politicians. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 17:05, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Is there an actual problem here that needs to be fixed. I don't support extending governmental power over the private sector (citizenry) without some clear specific justification based upon a serious detrimental problem (not theoretical musing) and a clear specific belief that regulation will bring improvements. This is really fear of monopolistic control that must be "regulated" by the government, when monopolies really inspire competition which brings about more choices and better results than regulation. This is a political issue and WP should take no position. MB 21:10, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would agree with you generally, but this is clearly a special situation. Scrapping net neutrality wouldn't encourage new ISP's to start up because the costs of starting a new network are simply too high. Removing it wouldn't have any affect on potential new competitors, just allow the existing duopoly to charge more for the same service. I doubt that anyone is sitting around wanting to start a new internet service but just can't because of net neutrality. It is a political issue, but we have a duty to do what we can to ensure Wikipedia continues to be a valuable resource into the future. --Blervis (talk) 21:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Support If we are going to take a historic stand for something which is likely to get media coverage then at least we need to assess what we have and what we are doing. I appreciate this RfC and I want to support this project but I think we should plan this a little better. Here are some things which I would want to see done:
    • Develop the right external partnerships
      • Someone needs to initiate on-wiki conversation with partners and get them to post to Wiki. A prerequisite for a Wikimedia partnership is that organizations should either have an on-wiki presence or a wiki community project here which is capable of two way communication. If they want a wiki call out then maybe someone can ask them if they can bring expert review and community engagement to wiki.
      • The proposal promotes Battle for the Net and Public Knowledge, a non-notable organization and an organization with a wiki page which probably would not pass AfD. It is not helpful to the Wikipedia community to associate with fringe organizations for which readers cannot get information on Wikipedia.
      • Wikipedia is the single most single most consulted source of information about net neutrality. These organizations have a communication strategy which does not include bringing expertise to Wikipedia, and they are making a mistake by not directing their staff to promote the development of the Wikipedia articles. I know these are small organizations but they are still funded, and there is nothing that they could do to better achieve their communication goals than give attention to wiki. If they develop wiki articles then they should claim wiki's audience to their funders, who almost certainly already require them to report impact and reach. Someone needs to tell them and they need to respond.
      • Battle for the Net organizes community events which they do not document. They should catalog their images and photos and get them into Wikimedia Commons. Unfortunately the many dozens of public demonstrations which they organize typically are not leaving behind a media record.
    • Develop the Wikipedia articles:
      • "Net neutrality" is in poor shape. For the amount of attention this article gets (it is high traffic by Wikipedia standards) I am a little embarrassed that so many people read it without it being well developed. Can we confirm that the wiki community wants this article to get media attention? It is intimidating for many editing to review high traffic complicated topics like this and I have doubts that we should showcase it without a cleanup effort.
      • We need to sort out {{Net neutrality}} and the articles in it. These are not good articles to promote on the world stage when we are asking for scrutiny and engagement
    • Have a community discussion about the circumstances under which we will endorse other organizations' work
I want to support this proposal. I would change my "oppose" to "support" if asked, but I wish that we could be thoughtful about the problems with this and plan to collect whatever resources we can to make this work. I do not want to set a high standard for what we need to begin an awareness campaign. However, I think that Wikipedia should have a minimal standard, however we define it, and I think that what I am proposing above about making an effort to improve wiki content and to consider our relationship to and the notability of partners when calling their names is reasonable.
Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:32, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm on board for improving Net neutrality and related articles. Will work on this soon. I do not think people in other orgs have an obligation to participate on our platform, but your arguments are significant and I'm processing them. -- econterms (talk) 21:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with most of what you are saying, but the time to act on this issue is limited. We can work towards improving what you mentioned, but if we don't act on the current situation now, any future efforts may be in vain. I also don't think this is a partnership with any of the above mentioned groups, we simply share the same goal. --Blervis (talk) 21:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Blervis and Econterms: How would you feel about removing mention of or links to other organizations? I would support this without the inactive partners, and if the wiki community came up with a few people to spend a few hours to revise the articles. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:00, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Bluerasberry: Re. the links to Fight for the Future and Public Knowledge, those can be removed - they're there simply as supplemental readings and are minor points in the proposal. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 02:29, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@SuperHamster: I changed to support if the non-wiki partner organizations are removed. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@SuperHamster, Econterms, and Blervis: I did a little article cleanup this morning as described at Talk:Net_neutrality#Split_of_content_to_Net_neutrality_by_country. I hope that what I did improves the article's readability, advances its development, and prepares it for any future education effort. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:52, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Last month, I noted that this was political, and shouldn't be broadcast through the entire encyclopedia. I like this pared-down version: it's significantly clearer, even if the technical issues involved are somewhat murky to this layman. However, the Wikimedia Foundation has already spoken about this, and no matter how much I agree with net neutrality, I cannot, in good conscience, support this proposal. Quite simply, it's a political issue, and there are other fora for issues of a political nature, including message boards, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, calling your Senators and leaving polite messages with the aides and staff, &c., &c., ad infinitum. So, the long and the short of it: again, no, it's too political. — Javert2113 (talk) 21:38, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum: I agree with Blue Rasberry; I'd love to support this, but it seems slightly unorganized. If we do go about this (that is, if this proposal passes), we cannot do so haphazardly, and that means planning (dun dun dun); and while I have some minor quibbles with Blue's notes, by and large, he's not wrong, though I do balk at the mention of a Wikipedia community endorsement (at least, that's how this editor understood it). One thing I'd like to emphasize, if I may, is his final point: community and collaboration. At all times, we must strive for consensus, even if we don't all agree. — Javert2113 (talk) 21:47, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Erratum: Not "last month", but, rather, in late March. See the below challenge to validity from Guy Macon. — Javert2113 (talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 22:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I think it's okay for us to occasionally take targeted action against particularly egregious threats to the site. SOPA/PIPA were good examples. Process-wise, this is a significantly different proposal, so I am okay with it, although admittedly this is a bit soon after that one (and a bit down to the wire). More substantively, and I can say this at meta as well, but "We are asking for your support" in a banner looks awful similar to asking for a donation. I would worry many folks would dismiss it without clicking, even though it's not December. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:44, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Ian.thomson (talk) 21:51, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I didn't join Wikipedia to be a party to politics, and not every Wikipedia editor is either for/against Net neutrality. Adding this disenfranchises many people for that reason. For me personally, I have no interest in participating here if Wikipedia gets involved in ANY political issue. We are supposed to be here to build an encyclopedia, not champion a political cause, any political cause. This constant RFC after RFC is akin to shaking the magic 8 ball until it gives you the answer you want, and frankly, seems to be a form of bludgeoning the point. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:01, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Javert2113 and Dennis Brown and this is a political issue and feel there other fora are better for this.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 22:19, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose. Wikipedia should not meddle in political issues, not only because many editors are not here for this but also because of the unwanted attention this kind of stance is likely to generate. Building an encyclopedia has nothing to do with that. José Luiz talk 22:25, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – It is tempting to use Wikipedia as a means to promote public policy. However, I would advise extreme caution whenever we consider doing it. There is a very good reason why we don't normally get involved in politics, and that is because it is also part of our mission to provide a neutral resource where readers can find out more about a topic without getting the feeling that someone is trying to sway their views in a particular direction. It is our goal to create a place where readers can decide for themselves what they should believe based on a neutral description of what reliable sources have said. The moment our editorial community forms a consensus to take a stance on a political topic, we are betraying that mission by admitting that we have a conflict of interest with respect to some political topics, so we better be certain that if we don't take the stance, Wikipedia's ability to function will be fatally compromised. That, in my view, is the cost of taking political stances for Wikipedia, and I'm not sure enough evidence has been presented thus far to justify that cost for this issue. Mz7 (talk) 22:33, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support If we're not prepared to lend exposure to issues that threaten it, we can't claim to be working for free knowledge available to all. — OwenBlacker (talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 22:39, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @OwenBlacker: On what basis do you assume that giving the US Government increased control over the Internet in some vague way "working for free knowledge available to all"? And why the US government? Why not the EU? The Internet is not broken and does not need fixing, and Wikipedia was built on internet freedom, not government regulations. The recently repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules adopted a vague but sweeping "general conduct" standard that gave the FCC the power to crack down on perceived bad behavior by internet providers and web site owners without providing any real details about what would trigger enforcement. How is this good for Wikipedia? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:57, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Net neutrality does not give "increased control over the Internet", no matter how many times you repeat it. If you oppose any law whatsoever that might help the weak, that's fine, but let's not get ridiculous. --Nemo 20:01, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fuck yeah. Net neutrality is 100% in alignment with Wikipedia's core mission. The only reason not to do this would be if the Foundation say it jeopardises 501(c)(3) status. Guy (Help!) 22:47, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment on the false dichotomy underlying statements like "Wikipedia shouldn't get involved with politics" or "Wikipedia shouldn't be political" - The question should be whether this is something that furthers the mission of Wikipedia or is otherwise in the best interests of the people involved with writing/reading Wikipedia. Wikipedia is political, and not just because of this kind of initiative. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit is political, the way we use sources and define which sources are reliable is political, how we understand neutrality is political, the decision to cover a subject one way rather than another is political, not running ads on the site is political, having as part of our mission being accessible to everyone is political, not privileging academic credentials is political, our consensus-building processes are political... it's just that these politics are not, for parts of the world most participants here live in, nicely split along partisan lines in contemporary discourse. For many other parts of the world, however, these things we take for granted are explicitly political in a similar sense. Climate change has been politicized in the United States, too, and we have dealt with that in a way that really bugs one side because we determined that doing so is in accordance with Wikipedia's principles/mission/purpose, not because we decided to get political. This is likewise not a decision of whether to "get political." We are already political. The question isn't whether this is relevant to American politics, but whether this is or is not something that matters for Wikipedia's principles/purpose. Oppose if you decide that it is not, oppose if you think net neutrality isn't all that meaningful or if you think this particular aspect of net neutrality isn't something that matters for Wikipedia, oppose if you don't think we should have messages outside of articles that don't themselves follow Wikipedia content policies, oppose if you think our article needs to improve first, but don't oppose "because politics." It's just more nuanced than that. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Exactly! "Everything is political", and that's fine. Not posting this banner is a political decision. Thus, I agree that !opposing this because "it's political" is invalid. Davey2116 (talk) 18:34, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, it really really isn't. We shouldn't be taking political stands as an encyclopedia. Period. --Trovatore (talk) 23:08, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm fine with disagreement but this doesn't address at all any of Rhododendrites' thoughtful remarks, it just says "uh-uh". In many parts of the world, the encyclopedia's very existence is a political stand. We are a neutral encyclopedia but we don't exist in a neutral world, unfortunately. Gamaliel (talk) 23:25, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Rhododentrites instructed me not to oppose the initiative because it's political, but I do oppose it because it's political. It really is just that simple. We should not be taking political stands as an encyclopedia. As for the existence being a political stand, I'm sorry, I think that's nonsense. --Trovatore (talk) 23:49, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • Agreed. In fact, the attitude expressed above "... Wikipedia is political..." is part of the problem, because such bias constantly and consistently finds it's way into articles, and must be regularly fought against. Wikipedia can't even keep it's own entries neutral, why then should it try to take on the internet? GenQuest "Talk to Me" 14:15, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • such bias - what bias are you talking about? The idea that Wikipedia is political is a bias? It's naive/simplistic to think there's some "politics" bogeyman that has infested our encyclopedia that can/should be contained before it dashes some objectivist fantasy about platonic apolitical truths. My point wasn't just about articles, but articles as part of the larger Wikipedian enterprise -- its own qualities and the world it exists in. You have extracted the words "Wikipedia is political" from what I wrote, but responded to those words as though I used them in the way I was arguing against. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I read the first of the four articles linked above by Guy Macon — the debate between Yoo and Wu. While I personally think the Yoo's arguments were more compelling, This discussion is not (or should not be) a simple vote on whether, on balance, regulation and supportive net neutrality is a good idea. In my opinion, there are some decent arguments on both sides, and as is almost always the case when considering a regulatory proposal the devil is in the details. Delivering a banner in support of net neutrality is not simply a statement that a majority of Wikipedia editors support the concept, but that the support is so overwhelming that we feel it is appropriate to make that statement in the voice of Wikipedia (as was the case with SOPA). I don't think that's remotely the case. On page 577 of the linked article, Yoo makes a similar point:

At this point, it is impossible to foresee which architecture will ultimately represent the best approach. When it is impossible to tell whether a practice would promote or hinder competition, the accepted policy response is to permit the practice to go forward until actual harm to consumers can be proven. This restraint provides the room for experimentation upon which normal competitive processes depend. It also shows appropriate humility about our ability to predict the technological future

