:There is no source that is a priori reliable. There are sources with a history of prior reliability. This is entirely irrelevant when it comes to supporting a new wikitext claim. The fact that certain sources have been historically reliable in no way elevates reliability of a new, particular claim backed by the same source. Reliability trends do not predict the reliability of individual new claims any more than they predict the next outcome of a coin toss. And every citation must be reliable in its context. The aggregate or average or trend being "generally reliable" just won't cut it. Every wikitext claim must be reliably proven. A "reliability list" or "reliability algorithm" or "reliability bot" will not do. This is too important to be relegated. If you want to help the project, you, personally, have to do the work. There is an exception: when the exact same claim has been made in the past, and has been unambiguously proven correct using the exact same source. For that case only, the particular source is {{em|currently}} (per the available information) considered reliable. Until perhaps contrary information emerges. [[Special:Contributions/74.64.150.19|74.64.150.19]] ([[User talk:74.64.150.19|talk]]) 12:59, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
:There is no source that is a priori reliable. There are sources with a history of prior reliability. This is entirely irrelevant when it comes to supporting a new wikitext claim. The fact that certain sources have been historically reliable in no way elevates reliability of a new, particular claim backed by the same source. Reliability trends do not predict the reliability of individual new claims any more than they predict the next outcome of a coin toss. And every citation must be reliable in its context. The aggregate or average or trend being "generally reliable" just won't cut it. Every wikitext claim must be reliably proven. A "reliability list" or "reliability algorithm" or "reliability bot" will not do. This is too important to be relegated. If you want to help the project, you, personally, have to do the work. There is an exception: when the exact same claim has been made in the past, and has been unambiguously proven correct using the exact same source. For that case only, the particular source is {{em|currently}} (per the available information) considered reliable. Until perhaps contrary information emerges. [[Special:Contributions/74.64.150.19|74.64.150.19]] ([[User talk:74.64.150.19|talk]]) 12:59, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
::I think the OP has only suggested colour indicators to highlight general reliability status of the source. No one has suggested blocking inclusion of such sources by the software or bot. – [[User:SD0001|<span style="font-weight: bold; color: #C30">SD0001</span>]] ([[User talk:SD0001|talk]]) 14:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
::I think the OP has only suggested colour indicators to highlight general reliability status of the source. No one has suggested blocking inclusion of such sources by the software or bot. – [[User:SD0001|<span style="font-weight: bold; color: #C30">SD0001</span>]] ([[User talk:SD0001|talk]]) 14:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
:::There can be no such thing. As noted above, the reliability of the source is relative to the context of the citation and the corresponding claims made in wikitext. This is not a one-to-many relationship. Apart from the exception, also noted above, of a repeated claim supported by the same citation. [[Special:Contributions/65.88.88.47|65.88.88.47]] ([[User talk:65.88.88.47|talk]]) 15:21, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
Removing links to portals from the Main Page's top banner
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.
(non-admin closure) Until the moment of closure, we've had 30 votes in favor of removing the portals and 17 in favor of keeping them. The reasons offered by the nominator are not based on Wikipedia policies or guidelines, but focus on the usefulness and relevance of these portals at the top of the Main Page. In brief, the proposal is based on (1) & (3) Lack of much use: “the pageviews of these portals is very low compared to the pageviews of the main page”, and “subjects in an encyclopaedia are used by readers who are looking for something specific, while a reader who would want to learn ‘something new’ would just read an article at random”, (2) Opposition to all portals: “portals are among the least well maintained and most outdated-looking parts [in Wikipedia]”, and (4) Inefficiency: “the net has largely moved on from the tendency of early websites to have 50 hyperlinks per square centimeter.” Those in support of Keeping the portals as they are object to the claim they are not used much. They also argue in favor of the status quo, on the basis of which they see no significant reason to change. (Arguments about the Main Page being the same way for "too long" have been offered by supporters of removing the portals.) In all, there is a significant number of editors against removal of portals, though they're a numerical minority. Arguing on the basis of #1 & #3 in support of removing the portals, “lack of much use”, were 9 contributors (Sdkb, Gog the Mild, Anarchyte, Retswerb, EpicPupper, CaptainEek, Jackattack1597, Firefly, Pldx1); on the basis of #2, “against all portals”, 8 contributors (Schierbecker, Vexations, SmokeyJoe, Izno, Sandstein, Guilherme Burn, Gadfium, Remagoxer); and of #4, “efficiency,” 12 contributors (Blueboar, UnitedStatesian, Ruslik0, Calliopejen1, AleatoryPonderings, Bilorv, Neil Shah-Quinn, Levivich, Aza24, Zero0000, SnowFire, Cavalryman). One supporter of removal (Moxy) did not provide a reason but their suggestion was counted, while another one (NightWolf1223) made an internally contradictory and thus invalid suggestion, i.e. by choosing “support per Kusma” while Kusma opposed. Editors using argument #2 are commenting on all portals and not specifically on these portals, although these editors might argue that they phrased their input in a more complex way. Clearly, though, the context of their suggestions revolves around the general worthiness of portals. If we're not arguing about portals in general, we can only discuss the ones on top of the Main Page. The combination of arguments #1, #3, and #4 calls essentially for an overhaul of these portals' design, place, and content, since as they currently stand, the argument goes, they are not used much and are inefficient. Logically, if they were designed differently, were placed somewhere "better" on the Page, and their content was improved, then they could stay up. However, this nuance gets buried under the binary choices offered, especially after initiator JBchrch added the choice to move the portals, instead of removing them entirely. Because of the confusion, we have suggestions to Remove which include the option to Move (elsewhere, mostly in the Main Page), while we also have editors favoring Keep that express also the need for an "overview" of the whole page, such as Certes, Godsy, and others. The discussion under the Survey section is, naturally, quite useful in identifying more clearly where the participants stand. Of obvcious and evident importance are the remarks from the initiator ("My impression—but I'm happy to defer—is that we are not likely to solve all of these question in this single survey"), as well as from other users (e.g. "We need to be wary of pitting one option against an alliance of the others as a binary choice."), which cannot but be taken into account. In conclusion, and despite the numerical majority of what appears to be removing the portals, this is an adulterated result and the decision seems clear: We have no consensus to move forward with altering the Main Page through this RfC because it did not offer clear-cut choices and thus did not manage to elicit clear-cut responses. For the time being, then, we should not remove the portals from the top of the Main Page. The way forward for editors keen to change this aspect of the Main Page could be a gradual one. #1 discuss about having portals in general or not having them at all in the Main Page. #2, in case the result of #1 is to keep portals on the Main Page, discuss where to place them. After this has been established, a new one, #3, may be initiated on the content of the portals themselves: Do we find them all useful? Or do we want some of them to be eliminated? And so on. The "way forward" part should be understood as only my humble advice; it's not part of the decision. -The Gnome (talk) 15:38, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Survey (Portal links)
I propose that we remove the hyperlinks to eight portals and the "All portals" page that are currently in the main page's top banner. Instead, the top banner would simply say "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. 6,[xxx],[xxx] articles in English" (same as now, but centered). I have the four following arguments:
The pageviews of these portals is very low compared to the pageviews of the main page (low thousands vs. 5+ millions), which suggest that no one clicks on them they are not essential to the main page's function.
Portals are among the least well maintained and most outdated-looking parts of the project.
Portals are not essential to the mission of an encyclopedia, which are generally ordered alphabetically, and used by readers who are looking for something specific. A reader who would want to learn something new would just read an article at random.
In terms of graphic design, the Internet has largely moved on from the tendency of early websites to have 50 hyperlinks per square centimeter. Removing these hyperlinks would ever so slightly modernize the user interface.
Note: This proposal only argues for the removal of the links from the top banner. You are welcome to express views on whether they should be moved somewhere else on the main page, as some editors have already done. JBchrchtalk10:56, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The page views of each of the top portals are roughly the same as those of typical Did you Know items, suggesting that people click on them reasonably often. —Kusma (talk) 16:44, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support with partial move of the "all portals" link to the "Other areas of Wikipedia" section. To give folks some data, here are the pageviews of the listed portals. Most range from 2000 to 5000 views per day, which would be decent to good for a DYK, but they're at the top of the page rather than in the middle so should be expected to do better. The "all portals" link, however, does significantly better at 12,400 per day. Broadly, portals as an idea have failed and ought to be mercifully put to rest, as they're not worth our effort to maintain. But until that outcome achieves consensus, it's not fair to kneecap them by totally removing them in places where they're relevant, which includes the main page. The other areas of Wikipedia section is pretty far down the page, so throwing in a line there along the lines of Content portals – A unique way to navigate the encyclopedia would be pretty innocuous (it would also help rebalance the section towards readers). {{u|Sdkb}}talk18:13, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support This would make the main page look much cleaner. Any incremental step to drag the page design into the 2020s (2010s?) is a good thing. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:31, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Main Page is in need of some updating. The top portals are remnants of a "systematic" approach to content organisation that the world is too complicated for. We should consider linking to good portals (Portal:Cheshire, Portal:Japan) more prominently instead of focusing on those that seem important from an abstract top-down point of view. —Kusma (talk) 18:44, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, quality control for portals is currently done through MFD, which isn't great. But that's a different discussion; I mainly wanted to point out that individual good portals still exist, despite the bad reputation of the namespace. —Kusma (talk) 13:29, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose any such change without a broader more centralized discussion. As an oft accused Portalista, I would be remiss if I did not accuse the OP of being a part of the war on portals. Sorry for the sarcasm, folks; had to throw down THAT gauntlet before anyone else. No offense User:JBchrch (who was not here during the portal wars); I was making a poor joke at my own expense. If in this thread a redesign of the main page is under discussion, what else is on the table? As an inhabitant of Planet PortalFan I must protest any removal of any link to any portal anywhere. Seriously, this cut would be pretty brutal on total portal views. Kneecapped. I'm not convinced that portals have gone the way of the dodo quite yet. Not everybody learns in the same way. The portals linked look good and seem well-maintained. I do very much like the turn of phrase by User:Sdkb: "A unique way to navigate the encyclopedia". BusterD (talk) 20:05, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding what else is on the table, we should limit discussion to the presentation of portals on the main page. Anything less focused will become a trainwreck without additional structure. VPR is pretty centralized, but portals folks should certainly be notified and this can be CENT-listed if needed. {{u|Sdkb}}talk20:13, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@BusterD: No offense taken! In addition to Sdkb's comments, I just wanted to note that I have no strong views on placing the portal links anywhere else on the main page. I just think they are out of the place at the absolute top. I will now place a notice on WT:PORT. JBchrchtalk20:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I do use the top-level portals from time to time. Providing multiple means of content navigation is definitely helpful. No objection to moving to a different part of the page but I'd strongly favor keeping all of the links somewhere on the home page above the fold. Seems more helpful than the "On this day..." or "Did you know..." content. - Wikmoz (talk) 20:39, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's in the hands of the Wikipedia community. It's all done in wikitext; there's nothing in the MediaWiki software that requires or prohibits these links or restricts their position or appearance. German WP lists the portals more prominently with icons; French WP has a single link ("Portails thématiques") to its main portal. Certes (talk) 00:22, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note to point out that both of these design seem to rely on incredibly high-def pictures, which we rarely have (except for the occasional European painting). In the first link, for instance, the big Nelson Mandela picture is not on Commons as far as I can see. JBchrchtalk00:37, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The second design link there prioritizes the portals in a very nice and logical way - if they were something that we as a community were really putting effort into and wanted to promote. Retswerb (talk) 06:34, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wow! Some of these redesigns are beautiful!!! Are these independent third-party mockups? Or anything that is actively being considered by WMF? Ktin (talk) 20:57, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I could see moving the portal links below the featured picture (and above “Other areas of Wikipedia”). It would put the navigational parts of the main page together. Blueboar (talk) 20:46, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose complete removal but support a review of the Main Page layout. The portal list fits in a handy space of just the right size. If more widely used information could usefully fit into that prime real estate then let's move the portal list down to make way, but I don't see any great candidates to replace it. The two traditional ways to organise and access content are alphabetically and by topic. An alphabetical article listing is obviously impractical, but the search box does that job well. I think access by topic is still worth a couple of square inches somewhere above the fold. Certes (talk) 23:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Certes: I guess the graphic design argument would be to say that we don't need a replacement, since the most straightforward way to modernize the MP's design is precisely to remove stuff and to leave some prime real estate empty [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Such a wholesale proposal is obviously well beyond the scope of this particular VPR section, but the idea that a removal would require a replacement seems to run somewhat contrary to the emerging consensus that the main page needs to be modernized. JBchrchtalk00:10, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Then I suppose it boils down to which better serves our readers: wikilinks, or white space. Personally I think it's no contest, but then I'm not a graphic designer. Certes (talk) 12:21, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support, as a first step in the deprecation of the portal namespace. They serve no useful function that is not served by wikilinks generally. Portals are collections of links; articles are better, more helpful, and better maintained (as suggested above) collections of links. