Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines.

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Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequently rejected or ignored proposals. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for two weeks.

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RfC: Attribution when copying within Wikipedia

Copying within Wikipedia: Should hyperlink attribution be allowed?

Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia#Hyperlink says:

"A statement in the edit summary such as copied content from page name; see that page's history for attribution will direct interested parties to the edit history of the source page, where they can trace exactly who added what content when. A disadvantage with this method is that the page history of the original article must subsequently be retained in order to maintain attribution."

Do we want to consider this to be proper attribution? -Guy Macon (talk) 16:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

• No: as proponent. In my opinion, this creates a copyright land mine. Requiring that a page never be deleted because someone made a copy isn't reasonable. It would be too easy to miss the one edit summary that makes the page undeletable and delete it anyway, thus creating an inadvertent copyright violation. Making a page undeletable could be abused by someone who opposes deletion. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
• Yes. It's one of the three methods of attribution explicitly allowed in the Terms of Service. I think we can trust WMF Legal in their interpretation of the license. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:14, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • No it isn't. That page says "a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using" (along with two other ways to do it) A hyperlink to a page that no longer exists does not qualify. If you allow hyperlink attribution, you must make the page you hyperlink to undeletable. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:49, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    • I'm simply not convinced that this is a problem unless you get WMF Legal to say that it is. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:53, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
• Yes. As Finnusertop points out, including a link to the original source page is one of the three explicitly mentioned methods of attributions allowed under our legal policies. As ProcrastinatingReader mentions below, if you are legitimately concerned that the source page may be deleted at some point in the future, you could add {{Copied}} to the source page's talk page to inform deleting admins of the copyright issue. In the event that someone uses this strategy to game the system to make a page that should be deleted undeletable, the situation could be repaired by moving the page out of the mainspace, e.g. to a subpage of the destination article's talk page, and then updating the attribution accordingly. In practice, this seems to be an issue very rarely, and I would want to see evidence that this is an actual recurring problem before considering a change to our guidelines here, as well as a viable alternative solution beyond the "list of authors" idea. Mz7 (talk) 17:24, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • A link to the a the original source page or a link to the missing page where the original source page used to be before it got deleted a year later? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:49, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

    If the page were deleted, that would of course be problematic, but the situation would not be irreparable: we can simply undelete the page and move it to an obscure location, then add a new dummy edit with an edit summary that links to the new location of the page history. If we had to do this constantly, then perhaps I might support some kind of process reform, but as it stands, I doubt this scenario happens more than a couple of times every year. Mz7 (talk) 19:22, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

    And just to add to this, I'm not suggesting this out of thin air. This repair process is documented at Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Fixing cut-and-paste moves#Parallel versions: This is sometimes done by moving the page history to a subpage of the talk page of the destination page. An example can be found at Talk:Compilation of Final Fantasy VII#Old page history. Mz7 (talk) 19:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

• Yes. This is already allowed, and recommended, in the copyright policy. The alternative – tracking down and listing authors – is often impractical. The biggest problem is not source pages getting deleted, but editors not providing attribution in any way when copying, and this is not going to get any better if we make the required process more burdensome.
  As for preserving histories - this is done not just for attribution, it's best practice anyway. I really don't see any issue with "undeletables". If the source page needs to be removed for whatever reason, then it's history should just be kept under a redirect, possibly at a different title. There's no benefit to deletion here. If under some exceptional circumstance the page does need to actually be deleted, then the deleting admin can extract the list of authors and mark it on the destination page; there's no need for this to be forced in all other cases. – Uanfala (talk) 22:50, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
• Well, I would be disappointed that deleting admins don't know what it means and what happens when they delete page history. I think, I was aware of what happens on deletion in wiping out history very early. Has not someone written instructions for admins about preserving history, when needed? -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:44, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
• Yes, obviously this should be allowed. Despite the policy page saying there are "three" methods, two of them are "hyperlink" based. The third method is listing every individual contributor. Listing every contributor in the edit summary is often impossible due to character limits, and is always inconvenient. So as I understand it, this will often make splits/merges impossible. There's already a template for talk pages when there is substantial edit-history relevant to content on other pages, so accidental deletion isn't really a concern. 力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:54, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Yes no good reason to change the status quo. Elli (talk | contribs) 05:40, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Yes per Mz7. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 16:35, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (attribution when copying within WP)

• Does this exclude the use of oldid/diff links? I understand the concern to the base bare article name, but using links w/ oldid/diff that contains the text that was copied should be fine? --Masem (t) 17:03, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Would that make the original page undeletable? I am not sure if the diffs work after deletion. An edit summary like "Added 'I like cake!', originally posted by User:Masem" along with the diff would preserve attribution even if the diff no longer works. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:27, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
• How else would we maintain attribution when merging articles or copying content? – Joe (talk) 17:05, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Merging deletes the source without deleting the history, so we would have no undeletable article. For short sections of content, see my answer to Masem. If someone wants to copy a large page with many editors, preserving the history for attribution is an absolute requirement; failing to do so violates the CC BY-SA 3.0 License. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
• This is the only feasible way to do attribution in many cases. For example: copying a template or another page into a sandbox. I'm not going to sit and dig through the page history and write down the name of everyone in the edit summary every time I create a sandbox. It's not really reasonable to expect when splitting or merging pages either. {{Copied}} exists to make sure the page doesn't get deleted. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:09, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Then you are saying that it is OK to make the page you copied from undeletable. Preserving the history for attribution is an absolute requirement; failing to do so violates the CC BY-SA 3.0 License. I don't like it either, but following copyright rules is not something that we abandon when it becomes inconvenient. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
    • It's well and good that you say this is an absolute requirement, but that is really a question for the Foundation's lawyers. If they feel it necessary, a list of editors who contributed to a deleted article could be provided for compliance, avoiding all the practical problems of the proposal. In practice, these pages are generally kept as redirects with revision history. 力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:57, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Could we have some background, please, like what exactly is the issue and where have the previous discussions on the topic been? Does the proposal aim to ban editors from linking, or to force them to always provide a list of authors? This can work if the number of contributors is small, but how do you trace all the contributors to a section of a large established article when splitting it out? Also, a list of contributors may be sufficient for copyright purposes, but having the actual history of that content is always preferable: it shows how the content has developed, it allows in principle to see who wrote what exactly (helpful, for example, if one of the contributors later turns out to have been partial to creating hoaxes), and it preserves a record, in the edit summaries, of justifications for parts of that content.
  And why would the original page need to be deleted? It can always be turned into a redirect (and also potentially moved to a different title), preserving the history, and if there's anything actually nefarious in that history, it can be revdeled. And as for inadvertent deletions, when are these actually likely to happen? The copying is normally indicated in a talk page template, or sometimes in the edit summary of the source page; even if it's not, then the source and the destination pages would almost always have some obvious connection, like one being a redirect to the other. – Uanfala (talk) 17:23, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Re: "And why would the original page need to be deleted? It can always be turned into a redirect (and also potentially moved to a different title), preserving the history", that's not the problem. The problem is when you copy a chunk of a page to another page using a hyperlink for attribution and then years later the original article gets deleted at AfD. Bam. Instant copyright violation.

  The problem is real. Not allowing hyperlink attribution is one solution. Making an ever-increasing number of pages undeletable is another solution (but we would need some way to keep track of which articles can never be deleted). I would love to hear a solution that is better than the above two, but "Ignore the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and purposely create copyright violations because it is convenient" is not an acceptable solution. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:41, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

  Not allowing hyperlink attribution is not a solution by itself; we still need a way to attribute the text. Should we be dumping the authors to a list and including it on, say, a subpage of the corresponding talk page? It would be helpful in that case for the software to provide additional support for this. isaacl (talk) 18:02, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

  Another possible software enhancement would be for it to support a "link to history" mechanism, so you could link a new article to the history of any ancestor articles. If an ancestor was deleted, then the software could provide a way to still extract the editor names. But something else still has to be done until any new feature work gets planned, scheduled, implemented, tested, and delivered (if it ever happens). isaacl (talk) 18:06, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

  Because Guy didn't answer, this is clearly related to the DRV topics discussed at WP:AN#Review of DRV supervotes by King of Hearts. Izno (talk) 18:27, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

  You may think that it is "clearly related" but I wasn't aware of the above until just now. This has pretty much nothing to do with the general question I am asking, but see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Frobozz1/PA-design, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#I feel personally attacked for good faith edits - MfD my user page, Incident threats, BRD disruption - still learning, am I wrong? and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Parental Alienation if you really want to get into the weeds. --Guy Macon (talk)

  The relevant bit in the AN/DRV threads – as far as I can tell from all the layers of procedural wrangling – is to do with the Squid article, and the fact that an admin was presumably aware of the issue of attribution, but decided to delete the article anyway. As for the MFD case, as far as I can tell from a quick glimpse, what is at stake is the deletion of a target of a merge, and not its source, so attribution shouldn't really be an issue at this stage, should it? – Uanfala (talk) 19:53, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

  Thus my statement, "This has pretty much nothing to do with the general question I am asking". I original ignored your request for "context" because there is no context, just a general question about our policies. Then Izno answered for me and got the answer wrong. None of this has anything to do with the question I am asking in this RfC. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:12, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

• Does this not have legal implications? Is this not an office matter? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:57, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
  • No, for two reasons. First, Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia#Hyperlink is an English Wikipedia editing guideline controlled by Wikipedia editors. Second, you only have to contact legal when allowing something forbidden by legal or lifting a restriction mandated by legal. We are perfectly free to add restrictions. We could decide that nobody is allowed to use the letter "E" and legal would have no say in the matter. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:27, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

    You must be a fan of Georges Perec. Mathglot (talk) 08:44, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

A potential solution

• What it sounds like we need is a mechanism to handle the following situation:

1. Article X is created and expanded over time
2. Article Y takes a sufficient amount of article X to require attribution (eg not just a citation, but like a whole paragraph). Attribution is added by linking of some time
3. Sometime after this content is added to Y, article X is sent to AFD and determined to be deleted (not merged nor redirected, nor where it would make sense to history merge X into Y).

So that the deletion "breaks" the attribution that was on Y that pointed back to X that would have been there by X's page history, which would likely still be there to admins but not to regular users. We need to find a way that keeps the history of X available but without having the article of X there. Perhaps when we know that there has been some copying done (can it be possible to automate this check?) that we cannot delete articles but make a deleted target a redirect to some common special page that talks about the history being retained for proper attribution and how the user can go back to the redirect's history to explore that? --Masem (t) 18:12, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

That's essentially what I was brainstorming as a possible software enhancement, though I don't see how the check can be automated, so I think the editor creating page Y would have to explicitly link to the history leading up to a specific version of page X. Note this applies to all Wikipedia pages, not just articles. isaacl (talk) 18:19, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure there's a few checks that can be made if the {{copied}} template is found on the talk page, or if the history edit summaries contain a diff or oldid (which is uncommon, so this could at least be a list that can be checked manually). But we're likely going to miss other ways that the current language currently allows for (the plain hyperlink w/o oldid or diff), so maybe there's almost a need in Wikimedia that if someone clicks on an oldid/diff of a page that is deleted, that they are taken to a special page to explain what they may be able to do from there; thre we can explain they can contact an admin to help - and if we have this redirect system in place, then the admin can restore+redirect to suit the purpose. I can't see any easy way to do a full Wiki-wide search this way, but we can set up processes to prevent the issue in the future and respond when the need from past deletions comes up. --Masem (t) 18:25, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I mean by needing an editor to explicitly link the history, whether it is through the {{copied}} template or a new user interface. To help reduce the window for race conditions, I think a new user interface would be better. isaacl (talk) 18:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Can editors request community review of the blocks of others?

Can editors request community review of blocks of other editors, particularly problematic and/or out-of-policy ones? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:33, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Proposal (block review)

In July 2019 a section titled "Appeals by third party" was boldly added to the Wikipedia:Appealing a block guideline stating that appeals may only be made by editors subject to a currently active block; other editors may only discuss the block with the blocking admin (but cannot request review). This text was removed a few times by different editors, but was restored by Sandstein who stated consensus is needed to remove or modify the text. Talk page discussions to remove/alter the text didn't reach a consensus on whether to retain the text.[1] This section is currently in conflict with WP:ADMINACCT and WP:Blocking policy, namely: If editors believe a block has been improperly issued, they can request a review of that block at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Some editors have tried to cite this section in WP:AN block reviews, as a rationale for why the review cannot happen. De facto, block reviews still occur with some regularity.

This RfC is started to get broad community consensus of this addition, with three presented options:

• Option 1: (text) Retain the current text: Appeals of blocks may be made only by the editor under a currently active block. Other editors may discuss the block with the blocking admin. The WP:Blocking policy should also be altered to this effect, to resolve the conflict.
• Option 2: (sample text) Blocks should generally only be appealed by the editor subject to the block. Additionally, other editors may request community review of blocks they believe are problematic or out-of-policy (per WP:ADMINACCT) after attempting to discuss their concerns with the blocking admin first.
• Option 3: Remove the section entirely.

Survey (block review)

• Option 3, second preference option 2: The text at Wikipedia:Blocking policy is just fine and this section unnecessary. In my opinion even option 2 does not accurately represent the status quo (I only tried adding it in an attempt to compromise with Sandstein). I find the position advanced by some admins to be concerning, as illustrated by one example: last year I came across a problematic indefinite full protection which an admin made after receiving a phone call from the subject, saying that all future edits should be run through the talk page as edit requests. The protection was totally out of line with policy, but was defended by some admin wagon-circling on some low-watched talk pages. Once it reached AN, it was near-unanimously overturned.[2] I've also successfully requested block reviews before for good-faith but problematic blocks, which would likely have remained in place had a review not been made. That editors can request review of admin actions to the wider community is a fundamental safeguard against any kind of 'miscalculated' admin action, and this safeguard shouldn't be weakened by bold attempts to introduce a non-consensus change into a low-profile guideline page, which is in direct conflict with policy and precedent. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:06, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1. There are good reasons why only the blocked editors themselves are and should remain be able to appeal their blocks.
  • First, it's a matter of basic individual self-determination and autonomy. Blocked editors are people, not the objects of our entertainment. They are the persons best able to decide whether, when and how they want their block discussed in public - including, of course, their own presumably disruptive or embarrassing conduct that led to the block.
  • Second, and in the same vein, it's a matter of enabling the blocked editors themselves to frame the unblock discussion, including its timing and forum, and the arguments they want to advance. They may want to discuss the matter with the blocker first, or let another trusted editor do so. They may want to make arguments that might not occur to whoever else makes an unblock request, or they might want to ensure that any unblock discussion occurs at a time when they are available to participate. They might want to have the discussion individually with {{unblock}} reviewers on their talk page, rather than in a public forum.
  • Third, it's a matter of protecting blocked editors from well-meaning, but incompetent or detrimental unblock requests by others. If a poorly thought-out or disruptive unblock request by others is rejected in a public forum, any subsequent unblock request might be rejected out of hand because there is a perceived community consensus in favor of the block.
  • Fourth, it's a matter of not wasting the community's time with unblock discussions that presumably even the blocked editor themselves considers meritless (or they'd have made the unblock request themselves).
  • But, fifth, and perhaps most importantly, serious unblock discussions are impossible without the input of the blocked editor. A core principle of our sanctions mechanisms is that blocks are preventative, not punitive. Unblock requests are not about "does the punishment fit the crime?", they are about "is the block needed to prevent disruption to the project?". And this, in turn, means that we need to know whether the blocked editor themselves considers their own conduct at issue to be a problem, and whether they intend to continue with it when unblocked. Without hearing from them in their own words, we're in pure punishment mode, not in damage prevention mode, and I don't think we want to be there.

  Insisting that unblock requests are only made by the blocked editor does not prevent admin accountability at all, because it does not foreclose any avenue of appeal. It just makes sure that a useful and productive discussion can be had that takes into account the interests of the blocked editor as well. Sandstein 17:38, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

• Option 3. The other two options reflect text that was recently added to the guidelines, which contradicts the already pretty detailed policy section Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Unblock requests. I know a few admins are unwilling to countenance feedback on blocks coming from third parties, but this unwillingness leaves the impression of avoidance of accountability. (This impression may not be correct, but the fact that it's there already undermines trust in the system). I imagine that these admins' assumption is that all blocks are good, and so the only conditions under which they can be lifted is when the blocked editor themselves shows readiness to change their ways. But not all blocks are good. There may, for example, be a misunderstanding, and this is sometimes easier to catch by an experienced observer than by the involved party. We should be aware that there are different temperaments as well – some editors would rather leave for good than swallow their pride and ask to be let back in, particularly if they don't agree with the block. Sandstein makes some good points above, and they show it's important to always let blocked editors take part in any discussion about their block. However, this misses the fact that in most cases where third-party appeals are on the table, it's not so much the blocked editor's conduct that's in focus as the blocking administrator's. – Uanfala (talk) 17:57, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2, with possibly Option 3 as the second choice. The basic principle of WP:ADMINACCT demands that every admin action, including a block, be accountable to and reviewable by the community. There may be many situations where a block was abusive or just bad and against policy but where the blocked editor is for some reason unavailble or unwilling to lodge an appeal. New editors in particular may not understand how to do that. Editors may get sick or have family or other types of real life emergencies or committments making them unavailable. Or they may simply wish to avoid the drama. If a block was bad and against policy, the community still has an interest and the right to hold the administrator who issued that block accountable. That's why a community review of a block needs to remain available as an option even if the blocked editor does not appeal their block. Nsk92 (talk) 18:13, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3 per WP:CREEP, WP:IAR and the points made by the OP. Also, the blocking admin or the blocked editor might not be available for a variety of reasons. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:58, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• I support keeping the existing text where blocked editors are the ones empowered to appeal their blocks. As they are the ones who face the consequences of an appeal, they should retain control over when and how an appeal is made. Generally, due to community fatigue, there is one initial chance to word an appeal optimally. Other editors should not be allowed to preempt blocked editors from being able to craft their own appeals, in their words and when they are available, or to explicitly delegate this responsibility. I do appreciate there is overlap with the community's responsibility to provide oversight of administrator actions. Nonetheless I feel it is important to allow those most affected by an appeal to be able to manage their appeal. isaacl (talk) 19:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 Policy says there can be a review, I agree with that and I also agree that it is desirable that an appeal come from the blocked party in the first instance.Selfstudier (talk) 20:01, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 per the points made above.Sea Ane (talk) 20:41, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 as the full rationales for blocks are often not disclosed on-wiki, having unrestricted third-party appeals will be problematic. Having third-party appeals to change a block "to time served" often will not help the editor blocked. For blocks that are made in error, there isn't the same problem. 力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 23:02, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3, with Option 2 as a second choice. The user who is blocked is just a witness to the event; they are not necessarily equipped with the knowledge, skill, or equanimity to argue policy to defend themself. I point to my improper block from December which was overturned because I was lucky enough to have support from others at my appeal when I felt helpless and lost (although I did make the initial appeal statement). Kolya Butternut (talk) 23:08, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2, with Option 3 as a second choice. Admins must be accountable to the community, and that includes having blocks they make reviewed by the community. It is generally preferable that reviews are initiated by the blocked party, but there are exceptions - not least because admins are humans and humans make mistakes. The only reasons why it is acceptable to review a block without having discussed it with the the blocking administrator first are where that administrator is unable or unwilling to discuss it (e.g. they don't have time, they apparently aren't around, or are just not responding) or have indicated that they prefer it to be discussed in a wider environment right away. Option 2 is the one that best captures this imo. Thryduulf (talk) 23:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• Comment - Would contemplate an appeal by another member of the community besides the blockee, but only with a short time limit (i.e. a week or month). One should not appeal the blocks of others 3 months, 6 months, or a year(s) after the fact (i.e. after a community member has not been around for a middling to substantial period of time) because that would be problematic in various ways. That aside, once in a while disagreement over blocks metriculate to AN rather quickly by interested parties; would prefer a just slighly softer wording of Option 1. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 02:41, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 - anything else would potentially open up a Pandora's Box of frivolous appeals. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:04, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

  I see option 2 as a line of defence against such appeals, which I agree are undesirable, but would happily support something explicit. I currently have no good suggestion for how to word that though. Thryduulf (talk) 03:39, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• Option 1 Unless there is some other iron-clad way that the blocked user is informed and explicitly consents to be being dragged through a high profile AN. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:24, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 Before I had experience on arb com I would have said option 3, but we encountered several instances where the blocked party did not want to be unblocked, and did not even want the matter discussed again. At least one or two of these was clearly a matter of someone else trying to harass the individual who had been blocked, which is of course entirely unfair. There has to be some discretion involved here, and #2 is a good compromise solution. DGG ( talk ) 01:58, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

  @DGG: has this been a problem on AN before, though? (if so, any links/examples?) I presume someone harassing someone under the pretence of unblock requests would face a harsh WP:BOOMERANG? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:19, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

  like this normally fall under arb com. DGG ( talk ) 17:59, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