--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:55, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I don't think that Wikipedia should be involved in any kind of activism, period. It isn't clear that Net Neutrality is going to have any detriment on Wikipedia's goals or functionality, and we should not get involved. This RfC is also too soon after the last one. The proposal is in violation of Wikipedia's core concept of conveying information from a neutral pint of view; picture the proposed banner at the top of the Net neutrality page. Does anyone accept that as being NPOV? — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 23:41, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongest oppose possible as a US citizen without resorting to armed rebellion Not that I dont support net neutrality, and I am taking steps to protect it, its the 2018 mid terms and I have plans to vote against my current representatives due to their ambivalence regarding the issue. Keep politics off Wikipedia. cinco de L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 00:20, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to clarify that unlike GM I support Net Neutrality as the only way to save us from the whims of for-profit ISPs, but this is the en.wiki not the US.wiki, something our Tommy editor friends love to remind us. cinco de L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 01:42, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@L3X1: To clarify, the proposal is for a banner that will only be shown to US viewers, unless I'm misunderstanding your point. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 01:48, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
...which is yet another reason for opposing the idea. The resulting increased US government control over the Internet will affect pretty much all English-speaking countries. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Wintonc7 (talk) 00:44, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Stop trying to involve wikipedia in politics. Natureium (talk) 00:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Wikipedia should remain non-partisan and non-political. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 01:00, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support. I'm baffled by the folks above saying that net neutrality wouldn't affect Wikipedia. As for involving Wikipedia in politics, the existence of Wikipedia itself is political. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:02, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm going to flat contradict you on that. The existence of Wikipedia is not political. --Trovatore (talk) 01:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • And you likewise. Everything is political. We aren't above that. Our licensing, our mission, our assessment of sources, protection of individuals by our BLP policies, the concept of neutrality itself, where we are hosted, where we can't be hosted. All of it is political. We're kidding ourselves by denying that. Seddon talk 03:04, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • This is rapidly becoming a very silly argument about definitions. Perhaps we could say that Wikipedia is not about advocating, implementing, or influencing government policy, hm? These things can be tangentially related to our goals under certain circumstances, but participating in activism related to these topics can be problematic. Our differing definitions of "political" do not change that. --Yair rand (talk) 04:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • In my view there is only a single political question: How, if at all, should the state's monopoly on the use of force be used? Net neutrality is a position on that question. It says that the state should use its monopoly on the use of force to prevent certain economic transactions, by players deemed to have market power, to prevent certain results deemed undesirable.
              The existence of Wikipedia, per se, takes no position on how the state's monopoly should be used.
              Now, it is true that some people have a more expansive notion of "political" than I do. They're entitled to that view. As Yair rand says, we can still formulate the view that Wikipedia should not take political positions in a narrower sense. --Trovatore (talk) 04:22, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Freedom of speech and open access licensing are political in a sense, but they are far from partisan politics. Net neutrality is similar. I believe this is the kind of policy that is directly tied to Wikipedia's core values, and that we should feel proud to share our views on in a public way once every few years.--Pharos (talk) 04:26, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Just as I opposed the SOPA/PIPA blackout years ago, Wikipedia must remain above the politics of any one (or group of) country. Courcelles (talk) 01:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Guy Macon. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 01:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: We are here to build an encyclopedia, and nothing else. That mission is better served by maintaining our impartial image than picking fights. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:20, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Mozucat (talk) 02:49, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose while it's tempting to say that Wikipedia shouldn't take political positions, I feel that's largely unrealistic. However, I don't support this proposal, which seems to be unilaterally encouraging people to contact their senators about a bill that is unlikely to be signed by Trump. It is too low-impact to justify a promo of this sort, which must remain rare. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:37, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would disagree, it is only a few votes away in the senate, and if it were to pass there, attitudes throughout Washington would be changed. It already has significant popular support, and a "Yes" vote in the senate could signal that. Ultimately our support or lack thereof may prove the deciding factor. -Blervis (talk) 14:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We are not the WMF. We are the English Wikipedia community. We can, and sometimes do, disagree with the Foundation with regards to what best serves our shared mission. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:08, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -- the Australia Fair Use campaign demonstrates that these targeted communications activities, act as a way to communicate to a very focused audience the importance of an open public forum/environment for making Wikipedia work. Wikipedia is political, in that it radically challenges a number of assumptions about knowledge: one of them, "what is the purpose of the internet". Like SOPA/PIPA, net neutrality is an important pre-requisite for our mission -- and its appropriate for our communities in the United States to support it, when it becomes a political issue. Sadads (talk) 12:33, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
So let me get this straight. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a controversial effort to increase the power of the United States government to control and censor the Internet (including the Internet in Australia), so you opposed it, and Net Nuetrality is a controversial effort to increase the power of the United States government to control and censor the Internet (including the Internet in Australia), so you... support it?
  • Support - while I'm generally adverse to slippery slope arguments, it certainly is easier to ensure net neutrality now rather than risk something being problematic in the future (whether related to usage speeds or an alternate area of governmental action regarding net usage). Regarding certain discussion points arguing a futile action due to X & Y, a campaign can influence people other than US senators, so there is benefit to be gained in more than one frontline.
Purely out of interest, does the WMF have an opinion on individual wikis campaigning in this fashion? Nosebagbear (talk) 14:11, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
From The Fear-Based Campaign to Control the Net:
"Unfortunately, as the internet has taken on an ever more central role in our personal and economic lives, the temptation to seize control apparently became too much for the FCC. The political left is invested in the narrative of internet service providers as privacy-violating boogeymen—and the FCC as a heroic digital guardian—not because there is any evidence to support the position but as a means to exercise more control."
From Here’s why the Obama FCC Internet regulations don’t protect net neutrality:
"The FCC staff did their best with what they were given but the resulting Order was aimed at political symbolism and acquiring jurisdiction to regulate the Internet, not meaningful 'net neutrality' protections. [...] Aside from some religious ISPs, ISPs don’t want to filter Internet content. But the Obama FCC, via the 'net neutrality' rules, gives them a new incentive: the Order deregulates ISPs that filter."
--Guy Macon (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To ensure we can keep writing this encyclopedia and to ensure people can keep reading it. Seddon talk 13:51, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
And giving the US government more power and control over the Internet accomplishes this ... how? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia was getting along just fine before the net neutrality law went into effect, and seems to be getting along just fine since the expiration of it. I don't understand where this nebulous 'ensurance' of which you speak comes from. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 14:29, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The only reason net neutrality even had to become a law was because of Verizon Communications Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission (2014). Beforehand, the FCC could enforce net neutrality statutes without it specifically being a law, but the lawsuit made it so the FCC might not be able to enforce the statutes anymore. The law just formalized this enforcement. The repeal of the net neutrality law does not allow the FCC to enforce the statutes anymore, not even informally. Therefore, your comparison of pre-2015 and now is incorrect. epicgenius (talk) 18:31, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What statutes? There were no statutes. Lumbering, idiotic bureaucracy maybe, but no statutes. And the free market is working/will work just fine without further US government or FCC control of the internet. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 19:31, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
OK, let's say there were no net neutrality statutes that restricted ISPs prior to 2015. I'd expect that if I were an ISP and I had no regulations, I'd be pretty happy. Yet that's clearly not the case: the ISPs kept suing the FCC up through 2015 (e.g. Comcast Corp. v. FCC, 2010), so there's gotta be something must have had pissed off these ISPs. Anyhow, it's not as if the FCC sat back while the big ISPs were all well behaved companies who voluntarily enforced net neutrality. Case in point, in 2005, Madison River had to pay the FCC a fine because it blocked VOIP communications through certain providers - clearly a violation of net neutrality standards. Therefore, it's incorrect that the FCC didn't have net neutrality before 2015, or that it never enforced net neutrality prior to that date.
As for the free market in action, the internet is not like the healthcare or energy sectors where you have a wide range to choose from. The market of ISPs right now, is composed of a half dozen huge ISPs and a smattering of comparatively tiny ISPs. There are smaller ISPs in TN and NC who were prohibited from expanding their services because they would have competed against bigger ISPs. As far as I'm aware, these bans are still in place. If these small ISPs can't compete, then obviously the market is not "free".
TL;DR - Obviously this isn't relevant to the original discussion about whether the banner about net neutrality is appropriate. But if you're going to argue in favor of deregulation, at least get the facts in order. I'm not trying to convince you that the FCC regulation is going to be the cure-all to net neutrality, or that it's even the correct step. I'm simply refuting the misconceptions. epicgenius (talk) 21:00, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You've made my point. Because there are very few examples of ISPs behaving badly in the past. But, with business being business, sometimes lawsuits ensue and sometimes government has to get involved. Let's take your Verizon example. When Verizon started their throttling shenanigans, the free market actually worked as it was supposed to. That behavior drove subscribers to their (often) much smaller competitors, and actually strengthened the marketplace. Saying ISPs won't be able to compete is simple fear-mongering which can be found on any progressive website out there. Doesn't make it so. News Flash: the internet isn't broken. It's working just fine. No need to man the life boats.
Back when I had my small business, if the big guys did something stupid, I capitalized on that and gained business. It's how competition works. The same thing happened to Verizon. They lost customers and eventually reversed their badly thought-out decisions. Things worked out, in a free market. I for one really, really don't want the US government to have any more bureaucratic control over our internet.
There is also no need for an unnecessary, non-neutral, devisive, controversial-at-best banner placed anywhere around an encyclopedia which touts its neutral voice. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 16:57, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I concede that you are correct that the free market worked in the particular case of Verizon. I myself am a supporter of small business: my family are small business owners, and we don't want to get crushed by the big businesses. The concept of net neutrality is the same thing. Net neutrality forces ISPs to treat small businesses' traffic the same way as big businesses', regardless of whether the ISP is a multinational corporation or a small outlet like the local public library.
When you say I for one really, really don't want the US government to have any more bureaucratic control over our internet, that is a laissez-faire approach, not necessarily a free market. A free market allows companies to thrive, even with some regulation, while the laissez-faire approach is a lack of any meaningful intervention by the government.
Now the problem here is that, with the laissez-faire approach, larger companies can snuff out smaller competitors, which is the opposite of a free market. There are still state laws that prohibit small ISPs or municipal ISPs from expanding, which actually prevents a free market from happening. Even if a small outlet like Greenlight wanted to expand, they couldn't, because it would be illegal. The larger ISPs are usually the only choices available to most of the population in these states, as I mentioned. Net neutrality makes the playing field easy for everyone from the start; you still have a free market, but the big ISPs aren't just going to be allowed to bully smaller ISPs. Net neutrality includes the concept that if you wanted to create your own ISP, the big ISPs would not be able to block your traffic - which is good for free market competition.
TL;DR: Wikimedia is not being non-neutral by advocating for a neutral position. A laissez-faire approach is not necessarily the same as a free market; the free market will still exist with net neutrality. epicgenius (talk) 14:14, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose. There seems to be too much focus among respondents on the goals of net neutrality and not the specific effects. I did research over the net neutrality debate for a speech class not particularly long ago, and I confess not being impressed by what I read. The ban on paid prioritization is pointless, as its effects already exist and are implemented without a paywall; instead it depends on the ability to purchase the relevant hardware. For example, it is relatively common for major websites to purchase dedicated servers at ISPs to expedite the speed at which they are processed. This website does a good job of explaining the details. Proposed net neutrality regulations fail to address this aspect of prioritization. The second issue raised, content blocking, is also not particularly important; I have only found one instance when an ISP used its status as an ISP to disrupt access to a website, and that's with Comcast throttling BitTorrent because the latter is extensively used to host copyright violations of movies. Wikipedia does a satisfactory job of policing copyright problems, and its popularity and humanitarian mission would make any attempt to throttle it deeply unpopular.
Consequently, I don't believe that Wikipedia is threatened by the issues purported by net neutrality supporters, and agree with TonyBallioni's statements that it could feasibly benefit from the regulations not existing. I will also argue that US regulatory agencies have histories of issuing absurd, impossible orders to enforce regulations, and that in this regard Wikipedia may actually be threatened by regulatory creep. I will also echo the sentiments expressed by numerous editors above: using Wikipedia to host a banner gives the impression that net neutrality is supposed by the Wikipedia community as a whole, and the controversy of this and previous RfCs clearly indicates that this is not the case. Furthermore, wading into activism for political issues undermines the project's appearance of being a neutral, independent source of information. Between the sacrifice of perceived neutrality and the lack of tangible benefits to the project, I must consider the promotion of net neutrality to be a net malus. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 14:11, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose: The entire discussion is turning into a political soapbox. While the Wikimedia Foundation can make political statements on behalf of itself, Wikipedia is a community project, and all of its decisions should reflect the consensus of its users and our core policies. In fact, a proliferation of support for net neutrality would actually place undue weight on the corresponding POV, as it will not equally promote counterarguments. Unlike SOPA, which was a much more clear-cut issue, Net neutrality is a more contentious issue, and in fact, the WMF had previously been involved in initiatives that blatantly violate its principles. ViperSnake151  Talk  17:12, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose for all the reasons mentioned above. Contact me for further information. Brian Everlasting (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support There are plenty of times when one would be right to worry about "expansion of government power", but this is not one of them. Regulating industry for the purpose of protecting the citizens is a good thing for a government to do. (And, no, we can't trust the Free Market(TM) to save us when consumers have no choice among providers; nor is it all hypothetical: Comcast throttling BitTorrent — which blocked legitimate content as well as piracy — is only one example of ISP bad behavior [5].) I'm here to build an encyclopedia, but I'd like for people to be able to read that encyclopedia without Wikimedia having to slide cash under the table to Comcast and Verizon. And, frankly, in the current climate of the United States, wanting to build an encyclopedia — that is, holding education to be worthy and facts to be important — is itself a political act. XOR'easter (talk) 16:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I assume your reference to Comcast-BitTorrent is partially directed at me, as I'm the one who mentioned it, so I should take the time to reply. I'm aware of the ACLU page, and in fact relied extensively on it in my research. But the other examples provided there aren't relevant, and I'll explain why:
  • AT&T's censoring of portions of the Eddie Vedder concert utilized the fact that AT&T was the official sponsor and sole provider of that concert. Their censoring actually made sense and was in my view justified, as the fact that they were a sponsor would have made it appear as though they were endorsing that political message when they weren't.
  • Verizon's discrimination against NARAL Pro-Choice America affected their text-messaging service, meaning that it involved their status as a cellular provider, not an ISP. Cell services are already regulated for this, and fall outside the scope of net neutrality anyway.
  • Telus is a Canadian ISP, so any regulations passed here don't seriously affect them.
The other claims you make have already been addressed elsewhere. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:57, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Expanding a little. tl:dr; The personal is political. "free knowledge is inherently radical"
Here's my reasoning. I'm a socially left (US left) leaning person living out the outskirts of a moderately sized urban center. Grew up rural. I'm more central (US central) when it comes to government, regulation, capitalism, etc.
I have two choices for my ISP. Both are large companies. Most folks, across the United States where this proposal will be most impactful, have an ISP like mine. ISPs, the large ones especially, can be considered government approved monopolies. Decades ago, taxpayers funded the initial cable to wire up the country. In exchange these companies are given exclusive status to prevent other companies from laying down their own wire. AT&T, as one of the oldest telecom companies in the country, just rents use of their wires to other ISPs, big and small.
I don't like the government sanctioning monopolies. That's a little libertarian sounding, I realize. If the government is going to do it though? They better regulate them. A government-sanctioned monopoly should follow the same restriction the government itself does for it's own utilities. That includes this kind of neutrality. I want companies like Comcast to have less power to coerce and distort the market. This is a complex, nuanced matter. While you might be against regulation in other areas, such as energy, or financial markets, or whatever - accepting this one actually works in our favor as a community, project, and movement. Ckoerner (talk) 18:08, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question - Maybe I'm missing it, but what is the timeline for this discussion? If the event people would "take action" about is on the 9th, today is the 7th. Is there a plan for a specific point to stop discussion ans assess consensus about this? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:47, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Answer It doesn't have the votes here, desn't have the votes in congress[6], would likely be vetoed if it did have the votes, and would not accomplish what this RfC claims that it would accomplish.[7] --Guy Macon (talk) 20:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The question was not "Would someone be willing to restate their opinion, but with the word 'answer' in front of it?" Alternatively, someone quoted Inigo Montoya elsewhere in this thread in a way that seems relevant re: "answer". — Rhododendrites talk \\ 20:42, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think these things normally run for 30 days or so? It would take a truly extraordinary consensus to justify accelerating the timeline to two or three days, just because of the timing of the vote in the Senate. I don't see that here; it's not clear there will be a consensus at all, but certainly there is no evidence of the sort of overwhelming consensus that could justify such a radical departure from our normal procedures. --Trovatore (talk) 20:55, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • An RfC typically runs for 30 days, yes. This is not technically an RfC, and I imagine that's intentional, given the time constraints. It would not be the first time we have had a discussion on a shorter timescale, but I do tend to agree that there should be a pretty clear consensus in such cases. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:05, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose - Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a platform for political statements supported by a majority of the few editors who happen to show up in a discussion on this page. That's regardless of the merits of the issues or how Wikipedia might be affected by them. We are Wikipedia editors, not political activists (although each of us is free to be a political activist off-wiki). In my view, this proposal should go the way of the proposal to show an anti-Trump statement before the U.S. presidential election. Furthermore, I think we should consider an explicit policy against using the encyclopedia as a platform for political statements. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:18, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as critical to Wikipedia's mission. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:48, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • So it is your position that a US government regulation that did not exist until 26 February 2015 and was repealed on 14 December 2017 (and pretty much not enforced during most of the 2 years, 9 months and 19 days it was on the books) is somehow "critical to Wikipedia's mission"? Critical?' In the words of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means."[8] --Guy Macon (talk) 20:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Net neutrality has de facto existed since the beginning of the internet. Net neutrality law is a more recent response to threats to the status quo that made a crazy project like Wikipedia possible, and you can disagree about any specific regulation, but the principle indeed remains critical to an open internet.--Pharos (talk) 20:28, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • My position is that net neutrality was in effect for pretty much the entire existence of the internet, until corporate interests decided to attack it, and now it needs defending. The principle was first enshrined into law/regulation in 2015, but it existed before. The issue is that the regulation/law has been since overturned to allow for violations of the principle. And yes, critical. Because otherwise a carrier may very well decide to have a surcharge for Wikipedia traffic, so they can send their subscribers to a Wikipedia mirror full of ads instead. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:36, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: This issue affects Wikipedia and its users directly. It also has significant impacts for users who access the internet via smaller ISPs who are not affiliated with the major telecom companies. While in general WP needs to remain NPOV, it does not need to be silent on matters that relate to its core mission. Montanabw(talk) 20:26, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support shoy (reactions) 20:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose One of the pillars Wikipedia is built on is having a neutral POV. There are many other outlets that can voice opinions on Net Neutrality, however I do not feel that Wikipedia should be one of them with this message front and center as this proposal would be. RickinBaltimore (talk) 20:50, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - let twitter and facebook do things like this. This feels too close to an ad or as Rick above says, a POV statement. I like WP because it is above politics or conflicts - it is a font of knowledge, nothing more. There ARE exceptions, mainly during the donation drive. But, this should not be an exception, imo. ‡ Єl Cid of ᐺalencia ᐐT₳LKᐬ 20:54, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 20:58, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose this is an apolitical project, as much sympathy as I might have for this. The SOPA/PIPA blackout set a bad precedent that shouldn't be repeated. Mélencron (talk) 21:04, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose Net Neutrality is just a means to allow big content providers to dictate what gets distributed. Indyguy (talk) 21:09, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Am agnostic about NN, but I find the apocalyptic scenarios unpersuasive and often tinged by hysteria. Wikipedia's neutrality shouldn't be thrown away for such a hobby-horse. NPalgan2 (talk) 21:16, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose It's best for the WMF not to get involved in matters that can be perceived as being political issues. BillHPike (talk, contribs) 21:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • support--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:19, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support - In the interest of being accessible to all, it would be remiss for Wikipedia to not get involved in issues of accessibility to the Internet. You can't be neutral on a moving train. Etzedek24 (Would it kill ya to leave an edit summary?) 21:23, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Wikipedia isn't everything. It doesn't have to take a stance on a question external to Wikipedia. We shouldn't speak as a united voice because essential to our nature is objectivity. Bus stop (talk) 21:48, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Napplicable (talk) 21:54, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support Accessibility is extremely important. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:47, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support per User:Fuzheado. OhKayeSierra (talk) 00:53, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose While I am sympathetic to net neutrality, the debate about it is a partisan matter, and with extreme exceptions, Wikipedia should remain neutral and not involve itself in political affairs. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:50, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, while I'm opposed to the idea of Wiki(p|m)edia being involved in politics or activism in general, the exception is when something is a direct threat to our mission. A lack of net neutrality threatens efforts like Wikipedia, for not-for-profit entities to make information and knowledge freely available. In this case, then, we should speak in favor of net neutrality and against any type of preferred traffic being permissible. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:02, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: per NPalgan2. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:31, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - making knowledge freely accessible to everybody is the most political, the most power changing, act that anybody can do. And it is our mission. Making all internet content equally accessible is the only way we can accomplish our mission - otherwise we can be censored for "economic reasons", i.e we may not be profitable to ISPs. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:51, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per above, I don't think it is appropriate for Wikipedia to be making political statements. And for the record, I do strongly support net neutrality. -FASTILY 03:05, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Complete and utter Oppose this is an encyclopaedia, not a political party, an activist group nor a debating society. Let us concentrate on the task of making the sum of human knowledge available and leave the politics out of it. No matter how much some of us feel that some political issue is important, it does not belong here. -Nick Thorne talk 07:40, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very, Very Strong Support. Wikimedia's mission depends in part to net neutrality, so if they support it, this banner is fine. I don't get what all of the opposes are about. Are people being bought out by ISPs and big businesses? This is sarcastic, just so people don't take this last comment at face value.
    But in all seriousness, this isn't a political question. It's a question about whether ISPs can throttle access to sites like Wikipedia, thereby compromising its mission. And it's not really even a political question with that much opposition from the general public. Polls have shown that more than 80% of Americans do support net neutrality. epicgenius (talk) 11:12, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This is certainly a political question because it boils down to an issue of free enterprise vs government regulation. ISPs provide services people want and if people want access to Wikimedia or anything else they will get it. As far as your 80% poll, I suggest that if that is true, it can be attributed to the benevolent-sounding name and ignorance. The US has supported spending on reducing poverty for over 50 years, but if you asked people if they would support "Spending $22 trillion with no improvement" [9] would they support that? How you ask the question is important. MB 12:37, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the wording is definitely important. But it doesn't change the concept of net neutrality which is to protect against unethical practices such as some content being prioritized over others. Here are some more surveys with different wording that support the idea that the vast majority of those who know about net neutrality support it. Net neutrality opponents argue that ISPs can self-police, but that's obviously not true. The truth is that without net neutrality, there is theoretically nothing to stop ISPs from burying Wikipedia links in favor of sponsored content, or even fake news stories. That really is against Wikipedia's mission.
In regards to being a political question, normally I'd agree that this would be a political dispute that should be kept off Wikipedia. However, net neutrality is an issue that directly affects this project. A banner is not even asking much. If net neutrality is such a politically charged situation, by that reasoning we shouldn't have had that huge anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA blackout six years ago. That was basically the same thing, except the entire project was inaccessible for 24 hours. A banner is not as obtrusive, it's simply asking to consider how Wikimedia projects would be like without net neutrality. epicgenius (talk) 13:03, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I do not need the Federal government to protect me from unethical practices by ISPs. Government regulation really means transferring more power from the citizenry to the government. Since the government is far more corrupt than businesses which have to provide services people are willing to pay for in order to survive, it should be kept to a minimum as envisioned in the US Constitution. You have no idea what the would happen without "net neutrality" - your fears are purely theoretical. I happen to believe it will continue to get better at a faster rate with less regulation. MB 15:34, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@MB: I don't agree with these points or think they make total sense, and I'm not trying to change your mind on this, but I'll just say my piece so others can understand my position: epicgenius (talk) 16:35, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The rules reclassifying internet traffic under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 were codified in 2015; but before that, it had been a de facto assumption that the ISP would act ethically. The FCC did not need to explicitly say that the ISP had to act ethically; it simply enforced ethical standards. But in 2015 the FCC enacted the rules due to lawsuits from Verizon (Verizon Communications Inc. v. FCC, 2014) and other ISPs that claimed the FCC was overreaching. Title II was the recourse because all the other methods of enforcement failed. The "net neutrality repeal" was not just a counteraction to the Title II classification; it also made it so that the FTC, not the FCC, was in charge of enforcing net neutrality standards. It just transfers enforcement from one government agency to another, but the FTC also doesn't have as much resources to enforce such rules.
As to your other points, they are political arguments so they are subjective. However, I will address them with factual evidence. To be fair, I may be a little biased because I did all of this research while writing the article on Net Neutrality (Last Week Tonight).
  • Regarding government is far more corrupt than businesses which have to provide services people are willing to pay for in order to survive - you are allowed to your opinion that the government is corrupt. But let's look at the facts: in large parts of the US, there is very limited choice in broadband providers. A 2010 study by broadband.gov showed that 96% of Americans have, at most, 2 providers to choose from. Here's another article from June 2017 which states that many people only have one high speed provider, or none at all.
  • You have no idea what the would happen without "net neutrality" - your fears are purely theoretical. - This is factually wrong. ISPs have blocked or slowed down access to competitors, promoted their own items, and even forced companies to paid for higher speeds. There are many examples of this. I think the most prominent is when Comcast slowed down Netflix speeds back in 2014 until Netflix agreed to pay a fee to Comcast.
  • I happen to believe it will continue to get better at a faster rate with less regulation. - Again, you are entitled to your opinion. Under normal circumstances, I would agree that if you leave the companies be, then they will be allowed to grow. But you are also missing an important point: the larger ISPs have successfully lobbied for laws that effectively shut out competition. In Wilson, NC, Greenlight tried to expand but they were blocked by a statewide restriction against municipal broadband - sponsored by private ISPs like Time Warner. And mind you, this restriction had bipartisan support. Same thing happened in Chattanooga, TN.
TL;DR - There are a lot of factors in play here. While the FCC's actions should technically be growth-inspiring and innovation-supporting, other actions at the state and federal level have made it so that this is essentially a monopolistic competition between a few large ISPs. I think everyone would agree that it would be better if a greater competition among ISPs was allowed, but this is unfortunately not the case right now. I would like to repeat that you are entitled to your opinion, MB. I'm not trying to change your mind, but I think there are many things to take into account here. epicgenius (talk) 16:35, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum to previous comment: A lot of the political controversy boils down to "Obama/Democrats/liberals/the left likes net neutrality so therefore I hate it". This shouldn't be one side versus the other. In reality, there is nothing not neutral about something that literally has the word "neutrality" in its name. Some of the strong opposers are arguing that this Central Notice is not a neutral message. This is true to some extent, but for political reasons, not because the concept of net neutrality itself is wrong. However, as I have personally observed, this is based on a lot of mistaken thoughts or suppositions about what should be the case (i.e. political views about laissez faire market), and not a lot of what's actually the case (i.e. the difficulties that smaller competitors face in a non-neutral internet). This issue is more complex than what is being presented as face value. epicgenius (talk) 15:26, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Admittingly I'm divided between the 2 - On one hand Net Neutrality is important, On the other we're not a platform for political statements ..... Whilst I did support the whole SOPA/PIPA thing compared to 2012 social media is used a hell of a lot more now (and SOPA/PIPA was different) and as noted above we should remain neutral on this (Not everyone's going to agree with Net Neutrality),
In short if anyone agrees or disagrees with it then they're more than welcome to sign petitions and use social medias - I know the project is American and all that but in my eyes as I said we should remain neutral on this and this project should not be used for political things. –Davey2010Talk 13:48, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Davey2010, I don't believe we've interacted before, but I have a curious question I hope you can help me with. You, and others in this conversation, have said, we're not a platform for political statements. I've always understood that the content of the Wikipedia project should be neutral, well cited, from reliable sources. Free from politics as it were. I think we all agree on that. :)
The confusion, and why I'm asking this question, is about the movement of people behind the projects. The work we do as a community is a political statement. We say, "Free knowledge for all". That is a rather radical statement to make (much less actually do) when you look at how, and by whom, knowledge was created and shared in the past. I think it's this last part we seem to have the most disagreement on as a community and particularly in this conversation. I would love to understand more why that is. From yourself and others if they're willing to humor me here or on my talk page. Yours, Ckoerner (talk) 20:40, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I support Net Neutrality, but we are not a political platform. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:32, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support Net neutrality is crucial to our goals in WP. SusunW (talk) 14:44, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Wikipedia should only take a political position in response to an existential threat. A very credible argument can be made that SOPA/PIPA rose to these levels, but I don't see the severity here. I'm happy to flip if the argument that net neutrality is an existential threat to WP can be made, but I haven't seen it made yet. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:55, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose Direct advocacy on a political matter is about the farthest you can get from maintaining neutrality. "Please do not add commentary, your own point of view, or your own personal analysis to Wikipedia articles", to quote {{uw-npov2}}. Go start a blog if you want to publicize your opinions about political matters, whether in your own country or another. Nyttend (talk) 22:58, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose Let's not get Wikipedia in the habit of advocating the progressive cause du jour. It's not going to convince anyone who isn't already sympathetic to the viewpoint, but it will alienate those who oppose it.—Chowbok ☠ 06:36, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I'm on this project to reduce walls between people and knowledge. Quiddity (talk) 06:37, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, mostly per Ajraddatz's remark. --Vogone (talk) 10:25, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose The Wikimedia Foundation should be less hypocritical. They spearheaded the anti-netneutrality Wikipedia Zero program knowing full well Facebook and Google would use it to justify their own Zero-rated programs. Refusing to entertain arguments that parts of the US have as much need for WP0 as existing deployments. Their actions speak louder than words and if this run it should rewritten to reflect their past actions ("Rules for thee, not me"). — Dispenser 11:24, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I've shown my support in the past for this, and still support it now. Esp. with something as low key as a geofenced banner. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:01, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I appreciate that editors feel strongly about this issue and share many of their concerns. But on Wikipedia the impartial credibility and integrity of this project should be our primary concern - advocacy activities should be a very rare exception reserved for imminent direct threats to Wikipedia's core mission. Also, some of the outlined speculative scenarios seem exaggerated or are still under discussion among experts. The net neutrality dispute, while serious and concerning, is not a direct imminent threat to Wikipedia. GermanJoe (talk) 12:25, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • strong support It is important that we speak up for this, as one of the only non-profits and public spaces on the internet that is *not* beholden to corporate interests, and thus as a project that can speak with authority on behalf of *users* of the internet -- not on behalf of companies trying to make a buck. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 12:46, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This project is made possible by the free and open internet. 10Eleventeen 13:01, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, while Wikipedia should stay neutral on almost all everyday political topics, Internet regulation (or lack thereof) directly affects us, so we should take a stand and defend our position so we can continue to be neutral in the future. —Kusma (t·c) 14:16, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose we are not a political platform. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:22, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - is not in accord with the WP:Five pillars, specifically Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy. -- Netoholic @ 20:07, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Although I have rarely edited recently, I still frequently read articles, and I find CentralNotice and other banners to be very distracting. I also believe that this would constitute using Wikipedia as a soapbox, which I disagree with. Finally, the rules change is not nearly as disastrous as some people have indicated, as it is only restoring similar regulations to 2013, and Wikipedia had no difficulty existing then. Gluons12 ☢|☕ 17:30, 9 May 2018 (UTC).[reply]
  • Oppose Per Guy Macon and WP:NOT. Mr Ernie (talk) 00:29, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, and especially support identifying now, gradually over time (and not in response to any particular campaign), the areas of policy around copyright, the Internet, and other topics which are core to wikimedia's work and not generic advocacy. – SJ + 03:18, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. ℯxplicit 04:06, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This proposal links readers to a relevant page where they can learn about an important ongoing political topic. I think that is by itself a benefit to our readers, and one that in my mind outweighs the nuisance of a banner (at least this one's somewhat unintrusive with the coloring). An additional benefit is that the Wikimedia Foundation has come out in favor of this position, meaning it would help inform readers about something the WMF thinks will be good for the encyclopedia (and the readers by extension). Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 06:57, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Andrevan@ 06:54, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. While I favor net neutrality and dislike many of Ajit Pai's opinions (and his lame videos), WP is not the place for politics. Glrx (talk) 17:15, 11 May 2018 (UTC
  • Oppose Per Dennis Brown, TonyBallioni, Guy Macon, Ajraddatz, ICPH, Mandruss, Nyttend, and others, without prejudice to Net Neutrality. Granted, the WMF and most of its servers are based in the US, but all the encyclopedia users and contributors are in the clouds - and not only above the US but also throughout the whole world. Wikipedia encyclopedias should not be dominated by American politics - who or whatever the WMF is, Wikipedia is already a global thing. The only way political action of this kind would be tolerable would be if the WMF owned server farm and its connectivity were physically threatened by any US policy, in which case, along with the WMF corporate identity and staff, it would then have to relocate to a more traditionally neutral territory. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:30, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. While I support net neutrality in terms of government policy, Wikipedia should stay out of partisan politics in view of our own policy of WP:NPOV. Sandstein 07:40, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • <Troll/sock comment removed and troll/sock blocked.> Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:56, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very Strong Support Important issue not just to the U.S. but to Wikipedia as well. There are many benefits to doing this, and virtually no drawbacks. Davey2116 (talk) 18:15, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Commment there are very big drawbacks - offending volunteer editors who do not support increased government regulation of private activity. If you want to lobby for this policy, by all means go do so in any way to want to personally. But don't do so under WP's name which implicitly makes me a supporter. MB 19:17, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your argument would be more convincing if the subject were something like tax or healthcare policy. But we're talking about net neutrality, which directly affects Wikipedia, so I think this banner is justified, as it was for SOPA/PIPA in 2012. Davey2116 (talk) 19:28, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree net neutrality directly affects Wikipedia. However you think it is positive while I think the effect would negative - there will be unintended consequences and it will slow the rate of technological progress. I don't believe "Free knowledge depends on net neutrality" and don't want to forced to be part of the "we" that is asking for support. WP should not take any position.MB 19:45, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure what "unintended consequences" you are referring to. Net neutrality has been the status-quo since the beginning of the Internet, and it has not been a hindrance to technological progress. If anything, covert 'bandwidth throttling' by ISPs (as has already been done by Comcast to BitTorrent, by AT&T to Apple, by Verizon to Netflix, etc.) would slow technological progress, and this is exactly the type of activity that net neutrality laws were formalized to prevent. Wikipedia would like to ensure that it does not become the next victim of such oligopolistic tactics; the reader should interpret "we" as the Wikipedia, not its entire base of editors. Davey2116 (talk) 22:40, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The status-quo since the beginning of the internet has been Laissez-faire which allowed great technological progress. Net-neutrality is the opposite of that, putting the industry under the regulatory purview of the FCC which will have negative consequences as explained here. I have no fear that WP will become a "victim" of free-market capitalism but rather a benefactor. MB 22:59, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • How is that? Where would Wikipedia procure the funds necessary to gain access to the "speedy service" lane? I am 100% sure that Wikipedia will be hurt by the repeal of net neutrality; how many more $3 donations per year do you think there can be? Also, net neutrality has been the status quo (you can't argue with that fact) and the laws passed in 2015 only formalized those principles. Net neutrality and laissez-faire are not completely incompatible; net neutrality is not the abolition of the free market. On the contrary, net neutrality ensures a fair market, so that not too much power is concentrated at the hands of a few large ISPs. Your talking point is that the whole purpose of laissez-faire is competition, which drives innovation and efficiency; I completely agree with that, and I think repealing net neutrality hurts those goals by stifling such competition and allowing unfair business practices. (Further reading.) Davey2116 (talk) 01:38, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Davey2116: I agree with the gist of your argument. However, I don't think you should try to convince opponents to switch to "support". Most of the editors who post here with an opinion on net neutrality are set in their beliefs, and trying to convince them will result in the backfire effect. Regarding Also, net neutrality has been the status quo [...] net neutrality is not the abolition of the free market. I had actually mentioned a very similar thing in my comments above.
    (Side note: MB's comment about the pre-2015 Internet being laissez-faire is totally wrong. The FCC enforced net neutrality by filing lawsuits against violators such as Verizon. This is the opposite of what laissez-faire means, which is "leave things be and don't intervene".) epicgenius (talk) 23:54, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Even if the notice were implemented, it would have to include a prominent disclaimer similar to: This message is supported by 59% of 0.8% of the active editors of English Wikipedia. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:44, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know how many causal readers are able to discern this. Any such banner should have a disclaimer.MB 22:59, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
1. WMF can advocate any position it wishes to advocate without using the encyclopedia as a delivery vehicle. 2. Wikipedia is its entire base of editors. Not the self-selected few. We will not make any statement on any political issue without making it crystal clear that it is the opinion of a minuscule fraction of the editing population, period. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:20, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not completely opposed to such a disclaimer; I was just going on the SOPA precedent, where the banner had no such disclaimer (so your claim that we always put a "crystal clear" disclaimer is categorically false). Also, as the Wikimedia Foundation owns Wikipedia, it can advocate any position using Wikipedia as the vehicle as it wishes (though doing so for any position other than those that directly concern Wikipedia (i.e., other than Internet law) would obviously damage its reputation). Davey2116 (talk) 01:38, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the correction. What I meant, which I thought was obvious enough, is that I will vigorously oppose any such use of the encyclopedia on the say-so of the self-selected few. It's patently wrong, but I can't force anybody to see that. Thankfully, it looks like I'll have plenty of self-selected company. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:50, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay. Don't get me wrong, I'm also annoyed that a (relatively) small group of people are 'deciding' for the whole of Wikipedia in this survey (especially since newcomers may find the village-pump very obscure). But this is the system we have, and we'd have to move mountains to change it. Davey2116 (talk) 03:51, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Wikipedia has been built by volunteers from all walks of life and political alignments, and it never should be hijacked for a political campaign. --Pudeo (talk) 01:31, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Wikipedia and politics should not mix. We have editors who support the governmental initiative, we have editors who oppose it, and we have editors who are neutral. We should--in this forum--be neutral. Editors should feel free to express their views any way they choose outside of Wikipedia. For Wikipedia to take a position would imply to the outside world that there is a voting system and a majority polling took place when really it could be just whatever a passing closing admin (or user) decided a conversation built as consensus from those who participate. We should avoid taking a position on issues like this as a matter of policy.--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:15, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Paul McDonald, are you aware that Overwhelming Bipartisan Public Opposition to Repealing Net Neutrality Persists («Eighty-six percent oppose the repeal of net neutrality, including 82% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats)»? There is only one fringe extremist political position here, and it's the idea to repeal net neutrality. Not speaking against the repeal of net neutrality means, in fact, to acritically adopt a party line. To be neutral, Wikimedia needs to support net neutrality. Then, of course, one can say that there are different degrees at which we can support the bipartisan view. --Nemo 04:18, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I disagree that "to be neutral, Wikimedia needs to support net neutr4ality." That's the opposite of "neutral" -- that's taking a position. And we shouldn't do that as a community.--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:57, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This seems very against the policy of being Here to build an encyclopedia, bordering even on WP:SOAP. Wikipedia is here to build an encyclopedia, not as a platform for points of view. [Username Needed] 08:43, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Saying that if one USA party adamantly opposes something then an issue automatically becomes partisan and all sides must be considered equal is bothsidesism. --Nemo 19:58, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, because even if Wikipedia was created at a time when the rules were dodgier, I believe that allowing ISPs to throttle back on certain services is laying the groundwork for future trouble for us. Also, the comments about us being apolitical are completely off the mark. Yes, we're a non-partisan resource, and we should continue to be. But we're not "neutral" in some abstract sense of the term; we have our definition of neutrality, based on presenting what reliable third-party sources say. The sources are literally all that matters; the views of political parties anywhere really don't matter a damn. So we write about climate change and Darwinian evolution as facts, we write most of our articles within a human rights framework (because that's what most scholars use), we're critical of the anti-GMO movement, critical of eugenics, etc, etc. A political party taking a stand on an issue is not a reason for us not to do so. Politicians can say what they like; this could threaten our mission, and that's all that matters. Vanamonde (talk) 06:26, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. We weren't always one of the top 5 websites in the world, and the only way we became that is because of effective net neutrality, because we would not have had the money to pay providers for speedy treatment. Same for most every other nonprofit, or startup, and especially nonprofit startup. --GRuban (talk) 20:38, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - What the proposer is actually asking is whether he can use Wikipedia to promote his own political viewpoint, and the answer to that ought to be a resounding NO! --Ykraps (talk) 05:18, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree. Even if a full audit was taken of all registered editors and active users that are not registered, and it could be validated, and exactly 100% of everyone supported the issue--if it were truly unanimous--Wikipedia should still remain neutral on all topics.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:17, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have already !voted above, but I urge an immediate close as 1) there is clearly no consensus, and 2) the vote in the Senate has already happened, making this proposal as stated moot. Gluons12 ☢|☕ 14:04, 17 May 2018 (UTC).[reply]
The senate is not the only governing body that has to approve this. It still has to pass in the House and be signed by the president. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:03, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This has no interest with Wikipedia. – TheGridExe (talk) 02:32, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I've read every comment, and after deliberating I strongly support this. This is beyond a political statement, it is about freedom and equal rights to access knowledge. If this is allowed to stay it is purely to maintain a manufactured social divide based on wealth and that is not why we are here. Mramoeba (talk) 13:02, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Support Wikipedia depends on Net Neutrality. Allowing ISPs to pick and choose winners online is dangerous and should never happen. The Wikimedia Foundation clearly supports Net Neutrality. So why doesn't Wikipedia? Retroity (talk) 19:42, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose -- I have personal feelings about the issue, but, this issue doesn't matter in the slightest to my work here as a Wikipedian. We are here to build an encyclopedia. -- Dolotta (talk) 01:17, 20 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion appears to have died down here too: time to close this. (non-admin closure) Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:50, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