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 22:35, 27 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Prominently displaying a manner to help readers navigate our content in a systemized manner is due. If there is a better way to do this in the current location, it should readily be considered. Until then, the current scheme suffices. That aside, perhaps our 'indexation' warrants maintenance or improvement as a whole. However, aesthetical considerations to appear modern or streamlined should never take precedence over form and functionality.— Godsy (TALKCONT)03:27, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Confusing noise, and portals fail to provide systematic navigation (categories do that, Portals do random and highly selective stuff). Portals belong under the Wikipedia:Community portal link in the Navigation frame, and they all belong in Wikipedia project space, because Portals if they can do anything, can draw in new editors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SmokeyJoe (talk • contribs) 03:42, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the first argument is flawed: very few people who go to the main page click on any of the links on it, and so this argument can be used for removing anything on it. For example Hoopoe starling, which was TFA two days ago and otherwise got very little traffic, got 30,000 hits when it was up there, a tiny fraction of the over 5 million people who viewed the main page yesterday. I think it's entirely legitimate to give readers a way of using Wikipedia from the main page other than a search box. I'm happy to consider moving the links somewhere else, but not removing them entirely. Hut 8.507:43, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hut 8.5: This proposal is not arguing in favor a removing from the main page completely, but just removing them from the main page's top banner. It leaves completely open the question of relocating them somewhere else on the talk page, and you are of course welcome to express a view on that. But your !vote seems to indicate that you want the portal links to stay at the top of the main page, which does not seem entirely consistent with the rest of your answer. Is that your view? JBchrchtalk09:20, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@JBchrch: your opening on this didn't make that very clear - of course anything can come up in discussion - but when you say "remove x from y" as opposed to "move x from y (to z)" from the start, that people think this is only about deletion shouldn't be too surprising. — xaosfluxTalk10:44, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@JBchrch: I think it may help guide the discussion more (there was nothing defective about the preceding discussion, but the clarity may help those joining consider the option). — xaosfluxTalk11:02, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks; that's a lot clearer. I'd interpreted remove the hyperlinks as getting rid of them rather than changing their location. However, if we are to retain the links in a different location, that should happen in a single operation. It would be wrong to get rid of the links now pending further discussion to consider the possibility of a decision about finding a better place for them in the fullness of time. Certes (talk) 11:29, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah - as it stands this is a proposal to remove the links, and some of the supporters do want the links removed entirely. If I support it and it gets enacted then they will likely be removed completely. If they are to be moved somewhere else then that should happen as the result of a single discussion. I wouldn't object to a proposal to move them somewhere else. Hut 8.511:53, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Interesting links to support this discussion:
Strong support: just a reminder that most of our readers are on mobile, even though almost all editors are on desktop. On mobile in particular, these portal links clog up the screen with links that put the interesting content we have to display a screen further away. Sdkb's partial move works fine to me (though they're referencing a panel I'd mostly remove in my ideal Main Page redesign). — Bilorv (talk) 13:08, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I support full removal strongly as first choice per all previous discussion on portals and move to "Other areas of Wikipedia" per Sdkb as a second must-have-consensus choice (probably just with a link to Portal:Contents [why is that an entirely different portal system in Wikipedia space???]). If portals are honestly used, moving the ones on the main page will be a good test.
I thoroughly reject blocking this improvement on a "systematic front page redesign", which has not achieved a consensus revised look for 15 years. Incremental change seems the name of the game for at least this aspect. --Izno (talk) 14:36, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Well, it depends. Is there a benefit to those specific portals being where they are? Would anything be lost if removed? I guess the thinking behind it is that people would've went to the main page and went through these broad topics, turns out, this didn't really happen, especially because of the search bar. But there is no reason to totally remove the portals from there. Just keep a link to "All portals". I'm not so sure about moving it to "Other areas". If a move like that happens, there should probably be a notification of the change on the page for a few days. Or for any noticeable changes to the main page, really. Dege31 (talk) 15:25, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Any designer will tell you that an overly cluttered layout is absolutely a real problem (even if Wikipedia, unlike the rest of the modern web, sometimes has trouble acknowledging it). {{u|Sdkb}}talk20:01, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose If it would just mean leaving a blank space. If there something specific to go there, or if removal would allow some beneficial change, I'd be happy to reconsider. I'm not for removing things that are "not essential", nor for giving more help to readers looking for things "at random", nor for "slightly modernizing". Thincat (talk) 18:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm curious too! Some layout change rather than a change of content. I like all of TFA, DYK, ITN and OTD. Personally, I'd like to see the featured picture without scrolling down but I've no idea how that could work. Thincat (talk) 20:47, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I don't think portals are a useful way to navigate the vastness of this Wikipedia, and they certainly aren't useful enough to merit such a prominent position. I support full removal from the main page or, failing that, moving them to a less prominent position. Having more blank space is not inherently a problem, and leaves us the option to add something better there in the future.—Neil Shah-Quinn (talk) 01:45, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal mostly a combination of "per" the support !votes above but also because I find the rationales for keeping the portal links quite unconvincing. Having more blank space is a good thing; that's basic layout and design principles. We don't want a "busy" or full front page. (Most readers are mobile anyway and there won't be blank space for them.) Just because "some" people find it useful isn't a good reason to keep it: given the scarcity/value of front page screen real estate, the threshold should be most not some. For browsing Wikipedia, only one link is necessary, and it should be to WP:Contents. (Most readers are coming for the search bar anyway, aren't they?) I don't think these links are used enough to justify the prime real estate (top of the front page) they occupy. Levivich06:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The link someone posted above clearly shows [10] over a million people clicked on one of the portal links in the past 30 days. Some people do use them. Other things on the main page get fewer hits than these do. DreamFocus13:22, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thats not what that link shows. That link shows page views, not how many people clicked on the links on the main page. Over 300k or 30% of that million is to WP:Contents/Portals. And even still, a million over a month is tiny for a permanent link on the main page, which gets 171 million page views in a month. So we're talking just over one half of one percent. Other content on the main page might get fewer page views but other content isn't on the main page every day for a month, and it isn't at the top of the screen taking up prime real estate. Levivich14:05, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal Portals are an outdated mode of presenting knowledge. We need to have a serious, informed (by research) conversation about how to best do so. This is not that discussion. But: Our current implementation is similar to of Yahoo's early approach (basically a taxonomy) , which worked for a while, but no longer does. Arguments in favor of keeping the links because "people click on them" don't take into account that people will click on anything in the top right corner of a website. Clicks in not an argument. I'm hypothesizing that the main page gets so many visits because it has the shortest URL, and most people who go there a really just looking for the search function. It is far easier to type en.wikipedia.org than https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=&title=Special:Search. Imagine the following: If instead of what we have now, Special:Search was the default and that page had it a link to Portal:Main, would that portal page still get 5 million views a day? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vexations (talk • contribs) 15:30, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Navigating content by category is outdated? Search definitely presents a great option for finding a specific topic but browsing is still very much a valid and widely-used alternative. Amazon, Britannica.com, Netflix, the New York Times, and most other content sites organize content by category so users can drill down to find content of interest. Search may be the ideal solution for many use cases but content hierarchies are not obsolete. - Wikmoz (talk) 06:26, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose As explained by Hut 8.5, the statistical argument is flawed. The argument about the space taken on the mobile interface sounded plausible but then I tried it. The portals appear after the strap line about "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and read as a brief and simple high-level start for browsing the encyclopedia: The arts, Biography, Geography, etc. But what then takes all the space on the mobile view is the FA and its blurb which is comparatively huge and, today, is 1920–21 Cardiff City F.C. season. That comes across as a very random article of limited interest to 99% of our general readership. The daily readership for that article last year was just 3. Not 3 million, not 3 thousand, just 3! That's what's getting undue weight in the current format Andrew🐉(talk) 20:10, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If look at what kind of pages people are finding through search engines, it appears that our most popular feature would be about recently deceased people. That wouldn't be my preference, but it would be relevant to our readers. Vexations (talk) 20:52, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the rationale, but I don't really understand the !vote: if we want to base our decision on what our general readership is interested in (agreed [save for the fact that I love obscure TFAs]), how does it make sense to place the emphasis on portals? JBchrchtalk21:20, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Portal links make sense because they give a brief, broad-brush sweep of the encyclopedia's scope and this is appropriate as an introduction. Note further that JBchrch seems to be talking only about the desktop view when most of our readership uses the mobile view. In my mobile view, the first line is not "Welcome to Wikipedia...", it's "Welcome Andrew Davidson!" Any redesign needs to focus primarily on this mobile view, where space is precious. The desktop view is less important because, on a large monitor, there's lots of room for everything and it's good to use the space. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:10, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This link is one of the only ways readers can get in touch with the Portal namespace. People argue... "We should delete them because readers don't look at them", but in reality, that's because access to the portal namespace from articles is low. There's only one tiny thing, a link at the bottom, that links main and portal namespace. However, most readers just read the lead and don't see the portal link. However the Main Page link is much more important because millions of people see the main page every day. The link provides easy access to portals. 🐔ChicdatBawk to me!10:22, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Much above, seems rather contradictory: the main page is a portal page, and the links are (sub) main pages -- sure more people read the 'front' page, and the front page gets more attention, but there are lists of subsections too, tables of content, if you will. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:53, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal unless some other use of the space is made. Removing links that thousands of people use to replace them with acres of white space seems counter productive. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:35, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We could even add white space and keep the portal links! We're not a physical newspaper limited by the size of tabloid paper. I'll curse whoever adds the white space and write a Tampermonkey script to remove it, so I can see the content without constantly scrolling or shrinking the text to the size of a gnat's genitals, but technically it's easy. Certes (talk) 15:56, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - We gotta fill that space up with something. Until we can think of another item, may as well keep linking to Portals. Note: This comes from a fellow, who supports the elimination of Portals. GoodDay (talk) 17:04, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Um… no… we don’t need to “fill that space”. After all, should we decide to delete the links completely, we would also delete the “space” they appear in (and thus there would be nothing that needed filling). Alternatively, if we decide to keep the links, but move them elsewhere on the page, we would move the “space” as well. Or did you mean something else? Blueboar (talk) 20:06, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Blueboar: Perhaps they meant that it would be imprudent to leave such a forward-facing part of our main page top matter unfilled (a notion with which I would concur should that be the case). — Godsy (TALKCONT)08:04, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support – The Mainpage is inaccessibly overloaded with information, essentially akin to banner blindness. Of the eight portals listed, only two (Math and Science) have a "maintainer" listed (which I'm sure is a concept most people in this thread aren't even aware of), meaning that the 6 other portals are being continuously linked directly from our most viewed page without any regular oversight. This is the kind of change that will begin to improve the Mainpage. Those that think someone will create a radically new Mainpage design and have it approved are living in fantasy—that will never happen, there are too many people on Wikipedia obsessed with the status quo for the sake of itself (e.g. the "solution looking for an improvement" crowd). Actual reform to the Mainpage will almost certainly be small and gradual improvements such as this. Aza24 (talk) 23:34, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal. Whitespace is incredibly precious and helps make layouts readable and intuitive. Most of the good proposed redesigns of the Wikipedia Main page make it less busy, and doing that requires sacrificing what isn't important in favor of what is important. Filling every last square with text isn't ideal - blank spaces draw the eye to the relevant sections. And Portals just aren't relevant enough, for reasons discussed ad nauseum. A link to "All Portals" is fine and can stay somewhere, but remove the others. SnowFire (talk) 03:47, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Remove but keep the "All portals" link with some meaningful name. All of us know what a portal is, but I doubt if the average reader does. Without the subject-specific portals there to give a clue, "All portals" becomes essentially meaningless. A better name would be "Browse by subject area". Zerotalk04:06, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose of entire removal. Removing access to portals from the main page will simply further orphan portals to a greater degree, and does nothing to provide diverse navigational means and content to Wikipedia's WP:READERS. I also echo the stances and concerns of BusterD, Wikmoz, Certes, Hut 8.5 and Amakuru here, among others that have provided meaningful oppose !votes.