• Option 2 An administrator's actions have to be reviewable by others. If a block is grossly out of policy, it should be brought to the community's attention. I hope this does not become a regular occurrence, but it should be possible when needed. Tamwin (talk) 06:08, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3 largely per ProcrastinatingReader and Kolya Butternut. A blocked user may not always have sufficient know-how to file an effective unblock request. A third-party review request is likely to be more convincing as its initiation by itself means there is at least one person who feels that the block is wrong and cares enough about it to request a review. – SD0001 (talk) 11:05, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 mostly per Power and DGG, though I'm sympathetic to the arguments of option 3's proponents regarding forced compromise and would certainly prefer it to option 1. Vaticidalprophet 13:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Sandstein, Option 2 to seems fairly reasonable too. wikitigresito (talk) 19:33, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Sandstein. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 or 3 - I think those esteemed members of our community who have passed RfA and have never before been blocked dont quite get how infuriating it can be to be blocked for what you feel to be a bogus reason. Now in my lengthy block log there's only one or two that I felt that way about, and those definitely were not ones I was going to file an unblock request for. It felt almost demeaning to request to be unblocked for something that I felt I should never have been blocked for. And demanding that somebody do that strikes me, as somebody who has been on that side of things, as just one more affront. If a block is improper it should be lifted. It should not matter who makes the formal request to determine if the block is improper. We should not be demanding that people be contrite when they have been wronged, and yes some blocks are wrong. nableezy - 00:33, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2.1 If a bad block drives someone off the site, then as it is, there isn't really a set-up to call it to the attention of the Community. Unblock requests are also difficult for new editors to fully get, especially if they're doing so while impacted by the block. I personally don't mind third party reviews. However, as well as prior contact to the admin, I would also require a) the 3rd party ask the blocked editor if they want to appeal and, if not, do they mind the 3rd party appealing? b) Wait 48 hours after a. If there is no response, or the blocked editor goes "no, and no", then an appeal can be made. If the blocked editor doesn't want the appeal (or makes it themselves) then obviously the 3rd party shouldn't be able to make one anyway. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:48, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3, with option 2 as second choice. I have been the victim of a bad block and I can fully understand why someone who's received one would quit. Under the current rules, this leaves the community with no jurisdiction to deal with the matter. We must be empowered to supervise, review and give feedback on blocking sysops' use or misuse of the tools. Some sysops are considerably more block-happy than others which leads to significant levels of inconsistency in our block-related decisions. As of now, any attempt to address problem blockers is hamstrung in every case where the sysop has successfully driven off their target. I believe that there should be a dedicated forum, separate from the Administrator's Noticeboards, for block reviews.—S Marshall T/C 10:05, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 Seems a good compromise between conflicting concerns.--agr (talk) 12:32, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3 1st choice, Option 2 2nd choice. #3 because, more or less of instruction creep: we don't need to have this section specify who can make the request and under what circumstances; there isn't a problem of bad block appeals that we need to head off with instructions on a policy/guideline page. The PAGs should be as short as possible and this just doesn't make the cut for me. Option 2 as a second choice, because if we are to have a written rule about this, Option 2 is what it should say. Levivich ^harass/_hound 03:38, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 as first choice; mix of option 2 as second so I think the reason there are so many "Option 2"s above is that we already have a mix of option 2 in practice. We allow third party appeals in extraordinary circumstances already, and what I'm concerned about with the wording use for the option 2 is that it would expand past the existing practice, which is somewhere in between option 1 and option 2. In other words, alleging your friend's block violated policy to appeal on their behalf will be much easier if we don't word an update correctly.
  In other words, I generally agree with Thryduulf above, but I would prefer this be eased into the existing wording rather than seen as something new. I don't see this as new (it can happen as an outside the norm thing when there's a serious error or something similar already.) Making sure that it retains the sense of being not-the-norm would be something I'd want to see in any wording. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:56, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 seems like the best option. This is not a "never" or "always" situation. Some blocks should NOT be overturned if the blocked user does not request it. Some blocks should. We neither want to encourage wikilawyering and excessive hounding of admins in cases of uncontroversial blocking, but neither do we want to hinder community review of bad blocks, even un-appealed ones. This is a case-by-case issue. For garden-variety, bog-standard blocks, it would be unusual to allow a third party to request an overturn, but practice CLEARLY dictates that we discuss controversial blocks at WP:AN, even if the blocked user does not request it. We're already basically doing 2, and that represents what has been standard practice for years. --Jayron32 16:42, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Not commenting on the merits here, but I just want to note that RfC's are supposed to be able to change practice. Admins are supposed to follow the will of the community, especially when formally expressed in a well-advertised and -conducted RfC. --Trovatore (talk) 18:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Yes, you're right, but your point is irrelevant. What I am saying is not "never change practice". What I am saying is "the alternatives proposed by the current RFC to current practice are bad. Don't do them. What we have works and is best". --Jayron32 11:15, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2, now that I've had a chance to look at the merits. The problem with Sandstein's argument is that it assumes that there is something about the blocked editor's conduct that does need to change. This is not always the case; sometimes the block is just incorrect, and never should have been made in the first place. In that case it should not be necessary for the editor to come hat in hand and ask for review. --Trovatore (talk) 19:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 followed by 3, per Jayron32 and S Marshall. No such user (talk) 08:13, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2. I think that Option 2 harmonizes the best with other policy pages, and it also is the most reasonable way for us to go about it. It's a sensible middle. Option 1 is too rigid and is insufficient for the correction of mistakes, and is inconsistent with other policy pages. Option 3 needlessly opens up too many ways to game the system. But Option 2 sets the right balance, with self-appeals the norm, combined with appropriate ways to have more eyes on a problem. I endorse Nosebagbear's suggestions about including some sort of requirement that third parties attempt to get permission from the blocked user before going forward. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:51, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 (second choice option 3) as there should be no prohibition on discussion bad blocks or reviewing them by others. Frivolous requests are not encourage and can be quickly concluded. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:38, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 first choice; option 3 otherwise. While third-party requests for reviews of blocks – or any other sanctions – are uncommon, there's not a central policy basis to forbid them, and in fact they are accepted sometimes, including by ArbCom (I've seen it happen at least twice at WP:AE, including once within the last year or so). The most obvious reason they should be permissible is that a restriction against one editor is often going to secondarily restrict another (e.g. bring a halt to a then-ongoing collaboration, or restrain the other editor in what they may discuss with the editor subject to explicit remedies). Given the lack of anything like a disruptive firehose of third-party unblock-related "noise", there is no actual reason for the page in question to attempt to excessively nit-pick about these matters, especially as a) WP:ISNOTABUREAUCRACY and b) our policies exist to serve us, not the other way around, and should not be restraining good-faith editorial action of any kind without very good reason (cf. WP:EDITING policy). Whatever option is selected, yes do make sure there is not a WP:POLICYFORK going on between these pages. PS: I agree with Sandstein's criticisms, below, of the phrasing of the RfC question, but I think most of us understood the meaning and intent without any difficulty. But do try to write RfCs more neutrally, per instructions at WP:RFC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:29, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Sandstein Majavah (talk!) 12:25, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2. The community is able and must be able to override almost everything else by consensus, if need be. Policy stating otherwise would be just plain wrong. Mentioning that possibility in policy will help a review actually get started when necessary, while telling editors to first try to take it up with the blocking admin before starting an ANI thread will help prevent things from being blown out of proportion when maybe they could have been resolved much more simply. I agree with some others' secondary proposal that the blocked user should have to be asked first – starting a discussion on somebody's behalf only for it to turn out they didn't even want to be unblocked would be disrespectful of them and a waste of time. Finally, frivolous requests happen anyway, and this RFC isn't going to change that, regardless of outcome. – Rummskartoffel (talk • contribs) 21:42, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2: any administrator action should be open to community review, blocks included. A community member may have a legitimate concern about an administrator action even if they were not the target of the action, and even if the target of the action does not wish to appeal it. An editor having a concern about an administrator action should discuss the action with that administrator first, and only bring their concern to the wider community if that initial discussion failed to resolve it. Mr248 (talk) 05:00, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3 first choice. Option 4 (just let us make third party requests} real first choice (were it available). We already have ADMNACCT and the blocking policy that is very clear, and we have trusted it to tell us we can make these appeals if we think there is problem. We should either support that policy in other places, or remove it from the other places where it conflicts. Huggums537 (talk) 09:36, 2 April 2021 (UTC) Also, most of Sandstein's arguments are based on the assumption that a blocked editor would somehow have no way at all to have any say so in the matter, or otherwise have no way to participate in the third party review process of their own block. There is no evidence of this because most blocked users still have talk page, and email access available to them, and even if they don't, they can still email someone. So, I have to disagree with his points based on that alone. Huggums537 (talk) 03:46, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 simply brings WP:AAB in line with the policy page it's meant to supplement and as such can't be reasonably opposed. Option 3 is my second choice—a very close second choice. Iaritmioawp (talk) 22:12, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 If a user appeals their block there is usually no reason to prevent discussion at the noticeboard. For example there is support for unblock at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1008#Meatpuppetry at Spygate from r/The Donald but not a specific proposal to unblock; when a review is started Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive308#Block review of KeithCu by Feezo it is closed almost immediately. Option 1 allows administrators to close any attempt at discussion, a decision likely to be influenced by the administrator's opinion of the blocked editor, of the blocking administrator, or of the editor requesting the review, or by politics, as much as by purpose of the block and the policies and guidelines. Peter James (talk) 12:19, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 – The wording that is most conducive to handling unblock discussions on a case-by-case basis. Kurtis ^(talk) 13:04, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option three. Administrators have to be accountable to the wider community with regards to the actions they take and sanctions have to be subject to review. Where the editor that has been blocked is unfamiliar with relevant policy or generally-accepted practices, it would be unfair to expect that editor to be able to compose an unblock request with a good chance of success. I feel that option one is incompatible with the ideas of accountability, while option two is unnecessary advice that unfairly constrains those who wish the block to be reviewed. Sdrqaz (talk) 20:49, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3 - The section was improperly added without a formal consensus and it never should have been added in the first place. That's not how policy works, we just don't write up new policy based on vague "previous discussions" and say "feel free to revert". The clause is completely illegitimate. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 22:28, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I think you make an excellent point here Swarm. The proof the entry was invalid is the fact it has been much objected here or challenged so many times since it was added, and even if it were somehow valid by some stretch of the imagination, I agree with comments made by Trovatore above that the arguments for it made by Sandstein and others make too many unrealistic assumptions about the circumstances involving blocked users as pointed out in my vote above as well. Huggums537 (talk) 03:00, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Swarm: I agree that the said provision might have been "sneaked" into the policy without due consensus but your opposition based on that mere fact should bear no weight here since the very consensus may be build regardless of the way it was initiated. (please reply into the discussion below) --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 11:14, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry, but that's not how any of this works. New policies must be proposed and require a high level of consensus from the entire community to be implemented. You can not simply add text without meeting this requirement, that itself is the community's policy requirement for the creation of new policies. This RfC does not frame the existing policy clause as an illegitimate policy in need of retroactive community validation, it frames it as an existing status quo to either be maintained or changed or removed, while glossing over the fact that it is not, in fact, even a real policy to begin with. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 00:13, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

  As I said elsewhere, I feel this change was an instance of this. Other editors discussed it in good faith on talk in October, but it blatantly failed to get consensus and was still being forced in. This is not how we should be editing policies. It's worrying, the idea of non-consensus text added to policies like this and then (according to Nsk92 below) used in discussions. More generally: portions of PAGs are quoted in dispute resolution all the time and used as a basis for sanctions / resolving RfC disputes, but some of these texts don't even have consensus, and most people don't use WikiBlame all the time to figure out when the text was added and after how much conversation. This can result in bad outcomes. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:22, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

• Option 2 - I hate indefinite bans. We shouldn't deprive third-parties from an opportunity to bring controversial bans (or evidence of wrongful ones) under the light of broader community reviews. This should be a first step preventing all sorts of hard-to-notice WP:GANGings-up and witch-hunts, make the process of behavioral-scrutiny more transparent and harder to misrepresent victims altogether or harder to make non-appealable bans. Considering that application of this provision may involve broader community attention it won't be abused. The lack of thereof would certainly embolden those with ill-intent. The WP:ARBCOM also routinely reviews some blocks so I don't see why community should be prohibited from doing so. This is a good proposal.--AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 11:14, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 - if a block is within a reasonable interpretation of policy, then indeed the blocked user's own appeal should be the only grounds for unblocking. However, if the block is outside of the reasonable range of policy, it should be undone as soon as possible even without such an appeal; any user who notices such a problem should be allowed to request community feedback about it. 147.161.8.7 (talk) 23:05, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2. Admins should be accountable to the community in the utmost. Benjamin (talk) 03:16, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 Only the blocked editor can give assurances that a good block won't need to be repeated. But anyone should be able to challenge what they consider to be a bad block. ϢereSpielChequers 23:49, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
• Option #1 #3 & #2 There is a math problem here. The fundamental question is whether or not to have such a process, and the "yes" support is split between two different options. You need to combine the #1 #3 and #2 support as a "yes" to answer that main question. North8000 (talk) 18:21, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  I don't follow, North8000. I view option one as being very different to options two and three, as option one effectively prohibits community review of blocks, while the others do not. Sdrqaz (talk) 18:59, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  I agree with Sdrqaz. My understanding of the question is "Should third-party appeals of blocks be allowed?" (1) No, (2) Sometimes, (3) Yes. I don't think that any of them can reasonably be combined, but if you insist on merging any two it would be 2 and 3. Certainly I intended my expression of support for option 2 with option 3 as a second choice to indicate my opposition to option 1. Thryduulf (talk) 19:43, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Thryduulf:@Sdrqaz: I made an error in my post. Thanks for catching it. I'll need to figure out the best way to fix it. Sincerely, I made an error in my post. Thanks for catching it. I'll need to figure out the best way to fix it. North8000 (talk) 21:16, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks. I fixed my error. Just reinforcing, I didn't mean to merge for all purposes. More like combining #2 & #3 to to see if people say "yes we want a way to do that" and, if so, then seeing whether #2 or #3 has greater support regarding how to do that. North8000 (talk) 21:29, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (block review)

The question posed in this RfC ("Can editors request community review of blocks, particularly problematic and/or out-of-policy ones?") is not neutral or sensible. It should be rephrased as "Can editors request the community review of blocks of other editors?". The question omits that this RfC is only about blocks of others, not of one's own blocks. And presumably everybody who appeals a block believes that the block is problematic or violates policy, else why appeal it? This qualification is therefore also not needed. Sandstein 17:46, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Some questions: (1) If there is an improper block, and after discussion with an administrator it is not resolved, does that mean a discussion has to be about whether there should be action taken against the administrator? (2) Sometimes an satisfactory unblock request is declined because an administrator has not read it properly (3) There can be other exceptions such as misunderstandings [3] or blocking the wrong user. The unblock process is too slow, there is at least one unreviewed request from January. Peter James (talk) 18:13, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

I see your point on the first (that it should be clear it's about other editors); I will tweak. On the second point: I think the qualification is necessary. There are different reasons to appeal/review, such as on the basis that the block is no longer necessary or that the editor has learned, etc, which doesn't mean that the original block was out-of-policy (though, it could still be misguided). Such discussions also happen with some regularity. I feel like introducing these two separate details directly into the RfC question will make this discussion a slight WP:TRAINWRECK. I have no particular opinion on appeals for other reasons and am happy with the actual status quo as it exists at AN. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:23, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

• I have always assumed that if an administrator takes an action against another editor, and I see a problem with that action, I could contact that admin to discuss it... and (if need be) I could post a thread at WP:AN to discuss the issue with the rest of admindom. Is this not the case? Blueboar (talk) 18:50, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

  Not when it comes to blocks. Or at least the situation is unclear when the matter comes to blocks. I am pretty sure that every time I have seen a community review of a block being started at AN/ANI without the blocked editor requesting an unblock, Sandstein brought up this particular provision of Wikipedia:Appealing a block ('third-party block appeals are not allowed'), usually resulting in protracted discussions of the matter. Nsk92 (talk) 23:19, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

  • What if there is a potential pattern of bad blocks? Surely we should be able to discuss the individual blocks to determine whether there is a pattern of poor judgement on the part of the admin. SOME flexibility is needed here. Blueboar (talk) 00:44, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
• It seems like a potential other option is to require the blocked person to consent to a third party requesting review (or to provide a window of time in which to object). I think some of Sandstein's objections are persuasive, but also know that blocks are emotional and confusing times, such that third party review is potentially extremely helpful to some users who don't feel equipped or otherwise feel overwhelmed/uncertain about the situation. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:45, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

  I do appreciate that being blocked is a confusing time, and I sympathize with blocked parties feeling overwhelmed. I think it is important, though, to try to guard against this becoming a situation where they agree out of distress to a third-party appeal, without taking time to consider what is the best course of action. In a different context, Bilby suggested having advisors provide guidance to aggrieved parties on possible future steps. This could be useful for this scenario. isaacl (talk) 20:01, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

• If I understand the intent of Option 1 correctly, I think it is a reasonable description of common practice that doesn't necessarily conflict with WP:ADMINACCT or the blocking policy, although it could definitely be worded better. Essentially, whenever a third-party editor posts on AN or ANI asking for a block to be reviewed, the community will generally want a statement from the blocked user that explains their view on the situation. Outside of situations where a block is a clear error or clear misapplication of policy, I can't think of a situation where we would unblock someone without hearing from the blocked user first. The intent is not to give administrators carte blanche to make bad blocks with impunity as long as the blocked editor refuses to appeal their blocks, but merely to convey that in the wide majority of cases, appeals will be unsuccessful if we don't have a statement from the blocked user themselves. Mz7 (talk) 21:24, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

  Block reviews are generally distinct from appeals (usually being made on the basis of being out of policy; Sandstein reverted this change too so I presume he disagrees with it). The community is generally inconsistent on what to do about actual third party appeals ime, often it depends on the editors participating in a given discussion on a given day. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

  Hmm, having looked into this a little more, I think I better understand the context of the dispute here. I would agree with you that if a third-party user comes to ANI asking that someone else's block be reviewed, e.g. accusing the administrator of being WP:INVOLVED or some other clear policy violation, we should not dismiss their argument just because it did not come from the blocked editor themselves. The rationale for this would be WP:NOTBURO: in legal disputes in the United States, it is not uncommon for a court to dismiss pending litigation purely on procedural grounds before reaching "the merits", e.g. if the plaintiff lacks standing to bring the case; Wikipedia is not a court, however, and NOTBURO states that A procedural error made in a proposal or request is not grounds for rejecting that proposal or request.

  With all of this being said, I think I would still support adding language that discourages most forms of third-party block appeals/reviews, unless a block is obviously flawed. The status quo seems to be fine, but I am concerned that with this RfC, we will inadvertently tip the status quo towards encouraging more third-party reviews to the detriment of our time and energy. Among the options here, it looks like Option 2 is the closest to my views, although I feel that a bit more emphasis should be placed on the "should generally only be" part. Mz7 (talk) 22:31, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

  The problem is a bad appeal can ruin the opportunity for a reasonable appeal in the short-term. It's not an issue of ignoring arguments, but letting the party most affected by the appeal manage when and how those arguments are made. It's unfair to blocked editors to allow anyone to make an appeal, without any co-ordination on its form, wording, emphasis, or other aspects. isaacl (talk) 22:42, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

  I think trying to invoke WP:NOTBURO or WP:IAR as a reason for allowing is not an ideal approach. It tips the scale in favour of editors who understand community norms, or editors with lots of TPWs of such editors, who can reconcile different policies together and know how the community responds to different issues in practice. Guidelines should reflect that status quo, documenting it so that people less familiar with back-office operations can also request the community review issues (and indeed, many times such editors have picked up on valid problems). It's probably undesirable not to make this clear for all editors, and unacceptable to provide a misleading image of this (which is what the current section does). I am aware folks get overly cautious on 'tipping the scales' too far, which is why I tried to compromise with Sandstein in what was, in my opinion, a careful worded change opening the door to block reviews for out-of-policy issues but not too wide. (my actual opinion is slightly more wide, though acknowledging isaccl's concerns on something too wide.) None of the choices explicitly say "any editor can appeal for any reason they want". So at best option 2 is still carefully worded and option 3 just reverts to whatever editors believe the status quo is (without documenting such) (which is pretty much in WP:BP: you can, but use common sense). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:44, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

  I'd add that, in my experience, the admin making the allegedly problematic action rarely ever backs down in local discussions (possibly because they firmly believe in their action, or the saving face aspect, or both). Indeed, in all the actions I've appealed to AN that were overturned the admins all declined to reverse themselves. This isn't really an indictment of the admins (people can naturally disagree on application of policy), just the fact that I think "you can discuss with the blocking admin" (from the current text) is toothless/unhelpful in practice. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:54, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding those supporting option 3 as editors may not know how to appeal or are overwhelmed: I dislike the community making an appeal on their behalf without discussing it with them first. Communication is a bedrock principle for a collaborative project. We should be attempting to work with the blocked editor to determine the best path forward, and not assuming we know best. isaacl (talk) 23:29, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

IMO: the immediate problem with that view is [4]. There are several secondary issues, ranging from confrontation and high-profileness (similar to fears against running RfA), to the community's role in admin accountability (if a poor action is so painful it causes an editor to quit, and other editors can't request review with the community, is ArbCom now the only choice?). Blocking is the pointiest stick in the toolbox. It should also be the one used most cautiously, and subject to the most avenues of review when it is not. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

There are always special circumstances that can be handled differently. This does not warrant, in my view, removing any restrictions (as per option 3) on who can initiate an appeal. When it is possible to communicate with a blocked editor, we should be trying to do so, and it poses no significant barrier for reviewing an administrator's actions. isaacl (talk) 00:16, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I presume you don't object to option 2, then? As I feel like your statement does lead to significant barriers if you also oppose option 2 (it would mean ArbCom is the only viable option [though, per remedy 5.x, that viability is in question]).

For option 3: I've seen thoughtful appeals come from third parties, like Ritchie333, which have helped in cases (in some they don't, but usually because editors say third party appeals bad, which comes around into a loop to this very RfC). I believe WP:UBCHEAP can apply in many cases, and more importantly don't really believe the art of crafting a persuasive block appeal / wider community relations has much to do with whether someone has learned and can be a productive editor. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:46, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't like trying to list specific circumstances; I think individual cases should be evaluated on their own merits. I don't like that there isn't any mention of trying to work with the blocked editor. There have been fine third-party appeals; I've also seen poor third-party appeals. It's not about the blocked editor having to learn how to do the lobster quadrille. It's inconsiderate to take an action on someone's behalf without even trying to co-ordinate with them and understand what they want to do next. isaacl (talk) 01:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

On the second half that's a fair point. It's worth noting that both option 1 and option 2 were each mostly written by a single editor without being churned through stages of policy-writing (hence my emphasis on sample text). I didn't feel extra specifics mattered because in this particular RfC I'd like to see the broader ideological issue resolved. I agree to adding text regarding best practices in third party appeals if option 2 passes. Although, I do think block reviews or criticism of the blocking admin is distinct from appealing on behalf of a person (a fine line, admittedly). On the first part I still don't follow; surely with option 1 cases can't be evaluated on their own merits, since it's a blanket ban on third party appeals? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:16, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

On general principle, special circumstances can always apply to any guidance; start listing some exceptions out, and people can start thinking those are the only special cases. In this particular case, "problematic" is so broad that almost anything could be put into that category. isaacl (talk) 01:31, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

• Genuine question, could I ask the option-3 !voters why they think option 2 (or whatever tweak someone might want) wouldn't be your preferred choice? If it's just "prefer not to have more rules" that makes sense, but presumably any block someone would question they must think is problematic? Nosebagbear (talk) 13:58, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  Because the community needs maximal freedom to address issues of poor sysop judgment. If I see a sysop handing down a problematic block, I would like to be completely free to raise that with the community. And it might well be that my unprompted, disinterested expression of concern about a block is more convincing to the community than the target's concern.—S Marshall T/C 18:03, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  @S Marshall: but you say it's a problematic block, so it would fall within proposal 2, surely? Nosebagbear (talk) 16:28, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

• Just as a general note; I didn't see a fourth option available to just simply allow for third party requests regarding block reviews. This didn't seems to offer an entirely unbiased amount of options to everyone from a totally neutral point of view. Huggums537 (talk) 09:03, 2 April 2021 (UTC)Strike that last part. I don't like the way it sounds. I was just curious why a fourth option wasn't thought of that's all. No offense to the OP. Huggums537 (talk) 10:27, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
• Also, I've been gone from the project for a while. What's all this first choice, second choice crap about? How's a closer supposed to tally that up? Huggums537 (talk) 12:58, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
• I've seen a great deal of people talk about adjusting the guideline according to what the "regular practice" and "current norms" are, but what does that really have to do with anything? That's like saying, "Our crime rates are very low, and it is the current norm to have little crime so we should write our criminal laws to notate that crime is not the regular practice." It makes no sense whatsoever, and really serves no obviously valid or useful purpose. It also begs one to wonder why anyone would want such notations in the guidelines. Huggums537 (talk) 01:19, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Huggums537: The answer is a bit of a cultural one: Wikipedia is not a legal system, and our policies and guidelines are intended precisely to describe regular practice and current norms, not prescribe them. See WP:PG (Wikipedia's policy and guideline pages describe its principles and agreed-upon best practices) and WP:NOTBURO (Although some rules may be enforced, the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice). In general, the reason why we refer to "regular practice" is because that is typically what has been tried and tested through experience. Sometimes, that experience informs us that we need to change our practices, and then consequently the policies and guidelines, which is the purpose of these kinds of discussions. Mz7 (talk) 03:32, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Mz7, thanks for responding. Wikipedia might not be a legal system, but many people still frequently make the comparison to a legal system in order to illustrate stupidity, as I did above, and I see nothing wrong with that. I have a very "culturally" different interpretation of what you have provided. I like to think of myself as someone who is able to interpret things from an "un-Wikipedified" point of view. In fact, the first quote you gave above seems to indicate to me that the order in which things should follow are that policy makers first decide what it's principles are, then agreed upon best practices are described in guidelines, not the other way around. In other words, it's not the current practices driving policy, but rather a predetermined set of principles with best practices that have been discussed, and agreed to beforehand. The lead of WP:PG mentions "standards" and "principles" multiple times. These are things typically associated with predetermined sets of values. It prominently mentions the WP:Five pillars as one of these predetermined sets of principles. I think my interpretation is very fair when you put it in this context with all the rest of the lead. Your interpretation of it only seems fair if you take a portion of it out of context, and interpret with your own narrative of what you think it ought to mean, and I have no doubt you would "in practice" have many who might not agree with me on that, and therein lies my actual point, you see very little clearly succinct policy to back up actual practice in many cases, while the majority of policy seems to indicate something else. It's contradictory, and seems to set a double standard. This appears to be a pervasive issue on Wikipedia. Additionally, the second quote you provided makes it a point to mention, "some rules may be enforced", and references WP:ENFORCEMENT. It must have been mentioned in the policy because it is relevant, particularly in this discussion where we are determining the issue of potentially bad blocks and the conduct of admins., so I still think an over-emphasis on "regular practice" is both unwarranted and senseless in this case as I pointed out before when I made the comparison to the legal system. Huggums537 (talk) 10:18, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  I also want to add to my comment that I think adding such senseless and unwarranted "regular practice" insertions are an actual detriment to policy and contribute to the pervasive issue of creating contradictions that lead to the double standard problem I mentioned earlier. Huggums537 (talk) 14:42, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Define "recently" for CSD R3

Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#R3: "This criterion does not apply to redirects created as a result of a page move, unless the moved page was also recently created."

Here, "recently" is undefined, which caused Fastily to be screamed at for performing an R3 deletion on a redirect just shy of a day old.