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

I challenge the validity of this too-soon RfC

It has only been a month since the last time this proposal was rejected. See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 147#Net neutrality. Editors should not be allowed to ask the same question over and over, hoping for a different result. This RfC should be closed and the proponent should be asked to wait at least a few months before asking again. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:34, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am having trouble finding any meaningful difference between
Could we perhaps link to www.businessesfornetneutrality.com in a banner at the top of all pages?
...and...
Proposal: A US-only CentralNotice in support of Net Neutrality.
What makes them different? Is it the added US-only provision, or the slightly different wording in support on Net Neutrality? I didn't see any responses to the previous RfC that said "I would support it if the notice was US only" or "I would support it if you dropped the businessesfornetneutrality.com link". Generally, for a new RfC to be posted after a month, one would expect the new RfC to address some issue identified in the previous RfC. In my considered opinion, this is substantively the same proposal. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:30, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would support the banner which states: "Wikipedians are opposed to the advancement of government control over our internet!". Wikipedia, however, does not speak with one voice here. Let's get over it, and get back to writing an encyclopedia. Can someone close this waste of editor time and energy which will NEVER REACH CONSENSUS and is beating a dead horse? GenQuest "Talk to Me" 16:40, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia, however, does not speak with one voice here. Can someone close this waste of editor time? Pot, meet kettle. Just let the discussion play out first. Maybe there will be consensus for one side or the other, but no one will know unless the discussion runs its course. epicgenius (talk) 13:13, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment No matter what issue exists, on any topic at all, it is likely unwise for Wikipedia to take any stance on any issues based on "consensus of editors" on any Wikipedia page. The potential morass is vast. The gain is de minimis. And where iterated versions of such things get placed here on a monthly basis, the value of any "consensus" is Wertlos. Guy Macon is correct. Collect (talk) 19:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Of course it is too soon. Saying "Plenty of editors above disagree." is either disingenuous because you want your side to "win at any cost", or moronic. Bludgeoning the community until it grows weary of these discussions is not how you form a consensus. In the past it has been clear that a majority do not want to get involved in ANY politics. Saying the slightly different wording changes everything is bunk. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:06, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You opposed the previous proposal so you weren't uninvolved Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:24, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You are saying that the proposals are in fact the same thing? Natureium (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say they were different anyhow; but presuming the proposals aren't the same, the proposals would still be on a similar enough topic that it'd be hard to call Guy Macon uninvolved Galobtter (pingó mió) 02:47, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
But whether or not I am involved because of my participation in another RfC, you do agree that the person who posted this RfC is involved, right? --Guy Macon (talk) 06:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(...Sound of Crickets...) --Guy Macon (talk) 12:40, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This would not accomplish what this RfC claims that it would accomplish

According to this legal analyses,
"The CRA would not undo the FCC’s decision to classify broadband internet access service as an information service. That classification decision was the result of an adjudication and is embodied in an order, not a 'rule' subject to the CRA. Nor would the CRA permit Congress to restore the net neutrality rules that the FCC eliminated in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order.
Thus, the CRA joint resolutions of disapproval recently introduced in the Senate (S.J.Res.52) and House (H.J.Res.129) can neither return broadband Internet access service providers to Title II regulation nor restore prohibitions on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. In fact, the result of an enacted CRA resolution in this case would be to disapprove the FCC’s transparency rule — the only substantive rule adopted in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order — and prevent the FCC from adopting substantially similar transparency requirements in the future. In short, the CRA resolution exercise represents nothing more than empty political theater rather than a serious legislative effort to preserve Internet openness."
Related: The Process for Using the Congressional Review Act to Protect Net Neutrality, Explained. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:35, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
So, a blog post written on a law firm's website, by a lawyer that represents communications companies against the FCC. Always nice to grab extra attention with a new subsection for such things.. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(Snark ignored.) Actually, it was published on Law360. As a convenience to the reader I searched out a non-paywall version.
Do you have a source that disputes the sourced claim that the CRA allows review and possible overruling of new federal regulations issued by government agencies and does not allow the overruling of a repeal of an old regulation as a result of an adjudication?
Do you have a single example of the CRA being used to force an agency to adopt a rule as opposed to disapproving a rule? See Congressional Review Act. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:14, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(Psst...saying something is ignored is the opposite of ignoring it.) ―Mandruss ☎ 23:27, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist Geonotice

A watchlist geo-notice targeted to the US is now in effect advertising this discussion, saying "Please participate in a discussion about whether to temporarily display a banner in support of Net Neutrality to U.S. readers only." As there is a very tight timeframe here and the notice is neutrally worded, this seems acceptable to me, though I assume some of the other participants here will disagree. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:57, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion update

IntelligenceSquared Debate on Net Neutrality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJabAjoK08

The Federal Communications Commission’s recent decision to end Obama-era net neutrality regulations has sparked contentious national debate about the future of the web. Is net neutrality necessary to preserve a free, open internet for all?

For the Motion:

  • Mitchell Baker Chairwoman, Mozilla Foundation & Mozilla Corporation
  • Tom Wheeler Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School and Former Chairman, FCC

Against the Motion:

  • Nick Gillespie Editor at Large, Reason
  • Michael Katz Professor, Berkeley & Former Chief Economist, FCC

--Guy Macon (talk) 15:01, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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

RfC: Deletion of drafts

The deletion of drafts via MfD was previously discussed over two years ago in this RfC that concluded that drafts should not be subject to the notability criteria, but that there may be other valid reasons for the deletions of drafts. Reading the comments of the RfC and the close, there also seemed to be agreement that drafts should be works in progress, eventually expected to meet mainspace standards. Currently, it is possible to continually resubmit a declined draft to AfC with no changes while not meeting any of the CSD criteria or failing WP:NOTWEBHOST and effectively stay in draft space forever. This has caused some back and forth at MfD as what to do with these articles. To help provide clarity for this situation, I am proposing WP:NMFD be modified to read the following (updated text in red):

Drafts are not subject to article deletion criteria like "no context" or no indication of notability so creators may have time to establish notability. Drafts may be nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion, but not solely based upon a concern about notability. A draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in Wikipedia:Deletion policy.

TonyBallioni (talk) 18:39, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Drafts RfC Survey

  • Support as proposer as it will clarify what has de facto become a delete reason at MfD, deal with cases that will never be G13 or G11 eligible but also have no chance of ever becoming an article, and also provides protection to drafts so that they are still not eligible solely because of notability and requires that they be given more time to develop. This also has the potential to lighten the load on MfD because it would set the standard as repeated resubmissions (read 3 or more times) and would leave the others alone to develop or meet G13. I think this wording is a good way of splitting the baby of protecting drafts from overeager while remembering that at the end of the day, we are ultimately an encyclopedia first and foremost, and that the end goal of the draft space is to build that encyclopedia. Content that doesn't have a chance of meeting that goal shouldn't be kept. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:39, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Drafts that are tendentiously resubmitted without improvement are an unnecessary waste of volunteer time and should be deleted. Some submitters evidently have difficulty in understanding the word "no" (let alone "encyclopedia"). Deletion makes that message clear. I'd like to see some article CSDs (A11 in particular) apply to submitted drafts, as the act of submission indicates that the submitter believes their draft should be treated as an article. MER-C 18:54, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • User:MER-C, the resubmitters are never told “no”. Have a look at some. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:04, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • In some sense, yes -- I strongly agree with you that we waste far too much time sending the wrong message to and accommodating those who aren't here to improve Wikipedia. But having a draft declined stating that further improvement is necessary and not doing that before resubmitting is still failing to understand a very simple concept. MER-C 11:57, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Mer-C & Tony but is not strong enough. I like Robert's idea of A7 for draft articles.-- Dlohcierekim (talk) 19:00, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose As I noted at AN before the thread was closed, resubmitting a draft multiple times is a conduct issue not a content issue and should be handled by sactioning the user in question instead. Once the user has been banned/blocked, the problem posed by the RFC is solved. This proposal would allow a single editor to decline a draft three times and then nominate it for MFD for being declined three times, effectively circumventing the whole reason why we have Draft-space in the first place (which is also why I strongly oppose any attempts to expand A7 to drafts). Regards SoWhy 19:02, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    SoWhy I would be in complete agreement, except Tony has inserted the phrase "without any substantial improvement". If there is question about what "substantial improvement" here constitutes, an per-case discussion happens at MfD. This is not a "Speedy" process, although I also think there should be such a process for egregious cases. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 19:07, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I just don't see it as solely a conduct issue. The reason why a draft may be repeatedly declined is because the subject simply isn't suitable for an encyclopedia and has no foreseeable chance at becoming suitable in the future (WP:OVERCOME); that's a valid content issue, if I did hear one. Although it might work, the problem I see with treating it as a behavioral problem is WP:BITE. Threatening to block should be a last resort, and I see deletion as the neatest solution that saves the most time and doesn't unnecessarily personalize the issue for new editors. Mz7 (talk) 00:30, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    How does deletion stop a user from recreating the same page? BITE problems are a big reason why I don't favor deletion of drafts at all (I see it as a fool's errand to devote energy to pages whose existence does not pose an actual problem in terms of outside visibility) but even BITE has its limits. We block users who don't get the message after being warned multiple times in other areas as well, so how is AFC different? Deleting a page someone has worked hard on is usually as BITEy as blocking them because both send the message that they are not welcome. But only sanctioning the user will actually address the problem posed by Tony. If we agree to sanction users, we could easily create an edit filter that prevents those users from resubmitting drafts (which would be less BITEy than blocking them without being less effective). Regards SoWhy 09:11, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Off topic uninformed oppose Vote! on a clarification of policy to match existing practice at MfD from a user with 17 visits to MfD in their last 50,000 edits over a decade. Sanctioning new throwaway accounts is a fools errand and does nothing to remove the bad Draft from the system. Legacypac (talk) 05:18, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Legacypac: An ad hominem argument obscures the points you are trying to make. You should stop attempting to discredit users by who they are or what they've done and instead discredit their points by answering their points directly. --Izno (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I appreciate the nuance given here to those editors who make good-faith efforts to improve their draft, even if it takes 3 or more or many more attempts. Tendentious resubmissions with no effort to address the concerns of the declining editor, however, should be cause for deletion. Even speedy per Dlohcierekim. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 19:03, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as redundant addition. I don't see the slightest effect that this will have on what we currently have. Also agree with SoWhy. Changed to support. As I already made it clear, I am not against the substance of this proposal but the amount of difference it can make to what currently exists. After TonyBallioni's response, I am convinced supporting this will surely be a one step forward and the impact will (hopefully) be seen in the long-term. –Ammarpad (talk) 19:11, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • It makes “repeatedly resubmitted with no improvements, has no chance of being in mainspace, and has no sourcing for uninvolved editors to show notability.” an unambiguously valid reason for deletion at MfD. I think it should be already per NOTWEBHOST. This makes that clear. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:33, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @TonyBallioni: I generally agree with the principle of any proposal that will hasten deletion of non-notable drafts that otherwise didn't meet any of our extant WP:GCSD. But I would like to support something that will make impact. Many proposals nowadays are just collection of random support without short term or long term effect. Even now, that this proposal is not in effect, one can nominate non-notable, hopeless and repeatedly submitted draft and it will surely be deleted. But considering your points;
    1. repeatedly resubmitted
    2. with no improvements,
    3. has no chance of being in mainspace, and
    4. has no sourcing for uninvolved editors to show notability
    Shouldn't this be clear need for speedy deletion criterion? If a draft meet all these criteria what else people will discuss? How many people participate in MfD these days? –Ammarpad (talk) 08:18, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi, Ammarpad, thanks for pinging me. The reason I didn't propose those here is because those would be a lot bigger changes than this, I don't think they have consensus at this time, and I hadn't done any work into looking at what a process there might look like.
    My general approach to policy reform is that policy is meant to be descriptive of practice, not prescriptive. That means I typically only propose RfCs where I think there is a pre-existing consensus. Here, I'd heard enough complaints about how we deal with drafts through MfD, I was aware that previous attempts to get a CSD criterion approved had not been successful, and that draft PROD would be more controversial than this and would probably have a 50/50 chance of passing. I think this proposal addresses a concern that people have, already has consensus, and will improve the encyclopedia as a whole.
    There may be other reform ideas in this area that could be successful, such as Kudpung's suggestion for DfD or yours for Draft PROD. I'd likely support those. That's not the intent of this proposal though. This is an attempt to be a first step in making the process easier by documenting what people already bring up at MfD pretty frequently in policy. If you support the idea generally, like Mz7 below, I hope you'll consider supporting. This doesn't pretend to be the perfect solution, just a viable step forward. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:45, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, TonyBallioni, I now understand you better. Hopefully, although this doesn't mean much now (my concern), it is a stepping stop to something more impactful in the future, instead of ignoring/opposing it now and end up discussing it again at the time we ought to be discussing measures beyond it. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:01, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    MfD receives reasonably high participation actually; for a CSD you'd need an A7-esque standard, as what counts as "no sourcing" for notability and not suitable for mainspace is contentious Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:52, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Indeed, I think if you look at Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion and its archives, you'll see that the current wording of this section has resulted in a lot of confusion and debate. For that reason, I do not see this clarification as redundant, and if you think it is descriptive of current practice, I think you should consider supporting. Mz7 (talk) 20:15, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I see it as that. That means it will have no solid impact. It merely repeats what already exists. Any draft that meet what was described above will surely be deleted at MfD. See my reply to TonyBallioni above. The current problem as described requires only speedy criterion to make sense and for us to know we're moving forward. Or to a lesser extant, to establish special "sticky prod" for drafts. I will shortly describe it in General comment section. comments below. –Ammarpad (talk) 08:53, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support see User:JJMC89_bot/report/AfC_decline_counts where drafts are declined as many as 11 times! It is a serious waste of effort and gums up AfC. This can help the actually notable draft stuck in AfC as well because it will expose the page to a discussion where someone can make a case for promotion, but mostly it will provide an exit path for the hopeless repeated reviewer free spin of the wheel style resubmissions. I also support applying A style CSDs to submitted drafts. The act of submission is a request to apply mainspace criteria to the page so treat the page as such. Legacypac (talk) 19:10, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Why should notability not be considered for drafts? The point of drafts is to develop into articles, and articles require notability. What then is the purpose of allowing drafts on non-notable subjects? Natureium (talk) 19:23, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - We should not be spending time in deletion discussions about drafts. These discussions and administrative actions take unnecessary resources, are WP:BITEY, and feed trolls. Please let these submissions wait their turn in the queue for a few weeks before rejecting them. Authors will get the message and the drafts will eventually be deleted under G13. ~Kvng (talk) 19:37, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, per Kvng. This proposal comes across as a punitive measure, too. --Doncram (talk) 19:52, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • The other working proposal to deal with this is to block them and let G13 take hold. I consider that much more bitey and puntative. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:56, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @TonyBallioni: I proposed above that we basically put these drafts in timeout. Can we put that on the table too? No change to process is required, just a change to reviewer behavior. ~Kvng (talk) 00:41, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not really sure if there is a way to prevent them from submitting the AfC draft. I'm also not sure what good it does to keep them for 6 extra months if we've already made the determination we don't want them. If the main reason is BITE, I'll somewhat echo Seraphimblade below in noting that most of these are not actually good faith users who are trying to contribute something encyclopedic that they find interesting to Wikipedia. Most of these are people who have a financial incentive to keep resubmitting and take advantage of our good faith. I'm not sure BITE is really a good argument in dealing with people we don't want contributing anyway. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:12, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Oppose arguments such Kvng's are admirable in their assumption of good faith, but practical AfC data shows that there are far too many bad-faith article creators. This reality is the reason that we have made ACTRIAL permanent, after all. The proposed language is a common-sense way to address bad-faith resubmitters. The difference between good-faith and bad-faith article creators is often disclosed by their response to AfC rejection. The former will at least query the rejection and its feedback, while the latter will just send the exact same article back into the queue. This proposal only targets the latter behavior, something that should be dissuaded in any event. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:57, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Kvng:, I suggest starting with the meta:Research:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial and wp:Autoconfirmed article creation trial/Post-trial Research Report. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 04:29, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Eggishorn: I've read those and they don't support what you're saying here. There is nothing in the report about draft author behavior. Also the WMF is only now gaining an understanding of how AfC works. The AfC-related conclusions in the report are disputed. There were more submissions to AfC but there is no evidence there was a "struggle" to keep up with it. See Wikipedia_talk:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial/Post-trial_Research_Report#AfC_backlog_"struggle". ~Kvng (talk) 14:38, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) Support – It is true that in the wide majority of cases, the notability guidelines that justify the deletion of articles do not automatically justify the deletion of drafts. This is because one of the purposes of the draft space is to serve as an incubator for drafts about non-notable subjects that have a high likelihood of becoming notable in the near future (e.g. film actors who are about to star in a significant role, upcoming films from major studios, athletes who are about to debut in the top tier of their sport). The draft space is the successor to Wikipedia:Article Incubator in this respect. Articles that were in the incubator did not stay there forever, however; they either were moved back to mainspace or were nominated to MFD or userfied (see WP:GRADUATE).
    I've long held the view that there are two general cases where notability should and does factor in as a part of a decision to delete a draft (see this July 2017 discussion). The first is repeatedly submitted AfC drafts with no foreseeable chance at acceptance due to lack of notability, and the second is long-abandoned non-AFC drafts about non-notable subjects with no foreseeable chance at becoming notable in the future. The second case has largely been mitigated with the expansion of CAT:G13 to all drafts, but I see MfD as the natural place where repeatedly submitted AfC drafts should be sent. I don't see blocking or other conduct sanctions as the best solution because the issue is indeed fundamentally with the subject of the article: no amount of editing can overcome a lack of notability. Mz7 (talk) 20:06, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for a few reasons, although mostly this is just echoing SoWhy. First, AfC doesn't own the entire Draft namespace, so constant submission is a project problem. In that case, I think SoWhy's response (i.e., it becomes a behavior/cluefulness issue) is appropriate. Second, the purpose of draftspace is for folks to work on pages that are inappropriate for mainspace; this would defeat the whole purpose of treating something as a "draft" rather than an article. I've said elsewhere that I am unconvinced of the damage or harm a large draftspace would supposedly cause, and that remains true. Finally, I think the proposed text weakens WP:NMFD to a degree that it will cease to be a barrier. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:34, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, AfC doesn't own the draft namespace, Amorymeltzer, but it was created with them in mind and with the hope that ACTRIAL would take place one of the days. Well, ACTRIAL took place, and has since become ACREQ and there has been the anticipated (but slightly lower than feared) increase in the number of drafts. Nevertheless, SoWhy's argument (i.e., it becomes a behavior/cluefulness issue) is indeed also appropriate, because the reviewing needs to be much improved so that even if they have clue, they will be singing from the same page of the same hymn book, and at the moment they do not appear to be doing either. And that's a much longer story. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:48, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would qualify your description of the purpose of the draft space in this way: the purpose of the draft space is for folks to work on pages that are inappropriate for mainspace but will soon be appropriate for mainspace. The draft space is not a dumping ground for articles about just any topic that doesn't meet mainspace standards to remain indefinitely – that would be using Wikipedia as a web host. We expect drafts to be actively worked on and improved so that they will eventually be a part of the encyclopedia. If a draft is about a topic that is inherently non-notable and has no foreseeable chance at becoming notable in the future, then more community time is wasted when we allow it to be repeatedly submitted at AfC than if we allow it to be deleted at MFD. Fundamentally, it is not just a conduct issue, but an issue with the subject of the draft. If the real solution is to threaten to block a user if they don't stop submitting, and let it be deleted after waiting out 6 months via G13, then isn't that WP:BITEy and perhaps even more time wasting than if we just waited out 7 days at MfD? Mz7 (talk) 23:59, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict)(edit conflict) Support strongly - in fact I would go one further and suggest the creation of DfD - Drafts for Deletion. Since ACREQ was rolled out, there are going to be a lot more drafts for deletion. As one of the editors who works a lot in these areas I prefer pragmatic solutions rather than philosophical ones. Being BITEY is not part of the equation , telling a troll his trash is not wanted is not being bitey, nor is telling an obvious paid editor that Wikipedia was not conceived as a platform for blatently making a career from making money out of our volunteer-created encyclopedia; Wikipedia is not a business directory either or a register for rappers. What is really needed are a better set of instructions (without TL:DR, but more than just a quick click-through of four four-line pages) at the Article Wizard, and more consistent reviewing at AfC; and above all, more truly active AfC reviewers Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:35, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Kudpung: I would say, personally, I would like a DfD system, but I've heard arguments that it won't have nearly enough traffic to work properly. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 03:45, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • User:Kudpung, User:Jjjjjjdddddd - I am genuinely puzzled by the idea of Drafts for Deletion. My question is why drafts need a separate deletion process from MFD, especially since MFD is primarily used for drafts anyway. Why do drafts require their own deletion process? Why not do at MFD whatever would be done at DFD? I hope that this isn't considered a stupid question, but I really don't understand why a new process would solve the known problems with cruddy drafts. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:12, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support In my experience, G13 is just not good enough to deal with this issue. Drafts that are truely not notable, which are just cruft should be able to be deleted rather than going after x months of no edits and instantly undeletable. Additionally, at MfD/DfD/whatever it is called, there will be the chance for more people to look over nominations than one reviewer every few weeks. While I'm an advocate for a more engagement-based approach on paid editing, in cases where companies are non-notable, we do need to be less wishy-washy on the message we send out. Mdann52 (talk) 20:54, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support but I like Kudpungs idea a lot - Having "DFD" would be a much better place for all of these as IMHO Drafts are unrelated to MFD, Anyway support this proposal. –Davey2010Talk 21:05, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (edit conflict) - I understand SoWhy's concern but I think that if the article is undergoing substantial improvements there is no concern with this affecting the draft. -- Dane talk 21:07, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - this is a step in the right direction, although it is still insufficient. Blatantly non-notable drafts (one where no reasonable editor can make a case for notability) should be eligible for deletion either as a speedy or through a XfD process without the need to show anything else. Endorse Kudpung's DfD process. Tazerdadog (talk) 21:18, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • In-the-end Support but not yet, not when the resubmissions followed a face reading of the saccharine decline template that encourages the author to edit improve and, with a big blue box, “resubmit”. The template confuses the newcomers who think this is how to communicate. The root fault lies with the AfC template and this deletion process does nothing to address it. Support for resubmissions that follow removal of the saccharine resubmit template only. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:34, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The prerequisites to precede are (1) Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Applying_A*_criteria_to_submitted_drafts and (2) fixing the AfC practice of the confusing rejection template. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:39, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I also wouldn't mind having a Drafts-for-Deletion notice board, but would prefer to save DFD for a Disambiguations for Discussions notice board. Also, if we are going to separate drafts from MfD, we should create a master deletion noticeboard where editors can see all discussions going on at AfD, MfD, CfD, RfD, and any others that are made. bd2412 T 21:42, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
DAB pages are dealt with at MfD. They may need to be deleted occasionally, but rarely for the reasons that junk that is received at AfC needs to specially treated. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:06, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, DAB pages are usually dealt with at AfD - if the issue is deletion. More importantly, however, there are a number of non-deletion issues for which disambiguation pages require a central noticeboard, including move requests, and proposals to change an existing article or redirect to a disambiguation page (or to turn an existing disambiguation page into an article). bd2412 T 22:19, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
DAB pages are never dealt with at MfD but are immediately referred to AfD. DAB discussions would be better as RM discussions on the DAB talk page, except if an outcome is deletion the discussion would be deleted. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:25, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In that case you'd better send this to RfD ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:53, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
With four incoming links, and before today an average of less than one view per ten days, rfding it would be busywork. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:39, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Kvng and SoWhy. I don't agree with deleting drafts that are declined multiple times after many resubmissions since it may come off as WP:BITEY and completely unnecessary. Just undo/revert the submitter to solve the issue easily instead of MFD-ing which is a waste of time or reviewers should just leave them alone for a few weeks before declining since no one outside the community cares about the draft space and keeping the drafts around will not be detrimental to WP. What is already written is sufficient and the proposed addition could actually make it more confusing rather than give clarity. KingAndGod 22:02, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    You are free to vote bow you like but basing your vote on the reasoning of an editor with no AfC and extremely limited MfD experience is less convincing. Legacypac (talk) 08:01, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Legacypac: See above your comment to SoWhy re ad hominem. --Izno (talk) 12:13, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, absolutely, per Tony. Volunteer time is our most precious resource; we should not be forcing wasting it on reviewing and declining drafts that are tendentiously resubmitted by people not acting in good faith. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:37, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Resubmitting the same draft over and over is a behavioral issue. Deal with the user. If it's a recurring problem, disallow it via AfC processes. If AfC allows resubmitting the same draft over and over again, don't defer to another process to fix it by deletion. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:53, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sanctioning new throwaway SPA accounts does not solve much. MfD is no more a seperate process from Draft space than AfD is a seperate process for Mainspace. I am unaware of any way to prevent someone from adding the AfC submit code to any page other than to block them. Legacypac (talk) 05:18, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, draft space should be used for things for which there's a reasonable likelihood that they can one day be an article. It should not be a dumping ground for people to write about their pet dog, nor (and I've seen this tried on multiple occasions) for an undisclosed spammer to see just how much promotional language they can get away with by making small changes and resubmitting. We either need this, or a "______ strikes, you're out" speedy criterion. At some point, repeated failed resubmissions indicate that either the author is not acting in good faith, or lacks the competence to write an article. In either case, there comes a point at which we need to say we've spent enough time on it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:02, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – this is a no-brainer: this is an encyclopedia devoted to articles on notable subjects – if a draft has been determined to insufficently notable at something like AfC multiple times, and is unlikely to ever be notable, it does not belong as part of this project, even in Draftspace. WP:NOTAWEBHOST. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 01:16, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - While I understand the good faith aspect here, and indeed whenever possible, if a draft has potential to become an article, they should be kept as long as they're being worked on. But unfortunately, there are many drafts on subjects that simply would be deleted quickly if they were an article. It would be better to put them out of their misery quickly as opposed to keeping them in the limbo of waiting for them to become G13 eligible. This is especially with ACTRIAL becoming permanent after all. With that said, perhaps MfD would be a better compromise as opposed to extending certain CSD criteria to drafts, since many drafts are still potential articles, and it's necessary to see which is workable and which needs to go. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:48, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Most people that repeatedly submit the same bad submission are either not acting in good faith, or are ignoring the decline reason. AfC is already heavily backlogged as it is, and besides, the MfD discussion will either have the bad-faith trash deleted, or give the (presumably somewhat good-faith) submitter a push to improve their draft. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 03:58, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. We are WP:NOTWEBHOST for material unsuited to our project. Sandstein 07:46, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support this seems reasonable, it allows for people to try to bring a draft up to acceptable standards without turning draftspace into a webhost for pages which will never become articles. Hut 8.5 10:05, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Hut 8.5. This doesn't stop people from using user space for longer term storage, but it does give us the appropriate tool to deal with the few drafts that need to be cleaned up. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 10:08, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This proposal makes a very bold assumption: that AFC reviewers are infallible and that if a draft has been rejected by them three times then "obviously" the draft must be worthless. the problems with AFC's lack of accountability have been discussed many times on Wikipedia and I fail to see how this does anything bu increase the lack of accountability.