An idea in lieu of the total removal of portal links is to move them to the end of Main page, perhaps encapsulated in the {{Portal bar}} template (see example below):
A very important issue is that the portal bar template does not appear in the mobile view of Wikipedia, so mobile users would not see the links. For example, for desktop users here, compare the portal bar at the bottom of the Sustainable development article and then notice how in mobile view the portal bar and links are nonexistent (link). So, if the portal bar were to be used on Main page, a new template or layout would need to be designed that appears for mobile users.
Many of the arguments here for the entire removal of portal links are based upon making the Main page look neater, cleaner or less cluttered, but this does nothing to provide diverse content to readers. Fact is, this would also dumb-down the Main page, providing less options for readers to learn about using portals as a means to navigate topics. If the portal links were to be removed entirely, portals will be used less, because people just won't see the option as often. Then at Miscellany for deletion, users that virtually exclusively opine for deletion of entire portals per low page views will have a very easy and convenient way to further their stances for deletion, which at times seems to actually be based upon a disdain of portals in general, using page views as a sort of "excuse" to "get rid" of them. The removal of portal links from the Main page would move Wikipedia in a backwards direction, not forward. North America100019:06, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support - not once in my six years of editing and several more browsing have I ever used those links. We could consider center aligning the "Welcome to Wikipedia" block. Anarchyte (talk) 06:25, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support relocation. Had to go visit the front page to even figure out what this discussion was about. Per the various arguments already made regarding usage, let's keep them somewhere on the front page for now. While we're at it, full support of re-labeling per @Zero0000. "Browse by subject area" would be much more meaningful to the average casual visitor. Retswerb (talk) 06:24, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support full removal, "per" the above. I find Levivich's argument quite convincing. Portals are like the bookmarks of editors; readers don't use them. I would suspect that the search function is used far more often. 🐶 EpicPupper(he/him | talk)02:51, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support as part of a portal space reboot. When clicking on one of these links, the reader experiences a “break” in the general layout of the WP and an absurd drop in quality content compared to the main page. I believe, a namespace that has failed to solve structural problems for over a decade (as demonstrated in my comment links above) does not deserve such privileged space on the Mainpage.Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:08, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Meh it's hard to say that the current links are good, but they do seem better than blank space. I suppose the line-wrap in "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." could be removed, but I don't like that change aesthetically. We also could just link to the article Mathematics instead of Portal:Mathematics. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 20:04, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal (and, if that fails, support moving them elsewhere) - portals are a relic of a long gone era, and if nothing else they shouldn't clutter the MP with more links. A little whitespace (or, in this case, greyspace) can go a long way for making pages cleaner and clearer. Remagoxer(talk)21:51, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – In November 2021 Portal:History received a grand total of 133,559 page views, averaging 4,452 page views per day. How does this correlate with the statement that portals are not "widely used". The reality is that there is no correlation to the assertion. Quite the contrary exists, actually, whereby portals linked on Main page are actually used frequently daily, by thousands of WP:READERS per day. Do those links really "clutter" the Main page? If so, perhaps they could be moved and integrated into a graphical format, as I have suggested above. North America100012:20, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This has already been gone over in detail in this thread. 4500 daily page views proves "not widely used" because 4500 is not a lot. The main page gets millions of daily page views. 99% of main page visitors do NOT click on the portal links. When 1% of our readers click on a link, that is not "widely used". Levivich13:17, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's true of almost all links from the main page. The portal links are amongst the most-clicked. The only reason to pick on them for removal, rather than some of the less-clicked non-portal links, is a dislike of portals, which is a separate debate. Certes (talk) 15:09, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, as we went over in this thread, what you're saying just isn't true. It is not true that the portal links are amongst the most-clicked. Your earlier argument about this compared the portal links ANNUAL page views, with things like TFA which are only on the main page for a day. But 4,500 is actually a very low amount of single-day page views for anything on the main page. TFAs and ITNs get tens of thousands of daily page views. For example, recent TFAs Jaguar got 55k, British logistics in the Falklands War got 65k. Orders of magnitude more. Please stop repeating the untruth that portal links are among the most-clicked, it's just not true. "The people who disagree with me just don't like it" is the most-tired, weakest argument that too many editors cling to when consensus doesn't agree with them. The truth isn't that people just don't like portals, it's that intelligent people are looking at the data and coming to a rational conclusion. There are no links on the main page that are less-clicked and as prominent (appearing at the top, every single day) as the portal links. Levivich15:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal of the links, which I doubt many people actually use. Blank space is not necessarily the enemy - there is no problem with having nothing in that space. firefly ( t · c ) 16:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose based on the evidence that they are well used by readers and the lack of any good reason to remove them. If they really do "clutter" the main page (for which there is no evidence) then move them elsewhere. Thryduulf (talk) 17:52, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal. Not really used, for a very, very good reason: portals are not so useful to navigate inside a topic. When you have tried some of them, "not worth the click" becomes your opinion. Pldx1 (talk) 18:07, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah but in this particular discussion there is no specific policy that we need apply, so IDONTLIKEIT is not an invalid argument. JBchrchtalk23:50, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying it's invalid, I'm saying it's fully balanced by the IDOLIKEIT arguments from other people and so carries no weight at all - it's just unhelpful noise compared to the arguments presenting evidence of widespread use (bizarrely including by some of those claiming the links aren't used). Thryduulf (talk) 01:08, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The link to the portals is a great way to showcase the breadth of what we have to offer. We will not be any richer nor will we be doing our readers any service by removing the links. Ktin (talk) 20:40, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
An issue that has been raised by some comments and !votes above probably deserves some meta-discussion: if this proposal gains consensus, when and how do we decide if we move the links somewhere else, remove them completely from the main page, or add some other type of link somewhere else on the main page? My impression—but I'm happy to defer—is that we are not likely to solve all of these question in this single survey. Accordingly, if this proposal gains consensus, we would have to launch a second proposal/RFC with several options to choose from. The main page should probably not be changed until this second survey closes. Tagging editors who have expressed some view related to this question: Sdkb, BusterD, Blueboar, Certes, Moxy, Cavalryman, Godsy, SmokeyJoe, Hut 8.5, xaosflux, Bilorv, Izno, Dege31. JBchrchtalk15:58, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that "do nothing", "move elsewhere" and "get rid" each have substantial but minority support. We need to be wary of pitting one option against an alliance of the others as a binary choice. "Do nothing" vs "do something" risks throwing out the most popular of the three options for receiving fewer !votes than the other two combined, as would "get rid" vs "keep somewhere". A politician would have a great opportunity to gerrymander their preferred result here, but for a fair and collegiate consensus we need to tread carefully. Certes (talk) 16:15, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this, if there's three options then the RfC should be about those three options, and trying to consolidate two of them can distort the outcome. For example if option A has 40% support and options B and C have 30% support each, then an RfC about option A only would eliminate it even though it's the most popular. Hut 8.517:40, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if I completely follow the practical implications of the comments above, especially the reference to a "do nothing" option? For all intents and purposes, the do nothing/do something discussion is taking place right now, in the (now CENT-listed) discussion above. If "support" comes out as the result, I don't think that it would be very useful to relitigate the question by adding a "leaving at the top" option in a subsequent discussion/RfC about portal links on the main page. JBchrchtalk02:42, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The practical implication is that, if leaving the links as they are is the most popular option but lacks a 51% majority, then a vague proposal to move, remove or otherwise change the links in an unspecified way would pass, neatly removing the most popular option and leaving the field clear for a less popular option to be chosen and implemented. Certes (talk) 11:28, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Do we have a way to know the frequency with which all of the links on the main page are visited? Without comparative data, we can't tell what links are most popular. isaacl (talk) 14:58, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Pppery: Thanks for that. Just curious as you'd be the person to know: is there a faster way to pull the main-page links out of that 1.5GB Sep 2021 TSV, other than my writing a py script to do it? Like is there some tool that already exists (Excel and gsheets obv won't handle it)? Thx again. Levivich16:32, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The last set of numbers counts clicks to the main page from various sources. The other-internal line probably includes a few readers navigating from portals to the main page. Sadly, clickstream doesn't seem to count clicks to portals (or any other pages outside mainspace), whether from mainspace pages such as the main page or from other sources. Certes (talk) 20:20, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen temporary redirects used from time to time to capture clickthrough data. Could capture the data for a week and multiply by 52 to get a full year estimate. = Wikmoz (talk) 21:15, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If an argument is going to be made based on popularity, we need data on all links from the main page to judge the various sections against each other. I suspect the vast majority of main page views result in no links being followed, so having comparative stats is essential. isaacl (talk) 04:51, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We could set up redirects for all the static links on the main page (so excluding things that change regularly like dyk) and see which are used and which aren't. Levivich05:09, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think we'd want to know on average how often links are selected in the "Did you know...", "In the news", "On this day", and other sections. I don't think a decision should be made solely on follow-through frequency, as the various links serve very different purposes and aren't directly comparable. The portal links are the only ones that offer navigation through content. The links in the colourful boxes expose articles to attract curiosity, links in the "Other areas" section aren't related to content, and links under "Wikipedia's sister projects" aren't related to this site. Plus we can choose to include a link with low follow through if we think it is sufficiently important. Nonetheless, having an idea of how often the different sections are used will help set background context to better frame discussion. isaacl (talk) 05:57, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For most dynamic links (DYK, TFA, OTD... pretty much everything except ITN), we can see the spike that linking on the main page causes just from looking at the page views. For ITN I don't think it matters much either way, as that's a special case (we're not going to decide static links like portal links by looking at ITN clickthroughs). Portal links aren't the only links that offer navigation through content; there's also the "Contents" link. That's one of the static links we should track through redirects. It would be a PIA to redirect all the dynamic content--we'd need the cooperation of everyone who puts together the ITN, OTD, DYK, TFA, TFP, TFL, and I'm probably forgetting some. Hence why I think we should just put redirects on the static links and not the dynamic ones. As Wikmoz points out, we could do that right now and have data in a matter of days. Levivich17:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pageviews for the portals linked from the main page range from 2300 to 4800 per portal per day. [11] Similar figures for the other top-level portals listed in Wikipedia:Contents/Portals range from 120 to 320. [12] It seems reasonable to conclude that this change would prevent approximately 90% of visits to the listed portals, i.e. about 25,000 visits per day. Certes (talk) 18:22, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you; that's wonderful news which I'll repeat elsewhere. A lot of us have been waiting for that tool, but none of us had managed to discover WikiNav. (I've been using a crude hack on my PC but it requires a 1 GB download.) Certes (talk) 14:02, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Whatamidoing (WMF): Is there any way we can show more than the top ten sources and destinations? I see we can extend it to top 20 in one of the graphics, but it would transform the tool's usefulness if the final tables could list all incoming and outgoing pageviews with 10+ views, as given in the Clickstream data, not just the top ten. (The Chocolate example cuts off at 289 views.) Certes (talk) 00:28, 20 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We'd have to ask User:MGerlach (WMF) or User:Isaac (WMF) about the possibility of getting more results. Also, for the purpose of this discussion, it'd be really nice to have the Portal: namespace included.