Proposal: define "recently" as "less than a month ago". (i.e. if a page is created on 2 February, last day to be eligible for CSD R3 is 1 March) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:32, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I think a month is about right. The big hurdle for R3 should really be the obvious implausibility, not the exact recentness - and something that made sense in 2006 might look implausible now but should be discussed, but something that looks implausible now probably still looked implausible in February 2021. I've previously not really thought this needed to be codified, but if people are really raising a stink on the basis of recentness when it happens to a day-old redirect, maybe it's worth making an actual solid line. I'd also like to mention that I just can't read {{db-redirtypo}} without my brain reading it as "re-dirty-po". ~ mazca ^talk 15:47, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• As I indicated at WP:VPI#Define "recently" for CSD R3, I'd prefer a bit longer, but this is acceptable. I'd also prefer if we didn't have to spell it out, but clearly we do - not so often in practice about people complaining about the speedy deletion of days-old redirects as about people complaining about the declination of years-old ones. —Cryptic 16:07, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

This has come up lots of times at RfD over the years and the rough consensus has always been that there isn't a firm cutoff but it's measured in weeks not months (or, by implication, days but I don't recall that coming up). Generally the more implausible it is the more lenient people generally are about recentness. If there is really a need to define it rigidly then certainly 1 month is acceptable, but I'm not convinced that there is such a need. Simply writing down the consensus of "weeks, not months" as guidance somewhere would seem sufficient to me. Thryduulf (talk) 16:54, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

There's not real problem here, just Fastily being more conservative than they need to be. The redirect in question probably could have been speedy deleted as a request by the only creator of the page anyway. No big deal, let's move on with our lives. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 17:24, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm with Oiyarbepsy on not seeing any problem here, unless one can be shown by a link to the actual screaming rather than a second-hand report of it. Like most things its best left rather vague because bright lines tend to lead to gaming. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:39, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding "link to the actual screaming", Alexis Jazz already asked for it, and I declined because this site really doesn't need the extra drama. Let's keep the focus on defining a suitable interval based on its own merits please. -FASTILY 22:41, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• This gets brought up from time to time (for example, in these two discussions from 2019). One month is consistent with most people's views, but my impression has been that there is broad agreement that flexibility is good and that having an explicitly set cut-off point is undesirable. – Uanfala (talk) 11:57, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Uanfala: The problem is that some people interpret "recently" as "24 hours" and others as "a few years". (Wikipedia is 20 years old, so anything created in past 2 years was recently created) My personal interpretation was about a week, but I'll use a month as a guideline now that I've seen that that is how most people interpret it. Couldn't we at least change "recently" to "recently, typically about a month" or something to give readers a ballpark? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 05:36, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Given that others have caused a concern, perhaps putting a suggestion would be a good thing. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:46, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• I'd support noting in the documentation something along the lines of "Users and admins are expected to show discretion, but a rough guideline for 'recent' should be one month". Elli (talk | contribs) 01:48, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
• well that previous discussion was closing in on 30 days being added to the text, But now the debate starts all over again. I think we should add that 30 days in to give a guide and a bar. It many mean that the deleter has to check when the redirect was created, but I hope they already do that! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:21, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

The word "recent" needs to be defined for the first mention in R3; when used later (such as in the section quoted by the OP), it should?mean precisely the same thing. 147.161.8.151 (talk) 23:32, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

• 30 days sounds long enough for people to notice it. I note that CSD A10 also lacks a defined "recent" cutoff, and I'd recommend the same threshold there. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 21:17, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Notability of fictional characters

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus was reached that an award does not imply notability Consensus was reached that characters should not be presumed notable simply because the portrayer of the character has received a major award for their work. However, that doesn't mean the character is non-notable. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 21:22, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

---

Should a fictional character in film or television be presumed notable if the portrayer of the character received a major award for their portrayal of the character? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 07:01, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• No — the award means people have praised the actor. That doesn't mean the character is notable.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:53, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• Enough for an individual article for the character? No. There needs to be ample coverage on the character's conception, characterization and reception. —El Millo (talk) 08:02, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• No, the award of the actor does not imply notability of the character. For an example, I don't think anyone would reasonably presume that the character Hal Fields in Beginners is notable enough to warrant an article, despite the actor who portrayed him, Christopher Plummer, receiving an oscar for his performance. --Volteer1 (talk) 08:52, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Or Dave Boyle in Mystic River. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:52, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• No - Acting awards rewards just that, acting. There's little to no connection between how well a character is played and how notable that character is. Volteer1's example above is right on the money. PraiseVivec (talk) 10:56, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• Of course not. It is instructive to look at Academy Award for Best Actor and see how many of the roles portrayed do not have standalone articles (the vast majority of bluelinked roles are not fictional characters). —Kusma (t·c) 11:15, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• No, and suggest snow close. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 14:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• No - The fictional character needs to be notable themselves; the notability of the actor who plays that character is not so important. Agree with the comments above. Netherzone (talk) 14:37, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
• No As per other editors, the character has to be notable because of articles and reviews, not because someone played them won an award. Characters like Lady Macbeth and Bill Sykes have pages because they have been discussed and written about.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 14:57, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

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

• A late comment - I agree with the above comments, with one addition: There is a reasonably good chance that if the actor portraying a character has won an award for the portrayal, the character has also received at least some coverage. Do a thorough search for that coverage WP:BEFORE nominating. Blueboar (talk) 21:32, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, that's a good point. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:41, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• @Theleekycauldron: Could you please clarify the close statement? Right now it technically states that someone winning a Grammy isn't notable nor someone who won a Nobel prize etc. Those things can make someone notable on their own for having received it per WP:NMUSICIAN/NBAND, Wikipedia:Notability (academics), (parts of) Wikipedia:Notability (sports), and WP:ANYBIO/NBIO itself. The close statement should oull specifics from the question to indicate its scope (i.e. something like "Consensus was reached that a fictional character in a film or television series is not presumed notable solely due to the real-life portrayer of the character having received a major award for their portrayal of the character.") --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 04:06, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  @TheSandDoctor: yep– sorry, i'm a dumbass sometimes. I'll modify the closing statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) 08:18, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Theleekycauldron: All good! We all make mistakes etc. Thanks for fixing the scope of the closing statement. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 08:56, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

  @TheSandDoctor: mo problem, thank you :) theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 20:31, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• LOL. This one was pretty obvious. VP need not be mired in predictable-outcome RfCs. Just look for extant examples that prove the case. E.g., Linda Hunt (unquestionably notable actor) received an Oscar (unquestionably notable award) among other awards for her cross-gender and cross-ethnic role in The Year of Living Dangerously (unquestionably notable film). But the character is not independently notable and pretty much no one remembers the name. Similarly, Fisher Stevens (notable actor) played a cross-ethnic role in Short Circuit (notable film) and (with the character's surname inexplicably changed in a pointless retcon) its straight-to-video sequel Short Circuit 2 (marginally notable film). Yet the character, whose confused name no one remembers either, is not independently notable – despite a great deal of controversy around these portrayals, which even resulted in Stevens being indefinitely persona non grata banned from traveling to India. Such fame and notoriety adhere to the actors, not the characters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:11, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

What is a genuine secondary source for birthdates?

MOS:BIRTHDATE says that all biographies should open with a paragraph containing the date of birth of the subject, but WP:BLPPRIMARY prohibits using primary sources for this kind of information and instead requires that the information "has been discussed by a reliable secondary source." (Further WP:BLPPRIVACY demands that this source is "widely published," whatever that means.) A secondary source, according to WP:SECONDARY, "provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources" and "contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation," etc. But except maybe for pseudo-controversies like Obama's birth certificate, a person's birthdate is never "discussed" by published sources to the extend that it merits the rank of a secondary source. So my question is: what do WP:BLPPRIMARY and WP:BLPPRIVACY actually imply, and which sources are permissible?

Let me give some examples:

• Is NBC Sports a primary source for the DOB of a marginal NFL player like Tae Crowder? It doesn't give the source for the information, neither does the site evaluate or discuss anything.
• Are the Library of Congress Authority Files a primary source for the DOB of a university professor like Kannan Soundararajan? LOC generally states the source of the information (e.g., "Info. from Princeton University Archives") but generally doesn't contemplate the information in any form. And presumably the Princeton Archives themselves aren't permissible sources either.
• And I presume a self-published CV doesn't qualify as a valid source for Mark Duggan's birth date either, because obviously primary.
• How about short profiles in a niche academic journal? It is published, but is it widely published? Also, the author's reflection on the DOB seem to be missing once again.
  My point is: how does a genuine secondary source for birthdates actually look like? If our policies set the bar this high, we should be able to clearly define this standard. Or can someone at least give an example of a reliable source that passes both WP:BLPPRIMARY and WP:BLPPRIVACY? --bender235 (talk) 16:33, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I believe only the first one, NBCSports, would definitely qualify as a secondary source as we operate on the presumption they have done fact-checking. LoC does not engage in fact checking or have editors so they would not satisfy secondary on their own. CV would certainly be Primary. The last one likely satisfies secondary as they have an editorial team in place, though I am not familiar with the specifics of them. Slywriter (talk) 16:48, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

On what basis exactly can we conclude that NBC Sports conducts a more thorough fact checking than does the Library of Congress? --bender235 (talk) 17:49, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

MOS:BIRTHDATE does not say that all biographies should open with a paragraph containing the date of birth of the subject. You missed out the all-important word "usually". Reading back to MOS:OPENPARABIO shows that this is an explanation of the sentence "dates of birth and death, if found in secondary sources." If the date is not found in such sources it should be omitted. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:06, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

But that is precisely my question: how does such a secondary source look like? --bender235 (talk) 17:47, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

On the narrow question of the difference between a secondary source and a primary source, every single one of the sources you note above are secondary sources. A primary source is a source like a birth certificate, a baptismal certificate, census records, etc. Whether or not any of the sources you cited are good secondary sources for this information, I will not comment on, but news organizations, employer profiles, and even CVs are secondary sources because they report on what would be in the primary sources. --Jayron32 16:26, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• Commenting re "widely", an example would be Mick Jagger. Example sources (no particular order/as they showed in my google results): New Yorker, CNN, USA Today, The history channel, Today, Boston.com, iHeart Radio, and Vogue. I could keep going, that was about 3 minutes of searching, each one providing both the date and age at that time; none disagreeing on the date/year/age etc. Without listing example sources, Taylor Swift would be another example. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 18:34, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, those people are super-notable, so there will be such sources. Maybe MOS:BIRTHDATE should use a weaker word than "usually". I haven't done the necessary research, and I doubt whether whoever put that word into the MOS has done either, but I somehow doubt that a large majority of notable subjects has reliable secondary sources for the birth date. I have commented elsewhere about Wikipedia editors' obsession with including a subject's national identity in the opening sentence even if it is not well sourced. The same goes for a birth date. In most cases the important thing is the location and timeframe in which a subject achieved notability, not such details. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:10, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  If those are the standards, 99% of biographies on Wikipedia have to be without date of birth. I mean, try to find this many news media sources for a random track & field athlete, actor, or judge, and so on. Because again, we're not talking about one reliable source (per WP:RS), but multiple widely-published secondary sources. --bender235 (talk) 19:40, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  Use WP:COMMONSENSE/ IAR when the rules result in weird output. -- GreenC 19:44, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  @GreenC: not an option. People tend to be very zealous in their application WP:BLPPRIVACY, in pursuit of privacy theater to protect supposedly sensitive information that is in fact already public. --bender235 (talk) 15:00, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) They are two of the most accomplished musicians in modern history, so definitely. I would support a weaker word than "usually" per the reasons you list, Phil Bridger. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 19:50, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• DOB can also be cited to a decent WP:BLPSELFPUB source, assuming such exist. Checkmarked Twitter etc. The OP:s Mark Duggan CV fits "published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object to the details being made public." Personally, I don't have a problem with 99% of BLP:s not having date of birth. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:06, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  I agree with Slywriter. It comes down to expected fact-checking. I'd expect NBCSports to fact check. I don't expect the Library of Congress entries to be fact-checked, and have encountered articles where we've disregarded LOC as a reliable source for dob. Short profiles are questionable, as the info often comes from a questionnaire or form sent to the subject that gets no independent fact-checking. If there are disagreements with different sources, the refs where we can expect fact-checking should be given precedence. --Hipal (talk) 21:02, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• The only time it would be incorrect for a biography to have no date of birth information would be when their date of birth is/was the subject of significant commentary (Traci Lords is the first example to come to mind), but by definition that means there are multiple reliable sources in which it features so there are no problems. For people whose birth date is uncontroversial and there is no evidence they object to it being public, a primary source can be used if there are no reliable secondary sources available. Whether such a primary source should be used is a matter for consensus at each article.
  Where sources contradict and there is no discussion of the contradiction, then present options/a range (applying qualifiers like "most sources state X" if that is true) or just omit it. Thryduulf (talk) 11:25, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

The policy WP:BLPPRIMARY forbids using public records as the main source of information about the birth date of a living person. This limitation does not apply to dead people. So this thread should really be divided into two different threads, one for dead people and one for living people. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:07, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

That is a good point. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:37, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it is perfectly acceptable to use a self-published source for a person's date of birth, if the person is otherwise notable and if they are okay with that information being present in Wikipedia. On the other hand, just because a person publishes their date of birth in their CV on their website, they may not necessarily want it included in their Wikipedia article. If the article subject turns up (whether as an editor or through OTRS or however), their preferences about whether the article should include their date of birth or not ought to be respected. Mr248 (talk) 23:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I mean of course you can use the person's birth certificate as a source for their birthdate. In fact it's the most reliable source. Even birth certificates aren't always correct, but they're more reliable than any other source, so using any other source is deliberately introducing a greater chance of error. Don't do that. If there's a rule against it, well, there are a lot of rules here, and that one's silly, so ignore it.

If the person doesn't want their birthdate published, that'd different of course -- you'd want to honor that, if you can. I believe the assumption is that putting in birthdays at the top of the article is OK unless the person specifically requests us not to. It's very key to getting a basic grasp of the subject (well, the year at least). If you're looking up an actor, or an athlete, or whatever, it's key to know right off if they're 20 or 45 and so on. This is why we always do it. I've never seen it not done except when the info isn't know or nobody's gotten to it yet. This is what we do. Rules are supposed to codify best practice. Ignore silly rules. Herostratus (talk) 07:30, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Herostratus, There is a rule against using birth certificates. It isn't a silly rule at all. If a person's date of birth is not already public knowledge, Wikipedia should not be making it public knowledge. If an editor somehow comes upon an article subject's birth certificate, they should not be adding information from that document to the article which is not already public. In many (but not all) jurisdictions, birth certificates will only be issued to the person and their close relatives (their parents, sometimes other relatives such as children), so they are kind of private documents, and you shouldn't be putting private information about someone on Wikipedia. (It might be different if everything in their birth certificate was already known to the general public, through media sources, etc – but that is probably only going to be true for very famous people.) Mr248 (talk) 03:08, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Mr248, alright, I see your point. It's a privacy issue, a WP:BLP issue. That's different, and fine, yes that makes sense. I was thinking about the (somewhat silly IMO) admonition in WP:RS not to use primary sources generally.... to avoid cherry-picking mostly I guess. It's hard to cherry-pick birthdates tho.

BLP, in its "Privacy of personal information and using primary sources" is equivocal. It says using the birth year is OK, and it's kind of unclear on whether you should or should not assume that that subjects don't want their vital info published if they've made no indication of that.

But if the presumption is that we shouldn't, we probably shouldn't usually use secondary sources either. The fact that somebody else dug up someone's vital stats and published them doesn't affect us all that much. For one thing our articles often come up high in google results for a person and are thus a big part of their public face, and for another our data will probably persist and follow the person around for a long time. There's a big difference between the Terra Haute Times-Dispatch publishing a person's birthdate and us doing it. In the first instance, one can find the info if one really wants to and is digging for it (at least now -- but maybe not in 20 years), in the second instance it's put right up in the world's face forever. Big difference. Herostratus (talk) 04:52, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I guess one concern with the birth date is identity theft. That's why BLP says giving just the year is more OK. Still, a lot of people don't want their age to be known, or anyway trumpeted worldwide by us. Place of birth also, maybe -- T S Eliot was born in St Louis, and Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho Territory, and it's quite possible they'd rather the world forget that (if they were alive).

Still, I've basically never seen an article where any of the vital stats are deliberately elided... It's general practice. Even for Jackie DeShannon, we give her birth year even though I think she'd like people to think she's younger. That's... not good. But general practice is to do that.

I'm liberal and expansive on subjects' BLP rights, so on reflection, I've changed my mind from my statement above, and for my part I'll avoid adding vital stats except nationality to any more (living) bio's I write. But BLP doesn't really require that, at least not clearly, and I expect other editors will come along and add it in. I can't control that, but I can control what I myself do anyway. Herostratus (talk) 04:33, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Herostratus, I agree in general, but I'd make two points. Firstly with But if the presumption is that we shouldn't, we probably shouldn't usually use secondary sources either – it does depend somewhat on what the source is. For example, for a university professor, if their official biography posted on the university website includes their date of birth, it is probably okay to use it. Whereas if some obscure newspaper published it, maybe not. Secondly, I think it also depends on how much of a public figure someone is. For someone who is very much a public figure, like a senior politician, I think there are less concerns about privacy, than someone much more obscure – such as an artist which many people have never heard of. (Your cited example is one of those – I've never heard of her before, and I'm sure I'm not the only person in that category.) Mr248 (talk) 04:46, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Are privacy concerns even applicable if the primary source document can readily be found by any person using the internet? LOC records, for starters, are readily accessible. BD2412 T 04:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

User:BD2412, yes. MOS:BIRTHDATE and MOS:BIRTHPLACE are guidelines, but the presumption of privacy is more important. WP:BLP is a policy and trumps guidelines. It's equivocal about when it's OK to publish vital info, but it says "Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources..." (emphasis added). "Widely" is open to interpretation, but BLP should be interpreted liberally in presumption of privacy.

"Can readily be found" I guess means "If a person wants to dig" (I don't know what a LOC record is. If it's not a high result on a google search on the person, it's not "readily found".) There's a lot of difference between "a person who really want to know it can find it" and our screaming it to the world forever. Otherwise BLP kind of doesn't make sense. Herostratus (talk) 05:02, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Mr248, right. There's no need for us to elide Emmanual Macron's birthday or whatever. As to the official college bio... I guesssss.... it's kind of the persons public face already, probably. If you have to dig to find it, maybe not. It's possible that the person is of the mind "Ugh, I can't stop them from publishing my vital stats, but I'd rather the world not know that I'm 60". It doesn't really demonstrate permission, I suppose.

Interestingly, an unvetted interview (where the person gives her birthdate or year) is a good indication that she doesn't mind our publishing it, but it's not a good source itself. People are not good sources for their own birthdates. We'd have to find another source (and it would have to match what the person said). Herostratus (talk) 05:12, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

On the Jackie DeShannon thing, if you just put in no birthdate... somebody's going to come along and be like "oh, vital stats missing, I'll add them!" and then put in either her real birth year (BLP violation) or the one she put out (giving the reader false info). So don't know the solution there. Herostratus (talk) 05:19, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Articles can contain notes to editors in html comments saying things like "do not add birth date, see talk" with an explanation on the talk page of why the article contains no birth date. If someone does add it then it can be reverted. I don't know it is possible to search for these easily, but Anoushay Abbasi contains a note in the infobox "<!-- Do not add a date of birth without citing a reliable source in the text. -->". Thryduulf (talk) 10:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Sourcing for obscure technical topics

Many topics goes under reported in the software world, with discussion limited to github issues, forums and reddit. But there is a wealth of knowledge that is undocumented on Wikipedia because of the way the sources are percieved as unreliable. Is there any way we can make them reliable, say through a Wiki vetting service that would allow this valueble “cyberfolk” knowledge to be cited? After observing many afds go the wrong way over the years I feel that a proper process needs to be set up here. The same process could be used to extract infromation from systemic bias affected topics and also convert COI sources into neutral ones. 94.175.6.205 (talk) 15:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

If a technical area is not covered by secondary sources, its not appropriate for WP to cover it. Software topics are obscure because they only appeal to a small number of individuals --Masem (t) 15:57, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Per Masem, coverage by reliable sources is what makes a topic worthwhile fodder for a Wikipedia article. If something is not substantially covered by reliable sources, it is not an appropriate Wikipedia article topic. Having a lot of people talk about it on Reddit is not sufficient. --Jayron32 16:37, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Subject-matter experts can be cited, even from generally unreliable sources. OwO (what's this?) 09:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

There's another factor here as well: the ability of volunteer editors to craft an accurate encyclopedia. We aren't experts. We aren't reporters. But we are careful readers. Wikipedia only works if we are using reliable secondary sources that consult multiple experts, do reporting, and fact check their work. I could easily deceive people outside my field by pointing to a grab bag of not-great sources, especially if the language was technical enough. And you could deceive me as well, in your field. But if the topic has a bunch of regular press about it, someone with google would be able to sift out the fringe theories. That sounds extreme, but it used to happen a lot. You may have been around long enough to see this too. Before WP:MEDRS, WP:COI and similar WP:PRIMARY reforms, obscure companies would put their shady health products on wikipedia, quote three studies they sponsored of 15 people each and make their shady claims in wikipedia's voice. Since they were totally obscure, there were no contradicting studies. They only thing that got this film-flammery out of wikipedia was insisting on higher quality sourcing. All that said, I do agree with you that in software there are a lot of things that are not well covered because of this. But software also has some of the strongest free-knowledge communities out there. They are more chaotic that wikipedia. But they might become even more chaotic if they were tasked with deciding on a single "right answer" on certain topics with no authorities to cite. (Programming language discussions, anyone?) Chris vLS (talk) 16:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Are official companions to TV shows independent sources?

The specific example here is this book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) 04:53, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

For the purposes of notability, I'd say definitely not if produced directly to accompany the show by or for the production company/network. In my opinion they are usually going to be reliable (mostly) primary sources for the purposes of verification, but WP:RSN is the better place to ask that question. Whether it is an appropriate source though will depend on how and why you want to use it. Thryduulf (talk) 11:53, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

They do not establish that the subject is suitable for a standalone article, but insofar as that has been established by other sources, they are perfectly acceptable for information about the TV show in question (i.e. episode summaries, character biographies, etc.). Non-independent sources can be (and often are) very reliable for information, but insofar as the information does not show that other people have taken note of the subject it doesn't establish notability. --Jayron32 14:03, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Particularly given their example, I think OP is asking just for purposes of using it for information to add to an article, not for determining whether a show should have an article. postdlf (talk) 16:44, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• On the question of using it for information in an already notable article, yes it is fine, but it should be used reasonably sparingly to fill in high-level details that may not be readily sourcable to secondary material; that type of work should not dominate the sourcing for the article. For example, I can see such a work to establish, for an already notable character, where they were born and what high-level schooling they got; details that may be buried in a few episodes but easier to just point to that, before the article moves onto details of characterization and the like that we pull from secondary coverage. --Masem (t) 17:25, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, that was my question. I was looking more for the in-depthness– I'll have to dig for other sources, than. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 18:39, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• Obviously not WP:INDY, any more than the producer's website is, or an interview with the author, a film's director, a game company's lead developer, or whatever fits the scenario. This is all WP:PRIMARYSOURCE and WP:ABOUTSELF material. It can be used, with caution, but only for certain kinds of claims, mostly "bare facts" matters, and only when there's nothing controversial or aggrandizing about it. ("Development started on May 13, 2001, at our Boston office" is probably not a controversial claim, for example.) When it comes to plot points, explanation of game features or system requirements, production/development anecdotes of a game/show/film, etc., official companion sites and books are probably relevant and reliable enough for trivial matters, but secondary sources would be better. And they can't contradict solid secondary sources that proves them wrong about something. Nor even better primary ones, like the published version of the work itself, which is more "canonical". An example close to my heart: My first ever companion book was one for Star Wars (the original film), and I got it before the film actually came out. It was in story-book format with film stills as illustrations. Early on, it shows Luke meeting with Biggs and his other friends on Tatooine. I would not be able to use that as a source to write those happenings into the film plot on Wikipedia, because they did not make the final cut of the film. However, a surviving copy of that book would be a good source (maybe for a note in the production section) for that material (also part of the plot of the novel version) having been part of the plot of the in-development film at some point, having been at least partially filmed, and what some of it looked like. (Not that we need it, since the deleted footage is all over the place on the Internet these days, of course. But it's still a good example.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
• Exactly what User:SMcCandlish said. They aren't independent, they are WP:ABOUTSELF, which is exactly what the "official" means. As SMcC points out, these are ok for bare facts, but not for the puffery you might find there, like "first show to show..." or "highly acclaimed" etc. Ideally, you can search for the most interesting tidbits or stories and find secondary sources that have published (and fact-checked) them. Chris vLS (talk) 16:35, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Rewrite Wikipedia:Citizenship and nationality

This failed proposal is based on a false assumption – that "citizenship" is a legal status but "nationality" is not. In fact, both are legal statuses. Nationality is a legal relationship between a natural person and a sovereign state, whereby the natural person owes the state a duty of allegiance and the state owes the natural person a duty of protection. Citizenship is a legal status of having political rights in a sovereign state, such as the right to vote in elections. Most of the time, the two go together, but more rarely it is possible to have legal nationality without legal citizenship. US law, for example, has a concept of "non-citizen nationals" who possess US nationality but lack US citizenship – this means they are eligible for a US passport but can't vote in US elections. Right now, the only people who are "non-citizen nationals" of the US are American Samoans, although there is a court case challenging the constitutionality of that. Similarly, the UK has a class of nationals known as "British subjects without citizenship" who possess UK nationality but lack UK citizenship. Current UK law makes it impossible to acquire this status, so it is eventually going to die out–most of the people with it had some connection with former colonies but for whatever reason did not acquire the nationality/citizenship of the newly independent state at independence. (Many of those people are people of South Asian origin in Africa and Southeast Asia–their ancestry in India/Pakistan was too distant for Indian or Pakistani citizenship, and those newly independent states sometimes denied citizenship/nationality to these minorities, leaving them with a UK non-citizen national status as a not very useful fallback.)