    AFC reviewers are declining articles for incredibly petty reasons like not formatting a reference correctly, or "this looks notable, but can you make the article perfect", or the most obnoxious, which is the dreaded copy-pasted boilerplates that say the draft is not good, but do nothing to advise the draftee on how to improve it.

    Something many older reviewers don't realise is that new users are corralled into AFC. AFC is not mandatory for creating a page, but if you are a new user, the instructions you receive to everything to convince you that the only way to create a new page is to make a draft and submit it for review. This has given the reviewers of AFC an incredible amount of power, in a way that goes against the entire spirit of the Wiki (Collaboration). Many AFC reviewers instead of looking to improve articles, have appointed themselves unilateral quality editors and continually reject drafts that AFD would never delete. This proposal seeks to increase the power of AFC editors, but I suggest that this is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Egaoblai (talk) 10:23, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Egaoblai this isn't a CSD so they aren't automatically deemed worthless. Having an MfD for those drafts declined spuriously means that they'll get attention from multiple editors and more accountability and an accept in those cases where the declines are spurious Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:13, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
At MfD we can discuss and save if the AfC reviewers are wrong Legacypac (talk) 08:01, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with your concerns Egaoblai but a timely MfD is likely to be an improvement on the draft ageing out and being quietly deleted G13 after 6 months. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:26, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I see this as a genuine problem and this seems like a practical way to solve it. WP:MFD will get extra eyes on them in case there's a consensus that the AFC reviewers have erred, and there's always WP:DRV as a backup as with other deletion processes. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:26, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Tony and Mer-C; blocking the accounts is hard to do when they are likely in good faith etc; you'd need first need to leave specific warnings rather than encouraging AfC messages and it is basically much more effort overall. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:52, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - this seems like a measured solution to the problem. Richard0612 13:47, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Per WP:NOTPAPER, there is no physical limit requiring deletion. If resubmission is an issue, it is better to retain drafts as a record of previous versions. If you start deleting versions, then further submissions will seem to be starting afresh, so causing the process to loop indefinitely. So, just as we keep our discussions and archives indefinitely, we should keep draft versions too. If they don't seem to be going anywhere, then use a category or other tag to mark their status. Andrew D. (talk) 21:23, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Measured oppose "Repeatedly" is an interesting word, and the criterion should not be "repeatedly" but "repeatedly without prospective changes in notability" - that is, we ought to avoid burning up a draft where the notability of the topic or person has a decent chance of being altered substantially. Collect (talk) 21:29, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
if that is true for a draft that can be discussed at MfD. Legacypac (talk) 08:01, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - a measured proposal that doesn't try to go too far. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 23:04, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Something needs to be done about tendentious resubmission. Either the drafts can be deleted, or the resubmitters can be blocked, or both. Something needs to be done. I don't see a practical way to request that the fools and flacks be blocked, because WP:ANI isn't worth the drama and will probably wind up with a warning anyway, and they aren't vandals. I don't think it goes far enough, but it is better than nothing. I would like to be able to speedy drafts that have no credible claim of significance, but I know that I am in the minority there. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:28, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - The issue of a draft being submitted too many times would be better addressed at Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation. For example, a process of barring a draft from resubmission for a certain period of time or barring a user from submitting draft(s) to be considered for a certain period of time could be established. Let the AfC process govern itself; the problem should not be thrust directly on MfD. If AfC establishes a guideline that such drafts should be deleted (as opposed to my examples above which I believe are better options), they can cite it at MfD. WP:NMFD is not the place for such guidance to reside. All drafts inducted into the AfC process become eligible for speedy deletion per G13 after 6 months of inactivity anyhow, so I fail to see the necessity of early deletion. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 00:21, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If they get repeatedly resubmitted they never get to G13 Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:35, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - per User:Robert McClenon Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:09, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a separate "drafts for discussion" page, as well as a CSD for drafts that have been declined more than 3 times without any plausible improvement. Lojbanist remove cattle from stage 19:07, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a working solution to a real problem of NOTWEBHOST content that otherwise falls between the cracks. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:42, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support just formalizing my own personal view. If the same submission gets repeatedly submitted without correcting the problem I go from friendly to not-so-friendly in my comments with the last comment being to the effect of Do not resubmit this without correcting the issues already raised otherwise I will nominate this for deletion at MFD. It doesn't threaten the user directly, it simply explains what the consequence of them failing to read/understand/correct will be. Hasteur (talk) 01:38, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per SoWhy and Amory. Besides, draftspace is exactly the place to put not-article-worthy-yet drafts. This would defeat the whole purpose of it. Besides, there are some AfC reviewers that will acept draft with lower standards, while others will wait for them to be GA-class to accept them. L293D (☎ • ✎) 02:24, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, but only under a specific set of criteria. I agree that drafts that aren't likely to go anywhere need to be shown the door, but I'm not sure just doing it by MfD'ing everything that gets power-submitted is the way. I'd actually think a valid case could be made for drafts that fit all of the following criteria:
    1. The draft has been rejected at least five times, or has been resubmitted and rejected with no substantial edits to it three times. If someone is working on a draft and at least trying to make it work out, the likelihood of it getting rejected five times is slim to nil. On the other hand, someone who's just spamming the submit button is likely doing it for Google exposure, not to build an encyclopaedia.
    2. The draft's sources are unacceptable, and no acceptable sources are available online or off. Oftentimes the biggest hurdle to a draft is finding usable third-party sources, and newer users are less likely to understand what we deem acceptable. I would also suggest amending the decline message for lack of notability to include a link to a plain explanation of acceptable sources (which I'll probably dope up soon, since this is almost universally THE main sticking point as far as helpees in -en-help go).
    3. The draft, in addition to the above, has not been (substantially) edited for at least three months since the last decline or edit. Given that the usual backlog for AfC at present is in the neighbourhood of months (as an acknowledged consequence of ACTRIAL and ACPERM) this gives time for sources to come into existence and thus subvert the second bullet above. This is also why a WP:BEFORE check must be done before a draft gets taken to MfD. While I suggest three months (as a fair chunk of drafts are made in anticipation of a topic) this should be considered a suggestion and not a hard-and-fast rule, but it should be no less than ten weeks and no more than 6 months (when G13 kicks in anyways). —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 03:30, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - This is not an area where I have a great deal of experience, but it seems to me that the "support" !votes present better arguments than do the "oppose" !votes. Having no strong personal reason to oppose, and trusting in TonyB's judgment, I support. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:54, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – Regardless of whether resubmitting a draft repeatedly is a behavioural issue as some argue it should be treated as, this will make it easier to get rid of problem drafts via MfD. If it is a substantive draft that is actually worth keeping, MfD will see it as such. Draftspace has been a mess for a while, and the problem isn't with the potentially publishable drafts; it's with the repeatedly resubmitted corporate spam and self-published non-notable bios. I don't see the issue here. Kb.au (talk) 14:39, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I will ask a going further, for those where consensus is at MFD that there is no clear case at mainspace WP:SNOW - then admins should be able to SALT the page. I have been seeing people recreating their useless drafts and then repeatedly recreating. Banning individual users may be in need, but we need warnings, final warnings and etc. And the user maybe able to contribute in other areas, so sometime can't ban also. Therefore, to solve the content issue, SALT the page. --Quek157 (talk) 21:16, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • G4 is applicable if they blindly re-create it after an XfD debate without fixing any of its issues. We shouldn't salt the earth unless and until they prove themselves unwilling or incapable of listening to criticism of their article by repeatedly growing a new one from the ashes. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 19:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Jéské Couriano:, I declined a draft with 2 - 3 can't remember previous deletion, CSD G11 (Advertising) with G4 (SALT). The admin who process initially did G4, but then said "unnecessary for draft" so then reallow creation for G4. G4 can only be used for mainspace, not draftspace, I am thinking to extend it to here. --Quek157 (talk) 21:20, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"It excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content that has been moved to user space or converted to a draft for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also does not cover content undeleted via a deletion review, or that was only deleted via proposed deletion (including deletion discussions closed as "soft delete") or speedy deletion."(emphasis in italics). This is the big problem NOW at the draftspace which is this entire RfC is for. It is quite protected and is not like others. I just came back after a long hiatus and apparently it is now like that, FYI too =) --Quek157 (talk) 21:25, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support- I'd personally go further, in terms of Notability as a criterion, but the proposal would certainly be an improvement on the current position. KJP1 (talk) 05:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I do think that this would address a need. What makes it work for me is that it is directed at drafts that keep getting resubmitted without "getting the message", and that it makes it possible to decide that a draft should be deleted, as opposed to saying that a draft must be deleted. In other words, it still leaves discussion and editorial judgment in place. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:25, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. This is already how discussions at MfD are turning out: the community (or, at least, the portion of the community that regularly votes at MfD) feels that it is appropriate to delete tendentious resubmissions that utterly fail to address the reasons for their rejection as a way of communicating to the user that their disruption won't be tolerated without going to the extreme of bans or blocks. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 21:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Anything not in one of the "normal" namespaces can already be nominated for MFD, and any such page will be deleted if consensus favor deletion. This isn't adding any new ideas or procedures to policy; it's simply saying what's already happening. WP:PPP. Nyttend (talk) 11:29, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, also support Drafts for Deletion. Having drafts with no hope of becoming articles is helpful to no one; having a dedicated drafts for deletion space will allow people specializing in drafts to watch it, as shepherding a draft into an article is a skill. --GRuban (talk) 20:30, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Kudpung. Amorymeltzer is exactly wrong; draft space only exists as the location for AfC's backlog. SoWhy is correct insofar as problem editors are behind the repeated submissions. Because these drafts are of interest to businesses or fan collectives where meatpuppetry or sockpuppetry is likely, deleting the draft is a more efficient practice. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:44, 20 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: no chance of ever becoming an article & tendentious resubmissions which take up volunteer time. This is a suitable approach to addressing the issue. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:30, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: well, a decision should be taken based on a statistic (in available). I agree that if a draft gets declined 3 times (ofthen for the same reason) further resubmissions for AfC is just time wasting. I believe that if a WP:RENOM style policy would be implemented for drafts would be a good step forward. We all know that a new editor, not familiarised with all the policies needs some time to know that there are some fair rules. So a time frame to improve an entry between two resubmissions would be a viable solution as well. However, if the draft keeps getting declined by different reviewes several times during, let's say, 6 months or a year... we all know what that means. As a NPP reviewer and page mover - sometimes, when I felt like an article has potential - I draftified those articles and some of then giving advice to its creator how to improve the draft. Robertgombos (talk) 23:07, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This feels like we are trying to make a crystal ball to predict if a subject will become notable or not. I do not agree with the wording and what it can imply. I could get on board for an "abandoned" guideline, that any draft that has not been improved in X amount of days is deleted or userfied.--Paul McDonald (talk) 23:17, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Tony and K.e.coffman. Could not have said it better myself. JTP (talk • contribs) 15:41, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support IF ANSWERED - it is codified how much and how frequently is going to trip the tendentious resubmissions bit. I'd like just being able to userfy etc, but if those who endlessly resubmit would presumably do the same in AfC.
TonyBallioni the latter part of your proposal "otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion". AfC pass requirements are stricter than those for an article to remain. Most notably on issues such as verification (AfD can be stopped by sheer possibility of finding sources) and promo levels (AfD articles have to be completely promo). Would a strict following of this proposal not risk us having a group of articles that would continually fail AfC but not be deleted under WP:DEL-REASON? Nosebagbear (talk) 14:54, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm obviously not Tony, but I would imagine that in such a case if an MfD is closed as keep, then the article fails AfC again or just sits there for a while, then that very fact can be used as an argument to delete at a second MfD. And, of course, if the draft is left unedited for 6 months then it'll get G13'd. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 09:34, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Nosebagbear, sorry for the late response. AfC's acceptance criteria is "is likely to survive AfD", which means they are substantially lower than the mainspace requirements. Also, if the reviewer has made mistakes, MfD will likely suggest booting it to mainspace with no prejudice against sending to AfD. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:21, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Drafts Discussion

TBD, the whole Draft system itself, should be abolished. IMHO, it's best to let an editor create an article as a stub, then let the community gradually evolve that article. Meanwhile, individual editors can use their own sandbox to construct what they want to put into an article created by themselves or somebody else. The Draft system is just an extra layer, for editors to fight over. GoodDay (talk) 19:17, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think that is an appropriate suggestion at all. Coming from a user who has a very high count of minor edits and not in the areas under discussion here, I wonder on what experience you actually base your comment. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:59, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Up until a few weeks ago, there were quite a few Draft-related disputes concerning behavior being brought to ANI. This wouldn't have occurred, if there were no Draft system. GoodDay (talk) 21:20, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
'Quite a few' is quantitively subjective. I'm no friend of statistics where concrete empirical evidence exists, but I would like to see that claim supported by some numbers. Are you an admin? Do you frequent ANI regularly? I do. Those issues would probably have been brought to ANI under some other reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kudpung (talk • contribs)
Abolish the Draft system & the community just might be happier for it. GoodDay (talk) 22:17, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, I remember the days when AfC drafts were stored in the "Wikipedia talk" namespace because the draft namespace just did not exist. Let us not return to those days. Mz7 (talk) 09:56, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re: "Up until a few weeks ago, there were quite a few Draft-related disputes concerning behavior being brought to ANI. This wouldn't have occurred, if there were no Draft system." On those grounds, if we abolish article space we'll have no article concerns brought to ANI, and if we abolish User space we'll have no User space concerns... perhaps we should just abolish Wikipedia? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:35, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - the interpretation of the RfC that "notability criteria don't apply to draft space" continues to be tone-deaf, overly simplistic, and harmful. Of course drafts should be on notable topics; anything else fails WP:NOTWEBHOST. Deciding which is which is a task for MfD (or perhaps drafts should be handled at AfD since they're supposed to be articles) but just setting another completely arbitrary draft working limit (like "six months") is not going to do anything to address the problems identified by this proposal (which are real problems which should be addressed). It's just inviting fights about what constitutes meaningful improvement. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:20, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I also endorse GoodDay's comment. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:20, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree but 1) I never propose RfCs that I don’t think have pre-existing consensus, and I think making N apply to all drafts at the beginning doesn’t have a chance of passing. 2) This actually expands the force of N to drafts more than it is now, while still shielding them from the brunt of it initially. It can’t be the sole reason for deletion, but a repeatedly deleted draft that fails the notability criteria and doesn’t have a chance of being in mainspace. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:30, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I just think the implementation of the RfC has been very poorly done; I get the intent, but, ugh. The notion that the draft space should be an incubating space for content intended to form part of an article, and not a junk space to hold whatever bits of writing anyone wants to drop there, seems to be a minority opinion. It's absurd to me that we allow editors to post basically anything they want in draft space, like the thousands of drafts that are nothing more than SEO listings for entirely non-notable businesses. We keep telling the authors of these articles that they "don't demonstrate notability" but our AfC messages encourage them to try again by adding more references, as though we'll decide to accept their article that's just a list of directors of their tech startup if they just pay for enough copies of their own press release, and so of course they resubmit over and over again with no meaningful improvement. There's no meaningful improvement to be made, the topic is not notable. We should empower our AfC reviewers to just come out with it and say, "this isn't notable" and punt the drafts to MfD immediately. And we can word that response as gently as we need to, we've been rejecting and deleting articles on non-notable topics for, oh, 17 years now? But if everyone who's been here a month can see that a draft on a non-notable topic is going to end up being deleted, is it more bitey to string an editor along for months and possibly years with messages telling them they just need to improve the draft a bit more before it can be an article when it never will be, or just delete it outright and say "thanks, but no"? I realize I'm ranting here and I'm probably not even really addressing the proposal at this point, but if anyone wants to really consider this, my talk page is probably a good place to respond.
Tony, to reply to your comment more briefly, a draft that doesn't have a chance of being in mainspace shouldn't need to be repeatedly [declined] before we pull the plug and delete it. In my opinion we should be able to make that determination much earlier in the process. To GoodDay's point, when a draft is reviewed we should be able to determine its article-worthiness on the first go-round, and either promote it or delete it. If it's notable but poor quality, promote it and let the usual community improvement process proceed. If it's not notable, delete it. Somehow AfC has evolved into a highly arbitrary quality pre-screening process, and I'm pretty sure that was never the intent. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:39, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ivanvector, The notion that the draft space should be an incubating space for content intended to form part of an article, and not a junk space to hold whatever bits of writing anyone wants to drop there, seems to be a minority opinion, is in fact very much a majority opinion. Our CSD criteria are very strict and narrow but there is no catchall for cases that don't completely match a criterion. I agree entirely that when a draft is reviewed we should be able to determine its article-worthiness on the first go-round, and either promote it or delete it. But we don't even do that in the harsh reality of the front-line trenches at at NPP where there are borderline cases that have to be sent to AfD, or inappropriate CSDs that admins have to decline and send to AfD. Contrary to GoodDay's point, it's not the Draft namespace that should be deprecated - it's more likely that AfC should be abolished or merged into NPP - but we're trying to come up with a compromise that will prevent that happening). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:38, 11 May 2018 (UTC) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:38, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
User:Kudpung, User:Ivanvector - I honestly didn't know that the common sense stated above was a majority opinion. It often seems that I am in the minority in thinking that draft space should be kept free of crud that will never be ready for mainspace. I don't mean to be sarcastic, but it does appear that Ivanvector and Kudpung and I are in the minority in wanting to apply common sense to what can be in drafts. Perhaps the problem is that AGF and BITE are carried to such extremes that they are allowed to override judgment about drafts. As User:Legacypac said today at my talk page, there is a culture of busybodies who have no practical experience at AFC or MFD but show up to express opinions. This is unfortunately part of a larger Wikipedia culture that it is a good idea to dump on the reviewers for not being sufficiently welcoming to new editors (even if they are fools or flacks). I honestly didn't know that Ivanvector and Kudpung and I were in a majority, when there is a culture of editors who preach platitudes about AGF and BITE without seeing the fools and flacks. (Of course new editors who have clues should be welcomed. Some do, many don't.) Robert McClenon (talk) 23:24, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I disagree. When reviewing pages at NPP, there are a lot of articles that could potentially be articles with a lot of work, but aren't good enough for article space. For example, an "article" of thoughts in bullet form with a list of references. Without the option to move this to draft space, are you suggesting that this be kept in article space or be deleted? Natureium (talk) 19:26, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Userspace. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:44, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, or at least extending ACTRIAL to DraftSpace. On the whole it is a big negative, mostly due to the silent cold reception given to the newcomers. They should edit mainspace before starting new topics. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:42, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Of course it would be better extend it to all users. We could do away with AfC altogether then, but that would defeat 50% of the object of having ACTRIAL - allowing IPs and non-confirmed user to create drafts was part of the plea bargain in order to get ACTRIAL approved at all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:32, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wouldn't it be a possible idea to have a ClueBot NG style bot monitoring drafts and reverting resubmissions without substantial changes? I guess an edit filter won't work because it probably can't detect resubmissions but a bot could and that would be a potential time saver if human editors weren't forced to check those pages manually. Regards SoWhy 10:27, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm, this is beyond AI at this time. SoWhy. "What is substantial changes"? Lot of text? Lot of references?. Number of sections?. –Ammarpad (talk) 10:37, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, ClueBot NG is pretty good at spotting vandalism. But that's why I asked. A bot could at least handle cases where no changes were made, couldn't it? Regards SoWhy 11:55, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Actually, this isn't a bad idea. There's one draft currently being debated at MfD, where it was rejected for the seventh time for notability with the note that the Daily Mail isn't a reliable source, so the person removed the Daily Mail and then re-submitted. I've also seen drafts where it was re-submitted immediately after the rejection with literally no changes. It would very easy for a bot to detect and reject these submissions. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 21:33, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't really have any idea what this is all about. But from a purely technical viewpoint I could quite easily train an AI program to scan for substantial changes to an article, measured by a weighted quality score rather than using any one measure. Such a program could be programed to automatically detect whether sources have been added or just slightly altered. And it would be feasible for it to detect and warn reviewers of policy violations in the text. The only reservations I have is that since no program is perfect I would not recommend you have an AI editing articles all on it's own. JLJ001 (talk) 11:10, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The more I read these debates, the more I feel the ability to ban/block users from any form of article creation process is inevitable. Junkcops, aka FMecha (mail box|what I did) 05:41, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding MfD of drafts and G13

I've heard that G13 is supposed to delete the junk from draftspace, but there's a better way. I propose that we repeal G13 and expand *some* CSD to draftspace, possibly write up new draft-specific CSD and PRODs, without actually expanding the normal PROD to draftspace (because it wouldn't be patrolled enough). Why? First off, G13 is simultaneously too fast and too slow. Too slow to delete the obvious garbage (and does nothing for repeat, unchanged, AfC submissions), and too fast to accommodate an abandoned-but-workable draft. Second, G13 is arbitrary. 6 months means nothing (see also WP:NODEADLINE). In a nutshell, more specific deletion criteria, less G13 dragnet. Thoughts? Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 03:58, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep G13 and extend PROD to drafts. After all, it's no worse than PRODing a new article at NPP. Again, however, I come back to what I've been saying several times: Improve the Wizard so that it provides some useful instructions for new users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:27, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
G13 actually sorks in favor of good drafts. A non-AfC Draft gets the attention of an experienced user working the G13 elegable list and, if tagged for deletion, an Admin's attention. I've sent many pages to mainspace from the G13 list (but 99% that reach G13 need to go in the dust bin). Rejected AfC Drafts may be bot nominated.
MfD can function as an advertised PROD for Draftspace. If no one objects a week after nomination an Admin deletes. Legacypac (talk) 04:55, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
How would some sort of PROD be helpful for drafts if they're being resubmitted? That just sounds like you want to take G13 down from 6 months to 1 week. Nobody but the occasional AfC participant looks at any given draft, so any PROD-like system is just an attempt to mass-delete drafts. I don't think we have a rash of people who take a week or two off from their draft but come back and "ruin" G13 five months later. Either these pages are resubmitted to the point of disruption or they're not. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:17, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
G13 is one of the most bizarre rules on Wikipedia. I still don't know the reason it was instituted. These arguments about "clogging" the wiki are bizarre when you consider that it's all online. Also many of the deleting admins at g13 don't even look at what they are deleting, which to me is ludicrous for a wiki that claims to be a repository of the world's knowledge. Again, what exactly is the problem here and why are people looking for ever more unilateral ways to delete potential content?Egaoblai (talk) 10:43, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you on G13, but I think it should be easier to delete drafts without potential, and other junk, so there are less junk drafts to get in the way of viable drafts. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 23:41, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Egaoblai, Also many of the deleting admins at g13 don't even look at what they are deleting, which to me is ludicrous, that's a strong claim. Please state on what experience you base your assumption. Provide concrete examples. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:37, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was looking through the G13 pages in December and saw one that I thought might be worth looking at, or at the very least not deleted without a conversation. The next day I went back to find it, but it had gone. I posted on deleting user's talkpage and asked them what the reason for deletion was, they said that it was because it hadn't been edited in 6 months and that was the only reason needed to delete an article.
I posted on the admin board about this as I believed that this was not the spirit of the rule and that deleting admins at g13 were supposed to check the articles before deleting them. The incident was closed and I messaged the closing admin about it, which actually led to this discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Primefac/Archive_14#Closing_the_Incident whereI was told that deleting admins can and do delete articles at g13 without looking at them. Winged Blades of Godric even stated that "even a GA-standard article, that for some reason has been lingering for over 6 months in draft space, could be G13-ed." Not that they neccesarily agreed with that, but that is the system that is happening right now. Do we really want the same lack of oversight to be applied to PROD too? Egaoblai (talk) 16:16, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]


This is commonly known, Kudpung. It may be that most admins who patrol G13 are diligent, but – as often happens – the vast majority of G13 deletions are carried out by the minority of admins who aren't. – Uanfala (talk) 14:47, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary when I nominate G13 I save the occasional useful page and the Deleting Admins occasionally save a page I nominated so they are looking at them. We have a G13 postponed category too. We definately need G13 or the rejected and abandoned would pile up. G13 sweeps up all kinds of problematic pages, including link spam. Legacypac (talk) 04:06, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wow... just wow... Time for a history lesson. G13 was originally created when we had One hundred and thirty thousand pages in the space Wikipedia talk:Articles for Creation/ that had been created by 15-minutes-of-fame editors that had zero interest in coming back and correcting the issues raised with their submission. G13 was originally written to address AfC pages that had been 100% unedited for 6 months. Editors went through and did bulk nominations causing admins to be upset with the amount of pages G13 nomination category and with the overall size of the CSD nominations set. I developed a bot script that would procedurally go through all the pages and warn the author that the page was in danger of being deleted under G13, how they could prevent the deletion, how they could get the page back with a very low effort, and if they were a user the option of WP:USERFICATION. The bot limited the number of pages in the G13 sub-category to 50 pages at once so as to not overflow the admins. Over time the backlog was addressed, AfC moved to Draft space, Incubator moved to draft space, the G13 rule got finessed to be "unedited for 6 months (barring bot edits or trivial changes)" (which I think opens it up to discretion and uphold the more strict interpertation of the rule), and finally G13 got expanded to encompass all of Draft space. G13 was written to be a binary question Has this page been unedited for at least 6 months? If so, you may nominate for CSD:G13. The amount of Good will that is expended towards the authors whose pages get swept up by G13 is far more than any other area in Wikipedia for the simple reason that these authors are supposedly the newbies and shouldn't be bitten by not knowing all the esoteric rules of mainspace. Abolishing G13 will only create more MFD nominations. Hasteur (talk) 01:56, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • G13 is certainly required but I've found ~5% of G13-ed abandoned drafts are on notable topics which might be salvageable with work but aren't ready for mainspace. I wish there were some way of dealing with these and bringing them to the attention of a wider editor base. Robotically deleting G13s because they are eligible feels wasteful to me. Espresso Addict (talk) 12:00, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sticky PROD for drafts (idea)

TonyBallioni expressed these 4-points in the above proposal.