The underlying clickstream dataset only includes the main namespace, so it might be challenging. I think including more namespaces would be a great thing, and very useful not only for this but for figuring out how users navigate Help and Policy pages. Thanks for pointing out WikiNav though, which is a much easier way to explore the data that we do have! the wub"?!"20:53, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We don't know if those page views are coming in from the main page links or not though. That's what the proposed redirects would tell us. Levivich18:40, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. However, of the top-level portals listed in Wikipedia:Contents/Portals, every single one that's linked from the main page has over 2200 visits, while every single one that's not linked from the main page has under 330 visits. We don't need a statistical analysis to see that can't be coincidence. These links are clearly the oxygen supply of the portal system, through which 90% of visits occur. Certes (talk) 23:53, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Which makes me wonder: why are we putting these links at the top of the screens of millions of daily readers if only a couple thousand readers are clicking on them? Levivich00:08, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Because in total that's about ten million clicks a year. Collectively, the portals get more clicks than TFA, and they get them consistently every day rather than having 24 hours of glory. I can't imagine any other website deliberately making a change to turn away that level of traffic. Certes (talk) 00:19, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Right but you're confusing causation and correlation. For example, portals get more pageviews annually than a TFA because they're linked on the top of the front page. If you look at all TFAs annually, the readership dwarfs portals. For example, just the TFA you linked to, got over 20,000 page views on the day it was linked. 10x what the portals get. Think about it this way: should we keep links at the top of the page when we know that 99.9% of readers never click on them? I think a lot of websites would say "no". We also don't know that every main page link is the cause of page view spikes. The main page portals may be getting more page views than other portals not because they're on the main page, but because they have more inbound links than other portals (because they're top-level portals). We don't know how many of the portal page views are coming from the main page as opposed to elsewhere. For ITN stories, we know that not all the page views are from the main page: when a story is listed on ITN, it's also in the news, so a lot of readers are getting there via web searches. This is why ITN candidates that don't get support to post sometimes get more page views than the stories that are actually posted on ITN. It's a false assumption that the portal pageviews=main page clickthroughs, and it's faulty logic to suggest that the portals should be linked on the main page because they're getting 2k page views a day. Levivich15:35, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The eight linked portals got 30,895 views on that date, very comparable with TFA's 20,000. Portal:History alone got 5,376. Bear in mind that regular visitors to the main page will have seen the portal links before but TFA is new for them, which will inflate TFA's clicks and suppress those for portals. A better comparison might be with other static links on the page. Certes (talk) 15:48, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why you're combining the eight links together as if they were one link and then comparing those eight against one TFA link. That's just manipulating the statistics through addition to get to a number that makes it look like the portals are as popular as the TFA. A better comparison might be with other static links on the page. No kidding, if only someone had suggested that :-P Levivich16:03, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we should be able to get the info we want out of the web site logs, and not need to use wrapper redirects as a hack, but that's another story... Like I said, until we have stats to compare with, we don't have a standard for comparison. But additionally: followed-link count is one measure of success, but a low count doesn't necessarily invalidate the goal of the design, as it can result from a failure in the implementation. Plus the vast majority of readers reach Wikipedia directly from search engine results, so if just looking at pure numbers as a justification, the main page should just be a choice of search engine forms.
I think we should be looking at the end goal, and figure out the best way to achieve it. If we want to provide more prominent content navigation than a sidebar link in a small font size, is using the existing portals the best way? Should we use links to the Contents subpages? Or something else? isaacl (talk) 03:56, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given the lack of information on what parts of the main page are popular, I don't feel an argument can be made on removing any of them based on page views. (Portal page views might be low compared with main page views, but they could still be the most often selected links on the main page.) Other arguments for or against any sections can of course still be put forth. isaacl (talk) 04:51, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
At the risk of WP:OTHERSTUFF, perhaps we should look at other language Wikipedias. Eight of the top ten main pages link to the major portals in a similar way to enwp, and usually more prominently (icons, bold, etc.), though sometimes further down the page. The other two link to at least the main portal. A quick sample suggests that English portals are similar quality to those in other languages. It's not clear why they are being singled out for orphaning. Certes (talk) 19:42, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
After reading this discussion yesterday I got in the shower this morning and my eyes fell on my trusty bottle of Dr Bronner's. For all those wondering why more white space might be desirable - this is why. Retswerb (talk) 21:55, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there are arguments for adding more white space to the main page. However, a consensus to add white space need not necessarily imply unlinking portals. We could remove some other feature instead, or simply make the page bigger. Certes (talk) 00:23, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Correct, of course: whitespace does not have to come from removal of portal links. But there appears to be an argument being made by you and others that whitespace is always less valuable than content (Then I suppose it boils down to which better serves our readers: wikilinks, or white space / creates more useless whitespace / Oppose removal unless some other use of the space is made). While it is certainly true that whitespace without content is meaningless, I would argue that content without whitespace loses significance altogether. Whitespace is how we point out content that we care about - rather than the page becoming a meaningless wall of text, like Bronner's memorable but ultimately uninfluential label. Retswerb (talk) 08:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – First of all, this is not meant as any sort of personal criticism, so sorry if anyone takes offense, because that's not the point at all. However, some of the arguments supporting link removal make no sense. For example, above a user states that they have never used portals, but if one user does not use portals, why should thousands of users that do use portals have lesser access to links to them? It's like saying, "I don't read DYK articles, so links to them on Main page should be removed". This is purely personal-preference based and subjective, and doesn't take into account that many readers do use portals. Another user states that "readers don't use them", but this is not based in fact whatsoever, and is obviously subjective opinion lacking any basis in actual facts. For example:
Obviously, readers do use portals, and these figures are from only three of the eight listed on main page. Another user states that "portals are generally outdated and poor content", but those linked on Main page are quite the opposite. For example, Portal:Biography only displays Featured articles in its Featured biography section. Per the Featured articles page, it states, "Featured articles are considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer". Portal:Geography provides another example, only displaying FA-class articles in its Featured articles and Biography sections. This is certainly not poor content, not in the least; rather, it is the best content. North America100023:07, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Another user states that "readers don't use them", but this is not based in fact whatsoever, and is obviously subjective opinion lacking any basis in actual facts. It's based on math. The main page got 170 million page views in October. The portals, combined, got less than 1 million. If we assume all the portal page views come from the main page (obviously not actually true), that's still less than 1%. So, 99% of main page visitors do not click on the portal links.
To put it another way, we know from the page views statistics that when someone loads the main page, 99 times out of 100 they don't click on any portal link. Those links are very rarely used. Levivich23:41, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We can be confident that 90% of traffic to these portals comes via the main page, because linked portals get ten times more views than unlinked ones. This report counts total views for pages linked from the main page. The portals rank between 18 and 32 out of 112. Every single portal is in the top 30% most popular targets. If we needed to remove links (which we don't) then there are many less popular pages which should be unlinked before considering the portals. Certes (talk) 23:51, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given it is incredibly unclear that most of the links are actually to portals, I am not sure page views are an accurate estimation of the utility people find from these links. People may be wanting to visit The arts and instead find themselves clicking on Portal:The arts|The arts. Further, we know from DYK data that being listed on the main page results in a massive spike in page views, are people visiting because of the prominence of these links or because they find them to be a really helpful navigational aid? Cavalryman (talk) 00:04, 10 November 2021 (UTC).[reply]
This is true. To really understand the utility of the Portal links we'd have to look at where users go next after clicking a Portal from the main page. Even then, utility is difficult to judge. Retswerb (talk) 07:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Meh. I partially agree with Calidum- I think that if we are going to redesign the main page, we should do it as part of a broader discussion of Wikipedia's appearance. However, I do think that Sdkb's proposal to identify portals as a "unique way to view wikipedia" is worthwhile-portals can be useful and a clearer identification of their purpose would increase their usefulness; it could perhaps even revitalise them from their current *older* appearance. NANPLover47talk05:06, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This RfC concerns the language used in MediaWiki:Editpage-head-copy-warn, the universal editnotice that appears above the edit window whenever one is editing a page using the source editor on desktop (it does not appear in the VisualEditor). The current language, which has seen only relatively minor changes since it was adopted in 2012, is:
The editnotice is accompanied by another notice, MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning, which appears below the editing window, just above the Publish changes button, and currently reads:
By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
That notice has legal implications and could not be changed without WMF involvement, but preliminary discussion has established that the universal editnotice is under our editorial control.