I was talking about this on the Talk page and WhatamIdoing was suggesting that some people in the UK use "nationality" to refer to one being English or Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish. I don't believe that is an official use – all official documents I've seen from the UK government only speak of "British nationality", not of "English"/"Scottish"/"Welsh"/"Northern Irish" as "nationalities" – some UK government forms speak of them as "ethnicities", which is probably the more appropriate term. However, it probably makes sense to note that this usage exists, even if though it is not an official or legal one. I think one shouldn't use this sense of "nationality" in Wikipedia articles however, since it is likely to confuse non-UK readers and produce the false impression that English/Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish are legal nationalities, when legally speaking they are not nationalities.

Anyway, I think, even marked as a failed proposal, having something in the Wikipedia namespace which is factually incorrect is problematic. I think the proposal should be written to make clear that both nationality and citizenship are legal statuses, and that with rare exceptions anyone who has one status also has the other. This in turn implies that having separate "Nationality" and "Citizenship" parameters in Infoboxes is a bad idea since they very rarely will differ, and I think if you look at the cases where those two parameters are being used, very rarely are they being used with different values (or one being chosen over the other) because of an actual legal situation of having nationality-without-citizenship. The rare status of non-citizen nationals could simply be expressed as a parenthetical remark in the "Nationality" parameter rather than needing a separate "Citizenship" one. @SMcCandlish: since you wrote the proposal I'm proposing we rewrite. Mr248 (talk) 03:26, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Huh? 01011000 (talk · contribs) wrote it; I just moved it to a more sensible page name, and cleaned up some of the most obvious issues in the text. Honestly, I think the outliers you mention above could simply be covered in footnotes with little impact on the overall gist. "Nationality" and "citizenship" as normally used in everyday writing and as typically understood by the vast majority of our readers have the meanings outlined in that proposal. Uncommon legal technicalities are simply exceptions to note in passing, in a footnote. Alleged vernacular British usage to distinguish between the UK as a "meta-nation" country and England, etc., as sub-national "countries" is another footnote. So is use of "nation" to mean "ethnic heritage" or "political movement", and there are probably some others. "Nationality" (in the usual sense and even most of these other senses, with narrow exceptions) usually is not a legal matter; it's a socio-cultural and sometimes socio-political construct (like gender roles, and like what passes for "race").

The typical solution is to move a failed proposal to a name like Wikipedia:Citizenship and nationality (failed proposal). However, it is possible that this piece can be "massaged" into an explanatory essay (which is mostly what it is already) without trying to also be a rule (which it was already rejected as). The problem I see is that the extant text is pushing an overly simplistic viewpoint, while you are pushing a "missing the forest for trees" nitpick-it-to-death viewpoint from the other direction. The solution is to retain the generality approach to the main text of it, then cover technicalities in footnotes, so they are there but do not mire it down in usually-inapplicable details.

But if this work isn't done to produce a sensible essay, I agree it would be problematic to retain it at the current name, since it purports to lay down rules or at least advice, and people can link to sections or anchors in mid-page, such that people cannot see the failed-proposal banner. So, it should either have "failed proposal" in the page name, or stop giving erstwhile advice/rules. PS: It requires no consensus discussion to just go do it and re-work the page to no longer be a failed proposal but instead an informative essay. Just try to ensure the resulting text will actually meet with agreement and serve an informative purpose with regard to most editing situations, not be a just a bunch of hair-splitting about oddball exceptions (footnotes, footnotes). See also the fallacy of equivocation; we all know any given word can have multiple meanings, and we have to keep them separated; making an argument about what "nationality" is and means in the usual sense of that word, and then changing the definition in mid-stream to something that only pertains to American Samoans, for example, and arguing from that basis ("Nationality is also a legal matter", etc.) isn't going to produce anything useful.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:41, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

SMcCandlish Huh? 01011000 (talk · contribs) wrote it; I just moved it to a more sensible page name Sorry for the confusion, I misread the edit history. "Nationality" and "citizenship" as normally used in everyday writing and as typically understood by the vast majority of our readers have the meanings outlined in that proposal I disagree. As normally used in everyday writing and as typically understood by the vast majority of our readers, "nationality" and "citizenship" are synonyms. Normal usage does not attempt to draw any clear distinction between the two, neither the technical legal distinction I am talking about nor the purported distinction the proposal presents. Mr248 (talk) 06:18, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

They can't be synonyms if much of your and my and 01011000's point is that they're distinguishable even in everyday use. You can't simultaneously argue to keep and improve the page, which is all about these distinctions, and also argue for a lack of distinction. We have to trust that our readers are more-or-less fluent and know how to use a dictionary. Observation of usage of these terms clearly shows that people do in fact use them differently. So, I'm really not inclined to argue in circles with you about this. Especially since your response ignores everything substantive about what I said; more nit-picking. The goal here is to arrive at a solution for this page, not out-nitpick everyone. Other editors, as they care to comment, can either support the idea to essay-ize this page, which will hopefully produce an essay people agree with and find useful, or they won't, in which case I or someone else will nominate it for a rename that ends with "(failed proposal)". Or I suppose someone could try to re-draft it in a way that actually made sense as a guideline and re-propose it, though I give that a snowball's chance in Hell.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:31, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Let me clear about my point of view – in technical legal terminology, yes there is a reasonably clear distinction between "nationality" and "citizenship"; however, in everyday language, there is no clear or standard distinction between the two terms – many speakers treat them as synonyms; a small number of speakers (who are familiar with the technical legal definitions) will use the technical legal definitions even in everyday language; yet others draw some other distinction between them which is different from the technical legal distinction. You (and 01011000) seem to be arguing that a distinction between them, which is different from the legal distinction, is standard in everyday use, which is where I disagree. I guess the question is, what evidence (even reliable sources) do we have on how the two terms are consistently distinguished in everyday use, if in fact they are? Mr248 (talk) 08:39, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

As I say, I'm not inclined to pursue circular argument about this. No one but you has said anything about "consistently distinguished", and if we had that as a criterion half the project pages on the system would have to go away, starting with, say, WP:Consensus, WP:Harassment, and WP:Civility. The fact that terms can have multiple meanings has never impeded us writing about them or being specific as to a "WP meaning", we just have to be clear about it. And none of that equates to "are synonyms" as you claimed. But let's just move on to more the constructive approach below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish, I don't think the page is correct. Here are a few lines from the ==Definitions== section:

• Nationality, on the other hand, denotes where an individual has been born... – No, where you were born is your national origin,[5] not your nationality.
• Nationality is obtained through inheritance from his/her parents... – So is citizenship, for most people, but I think you meant national identity.
• An example of nationality is Italian to a person with Italian roots born in the United States... – No, that's an example of ethnicity.  A person born in the US is a US national and a US citizen.

It is true that many people use these terms imprecisely. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:56, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, where you were born is your national origin I think the definition you linked ("the place of birth of an individual or of any of the individual’s lineal ancestors") applies for some legal purposes, but a person might not consider the country where they were born their "national origin". A good example of this is US Senator Ted Cruz – he was born in Canada, to an American mother and a Cuban refugee father, his parents had met in the US and only later moved to Canada, and his parents moved back to the US when he was four years old and thereafter he grew up in the US. Even though Canada is the country of his birth, he probably wouldn't consider it his "national origin". In fact, when he found out (as an adult) that he was a Canadian citizen, he renounced his Canadian citizenship. Mr248 (talk) 03:41, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

What a person believes about themselves is their national identity. In the case of Ted Cruz, his national origin is Canada (birth place), America (maternal lineal ancestor), and Cuba (paternal lineal ancestor). You don't have to have a single claim to a national origin. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:00, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the definitions that "national identity" is about subjective identity (what you believe about yourself, how others identify you), whereas "national origin" is defined in more objective terms. That said, I don't expect everyone is going to make that distinction – some readers will probably use the terms interchangeably, and hence may use "national origin" in the subjective sense as well. Mr248 (talk) 22:06, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree these definitions are half-assed at best, and I have no objection to improving them, as long as what results is something editors are apt to understand and agree with, which means it has to be cognizant of meaning variance instead of trying to hide the variances and suggest that each of these words can only possibly every have one specific sense. We know that simply isn't true. The very fact that they're potentially confusing is one of the reasons to avoid relying on them at Wikipedia as a means of conveying information we expect to be consistently understood by different readers. Even simpler concepts like "country" often mean very different things to different readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you that there is value in helping editors remember that people (especially people from different parts of the world) often use these terms to mean different things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I tried to rewrite this essay to be accurate. Here is what I came up with – User:Mr248/Citizenship and nationality. What do people think of the relative merits of the current essay here to my draft? Mr248 (talk) 13:53, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Strikes me as a vast improvement, structurally and conceptually, though I have not pored over every word of it. My main concern would be that many of the definitions given are not ones many readers or editors will be familiar with or even encounter, so the first part of the essay should focus on the most common meanings. PS: My assumption is that your intent is to replace the failed proposal with a viable essay, not create a new guideline proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I claim no special expertise in this area, BUT, nationality in the UK frequently relates to whether one is English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. These are distinct nations, and although membership of any one has neither any legal basis nor legal definition and confers no benefits or rights - one cannot dismiss this usage. Legally this may merely be 'national identity', but the usage is very deeply rooted, but the essay ignores this use of nationality. Secondly, not all countries automatically confer 'nationality' to all those born within the country. Germany for example only awards nationality and consequent citizenship to the children of German citizens (the children of 'guest workers' or refugees are not legally German, even if born there from parents legally resident in Germany - they must apply for naturalisation). The essay implies that only the children of illegal immigrants (plus diplomats and armed forces) are ever excluded from gaining nationality by virtue of place of birth, this is not the case. I don't pretend to know what the problem is that the essay attempts to solve, but I have to say I find the essay confusing rather than clarifying. Pincrete (talk) 18:01, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Pincrete, but the essay ignores this use of nationality It doesn't ignore it. It talks about it in the section User:Mr248/Citizenship_and_nationality#UK_constituent_countries.

The essay implies that only the children of illegal immigrants (plus diplomats and armed forces) are ever excluded from gaining nationality by virtue of place of birth, this is not the case It doesn't. It says "Some states reject jus soli and hence a person born on their territory to non-national parents does not acquire the state's nationality no matter for how many generations their ancestors may have lived in that state". That's exactly the case of Germany, I just didn't mention Germany specifically as an example of it. I'll add that. (Edit: Actually, contemporary German law does grant children born in Germany to legal residents citizenship, at least in some cases – what you are saying is historically true, but no longer true since the 1999 legal reforms.)

I don't pretend to know what the problem is that the essay attempts to solve, but I have to say I find the essay confusing rather than clarifying The problem it tries to solve is (1) a lot of Wikipedia editors have a poor understanding of the variety of meanings that "citizenship" and "nationality" have; (2) the existing essay Wikipedia:Citizenship and nationality contains factual errors and to a great extent just reflects a single editor's questionable personal opinions, and I'm trying to replace it with something which is factually more accurate and more neutral. But if you have either concrete suggestions for improvements to the text, or you think you can do better, please go ahead. Mr248 (talk) 02:53, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I sympathise with the problem, but wonder if a universal solution is even possible - beyond the one we already use, which is that we refer to individuals nationality as WR:RS do. I admit I was wholly wrong about the 'German' situation, though I don't know how common such withholding of rights is. I think I am at least partially right about the UK-Eng-Sc-Welsh-Irish situation (which certainly is inconsistent and muddled at times, but which I recognise is often very important to the individuals written about). Merely by saying that nationality has a legal definition (and describing its properties), you contradict a major country where nationality has distinct definitions, most of which have no legal basis and confer no rights or privileges or protections whatsoever. Mentioning UK later cannot undo what has already been stated. Pincrete (talk) 07:50, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Pincrete, which is that we refer to individuals nationality as WR:RS do reliable sources very often call people "American" or "French" or "British" or "English" or whatever. But is that ascribing to them a nationality? Or a national identity? Or a national origin? Rarely are reliable sources specific about which of those three related concepts they are talking about, and to read a source as being about nationality specifically, as opposed to one of those other related concepts, when it isn't being explicit about which one it is talking about, is to run the risk of reading into it something which isn't actually there.

Merely by saying that nationality has a legal definition (and describing its properties), you contradict a major country where nationality has distinct definitions, most of which have no legal basis and confer no rights or privileges or protections whatsoever Did you read the introductory section of the essay? It says: Both are legal terms, and this essay will endeavour to give an overview of the legal distinction between "citizenship" and "nationality"; both are also used in non-legal contexts in ways distinct from their legal use, and this essay will also attempt to provide an overview of the different non-legal ways in which those two terms are used. It is being quite explicit that the terms have both legal definitions and non-legal definitions, and that those definitions are distinct, and it treats them separately – the whole essay is organised into two major sections, one dealing with legal definitions, the other with non-legal definitions. I don't understand the criticism you are making here. Mr248 (talk) 22:41, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not going to quibble with you - good luck with this. Pincrete (talk) 06:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

@Pincrete and Mr248: If I may intervene a bit:

Pincrete: "Mentioning UK later cannot undo what has already been stated." That's a fair point, so using example like that earlier on to make it clear that these definitions are not universal to every context and party would be reasonable. So, Mr248 is correct that it's not "ignored", but where is placed may be, as Pincrete indicates, too little too late. We can't really assume everyone at this page will read all of it. It's important that the top-matter summarize the overall gist of it well.

Pincrete: "The essay implies that only [odd cases] are ever excluded from gaining nationality by virtue of place of birth"; Mr248 "It doesn't. It says 'Some states reject jus soli and hence [more explanation]'. Again, I'm going to agree with Mr248 technically, but Pincrete in spirit. Is there not a way to juggle some material around so that it's clearer? I don't think Pincrete has dain bramage, so if one of our editors is finding this confusing there's a good chance that others will and that it could use some wordsmithing, which may be about word choice, placement in the piece, or both. That is, let's try to massage the material to resolve the dispute rather than just argue until someone gets angry and leaves.

Just something as trivial as changing "Both are legal terms" to "Both are sometimes legal terms" or maybe even better "Both have various legal definitions", might help a lot, by making it clear from the very first words that no absolutist definitions are going to be offered. I know enough from usability work I did in ye olde tymes of the early Web that users of websites have a strong tendency (in LtR languages) to start at top left of the content proper, read just enough to be sure they're at the right place, then start skimming around rapidly for what they're here for, and will not settle into reading in earnest (if at all) until they've latched onto something of interest. So, there's a good chance someone will see "Both are legal term", conclude "Ah HA! Just what I was saying!", jump down the page to look for something pertaining to this that bolsters some point they're arguing about, find what they want and read it (without reading past it), then copy-paste some material quoted out-of-context and return to their fight. LOL.

I try to write essay material in ways that thwart this pattern, especially by avoiding statements that seem absolute and that are then later qualified, since people are apt to see and make use only of the absolute part. (It's also one reason that in guideline material we don't lead with a bunch of exceptions and then give a general rule at the end. We want people to latch onto the general rule and apply it unless there's a codified exception. If we led with exceptions, people would latch onto one of those and try to over-generalize from it, and never reach the actual rule, or ignore it if they do, hoping it doesn't really pertaining to their situation.) I know this is a lot of UE psych, but it's worth thinking about in the latter drafting stage.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:15, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I think that is an improvement that could be done after @Mr248 gets the already-an-improvement version pasted into the page. Maybe just add a big box that says "Watch out particularly for people from the UK saying that their 'nationality' is English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh, even though their own census form calls that 'national identity' instead of 'nationality'"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:33, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Religion or Race in "Early Life" sections of biographical articles

I've noticed something. In any biographic article, if a person is of Jewish descent or ancestry, that information is prominently displayed; but this is not true of other religions. A bio never points out that so-and-so is an Episcopalian. Or that someone-else is Hindu. It's only if they are Jewish when this is brought up. At first, I thought that this was because of race and not religion, but you won't find similar markers for Black, Asian, or any other race mentioned, so this mentioning must only be because of religion. Which then bring me back to the question: who is going around sourcing every Jewish person on WP to specifically add information that really isn't integral to the article. Are we to actually care if a person is or is not a particular religion? Is that germane to the person's life?

It seems a little forced to me, and unnecessary to point out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.70.2.200 (talk) 13:45, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia's guidance on noting a person's religion and race is located at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography, which states under the shortcut WP:ETHNICITY "Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless it is relevant to the subject's notability. Similarly, previous nationalities or the place of birth should not be mentioned in the lead unless they are relevant to the subject's notability." Whether or not a person has or has not followed that guidance in any one particular article or not will vary from article to article. If you find that an article does not follow this guidance correctly, WP:SOFIXIT, but in cases where there is an active dispute (i.e. if someone objects to your changes), then please discuss your rationale for the changes at the talk page per WP:BRD, and if there is an impass, use Wikipedia's dispute resolution system to get outside help. --Jayron32 13:56, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Someone is "going around sourcing every Jewish person on WP to specifically add information"? evidence? you might also notice that American BLPs display a clear obsession with "ancestry," but that's the result of a socicultural preoccupation with "heritage" in the US and not the result of one individual going around sourcing this irrelevant information. Acousmana (talk) 14:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, it can be a subject of discussion at any particular article -- not too long ago, iirc, there was a dispute involving a WP:BLP in which the living person took exception on the basis of relevance and that had to be worked out. It also seems sometimes people confuse "nationality" which should generally be in the first sentence, with "ethnicity", which should go later, if at all. I would note also, that the OP asked about the "Early Life" section, which is usually the first section below the lead, and the OP is right that it should not seem "forced", so perhaps reword it, or if there is a dispute discuss it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:55, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: Well, the term "nationality" can be confusing because it has multiple meanings. On the one hand, it can refer to ones legal nationality – which usually (but not universally) goes hand-in-hand with legal citizenship. On the other hand, the word can also refer to "national identity", which is about whether a person subjectively identifies with a particular "nation", and whether others identify them as such. This is not a legal concept, and something which counts as a "nation" for purposes of subjective national identity may not be accepted as an independent sovereign state under international law. For example, a Kurdish nationalist may view "Kurdish" as their national identity even though there is currently no Kurdish nation-state; an Arab nationalist may view "Arab" as their national identity even though the Arab world is currently divided into 22 separate sovereign states. And "national identity" has an unclear relationship with "ethnicity", since what some will call a "nation" others will limit to the status of an "ethnic group"–the question of whether something counts as an "ethnicity" or a "nationality" is often the kind of political question which various flavours of nationalists will fight over. As I mentioned in another section above, I've been working on an essay which attempts to unpack all these complexities in an unbiased way, with the hope that it might replace the current Wikipedia:Citizenship and nationality essay (which is full of factual inaccuracies, and in my opinion is trying to push a particular POV). Mr248 (talk) 23:34, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

The point of nationality, is primarily context of place in the world, to quickly answer for the reader the 'from where' question. So, best not to complicate it, but sure there will be edge cases. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:36, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is that many people think that the answer to "from where" has to be the name of an recognised independent sovereign state (or possibly a dependent territory) – a person may be from McMinnville, Oregon, but nobody would call that their "nationality". However, that collides with others who think that their nationality is something other than a sovereign state or dependent territory, such as a subnational division (a "nation-within-a-nation" such as "English", "Scottish", "Québécois", etc) or an ethnic identity such as Kurdish ("I'm a Kurd from Kurdistan"). And then the first group of people respond with "that's not a nationality, that's an ethnicity!". Deciding what counts as a "nationality" and what counts as an "ethnicity" is often a very political question. Mr248 (talk) 01:23, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Less often than general, and general practice is just that, general, while in edge cases, there are often several ways of finessing it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:07, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

• https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/edward-kosner/jew-tagging-wikipedia/ is likely a very relevant read. One quick thing to note is that, whereas Espicopalian is just a religious description, Jew is an ethnoreligious description, and thus could arguably be said to be at least a little more relevant. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:25, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

well that is interesting, so there is evidence. Personally, I don't think any of this kind of stuff (religion/ethnicity/ancestry etc.) should be listed in BLPs unless it can be shown - via reliable sourcing - that: 1) individuals self-identify with one or other label; 2) that said label is a notable aspect. Acousmana (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

The culture someone is raised in, or the church their family went to, or the ancestry of their parents, is relevant biographical information for any person. This is not the same as "labeling them", because what they later practice or not identify with or not as an adult is a separate question. "Smith was raised in an Episcopalian household" ≠ "Smith is an Episcopalian". postdlf (talk) 23:43, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

relevant only in so far as WP:RS sources support worthiness of mention, otherwise, the "culture someone is raised in, or the church their family went to, or the ancestry of their parents" is fluff, people obsessive over this stuff, why? because they like to pigeonhole folk, it's BS unless the subject themselves lends importance to these aspects of their lives, and if they do, RS will probably reflect this. Acousmana (talk) 11:57, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Of course we are only talking about verifiable information. But I don't get the view at all that we should limit ourselves to only what the subject thinks is important about them, or that anything not on a CV is "fluff". We write biographies of human beings, not bullet pointed resumes. postdlf (talk) 17:33, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

just don't think it's necessary to detail aspects of someone's past if it has zero to do with why the individual is notable. I've seen some particularly egregious "ancestry" examples that have just left me scratching my head. Acousmana (talk) 18:00, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

I think one issue about that article in particular – there is a long and horrible history of antisemitism, and the article author is concerned that describing article subjects as "Jewish" may have antisemitic motivations, or may have the consequence of encouraging antisemitism even if that was not the Wikipedia editor's intention. By contrast, there is no significant "anti-Episcopalianism" in the contemporary world which wants to harm or denigrate Episcopalians, or blame the world's ills on a shadowy Episcopalian conspiracy. Maybe the author's concerns then are more specific to the Jewish identity – and possibly other identities which may be on the receiving end of a similar degree of hatred – than concerns about identity in general. Mr248 (talk) 01:48, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

antisemitic motivations would certainly be problematic, and would no doubt warrant attention. Acousmana (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Part of it is the general trend that someone being Jewish (or another minority ethnicity) is (usually) considering an "interesting fact" about a person by reliable sources in most White Anglophone countries since being a White Anglo Saxon Protestant is the default. (not many people care about the denomination a Protestant Christian is since most people know nothing about the theological differences). e.g. Sandy Koufax is famous in part for being the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time (Airplane! had a joke about pamphlets of famous Jewish sports legends), Barry Goldwater is famous in part for being the first ethnically Jewish candidate for president in the US, etc etc. Non Jewish examples include Derek Jeter and Tiger Woods being mixed race. While this could be seen as reflecting systemic bias in the sources we're using that's the way this enyclopedia works. We're not here to right great wrongs.

There's also other cases like Bernie Sanders whose religious views are explained due to it being a topic discussed by many reliable sources (there has been speculation on if he's an atheist; it's necessary to include the context that he was born a Jew and that he identifies as one as this has been a significant topic discussed in reliable sources). There's also Larry David or Jerry Seinfeld whose Jewishness provides necessary context to their work. These aren't really cases of systemic bias.