  1. repeatedly resubmitted
  2. with no improvements,
  3. has no chance of being in mainspace, and
  4. has no sourcing for uninvolved editors to show notability

There are many, many drafts that currently possess the above characteristic squarely. However, I (previously) largely opposed because, it just repeats what exists, and will not make any solid difference to how MfD is run now. Because any draft that clearly possess these characteristics, it will surely be deleted at MfD. Now we are looking for way to move forward. To agree on more process that will hasten deletion of utterly non notable drafts that otherwise didn't met any of our CSD criterion and at the same time be courteous to these new users. One of the option can be clear need for Speedy criterion for them, which has been repeatedly discussed but lacked support. So I think why should we not try special PROD for that kind of drafts?. I know something like this was discussed before, but I am outlining it more explicitly below for more thought.

  1. A draft meet all the above four characteristics.
  2. A special sticky Draft Proposed Deletion tag (DPROD) is placed by user.
  3. Once draft is tagged with DPROD tag, then it cannot be removed unless if the person wishing to remove it has thoroughly rewrote the article and moved it to mainspace. (This will serve two purposes: It will be an incentive to save salvageable drafts and at the same time any non-notable draft moved to mainspace without development will now be subjected to both WP:ACSD and AfD.)
  4. If the tag, remains in the draft after say 1 week, 2 weeks or 1 month at most; then it will be summarily deleted as expired DPROD. Any recreation is subject to rule of G4 since it is determined not notable at all and no one is willing to explain why it should stay here.

Through this method, a large number of these hopeless draft will be easily shown the way out without exhausting editors' time at MfD and at the same time ample chance is given for anybody to prove why they should stay here.

Of course, this can be tweaked and refined. –Ammarpad (talk) 10:24, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strongly Oppose Every single time someone makes a proposal to increase deleting things, the argument is always "but we'll only do it for the ones that are really non notable, we swear", and every single time, the dragnet is increased and increased until you have uninvolved editors, who have zero knowledge or interest in the subject of an article or draft declaring "this will never be notable". At least with the jury system of AFD these decisions have a fighting chance, but increasing the scope of what are basically unilateral deletions is not helping the Wiki with collaborative editing. Just the other week I dePRODded an article, which the nominator then sent to AFD instead, to which the community decided that the article was notable. How many articles that the community would have seen as notable have been wiped from the Wiki because of PROD? It's undemocratic and goes against the spirit of consensus, which is supposedly how this Wiki is run.Egaoblai (talk) 10:49, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Again Egaoblai you are making some very strong assumptions. The way Wikipedia is run, some examples would be needed to give weight to your opinions. Our PROD systems were introduced on very strong consensus - are you suggesting PROD is 'undemocratic' just because you found one that was kept at AfD? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:47, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
So, I have looked at your editing history and your user page and checked out the articles. I admit that more 'BEFORE' should have been done prior to listing them for deletion. But this is not a fault of the system, it's a problem of educating the users who tag them. In the case of the school article on which your arguments were excellent, your adversary has a clear pattern of singling out schools for deletion. They generally lose the school AfDs they nominate or vote on. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:11, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
A system should be evaluated by how it works in practice, not in theory. Furthermore, just because a system is established by consensus does not mean the system itself is democratic. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 04:57, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support in principle, but perhaps a normal PROD would suffice. I am reminded of recent discussions somewhere about a 3-Strike rule, but I don't recall the outcome. Perhaps a PROD following the 3rd rejection? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:51, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Prod for drafts but I prefer simply sending them to MfD as a form of advertised Prod If no one votes keep and adopts the page in a week it gets deleted without fanfare. Legacypac (talk) 07:49, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I am surprised there is not already some guideline providing for the deletion of drafts resubmitted after being rejected for non-notability, and where the draft has been changed little if at all since the last rejection. I certainly think this would be helpful in helping the community delete some of these drafts that clearly have no chance of becoming actual articles. But I wonder: the proposal uses the word "repeatedly"--does that mean that a draft that was rejected once, resubmitted, and then rejected again would immediately become eligible for deletion? Does "repeatedly" mean "2 times or more" here? (BTW what the answer to this question is doesn't really matter as far as my support for this proposal is concerned.) Incidentally, I might even support the use of a new CSD criterion for drafts repeatedly rejected as non-notable, where the lack of notability is obvious. Every morning (there's a halo...) 21:08, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Do you realise how BITEY this sounds? "Hey your draft sucks and we've put a label on that means if you don't improve it in one week it's getting deleted!" If you wish to frustrate new users or people that can't afford to spend hours a day on Wikipedia, then this is the proposal for doing that. AFC reviewers are not gods and their opinion on what is notable should not supercede the community at large. Currently drafts can be deleted through MFD, which at least puts things to a public discussion. There is also G13 which is mostly hidden and allows drafts to be deleted without discussion after 6 months. Now you want to increase that power and allow drafts to be deleted after a week? based on the opinion of one person at AFC? What is with this paranoia and hand wringing about drafts. What problems are there that this is a solution to that G13 or MFD don't already solve? Please consider that for many many users here, writing a draft is a learning process and so is submitting it for review. Not every draftee is out to try and scam the wiki, many are good faith contributers, often with English as a second language who need guidance and help and community. What ever happened to that on this wiki? As far as I can tell this proposal does not allow any chance for the community to help the draftee improve the page, nor does it offer any space for the community to discuss the merits of the draft. According to the proposal one or two AFC editors could effectively blackball a topic from wikipedia and this would go unnoticed by the majority of editors, unless they were also AFC editors who happened to look in, or people who browsed Prod. This is really unacceptable for anyone who sees this as a community project. Egaoblai (talk) 00:06, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose So you'd rather take the consensus discussion that happens at MFD to individual draft pages and put a arbitrary stickey prod on it? PROD is "I propose a uncontraversial deletion". The only exception is BLPPROD, and that is foundation policy. Hasteur (talk) 01:58, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    That is not true. BLPPROD was not created by fiat because of "foundation policy" as you're wrongly implying. It was created after community consensus was found for it. Your first point doesn't make sense either. It is still uncontroversial PROD, if you object to any DPRODDED draft, then simply develop the draft to become meaningful article, move it to mainspace and remove the tag, the same way it is done for sources in BLPROD. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:06, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for drafts that, if they were articles, would not fall under BLPPROD; support ONLY for drafts on living people that would otherwise fail BLPPROD. There's absolutely no reason to apply a sticky PROD to all drafts, and as noted above it's fairly BITEy to users for whom English may not be a language they can communicate well in. (There have been a few instances in -en-help where users seeking help have "keyworded", missing most of what was being said and responding only to certain words in the message.) That said, biographical drafts do still fall under WP:BLP, and so those can and probably should be allowed to be sticky PRODded if they have absolutely no sources (or ELs that can be made into sources) whatsoever. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 03:11, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jéské Couriano: You missed the requisite points raised above. This is not meant to apply to all drafts. It is meant only for draft that:
    • is repeatedly resubmitted
    • with no improvements,
    • has no chance of being in mainspace, and appears to
    • has no sourcing for uninvolved editors to show notability. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:16, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    To which I'm saying that those limitations are bullshit. In essence, I'm saying "apply BLPPROD standards to biographical drafts instead of making a sticky PROD standard for all drafts". Note that my argument in favour of MfD'ing unacceptable drafts above comes with caveats more along the line of those suggestions you just threw at me. I agree with the other Opposes in that this is something that seems too half-baked and, as pointed out below, the time period the grace period provides is ludicrously short, considering most drafts tend to get abandoned due to real-life concerns. The only sticky PROD debate we should be having is whether to apply BLPPROD to drafts, not whether to BITE newcomers who may not speak very good English or who (almost invariably) have real-world commitments that make this sort of PROD so bitey. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 08:48, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - 3.Once [a] draft is tagged with DPROD tag, then it cannot be removed unless if the person wishing to remove it has thoroughly rewrote the article and moved it to mainspace. is fairly self-evidently ridiculous, but I'll explain the fundamental flaw (among the many flaws): Deletion bar improvement should not be turned into a unilateral decision by a single editor but should remain a community decision that is made through a discussion to determine consensus. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 04:47, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Sticky and PROD don't belong together, especially not in draft which is supposed to be a safe space for article development. ~Kvng (talk) 12:57, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Draft is for article development - you got that part right. Deletion procedure is for junk/promo that is not going to be an acceptable article. Legacypac (talk) 15:12, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for this to work it would have to have objective criteria, things like "no chance of being in mainspace" and no evidence of notability are very subjective. The process doesn't make any sense at all. If I take a draft which has been sticky PRODed and add two sources which demonstrate that the subject is notable then I can't remove the tag. Not unless I'm also prepared to completely rewrite the article and get it ready to move it to mainspace before the clock expires. Having recreations subject to G4 doesn't make any sense either, and we don't apply it to other types of PROD. MfD is not being inundated with deletions of hopeless drafts and if it was then something closer to normal PROD would make more sense. Hut 8.5 18:22, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I appreciate the good intent of this idea, but I think it has the problem of setting a deadline for something that doesn't need a deadline. The main proposal above is in large part about the problem of drafts that keep getting resubmitted, but the proposal here is about drafts that are just sitting there. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:18, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose draft means draft.--Paul McDonald (talk) 23:22, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

American English Wikipedia

No. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:47, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Split American English Wikipedia (let's say american.wikipedia.org) and use British English on English Wikipedia as British English is the original dialect of English. That would solve all debates on which dialect of English should be used on which article. Erkinalp9035 (talk) 16:36, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Articles currently in American dialect would be moved to American English Wikipedia. Articles written Australian, NZ and Indian varieties would be converted to British English. Erkinalp9035 (talk) 16:38, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Extremely bad idea. Lots of work without any gain whatsoever. Also, Australian and New Zealand Englishes are perfectly legitimate and separate varieties of English. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:40, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Erkinalp9035:, you may want to see this. The wild impracticality also applies equally to this. I also suggest reading the Manual of Style on English varieties. Good luck. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:43, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ENGVAR is already quite adequate to deal with it. Splitting projects would be a massively excessive "solution" to an already solved problem. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:45, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Sorry for necroposting, but MediaWiki already has a separate "en-gb" language option, so we could theoretically have a "en-gb.wikipedia.org". Lojbanist remove cattle from stage 23:29, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It'd be better to have someway to convert articles between the two (actually all) English dialects within the same Wikipedia. I think that was originally planned for the Serbian Wikipedia (for ekavski and ijekavski dialects) using lookup tables or something.Details on that plan here. I'm pretty sure that part wasn't implemented and they only got the Latin/Cyrillic script converter. Anyway, the ekavski/ijekavski problem is a headache (go read about it) but doing English "dialects" should be really simple. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[ᴛ] 15:38, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NOTMEMORIAL Victim lists in mass tragedy articles - Round 2

The issue of victim lists in mass tragedy articles was adressed before and the consensus was that these scenarios should be handled on a case-by-case basis. I believe the issue needs to be addressed again to finally reach global consensus due to the fact that each mass tragedy articles become a constant struggle amongst editors supporting or opposing the inclusion of a victim list. There is also another issue where outcomes of a consensus on a specific article does not count as consensus for later articles, so the back and forth edits and fights never end. Current RfC

Current language of WP:NOTMEMORIAL: Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements.

I propose that we add a line to WP:NOTMEMORIAL that would either allow or prohibit listing individual victims of mass tragedies if they do not meet our notability guidelines and/or WP:BLP and they are covered in the media as part of the story of the mass tragedy event. This proposal, if approved, would also override any local consensus and precedents. Long lists containing more than 20 names should be contained in a collapsed section. 

   Support = Will allow inclusion

   Oppose = Will prohibit inclusion

Cheers, --Bohbye (talk) 21:52, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Memorial:Support

  • Support as nominator. --Bohbye (talk) 21:53, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I continue to say that the victims are notable in the context of the given event. This isn't just someone creating an article in order to remember their deceased loved one or friend. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:04, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support — I'm reading this proposal as "allow" not "require," since that's what it says. I don't expect adding a line to WP:MEMORIAL stating this will end all disputes over victim lists. However, right now these disputes often boil down to
Proponent: I think we should have a victim list due to X, Y, and Z.
Opponent: I don't think we should have victim lists because of WP:MEMORIAL
Proponent: That's not my reading of WP:MEMORIAL.
Admin closer: No consensus.
This is simply not a helpful pattern. If WP:MEMORIAL included something like the following it would help: "This policy does not prohibit the inclusion of lists of victims of tragic events, if they serve an encyclopedic purpose, appear in reliable sources, and are compliant with other Wikipedia policies. These lists should be written to provide relevant information, rather than memorialize the lives of the victims."--Carwil (talk) 18:46, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support as 2nd choice. A mandatory rule that overrides local consensus and past precedent is a horrible idea that will require absurd and illogical outcomes. However, if the community decides to create a mandatory rule, I’d prefer for it to be inclusion for two reasons. First, this is more in-line with common practice on Wikipedia (particularly with school shootings) and will require less clean-up. Second, many tragedies are notable because of the specific victims (such as the 1943 Gibraltar B-24 crash, which killed many leaders of the Polish Government in Exile). In these cases, it is incredibly important to know the names of at least some of the victims. Further, many notable people (particular those from non-English speaking countries) do not have articles, so we’d have to hold a pre-emptive AfD for many entries into the victim list. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 19:40, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I realized that a mandatory inclusion rule would require victim lists for pandemics such as the 1918 flu pandemic (50 million deaths, minimum), natural disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami (230,000 deaths, minimum), and genocides such as the Rwandan Genocide (500,000 deaths, minimum). Most commenters in this RFC agree that victim lists are appropriate in some articles but not others; the main dispute here is over the proportion of articles in which victim lists are appropriate, not whether they are appropriate period. I think this RFC would have been more helpful if it proposed a default rule that could be overruled with local consensus instead of a mandatory rule that must be obeyed even in illogical situations. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 20:47, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Memorial:Oppose

  • Oppose, policy is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. As it stands, this type of information gains consensus to be included in some articles and fails to in others, so there is clearly no consensus that this should always or never be added. Therefore, case by case discussion, as is current practice, is the proper way to settle it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:17, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, the victims of mass tragedies are (generally) not notable, they are simply the people who happen to be in the area when the event occurs. Even in the case of mass shootings (where this debate keeps popping up), most of the perpetrators are not targeting specific people, they are simply killing anyone in the way. Obviously there are some minor exceptions. The vulcanologist who was killed by the eruption of Mount St. Helens while collecting data, a newscaster who is blown away by a tornado while on air, a passenger on a jet who attempts to stop hijackers, a shooting victim who was called out by name in the perpetrator's manifesto. But notice that these are highly specific things. For most victims of these tragedies the story would have been exactly the same if anyone else had been there and their names give us no real extra data. --Khajidha (talk) 11:58, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose but with appropriate exceptions. We should encourage editors to avoid these, unless there are reasonable circumstances, notably that if discussing the event that it is impossible to do so without mention some of these people. --Masem (t) 02:30, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Masem: My understanding is that this is about complete lists of names and ages, not prose about selected notable victims. They are separate issues and I think most opponents of the former do not oppose the latter outright, although we might disagree on the meaning of "notable". In my opinion your !vote is the same as mine in the following subsection. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, lack of notability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edibobb (talk • contribs) 02:08, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, with appropriate exceptions per Masem and Khajidha. The status quo, however attractive it may seem to !vote for, has not served as well, and provides a justification for battleground that is really unnecessary. The wording should at least strongly discourage the practice of inclusion. No such user (talk) 13:35, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. For the normal reader it is an utterly meaningless and worthless list of names randomly pulled out of the phonebook (with my apologies to the family and friends of the deceased). For the normal reader, it serves absolutely no encyclopedic purpose. Name(s) should only be included where it provides some identifiable and distinctive purpose for a generic reader. If it's a relative of the perpetrator, or a celebrity who gets individualized news coverage, or one of Khajidha's examples, it makes sense to have a textual-discussion of those individuals. To make the point reducio ad absurdum, there's no reason we should treat the victims of a mass shooting any differently than the victims of 9/11. A list of 20 random names is just as useless as a list of 2,996 random names. Alsee (talk) 00:53, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - 2nd choice because there should be explicit provision for exceptions. Superior to status quo, however, per my comments elsewhere in this proposal. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:25, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose a list of the names of non-notable people who were killed in an event has no point other than to memorialize the victims in question. While I feel for the people involved, that is not the point of an encyclopedia. Cataloging the victims of various of events is a noble pursuit, but is more suited to another venue. My conclusion would be to prohibit victim lists unless the victim meets general notability requirements. It is either that or we have to decide where to draw the line. Does every soldier who died during a battle get listed in an article about the battle? How about everyone killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz in it's article? The list could do on. {{u|zchrykng}} {T|C} 05:39, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, If for no other reason then who gets to decide what is deserving of such memorials? Victims of Terror, Mass shootings, collateral damage? Too much room for edit warring and POV pushing.Slatersteven (talk) 15:41, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Memorial:Alternatives

  • Status quo Continue deciding ona case-by-case basis. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:38, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo One-size-fits-all policies are rarely useful at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 02:28, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo, since apparently "oppose" doesn't actually mean, well, "oppose", but I oppose making such a change. Policy is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. As it stands, this type of information gains consensus to be included in some articles and fails to in others, so there is clearly no consensus that this should always or never be added. Therefore, case by case discussion, as is current practice, is the proper way to settle it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:17, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo - 2nd choice. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:04, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Default to omit, exceptions by local consensus - There was a minor but distracting outcry of "Not this again!" when the list was disputed at Santa Fe High School shooting, and the RfC for that case is underway. If "Status quo" or "no consensus" is the result here, it must be stressed that "Not this again!" is inconsistent with that result and thus an invalid complaint. If the community kicks this decision down to article level, despite the fact that the relevant factors and circumstances are essentially the same in each successive case, then the community is saying it must be re-litigated at each successive case. I oppose that as a waste of editor time, and I support omission as default with provision for exceptions by local consensus. The difference between that and the simple "decide case-by-case" is that any arguments for exception would be required to show what is unusual about the case that justifies exception to the default. My rationale for supporting omission rather than inclusion as default is found here (first !vote). ―Mandruss ☎ 04:09, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo. Continue deciding on a case-by-case basis. One-size-fits-all policies are rarely useful at Wikipedia. Case by case basis with no default rule. Some take WP:NOTAMEMORIAL way out of context. It is meant to shut down stand alone bios on deceased friends and family. It is not meant to exclude the mention of a murder victim name within the context of a page about a notable crime. Bus stop (talk) 05:38, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Omit excepting strong local consensus I'm not entirely sure what adding a comprehensive list of victims adds to an article, and as some users commented at the last RfC, it may be seen as disrespectful to mention people purely for how they died (WP:BLP1E). If some victims are notable for other reasons, sure it may make sense to list them. However, there may well be cases where listing all victims makes encyclopedic sense, and local consensus should be sovereign where it exists. Richard0612 12:46, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Generally Support Inclusion I think generally murder victims names and often ages (which helps distinguish the victum from other people with the same name) are an important part of every murder story that are almost always covered by reliable sources repeatedly. We have almost always covered the victim names for other notable murders like Golden_State_Killer#Original_Night_Stalker There is a trend in the media to even deemphasize the killer's name and emphasize the victims for notoriety reasons. Some take WP:NOTAMEMORIAL way out of context. It is meant to shut down stand alone bios on deceased friends and family. It is not meant to exclude the mention of a murder victim name within the context of a page about a notable crime. Do to privacy and accuracy reasons I do not support releasing victim names before they are released by law enforcement and published in RS or the listing of all wounded victims, which needs to be considered on a case by case basis. If child Mary Jones is shoot in the leg and survives she does not need to be named on wikipedia but if Jane Smith gets shot and earns an award for heroism we may well name her. Legacypac (talk) 12:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo. The current wording, which in general would appear to prohibit the mass listing of names, but would allow for it if there were a good reason (mainly notability), seems fine.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:59, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo - Case by case basis with no default rule. I have supported inclusion on the two most recent mass shooting pages I have participated in, but I see examples where it was decided to exclude the names, and if there is another situation where that is what the consensus is decided to be I have no problem with it. WikiVirusC(talk) 13:22, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo - Should be done on a case-by-case basis, Seems the logical answer..... –Davey2010Talk 14:10, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo - There are some cases where setting notability as a threshold would be a good idea. But, there are other cases, like where there are seven or so victims, and one notable person among them, when including the names of all killed would be a fine idea. Overall, having a guideline to cite isn't very good when that guideline has lots of good exceptions. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 20:13, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo I'd suggest that it mostly depends on the number of names, if there are only a handful then it makes some sense to include them, if there are hundreds then it probably isn't a good idea. There are other factors that could affect the decision though. Hut 8.5 20:30, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Default to include, allow exclusion per local consensus After every major shooting, we seem to have the exact same debate about whether to include a list of victims. The debatealmost always centers around the same general arguments rather than the details of the specific shooting. Having to debate the same point again and again is a waste of time and is starting to ware on the nerves of many editors. Establishing a default rule instead of continuously debating the same point would be in the best interest of Wikipedia. I would prefer for the default rule to be inclusion of the lists for the reasons I explain here. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 01:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status quo These are the type of articles where the need for editorial judgement is the greatest. Drawing lines in the stand is rarely useful. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 07:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • These local discussions are never about the characteristics of the case. They are regurgitations of the same general arguments about victim lists, over and over. The result depends merely on the mix of the editors involved in the local decision. And there are always many editors who !vote based largely on precedent, as if that showed a community consensus, when in fact it does not. If there were such a community consensus, it would be affirmed in discussions like this one. The status quo is a mess, and the only way to resolve it is to reach a community consensus for something other than status quo. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:09, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Memorial:Neutral

Memorial:General discussion

The two suggested "votes" may be confusing people. The options might be better framed like this:

  1. Require victim lists (if verifiable; WP:SPLIT to a stand-alone list if large)
  2. Decide separately for each article (permitted with consensus; status quo)
  3. Prohibit (no lists, except in extraordinary situations)

If people can be clear about what they mean in their comments, that would probably be more helpful than "support" or "oppose". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:05, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Victim lists have long been an issue. I was involved in a related local discussion nearly 5 years ago which had some interesting points raised. Cesdeva (talk) 11:47, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well it appears that nothing has come out of this discussion, the issue is going to continue to be fought out and re-discussed to death. Sorry if I sound pessimistic here but I have seen it play out now many times from both sides presenting the same arguments. Why would one school shooting for example be different than another with the same talking points presented? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:28, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Remarkably, at least one editor—an editor with extensive experience—has declined to help form a consensus with the rationale that there is no consensus. Apparently, avoiding pointless expenditure of editor time is seen by many as an improper use of community consensus. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:48, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Are you seeing something above that implies anything other than the status quo (no change)? This has been discussed in one way shape or form for years now, something is going to have to give eventually. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:42, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Knowledgekid87: I'm not sure I understand the question. If you're asking how I read the consensus to date, of course it leans toward status quo. If the trend holds, I know WP:how to lose and I'm resigned to the continued waste of time, but I will respond negatively to further "Not this again!" protests at article level. This will be the clear will of the community, and every editor should respect it. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:21, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest the closer apply extra care evaluating individual responses. We have a striking situation where there are !votes in three different sections all saying the exact same thing: names can be included if they serve an encyclopedic purpose. People are just coming at it from different angles. If we get stuck with yet another RFC on this same question I suggest extra effort to more clearly articulate that position. The current drafting looks too much like "Always include all names" vs "Never include any names". Alsee (talk) 01:08, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that the framing is poor, as might be expected from a very-low-time editor. I offered to collaborate on framing and my offer was ignored. But to me the drafting looks like "prohibit lists" (Oppose) vs "don't prohibit lists" (Support). In any case, I think it was clear from the start that the question is about complete lists of names and ages; that's what "victims list" means. It is not about prose about selected notable victims, and I'm pretty sure that some !voters have missed that essential point. It certainly is not about lists of names and ages of selected notable victims with no explanation for what makes them notable; that should never be on the table for obvious reasons. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:47, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Increase G13 Speedy deletions to a one year grace period

Only four days since the two discussions started, but already it's freezing here hard. (non-admin closure) Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:48, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

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

The G13 speedy deletion system means that any draft or AFC submitted article that has not been edited for 6 months may be deleted without prejudice. The obvious downside to this is that it can be a very WP:BITE thing to do especially for new editors, who are the type to use AFC. I think we can all agree that not every drafter is going to finish the draft in a short period of time. Many people may start a draft and then leave it for a while, maybe coming back to it later. To me 6 months seems like an incredibly short time period for which to penalise a drafter. People may have life events (job change, house move, weddings, babies, study) that get in the way of working feverishly on a Wikipedia draft. Coming back to an empty page of a draft you spent time working on must be a demoralising and frustrating thing for any editor.