Given how widely it appears, the universal editnotice is an extremely valuable space. If we use it well, it can help us communicate essential information with editors, particularly newcomers. However, from a usability perspective, the principle of banner blindness is vital: users don't like explanatory text, so the longer we make the notice, the fewer people will read it (and most won't read it no matter what, and even fewer will click links). Therefore, we should ensure that the notice contains only the most essential advice and does not succumb to instruction creep.
I have made two proposals below that I think will help make the editnotice more useful to newcomers and improve its conciseness to increase the likelihood it is noticed. If the discussion here identifies additional possible changes, feel free to open sections to discuss them. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk23:46, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 1 (Universal editnotice)
This proposal passed. There was pretty strong consensus for adding "citations to reliable sources", but more debate on whether "supportable" was the right word. The discussion ended with a weaker consensus towards using "verifiable", in line with Wikipedia:Verifiability. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 18:14, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The fundamental issue here is that "verifiability" is not an intuitive concept, and newcomers will not know what it means unless they click the link (which, per above, most won't). "Cite reliable sources", on the other hand, is direct instruction that will make sense to most people. {{u|Sdkb}}talk23:46, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support as nominator. The choice to use supportable rather than supported was intentional. It avoids providing technically false guidance (citations are technically only strictly required for BLPs/challenged material, and there are arguably exceptions like MOS:PLOTSOURCE and WP:BLUESKY) but still pretty directly communicates what we want newcomers to do in practical terms. {{u|Sdkb}}talk23:46, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I think "supported" is the better language. Not only is this word more common, it is also closer to WP:V's meaning. Under WP:V, what is required is inline citation if the material is challenged or likely to be challenged. However, all material must still be supported by a reliable source, i.e. the editor must have established that a reliable source exists somewhere. (At least that's my interpretation.) In this sense, "supported" is pretty close in meaning to "lifted from" a reliable source. I don't think the meaning of WP:V is to allow editors to add content without having checked first if a source exists (see also WP:NOTESSAY, which is a policy). I also disagree with the implied notion that adding material without an inline citation is a valid way of contributing to the project: it is established that adding unsourced content repeatedly may lead to a block: see {{Uw-unsourced3}} and {{Uw-unsourced4}}. JBchrchtalk02:50, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sdkb makes a good case. Regarding "supported" vs "supportable" I'm not sure, either can be correct from different perspectives. Essentially, what we require is verifiability. Citations to reliable sources is the just common way to achieve that – and which is not strictly required for lists and outlines and glossaries and the like where wikilinks (pointing to articles which have sources) are usually a reasonable substitute for citing sources directly. Nor are they required for MOS:LEAD. But the new wording does strike as the more easy-to-grasp concept. And it's a bonus that the wikilink is spread across several words making it more likely to be clicked. – SD0001 (talk) 17:07, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Isaacl, how would you feel about "supported", as suggested above? I don't have a strong preference between those two—the main thing I care about is the "verifiable" → "citations to reliable sources" change—but I want to make sure that once this goes wider (probably CENT) it doesn't get scuttled by concerns it'd be in any way changing policy. Perhaps I'm just imagining those concerns, so if you or others do hold that view, I'd definitely like to know. Regarding "defensible"/"justifiable", I think that starts to become less clear to newcomers, who are likely to gloss over "supportable" and read it as "supported" but might not do so for those other words. {{u|Sdkb}}talk21:15, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I think it's as clear to say something like Encyclopedic content must be justified by reliable sources. as it is to say Encyclopedic content must be supported by reliable sources. I think it's easier for readers to parse when using a verb rather than an adjective, as I feel the adjective is less direct (it describes a property of encyclopedic content, whereas with a verb, a direct instruction is being given). In this form, either verb is fine with me. isaacl (talk) 21:34, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I agree with Sdkb that "must be supported by reliable sources" would give the wrong impression; I'd read that as meaning that adding unreferenced content is completely forbidden, which isn't true. On the other hand, "supportable" is awkward; it takes an extra second or two to grasp the meaning of the sentence, and for that reason I suspect new editors would be more likely to skip over it. The proposed wording also omits or downplays the second part of verifiablity, which is that inline citations are required for anything challenged or likely to be challenged. In fine, I'm not sure that the concept of verifiability can be easily explained in a sentence, in which case a simple wikilink might be the better option. Dan from A.P. (talk) 10:50, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I don't think there's a lot of risk in a modified edit notice deterring edits from those who have a reliable source on hand but don't want to add a citation. This happens all the time at present, and I don't think the proposed change will alter this. I think the amount of citations in the existing text will be a greater influence on new editors, for those who are inclined to add citations. I think the essence to get across to newcomers is that they should be making edits based on reliable sources, not just something they know from having heard somewhere. ("...based on reliable sources" could be another way of wording it.) isaacl (talk) 16:18, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have an issue with "verifiable through citations", but I don't see how it is different from "supported through citations" from a policy perspective. isaacl (talk) 02:47, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
must be supported implies that you aren't allowed to add statements without citations. It's generally discouraged, but there's some places (like plot summaries) where it's the default, and even outside of those cases it's allowed to an extent. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they)05:15, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that "must be verifiable through citations" implies this in the same manner. The key passage that does this is "through citations", as this implies the presence of citations. Just saying the content must be supported/verified by reliable sources avoids this (plus is more direct). isaacl (talk) 16:28, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But "verified"/"supported" and "verifiable"/"supportable" are not the same thing. "The sky is blue" is verifiable, but, inserted into an article that doesn't already have a citation to that effect, it's not verified. Saying that content must be verified would imply that users are not allowed to add statements without adding a corresponding source, which is not a policy. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they)18:36, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Verifiable through citations" implies there must be a citation present in order for the statement to have the property of being verifiable. "Verifiable through reliable sources" does not imply the presence of a citation, nor does "verified by reliable sources", nor "supported by reliable sources". isaacl (talk) 22:09, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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.
Remove the last sentence (Any work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions.).
There are two problems here. First, it's redundant to the Wikimedia copyright warning (see Explanation and principles above), and if editors don't read that, they're not likely to read the universal editnotice either. Second, of the three topics covered in the current notice, two of them—copyright and verifiability—are major issues that we are constantly struggling to communicate to newcomers (see the backlog at WP:CCI or Category:Articles with unsourced statements). But the third just isn't. Editors complaining about content they contributed to Wikipedia being reused is quite rare. Per the principles above, the question we should be asking ourselves is not whether any editor might ever find it useful, but rather whether it meets the extremely high bar of being the most important thing for us to communicate. This sentence does not meet that bar. {{u|Sdkb}}talk23:46, 11 November 2021 (UTC)Modified 17:48, 12 November 2021 (UTC) in response to misunderstanding below.[reply]
Need legal advice. I'm pretty sure that there are some good copyright lawyers at the WMF, so we should probably ask them and not rely on my hot takes but: I think this is here for purely legal purposes. The CC BY-SA license requires attribution "in the manner specified by the author or licensor". Left as is, the author could think that he would be given personal credit for the content they have contributed, and such a perception could have legal consequences for the re-users of Wikipedia content. In more technical terms, some lawyers may have thought that there was a risk that clause 7(b) of the Terms of Use might not be binding on editors without emphasizing this specific point (see also here, at "Are my terms and conditions enforceable?"). This disclaimer makes this point absolutely clear and I would assume that it's a fine print not there for people to actually read, but to provide protection in case something goes wrong. But again, we should probably ask the lawyers who thought this through. JBchrchtalk03:20, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@JBchrch, see the explanation section above; the WMF Legal Team was contacted in the preliminary discussion. It seems it's only the copyright notice that has legal implications. {{u|Sdkb}}talk03:55, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sdkb: We should double-check, IMO. The sentence "You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." has definitely been written by a lawyer, and with the aim of having legal/contractual effects. Do we know when and why it was introduced? JBchrchtalk04:07, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The WMF lawyers are listed here, under "Legal Ops". I propose that I shoot them an email tomorrow night if we have not been able to clarify this issue by then. JBchrchtalk04:15, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It definitely wouldn't hurt, so feel free. And just to make clear, the hyperlink/URL sentence isn't what's under consideration here; it's the Any work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions.{{u|Sdkb}}talk06:32, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sdkb: ooOOOoohh, so the sentence you propose to remove is not You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.? JBchrchtalk06:42, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sdkb: Gotcha. I will now collapse my comment in order not to pollute the discussion, but perhaps you should clarify in your proposal what exactly "last sentence" refers to. Cheers. JBchrchtalk16:00, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Discussion (Universal editnotice)
A bit off-topic maybe, but if we want to ensure that people read the note, maybe we can also do something about the giant interstitial? ("Welcome to Wikipedia / Anyone can edit, and every improvement helps. Thank you for helping the world discover more!", shoved in front of everyone before they can get to the edit screen, with a button for switching to the VisualEditor.) --Yair rand (talk) 11:17, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You mean the pop-up notice? My understanding is that that is the current compromise between a VE and a source editor default. So long as source remains the default, I think newcomers definitely need something inviting them to use VE. That's a separate discussion not very related to here, though, so perhaps we should take it up elsewhere. One question that might be more related to here is why the notice doesn't appear in VE. Once we get it refined, I think pushing for it to appear in VE the same as the source editor would be a good next step, since copyright/verifiability are just as important there. {{u|Sdkb}}talk17:12, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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.
After 22 days, I think it's time to close this one. First, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who participated—I learned a lot about accessibility and formatting throughout the process and particularly by reading all of your comments. I think it's fair to say that the general consensus was the proposal's clunkiness and bureaucracy outweighed possible accessibility upsides, given the prevalence and improvement of screen reader technology. Accessibility, to all who might not consider reading the best form of digesting information (including, but also supersedind, blind people), is a super important topic for the encyclopedia to address and I can't wait to see where we go to address it. Here's to the sparks of new ideas and to the saucer that cools the coffee—Cheers, everyone! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she?) 06:56, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Problem: The Main Page of English Wikipedia is regularly seen by 5.5 million people, of whom a significant number are visually impaired. While WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia exists to narrate existing articles, and has narrated hundreds of Featured Articles, users are currently not allowed to add recordings to sections of the Main Page. This lack of audio narration poses a barrier to not just the visually impaired who wish to view the works we want to spotlight, but also those with reading or learning disabilities, those too young to read large chunks of text comfortably and seamlessly, and those who simply are more predisposed to retain information auditorily rather than textually. Not every section of the Main Page is easily narrated—Did you know, On this day, and In the news, for example, are too unpredictable to have immutable recordings attached to them. Today's featured article (TFA), however, consists of a single thousand-character blurb generally updated only once a day, ideal for a spoken recording.