That being said there's a lot of cases where people have been identified as Jewish in their articles and this topic hasn't been discussed at all in reliable sources; or editors have found obscure sources that state someone is Jewish and don't acknowledge that WP:DUEWEIGHT means they shouldn't be ID'd as such. While I'm not going to mention anyone in particular since it would go against the spirit of BLP here; there's a lot of media executives or people in the banking industry with Jewish-sounding names (who may or may not be actually Jewish) are getting mentions in the Early Life section despite no reliable sources actually commenting on their perceived Judaism. It really makes me think about if there's some kind of (((tagging))) campaign targeted at Jews in certain industries. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 20:46, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Can confirm: I just got done bringing up one such instance on a Talk Page and outright removing another from David Solomon after a casual CTRL+F of the sources cited. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 23:16, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

• I think there's lots of different phenomena happening here, and it's often impossible to tell which is responsible for any one instance of content. There are antisemitic people, largely on the far-right, who wish to paint a picture of Jewish conspiracy and so might add the label to someone who they see as part of the "mainstream media", "liberal elite" or another political enemy—notice it's a sort of "one-drop rule", that someone is considered Jewish by these people if one of their great-grandfathers was Jewish and the other seven great-grandparents were Protestant. There are also, completely unrelatedly, lots of us who enjoy repetitive categorisation-based activities, which is why AWB and other semi-automated tools are so popular. Someone of this vein may go on a hunt for sources/BLPs to identify as Jewish, even if, like in the other case, it's rather a stretch in many cases. This was the situation for the Commentary article case.
  On one hand we have a neo-Nazi, on another we have a well-intentioned editor and if you've got a third hand you can put some Jewish people who proud of their culture and heritage who are also prone to over-categorising. I've seen several websites/news media by well-meaning Jewish people who over-categorise public figures as Jewish—Dave Gorman once did a stand-up bit about such a source categorising him as such, though he's not Jewish. So even in the cases where someone is unduly categorised as Jewish, but not any of the other descriptors that are equally (ir)relevant, it could be a case of anti-semitism, an editor who's completely neutral on the topic, or even an over-eager Jewish person. Very tough situation to deal with, but the overall effect is often an anti-semitic bias on our BLP pages (all of the over-categorisation will heighten this "Jewish conspiracy" mentality and lend it false credence), so it is a phenomenon we all need to be really aware of. — Bilorv (talk) 00:29, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I think there can be a kind of inverse bias of the one you're mentioning above that people should also be aware of – while nazis, overzealous Jewish people and overzealous categorizers (probably) end up giving undue prominence to the fact that people are Jewish throughout Wikipedia, I think knowing that fact can make you more hostile to the inclusion of the fact that someone is Jewish in early life sections than you would otherwise be. Especially for articles about an American subject, being any religion other than Christian in the US is probably perceived as noteworthy in and of itself, and as Acousmana pointed out, there is a kind of sociocultural obsession with ethnicity in America that leads people to care a lot and be very interested in people's ethnicities.

Take for instance the first paragraph of the early life section of Joe Biden: The oldest child in a Catholic family, he has a sister, Valerie, and two brothers, Francis and James. Jean was of Irish descent, while Joseph Sr. had English, French, and Irish ancestry. This doesn't make me look twice at all, these kind of categorisations: Catholic, Irish, etc., are genuinely noteworthy information for a BLP. You should just be careful not to overcorrect for the bias you think people particularly fond or particularly averse to Jewish people create, for an article of a sufficient length most of the time the fact that someone is Jewish is noteworthy information relevant enough to include in an early life section, no one should be batting at eye at the Jewish equivalent of Joe Biden's biography and thinking "darn those dastardly pro/anti Jewish crusaders" – most of the time it really is fine. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 17:00, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Stepping away from the context of the United States, we have some categories for rather fine ancestry-based groupings like Category:Lebanese people of Iranian descent. Is categorising people like that generally problematic, or generally okay? In some cases you won't find a direct source stating "X is a Lebanese person of Iranian descent", you may even have to do a little bit of WP:SYNTH ("X is father of Y", "Source Z says X is of Iranian descent", ergo "Y is of Iranian descent"). I don't know the cultural context of how being of Iranian descent is viewed in Lebanese society – might there be concerns about feeding anti-Iranian sentiment, much as there are concerns about labelling people as being of Jewish descent in the American context? Or does nobody over there care? I guess I'm concerned that Wikipedia is a global resource, and so whatever rules we come up with have to make sense globally, not specific to American (or even Anglophone or more broadly Western) concerns. Mr248 (talk) 22:56, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Those hyperfine categorizations I feel are usually problematic. Take for instance this argument about whether or not Louis C.K. fits into the category Category:American people of Mexican-Jewish descent and how that fits in with Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent. I really just can't imagine any reader genuinely interested in scrolling through the "American people of Mexican-Jewish descent" category, and I can't imagine anyone at all looking at Louis C.K.'s page and saying "oh yes I'd be interested in seeing more American people of Mexican-Jewish descent show me more of that please Wikipedia". They spawn rather silly, WP:SYNTH-y, WP:OR-y arguments for effectively no gain at all to the project. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 05:03, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. Categories should be defining and a good test for this is "would a reader click on this category because they'd like to see more articles meeting this criterion?" I similarly doubt many of these types of categories pass this test. Unfortunately, in practice categories can often just be busywork, sources of conflict and a collection of internal pages for editors rather than front-facing content for readers. — Bilorv (talk) 18:37, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

The thing about politicians (usually American ones) is that their religious views get discussed a lot in the media and oftentimes forms a central part of their public character. Biden often mentions in public statements that Christianity is about caring for people or whatever and he's had to address the situation of being between the Catholic Church's position on abortion or birth control and his party's position. His Irish roots are also remarked about as well in reliable sources; but Irish people aren't as much of a target (anymore) of white nationalists conjecturing a Hibernian Occupational Government trying to infiltrate the American political obsession. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 01:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Just mass move all BLPs about Jews to triple parentheses. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 01:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

The OP said "but you won't find similar markers for Black, Asian, or any other race mentioned". However, that is incorrect. Almost every Canadian Inuit bio, living or dead, will state in the first line that the person is Inuit. I've seen that for Métis and First Nations and the more generic indigenous. It's used in articles about Sherpa people and Indigenous Australians. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 01:42, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Muslim is also almost always mentioned in UK/European articles (and categorised) - which I appreciate is not an ethnic term, but in the vast majority of cases is synonymous with "non- European" and "non-white" ancestry and heritage. There are sometimes good reasons why we mention the religion or ethnicity of a person (particularly an elected politician perhaps) - it would be remiss for us to fail to state that Obama was different from all previous US presidents in at least one very obvious respect - but religion and ethnicity are sometimes included when they have zero relevance and aren't covered much by sources. A scientist, medical person or academic or similar may well be entitled to keep (and may have succeeded in keeping) their ethnicity or religion as their personal business. Pincrete (talk) 07:03, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

(Un)paid votes in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rt Rana

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § (Un)paid votes in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rt Rana

 – FF-11 (talk) 19:57, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

According to this edit, users were told that they would be paid for voting "delete" (it looks like "salt", too). However they weren't actually paid. I however don't want to talk about paid editing or scam but wanted to say that the discussion seems to be manipulated. I'm not sure if anything should be done now. FF-11 (talk) 13:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

This seems more suitable for WP:AN, but I'm not a VPP regular so I'll hold off on moving this. GeneralNotability (talk) 18:54, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

RFC on issues with airport pages that violate policies

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

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Apologies if this is posted in the wrong place (please move if it is). I am requesting a RFC regarding two issues on pages regarding airports that perhaps are running afoul of WP:NOTTRAVEL and WP:RAWDATA. I am posting here as the previous one on the WP:AIRPORTS talk page has gotten virtually no traction.

1. On the "Airlines & Destinations" tables in airport articles, we need to consolidate the mainline/regional carriers (i.e, American Airlines/American Eagle) under the marketing carrier (i.e, just American Airlines). This has been discussed before and was last attempted around 2 years ago. The consensus at the time was to leave it separated, but the problem is, there were really no valid arguments made from a purely encyclopedic standpoint as to why they need to be separated. It also did not address the inconsistency as to why we allow it for some carriers (such as KLM/KLM Cityhopper, Air France/HOP, etc), but not for others (i.e, American Airlines/American Eagle, Delta Air Lines/Delta Connection, etc). The COVID-19 situation has drastically exasperated the ongoing problems with maintaining the tables, and there is so much error as to which destination is mainline and which destination is regional (see O'Hare International Airport for example). At the end of the day, it is still American/Delta/United regardless of whether it is mainline or regional. When the average Joe flies, they aren't going to care whether or not it is American Airlines or American Eagle, they just know it is American. American still does the background work for the flight, they just contract out the actual flying, but they still consider it an AMERICAN destination. Why must from a purely encyclopedic standpoint they continue to be separated? This is getting extremely frustrating to deal with. Already the tables are very close to violating WP:NOTTRAVEL, but perhaps this would help bring them more in line.

2. The annual traffic tables on airport pages have gotten too long in a lot of cases, and come really close to, if not outright, violating WP:RAWDATA. We already list the previous years annual traffic in the infobox, with a link where they can (presumably) see historical data. We need to either remove the tables or figure out a way to condense the information (as long as it is properly cited) so it doesn't go off the page. Blissfield101 (talk) 21:24, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

For #1: The entire table at O'Hare International Airport#Passenger reads like a travel guide IMO, not encyclopaedic content. Besides, if people want an up to date version of the list of routes flying out of an airport, surely there are more reliable and maintained sources than an encyclopaedia article? (certainly, Wikipedia is not the first place I would begin to look.) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:00, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Although... perhaps some airports have more information available about them than others do? For #2 I feel like graphs of historical information are useful information. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:07, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

As a note, as the airport data (passengers/etc.) is non-copyrightable, you can create .dat tables over at Commons for this information and just use graph functions to show the trends. That would cut down the length of those tables.

I agree that the example airlines section at O'Hare is overkill and something easily outdated. It is likely better to simply group carriers to an airport among "Current" and "Former" carriers, and among those, those that consider that airport a hub (such as United at O'Hare, or Delta at Atlanta) verses those that just include that airport among its destinations. There is zero need to include the list of possible connection cities there. (I can see this being the case of regional airports that can really only take puddle-jumpers, where there's only a handful of possible airports that they connect up with). --Masem (t) 23:14, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree the Airline and Destination tables have probably outlived their usefulness, but removing them is going to cause a huge firestorm. Blissfield101 (talk) 23:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

This discussion has already been started at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Airports#RFC:_Mainline/Regional_and_Annual_Traffic, so even if I am the only respondent so far it should probably be continued there. I am not aware of other sites with flight destinations in this format and would vehemently oppose its removal. These actually are kept very well up to to date, and this is in fact the first place I look for direct flight routes. Reywas92^Talk 22:22, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

That depends @Reywas92:, usually they are, but sometimes they aren't. It depends on the airport page and how much traffic it gets. The primary issue with them is the mainline/regional difference and how it is very difficult to keep track of which is which, hence, why I strongly believe they need to be consolidated down to just the marketing carrier. Last time we tried a RFC on this, the users never gave an encyclopedic reason as to why they need to be separated, only aviation related ones. I'm neutral on keeping them overall though. Blissfield101 (talk) 23:57, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: What would be the best course of action here to get some more discussion? There isn't a lot of movement on this, and it's becoming a bigger problem as time goes on. Blissfield101 (talk) 18:30, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose both For #1, it's all about what the sources say - it's wrong to say an airline flies to a specific destination if their subsidiary does, and sources say the subsidiary flies there. The tables also do not violate WP:NOTTRAVEL as destination lists don't help anyone actually make travel plans and have other uses, similar to how we list where railroad routes go from specific train stations. For #2, I can't quickly find an annual traffic table which I'd consider a problem, and WP:RAWDATA really does not apply at all here - these are tables you'd expect to find in encyclopaedic content. I would expect that annual traffic tables have reasonable cut-offs for numbers of rows, though, not really out of line with what is being proposed here. SportingFlyer T·C 19:14, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
• @Blissfield101: neither of the discussions you started are "RFC". Please follow the instructions at WP:RFC if you really want to start one. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:31, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Finnusertop:I have started a new RFC here using those guidelines. Blissfield101 (talk) 20:22, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
    • Pinging @ProcrastinatingReader, Masem, Reywas92, SportingFlyer there is now a proper RFC at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports#RFC: Airline & Destinations/Airport Traffic Tables/Focus Cities. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:33, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

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

DefaultSort for full name redirects

Should redirect pages from full name have a DefaultSort template? For example, should a redirect page titled "John Frederick Smith" (to "John Smith" -- added 22:24, 5 April 2021 (UTC)) have a DefaultSort of "Smith, John Frederick"? How does it work for redirects from and/or to non-humans? Recently returned from lurking, DePlume (talk) 01:24, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I have requested comments at Talk:Michael John Graydon Soroka, the page concerned. Please comment there, DePlume (talk) 02:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The relevant policy page is Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects, which says When the title being redirected is a person's proper name, consensus is to modify the sort key from its default action, (usually sorted by {{PAGENAME}}, the redirect title in this case), to instead sort it by surname. Of course many redirects are not categorized at all. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:32, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I have expressed knowledge of the green text in the Soroka discussion already - thank you none the less. As for the redirects sorted by first names (e.g. Michael John Myers), should they be the ones changed instead? --DePlume (talk) 22:34, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The text on that page from {{R from birth name}} says be sure to include {{DEFAULTSORT:(surname), (given name)}} for correct category sorting of this person's name, so yes. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:36, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Important: May I propose a category for redirects tagged with {{R from birth name}} but not {{DEFAULTSORT}}? --DePlume (talk) 22:43, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Nobody can stop you from proposing it. I don't think it is technically possible, but if it is possible it's probably a good idea. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:47, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

This is a complete waste of time. An RfC was started at Talk:Michael John Graydon Soroka without any mention of this existing thread, and it went through several convoluted revisions. No RfC was necessary, a simple question at either WP:HD or WP:Teahouse should have sufficed, where a simple answer would have been provided, along the lines of "use {{DEFAULTSORT:Soroka, Michael John Graydon}} per WP:NAMESORT". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:56, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct – 2021 consultations

Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a universal baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire Wikimedia movement and all its projects. The project is currently in Phase 2, outlining clear enforcement pathways. You can read more about the whole project on its project page.

Drafting Committee: Call for applications

The Wikimedia Foundation is recruiting volunteers to join a committee to draft how to make the code enforceable. Volunteers on the committee will commit between 2 and 6 hours per week from late April through July and again in October and November. It is important that the committee be diverse and inclusive, and have a range of experiences, including both experienced users and newcomers, and those who have received or responded to, as well as those who have been falsely accused of harassment.

To apply and learn more about the process, see Universal Code of Conduct/Drafting committee.

2021 community consultations: Notice and call for volunteers / translators

From 5 April – 5 May 2021 there will be conversations on many Wikimedia projects about how to enforce the UCoC. We are looking for volunteers to translate key material, as well as to help host consultations on their own languages or projects using suggested key questions. If you are interested in volunteering for either of these roles, please contact us in whatever language you are most comfortable.

To learn more about this work and other conversations taking place, see Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultations.

-- Xeno (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

English Wikipedia Request for comment: Universal Code of Conduct application

Further to the above, I've opened an RfC at Wikipedia:Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultation, and community comments are invited. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Protection templates excessive in article pages

The recurrent use of {{pp-protected}} and {{pp-protected|small}} (which adds the lock image next to the title) is quite redundant and is NOT mandatory according to Wikipedia:Rough_guide_to_semi-protection. What's more pages are a little heavier to process and the image of a lock can discourage users from editing. Implicit protection (you can see it by trying to Edit Source or in Page Information) should be fair in the free encyclopedia, united to encouraging creation of persistent and trusted user accounts. Vaunting of protected articles through images of a lock is not the way to free encyclopedia. Brainfrogk4mon (talk) 20:10, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

My general view is that it's worth presenting a piece of information to readers if it affects the reading experience. In this case, I think having the padlock icons could help in some cases assure readers that a controversial article is at least somewhat protected from vandalism, so there is some benefit. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:17, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I doubt that any of them notice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

RfC on FA protection

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

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Should featured articles automatically receive some level of article protection? Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 14:38, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• No. Our front page says "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." FAs are supposed to exemplify our finest work; making it so not anyone can edit them makes them pretty bad examples. --GRuban (talk) 14:51, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• No. Without an open "anyone can edit" policy, with protection only being used where strictly necessary, we wouldn't have so many FAs in the first place. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:10, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• @Sungodtemple: Why? Leaky caldron (talk) 15:20, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• I'm torn on this. On principle, no of course not. We should seek to minimize protections where not necessary. In practice, however, I'd be curious to see research about how many new users' edits to FAs stick. We should consider that, as with active controversial topics, there is more pressure for editors to edit without even small mistakes and/or discuss before changing anything. Whether that reality is codified doesn't affect new user experience. There's something to be said for maximizing a new user's chances at success, and jumping into an FA decreases that likelihood. In other words, I think a new user who decides to get started with an FA is more likely to get discouraged by their first experience than someone who begins elsewhere. Seems like something that could use some data, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:25, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Hmmm. I'll try to collect some data about long-term degradation of featured articles from slightly unconstructive edits. Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 17:09, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
    • This raises a different question: is your proposal that once a featured article is featured it would become permanently protected? Chris vLS (talk) 14:28, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
• No, Wikipedia is about being a place where "anyone can edit". Also see WP:PEREN#Protect_featured_articles. — csc^-1 15:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• No Reviewing the stability of an FA article for it's continued status as an FA relies on the ability of editors to edit the article.Selfstudier (talk) 16:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• No In the past, no one has ever shown that FAs receive an inordinate amount of vandalism, even while on the main page. The OP has also failed to show that. Given that it doesn't seem necessary, I see no reason to change this long-standing policy. --Jayron32 16:10, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• No theoretically, if the FA process worked better and pending-changes worked better, I would consider this. As it is, it won't help the project. It's also unclear that there is a problem this solves. When specific articles have problems with vandalism, POV-pushing, etc., they are protected through the regular procedures. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 16:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• No. Like any other article, an FA should be protected as a reaction to vandalism or other abuse, and only at the minimum level and duration needed to deal with the problem. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• No; also, aren't we already discussing something very like this at VPR? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

  I was going to mention that other discussion myself. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• Absolutely not. The WP:FAC wikiproject (and it is a wikiproject, it just doesn't happen to be named "WikiProject Featured Article Candidates") is already a WP:OWN / WP:VESTED problem factory, so much that for several years I've pondered proposing that it be shut down and replaced by some other, more transparent process that doesn't work like a self-righteous and un-wiki good ol' boy's club. The thought of using page protection to cement the content-control hegemony of participants in that project, and of particular "this is my article!" editors at particular pages, is just fucking unconscionable. If any particular FA is being subject to ongoing streams of unconstructive input like vandalism and PoV-warring, it can be short-term (and sometimes fairly long-term) protected, like any other article (and is already more likely to receive that protection than non-FAs anyway). This is a solution in search of a problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:47, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: Sorry if the message didn't get through. What I meant was that long-term damage by unexperienced editors putting in original research, not keeping to a NPOV, etc. leads to a significant portion of article demotions. In the case of Bhumibol Adulyadej, revisions such as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhumibol_Adulyadej&type=revision&diff=214329503&oldid=214212028 led to the problem and subsequent stripping of featured article status. Now, protecting the article makes people not contribute to the Wiki, but, in my experience, there are many IPs and new users that don't understand how to edit Wikipedia properly, and then are bitten by experienced editors, which eventually results in them leaving. It seems like a case of 'pick your poison' here: Either drive away potential editors, or bite them and eventually scare them away. Sungodtemple a tcg fan!!1!11!! (talk) 02:14, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

  If you're concerned about an article losing its FA status, fix the article. You are an experienced Wikipedia user; you know what to do. Don't protect the article, instead do the work necessary to fix the problems with it. --Jayron32 14:21, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

  'Zac'ly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

• No, featured articles need the least protection because there are good editors well involved with the page. Summoned by bot. All articles are vulnerable to bad edits. Featured articles less so, because the thing that removes bad edits are editors who care and are watching, and featured articles are more likely to have those. It might feel like a featured article is "done," but they can get better. And featured articles are often popular, and new editors are more likely to jump in and learn from a popular article topic (with editors who will teach them) than obscure ones (where they are not interested and no one is around to teach). A well meaning proposal, but the counter-intuitive wiki approach has more strengths than it seems. Chris vLS (talk) 14:37, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
• No as per the comments above.Sea Ane (talk) 10:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

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

Proposed MoS addition on optional stress marking in Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Korean, etc.

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC?, for a proposal relating to optional characters/marks for indicating vocal stress, used in some foreign languages, include "ruby" characters for Japanese and Korean, and znaki udareniya marks in Ukrainian and Russian. The short version is that, based on a rule already long found in MOS:JAPAN and consonant with WP:NOTDICT policy, MoS would instruct (in MOS:FOREIGN) not to use these marks (primarily intended for pedagogical purposes) except in unusual circumstances, like direct quotation, or discussion of the marks themselves. Target date for implementation is April 21. PS: This does not relate to Vietnamese tone marks.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Policy for creating stubs

This has been moved from WP:ANI, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass-creating articles based on one unreliable source for context--Ymblanter (talk) 14:35, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

 Administrator note I left this section open (separate from the close above) as I believe this discussion is badly needed. However it's not a discussion that requiers admin attention, and should probably be moved elsewhere. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:13, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Is there are any interest in drafting a policy which would determine when standalone stubs of locations are allowed, and when they must be bundled into lists? Does anybody knows whether such a policy has been attempted, and whether it is an evergreen proposal? Pinging @Iridescent: who might know this.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:40, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, list vs standalone articles is a very broad scope questions; I am now only talking about localities (which I guess has at least some chances to be considered seriously).--Ymblanter (talk) 07:42, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

• We've been discussing this here: Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)#Mass-created village/neighbourhood Geostubs. FOARP (talk) 09:22, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
• In addition to better notability guidelines, it would be helpful to have a policy that actually requires editors to demonstrate notability at the time of article creation. Many of Lugnuts' Cricketer stubs were created under the assumption that there must be significant coverage out there somewhere for anyone who has played in a certain number of matches at a certain level, and several editors are !voting Keep at AfD based on that premise even when the only source found is a database entry. –dlthewave ☎ 15:18, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Even WP:GEOLAND carries this implicit assumption (this is why it uses the language "typically presumed to be notable" rather than "are notable"). Even for legally-recognised populated places, we are only presuming they can make a WP:GNG pass if someone does the research deep enough. Maybe this behaviour was OK when simply doing this based on Sports-Reference.com for e.g., pole-vaulters (I don't think it is, but the consensus hasn't historically been against it), but as soon as you try to do GEO articles the same way you end up with something like the Iranian "village" case because geography is much more complex than sports statistics. The amount of grief we've had over the assumption that X in Persian/Azeri/whatever is the same as "village".... FOARP (talk) 18:50, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, let us not overdo things. I have created for example this article today, and it is currently sourced to two databases (well, to one statistical document and one government dadabase-like site). I will return to it later (which may well be over several years) to bring it to this stage. However, I do not think any sane person can argue that it has notability issues, or even that it would be more beneficial to have it as am element of a list. My argument is that at some stage of the development (which needs to be formalized, but something like the article about a locality only contains the name, the native name, administrative division the locality is in, population, and coordinates), it is more advantageous to have it as an element of a list and not as a standalone article. Such article should be redirected to the list.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:17, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

"Presumed notable" under notability guidelines does not mean that this necessarily needs to show the type of sources that meet SIGCOV, only that the article can be shown to meet criteria that is likely to lead to more SIGCOV for notability. Most notability guidelines are merit based (like winning a Nobel prize) and this approach makes sense, but the issue are cases in GEOLAND and NSPORT where simply proving something/someone existed at a certain level is a presumption of notability (in the case of NSPORT, having played a professional level game is the presumption that the person had to have a prior career to get to a professional level that can be documented). I'd also note that any approach like this would have to be aligned with CSD which has purposely rejected any "notability" factors and uses a far lower bar to allow articles to be kept. --Masem (t) 14:42, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I would support such a policy, especially if it applied to sports as well. How hard is it to find one SIGCOV source? If you don't have access to refs but expect them to exist, it seems much more reasonable to put the subject in relevant lists and make a post in the relevant wikiprojects asking if anyone else does have access. JoelleJay (talk) 20:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

As pointed out above, this discussion duplicates Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)#Mass-created village/neighbourhood Geostubs. Please comment there instead. – Uanfala (talk) 15:04, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Whereas my intention was to restrict the discussion to purely articles on localities, the discussion went more broadly and would not fit to Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)--Ymblanter (talk) 15:09, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Do you consider a locality as a place falling under WP:GEOLAND? Part of the lack of clarity here comes from the definition of WP:GEOLAND, I think. SportingFlyer T·C 15:10, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, localities fall under GEOLAND, but there are a lot of other things which fall there, and which can not be treated the same way.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:17, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

My biggest gripe with geographic (and sport) stubs is not there existence but its that they clutter random and will discourage any reader/editor from pressing the button more than a few times. Quality articles have little chance of being discovered when they are drowned out in all the noise. So I would support any attempt to reign in stubs and replace them with descriptive lists.