Yes of course there are drafts that haven't been worked hard on. Of course there are drafts that have been made full of nonsense. But what harm would it do to keep them around a little longer? I'm not proposing that we shouldn't delete those drafts, simply that we extend the time frame, so the genuine drafters aren't so heavily penalised. The G13 system is deletion without prejudice. Deleting admins may glance at what they are deleting, but are under no obligation to and many good or potentially great drafts are deleted in this way.

So I propose that the G13 be extended to 13 months. Which means in theory a drafter may return to their draft a year after last editing and still have a month in lieu to work on it. This system does not abandon the G13 system but simply makes it less Bitey. Unedited poor drafts will still be deleted and genuine drafts and encyclopedia newcomers have less chance of being penalised. Egaoblai (talk) 19:39, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

6 months is a pretty fair amount of time for something to sit there without touching it. Natureium (talk) 19:40, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is very easy to request that drafts deleted under G13 be restored, and this is usually communicated in the deletion log entry. Also, as I understand G13, they only need to make one edit, even a minor one or dummy edit, to reset the 6 month time frame. We also have Template:Promising draft which can be used to prevent a G13 deletion by any editor. I guess I am not seeing a huge need for this proposal. 331dot (talk) 19:51, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. We’ve had countless discussions on G13, the grace period, and draft deletions. The community consensus is clear: draft space is an utter mess and we are not a webhost. It isn’t exactly like we’re dealinh with biographies of Nobel prize winners in most of these cases: G13 is mainly stuff that would be A7, A11, of G11 as an article. No need to keep that stuff for a year. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:57, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose; 6 months is plenty of time to get an article up to snuff if someone is actively working on it instead of half-assing it for exposure. Not to mention that G13s are almost always restored at WP:REFUND upon request (the main exceptions being undiscovered copyright violations and drafts that went right back into turnaround after the first undeletion). —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 20:43, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose if anything it should be three months. Six is more than enough to get drafts up to snuff. And should a user want the draft back, WP:REFUND is thataway. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 21:19, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If people are working on it, then yes of course you can make a good draft in less than six months. But there are people who put the draft on the backburner for a while. it's not "half-assing", it's that people have lives outside of Wikipedia. Making it a year instead of 6 months decreases the amount of bite. What advantage does 6 months have over a year? Egaoblai (talk) 21:57, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The "half-assing" bit is aimed at me, so I will point out that TonyBallioni is right in one. When I say someone is "half-assing" a draft, it's because the person working on it is doing it without bothering to educate themselves on core Wikipedia policies (WP:N, WP:NPOV, WP:COI, etc.) for the sole purpose of making a deadline or exploiting Wikipedia's preferential treatment by search engines. A large chunk of these users are from South Asia (more specifically the Indian Subcontinent area) and therefore part of the issue is also a language barrier, as a large number of these users are only selecting the English Wikipedia based upon its prevalence and cannot read or write English with the proficiency en.wp requires. Quite a few of these users, when I've dealt with them in #wikipedia-en-help, refuse to go to the Wikipedia for their native language because the people they're intending to target with their articles aren't there and search engines are less likely to pull up articles from the Malayalam or Bengali Wikipedias than English. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 04:41, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
the problem is that new editors are being bitten and potentially good drafts are being lost too quickly for anyone to check. Is there any advantage for 6 months over 1 year?. Egaoblai (talk) 21:57, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Can you cite specific examples of what you claim? 331dot (talk) 22:04, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
First, these are mainly spammers. I am 100% fine with biting spammers. Second, yes, the advantage to 6 months over 1 year means it is harder for a client to hire a new freelancer to work on their prexisting rejected draft. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:22, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You have a very negative view of new editors. I'm not denying there are spammy editors, but your world view seems to treat every new editor as one and you can't accept that there are good faith editors who get lost in the shuffle due to bite.Egaoblai (talk) 07:14, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose 6 months is already too long for most of the crap in Draftspace and we have a hard enough time at MfD deleting garbage which leads me to believe 3 months unedited would be better. Gnoming edits by random users often give pages a lot more than 6 month unimproved anyway. Having extensive experience in Draftspace I don't suffer from the delusion that Draftspace is full of ready to go gems waiting to be finished by some slow but soon to return editor. Legacypac (talk) 04:54, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose 6 months is plenty of time. If an editor hates asking for refunds they need only to make a minor edit to the draft to reset the time. That's a very low bar. VQuakr (talk) 05:04, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The bar is already extremely low. 6 months is plenty of time with no edits and refunds are easy. I don't see how this change will make any improvement to the current system. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 05:09, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I would be in favour of lowering the time to 3 months. The draft namespace is for articles that are actively being improved to get ready for mainspace. Bradv 05:10, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Solution looking for a problem. Decreasing time limit to 3 months is a good idea. If an draft has gone 6 months, there is a good chance it is beyond salvage. The AfC reviewers are already sorting the one's with potential from the one's without. Dlohcierekim's sock User talk:Dlohcierekim 07:04, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Some editors mistakenly believe G13 is only about deleting drafts. While the vast majority need deletion, there are some useful ones that should be saved. Listing the pages as G13 eligible Wikipedia:Database_reports/Stale_drafts brings them to the attention of experienced editors and admins who can act on promoting or at least improving the pages. More eyes sooner on Drafts is the answer, not setting up systems that ignore them longer.
  • We should also consider expanding G13 to the huge mess of copyvio, attack, spam and other crap that are userspace drafts. There are even a few useful pages there to save if someone looked at them. Legacypac (talk) 05:20, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as more in tune with the community philosophy (see WP:NODEADLINE in particular). For people who haven't had the good sense to avoid the draft namespace, it can be dispiriting to return after a break and see that their unfinished work has been deleted: it doesn't help much that refunds are easy: a reaction like "Great! Let me fill out this form now." isn't any more likely than "Oh, why bother.". Still, though a step in the right direction, this proposal isn't going to do much about the real problem: the indiscriminate deletion of drafts. A more meaningful solution is to abolish G13 altogether and replace it with a rule that after a certain period (6 months, 1 year, 3 months, 1 month, whatever), a draft becomes eligible for the article speedy deletion criteria. This will add more accountability to the deletion process, and it will weed out the vast amount of junk, leaving the community more time to deal with the promising content. – Uanfala (talk) 10:12, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:G13 already says "Redirects and pages tagged with {{promising draft}} are excluded from G13 deletion," and the deletion comes from a human admin who is perfectly free to tag a draft with the promising draft template (not some indiscriminate bot). The only difference between your proposal and G13 is that your proposal would put more work on the few people helping with AFC. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:02, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The only difference is that between the ideal and reality. Yes, many admins will look at a draft before deleting it and will spare it if it's got potential, but the vast majority of G13 deletions are carried out by the admins who don't seem to look at all. And {{promising draft}} isn't even respected by the bot that does the tagging. The problem with G13 as it stands is that it allows for (and leads to) the more or less automatic deletion of pretty much anything, regardless of quality or potential. – Uanfala (talk) 21:58, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I get that not everyone logs in every day (I believe even I've had a couple of points where I didn't log in for a couple of months except to check messages), but if someone really cares, they need to check to see what's happened more at least once every half year. If someone believes they can post a half-written, unsourced puff piece in draftspace and that they're entitled to see it become the article they want without them so much as visiting the site once for over next half year -- that's a case where WP:CIR may override WP:BITE. Now, I get that that's an extreme example (even though I see "how dare you delete my company page" more often than I'd like), but the basic principle of "if you really cared, you should have checked back within the next six months" applies to any user. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:02, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - the time limit is the very definition of arbitrary: it would make no difference whatsoever if the limit were 6 months or 6 years or 6 minutes, any page deleted under G13 can be automatically restored at WP:REFUND, no-questions-asked. It's part of the criterion. Also my perennial opposition to modifying G13 in any way that does not deprecate it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:06, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, G13 isn't even a "hard" deadline. An editor can work on a draft for years if they want to. G13 is just a cleanup mechanism that comes in if the draft is abandoned, and "hasn't been touched in six months and the editor did not respond to the deletion notice" is a pretty good sign that it is indeed abandoned. And if that turns out to be wrong, it's undeleted just for the asking. We're not a webhost, draft space is for articles that stand a reasonable chance of being acceptable encyclopedia articles one day. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:46, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - per all the above arguments --Quek157 (talk) 17:42, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose it's a non-solution to a non-problem --S Philbrick(Talk) 19:03, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It's dangerous to think of most drafts as crap. They are a resource for the community to build upon. Keeping drafts for a year means that other editors will be able to work on them. I have been able to salvage many seemingly abandoned drafts, but I know that many other abandoned drafts with potential have been deleted under G13. WP:REFUND is only useful if you know the name of the deleted draft. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 20:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Nine times out of ten they do because HasteurBot notifies the main contributor(s) of each draft when it's near deletion. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 23:44, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I salvag pages too but often find them becuase of G13. I'll go with my experience that 99% are crap that needs to be deleted, based on my many thousands of pages handled. Legacypac (talk) 22:56, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Expanding draft deletion was and remains a waste of time. As such, I see no problem but only potential benefit in putting off deletion longer. Also per the former half of Uanfala's rationale. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 06:27, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Counterproposal - make G13 3 months

Quite a few editors have suggested 3 months as a better solution. If others agree this can close as a change to 3 months. This would reduce a lot of problems in MFD, clear out the bad quicker and get eyes on the good faster. Legacypac (talk) 07:32, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm familiar with those. When found stale a dummy edit or any small edit buys thrm time. Some I just finish and promote. Not a problem at all. Legacypac (talk) 12:31, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
off topic
You said you were staying out of non-article space. What happened to that? Natureium (talk) 17:48, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't stalk me please. drafts are as part of AFC work where I am still having some drafts pending approval. I just posted this sometime ago and this is the reply within 5 minutes, this is creepy and worrying. Did you watchlist me? Anyway I commented in the RFC above about MFD changes to add notablity so is perfectly reasonable I am watching this page what. And can you add to the RFC please, appreciate your inputs --Quek157 (talk) 18:37, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You can't watchlist a person. I have this page watchlisted. I'm not stalking you, you just happen to be posting everywhere so you're not hard to run into. Natureium (talk) 20:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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.

Making widely-used icons consistent and modern

Look into most used files. We have four different information icons in the top thirty images. Most of them are also really old designs with lots of details (which was a thing in mid 2000s but not anymore) and they don't scale down to the size that they are being used. Most used icons are mostly in three categories:

  • Portal icons
  • *-stub template icons
  • *mbox templates

I hereby suggest using more modern set of icons that are more abstract (for example see Template:Astronomy-stub) or more specificity from these five sets: c:OOjs_UI_icons (icons used in the interface of mediawiki), Wikipedia 15 icons, c:Category:Material Design icons (because of the similarity), and c:Category:Emoji One BW (because of the diversity of the inventory). If not, at least putting some style guide for the icons. Ladsgroupoverleg 23:58, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I agree. Another icon-related thing: does anyone want Wikimedia to implement some form of HTML5 Canvas? Lojbanist remove cattle from stage 02:14, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • While on the subject, I would really like a new set of icons for Portal:Contents to represent the categories, they all have to be SVG and the same size, so anything in the way of better / more modern CC0 / PD icons would be great. JLJ001 (talk) 14:36, 27 May 2018 (UTC)sockstrike Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:02, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • All those icons look rather flat, one toned, and overall meh. —Farix (t | c) 16:30, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whole-hearted support. Ladsgroup, I think you're a hero for proposing this. A lot of our visual iconography around here is a product of the trends early-2000s that birthed Wikipedia, and it's hugely overdue for a facelift. A flatter look like that represented by those material design icons would go a long way towards updating the look and feel. However, this is the most subjective matter imaginable, so I'm not sure how far this will get. But I'll with you all the way. A Traintalk 23:44, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is something worth looking into, but of all the possible arguments in favor of changing some of the icons, saying that they're no longer fashionable is really the bottom of the barrel, in my opinion.
    Anyway, let's put together some examples of the icon set. To compare:

Some current icons:

Warning icon Please stop disruptive blah blah blah.


Compared to icons from the proposed sets:

Warning icon Please stop disruptive blah blah blah.

--Yair rand (talk) 03:09, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The proposed icons are mostly horrible and not inline with the aesthetics of the project. The puzzle piece especially, which loses the Wikipedia logo entirely. I don't mind the new scales however. Do it on a case by case basis, but remember that most of the use of the 'bad' icons (like some assy .jpg version) is due to the substitution of old templates that have long been updated to look better. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}
I agree about the puzzle logo but other ones look way better. Specially having consistency in the look seems great to me. We can use more blue in the icons to give the sense of ink Ladsgroupoverleg 04:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ladsgroup, I genuinely have no opinion on this topic, but do you think it would be better to wait until this discussion is finished before changing all the icons? Primefac (talk) 16:59, 3 June 2018 (UTC) (please ping on reply)[reply]
    Primefac The last edit on the discussion was about four days ago and I mostly wanted to be bold and change things gradually (changing everything in one go would be complicated and I don't want to do that.) Ladsgroupoverleg 17:06, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough, guess I wasn't paying that much attention to the timestamps, more the fact that there's about 50/50 for/against so far. Primefac (talk) 17:10, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think you should be changing the icons. I don't see a consensus for changing, with many complaining about the OOUI icons being flat/bad, and personally I don't like the new information icon that much; I don't hate it though, and could be convinced on it. Probably need an RfC if you want to change things; and IMO either use the new OOUI information icon or the old one, but mixing seems horrifying. At the very least, all the warning templates should use the same icon. I've reverted the changes since they don't seem to have any consensus. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:16, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    There is a design style guide that explains why icons have been designed this way. This is a good read. Let's make subsections to move forward Ladsgroupoverleg 17:25, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I've posted a link to this discussion at Template talk:Ambox. I think notices should probably be posted on talk pages of all templates that will have icons changed. --Yair rand (talk) 23:27, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I *do* think it's time to change the icons somewhat, and the proposed ones do look modern and nice, but I don't think these would be best for the message we're trying to send with these icons. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 16:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Changing information icon

This is proposal to replace blue information icons ( ) with the OOjs one () Ladsgroupoverleg 17:27, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Changing alert icon

This is proposal to replace red alert icons ( ) with the OOjs one () Ladsgroupoverleg 17:30, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Changing scale icon

This is proposal to replace scale icons () with the emoji one version () Ladsgroupoverleg 17:33, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Account passwords

Hi! When creating a new account, on the passwords, thinked I to change globally so only the characters A-Z and 0-9 be used and not special characters (such as ?, !, @, + and so) to make it easier to choose a password, and other websites disallow §, +, =, ? and so, because these passwords are harder to guess. Please make so only characters A-Z and 0-9 be used on account passwords --46.227.72.88 (talk) 16:07, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't want to use special characters, don't, but we're not going to lower security to makes things more easily hackable. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:10, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. You should not want your password to be easy to guess; if it is easy for you, it is easy for a hacker. 331dot (talk) 19:08, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Require special characters for passwords (ok, not really, but...)

Remember a few weeks ago when someone tried to hack into every account on the site? Yeah.

Ok, so I'm already well aware that length is more important than special characters in passwords, but a request to reduce site security just pokes me in a way that makes me want to retaliate in some way (and I'll try to see that it's for the better).

Why don't we require passwords to be at least a minimum of 12 or even 16 characters? It'd be stupid to not require at least 8 characters. There's also lists of most common passwords, why don't we make it so those can't be used as passwords?

Ian.thomson (talk) 21:17, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't 8 characters already a minimum? On a more serious note, your last point is a great idea. The password page could check the Pwned Passwords API (via Have I Been Pwned?) to ensure users don't choose a previously compromised password. This could even be limited to just the "top million" if you didn't want to be too restrictive. — AfroThundr (t•c) 22:01, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
A request is already open to expand the password blacklist, see phab:T151425 to track progress. — xaosflux Talk 22:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Why don't we actually respond affirmatively to the mathematical reality Randall Munroe explained so well, and which Ian.thomson referenced, and require the infinitely more secure "four random common words" password format? (Shorthand: 4RCW). Is there some technical reason why this doesn't work? I can't imagine why it wouldn't, and I know one company that requires 4RCW--YouNeedABudget.com.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 07:55, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that thousands of smart IT folks have read xkcd #936, forwarded the comic to friends and posted it on social media sites, agreed with Randall's conclusion ... and then proceeded to "increase security" for their company or employer by requiring longer passwords that are even harder to remember and still relatively easy for the bad guys to hack.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 08:03, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Shortly after posting the above, I remembered my teenage daughter teaching me the acronym (and website) GIYF. Darn it! I posted without checking the Google first. Looks like there is a reason why the 4RCW method won't help much. At least I was persuaded by this Ph.D.'s article on the topic: Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct. Do you In who know a lot more about this topic than me agree?   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 08:15, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, not all software clients can be used with a password manager. For example, I know one game client that prohibits the use of copy&paste in the password field. I'm sure it is not the only one either. —Farix (t | c) 10:28, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The firefox addon Enable Right Click and Copy may solve your problem. It doesn't work on all pages, but is usually does work. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:29, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I also found this:[12] (I have not tried it). --Guy Macon (talk) 12:31, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Guy Macon's robust password advice

I am going to ignore what other websites do, because we can only control what Wikipedia does.

Every time I have looked into the nuts and bolts of how the WMF does security, it has always, without fail, turned out that they do it right, so I am not even going to bother finding out how they stop an attacker from either making millions of guesses per second or being able to lock out an admin by trying to make millions of guesses per second. Clearly the WMF developers read the same research papers that I do.

That being said, as explained at Kerckhoffs's principle#Modern-day twist, while doing things like rate limiting and key stretching are Very Good Things, we are not to rely on them. We are to assume that the attacker knows every byte of information on the WMF servers (and in fact the attacker may actually be someone who has knows every byte of information on the WMF servers -- If a nation-state offered a key WMF employee millions of dollars if he complied and made a credible threat to torture and kill his family if he didn't, there is a 99%+ chance that they would end up knowing every byte of information on the WMF servers.)

The WMF does not store your passphrase anywhere. When you enter it it a cryptographic hash is performed and the result compared with a stored hash. This means that an attacker who knows every byte of information on the WMF servers can perform a high-speed offline passphrase-guessing attack, but cannot simply look up your passphrase and use it to log on. So according to Kerckhoffs's principle, you should choose a passphrase that is easy for a human to remember and hard for a high-speed offline passphrase-guessing program to guess. I will call this "Macon's principle" so that I don't have to type "Make it easy for a human to remember and hard for a high-speed offline passphrase-guessing program to guess" again and again.

Bad ways to follow Macon's principle

  • Passwords instead of passphrases (single words instead of strings of words with spaces between them).
  • Random gibberish.
  • Short passwords or passphrases. 8 is awful, 16 is marginal, 24 is pretty good, 32 is so good that there is no real point going longer.
  • Character substitutions (Example: ch4r4ct3r sub5t|tut10ns)

Good ways to follow Macon's principle

  • Use a standard English (or whatever language you know best) sentence with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
  • Make it longer than 32 characters and have it contain at least three (four is better) longish words plus whatever short words are needed to make it grammatically correct.
  • Make sure that sentence has never been entered anywhere on your hard drive (including deleted files) or on the internet. "My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels" is bad because a dictionary that contains every phase used in Monty Python's Flying Circus would find it.[13]
  • Make it meaningful, easy to remember, and something that generates a strong mental image.
  • Make it meaningful to you, but unguessable by others (don't use your favorite team, first kiss, mother's maiden name, etc.)

An example of a good passphrase that follows Macon's principle would be: 

 Geoffrey painted his Subaru pink so that it would blend in with his flamingos.

(This assumes that you actually know someone named Geoffrey and that he owns a non-pink Subaru. Replace with a name/car from among your acquaintances to make it easier to remember.)

That's 78 characters that nobody in the history of the earth has ever put together in that order until I just wrote it. Typos really stand out (Geoffrey paibted his Subaru pink so that it would blend in with the Flamingos.) and are easy to correct. The sun will burn out long before the fastest possible passphrase-guessing program completes 0.01% of its search. And yet it would be far easier to remember than the far easier (for a computer) to guess BgJ#XSzk=?sbF@ZT would be.

BTW, There is no need to do the math for short passwords. Steve Gibson has done it for us. See [ https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm ]. Note that since he wrote that the password-guessing computers have gotten even faster. See see [On the Economics of Offline Password Cracking - Purdue CS].

The GRC calculation is done locally, using Javascript, so you can safely test your passwords - the password doesn't leave your computer. But if you want to be extra safe, try these examples...

  • HZn?m+jW
  • PhBixXL4
  • qza7nm3g
  • pgupwmxn
  • 54606559

...as your 8-character test password.

I generated the above from my atomic decay true random number generator, set to chose from:

  • The 95 ASCII printable characters (0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ `~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[{]}\|;:'",<.>/?)
  • The 62 ASCII a-z/A-Z/0-9 characters (0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ)
  • The 36 ASCII a-z/0-9 characters (0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz)
  • The 26 ASCII a-z characters (abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz)
  • The 10 ASCII 0-9 characters (0123456789)

Not happy with the results for an 8-character hard-to-remember password? Try entering the easy-to-remember password "Geoffrey painted his Subaru pink so that it would blend in with his flamingos." on the GRC calculator. The time to crack goes from 27.57 seconds to 10.05 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion centuries.

I have done a similar analyses with the assumption that the attacker uses a password-guessing dictionary instead of a brute fore attack (a competent attacker will run both in parallel) and my conclusion still holds. I can get into the details of how I calculated that if anyone is interested.

Optional modification to the above scheme

Use a password manager to manage very long (and impossible to remember) unique passphrases (and maybe usernames) and use Macon's principle to choose the master passphrase for the password manager. Also, have the password manager enter long random answers to questions like "what is your mother's maiden name"?

This optional modification to the above scheme has a few disadvantages: You are depending on your password manager being secure and bug free. Leaking the passphrases to an attacker is bad. Losing all of your passphrases is worse. Will you be able to recover if your computer is stolen?

My solution to the above is to keep a set of standard text files that look like this... 