Proposal: In every nomination template for TFA, there should be an optional "narration" parameter that allows the nominator, or any other interested editor, to add a spoken recording of the blurb that is to appear on the Main Page. A sample narration on a past iteration of the Main Page can be found here to roughly illustrate how this may look and feel, although this will be changed as more experienced template editors than myself fiddle with the idea. No nomination will be required to contain a narration, but any recording that is attached to the nomination must be reviewed by an admin according to the guidelines laid out by WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia for technical quality, clarity, and accuracy before the recording can accompany the nomination to the Main Page. This proposal has the potential to help thousands in accessing the articles that Wikipedia is most proud of. Thanks for your time, and I hope I can count on your support! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 06:54, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion (TFA blurbs)
I'm interested to hear from editors familiar with visual impairment whether spoken versions of articles actually help aid accessibility. I have a sense that text-to-speech software has improved dramatically in the past decade or so, which has limited the usefulness of spoken versions. If there's not a major advantage of having human narration, the costs in effort, inconsistency, and difficulty in updating may be reasons to reject this. {{u|Sdkb}}talk09:13, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not persuaded that there is a pressing need, particularly given the advances in text-to-speech technology since WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia launched. {{u|Sdkb}}talk02:13, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In-principle, this is a very nice and innovative idea, which is definitely useful for visually impaired—in my opinion, a human narration is better than an automated one. But presently, the biggest issue I see with this is its inconsistency. "No nomination will be required to contain a narration ..." may not be a good idea, especially for the main page. To me, it will look odd if we have narrated version attached with the blurb for three days, but not for the fourth. Article featuring at TFA are scheduled well in advance. As of today (November 15), we have articles scheduled for all the dates till December 31! I was wondering if we can have a group of interested editors volunteering to create recordings in advance as to avoid this inconsistency. Thoughts? – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 09:32, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As a blind user, I wouldn't benefit from this at all personallly, but I'm one of the most un-audio-oriented blind people I know of. I don't know any other blind people this would benefit; people who are proficient at using screen readers tend to prefer using them, but not all blind people are (especially those who have recently lost their sight). As noted in the executive summary and at the idea lab discussion (which I noticed but chose to lurk in), this might also benefit people with other disabilities. Since the TFA blurbs are relatively short and the spoken version isn't a *requirement*, I'm basically meh on the whole idea. Also, many people who visit Wikipedia's Main Page don't read much or any of it and just use it as a search bar; we don't have exact figures but I highly doubt that 5.5 million people a day actually engage with the "Today's featured article" section, for example. Graham8710:12, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's worth a try, it does require both volunteers willing to record narrations and those to quality check the recordings - so being optional is necessary as either of those could fail to emerge. A probably-more-than-bikeshedding part to consider from VPI is how much screen real estate to allocate for this control. It could be anything from a small icon (topicon sized), a line of text, the full player control - or something else. — xaosfluxTalk11:00, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I reiterate what I've stated elsewhere, in that this is a forward-thinking idea. Just consider all you access on the internet that comes with sound, some helpful and some not. But Wikipedia has no sound on its main page, possibly the first Wikipedia page that opens up for much of the global readership. In addition to the sight-impaired benefit, even if it's just a little two-sentence oral blurb, it enhances the reader experience. On a global media outlet where nothing is censored, there's an aspect to consider about whether or not we want it on every TFA. That could be decided on a one-on-one basis as the TFA process puts together it's individual blurbs. But I certainly believe it's a worthy feature we should enable. — Maile (talk) 11:31, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a great idea. It calls attention to WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia with a minimum of effort: recording one blurb doesn't take long at all, and they can be prepared weeks in advance, so I don't think we need to worry about gaps. I'd also like to hear more about whether readers with visual impairments find these useful, but that shouldn't be the only consideration either. Lots of people just prefer listening or watching to reading and Wikipedia's overwhelmingly text-based front page is really starting to show its age in comparison to other websites. – Joe (talk) 12:18, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are some practical difficulties. We are scheduled until December 31, but that is because I scheduled December a bit early this month (I schedule the third month in each quarter) and often it's not until the 20th or so that the coordinator whose month it is competes work. "Nominations" (at TFA/R) account for perhaps five or six of the blurbs in a month, many of the remainder won't have prepared blurbs yet. Once a blurb is posted (whether by a coordinator or by one of the principal editors of the article), that is not a final version as there are several users who often go through some days in advance and offer suggestions or edit it directly. And, quite often, WP:ERRORS weighs in on the day or on the day before, and we wind up changing the blurb. Since the spoken word version needs to be finalized some time in advance of main page day to allow for review, one can expect variances between it and the written blurb.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:35, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If there's a substantial difference, or an error of fact, the recording can be pulled (or even remade); but I think it's okay if there are more unimportant variances between the two. The recording still supplies the necessary information to the relevant people. I do agree that it's hard to make recordings so far in advance.theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 19:22, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't want to see variances, even minor ones. The main page is supposed to have the most refined content, and having a different blurb and spoken version is something that could cause mild confusion for readers or arguments among editors (over whether or not a variation is minor). {{u|Sdkb}}talk02:11, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Moving to a !vote since the discussion above has failed to articulate compelling reasons (accessibility-related or otherwise) that we would want to do this. The "meh, it doesn't seem useful but wouldn't do any harm either" position is tempting, but I can't buy that either. As we've been experiencing (sometimes painfully) with the book and portal namespaces over the past few years, even when editing/engaging in an area is optional, there are costs to having it around in maintenance, diverted attention, clutter, etc. Fundamentally, this is not worth it. {{u|Sdkb}}talk02:21, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think one can compare this to books or portals. Both of these need active maintenance, while the contents of this proposal seemingly do not. Dege31 (talk) 16:32, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Lean oppose. This seems like busywork that we don't even know if there are people who'd volunteer for it. I think the option to add audio to the blurb is ok, but only if it's a cut from the existing spoken article, assuming the content matches. Otherwise, it's more work for very little gain. Dege31 (talk) 16:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Project Spoken Wikipedia, while done out of good faith, was largely a misguided way to direct volunteer time, and doing the same for blurbs would have the same problems. Most blind people who wish to listen to an article would actually rather hear the up-to-date version spoken by a controllable machine reader which can go at the desired pace, accent, and so on of the listener, not a snapshot made three years ago by an unknown speaker. I suppose the risk of "vandalism" would be less for the front page version, but this seems like misspent effort - very, very, very few people would be interested in this, yet it wouldn't really achieve much for accessibility. And unlike article recordings, these front page blurbs would be used one day and then never again. SnowFire (talk) 19:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: I am not too familiar with this area and it seemed like a grand idea --- until --- issues were brought to light that derailed it. Unless there was some compelling solution to issues mentioned by Wehwalt then I can see some corrections not being updated in the audio resulting in "variances" as mentioned by Sdkb. I would imagine an editor making last-minute changes could (a stretch) simply remove the audio but consistency and convenience would seem to mandate it should be there all the time or not at all. -- Otr500 (talk) 03:31, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support (with caveats) - Wikipedia is one of the least accessible websites there is, making it more accessible is always a good thing. When I visit other websites, and they have a "Listen to this article" option, I always always use it rather than my screen reader. For me, a human voice is preferable over a machine translation. But, here's my caveat, if it's not going to be consistent on a day to day basis, what's the point? Readers shouldn't land on the main page one day, and see this new feature and think, oh wow, look at Wikipedia stepping up their game, and then come back the next day and not find it, thinking, I knew it was too good to be true. Be consistent or don't do it at all. This is good advice for the whole project, audio articles help retain readers.Isaidnoway(talk)13:57, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Volunteer I put forward that none of us will really know whether it is a great idea or a terrible idea until we get a few blurbs read aloud and hear them, gauge how much work is involved, and compare this to the benefits reaped. I thus volunteer to do several blurbs, as I have found this work very beneficial to myself personally. If it's no better than a screen reader, we can discontinue.Gallomimia (talk) 17:35, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose based on considered feedback of several above. First, if Graham87 doesn't see it as helpful, that is huge in my estimation. Second, the concerns raised by Wehwalt are very real and serious ... the blurb is changing even as it is on the mainpage, so this could be a very difficult wrinkle, and the TFA/mainpage/FA editors don't need another wrinkle to deal with on mainpage day. And I agree that doing all of this for a one-day event is misspent effort. Third, I agree that Spoken Wikipedia is well intended but quite misguided; I note how often even Featured articles have links to dated spoken versions on the article page. In the medical realm, this is really troubling, when we are linking to outdated info. So, I'm not really inclined to do something to advertise a project that isn't working as well as hoped. I could be persuaded otherwise if I thought this move would really benefit the visually impaired, but with Graham87 not on board, that pushes me definitively to oppose. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:47, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Better to rely on text-to-speech tech, in which big corporations are investing millions of dollars. Adds a lot of complexity to the TFA process which, while I'm not personally familiar with it, I don't think is a walk in the park. Also sharing Sdkb about diverting editors' attention away from more central missions of the project. JBchrchtalk22:23, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as someone who makes Spokens. I would prefer only a few select ones that can be updated as time goes on for each user, of a high quality. Each blurb would most likely be rapidly made and quickly be outdated. I think Spoken Wikipedia may not serve an accessbility purpose anymore, as Graham has pointed out, but as just another format to absorb Wikipedia. If they are not of the quality and close to the date of the article it corresponds to, it really isn't useful to any listeners. And as a small tangent; SandyGeorgia, a lot of why the articles are old and outdated is that the project was dormant for a long time. I hope to get around to them at some point, but it is a serious problem. If they are that outdated, feel free to remove them I guess. Sennecaster (Chat) 19:19, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Suggestion for attracting additional editors to wiki
Wiki edits can be seen as being made up of;
(A) adding new content, and (B) correctly following wiki rules for sources, formatting and non-copyright infringement.
I see various ways in which these characteristics could be achieved;
1. An individual editor does both A and B.
This is the view of a recent ANI group.
2. An individual editor does A, and another editor and/or bot at some point kindly does B.
This is the model I have followed for many years.
3. An individual editor does A, and tech does B.
I accept we may not quite 'be there' yet ref tech (e.g. 'AI') for this, but suspect it is close.
4. An individual editor does A, but also sets an automatic mechanism (§§), whereby if no-one else does B then the edit either (i) does not show on Wiki, or (ii) automatically disappears from Wiki after a period (a day? a month?).
Setting this up might lead to a material increase in wiki editing.
My own feeling is that the potential editors who will not operate under 1 (they may not do B due to e.g. burnout, bandwidth, lack of interest, ability, fear and/or character issues), but who would operate under 2, 3 or 4, may be of a type that is valuable in keeping wiki articles punchy and up to date.
I would suggest considering setting up method 4. above.