For localities, Stub policy should be modified to explicitly prohibit creation of an article when the only information is available is database entries. A minimum of a history, geography, or other informative section should be required. Slywriter (talk) 16:19, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I second what you've said above. Störm (talk) 21:46, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Slywriter: I'm not sure about this. I've found our locality stubs on US locations are pretty good, say Lake George Township, Hubbard County, Minnesota (selected at random). Sure, it's not great, but it's better than nothing. I'm pretty sure everything in said article, other than the name history (which isn't really significant), came from databases. Would your proposal be against that type of article? Elli (talk | contribs) 22:25, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Elli, it's better than Meryemköy,_Çıldır but all the reader has learned is the US census data and outdated census data at that. So unless someone bothers to update that article next year, it will be two censuses behind current times with little hope of anyone every updating. A list of townships in Hubbard or Minnesota with links to us census, wikidata or other data points would serve readers better long term as a single page can be updated to point to the most current data and preserve historical data. Slywriter (talk) 23:26, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'll third the Random button comment. It serves no purpose at this point unless you want to discover dozens of stubs of football players and plant cultivars. JoelleJay (talk) 03:25, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Not limited to stubs, not limited to locations; every new article creation should cite at least one reliable, indepth source. Articles lacking this should be tagged for improvement, and then (after a week or so) either moved to draftspace or redirected to a list (if a relevant list is available). Fram (talk) 07:56, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

chapel in Dolany

• The random function could be easily configured or parameterised to include or exclude specific types of content, depending on the user's requirements. For example, I most often see "random article" in the Wikipedia iPhone app, which I browse daily. This seems to be already filtered so that only articles with images are shown.

Trying the app's randomizer, I soon find Dolany (Kladno District) – a Czech village. This is a stub but notice that it has has an image and infobox and so looks fine. Notice also that it has no citations – just an {{authority control}} entry. It was created from the corresponding article in the Czech wikipedia. Notice that the topic also exists in many other language Wikipedias and so is generally accepted as valid.

If editors want to flesh this stub out then that's what they should do. Deletion would be a retrograde step and therefore disruptive. Creating yet more rules would be contrary to policy per WP:CREEP.

Andrew🐉(talk) 19:02, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes an article that has a history section in Czech, has image galleries on commons and other points that show someone took effort in at least one language, and didn't just drop a line from a database

The mission also calls for wikipedia to last a 100 years, tens of thousands of one line articles that require updating to be relevant are of no help to future editors and readers.(Nor are database dumps of single game sports professionals nor genus/species articles that could be handled at the genus level because nothing is known about any of those species. And there is little call to delete the data, it's about changing how it is organized so there are less articles and more relevant lists/charts to capture these one liners. Slywriter (talk) 20:00, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Nganzun, created in 2008, has two additional stub articles hierarchially above it before you get to an en-wiki article with any relevant information at Mandalay_Region. The Burmese wikipedia is marginally better though even there Nganzun and Nganzun Township could easily be one article, but better yet both could make Myingyan District an actual relevant article and editors have only one article to update going forward. Instead, 3 articles will languish untouched for decades. Slywriter (talk) 20:34, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Burma and Bangladesh got hammered with loads of "village" stubs created by-bot/bot-like-editing by Dr. Blofeld (now Encyclopædius) back in 2008 or so. Almost none of them have been touched since. The articles were created from GEOnet data but - very importantly - what GEOnet calls a "populated place" can be literally anything that people might live/work in and many of the places it describes as "populated" may never have been populated (it's not like they send investigators out to check or do any work to validate the data they present). Nganzun doesn't even have that.

"Spray and pray" stub creation really is just a bane. FOARP (talk) 07:28, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

• Lake George Township, Hubbard County, Minnesota mentioned above was a Ram-Man (talk · contribs)/Rambot (talk · contribs) creation and what newer editors are probably unaware of is that people had a discussion then about mass-created geographic stubs, too. One of the things that was done was ensure that these articles started out with several paragraphs of prose. Witness Special:Permalink/5057043, and read Special:Permalink/512950#FAQ and Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive 1. Also note what was said, back in 2002, about the random page's function indeed being to discover stubs. Uncle G (talk) 08:05, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Creating articles that are simply statistical data presented in prose-format is simply bad editing - everything Rambot added could have been (and probably was) a single line in a table and would have been more concise and more easily comparable to other places presented that way. I think we can and should do better than that. I will, however, say that using a bot to do this is still better than the cut/paste stuff that Carlos, Lugnuts, and Dr. Blofeld were doing, since human error is reduced. FOARP (talk) 08:18, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Why doesn't Wikipedia require editors to be 13 or older?

Most websites with user interaction require the users to be 13 or older. I think that having a minimum age would somewhat reduce the amount of vandalism on the website. How come Wikipedia doesn't have a minimum age? Félix An (talk) 14:39, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I suppose you could ask people to state that they are 13 or older, such statements might not be true tho.Selfstudier (talk) 14:42, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

This is impossible to enforce. One can add such a clause to the terms of use, but vandals do nt care about terms of use anyway.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:43, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

"Most websites ..." Most vandals don't log in anyway. And readers can use accounts for other things than editing. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:56, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Websites do that because the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act limits what personal data can be collected from those under 13. Wikipedia is not in the habit of collecting information, so it doesn't have that particular age concern. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:02, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Not only does WP not actively collect the kind of user information that such laws and regulations are concerned about, we actually advise young Wikipedians to not reveal their age or other private information. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:06, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has no qualifications on who can edit other than accepting the terms of use. This is one of our founding principles. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:05, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Nobody should be pre-judged to be a vandal simply because of their age. And most vandalism by under 13s would not be very subtle, so would be easily spotted and reverted. It's the subtle, more hidden, vandalism that we need to worry about most, and most of that comes from older editors. If we are to ban people from editing because they might be a vandal we will have to ban everyone (even me, aged 63) from editing. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:50, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

As noted above, we don't really have a mechanism for enforcing an age verification requirement for WP editors on the scale suggested by the OP. We do have the WP:CIR guideline which in practice does weed out most very young editors. Personally I believe it would make sense to have a minimal age requirement for the admins, if only for legal reasons. Nsk92 (talk) 16:14, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Nsk92: there is such a requirement for Checkusers, Oversighters, and ArbCom members. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:04, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Félix An: why should it? A minimum age wouldn't reduce vandalism in the slightest, from what I can tell (I'm sure wanna-be 12-year-old vandals would just lie). Elli (talk | contribs) 21:04, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

The reason many websites have a requirement for the minimum age (13) is because of COPPA, which does not apply to Wikipedia as we do not collect, use, or disclose a user's age. Izno (talk) 23:02, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

For what it's worth (and this is peripheral), I believe that in the early days of Wikipedia there were administrators that were even younger than 13 and I can think of an incumbent who was 13 when they passed RfA. Questions of age of course come up in RfAs, with many voters unwilling to vote for minors. There's also the case of on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Sdrqaz (talk) 17:10, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Sdrqaz: Yes, see my comments at User talk:Iridescent/Archive 41#sidetrack-within-a-sidetrack on age. Graham87 10:10, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Ah, that's an interesting bit of history, Graham (with a bit of commentary regarding Malleus sprinkled in). Are you aware of any successful RfAs for minors in the "modern" era? I'm reminded of this 2015 RfA, which I had stumbled on a week or so ago, where about half of the opposes were about age (and the candidate was older than many of the more extreme examples too). Sdrqaz (talk) 12:41, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Sdrqaz: Nope, I don't know of any. Graham87 13:40, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I can't think of a recent succesful RFA by someone believed to be a minor, it would not surprise me if our youngest current admin is older than a teenager. There are two things that have made the community less open to adolescents in the last decade or so, the expectation to use inline citation, and a mobile platform that makes Wikipedia apig to edit on smartphones or tablets. This doesn't just give us a serious ethnicity skew, but we underrepseent the smartphone generation. ϢereSpielChequers 08:34, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: The smartphone generation of dedicated editors doesn't exist. While exceptions exist, smartphones are used by consumers of media and beyond photos and video not so much by creators. Wikipedia is a pig to edit on smartphones or tablets because those devices lack a physical keyboard. Nobody writes a book on a smartphone. They may fix a typo here and there, add a category or even a reference, but are much less likely to add a whole section. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:23, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: Writing on mobile isn't so bad: I've found that glide typing speeds it up and when you're used to typing on mobile, touch-typing is actually possible. The point about consumers of media seems about right, though. Sdrqaz (talk) 16:31, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

@Sdrqaz: I suppose you could get used to anything, but even on a netbook keyboard I would probably still beat you on both speed and accuracy. The problem isn't just the keyboard either: the screen on a tablet or large phone would be almost adequate, and for the consumption of media it essentially is, but when you start typing the keyboard takes up a large portion if not all of that screen. It may not be impossible to write text on a mobile device if you are trained in that, but anyone who really wants to write more than a short social media comment or fix a typo on WP is likely to ditch their mobile device for something with a physical keyboard. So to circle back, Wikipedia doesn't underrepresent the smartphone generation, smartphone users underrepresent Wikipedia. Which just makes sense. Fiat Pandas are fine everyday cars but underrepresented in stock car racing and that's unlikely to surprise anyone. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:37, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I have a Fiat Panda, and I have a smartphone. I'd rather edit Wikipedia with the Panda than with Wikipedia's mobile interface. DuncanHill (talk) 23:11, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

WereSpielChequers, that's interesting. I was thinking about it more in the sense of shifting RfA standards rather than a lack of representation. Personally, as a frequent "pure" mobile editor (using the mobile website, not the desktop site on a mobile à la Cullen), the interface is adequate (faint praise perhaps). You can't use Twinkle or RefToolbar without the Cullen method and it's difficult to have two windows open at once for better writing, but it's not as terrible as others say (the app on the other hand, is a different story). Inline citations can be done by having Template:Cite web open in another tab and copying the skeleton over or typing out the parameters manually once you've remembered it.

I would've thought that all things being equal (if we disregard the changing standards at RfA), the admin corps would have younger inductees than a decade ago because younger editors wouldn't have to wait their turn at the family computer and could just edit any time, any place.

Chequers, were the successful candidacies of minors because voters didn't care about their age or didn't know? Or maybe those who knew didn't publicise it so the rest of the voters didn't know? Sdrqaz (talk) 16:27, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

I have looked back on two RFAs from ladies who I'm pretty sure were young when they passed their RFA. One in 2010 was a close call in numbers, in hindsight my own oppose there was over harsh and I've since only opposed for faulty deletion tagging where I've found multiple mistakes. One of the opposes in that one was explicitly because she was a schoolkid, but no subsequent opposes mentioned that or the maturity word, and quite a few opposes were of the "you're almost there come back in a few months" type, which I doubt were ageist. In 2007 I found one where there was a neutral vote "I cannot bring myself to support someone so young" but the RFA passed 90 to 1. Which fits my memory that the community didn't used to see it as a problem to have very young admins. I can remember a couple of narrowly unsuccessful ones in 2009, one of which had several editors cite "maturity concerns", but in both cases there were recent mistakes. So I'd say the community used to knowingly appoint teenage admins. I have vague memories of a more recent RFA where expectation had become more common that admins should be legally adult. ϢereSpielChequers 20:50, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Interesting stuff, WereSpielChequers, thank you. I think I am aware of which 2007 RfA you're referring to; she unusually had a reconfirmation shortly after. Looking at a 13-year-old candidate in another, they sailed through with 98% support without anyone bringing up age, so I'm not sure if anyone else was aware of their age at the time. Maybe the one you're thinking about that was more recent was this 2015 one? It seems around half of the opposes were based on age. Sdrqaz (talk) 21:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Almost certainly it was, at 15 he was older than at least one of the uncontentious ones from a few years earlier and most of the age opposes were on the principle of his age - there was also a huge amount of kickback in the support column from people who rejected the ageism in the oppose column. I'm pretty sure something changed insde or outside the community in the intervening years to shift Eric Corbett's view from an outlier to a large enough minority to probably derail an RFA. The only thing I can think of that might account for the shift is the Catholic sex abuse scandal and the role of admins in keeping certain things off the pedia and having access to deleted edits. I will leave it to some future researcher to work out whether a group of editors changed their views on young candidates or if this was the RFA electorate changing. Or indeed that by 2015 the community no longer had many teenagers or at least teenage admins. But clearly things did change, and I doubt they have changed back. I think the RFA crowd has long been capable of spotting very young candidates. ϢereSpielChequers 07:25, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I recently came across a BLP article that was being actively vandalized by an IP who was repeatedly re-adding an obscene pornographic image to the article to the infobox instead of the photo of the subject. As I was reverting the IP, I saw that the IP got blocked, and then I received a nasty e-mail through my Wikipedia e-mail with a threat of violence. Shortly after I saw that the blocking admin revoked the IP's talk page and e-mail access (I assume the admin received a similar message). I am pretty sure that the responding admin in that case was an adult, but in general I think we should not be putting minors (e.g. 15-year-olds who happen to be admins) in the position of having to address these kinds of situations. Nsk92 (talk) 13:22, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• I think I remember one editor who made good edits to dinosaur articles was less than 13 when they started, so I'm not sure why we need to exclude them on that basis. FunkMonk (talk) 14:00, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
• I'm nine years old, in dog years. -Roxy the sycamore. wooF 14:03, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

  So, you admit to having made your first edit pre-conception. Please may I borrow your time machine? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:57, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

• Excluding those adolescents who obey rules such as don't edt until you are 13 won't lose us any vandals. It might lose us some goodfaith editors, and it might even attract some vandalism from adolescents who want to show that they can hit the edit button even though they shouldn't. So I don't see any benefit from this proposal, and there is a small disbenefit. ϢereSpielChequers 08:40, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

  Agree . If this were feasible to enforce, it'd be worth discussing. It's not, so it isn't. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:21, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

• In the US, COPPA applies to all personal data, even if voluntarily posted (contact info on a userpage for instance), if the operator is aware that the user is under 13. Nonprofits, however, are exempt. We follow best practices by oversighting such personal info when we come across it. –dlthewave ☎ 20:23, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

  Agree . RaptorLake (talk) 21:14, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

• In Europe, wouldn't Article 8 of the GDPR apply? Personal data is processed (IPs, email addresses). But I guess the WMF has figured this out with their lawyers. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:37, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Undisclosed alternate accounts

For purposes of this discussion, "undisclosed" can be taken to mean "not publicly declared" regardless of whether the account has been disclosed to ArbCom or to a CU, or was discovered without voluntary disclosure. This discussion is aimed at "privacy alts", secondary accounts created for editing certain topic areas the user would prefer not to edit from their primary account.

Background

Since the early days of the English Wikipedia, there has been a tradition or custom of some users having either known or undisclosed alternate accounts. This has held over to some extent into the modern era of the project and is enshrined in policy at WP:VALIDALT. Publicly disclosed alternate accounts are fully free to edit in any way with few restrictions, however WP:PROJSOCK states that undisclosed accounts may not edit the Wikipedia namespace. English Wikipedia is something of an outlier in this regard, many other WMF projects regard undisclosed alternate accounts as illegitimate sock puppets. Therefore, behavior that is technically acceptable at EN.WP can have serious consequences if practiced on many other WMF wikis. Existing policy makes it clear that private disclosure to ArbCom or individual functionaries does not allow for policy violations, but this is often misunderstood by users and can lead to frustration both on the side of users and of CheckUsers.

Issues

• A blanket ban on undisclosed alternative accounts editing project space results in a situation where content created by an alt could be under discussion, for example via WP:AFD, or the user's behavior may be under discussion at forums such as WP:ANI and by the letter of current policy, the user cannot participate in those discussions at all.
• Only the Arbitration Committee has access to the list of known undisclosed alternative accounts. This information is considered private and generally cannot be shared, even with checkusers. This means a user could have disclosed their alt account to the committee, only to be blocked for socking, and the connection between the accounts publicly revealed, in the course of a legitimate sockpuppet investigation.
• There is not actually a hard obligation to disclose alternative accounts at all, to anyone. It is therefore likely that the accounts known to the arbitration committee or individual checkusers are mostly those who would not abuse them anyway, and represent only a small portion of the total number of such accounts.
• There is no reasonable way to police all the edits of all known alternative accounts to ensure they are within policy.

Proposed remedies

• Not anyone else's problem Change language of policy to actively discourage using privacy alts and to make it clear that if the connection is discovered it is not the responsibility of the community, the functionaries or the Arbitration Committee to conceal it. If the connection is made clear by the privacy alt's behavior, that is the fault of the account operator.
• Clarify WP:PROJSOCK: Carve out narrow exemptions to the project space ban for deletion discussions related to content created or edited by the alt account, or discussions of the alt accounts' own behavior. Broader discussions on site policy, other users behavior, etc, are still strictly off limits.
• No longer allowed at all: The use of privacy alts is to be considered deprecated and removed from policy. Any user operating more than one account without publicly linking them for any reason will be subject to the sockpuppetry policy. This would not apply to legitimate clean start accounts where one account was abandoned before the new account began editing. (this option is mutually exclusive with the other proposed options)

Discussion of proposed remedies

• I've opened this discussion because some recent events have revealed a number of issues, identified above, with the policy on private alternative accounts. The first remedy in particular I feel pretty strongly about. Privacy alts are at-your-own-risk. If you screw it up and are detected, whoever you disclosed to can verify that you disclosed an alt to them, but that doesn't obligate that user to then cover up the entire affair. Generally, private alt accounts are just a bad idea, and we should probably be more stringent in discouraging them, and also making it clear that disclosing is not a free pass to otherwise violate the socking policy. On the second remedy, it's just not fair that we allow these accounts for privacy reasons, but by the letter of policy they cannot contribute to any project-space discussion, even if it is about their own behavior or content they created. The third remedy, I threw in there in case it happens that the community just wants to end this practice altogether, as many other projects have. I've not proposed specific wording, this is more about looking for consensus on the ideas, the wordsmiths can get in there and create the appropriate wording if such a consensus is reached. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:15, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  Beeblebrox, Thanks for starting this discussion. I suspect it will attract enough attention that maybe you want to break it out into its own subpage? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:23, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

• One thing I'd like to see added to option 2 is permitting undisclosed alts to ask questions at appropriate venues (Teahouse, Help Desk, that sort of thing), since the letter of the law says those are projectspace but those aren't exactly policymaking venues. People also ask legitimate questions at the village pumps, but I'm not sure whether to include those in this exception since those are more "internal project policy discussion" venues. GeneralNotability (talk) 22:17, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
• Question: I understand the reasons for public alt accounts (such as having an alt for public computers or at work), but what are the reasons (in the past, at least) for allowing undisclosed/private alt accounts? Schazjmd (talk) 22:21, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

I would like to know this too. I don't have an issue with undisclosed alt accounts that would out someone who isn't paid but if you don't want to potentially connect yourself to your employer, a simple solution is to not edit about them. No one is forcing you to and conversely, no one is forcing you to edit Wikipedia at all. TAXIDICAE💰 22:27, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

See the comment directly below for one example. Often it's a matter of not wishing to "out"some specfic aspect of their life, either something mundane as mentioned below, or perhaps editing controversial topics on religion or sexual practices. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:32, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Schazjmd: that's a good question. The common old-school example for why someone would have a "secret" alt is to edit embarrassing subjects, e.g. certain sexuality topics. Another possibility is to edit a topic, which editing with the main account may compromise the user's privacy. Another possibility could be an existing Wikipedia editor having assigned coursework that involves editing Wikipedia, and would not want that associated with the main account, either from either side so to say (on-wiki in terms of an association with a given university, or having university colleagues know the existence of the main account). In some cases there are real-world implications in that Wikipedia editors may experience trouble with local authorities as a result of certain edits.

At the end of the day we are a project that permits pseudonymous editors. Short of running certain mass checkusers—something that is a non-starter as far as the privacy policy goes—we ought to accept that there is not much one can do about someone using two accounts to edit separate topics. Of course, there are obvious deceptive uses of multiple accounts; think of vote-stacking an AfD or cases where a banned user uses multiple accounts to evade the ban to continue the same disruption that led to the ban. That said, it ought to be considered whether the simple fact of using an alternate account is somehow a problem. Maxim_(talk) 23:34, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

• I hope the third suggestion isn't going to be taken seriously. I have a some photos I've been meaning to add to a few articles when I get around to it. These photos could be traced back to my real-world identity. Should I really have to choose between adding the photos, and outing myself? Because I see no other way to add the photos than create a "privacy alt". Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:24, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I assumed someone would propose it during the course of the conversation, so I just put it out there. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:32, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  Suffusion of Yellow, regardless of the above changes, using a separate account only to upload pictures shouldn't put you at any risk. Blocking someone for using multiple accounts requires behavioural evidence (with or without technical evidence), so the chance of someone connecting those two accounts is practically zero. (Yes, mistakes happen, and checkusers occasionally run checks they shouldn't, but that's also why oversight exists.) – bradv🍁 23:27, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  It doesn't matter whether you would be caught for uploading the images. It matters that it's against the rules. I've been in similar cases to Suffusion of Yellow and agree that the third suggestion is ludicrous. If there is a common use case of people evading a rule with no harm done, no way of detection and in a way that nobody could possibly object to then it is a bad rule. Though in my case it would actually stop me uploading pictures altogether, because I would follow the rule even if it's pointless and unenforceable (too high consequences for too low a reward). (And though Commons isn't under our scope, this soft redirect and the fact I have used or would use an en.wiki account to add the uploaded images to articles means that this is our jurisdiction.) — Bilorv (talk) 12:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

• I would really only support 2 as worded, and could support 1 if language about "actively discouraging" is removed. I've never used an alternate account, but I respect that others may find it necessary. I agree that no one is ever under any obligation to keep knowledge of someone else's secondary account secret, HOWEVER, I also can understand legitimate reasons to use a secondary account. We should still discourage good hand/bad hand accounts, or similar purposes, such as participating in policy discussions while concealing prior activity on Wikipedia, but I do agree that exceptions need to be allowed for when the alternate account has itself an interest in the discussion, such as AFDs for articles where the account is a contributor. However, Wikipedia should neither encourage nor discourage the use of private alts with the only caveat that actual violations of community trust are likely to have consequences. --Jayron32 22:35, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
• (This thread moved from its own section originally entitled A difficult example): Let's assume I'm a member of International Flat Earth Research Society, and I've made many posts edits from my personal account (with a non-PII account name) espousing this viewpoint, including vigorous participation in AfDs and other WP-namespace pages. In my day job, I'm employed by NASA where my job responsibilities include computing trajectories for space missions. I haven't told my employer of my flat earth beliefs because that knowledge would impact my career advancement. Assume for the moment that despite my private views, I'm good at my job. One day, my boss comes to me and says, "We need a WP:Wikipedian in Residence to curate articles about NASA, and you're it. Your job responsibilities will include being active in discussions about what articles to keep or delete". The "No longer allowed at all" option would put me in a bind. There's no way I can perform my job without either breaking our socking policy or outing myself to my employer. If you don't like my NASA example, I'm sure you can think of similar situations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 22:41, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  Aside from the absolute absurdity of this example, your career advancement isn't Wikipedia's problem, nor should it ever be. You can turn down a WIR or come clean - transparency is key here. You don't have to dox yourself by adding your full name or even first name. Disclosure doesn't require identifying yourself. WIR is another matter and not really relevant to this discussion. TAXIDICAE💰 22:47, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  Praxidicae, Why is the example absurd? We have many examples of people who edit as a requirement of their employment. A department in a University wanting every faculty member to have a wikipedia page and assigning that job to some low-level person in the department office. We've seen that scenario multiple times. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:56, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  And that person is welcome to decline that request from their employer if it would violate the sites terms of use for the same reason an employer demanding an employee break a law or policy should be declined. No one forces you to edit as a volunteer or a paid editor and our policy is already clear enough on that. TAXIDICAE💰 23:25, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  RoySmith, in this case you could just stop editing from your previous account. Using serial accounts does not constitute sockpuppetry, unless you are subject to a block or ban. – bradv🍁 23:15, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  But what if they are subject to block or other restriction. Continuing the NASA example, our theoretical editor (let's called them Tarquin) is presumably a generally good contributor and net positive to the encyclopaedia but perhaps they are topic banned from editing articles about the phantom time hypothesis or they have a mutual interaction ban with another user? If Tarquin just stayed away from those topics/editors we probably wouldn't be any the wiser, but it would be a breach of policy and obviously the other party to the interaction ban would not know to stay away from the new account. Thryduulf (talk) 01:28, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  If someone is subject to a ban they shouldn't be creating a new account or accepting a paid editing position – especially not without being fully transparent with both their employer and the editing community. That's currently prohibited by both our sockpuppetry policy and our paid editing policy, and none of the proposed changes above would alter that. – bradv🍁 02:07, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Thryduulf: I think you could have picked a better example for a username. :-) That user's very familiar to me for his early work in mathematics and classical music articles. I don't think I ever spoke to Tarquin personally but his name is very familiar to me in page histories and on old talk pages. I hope he'd be as amused by this as I am; I've mentioned it on his talk page. Graham87 08:46, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  In a paid WiR role, you are already mandated to disclose your alternative accounts under current policy Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure#How to disclose: "paid editors must provide links to the user page(s) of their Wikipedia account(s) on each website on which they advertise, solicit or obtain paid editing services, as well as in direct communications with each client and potential client (such as through email). If the paid editor has used or controlled more than one Wikipedia account, each account must be disclosed." This was added in a recent RfC. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:17, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  Whether and to what extent that applies to Wikipedians in residence is not at all clear. It is also completely and utterly unenforceable because we can (and should) never know the contents of all private communication, as was pointed out repeatedly when it was proposed. I'm also dubious that stipulating the content of communication between employer and (potential) client is something that it is even legal for a third party to place restrictions on. Thryduulf (talk) 01:01, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