Filename of text file: Example web site.txt
Website: http://www.example.com
Username: jfhsx4ih2l91m7xawwhoup96svovfp46
Password: F@ZBgJsTzk=?#X@ScPh%b#iBxXL4F%qz
Security Question: What is your favorite sport?
Answer: iJStVIgdfXWZbhEqmidrXFTFgUCwEgAF

...and store them on a thumb drive that is encrypted with Veracrypt. A copy of the thump drive is in my safe deposit box and another copy is stored on a remote backup server in another city. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:18, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • We are to assume that the attacker knows every byte of information on the WMF servers (and in fact the attacker may actually be someone who has knows every byte of information on the WMF servers -- If a nation-state offered a key WMF employee millions of dollars if he complied and made a credible threat to torture and kill his family if he didn't, there is a 99%+ chance that they would end up knowing every byte of information on the WMF servers.) If some nation state cared enough about Wikipedia to resort to torture and murder, there is little that any editor could do to prevent it from happening. Frankly, editor passwords would be the least of the security concerns at that point, and there's nothing that such a nation state could do with editor passwords that couldn't be undone or fixed. While what you're saying may be true for those with developer and sys-admin access to the servers, it's completely overkill from an end-user standpoint. Assuming that the WMF sticks to some basic security standards, the only feasible attack venue editors should worry about would be an online attack (since a compromise of the servers that yielded the password database would likely have much juicer targets than editor passwords). An online attack is easily throttled and managed, and if the password database did leak out, it would be trivial to force a password reset for editors with advanced permissions. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 15:25, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Guy Macon: Indeed, the security controls should be proportionate to both the risk and the likelihood of compromise. Admins (and security passionate, technically minded users) should definitely follow your advice, but for regular editors, I wouldn't reasonably expect them to keep up with all of this. For myself, I use KeePassXC in a Veracrypt container that gets synced via Keybase, but I had a difficult time getting my mom to convert to a password manager just to remember the half dozen variants she uses on everything. I'm slowly getting her to realize that if KeePaas remembers the password for her, then it can be randomized. Slow steps. Ahecht is correct that the most likely threat vector is an online attack, for which there are many mitigations already in place. — AfroThundr (t•c) 15:38, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above is a legitimate viewpoint, but I would like to avoid advising anyone to use weaker security. That's a decision each of us have to make for ourselves based upon our circumstances. The main point that I was trying to get across is that ch4r4ct3r sub5t|tut10ns make it hard for humans to remember and easy for computers to guess, while following my advice above makes it easy for humans to remember and hard for computers to guess. If you don't care about security at all (and often you don't; why pick a good password for a %$#*! website that makes you register just to read it?) just use "swordfish" as your password. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 16:16, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Revise WP:NPOL so that someone who wins primary qualifies for more information in Wikkipedia

In any election, the incumbent has a great advantage over a challenger. Wikipedia's NPOL policy means that incumbent is by default notable but challenger isn't. As a service to our readers, instead of just re-directing from name of challenger (who at least in the US got some coverage running in primary election) to district race URL, could we not give more information about the race as exemplified for example here?[14] I understand reasoning behind our current model. I do not propose that, after general election, we continue to host info on challengers who are not otherwise notable. I do not propose to change notability criteria for any other categories such as NACTOR etc. But I think we can do better for general elections. What do others think? HouseOfChange (talk) 19:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"I do not propose that, after general election, we continue to host info on challengers who are not otherwise notable." That seems to make the proposal a WP:NOTNEWS violation. We don't temporarily host information just to make races more fair; that's simply not Wikipedia's thing. Huon (talk) 19:39, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)In an article on the race you can say as much as sources and WP:DUE allow about any candidate, and balanced coverage is good. As to biographical articles, you seem to be suggesting a form of temporary notability, which we don't do. Johnbod (talk) 19:42, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
OK so for example, if you search for Texas candidate Lizzie Pannill Fletcher you end up at page for Texas 7th district, which has zero info about challenger Fletcher but a link to incumbent she will challenge. I am suggesting that such a page (for election) has a section for some links or info about positions of both candidates. I agree with Huon that it will be unnecessarily tricky to create a new category of "temporary notability." I am searching for a way to benefit our readers without requiring painful contortions of Wikipedia principles. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:03, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The best solution in such a situation is to add neutral, well-referenced information about each of the candidates to the redirect target, describing the race neutrally. Articles about unelected candidates tend to start out as campaign brochures masquerading as encyclopedia articles, and then are often loaded up with cherry-picked negative information added by supporters of rival candidates. It is a mess. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 20:08, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree 100% with the lively description of Cullen328 about articles of politicians. Cullen, if you can give an example, on any page you like of what and WHERE such info might go, that would be a great help. Sleepily, from Sweden, HouseOfChange (talk) 20:15, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In the current case, HouseOfChange, the information can go in the District 7 section of United States House of Representatives elections in Texas, 2018. If you look at sections for other districts, you will see that some have information about various candidates. There could be 36 neutral spinoff articles about the races in all 36 Texas Congressional districts. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 20:28, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Cullen328, I do not propose to write 36 spinoff articles, but I will try to wrie one or 2 and see what reception is for them. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:07, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment generally there haven't been stand-alone articles on US House races, but based on the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/California's 39th congressional district election, 2018 it seems that it is permitted, at least for races that generate national-level coverage (normally well-correlated with competitive races).
    As far as notability of candidates: I'm not happy with the current system, but don't see a better alternative yet. Notability is not temporary, and proposals that suggest current candidates are notable but will not be notable after the election are exceptionally unlikely to find consensus. Some candidates (Kara Eastman, Mark Walker) have been kept at AfD recently.
    Finally, as a procedural note, this is a fairly good time to have this discussion; there's enough time before any election that there's no obvious benefit for any political group associated with any policy change, but enough activity to give specific examples rather than hypotheticals. power~enwiki (π, ν) 22:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose In the case of the U.S. House of Representatives, there are very few competitive seats in any election cycle. Cook estimates that less than 100 of 435 seats are competitive [15] in 2018, for instance. That means that in three-quarters of all U.S. congressional races, the general election challenger candidate will often be either a perennial candidate or someone simply running as a party standard-bearer with no hope or intent of election and no organized campaign. Over the next six years, that means we could potentially accumulate hundreds of biographies of individuals notable for no other reason than they once spent 15 minutes filling out a certificate of candidacy. Further, many general election candidates for congressional office already are usually able to meet notability standards absent this proposal as they will frequently be former state legislators who are inherently notable, or in some other way pass the WP:GNG. Candidates for competitive house seats are rarely unknowns. Chetsford (talk) 04:56, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In my long experience as a disambiguator, I have observed that the larger the number of disambiguation links added in a single edit, the more problematic that edit is likely to be in other respects as well, such as containing copyvios, overlinking, creating a sea of non-notable red-links, adding walls of text, or indiscriminate data dumps. I think an edit that adds more than, say, links to twenty different disambiguation pages should probably at least bring up a notice advising the editor to review Wikipedia's policies and MOS and consider whether they need to adjust their writing before saving the edit. I will add that, out of the hundreds of thousands of edits made on Wikipedia per day, only a handful have this characteristic. Nevertheless, it would quite often save a lot of work if the editor adding the disambiguation links (and likely other issues) would get a heads up, rather than other editors needing to puzzle them out afterwards. bd2412 T 03:36, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

bd2412, that sounds like an excellent idea. The next step would be to put in a request on phabricator. If that doesn't get results, drop me a line on my talk page and I will create a proposal and push them until I get a yes or no answer. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:30, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is in the same vein as various semi-perennial proposals for alerting users before they save certain types of edits: ones that introduce unsourced text, spelling mistakes, etc. In fact, there was a proposal in 2016 for similarly alerting editors when their contributed text contains links to dab pages. To rehash in the current context some of the reasons why these have all failed: 1) they introduces additional hoops for good-faith new editors to jump through (not good in the context of declining new editor numbers), 2) the presence of many dablinks by itself is only a minor problem that can easily be fixed afterwards, and 3) the real problem is the presence of copyvios etc, and these might or might not come along with the type of edit that would get picked up: the software will have no way of telling which edits are problematic and which aren't.
    Also, worth remembering that articles with more than 8 dablinks get swiftly tagged by DPL bot, which places them in Category:Pages with excessive dablinks (which currently has three members), where they can be examined by experienced editors. And the user who introduced any number of dablinks will promptly receive a talk-page notification (unless their edit count is below 100 or they have specifically opted out). – Uanfala (talk) 22:26, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • The previous proposal was to throttle the addition of any new dab links. This is for edits adding a relatively high number. To add one or two disambiguation links in an edit is easy. To add more than ten takes a special kind of absence of forethought. I would add that very frequently the sort of editors who add masses of text laden with disambiguation links are the sort who have fewer than 100 edits. Suppose for the sake of argument we were to say that we would do this for edits adding 20 new links to disambiguation pages? Or 50? Or 100 (since I have seen that happen on rare occasion)? bd2412 T 11:52, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Delete IABot talk page posts?

A previous RfC halted new talk page posts by InternetArchiveBot.

This RfC is to see if there is consensus to delete the posts. It affects about 1 million talk pages. An example post that would be deleted.

There are two options for deletion:

#1 - a bot edits the 1 million pages deleting posts. Archived talk pages will be left alone. Bot operator User:GreenC has volunteered.
#2 - the wording of the post is modified to give users permission to delete posts if they want to. Since talk page posts normally can't be deleted by other users, it would remove that restriction. The wording can easily be changed via the {{sourcecheck}} template, it would not require every page be edited.

Please !vote support or oppose. Clarify choice of method #1 and/or #2 in order of preference.

- Rod57 (talk) 16:02, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

Because the posts clutter talk pages and confuse editors. They won't be archived in most articles, most have no automatic archiving or enough traffic to warrant archiving. If you still oppose why not support choice #2? -- GreenC 18:23, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Choice #2 says this. Are you then in support of #2? -- GreenC 18:17, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty indifferent to option 2, just strongly opposed to option 1. If going for option 2, certainly need to check if there are other uses outside of this use case that could lead to unintended impacts. — xaosflux Talk 19:42, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Choice #2 says this. Are you then in support of #2? -- GreenC 18:17, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - See choice #2  :-) -- GreenC 18:26, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose everything — literally not a single reason to make a million edits to remove once-useful things. Unless there's a good reason, we need not retroactively remove material. I don't see a need to change the template to encourage folks to delete them, they're not hurting? What's the need here? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:45, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support deletion Option #1 or any deletion plan is fine. This text is spam and information pollution which wastes huge amounts of time by continually distracting users to read this text. It is of no use to anyone. This text never should have been posted and for as long as it persists it is actively spoiling the Wikimedia user experience. At least archive it all; preferably delete it outright. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:59, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose option #1 as something that could cause more harm than good, especially if a new bot has to be designed to handle this workload. I just don't think it's worth the time and effort just to create more page revisions that don't do anything constructively. I would be okay with rewording, per option #2, but again, I don't see a need to do it retroactively to past posts. Surely, if anyone cared, I'm sure after rewording the post others would interpret that as being safe to remove past posts if they wish, and no one would find a problem with that. Red Phoenix talk 21:44, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The posts get archived on active talk pages and lend meatiness to article talk pages that otherwise have seen little activity. I've actually used IABot's messages to do some close checking and don't want to see my work deleted, if it still exists where it hasn't been archived. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:55, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose option 1, indifferent on 2 as long as the template isn't used elsewhere. That said, this seems to be a solution in search of a problem - has the fact that the messages exist been raised as a problem before now? ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 22:15, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Firefly: Yes, below in the discussion, I have raised the existence of the messages as a problem. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:51, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Blueraspberry: You say that the messages 'consume human time', but what evidence is there for this, or for this being a problem? Tone doesn't come across well in text, so please rest assured that I'm genuinely interested in this - do you have any data to back up that such messages eat up reader time (unnecessarily), or are they just scrolled past in a second or two. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 23:01, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Firefly: This is spam. Spam consumes small amounts of time and attention from large groups of people giving benefit to almost none. Which of these premises do you dispute? - there are millions of these messages, tens of thousands of people read them, they have a life of years, the talkpages show tens of millions of views, there is a body of research publication which describes how spam / advertising consumes time and spoils an environment, these messages ask for minutes of time from all readers, people prefer to moderate their environment's level of spam, this kind of messaging is unprecedented in Wikimedia projects. Most people scroll past in 2 seconds but even that is unacceptable multiplied times millions. Many people read the messages the first few times and some people actually respond. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:11, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose all Please do not edit one million pages (or even one hundred pages) without a clear benefit. The watchlist turmoil alone is not worth it. A worse problem is the wasted effort as puzzled editors check what happened on the talk pages they monitor. I would scratch my head if I saw a bot modify another bot's message. Johnuniq (talk) 23:09, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please make a proposal with precise wording, preferably brief. However, you don't need an RfC to edit a single template. I don't see a need to add a "you have permission to delete this" message. If someone is too inexperienced to know they can delete a bot's message if it's a nuisance they should not be fiddling with talk pages. Johnuniq (talk) 00:52, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Johnuniq: I agree that permission isn't actually needed on any given single article, but Rod57 initially proposed something roughly reflecting your position on the template's talk page and ended up running this RfC at least in part because I asserted that mass removal of the messages, regardless of whether done by bot or by encouraging human editors to do so, is something that would require community approval (mea culpa). Even (especially?) experienced editors are indoctrinated to never ever mess with others' talk page comments, so I think adding such a message to the (already transcluded) template would have an effect beyond just "stating the obvious". I suspect the "precision" you find missing in the framing of this RfC is due to an attempt at brevity and neutrality from someone who has never constructed an RfC before. I hope that tradeoff won't make necessary restarting it entirely. --Xover (talk) 06:16, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose; per above. This has the potential to waste users time by alerting them to the automated change. Also possible is wasted editing hours as people discuss the issue during the fallout. In any case, particularly with regard to the example given above, we would almost certainly appreciate a human user leaving such a TP summary after making a non-minor edit affecting sourcing, why should a bot's contribution be less valid/useful. Agree with discussion points below - that brevity should be considered and would support improved brief messages if they can be shortened. Edaham (talk) 08:25, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Solution 1 per cost benefit; would
  • Weak Support number 2 per User:GreenC . GenQuest "Talk to Me" 11:46, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose making edits to every talk page with such a message, there's no point in flooding watchlists for that. Don't care if the solution is changing the wording of a transcluded template, as implied might be the case in option 2. Anomie⚔ 12:17, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Option 1, meh for Option 2. Don't see the point in removing the notices systematically, especially many of those were made at a time when IABot wasn't super reliable. I've removed IABot messages before myself, so if you want to add a message to a template IABot used to mentioned this is an option, sure. I don't think it's going to make much of a difference, but I'm not oppose to that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:34, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Option #2 and Would not oppose Option #1. I manually remove these on "my" articles if they happen to annoy me (clutter), and see no reason why others should not feel free to do the same, with or without "permission" from the template message. Changing the message to explicitly allow this (subject to normal local consensus), provided it is backed by community consensus in this RfC, has effectively zero cost and mainly reaffirms the status quo. Mass removing them by bot seems excessive for the problem: they're just a bit of clutter, and we have a ton of that in various other forms. Better to avoid the watchlist noise and potential for wikidrama such mass edits can engender. I would not, however, be opposed if consensus was to bot-remove them: I just don't think it's a big enough deal either way to feel strongly about it. (PS. Kudos to Rod57 for setting up this RfC. It's good to have a community consensus as guidance, either way.) --Xover (talk) 13:11, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support #2, neutral on #1 I hear the arguments against 1 on the basis of the many edits, although I'm not sure how much of a problem it would be. However, it would be sensible to allow users to remove notices in areas where they constitute clutter. Tamwin (talk) 16:42, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Option 1 and Support Option 2 which pretty much lets sleeping dogs lie. The posts are spam and were a nuisance when made, but make further nuisance only to those readers who read old posts. Waking this sleeping dog will make a new, similar nuisance to my fellow talk page stalkers. Yes, my opinion is based on a guess that the new nuisance will be bigger than the remaining nuisance value of the old spam posts. No use complaining when other guesses lead to other opinions. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:46, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support option 2: the messages are useless, but not worth the trouble of performing a million of edits. Option 2 seems like a good choice in addressing the perceived issue. --K.e.coffman (talk) 20:26, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose All - There is no benefit to editing over a million pages just to delete a bot message ..... They can and will be archived eventually, I and others archive talkpages and most talkpages have the archive bot .... if they're not archived then who cares ? ..... The proposal IMHO does not in any way, shape or form help with the goals of Wikipedia. –Davey2010Talk 20:53, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose option 1, indifferent to option 2 I'm just not seeing the problem with letting old Archivebot messages stick around: they aren't causing any harm and they'll eventually go away on their own through talk page archiving. I strongly oppose option 1 since it will require a ton of work for little benefit. Option 2 only requires a single edit, so I have no objection to it. I don't think it will accomplish much, but if the community wants it I won't oppose. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 23:11, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support option 2, to clarify that one doesn't really need to check the bot's edits nor to edit any talk page template. Those requests were just terrorism imposed by users who didn't believe in the success of the bot. Neutral on option 1: the whole message should have been a template, but the subst-worshippers would have opposed that; the real solution for the future is to avoid adding so much text in talk pages, changing Wikipedia:Substitution if necessary, to make it clear that it's vastly better to insert boilerplate text via templates. --Nemo 07:01, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose option 1 - the benefit doesn't justify the volume of talk spam. No opinion on Option 2; I have WP:OneClickArchiver enabled which can remove them from the talk page already. power~enwiki (π, ν) 23:52, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose both options. This is unnecessary, will clutter watchlists and history, and remove slightly useful posts. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:50, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will add that option 2 will be much worse than the original posting of messages on the talk page, since all the talk pages will be changed, and will waste so much time in people finding out what happened, for no benefit at all. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:57, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

The persistence of advertising and spam messages consume a huge amount of human time and attention and bring no benefit. The Wikipedia community currently does not anticipate or measure the costs of mass messaging millions of discussion posts to hundreds of thousands of readers. If a message has a life of years, then if great numbers readers spend their time considering great numbers of messages, then this wastes hundreds of hours of Wikimedia community time in an unsatisfying user experience. We have to keep Wikipedia clean of unproductive distractions! See my previous rants on this topic:

No bot should be allowed to consume hundreds of human hours about its automated activities! Remove these messages immediately and avoid ever allowing this again! Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:47, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No evidence any significant amount of time is spent on these. They were turned off precisely because everyone just ignores them. On active talk pages they'll be archived quickly, on inactive pages they won't get seen. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:46, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in general agreement with Bluerasperry on the principle, but must note that I consider the concern somewhat overblown on this particular instance of the issue. In general we should strive to be mindful of editor attention, including both article and user talk page messages, and "noise" in people's watchlists; but not to the exclusion of useful functionality or information. There is certainly wasted attention caused by these messages, but they are not entirely devoid of compensating value (how much is a subjective call). And excessive effort expended on them, relative to all the other more pressing issues the project faces, is likewise not a good use of the same limited resource (editor attention). --Xover (talk) 13:00, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Xover: I really appreciate your acknowledgement that editor attention is a limited resource. I can understand and accept that different people will calculate cost/benefit in time in different ways, but I find it challenging to understand how anyone could say that the cost is zero or immeasurable. Thanks for the reply. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:08, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No one said the cost was zero, just that what the exact cost is is at best a guess that depends on a lot of assumptions, which ultimately yields little to no insight on anything. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:11, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry: Per Headbomb, I don't think anyone is asserting that the cost of editor attention is zero. But they may disagree that leaving the old messages in place affects (uses) editor attention to any degree worth mentioning, or they may care so much more about the editor attention wasted by noise in watchlists and possibly discussions and wikidrama arising from the removal as to consider the other to be insignificant. Or they just think other factors are more important. An RfC !vote is the distilled result of the conclusion drawn after considering the various factors and assigning them your particular relative merit: it is not an expression of ignorance of, or active dismissal of, other concerns. It's "Here's what I think is important", not "What you think isn't important", if you'll pardon the simplification. --Xover (talk) 05:19, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would not criticize others. For myself, I fail to understand the other side, and for myself, I feel a lack of ability to express what I see in a way that makes me feel understood. Thanks for the encouragement. Blue Rasberry (talk) 10:35, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'll note that we have a reasonably accurate proxy of the attention gains by the bot's activity, namely clicks on its userpage. --Nemo 07:19, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can they at least be put under 1 <h2/> tag titled == "External links modified" == and then each time the bot runs it just adds the date as an <h3/> (===6 June 2018===)?  Nixinova  T  C  04:28, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

First designs for page, category, and namespace blocks

Hello all!

The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team is working on building the ability for admins to block a user from a page, category, and/or namespace instead of the full site. With input from your comments, we've created the first round of designs for this feature. This involves some changes to Special:Block and we want to make sure we're thinking through all the details. We'd appreciate for you to review them and share your feedback at this discussion.

Thank you! — Trevor Bolliger, WMF Product Manager (t) 23:21, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Portals#RfC: Adopt as a MoS guideline

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Portals#RfC: Adopt as a MoS guideline . - Evad37 [talk] 03:00, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nutshell templates

I am proposing that the nutshell templates be used in Wikipedia's encyclopedic articles to provide a quick summary about a particular subject. Please let me know what you think of this proposal.
Example: United States

--2601:183:101:58D0:B420:71FD:AA18:2464 (talk) 21:54, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No. That’s what the lead section is for. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:29, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The first sentence at United States reads: "The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions." We think our readers are capable of reading and comprehending a 33-word sentence; 10-year-olds are not our target audience. What reader benefit does your nutshell add that justifies the added clutter? ―Mandruss ☎ 22:31, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why do policy and guideline pages use the nutshell template? Why not use the first sentence of the article? --2601:183:101:58D0:B420:71FD:AA18:2464 (talk) 23:03, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:SHORTDESC. This is a project that does almost exactly what you are looking for. Bradv 23:28, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Nutshell banners work well when the page is a lengthy set of instructions and the reader needs help to understand what they should do or focus on. For an encyclopedia article, what Brad noted. A database of 5 million short descriptions on any topic is quite useful on its own, can be used on mobile apps, book reading apps, Google search result page, etc.. but when landing on the encyclopedia page itself, it's redundant with the lead section. -- GreenC 14:04, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion about the Main Page

A discussion about changing the Main Page is being held here. Please weigh in so that a rough consensus may emerge. Thanks122.163.93.250 (talk) 03:26, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Background: please see this discussion started by Jimbo Wales on his talk page.

I propose that a site-wide banner be displayed through June 20, 2018, on all language Wikipedias including the English Wikipedia, when geolocation indicates that the reader is in an EU jurisdiction, explaining the upcoming June 20 European Parliament vote on the copyright law changes being considered there which could severely impact all Foundation projects, including a link directly to https://saveyourinternet.eu/

Note that the Wikimedia Foundation already has an official position on this issue: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/06/06/european-copyright-directive-proposal/ Doctorow (talk) 03:13, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Background information

Collated information on the effects of the law on Wikipedia

Filtering proposal

(taken from @Doctorow:'s message on Jimmy's talk page)

  • Sites that make material available to the public are required to filter according to rightsholder-supplied lists of copyrighted content
  • Even if they do filter, they are still liable if infringing material is uploaded and made available
  • If you believe that you have been unfairly blocked, your only remedy is to contest the block with the host, who is under no obligation to consider your petition
  • There are no penalties for falsely claiming copyright on material -- I could upload all of Wikipedia to a Wordpress blocklist and no one could quote Wikipedia until Wordpress could be convinced to remove my claims over all that text, and Wikimedia and the individual contributors would have no basis to punish me for my copyfraud
  • There was a counterproposal that is MUCH more reasonable and solves the rightsholders' stated problem: they claim that they are unable to convince platforms to remove infringing material when the copyright rests with the creator, not the publisher (e.g. Tor Books can't get Amazon to remove infringing copies of my books because I'm the rightsholder, not them); under this counterproposal, publishers would have standing to seek removal unless creators specifically objected to it
  • There is a notional exception for Wikipedia that carves out nonprofit, freely available collaborative encyclopedias. This does get WP a lot of latitude, but Article 13 still has grossly adverse effects on WP's downstream users -- anyone who mirrors or quotes WP relies on the safe harbours that Article 13 removes. Think also of all the material on EU hosts that is linked to from Wikipedia References sections -- all of that could disappear through fraud or sloppiness, making the whole project (and the whole internet) more brittle

Position of Wikimedia organisations

Questions?

Please post any questions about the law and how it might affect Wikimedia projects:

  • Do we currently make use of copyrighted material in a way that would be affected by being in violation of this "law"?Slatersteven (talk) 18:26, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Slatersteven: yes, "it could also require Wikipedia to filter submissions to the encyclopedia and its surrounding projects, like Wikimedia Commons. The drafters of Article 13 have tried to carve Wikipedia out of the rule, but thanks to sloppy drafting, they have failed: the exemption is limited to "noncommercial activity". Every file on Wikipedia is licensed for commercial use." ref.
    • @Slatersteven: No, no direct impacts on Wikimedia projects as the text currently stands in both Council and Parliament. All non-for-profit projects would be excluded, which means all our projects. If our content is used commercially this would happen on another, non-Wikimedia service. That being said, the wording is not final and sloppily written, so no guarantees it will stay this way. But there is a clear political will to exclude all Wikimedia projects. --dimi_z (talk) 20:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • What effect would this law likely have on sources Wikipedia uses for references? E.g academic journals and newspapers. John Cummings (talk) 18:31, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Under Article 11, each member state will get to create a new copyright in news. If it passes, in order to link to a news website, you will either have to do so in a way that satisfies the limitations and exceptions of all 28 laws, or you will have to get a license."refJohn Cummings (talk) 19:44, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • What effect would this law likely have on websites that Wikipedia sources open license media content from? e.g Flickr John Cummings (talk) 18:31, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Does this law effect Wikimedia Commons? John Cummings (talk) 19:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