§§ "Dear wiki editor, most of our editors both (A) add content and (B) make sure that content fits wiki rules (e.g. for formatting, sourcing, not breaking copyright). However we know that some editors are motivated to make wiki articles better by adding content (thank you!), but are not able/willing to do the 'fitting the rules' work. If you are one of these please tick [this box] when you edit. Your edit will go live on wiki, but will later be deleted if the wiki editing system does not do the 'fitting the rules' work on it. (The time limit for this will depend on factors including the visibility of the page (i.e. we'll delete it quicker if the page has high pageviews)).Thank you again for making wiki better."JCJC777 (talk) 11:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Permitting or encouraging the addition of copyright text under the expectation that it will be rewritten by someone else is a non-starter and incompatible with Wikipedia's licensing scheme, in which every editor affirms that they can and will license their contribution under CC BY-SA 3.0 and the GFDL each time they click "Publish changes". If someone is unable to not plagiarize because of "burnout, bandwidth, lack of interest, ability, fear and/or character issues", they should feel free to suggest the source on the talk page, possibly in a {{Refideas}} template. DanCherek (talk) 07:10, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.
Yes or No. Shall the Citation Style 1 / Citation Style 2 (cs1/2) Lua module suite be updated to reflect the changes that have accumulated in the module-suite's sandboxen?
This is an all or nothing rfc. In the event of a draw, cs1/2 shall be updated. §list of prospective changes gives brief descriptions of the individual changes and links to related discussions.
list of prospective changes to the cs1/2 module suite
The last update to the cs1|2 module suite was 2021-04-10 except where otherwise noted. This section lists the changes made to the cs1|2 module suite sandboxen since that update.
Strong oppose. There are far too many changes here for a single, all-or-nothing question, so I must oppose. Come back with a series of proposals that treat the community like adults and I will support the ones that will improve the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 00:42, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I object to the concept of this RFC being all or nothing so that controversial changes such as removal of support for parameters that there was no community consensus to deprecate let alone remove are being pushed through with proper review because it would hold up needed uncontroversial changes. That's WP:GAMING the system. Thryduulf (talk) 19:50, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The removal of support for the unhyphenated parameters is also contentious, given that the premise of the discussion that (is claimed to) be the basis of consensus for the changes explicitly ruled that out (according to my memory of the major RFC anyway). Thryduulf (talk) 01:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The RFC established that the basis on which both sets parameters were deprecated did not have community consensus, or even a local consensus given that the course of action undertaken was explicitly ruled out as something that would happen. Wikilawyering about exactly what was covered by the RFC is also not a good look. Thryduulf (talk) 13:43, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is a normal code update that has typically happened every few months. It contains bug fixes, minor enhancements, and small refinements. A larger number of minor changes than usual have accumulated because a small band of editors objected to the last regular update, and the volunteers who maintain the modules understandably decided to take a break from that drama for a while. Normally, notice of these updates would take place at Help talk:Citation Style 1 (418 page watchers, 125 recent visitors), where updates to these modules have been discussed for roughly a decade. Since there was drama last time, the updates are being vetted at this more-heavily-watched page (3,503 watchers / 554 recent). – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support—we're overdue for the quarterly update. These updates dump millions of articles into the job queue for processing, so the changes are bundled and applied at once. Imzadi 1979→15:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal of formerly valid parameter names, breaks old revisions for no good reason, was opposed at previous RfCs. Would probably support the rest, but in something as unwiki as an all-or-nothing RfC (Wikipedia usually operates by consensus), this is my only option. —Kusma (talk) 20:14, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But that's not what Kusma (correctly) opposes for: the "deprecation" of parameters we used to allow is one thing, the "removal of support" from the code though means that all older versions of articles which did use these parameters will now give errors instead of just having a working (though no longer wanted) parameter. For parameters which were never widely in use, this may be acceptable; for parameters which where more widely used, this is problematic. Where the cutoff for "widely" should be placed is another kettle of fish of course. But that these parameters have been deprecated in February doesn't mean that one should support a change which now no longers supports them at all. Fram (talk) 09:15, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support all of these changes, including those identified as potentially contentious by Pppery below. I would also prefer a return to the previous approach of more frequent updates for minor changes, with RFCs reserved for changes that are likely to prove controversial, but am content for the editors that maintain the CS{1,2} templates to decide how they bring changes to the community to review. Wham2001 (talk) 08:01, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. "It's an all or nothing" and you sneak in opposed changes which you happen to support? No thanks, if that's what you try then just abandon your maintenance of this please. I love the division created by a support vote between "a small band of editors" vs. "the volunteers who maintain the modules", a nice indication of a warped view of priorities there. Fram (talk) 08:42, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fram's last sentence is important. Those who maintain these modules are doing a service to editors who add citations to articles not the other way around and this needs to be remembered. If the people who use the templates say something is bad, disruptive or unwanted then it should not happen and/or be reversed without question. The encyclopaedia does not exist for the convenience of coders. Thryduulf (talk) 10:51, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Those who maintain these modules are volunteers, not WMF employees, and they perform a complicated and very valuable service for the content creators. We are immensely grateful for the work they do. We appreciate and understand that a package of changes have been tested together and cannot easily be unbundled. Hawkeye7(discuss)03:52, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, you've been mislead to believe that. It would in fact be technically trivial to perform the rest of the update without changing the list of supported parameters. I'm becoming more and more inclined to oppose this RfC with every passing comment. * Pppery *it has begun...03:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Those who maintain these modules are volunteers, not WMF employees yes, so?. they perform a complicated and very valuable service for the content creators. which is why they need to respect the community's wishes. Thryduulf (talk) 12:18, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support all changes per Pppery and Jonesey95 comments below. As an additional comment to this procedure, the module maintainers do a very complicated and ungrateful service and I find it pretty absurd that module updates now require RfCs and even more absurd are some of the opposers are on the grounds that there are too many changes (and I'm not one of the maintainers). --Gonnym (talk) 11:01, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is not that there are too many changes. The issue is that there are too many changes that we are being asked to approve as a single unit, and that unit includes changes that should not be made as well as changes that should. The module maintainers are giving the appearance that they care more about the module than they do about the reason the module exists: to support those writing an encyclopaedia. The only correct way to proceed in a situation like this is to swallow some pride and agree to separate the controversial and uncontroversial changes so that the former do not hold up the latter. The controversial changes than then be discussed on their merits and the consensus of the community listened to, whatever that consensus is, rather than attempting to bypass it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:40, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support, although I don't really like the format of this RfC (particularly, the "all or nothing" framing and "In the event of a draw, cs1/2 shall be updated"). I don't think that the RfC should be closed as flawed, but it should be evaluated based on consensus for each of the proposed changes rather than "all or nothing", and no consensus should lead to retaining the status quo. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:57, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this RfC as stated but support unbundling the set and implementing the many non-controversial changes but not the controversial ones aka "common sense". Levivich05:18, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I've come to realize what this RfC really is, an attempt towill do: falsely establish consensus for controversial changes by making them a rider to clearly-supported changes when they failed on their own merits. That sometimes works for legislation, but it should not work on Wikipedia. * Pppery *it has begun...22:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Really? Really? Do you really think that were I trying to falsely establish consensus for controversial changes by somehow hiding them amongst a large number of other changes, I would have written this with its rather obvious markup which pretty much guarantees that anyone who merely scans the list could not fail to see it:
remove support for previously deprecated parameters |booktitle=, |chapterurl=, |episodelink=, |mailinglist=, |mapurl=, |nopp=, |publicationdate=, |publicationplace=, |serieslink=, |transcripturl=
You have accused me, and probably, by extension, the other maintainers of the cs1|2 module suite of malfeasance, of dishonesty, of lying. Produce the evidence or withdraw your accusations.
If this RfC passes (which might happen), then support for unhyphenated parameters will be removed.
If there had been a RfC solely on the question of whether support for unhyphenated parameters should be removed, that RfC would likely have failed for the same reason Option C passed at the previous RfC
Conclusion:
This RfC passing will result in a false consensus in favor of removing support for unhyphenated parameters, as a result of it being stuck in as a rider to a broadly-supported set of changes. It was incorrect to phrase it as an accusation of malicious intent, and I've reworded the above comment slightly, but that doesn't change the underlying situation.
No (equating to "oppose") as clearly mandated in the RfC's instructions, and almost entirely because of the RfC's instructions. Apparently, this RfC has to lean hard over to the "oppose" side, lest there be "no consensus", leading to to the same results as "Yes" ("support"). Then we can discuss the specific issues in an actual, properly formed RfC. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)20:36, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am astonished, truly, I am. Usually the complaint is 'too technical' or 'too much detail'. Discussions about all of the proposed changes are linked in the collapsed box at § list of prospective changes to the cs1/2 module suite. Except for the most minor of changes, all changes to cs1|2 are always discussed so whatever detail you are seeking is likely in the related linked discussion. My word choice is not the subject of this rfc so a comment about that is erroneous here. (I'm not old enough to remember Middle English: boxen in everyday usage, but I am old enough to have used VAXen so it is not uncommon for me to also substitute boxen in its more modern sense anywhere that boxes might occur. I am not the only editor at en.wiki to do this)
The only things here that seem plausibly controversial are:
add Category:CS1 tracked parameter: $1 properties tracking category; discussion (My observation: this doesn't actually add any new tracking categories, but merely adds code to populate such tracking categories if they are later needed)
FWIW, the deprecation of the above parameters happened in February 2021, more than nine months ago, all of the parameters were updated shortly thereafter, and any stray instances of those parameters have been generating error messages (and have been quickly fixed) since April 2021. This update would change the error message from "deprecated" to "unsupported" in the very rare instance that someone used one of these long-gone parameters. This change should not be confused or conflated with the objected-to deprecation of |accessdate=, which is still in wide use. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:08, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How long have they been used and how many old revisions will be broken by removal of these parameters? And what is gained by removing them? —Kusma (talk) 09:38, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
These parameter aliases were not commonly used. Hyphenated versions of them have been the standard since 2014. Dozens of unhyphenated multi-word parameters have been deprecated and removed from the CS1 citation templates over the past seven years with a minimum of drama (until the final six were proposed for deprecation back in April 2020, which is not something that is happening in this RFC). – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:19, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For a sense of scale, Module:Citation/CS1 is used in just over 5,000,000 pages. 33,000 pages was a little less than 0.7% of the total page usage. That is why it was so straightforward and easy to deprecate and update the above parameters, as opposed to the six remaining unhyphenated parameters, which are more widely used. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so the damage is middle sized (17000 broken chapterurls will create some annoyance). But removing these aliases still doesn't have any obvious advantages over not removing them. —Kusma (talk) 16:40, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In the event of a draw, cs1|2 shall be updated. This isn't normally something an editor opening an RfC can unilaterally declare, nor is an RfC's all-or-nothing status. Per WP:Consensus, if there's no consensus, we generally retain the status quo. {{u|Sdkb}}talk23:33, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is totally inappropriate, and whoever closes this should ignore this made-up rule that has no policy-based support whatsoever. In the event of "no consensus overall", the changes that are supported by consensus should be applied and the changes not supported by consensus not applied. —Kusma (talk) 09:36, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Waste of time RFC it's utter nonsense that we have to wait for months for CS1|2 updates to be rolled out, it's even more utter nonsense that we need RFCs to roll them out. If they're ready and have consensus, roll them out as soon as they've been tested in the sandbox and confirmed as working as intended. Don't delay, and don't plague us with pointless RFCs. If a particular issue is contentious, have an RFC on that issue, don't hold the rest of the updates hostage. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}00:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like the format of this RfC. It would be better done by a different method:
Propose these changes and see if anyone opposes one or more of them.