• I explained my concerns with WP:PROJSOCK elsewhere. I can only see what I can read from the history, so perhaps someone who was actually there knows the context better and can point out any errors, but its current enforcement doesn't make sense to me. Most illegitimate uses are obvious why they're disallowed; you can't use multiple accounts to pretend to be multiple people in a way that bolsters your position, avoids scrutiny, or deceives editors. But PROJSOCK isn't intuitive in the same way. It's cited to an ArbCom case from 2007 where the evidence was an editor abusing multiple accounts to participate in policy discussions whilst avoiding scrutiny. The community appears to have narrowly worded it to this (and similar variants) for years after the case, clarifying that Alternate accounts should not edit policies, guidelines, or their talk pages; comment in Arbitration proceedings; or vote in requests for adminship, deletion debates, or elections. That all makes sense, and directly follows from the case evidence too. Then in 2014 someone boldly edited the page to the vaguer "quote[] from the underlying Arbcom decision" which says Undisclosed alternative accounts are not to be used in discussions internal to the project. As a reader, discussions internal to the project is ambiguous whether it means a namespace ban or (indeed, as the original interpretation appears to have been) just consensus discussions, and a Wikipedia namespace ban doesn't logically follow from the evidence in that case. Asking questions in venues (including WP:VPT, which whilst is a "village pump", it's used for asking questions not consensus discussions on making policy) is totally fine, for example. That 2014 edit, at least as interpreted now, appears to have been a material change. Was there a discussion leading up to that? Why is the WP namespace more of a problem than any other NS? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:44, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
• (based on your old sandbox I've presumed option 1 includes CUs disclosing connections) Presumably users can be subject to discretionary checks for various reasons, and the CU policy is rather vague on what is grounds for a check. So, reading that option now, a discretionary check could result in a privacy account popping out (possibly already disclosed to ArbCom which the CU wasn't aware about, but even if not we don't treat ignorance of policy as deliberate attempts to violate policy), so the CU goes ahead and links the two accounts publicly. So basically you'd have CUs outing editors, with solid technical evidence to dispel any doubt too. Which just isn't fair on its face. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:57, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
• My tenure on the Arbitration Committee, and as a checkuser, made me aware of plenty of situations where the use of an alternative account was the only legitimate way to continue participating on the project. I also saw any number of situations where legitimate use strayed into illegitimate. This was often by accident, but if someone sees that slip, the cat is not getting back in the bag. The conflict between alternative accounts and Wikipedia's commitment to transparency is unresolvable. I'll defer to the current committee on whether they think the present system is sustainable. Personally, I wouldn't want to be entrusted with that information, and if I were seeking to avoid scrutiny and still edit Wikipedia (a difficult task), I would be loath to disclose that information to anyone. Mackensen (talk) 23:01, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

  Mackensen, I've just noticed that you were part of the Committee that passed the principle that led to PROJSOCK (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings § Sockpuppetry). What was the reasoning behind it? The first two sentences are intuitive, but I don't understand that final restriction. Pinging those members of the Committee.​​​​​​​ Sdrqaz (talk) 21:57, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Sdrqaz wow, what a fucked up thing {{bcc}} is. How in the living hell is a recipient supposed to know where on the page they've been bcc'd? Otherwise, my opinion about sockpuppetry (I hate that term) is the same it was back then: "Should be generally forbidden. Wikipedia is not a role-playing game." But I wasn't going to win that argument, which is why I've divorced myself from all involvement in Wikipedia policy; I'm a sore loser.--jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 00:56, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry about that, jpgordon. I only use it when I feel there are too many people being pinged. Thanks for sharing your opinion on sockpuppetry. Sdrqaz (talk) 17:12, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Sdrqaz, I don't think we thought we were saying anything new. See for example my comments at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings/Workshop#Alternate accounts: The use of an alternate account to stir up policy debates while the main account does something different has never been acceptable on Wikipedia. Sockpuppetry was understood to mean the abuse of multiple accounts; using multiple accounts non-abusively was frowned on but not banned. Maintaining a burner to stir things up on policy pages evaded accountability. Mackensen (talk) 23:22, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Sdrqaz, that said, this was apparently a controversial assertion at the time (I'm sure I knew that once, but I'd forgotten). See Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings/Proposed decision#Principle 3 concerning sockpuppet policy. Mackensen (talk) 23:27, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  I was pinged into this discussion. The contentious issue seems to be the natural justice of excluding undisclosed private accounts from the Wikipedia: namespace. My reaction here is "too bad". I would keep the principle, and just note that there may be mitigating circumstances for such editing. On the whole we want to know that users edit in good faith from single accounts in internal discussions, and I find said "restriction" natural at the level of ArbCom principles. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:12, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, Mackensen and Charles. Mackensen, wouldn't such abuse fall under the "avoiding scrutiny" part of policy? I don't think PROJSOCKing should be encouraged (and the maintenance of accounts in the Privatemusings case arguably falls under that avoidance), but a blanket ban doesn't sit well with me. Sdrqaz (talk) 17:12, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

• I would prefer that PROJSOCK be modified. There are cases where a privacy alt is useful. Just because we are not censored, does not mean the world is the same. They can be particularly useful in maintaining sexual health articles. A recent example is the RfD's for Tiny penis. It's reasonable to not want that at the top of your contribution history, and as long as the editor is not being deceptive or behaving in a way that will get them sus'd out, we should allow privacy alts in discussions of that nature and not actively discourage their use. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:24, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
• I generally back proposal 2. There are reasons for private accounts. While editors obviously can't be obliged to "cover it up", that does not mean that we have to pick an all or nothing approach. For example, a sockpuppet investigation could have the details revdelled if it was agreed no breach had occurred, but required major disclosure to demonstrate it. We wouldn't be any worse off, other than a few minutes of admin clerk time. Some minor amendments to the nature of proposal 2 to include helpdesks and so on in the exemption also seems reasonable. I had originally wondered "why not just switch back to the main account to ask", but realised that certain questions would require enough specificity to accidentally twin the accounts. One additional change I'd propose would be formally authorise ARBCOM to share details on private alts with CUs Nosebagbear (talk) 23:52, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
• If never the two accounts shall meet, why should we care? Absent seeking significant bits, is it really an issue if an editor manages to successfully maintain two alternate wiki personalities for years on end? The risks should be disclosed up front (option 1) and from there on, it should be on the editor to ensure the two personalities are never in the same venue. Once they catch the eye of a CU AND violate policy, then public revelation may be a consequence (though pointing to things like WP:BLP, we have expressed an aversion to exposure that could lead to real-world harm of subjects, though guess editors do not get the same courtesy). In short, it seems like we shouldn't be playing a game of gotcha until/unless pseudo-anonymity is not a core policy of en-wiki. Slywriter (talk) 00:07, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
• A modified option 2 (with the warnings from option 1) is really the only practical option here, but instead of minor amendments it should be rewritten wholesale to focus exclusively on detailing what activities and behaviours are prohibited. For example we want editors to be able to highlight problems and potential problems with articles/project pages/technical issues, we want them to be able to respond to queries about their editing, we want them to be able to ask questions aimed at improving their editing, etc. We don't want them to misrepresent themselves as more than one person, we don't want them to !vote multiple times in a discussion, we don't want them evading sanctions, etc. All of these things are equally desirable or not desirable regardless of what namespace they happen to occur in. Asking for help on an article talk page is no different to asking for help at a Wikiproject page or the teahouse, discussing the reliability of a source on an article talk page is no different to discussing the reliability of a source at WP:RSN. Discussing changes to a template used on user pages is unquestionably a "discussion internal to the project" but I see no possible justification for excluding privacy alts from such a discussion, doubly so if they are excluded if the discussion happens in the Wikipedia namespace but not if it happens in the template talk namespace. If there are certain discussions such users need to be excluded from (and I'm having difficulty thinking of any) then we need to detail what those discussions are and importantly why they excluded (people are more likely to abide by rules they understand the purpose of that rules they don't). Thryduulf (talk) 01:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
• I was writing something up, then Thryduulf put it in a far more elegant manner. I have no objection to private secondary accounts editing project space and would scrap PROJSOCK entirely. The standard provisions under WP:BADSOCK would apply, such as voting twice in the same AfD (though that would defeat the point of a "private" secondary account), voting twice in the same discussion, editing the same articles etc. Sdrqaz (talk) 01:24, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Sdrqaz, I'm trying to think of any truly problematic behaviour that is prohibited under PROJSOCK but isn't covered by one of the other provisions, and I can't think of any. Scrapping that line entirely may, in fact, be the most straightforward solution. – bradv🍁 02:09, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, Bradv. I'm open to changing my mind if someone puts forth a good argument, but I'm pleasantly surprised by how commenters so far are viewing it – I had thought mine would be a minority opinion due to a desire for transparency. Sdrqaz (talk) 17:56, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

• Scrapping WP:PROJSOCK sounds good, given that all of the areas where editing project space creates problems appear to be dealt with by other restrictions. Tamwin (talk) 07:02, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
• I agree that WP:PROJSOCK should be scrapped. As written, it doesn't make much sense because it may not be clear which account is the alternate and which is the primary. And it's not clear what "discussions internal to the project" means or why this matters. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:56, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
• Scrap WP:PROJSOCK. The whole thing has contradicted Wikipedia:Clean start outright for years, even though the latter is policy (rather than essay). The only things we need to stop alternate accounts doing is evading scrutiny, bypassing editing restrictions and creating a false illusion of support for an action (and anything else uncontroversial I'm forgetting off the top of my head). Our rules here are ludicrous. Let's say someone edits as a child and gives away a bit too much personal information (not enough to dox, just enough for them to be concerned that combined with the topic of their edits or time zone or something else, it's enough to not wish to be public). Let's say that someone copies and pastes the wrong text without noticing, it's personal information and by the time it can be oversighted they're scared someone has seen and saved it. Or someone drunkenly writes something with stupidly much information. All three of these people have the choice between losing all right to privacy or never editing Wikipedia properly again (just mainspace edits is not "properly"). People here are underestimating how much information editors can unintentionally give away in behavioural evidence such as subject knowledge contributions, timestamps of edits, edits about localised topics etc., and how much some people value privacy. If an experienced editor wanted a new account just to stop the behavioural evidence piling high enough that they could be targeted then that's a plenty good enough reason.
  If someone starts an SPI based on a valid alt then you need to contact them by email or contact a CU/SPI clerk by email and explain the situation. The SPI should then be dropped, with the closure written to create as little suspicion as possible. Tough situation with no ideal solution but it's better than nothing. If you think your alt is now unusable because of the connection drawn, even though the SPI was thrown out, then start a new valid alt. — Bilorv (talk) 12:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Bilorv, creating a new account, as long as the old one was not under some sort of sanction or block, is not and has never been sockpuppetry and does not violate PROJSOCK. It's only sockpuppetry (and that includes PROJSOCK) if you operate multiple accounts simultaneously. GeneralNotability (talk) 19:46, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  @GeneralNotability: says who? WP:SOCK says "The general rule is one editor, one account", "sockpuppetry, or socking, refers to the misuse of multiple Wikipedia accounts", "Editors must not use alternative accounts to mislead, deceive, disrupt, or undermine consensus" etc. No mention of whether you're operating them simultaneously. PROJSOCK says, in full, "Undisclosed alternative accounts are not to be used in discussions internal to the project", correct? The page doesn't define "alternative" but I've always taken it to mean "second or subsequent account created" (with complications in the case of IP editing). If that's not the case and I've not overlooked a definition, then it needs properly defining. It also seems to me that a counterexample to your comment is that WP:BADSOCK explicitly lists "Misusing a clean start", a term specifically referring to a new account operating never in conjunction with an old account, as an instance of sanctionable sockpuppetry. (Though this bullet point is almost the exact opposite of CLEANSTART, as the main use of a clean start is when you think you've been messing up and you want a chance to leave that baggage behind i.e. avoid some types of scrutiny. Another one to remove entirely.) I think we need a lot of discussions about how to rectify the many contradictions within SOCK and itself, and SOCK and CLEANSTART, and removing PROJSOCK is one of the things I would like to happen. — Bilorv (talk) 20:42, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Bilorv, further down the page, under WP:SOCKLEGIT: Clean start under a new name: A clean start is when a user stops using an old account in order to start afresh with a new account, usually due to past mistakes or to avoid harassment. A clean start is permitted only if there are no active bans, blocks, or sanctions in place against the old account. (some further details follow that quote, but that's the gist). Also, If you are unable to access your account because you have lost the password or because someone has obtained or guessed your password, you may create a new account with a clean password. SPIs are routinely declined because the reported accounts operated sequentially. I concede that both of those say you're supposed to mark the old account as retired or (for lost-password cases) publicly declare the connection between accounts. With lost-password scenarios, however, odds are that the editor in question didn't actually read the sockpuppetry rules when they got locked out and created a new account, so that is fairly loosely enforced. GeneralNotability (talk) 21:11, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  @GeneralNotability: I'm struggling to see which of this text supports the claim creating a new account, as long as the old one was not under some sort of sanction or block, is not and has never been sockpuppetry, or which of it refutes any of the statements I made. — Bilorv (talk) 21:23, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Bilorv, apologies, it's actually the context of those sentences (the fact that they're under WP:SOCKLEGIT, which is the section "Legitimate uses") which supports the claim. The heading of that section, in part, says Alternative accounts have legitimate uses. For example, editors who contribute using their real name may wish to use a pseudonym for contributions with which they do not want their real name to be associated (...) These accounts are not considered sockpuppets. and then goes on to list examples of legitimate alternative accounts, two of which I quoted in my previous post. I do, however, quibble with the terminology of "alternative accounts" since that (to me) implies the use of more than one account at the same time. GeneralNotability (talk) 21:35, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  @GeneralNotability: thanks, I think I understand better where you're coming from now, though I can't agree that the policy as written supports your claim. On the other hand, I think I agree that it should be written in a way that makes the claim unambiguously true. There are lots of problems here—"Inappropriate uses of alternative accounts" is including things which maybe don't fit the letter of this definition of "sockpuppet", but it's labelled WP:BADSOCK and everyone uses this as a list of sockpuppet behaviour. This definition of "These accounts are not consider sockpuppets" follows the section, rather than preceding it, and still leaves a lot of terminology specification to be desired. This is the sort of thing I'm referring to about SOCK contradicting itself—I suppose the base issue here is that I've been here 7 years and read the page dozens of times and I don't feel I understand clearly where the boundaries are. In general I don't like legalese and bureaucracy, but I do think we're doing a huge disservice to anyone navigating alternate accounts (or IP and logged-in editing) in good faith because they need to be able to say: here is an ironclad justification for my actions and if I ever have to defend them, here is unambiguous policy as written at the time I made these decisions. Or they need to know: actually, I can't do this, and here's the unambiguous reason why. — Bilorv (talk) 21:56, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  The more this discussion goes on and the closer I look at all the policies the more I see what a complete mess they are. Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry could do with a complete top-to-bottom rewrite to increase clarity, remove contradictions, and present everything in a logical order. For example several of the bullets under inappropriate uses are different examples of appearing as multiple people, there should just be a single prohibition on doing that with an non-exhaustive list of examples. Thryduulf (talk) 21:44, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  Absolutely, this is part of the point I'm trying to make (though I think I'm muddling it partly because I don't even understand what the rules are and aren't, so I struggle to suggest concretely what new version to change to). — Bilorv (talk) 21:56, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

  @GeneralNotability: Question: Say you got a 14 year old doing some silly stuff and gets themselves indeffed. 4 years later they decide to give Wikipedia another try. Obviously it's not ideal to be continuing an account where one was adding obscenities to articles or something. So... they're expected to get an unblock on their main account, and then mark it as retired and then create a new one? If they've lost the password to the original, they're expected to reset it. If they've lost the email, then...? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:24, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Just to clarify the point a bit: I strongly oppose all three of the proposed remedies and feel they are a step backwards from the already inadequate status quo, though (1) is the least objectionable. — Bilorv (talk) 20:42, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

• 1 or 3 are my preferred solutions. --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 13:47, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
• Scrap WP:PROJSOCK. I can't think of any behavior we want to disallow which isn't already covered by one of the other bullet points in WP:ILLEGIT. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:39, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
• Scrap PROJSOCK per the others. Otherwise oppose all three options. Levivich ^harass/_hound 15:44, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
• Keep PROJSOCK, but can clarify; 1 and 3 are preferred I largely agree with Guerillero on this (also courtesy ping to Risker for some history on the topic.) I am fine with clarification on PROJSOCK that people can validly use it to comment on discussions directly relevant to them, but that isn't a reason to throw our the baby with the bathwater.
  There are several reasons behind PROJSOCK, but one of the main ones is that it provides a clear line for individuals rather than the rather ambiguous avoidance of scrutiny line, which is open to interpretation. As an example of where these would be issues:

1. People commenting on AE or ANI cases related to individuals they have a known negative relationship with. This prevents the closer from weighting arguments (grudges are fair to consider), and has the effect of potentially preventing sanctions on a main account (i.e. IBAN.) Even if only one account comments, this is an issue.
2. Potential harassment concerns following users around in project space that they don't like from disputes elsewhere. Even if there is not any double voting, this is still an illegitimate use of multiple accounts. It is significantly harder to deal with, however, if there is not a clear prohibition.
3. Concealing behaviour on internal discussions that might not be sanctionable but would have a negative impact on someone's position within the community -- if you're an archinclusionist or archdeletionist with positions way outside of the community norm and use a "privacy alt" to comment on AfDs this is an abuse of multiple accounts. If you request permissions at NPR and it is clear that you do not have an understanding of the notability policy that is in line with the community's it will be denied. If you run for RfA and you have positions on any number of topics that show a clear disconnect with community consensus, you will not pass RfA. All of these are forms of evasion of scrutiny that erode community trust, and are abuses of multiple accounts, but without PROJSOCK would be much more difficult to deal with.

We are an online community and part of that is about trust. If you don't know that the person who you are talking to is not commenting in a completely absurd and abusive manner 10 minutes later, or at least have reasonable assurances that they aren't, trust will go down hill. Many other Wikimedia projects do not allow secondary accounts at all. Updating our policy to allow people to essentially have as many personalities as they want in project space, and have ways to Wikilawyer out of it as the policy would be unclear is a clear negative, and would set us up with Commons to be one of the projects most open to abuse. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:32, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Hmm... On #2, surely hounding is hounding anywhere (why is it any better to be following an editor around on article talk or template talk pages?). On #3, surely we shouldn't make policy that affects many editors for the sake of the dozen per year that want to run RfA (who can be asked to disclose individually?). Also, general note, aren't 1/3 not mutually exclusive with 2? Seems like Beeble has pointed out multiple issues, and even if PROJSOCK is adjusted (in whatever direction) the 'issues' about CUs not knowing declared alt accounts, or the infeasibility of policing edits (whether in WP: or any other namespace) remains. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:15, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

TonyBallioni, The problem is, this is conflating "internal discussions that affect project policy" with "Wikipedia namespace". Given that we do allow privacy socks, surely you're not arguing that WP:Teahouse should be off-limits? Is asking for help on Help talk:Footnotes OK, but not on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources?

If a privacy sock is dragged to WP:AN, can they defend themselves there? Or if one of their articles is nominated at WP:AfD, can they participate in that discussion? Would it be OK to protest a WP:PROD, because that happens in article Talk space, but once you've done that and somebody takes the next step and brings it to AfD, you're stuck?

And what about WP:DYK, WP:GA, WP:FA? Are those fair game for privacy socks? DYK reviews take place mostly in Template space, GA in article Talk space, and FA in Wikipedia space. Does that mean that DYK and GA are OK, but FA is not?

What about participating in wikiprojects? They're in Wikipedia space. Would our hapless NASA employee from my earlier example be barred from participating in WP:Wikiproject Flat Earth? Maybe that's off-limits but Portal:Flat Earth is fine?

What about drafts? Can they review submissions in Draft space, but not add their name to Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants?

Your goal is to ensure that privacy socks don't get to speak with multiple voices at discussions that drive project policy. That's a laudable goal, but outlawing the subset of pages that happen to fall into the Wikipedia namespace does not advance that goal. By the time you're done carving out all these exemptions, the bright line you seek will have gotten rather blurry. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:47, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Your goal is to ensure that privacy socks don't get to speak with multiple voices at discussions that drive project policy. No. That is not my goal, and my entire response above was saying it doesn't matter if people only contribute once to each discussion if they are doing so in a way that is designed to avoid scrutiny and deceive the community. My goal is to prevent evasion of scrutiny by people using multiple accounts, because evasion of scrutiny destroys trust on a collaborative project, which is one of the driving principles of our policy on the abuse of multiple accounts.