The first link in this section includes that description. I agree it certainly does represent an existential threat to the freedom of content re-use, even if the exception for encyclopedias was carved out to prevent direct legal attacks on the existence of the wikipedias. Other projects such as Wikisource would certainly be directly at risk, but they don't reach as many EU citizens as enwiki banners would. EllenCT (talk) 23:47, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
--Guy Macon (talk) 23:43, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. According to [16], "France, Italy, Spain and Portugal want to force upload filters on not-for-profit platforms (like Wikipedia) and on platforms that host only small amounts of copyrighted content (like startups). Even if platforms filter, they should still be liable for copyright infringements of their users under civil law, just not under criminal law." There is a time to panic, and unless someone can come through and show that all this is not true, then this is that time. If the EU enacts this, we should immediately and permanently block all access to Wikipedia from the EU, globally lock EU-linked editors on all WMF projects, and disband all EU Wikimedia chapters and liquidate any assets there. For a start. We should do that in two weeks. Or we can do a banner now. Your choice. Wnt (talk) 23:53, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    European chapters have no legal responsibility whatsoever for Wikimedia sites, IIRC. Does the WMF even need to listen to European copyright laws at all? What we need now is an analysis by WMF Legal on what the ramifications of this would be. Panicking isn't helpful. --Yair rand (talk) 23:57, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    There is a duty of care. If the above comes to pass, anyone participating in a European chapter would be subject to very extensive legal harassment and it is not reasonable to pass that responsibility on to them. Johnuniq (talk) 00:07, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment It's not reasonable to claim that the WMF is not subject to EU law and thus action is not necessary. I'm skeptical about some of the claims made by opponents of this measure, but if they are accurate I would support an EU-wide blackout in response. I'd like to hear whether the WMF or their lawyers have an opinion before !voting. power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:06, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • It may not appear reasonable, but it is the case the the WMF servers are in the US, and US opyright law is controlling, not EU copyright law. There may be personal risk for individual editors, but there's no more risk to the WMF's projects than if China changed its copyright laws, or Melanesia. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:28, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Beyond My Ken: I’m going to take the opportunity to point out that Wikimedians are already individually liable for every action we take on WMF projects, so if the concern here is that individuals will be held more accountable for stealing the intellectual property of others, well, good for the EU in my book. If there is actually an existential threat to the WMF, I’m sure their legal team would be on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:46, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • US copyright law is (fortunately for us) not all-controlling. Local copyright law is also important. WMF does need to comply. The point is the opposite; individual editors are not affected; WMF is. But it's not complaining. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:28, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've created Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. It's fairly difficult to find "neutral" sources here, and I'm not even sure how the EU makes legislation. Hopefully the magic of collaboration will improve it. power~enwiki (π, ν) 06:16, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per TonyBallioni's concerns about being perceived as politically biased. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 01:31, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Unless the WMF is supporting such a banner (Jimbo != WMF) we have generally decided that politically-oriented banners are not appropriate. If the WMF want to enforce one, if they feel the issue is significant enough, they have ways to push that themselves. --Masem (t) 01:49, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: While I'm sympathetic to the arguments here, I am somewhat weary of requests for politically-oriented banners. If the Foundation wishes to do it themselves, they can (and, by all means, they should, if they feel that strongly about this issue), but the voters of Europe have made their choices, and it's not our place, as a worldwide community of editors, to browbeat, cajole, or even attempt to persuade them otherwise, through the usage of Wikipedia. So, just as I voted on net neutrality (twice), I vote again: please, no more political banners/alerts/whatever on Wikipedia. — Javert2113 (talk; please ping me in your reply on this page) 02:40, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for many of the reasons stated above. While I can see the harm to the wider internet if this passes, I'm not convinced that this poses an existential threat to Wikipedia which I believe is the only case where such banners are appropriate. Winner 42 Talk to me! 02:55, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose any political banners, as always. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 03:44, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose As above and echoing the oppose votes for net neutrality banner further up. We should be careful with political banners. doktorb wordsdeeds 04:38, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per TonyBallioni and oppose Political banners and this is a political issue and feel there other fora are better for this.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 05:49, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Though I'm sure the proposal is with good intent, ultimately this is an encyclopedia and not a campaign rally. Chetsford (talk) 07:27, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose and suggest some plan to formally document somewhere that generally politically-themed banners from any country will not be run, to save editors time in discussions like this. It is all evident from recent proposals, that consensus cannot be reached on issues like this. –Ammarpad (talk) 07:35, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I don't think we should be in the business of championing political causes, and adding a guideline to that effect sounds like a good idea. If the WMF decided this was a threat to the movement and wanted to campaign against it, that would be a different matter. That is part of their job, after all. – Joe (talk) 10:59, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. On June 11, net neutrality will be adopted as official U.S. policy, and if internet can survive in America, it can survive in Europe too. wumbolo ^^^ 11:48, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, at this point we should ask WMF for more information and advice about this situation instead of speculating based on opinion pieces and advocacy sites (such sites may very well be correct, but they do not offer an unbiased perspective on controversial topics). Also, as already pointed out by others: it would be helpful to discuss a more general guideline about prohibiting political (and other) advocacy on English Wikipedia and to clarify the handling of possible exceptional cases (if any). GermanJoe (talk) 12:27, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Not an existential threat as Wikipedia can easily exist without the EU, see also the Turkey block. While bad for editors in the EU (including myself), if this comes to pass we might as well fork the encyclopedia, it seems a saner strategy at this point. I find it interesting btw. how people point at WMF whereas WMFs strategy has been to ask the community. Seems a bit circular. :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:01, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sure, for that matter Wikipedia can continue existing even if tomorrow a biological attack kills the entire humanity. It just won't have any user. --Nemo 21:09, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well it's clear that the community is fine with that, isn't it ? The ideals have eroded to the point where we effectively ARE the Encyclopaedia Brittanica that we replaced. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:19, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, we need to be able to address laws that directly affect Wikipedia. (Note that I am not thrilled by the not very informative nature of https://saveyourinternet.eu/ ). We regularly have banners claiming Wikipedia will die if users don't donate -- the potential threat from bad legislation seems worse than two years without donations. —Kusma (t·c) 14:07, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, the community is here to build an encyclopedia, not for political campaigning. Proposals like this are on their way to WP:PERENNIAL. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:45, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support compared to net neutrality, this appears to actually have a direct and major effect on wikipedia in the EU, closer to WP:SOPA. Hope to get a statement from the WMF on how exactly this would affect us though. Galobtter (pingó mió) 21:05, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • As Galobtter and Kusma say, this is legislation which directly affects our copyleft and wiki model: not only it directly affects Wikipedia, but of all possible topics in the world it's the one where we can't avoid having an opinion and can't avoid being the most competent to talk (copyleft is the third pillar, folks). On the other hand, it's a bit hard for a community like ours to give a clear and short message among stacks of open letters signed by hundreds of organisations, piles of papers by hundreds of academics, hundreds of competing amendments. Realistically, the true menace will be clear after the JURI vote and the final call to arms will be before the vote in the European Plenary, like last time. After the committee vote, it's certainly too late to have a good law, but it won't be too late to stop a bad one. If we use all our bullets now, we will be harmless when the lobbies come up with yet another trick against Wikipedia. --Nemo 21:30, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support great idea. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:45, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose yet ANOTHER PROPOSED WIKI-BANNER CRYING WOLF about the end of civilization as we know it. When can these well-intentioned—but badly conceived proposals—and the accompanying Wiki lawyering, just stop? If the WMF speaks out on the issue, ping me... GenQuest "Talk to Me" 23:17, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ping. This is highly relevant for everyone to read.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:04, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per all the oppose comments - Exactly as the opposition to the US net neutrality banner. Also this would mean identifying from cookies/IP adresses the location of our users/readers. Our encyclopedia is international and it must remain apolitical. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:42, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Kudpung: "Also this would mean identifying from cookies/IP adresses the location of our users/readers" eh. we already do that for almost every single banner.. Since at least 2009. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:24, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
TheDJ, I have no idea. I'm an editor not an IT expert. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:23, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Apolitical? LOL. I have a list of articles I would like you to make apolitical.... HiLo48 (talk) 08:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
HiLo48 then as a Wikipedia editor there are things you can do about it. Hope your list is not too long...Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:23, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Kudpung Some I can work on. Give me time. Some are owned by unprincipled Admins who would rather see me banned forever. There is no hope there. (For those articles or those Admins, and maybe Wikipedia.) HiLo48 (talk) 21:48, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Not appropriate to push that POV, even though many of us might agree with it. HiLo48 (talk) 08:14, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per GenQuest. Wikipedia is not for righting great wrongs, in articles or otherwise. --Joshualouie711talk 15:13, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose We are not a forum, and that must just as much apply to this as anything else. Wikipedia must not and should not engage in advocacy. Once we do that then any claim of neutrality goes out of the window, we play into the hands of those who say we are not neutral.15:17, 6 June 2018 (UTC)Slatersteven (talk)
  • Support. Like the net neutrality proposal, this is not inherently political. Like net neutrality, this also has to do with something that threatens the very premise of WMF's purpose. But unlike net neutrality, this law may prevent EU users from accessing Wikipedia because Wikipedia doesn't pay the appropriate fees to news sources for using short snippets of text, and so forth.
    I initially thought this was about the image copyright law that banned images of certain structures in the EU, but this is much, much worse. Talk about heavy-handed... epicgenius (talk) 15:58, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: this law will have very serious consiquences for Wikimedia projects as outlined by the proposer, Julia Reda, WMF, WMDE and others. John Cummings (talk) 15:48, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – Wikipedia is not a soapbox, whether political or not. But wait, why would we think this is a bad idea anyway? Isn't a robust and effective filter to prevent copyright violations one of the things we've repeatedly asked the Foundation for in the various community wishes consultation exercises? Isn't it exactly what we desperately need and want for this project, instead of relying on a script written by a user and the one dedicated admin who monitors it? Since the vote is imminent, can we take it that the WMF has already dedicated substantial human and financial resources to preparing an effective filter in case it turns out to be needed? Will it be ready in time? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:17, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Before it is too late. Yann (talk) 20:42, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose - Copied from the recent proposal for a Net Neutrality banner, after reading much of this discussion (I can't say it any clearer than this). I'll note that something does not need to be "partisan" to be political by my understanding and use of the word. First definition at m-w.com: "of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government".
    Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a platform for political statements supported by a majority of the few editors who happen to show up in a discussion on this page. That's regardless of the merits of the issues or how Wikipedia might be affected by them. We are Wikipedia editors, not political activists (although each of us is free to be a political activist off-wiki). In my view, this proposal should go the way of the proposal to show an anti-Trump statement before the U.S. presidential election. Furthermore, I think we should consider an explicit policy against using the encyclopedia as a platform for political statements. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:13, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WAIT, how is this political?

WAIT. before you oppose on 'not-political' grounds, be aware that this is not something that it politicised in the EU, it is something that has not been reported on in the media, and the public are largely not aware of. This EU proposal is far more dangerous than any of the net neutrality debates, in a direct way to Wikipedia. Net Neutrality doesn't directly affect Wikipedia, but the changes to copyright that article 13 contains may make it impossible for Wikipedia to operate in the EU; the 'link tax' might completely shut down access to Wikipedia in Europe if enforced, and the rules for copyright basically eliminate fair use, making all the European branch language Wikis largely impossible. That is way more of a big deal than a bit of political activism. Please do not bandwagon this one, THINK. I was against the other net neutrality banners, but this is NOT THE SAME THING. I urge you guys to please reconsider, because this is not a partisan political issue in the EU, and that this is actually a potentially huge existential threat to Wikipedia itself. Even Jimbo Wales has said so over on his talk page.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 20:39, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Where have you been told that the WMF isn't worried about it? It is not a partisan issue like net neutrality, so Wikipedia wouldn't be 'taking sides'. This is trying to be snuck through the political process with nobody noticing. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 21:09, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless, if this is a threat to the WMF model, then the WMF should be clearly issuing a statement against it and/or issuing something to say they support a message. (WMF supported the Protests against SOPA and PIPA). If we had this, I would see no problem then including a banner message to warn about this. --Masem (t) 21:16, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Err, they already did: wmfblog:2017/06/06/european-copyright-directive-proposal/. Judging from the statement, WMF seems rather worried about article 13, which would probably make the WMF subject to some kind of liability. The European users and associations originally cared about other things, necessary for our copyleft wikis: freedom of panorama, public domain, orphan works. But then, maybe that's considered "political" too. --Nemo 21:17, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I detest hidden pings; if you're going to ping me, at least make it so I can see my name. Anyway, I agree with Tony and Masem; if it's an existential threat in the view of the whole of the Foundation, not just Jimbo, something will be done. Moreover, it's not our place to attempt to sway the minds of voters regarding the proposed policies of their lawmakers. (Hint: contact your lawmakers and spread the word about this.) — Javert2113 (talk; please ping me in your reply on this page) 21:22, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Javert2113:Sorry about the hidden ping, I pinged everyone that had made a 'political' oppose above, and it was a long list of names. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 21:51, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's fine. I'm just a bit grouchy today, to be honest. Thank you for the ping; I probably wouldn't have seen this otherwise. — Javert2113 (talk; please ping me in your reply on this page) 21:52, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whether or not the WMF is worried about it, or whether or not I'm personally worried about it, I still oppose. While I understand the proposed banner would not be encyclopedic per se, I think the general spirit of WP:NPOV should still apply to publicly-facing content and the proposed banner - linking to a site that says a specific piece of legislation "threatens everything you do" - is not in line with that. That said, I appreciate the spirit in which the banner is proposed. Chetsford (talk) 22:11, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the issue is that it isn't clear exactly what consequences this might have, particularly for Wikipedia. Article 13 is pretty broad in its language, which makes it a bit unclear where it will be enforced and where it won't. When similar laws passed in Spain I know that google news shut down in that country (at least linking to Spanish publishers). A lot of these links are pretty fearmongery, and I am not sure anyone really knows what consequences this might actually have. Everyone seems to agree that it will be bad to some degree however. If a Lawyer from the WMF could give us confirmation on this (can someone ping somebody?) that would be the best. I'm not sure if wmfblog:2017/06/06/european-copyright-directive-proposal/ represents a WMF position on the topic or not... — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 22:44, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The worst case scenario, it seems, is that Wikipedia in the EU goes the way Google News did in Spain. That, in the future, Wikipedia will be inaccessible to EU citizens. However, I oppose the persuasive banner regardless of the consequences. If the citizens of the EU, acting through their MEPs, decide WP is not welcome in the EU we should respect their decision, not chain ourselves in the guest bedroom and demand to stay. Again, though, I do appreciate the spirit in which the banner is proposed and agree it would be unfortunate if the worst came to pass. Chetsford (talk) 22:52, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Meh, the WMF is not worried about it. They are insulated by being (as an entity) based in the US, the material based in the US etc. This will not impact Wikipedia or any of the major encyclopedias in any significant manner. It will be an issue for editors in the EU but as to how much - that remains to be seen. What it is highly likely to totally fuck right up is Wikia - a site that routinely (and is in fact built around) violates copyright. And since Wikia is a for-profit cash-generating machine of a certain someone, who happens to live in the EU and so is subject to EU law, its not surprising they are 'concerned' about legislation that will directly impact that. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:10, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose We are not a forum, and that must just as much apply to this as anything else. Wikipedia must not and should not engage in advocacy. Once we do that then any claim of neutrality goes out of the window.Slatersteven (talk) 14:58, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support although I doubt a proprosal on en-wiki can affect all other language wikis, so probably just here. I'm quite flabbergasted whenever I hear the "we shouldn't be doing advocacy"-line. Obviously we shouldn't be advertising for political parties or recommending the next big dietary supplement, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with telling our readers whenever a proposed policy would severely **** with our editing model. I wonder if one would get the same reaction if the proposal was more obviously authoritarian. It's also incorrect that the WMF hasn't said anything about this as explained above, and various elements of the WMF-affiliate ecosystem has been working against this, such as the WM EU-group (full disclosure, WMDK, which I'm a part of, has done so as well). Despite the carveouts for online encyclopedias in the proposal, it would still impact some of our other projects, as well as the general free-knowledge infrastructure, such as forced remuneration. Sincerely, InsaneHacker (💬) 16:28, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I agree with Kusma, including caveat that the saveyourinternet link is not ideal. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 17:22, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Julia Reda AMA

For those few interested, tomorrow Julia Reda (one of the few defenders of the Internet within the EU politics), is doing an AMA tomorrow at 12:00 CEST on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/ —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:03, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it has started: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8oywxz/i_am_mep_julia_reda_fighting_to_saveyourinternet/ --Nemo 11:29, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, there is no link from the {{Authority control}} navbar template to the Wikidata item page, where the information displayed is gathered. The Wikidata item page is where an editor may add/remove/correct authority information on a person/entity. A common complaint against {{Authority control}} is that the template (and thus Wikidata) contains information on the wrong subject, or that the links are useless, or the associated link is broken, or frustration from how/where to correct it (there are other complaints as well, but they are outside the scope of this discussion). This proposal/survey seeks to allow editors to more easily access the Wikidata item linked to the Wikipedia page to make such additions/removals/corrections. While gaining some support, it has been suggested at Template talk:Authority control#Adding Wikidata item link to aid navigation to poll a larger audience, so voilà.

A 'Wikidata item' link exists on the left hand margin of any Wikipedia page which currently has a Wikidata item associated with it, similar to commons, wikiquote, wikisource, wikispecies, etc. Also similar is our placement of a 2nd link to commons, wikiquote, wikisource, wikispecies, etc. at the bottom of the page in the external links, to aid navigation and visibility. So the addition of a 2nd link to Wikidata would be in line with current behavior.

This will not affect dormant transclusions of {{Authority control}}; i.e. those which do not display on the page.


Option 1 - RHS in-line 'Wd: Q2144892' links as the first item:

Pros: it's short, so the chances of adding an extra vertical increment to the height of the {{Authority control}} template is also small. After scanning 400k transclusions, 50% of {{Authority control}} templates display 3 or fewer links from Wikidata, and 90% display 8 or fewer, so those 50% would very likely retain their current height (I'll update these numbers again at 690k). Also, parameter suppression of some kind will probably happen in the next 1-few months, making even more templates 1-liners.
Cons: it's lumped together with the other authorities so it (Wikidata) might run the risk of being misidentified as an authority (which it isn't), but I've only seen this concern raised once (part of the reason I'm here). This hasn't been a problem with a sister template, {{Taxonbar}}, which has about ~50% of the transclusions of {{Authority control}}.


Option 2 - LHS 'Q2144892' link on a separate line:

Pros: less chance of being misidentified as an authority, and more obvious linkage to the corresponding Wikidata item than Option 1.
Cons: will force all {{Authority control}} templates that are 1 line tall (~50%) to be 2 lines tall.


Option 2Wd - LHS 'Wd: Q2144892' links on a separate line:

Pros: lowest chance of being misidentified as an authority, and more obvious linkage to the corresponding Wikidata item than Option 1 and Option 2.
Cons: same as Option 2, and slightly wider.


Option 2Q - LHS 'Q2144892' links on a separate line (stylistic variant of Option 2Wd; Q and 2144892 link to different pages):

Pros: same as Option 2, plus the additional link describing what Wikidata is, and is "cleaner looking" than Option 2Wd.
Cons: same as Option 2.


Option 2Wikidata - LHS 'Wikidata' link & RHS links display ID names instead of numbers:

Pros: same as Option 2, but much more reader friendly, and LHS is constant width regardless of Q# size, and the RHS (with this example) is slightly shorter than any Option 2.
Cons: same as Option 2.


Option 2pencil - LHS ' Edit this at Wikidata' link:

Pros: same as Option 1, and widespread use elsewhere, so intuitive.
Cons: less descriptive than Option 2Wikidata, and hard to see for users who invert browser colors.


Option 2edit - LHS '[edit on Wikidata]' link:

Pros: same as Option 2 and Option 2Wikidata, and widespread use elsewhere, and maximally intuitive.
Cons: ?


Option 3 - any of the above.

Pros: various.
Cons: various.


Option 4 - no change.

Pros: status quo.
Cons: less mobility to Wikidata, and thus less potential for editors to add/remove/correct information.
  • Option 2edit, 2Wikidata, 2pencil, 2Wd/2Q, 2, 1, in that order, as nom.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:18, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 2Wikidata, if not, 2Wd, failing that, 2. I feel 2Wd is the best here, or failing that option 2. 2Q is bad and confusing. Option 1 is baaaaad. Personally, I'd just add the full Wikidata:Q2144892. The objectings (below) to this are silly, since it makes editing what is presented harder if there are errors, and presents Wikidata as authoritative.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:52, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Options 2edit/2pencil, 2Wikidata, 2Wd, and 2, in order. We shouldn't add it to the authority field, so option 1 is a no-go, and 2Q is confusing for the user. Option 2Wd gives the best indication of what the Q link is for, although just calling it "wikidata" would suffice. Option 2edit is probably the most clear, but the pencil reduces the template back to one line, which is nice. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 00:47, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Options 2 or 2Wd in that order. Oppose 1 as very bad. Oppose 2Q as too difficult for mobile users to navigate. Chetsford (talk) 02:40, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 4. There is no need for a WikiData link, especially since we now transclude most from WD (at least up to 22 per subject are transcluded, up to 43 possible). WD is NOT an authority, and anyway it is already linked from the toolbox. There is no ‘one size fits all’, on many articles, both the in-AC link ánd the link in the toolbox will be visible at the same time on one physical computer landscape oriented screen. No objection agains a ‘sisterlink’ like template at long articles (but no standard inclusions there either, it does need merit). —Dirk Beetstra T C 04:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • As it is relevant here, today I did this. The link to Commons is in the toolbox, anddisplaying it so prominently in this case suggests that there is more to get on Commons. However, commons in this case has just three other cropped immages of the same as in the article - nothing to ADD. For much of WD (we are set to transclude 43, we sometimes display up to 22), the WD link has NOTHING TO ADDin terms of authority control (and there are enough requests to have more parameters t be added ...). The inclusion at the bottom should be a choice, not a standard for the 10s of thousands of articles that have an AC. If WD really has more to offer, include a sister link. —Dirk Beetstra T C 00:12, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 4. The reason given as a "con" is actually a "pro". We don't have the WD link in other templates that are filled way too often from Wikidata (official website, commons cat, ...). AC is already a poorly designed reader-unfriendly template, and efforts are under way to drastically change it. Adding yet another link and another undecipherable code after a meaningless abbreviation is not the way to go. If not option 4, then whatever, but definitely not option 1. We shouldn't put IDs from unreliable wikis into our "authority control" templates (not just Wikidata, but also musicbrainz and so on). If any option 2 is chosen, then don't add the Q-number, just add "Wikidata", so readers have a better chance of knowing what the link means (something that should be done for all the others as well, give the short "name" of the site instead of the meaningless ID, so people know that they are looking at a link to a Czechian, Swedish, US, ... repository). Fram (talk) 06:56, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 4 per Beetstra and Fram. To be honest, I'd be quite happy if Wikidata folded but since that is unlikely to happen any time soon, the less connection there is, the better. - Sitush (talk) 07:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 3 Adding the Wikidata link/ID is useful. Option 1 has the benefit of (almost) matching what is used in this template on other wikis (e.g., commons). I quite like the last Option 2Wikidata with the full display of the names rather than the acronyms and numbers. But any of the options would work aside from option 4. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:51, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • "No link to Wikidata" is painful. I think we've generally established that a template pulling from Wikidata should provide in the context of the template a way to edit the content at Wikidata (this is how Module:Wikidata functions broadly). OTOH, I don't think any of the options above provides the call to action in the way that Module:Wikidata does presently (the little pencil icon). I would prefer to see that here rather than the Wikidata ID or even the nomenclature for Wikidata.

    Regarding the specific proposals: Some Pencil Icon Version > 2Wikidata > 2. I'm partial to 2Wikidata for a non-Wikidata-specific related improvement. That said, I believe the intent is for the template to provide the links internally so that people who are curious about any particular identifier can understand (with some level of encyclopedicity) what it is they would end up looking at without taking up oodles of space with the template where it is provided (by use of the abbreviations). I'm not sure if those links are so valuable in fact or not, and I might suggest the general link to authority control/help:authority control suffices for "hey, what is this template doing? what are these links here for?" rather than specific links to each of the authority controls. That leaves me somewhere in the realm of option 2 as a last resort. Flat rejects: 2Wd for previous comments, 2Q per sea of blue rationale, 4 per first paragraph, 1 per con listed, and 3 because I have a specific preference. --Izno (talk) 13:14, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Option 2pencil (per Izno) or Option 2edit . This has become the standard way of indicating "edit this on Wikidata". All of the presented options betray into thinking that Wikidata is one of the authority control files. It's not (is it?). The problem this proposal wants to fix is not that readers want to use Wikidata as an authority control; it's that editors can't find how to edit the actual authority files stored on Wikidata. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:23, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're the first person to enter this conversation that was aware (or at least vocal) about such standards!
I guess Option 2edit needs to be made for "[edit on Wikidata]"?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:04, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Please keep the discussion focused on the merits of the available options.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:18, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I added some text to clarify 2Q. Johnuniq (talk) 23:34, 5 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can we please promote this to an RfC, that attracts more editors and will get independent closure with a bit mere authority? —Dirk Beetstra T C 04:09, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why are the options confusingly numbered 1, 2, 2Wd, 2Q, 2, 3, 4? Could we change to having them as 1, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 3, 4 - or something else that's more straightforward? In particular, we shouldn't have two that are just "option 2"! Mike Peel (talk) 09:53, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I renamed the second option 2, that was my mistake. Fram (talk) 10:03, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to change "on the article's talk page" for deleted articles

If one goes to Wikipedia: Articles for deletion, one can often see notices after a discussion has closed saying "The following is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it". This notice then says that subsequent comments can be added to a deletion review or to the article's talk page. However, making comments on an article's talk page is difficult if the article has been deleted here. My proposal is that we change the wording if an article has been deleted. Vorbee (talk) 19:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Conversely, the talk page is the single best place for subsequent comments if the article hasn't been deleted.
(I'm going to preemptively oppose any suggestion that Template:Afd top and Template:Afd bottom change to require additional parameters, either the article's name or whether it's been deleted. People do still close discussions with just the edit button.) —Cryptic 19:50, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RFC for an Altered Main Page Design

Following on from the discussion on the issue linked to above (point 16), a full RFC has been launched on the proposed style which is accessible here.

Please give your opinions on the new design. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:22, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Minor visual update to access locks

Following a an old RFC, the current access lock scheme for CS1|2 template is

  • (current) Freely accessible / Free registration required / Paid subscription required

The first icon is meant to convey open access, the second one is meant to convey limited access, the third one is meant to convey closed access. This scheme has as a few problems.

First, the red lock is not very recognizable as a lock. To fix this, I propose a more recognizable red lock

  • (new1) Freely accessible / Free registration required / Paid subscription required

However, an additional problem is that Green/Blue/Red makes does not convey progression, and was picked over a more logical Green/Yellow/Red by a non-statistically significant 1 vote, mostly because the yellow didn't look very yellow. It also tends to get lost in the see of blue, e.g. (JSTOR 01234 Free registration required)

  • (old1) Freely accessible / Free registration required / Paid subscription required

To fix this, I propose a better intermediate level lock: grey

  • (new2) Freely accessible / Free registration required / Paid subscription required

Some people also didn't like the red, feeling it was too aggressive, so we could stick to green and grey:

  • (new3) Freely accessible / Free registration required / Paid subscription required

The "new2" scheme only has advantages compared to the current scheme: It has more recognizable icons, better accessibility, and better conveys levels of access. "new3" loses easier distinctions between limited and closed access, but is also less aggressive.

Which of the proposed schemes should we use?

  • new2 > old1 > new3 > new 1 > current. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:45, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • new2, failing that new1, failing that current. Both of these have sufficient distinction in color and shape, with grey as a more intuitive color progression than blue thus my preference for new2. Current is not particularly intuitive but the different symbols are nonetheless quite distinct and thus recognizable enough once their meaning is learnt. Not a fan of new3: these symbols are displayed at a small size and the two different grey symbols are sufficiently "similar-ish" (very similar shape, fairly similar ratio of grey-vs-white even if the *pattern* in which it is used differs) that I suspect they may be hard to distinguish for people with limited vision. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 03:04, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going to rank these, if you don't mind, as well. I concur wholly with AddWittyNameHere. new2 looks best to me, though I really do object somewhat to the grey; then new1 and current, and finally, new3 (like AddWittyNameHere said, two grey locks are hard to distinguish, and that's bad for accessibility reasons). Great work, by the way! — Javert2113 (talk; please ping me in your reply on this page) 03:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • new2, and failing that, new1. Gray and gray doesn't help distinguish anything, especially when there aren't three right next to each other. New red lock looks nice. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:29, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • New2 looks fine. Grey conveys "no information really", which is right for the middle lock (once you require login, restrictions have an almost infinite granularity) but not when we know for sure that something is paywalled. --Nemo 10:44, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • old1, new1, current, in that order, because progression/streetlights, and grey is more ambiguous than blue.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:21, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • new4, old1, new3 Some people will only be able to visually distinguish a single element; color, lock body (open, partial, filled) or intensity (light, shaded, dark) so each icon needs to be distinguishable by a single element. I would suggest a new4 which makes the distinction between the open, half-filled and filled body of the lock more crisp and varies the color intensity/tone in a noticeable way between the three. I would also suggest a slight increase in size since some will not be able to resolve the body of the lock; removing the dot in the 'open' making the body white; and removing the dot in 'locked' making it solid. This should result in a more crisp image which is easier to resolve. Jbh Talk 15:44, 7 June 2018 (UTC) Last edited: 15:55, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with is that it looks like an lowercase a. This is particularly bad when printed, or in grayscale. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:44, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Polling templates

I suggest including the polling templates on Commons to Wikipedia. It would look better on Requested moves, Articles for deletion, and Proposed mergers and other Wikipedia proposals.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Polling_templates
--192.107.120.90 (talk) 14:03, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on the enforceability of logged voluntary editing restrictions

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforceability of logged voluntary editing restrictions, all are invited to participate. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:07, 7 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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