The reason why Wikipedia space in particular matters is because the only reason to use a second account in the Wikipedia namespace outside of limited discussions about content (RSN, AfD, and FA mainly) is to avoid scrutiny. It's to separate personalities, and not cause you to associate actions from one with the other. Unless your dealing with sexually deviant materials or other similar controversial topics, there really isn't a valid reason to want to have privacy on your project space discussions other than evasion of scrutiny

Which leads us to the final point: clear lines addressed with common sense are easier to enforce than ambiguous policy. No one is currently being blocked for commenting on the Tea House or in DYK or the like with a second account. CUs and SPI clerks have brains and are able to determine intent. If you remove a clear prohibition, that becomes much harder to figure out, and appeals become more difficult. Ambiguity on what constitutes "Avoidance of scrutiny" isn't helpful, and by keeping one line that clearly defines it for everyone, you help people know what is and isn't allowed and you help with enforcement. We're dealing with hypotheticals about the negatives, there are some heavy handed blocks, but they're pretty rare for this violation. The positives of this line when it comes to enforcement, however, are pretty huge. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:18, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

"by keeping one line that clearly defines it for everyone" Except the current single line doesn't clearly define it for everyone (otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion). In addition to RSN, FA, AfD there are the village pumps (this one arguably excluded), the help desk, WikiProject pages, XfDs (especially related to pages they've contributed to with the alt account), RFU, RFHM, ITNC, TALKPP and similar projects, AN(I) when their behaviour is being discussed or they are the victim of others' bad behaviour, CCI, EFR, EFFP, EAR, Arbitration space for cases relevant to the pages they edit with the alt, RFA/RFB for someone they've interacted with in topics they edit using their alt, and likely many more I've not heard of. Yet the current wording does not do anything to stop someone developing multiple account personalities in discussions that happen to occur in places other than the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces. By saying "CUs and SPI clerks have brains and are able to determine intent." you seem to be agreeing with me that what matters is the intent of the person, so surely the rules should be written to state that what matters is the intent not the venue? "The positives of this line when it comes to enforcement, however, are pretty huge." I've not seen a single good enforcement of this rule that was not also covered by other existing provisions so I completely disagree with you that "The positives of this line when it comes to enforcement, however, are pretty huge."Thryduulf (talk) 18:19, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

• Keep PROJSOCK, leaning option 1 – essentially per Tony. Abolishing PROJSOCK would require us to replace it with a huge wall of text explaining what exactly constitutes evasion of scrutiny in projectspace. Yes, there's a reasonable argument to be made for split contribution histories in articlespace in some cases. But independently using two accounts to participate in behind-the-scenes community processes inherently makes it impossible for me to evaluate someone's conduct as an editor in context, and that is poison for community discourse. If carveouts and clarifications are needed, that's fine and we can discuss those, but deprecation of PROJSOCK would either lead to ballooning policy or socking galore. As for my take on option 1: The current system of is suboptimal because it presents us with complicated OUTING considerations – I'm not opposed to people using alts to edit controversial topics (in articlespace) per se, but using them in a way that's policy-compliant and disconnected from their main account should be the responsibility of the operator. --Blablubbs|talk 09:39, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Blablubbs and TonyBallioni: Why is projectspace special? Why is evading scrutiny on a page in the Wikipedia namespace different to evading scrutiny anywhere else? Why is, e.g. Wikipedia:Help desk a "behind-the-scenes community process" but e.g. Help talk:Citation Style 1 not? Why would we need a "huge wall of text explaining what exactly constitutes evasion of scrutiny"? Surely it is better to just prohibit "evading scrutiny" and list some examples so that we don't have to deal with wikilawyering? Thryduulf (talk) 11:08, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, the Help Desk is one of the places I would consider carveout-worthy. What is special are places like AfD, AN(/I), AE or RFAR. The issue with relying only on the evasion of scrutiny clause is that it will lead to Wikilawyering either way. It inevitably provokes situations where people say "but it wasn't one of the listed examples" and we have to have drawn-out unblock discussions and AN threads about what is and isn't evasion of scrutiny. I'd argue that most scenarios where someone uses a privacy alt in community discussions are inherently scrutiny evasion; a blanket ban on PROJsocking with specific, narrow exceptions is more feasible. Blablubbs|talk 11:18, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Even if we say something like PROJSOCK is required, "consensus discussions and conduct dispute resolution" seems to encompass all of those examples, and others. The average projectspace page is just not problematic, from WikiProject talk pages to bot/editfilter requests. Even the text I cite is questionable, as asking whether a source is reliable at RSN could be seen as a "consensus discussion" but is just not problematic. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:25, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Also, what if a privacy alt is being harassed? They can't post to ANI, so what's their recourse? Should they contact an admin privately? (if so, how do you communicate this to them? using the ANI banner that evidence shows few actually read?) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:34, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Blablubbs: So a privacy alt is not allowed to contribute to a discussion at XfD about a page they are a significant contributor to? What benefit to the project does that bring? As long as they only contribute using one of their accounts and don't otherwise give the impression of being multiple people, I just cannot see how their actions are harmful? As for "but it wasn't one of the listed examples" it's much much harder to wikilawyer around a list of examples that is explicitly not a complete list than it is a list that purports to be complete. Thryduulf (talk) 11:54, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  I'll reply with two quotes from Tony's comment that I'm in full agreement with. As for noticeboards and AfD discussions:

  • I am fine with clarification on PROJSOCK that people can validly use it to comment on discussions directly relevant to them, but that isn't a reason to throw our the baby with the bathwater. Whether we want to keep the wording as "projectspace", or tweak it to "consensus discussions and conduct dispute resolution" is another matter.

  As for what harm it brings to just blanket-allow participation in such discussions:

  • ...if you're an archinclusionist or archdeletionist with positions way outside of the community norm and use a "privacy alt" to comment on AfDs this is an abuse of multiple accounts.

  If we see such an obvious alternative account used to vote in AfDs now, current policy gives us grounds for an investigation; a deprecation of PROJSOCK would severely complicate that, but such behaviour is highly problematic and a serious breach of community trust. Blablubbs|talk 12:11, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Firstly, why is using multiple accounts to express extreme views more problematic than using a single account to do so if there is no attempt to manipulate the discussion or appear as multiple people? Secondly, why is using multiple accounts to communicate such positions problematic in the Wikipedia namespace but not in any other namespace? Thirdly, If we agree that using an alternative account in a given manner is problematic then surely policy should explicitly prohibit using multiple accounts in that manner rather than as part of a very broad and very vague prohibition that requires numerous carveouts and exceptions to avoid catching things we don't want to prohibit and requires people to guess what behaviour we don't want them to engage in? Thryduulf (talk) 12:43, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  Anyway, even if we do nothing but remove "Undisclosed alternative accounts are not to be used in discussions internal to the project." the behaviour you are talking about would still be covered by "it is a violation of this policy to create alternative accounts to confuse or deceive editors who may have a legitimate interest in reviewing your contributions." Thryduulf (talk) 12:47, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  To answer your question as to why it's problematic for someone to use different accounts to segregate views on internal matters: our system is built on trusting other contributors, and part of that trust is built on knowing their past history of views. As an example, I know you and I agree significantly on most things related to the harassment policy and outing, but have very different views on speedy deletion. While I'll engage with you on the latter topic, I'm also not going to spend a significant amount of my time trying to persuade you around to my point of view because at some point based on past discussions, I know we're just going to have to agree to disagree. On the flip side, in discussions around harassment and privacy, I'm much more likely to rethink my position and see if I considered everything if I see you or someone else who I know I share similar thoughts to arguing one way.

  This is what comes with being a community: you take all of the actions and positions of people, and they do impact how you read what they're saying and influence your thoughts. That's not a bad thing, that's human nature and it is a natural and important part of communities, both online and otherwise. The concern isn't an account that exists solely to segregate views on policy discussions, it's two accounts that never overlap and are fully developed accounts with their own personalities contributing to community discussions in a way that if uncovered would cause a loss of trust in the community. Having some policy around that clearly prohibiting it is a good thing, as in my experience it's easier to deal with clear lines with common sense than it is to deal with ambiguous lines in a similar manner. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:18, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

• All three original options seem reasonable to me, per the proposal. Removing WP:PROJSOCK from the sockpuppetry policy entirely, however, is an idea that came up during the discussion and that isn't agreeable to me. Imagine someone who operates two accounts, one for mainspace and one for projectspace. Both are strictly separated: The mainspace account never edits the Wikipedia namespace, the projectspace account never edits articles. The result is an account that does not violate any policies while undermining our trust in community discussions. One of the main aspects of internal Wikipedia discussions is that they're held by users who also contribute to the encyclopedia in ways that can be easily looked up. Allowing project-only sockpuppets to loudly participate in internal discussions without ever having made any visible contributions to the encyclopedia would be a mistake: Policies affecting all articles are created in internal discussions, so we'd suddenly be open to policy changes by people who have no idea what their proposed changes mean to editors. Policy must be written, and consensus must be found, by people who verifiably contribute to the encyclopedia. Project socks prevent this verification. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:59, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  An account that edits only in projectspace is a very, very uncommon situation and PROJOCK both prohibits far, far more than that and doesn't actually prevent an account that doesn't contribute to the encyclopaedia from contributing (loudly or otherwise) in internal discussions held on e.g. template (talk) pages, help (talk) pages, article talk pages, category (talk) pages, etc. I'd also argue that an account that has contributes to the development of back-end tools and similar has verifiably contributed to the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 11:14, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

• "The reason why Wikipedia space in particular matters is because the only reason to use a second account in the Wikipedia namespace outside of limited discussions about content (RSN, AfD, and FA mainly) is to avoid scrutiny." I disagree with this. I would create a second account under my real identity if I could, and use my real-name account for noncontroversial editing and all noncontroversial project space discussions, while using my anonymous Levivich account to edit controversial topics (like war, politics and religion) and related project space discussions. If I did, it wouldn't evade scrutiny, it would increase it. Right now I could have a privacy alt that edits, say, sex topics (User:Sexivich?), and I can use this Levivich account to edit project space RFCs about sex issues and no one would know Sexivich's edits in those areas were mine. That avoids scrutiny. If instead I could use the Sexivich account for sex-related project space discussions, that would be more transparent, not less. If we're going to allow privacy alts (and we do, as we should), we should allow those alts to edit all namespaces. Levivich ^harass/_hound 18:45, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
• Strongly agreed on the first remedy. We should discourage privacy alts not because they're illegitimate, but because they don't work very well. Like Beeblebrox, my experience with this on ArbCom was a bunch of cases of people setting up a privacy alt for good reasons, accidentally outing themselves and/or getting themselves CU-blocked because they misunderstood our byzantine sock policy, then asking us to unring the bell. Probably there's a bias there in that we only heard about the cases that went wrong but, with this and other policies (oversight, vanishing, clean starts), we need to be more up front with the fact that the only reliable way to maintain your privacy on Wikipedia is to never reveal private information in the first place.

I always thought PROJSOCK was an arbitrary rule, but I don't know the history behind it, so I'm on the fence about that. – Joe (talk) 19:05, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

• Scrap PROJSOCK, remedy #2 second choice Projectsock is really an outdated and overly broad guideline that should be eliminated, but if that doesn't have consensus I would support clarifying it to make its reach more narrow.Jackattack1597 (talk) 00:59, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Strongly Discourage non-publicly-declared parallel-editing accounts,
  and simplify the rules for simple cases before getting bogged down in the complicated LEGITSOCK rules.

WP:SOCK is confusing for a simple newish Wikipedian to get simple answers. There is some very complicated stuff in it that is interspersed with simple stuff, and I think the simple stuff should be stated clearly and upfront, and with the complicated stuff below, under warnings.

The simple stuff is:

WP:SOCKING is NOT:

• The use of multiple accounts that are publicly declared (declared on the main userpage, and all such accounts connected). Examples for this include secure and non secure computers. Segregation of edits of different types. Maintenance of multiple watchlists. Templates for this include {{User alternative account name}}, and I think they belong at the top of the main userpage.
• Non-editing accounts. eg. Reader accounts; long-abandoned accounts; doppelganger-prevention accounts.
• Editing logged out to fix errors in mainspace.

Stuff gets complicated when talking about multiple editing accounts that are not publicly declared. Mainly, the reason for these seems to be "privacy". There are good reasons to not publicly disclose two editing accounts. You may have a good reason to edit publicly, in front of family, work, or for educational course purposes, and not want to reveal your main anonymous account. However, the section allowing for this should clearly and strongly state that doing this is NOT RECOMMENDED, and if done, done only briefly and for very narrowly defined purposes. One little mistake, and the connection may be spotted, and may then be forever public. Relative newcomers to Wikipedia should be actively discouraged from running undeclared editing accounts in parallel. This complicated stuff needs to be written, and is written, but it should be separated from the simple for the sake of simple comprehension of a simple reading of policy for simple questions.

The rules for non-publicly-declared parallel-editing accounts need to be clear and hard. There is currently a rule that you have these, only the main account may edit project space. This is very important for accountability. I think some words are needed to clarify what is a "main account".

Should an undeclared account every be allowed to participate in AfD discussions on their own content? We had discussions on this at WT:SOCK in March 2010, and in the end I found User:SlimVirgin, 10:03, 19 March 2010 specifically, convincing that legitsocks should not be allowed at AfD or dispute resolution. I also think that it is a simple and necessary extension to this that IPs must not be allowed to contribute to AfD, or to project space discussions in general.

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:36, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Answering User:RoySmith's questions of 12:47, 17 April 2021 (UTC). For LEGITSOCKS, that are the not the main account, These should be specific-purpose, preferably short-term accounts. WP:Teahouse should be off-limits. Asking for help on Help talk:Footnotes maybe, but not on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources? No, simple hard rules are needed for this dangerous practice. The main account can ask questions about citing sources. I don't see why the non-main LEGITSOCK should be asking at Help talk:Footnotes.
If a privacy sock is dragged to WP:AN, they cannot defend themselves. If a privacy sock is dragged to WP:AN, and the thread is entertained, something is wrong, and the person is not qualified to run a privacy sock. An account trying to be quiet and do a specific thing should be quiet and well mannered.
If one of their articles is nominated at WP:AfD, can they participate in that discussion? No. The community has to be trusted to be running a fair AfD.
Would it be OK to protest a WP:PROD, because that happens in article Talk space, OK. But once you've done that and somebody takes the next step and brings it to AfD, you're stuck? That's right. Trust the community at AfD.
And what about WP:DYK, WP:GA, WP:FA? These are high end editing, competitive and somewhat drama associated. Reputation and accountability are important here. It is no place for a sockpuppet.
No to WikiProjects. No to AfC reviewing. No to Portals.
Pretty much, LEGITSOCKS should stick to mainspace, and to answer questions directed to them in talk space and user_talk. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:21, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• I strongly support the right to have privacy alts. Accordingly, they should be allowed to contribute in the project namespace, insofar as it's practical to write policy allowing this, subject to concerns such as the ones raised by TonyBallioni. They should certainly be allowed to defend their articles from deletion, and other such directly relevant activities. Benjamin (talk) 08:45, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Scrap PROJSOCK and scrap disclosures - PROJSOCK misinterprets the Arbcom case that led to its addition to the policy. The issue there was not that the user was using undisclosed alternate accounts in project space (in and of itself) but that they were using them in ways that were already forbidden by WP:SOCK (apparently WP:GHBH and WP:STRAWSOCK). It's not Arbcom's place to invent policy and they should not have done so here. If someone uses different accounts to contribute to different discussions (not the same discussions) in otherwise legitimate ways, what does it matter? PROJSOCK is a "gotcha" policy that punishes users for no benefit to the project; we should just remove the bullet. As for disclosures, we should probably stop: it's irresponsible and probably unethical to suggest that disclosing a private alt to Arbcom somehow imparts a guarantee of privacy, which is absolutely not the case. It's also clear that everyday editors don't understand that each WMF site is a separate project with separate governance, that our coordination between projects is deliberately very limited, and that what might be allowed here might not be allowed on other WMF projects. What we should do is more strongly advise editors considering a privacy alt of the dangers: if they do use their alt in forbidden ways then we will publicly connect their main just as we do for all sockpuppet accounts, and although we discourage outing, Wikipedia is in the real world and we really have no control over other editors trying to "unmask" a privacy account, though I say we should do more to discourage editors who make a habit of malicious witchhunts. If a user is going to try to use a privacy alt, they need to understand the risks, and that they are responsible for maintaining their privacy, not Wikipedia. I am, however, very strongly against creating a policy that private alts are forbidden. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:30, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Question: I've been editing since 2006, but usually I create a new account every few months because I don't think scrutiny is fair. That is, if someone doesn't like what I write about sexuality topics, I don't want them going through my environmental topic editing to dig dirt on me. Is my behavior outside established norms? If I give myself a WP:CLEANSTART every three months, and abandon all my earlier accounts, is that bad? 50.242.124.27 (talk) 16:04, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Automatic Exemption from Hard IP Block for established logged-in users

I don't understand the rationale behind parts of the current Hard IP Block policy. Obviously it is important to prevent vandalism from unregistered or new accounts, however once an editor is relatively well established I don't see how this has any significant effect. Many people, myself included, frequently use a VPN service for perfectly legitimate reasons, in my case my ISP fails to connect to many servers elsewhere on the web. When I come across small errors on wiki, it is impractical to disconnect and reconnect just to fix it, so I often simply don't do it.

From my understanding, the reasoning behind such a policy is to prevent anonymous vandalism by ensuring that all edits are attributable. Provided a well established user is logged in then any edits they make remain attributable, regardless of the IP address they originate from. If such a user were to engage in vandalism, they would be blocked; they would then be unable to edit from the blocked IP, removing the problem.

I do not understand why automatic exemption should not be granted to such users; as they are still accountable for their edits there is no reason why this would have any meaningful impact on vandalism. I think that once a user has shown that they can be trusted to edit protected pages, their motives for using a blocked IP can be assumed to be benign.

Extended confirmed users should absolutely be trusted with this; the risk of someone creating an account (which cannot be done from the blocked IP), making 500 edits and waiting 30 days just to abuse an anonymous IP address is non-existent, given the user can still easily be blocked. I think autoconfirmed users are up for debate, however I would again point to the fact that accounts cannot be created from blocked IPs, providing an element of accountability.

While VPNs and other forms of anonymous proxies clearly pose a risk of vandalism, having a blanket ban fails to recognise that there are perfectly legitimate reasons for an editor to use these. Exempting established editors from these bans will not have any impact on vandalism or accountability, while removing barriers to them fixing issues they see on wikipedia from such IP addresses. If an editor is trusted with high-level permissions, why can they not be trusted to edit from a blocked IP?

Given administrators automatically receive such an exemption, it cannot be that difficult to add this permission to other user groups. Therefore, I propose that extended-confirmed users are granted this permission, and ask that we debate whether this exemption should be extended to auto-confirmed users. John wiki: If you have a problem, don't mess with my puppy... 12:17, 17 April 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by John wiki (talk • contribs) 12:01, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

There is already a mechanism for non-admins to work around hard IP blocks: Wikipedia:IP block exemption, which is open to anyone who demonstrates a need and can be trusted not to abuse the right. Since the vast majority of users don't need it, automatically giving this to a whole user group would serve no purpose, except to significantly undermine our ability to detect misuse of multiple of accounts (which is the main reason we hard block proxies, not ordinary vandalism). – Joe (talk) 18:39, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: How would it undermine the ability to detect socks? Also, how would a user be able to abuse the right? The main thing I'd be worried about are compromised accounts, but inactive accounts could maybe be excluded somehow. When you say that "the vast majority of users don't need it" I'm not entirely sure. Am I the only one who gets bombarded with VPN sponsorships on YouTube? They must be selling subscriptions if they can afford that. Some mobile internet ranges probably also get blocked every now and then. The vast majority of users is likely unaware of the possibility to get IP block exemption. In order to say anything sensible, we'd need to know how often extended-confirmed users are stopped from editing by an IP block. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:57, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Open proxies are hardblocked => Registered users can't use open proxies => Registered users have to use their own Internet connection to edit Wikipedia => Checkuser can detect all accounts on the Internet connection. (Ideal scenario)

Allowing users to use proxies means allowing them to hide their IP address from checkusers. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:10, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Checkusers can see 3 months back, so this would require some serious planning. On the one hand there is the theoretical risk of increased vandalism because of that, on the other hand there are potential missed contributions from legitimate users who happen to use a VPN. Since the former is theoretical and we don't have stats on the latter, there is no way for us to come to an informed decision. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:07, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

"Extended confirmed users should absolutely be trusted with this": No, as it would take away the scrutiny and requirement for justification that WP:IPBE provides. Extended-confirmed sockpuppeteers, even admin sockpuppeteers, exist. A prominent case was Edgar181. This case was prominent because it was a rare occurrence and the trust implied in sysop permissions is even higher than the trust required for IPBE. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:17, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

If you think that sockpuppeteers would not go to the trouble of creating multiple extended-confirmed socks to disrupt with, you haven't met some of our most dedicated sockmasters. Black Kite (talk) 20:23, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:49, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure how best to preserve the ability to detect socks, but I feel strongly that any situation that makes it as hard as it currently is to edit from, say, China is unacceptable. Benjamin (talk) 08:53, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Make autopatrol an optional right for administrators

I propose to make the autopatrolled user right optional for administrators in the same way as edit filter is. ( Administrators can assign it to themselves, but it isn't part of the standard toolset.) Jackattack1597 (talk) 00:56, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Any particular reason? – bradv🍁 03:48, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

@Bradv: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Large batch deletion probably needed I bet. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 09:03, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Jackattack1597: Indeed: before proposing a change to an established practice, you should first demonstrate that there are problems with that practice, and then show that such issues that exist are best fixed by applying your proposed change. Secondly, this should really be at WP:VPR, not VPP. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:04, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - I'm pretty sure I know what this is about, and this is the wrong solution - there isn't a good reason to unbundle just this one userright, and I don't see a discussion about unbundling similar rights which would be for the same reason. I'm also against unbundling tools from admins only to let admins assign them to themselves; if we're going to unbundle, then admins should ask at WP:PERM just like everyone else and be evaluated according to the community's criteria. Edit filter manager and interface admin are different things: you can do real damage to the project with those, that's primarily why they're not part of the standard admin toolset. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 11:29, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Believe me, I want to unbundle more rights, but based on Village pump ideas feedback, a proposal to unbundle multiple similar rights wouldn't have gone anywhere, and may have even gotten WP:SNOWed, and I went with this instead because it would be a step in the right direction, and there's a recent example of when it would have been helpful. Mass creating non-notable articles does real damage to the project too, in my opinion; it consumes countless hours of cleanup time from productive editors that could better be spent elsewhere.Jackattack1597 (talk) 14:07, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. The proposal is an overreaction to a single isolated incident that is an extreme outlier. On the whole we don't have evidence of a significant number of admins creating a lot of substandard articles that escape community's attention. Rather than taking away user rights from the admins we should be creating new userrights, that are a part of the full admin toolkit, and making them available to regular users. That's how I'd like to see unbundling proceed. Nsk92 (talk) 11:54, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support, I'd like to be able to have my new articles scrutinized like everyone else's. —Kusma (𐍄·𐌺) 12:09, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

  Administrators can unreview pages they create; an opt-in bot could be written to cover admins who want this by default or are subjected to it by restriction. –xeno^talk 13:41, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

  In the past I've deliberately submitted articles I create to WP:AFC for that reason. AFC is a stronger review process anyway. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:44, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose If an admin is unable to create pages in compliance with the most basic of site policy, then they shouldn't be an admin. If they want NPP review of a particular page for some reason, they can manually unpatrol it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:14, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose We are here to build an encyclopaedia, not to talk to each other and play with policies and guidelines (including wikilawyering). If a user can't write a decent article, they should not be an admin here in the first place. Content issues are very important and one who violates core content policies should not have the opportunity to climb up the ladder. 4nn1l2 (talk) 12:30, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose The proposer hasn’t made a case for this. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 12:39, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

We recently had a situation where a long-term admin was discovered to have made thousands of non-notable articles over the years, and it had been brought to the communities attention previously, but nothing happened until this year because he was an admin and the autopatrolled right is part of that toolset. His actions have resulted in a large cleanup effort spanning multiple wikiprojects and taking up countless manhours of cleanup time, and if autopatrolled had been debundled from the start it could have been removed when the issue was brought to the communities attention in 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive830#Carlossuarez46_mass-creating_articles, instead of enabling him to create thousands of articles between then and now of questionable notability. Jackattack1597 (talk) 14:26, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support The real question here is simple, are admins expected to create content or are they expected to administrate? Autopatrolled exists purely for the benefit of the WP:NPP project, and non-admins can already receive this permission so this is already unbundled from adminship, but admins automatically receive this permision when they become admins, so the only current way to un-autopatrol an admin is to desysop them. Admins who don't create articles up to the standards of NPP should have the autopatrolled perm removed instead of having the NPP project request a full desysop because none of the other admin tools (block, delete, protect etc) are used help the NPP project in ways that non-admins can (NPP non-admins have RFPP, CSD, AIV etc when they need admin attention already). Also, it should be plainly obvious that any admin who tries to re-autopatrol themselves against the wishes of the community would be quickly desysopped. Iffy★Chat -- 13:00, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

  I would support a proposal to unbundle every userright that can be requested by non-admin editors from the admin toolkit, for the reasons Iffy presents, but that is not this proposal, and doing them piecemeal would be worse than not doing anything. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:46, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

  See also my comment below, but I've found that the NPP project mostly only cares about ns:0 pages; not actually all new pages (which are affected by patrolling). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:50, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose – while I agree it's not administrator's main job to do content creation (they were appointed to administrate the project), it doesn't make any sense to me to remove autopatrol from them. First, "administrating an encyclopedia" pretty much means make it look like an encyclopedia (by using the mops here and there). In order to be able to make something look like an encyclopedia, you naturally need to know how an encyclopedia looks like – in another words, you must be able to create an article that would normally pass an AfD, AfC or NPP. I think that all administrators should either be able to write articles in a good enough form to pass the standard review process, or they shouldn't be an administrator at all. Note that I don't think administrators necessarily need to be able to write good/featured articles – but that's at another end of the quality scale we use --Martin Urbanec (talk) 14:41, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose while I certainly don't expect all admins to write brilliant prose and expertly built articles, I do expect articles created by admins should survive speedy deletion (which according to WP:NPP is at its core...about deciding whether a new article will be...accept[ed], or initiating...deletion procedures. If admins are creating bad articles a topic ban against article creations could be levied. As far as non-content space creations, the bar to acceptance of these pages is even lower and admin are likely to create all sorts of meta pages that shouldn't need to bother recent changes patrollers. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:48, 18 April 2021 (UTC)