Unopposed (uncontroversial) changes can be immediately implemented or held until after the second part.
Opposed (controversial) changes would need consensus in part 2.
Obviously uncontroversial changes don't need to be included.
Open a multi-section RfC with a section on each controversial change, and let each section gain consensus individually.
Implement changes that were either uncontroversial in part 1 or gained consensus in part 2.
I don't think that the RfC should be closed as flawed, but it should be evaluated based on consensus for each of the proposed changes rather than "all or nothing", and no consensus should lead to retaining the status quo. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:57, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The cynical view is because that's the only way the proposer(s) do not wish to test the consensus of the changes individually, possibly because some of the desired changes may not pass. You are not the first to ask the question, but none of the responses have provided a plausible alternative view, although malicious intent has been denied. Thryduulf (talk) 21:31, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Changes to cs1|2 are not made secretly behind a veil; all editors are welcome, encouraged, to participate in the discussions about cs1|2 at Help talk:Citation Style 1. There is no need to re-discuss that which has already been discussed (see the discussion links in the collapsed box at § list of prospective changes to the cs1/2 module suite). Except for the most minor of changes, all changes to cs1|2 are always discussed, mostly at Help talk:Citation Style 1 and sometimes, at other locations (Help talk:CS1 errors and Template talk:Citation are common alternate-discussion locations).
In my experience – yours may be different – inconclusive RFCs result in the question: 'now what?' To avoid the 'now what?' question, I defined an action to be taken in the event that the community's opinion is not definitive. So now you know. The answer to the 'now what?' question for this RFC is: update.
There is no need to re-discuss that which has already been discussed (see the discussion links... But not all of those discussions reached a consensus in favour of the proposed changes. That suggests that either they do need to be re-discussed, or they should be removed from the proposal. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:03, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Trappist the monk:inconclusive RFCs result in the question: 'now what?' This could not have been an inconclusive RfC - either there is consensus for the changes or there is no consensus for the changes. In the first case the changes are implemented, in the second case they aren't. If the changes did not get consensus there is nothing stopping anyone who understands why they failed to get consensus addressing the reasons and asking the community about the revised proposal. Everywhere else on Wikipedia changes for which there is no consensus do not get implemented, and there is no reason for this to be any different. Thryduulf (talk) 11:32, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The question asked by this RFC is simple: Yes or No, shall we update? If the community's answer as determined by the closer is predominantly Yes then we update; if the community's answer as determined by the closer is predominantly No, then we do not update. If the community's answer as determined by the closer is inconclusive then we update and avoid the 'what now?' question. Because it is stated in the question, all respondents to this RFC know what to expect in the event of a tie.
Lol ttm like that would ever fly. The initiator of this RFC knows what to expect if updates are pushed without consensus. Levivich14:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If the answer as determined by the closer is "inconclusive" then anywhere else on Wikipedia the status quo would apply, which in this case would mean "we do not update". You have not explained why this RfC should be different to everywhere else. Thryduulf (talk) 18:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How much of a maintenance burden would it be to keep the deprecated parameters around? I sometimes worry that while the desire to keep old revisions working is reasonable, keeping the old parameters around might create extra work when updating/maintaining/adding new functionality to CS1/2 templates and we might be neglecting this extra work. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:42, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In the last RFC, which found "There is a rough consensus that non-hyphenated parameters should not be deprecated in citation templates" (emphasis in original) the maintenance burden was brought up multiple times, but nowhere in the discussion could I find anywhere that detailed exactly what that burden is or why it is so significant that it was more important than the various benefits of keeping them around (not breaking old revisions, editor familiarity, ease of use, etc). Certainly none of the arguments about maintenance burden convinced people in opposition to deprecation to change their minds. Thryduulf (talk) 11:43, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Make a reading list system on the Wikipedia website
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
There should exist a system, similar to the mobile reading list system, on the browser Wikipedia. It would be much easier to save articles on the Wikipedia website than to download it onto the computer — Preceding unsigned comment added by Constellation314 (talk • contribs) 14:43, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Familysearch ID
I have fond an very useful wikidata project: [familysearch] My question where we can see the results; either the person's Infobox Templte or the Authorisy Contol space? It is a very important geneological data and identifier of him or her.
Why would we link an unreliable site where you have to leave your personal information with a cult to even access it? That Wikidata isn't critical at all in which IDs they add is their problem, but we shouldn't add this anywhere, either directly or through a Wikidata-fed template. Fram (talk) 21:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
They are asking money for policy writing!
Sorry if it is not right place for this kind of post. This is not related to enwiki but i thought i should share. While browsing on meta, this rapid grant proposal caught my attention. They are asking money for policy writing on their wiki! It suppose to be created by community discussions and consensus by volunteers and not as paid job. If wmf fund this proposal, i guess, wmf should start paying all wiki (including enwiki) editors for on-wiki works like policy making you guys do here. --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 15:12, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everyone, I am advising on this project in my volunteer capacity. My username has been changed to my volunteer account on the proposal itself.Also, this project is not about writing the policy by one person but rather helping coordinate with the community and experts to co-create various policies. Workshops with other community members to educate them about the policies and organizing further events is a major component of this project. Satdeep Gill (talk • contribs10:50, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ammending Sources Policy
Hi there I recently edited or at least tried to edit the Spider-Man: No Way Home wiki page and tried to remove some unconfirmed provisonal information (which is not yet live to the public about cast members from what the site currently considers reliable secondary sources. In my opinion no secondary source should be considered reliable unless the information is backed up by information. If this policy ammendment was made it help improve the accuracy and reliability of wikipedia. Please consider this proposal carefully--MKL123 (talk) 20:23, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Hello,
As a suggestion to raise awareness of the benefits of Wikipedia and to encourage donations, I think it would be beneficial to implement "Useless Information Day". One day a year, users are allowed to make changes to any Wikipedia page without moderation. (Obviously, obscene or violent or otherwise harmful changes would not be allowed.) Basically, users would be allowed to vandalize any page for the entire day for the purpose of creating jokes, etc. which are normally corrected fairly quickly. Especially interesting edits would gain news or viral interest. The unreliability of information on Wikipedia on this day would highlight the need for the service and hopefully encourage donations.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeepnut1 (talk • contribs) 12:13, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That could lead to readers being seriously misled. There is also the problem of reverting the joke edits whilst retaining useful changes after the event. There is limited tolerance for jesting outside article space on April 1 each year, but even that is controversial. For those of us who fight vandalism, every day is Useless Information Day. Certes (talk) 12:47, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I thought about that. I don't have enough Wikipedia knowledge to know what's possible and what isn't, so I can't speak to the difficulty of reverting. I assumed, possibly incorrectly, that everything could just be reset to what it was before the day started and that during the event, large banners could be placed at the top of the page to alert users to the fact that today, the information of Wikipedia should not be trusted and to donate to secure the future of the service.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeepnut1 (talk • contribs) 12:54, 8 December 2021 (UTC)}[reply]
As stated above, this doesn't seem like all that good of an idea as it'll make users think that it's ok to vandalize Wikipedia which, if it were implemented, wouldn't be true. In fact, it basically goes against WP:DENY. If we were to dedicate an entire day on Wikipedia to allow users to vandalize we would be feeding any new trolls that come to Wikipedia on that day. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654517:46, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Opting out of mass messages should not generate new messages of another kind
I just got a ping in my alerts that reads "Delivery of Bots Newsletter, December 2021 to User talk:Guy Macon was skipped because the target has opted-out of message delivery".
I propose that, as a general rule, when someone indicates that they don't want certain types of messages, this should never cause them to receive another kind of message such as a ping.
The obvious way to do this for mass messages is to have the log entries use Template:No ping, but I would like there to be a general rule for all similar situations so that opting out stops all messages and never generates any sort of "here is a message telling you that we are not sending you any messages" message.
Of course some talk page notices are required, but such notices already ignore the opting-out of message delivery entirely and thus would not be affected in any way.
@Guy Macon: the linking of users in the MMS failed delivery log is not being controlled by the sender, as such this is not something we can fix here on the English Wikipedia. I have filed phab:T297538 for this though, as it certainly sounds like something that would never be desired. — xaosfluxTalk03:28, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am hoping for a notification telling me that I didn't get the notification that I didn't get a notification because I opted out of notifications. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 18:08, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(page unhelpfully refreshed by browser, causing me to have to retype the comment x5) @Guy Macon: hmm, I just tried to replicate this (by having a MMS deliver to my opted-out test alt) and got no ping. Leads me to believe that this is probably some bug and it wasn’t intended to happen. @Theinstantmatrix: did you get a ping like Guy did when the bots newsletter was handed out? —GMX🎄(ping!)08:44, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
sorry, I meant “did you get a ping, like Guy did, telling you that the bots newsletter was not delivered to you because you opted out”? —GMX🎄(ping!)08:47, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note that in my Preferences --> Notifications I have every "Notify me about these events" box set to "Web" (except "Login from an unfamiliar device", which can only be set to email). I assume that anyone who doesn't have the "mention" (Notify me when someone links to my user page) box checked will not get a ping from the mention in the mass message log. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:08, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Don’t annoy the 2% who give
I’m one of the above. I’ve just been berated multiple times in the last 5 minutes. A gentle nudge is sufficient. You have the technology to distinguish me from the 98%. Do that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.106.102.52 (talk) 01:12, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the general principle of providing customized experiences for readers who are not logged in, there is a significant number of people who dislike being tracked in this manner. In theory it could be used solely to disable fundraising banners, but I suspect the resistance to IP tracking will continue to be a barrier for acceptance. isaacl (talk) 16:35, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Adding onto the above, if you don't already know, one easy way to disable the banners is to just create an account and log in, since they're not shown to logged in users. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk21:07, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good morning,
I a not a scientific but it is possible to have two articles. Cosmic Dawn matches several and many more results in Google in English. The french translation of Cosmic Dawn i.e Aube Cosmique matches more and more results. I will reading you. Thank's and best regards, Mike Coppolano (talk) 14:41, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
When using the Cite template forms, especially in the article text editor, submitting the URL should not only return title, author, but also a red, green, yellow, or blue, indicating its reliablity status, if known. .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 05:42, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This probably should go in VPI for further fleshing out, as it doesn't propose a methodology, or how to handle cases where a source has heavily mixed reliability statuses, but would be an interesting add-on. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:15, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Or WP:UPSD if you're interesting in finding out about bad sources. Highlighting "good" sources in green is problematic, because no source is always reliable for all information. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}00:40, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In addition, even the sources that are blacklisted are sometimes (albeit rarely) appropriate to use, for example in an WP:ABOUTSELF manner, and while you could hazard a guess that if the name of the source matches the name of the article that it's being used in that manner this isn't always the case, nor is that the only place ABOUTSELF may be used. Thryduulf (talk) 03:07, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a very interesting idea, which is essentially asking for WP:RefToolbar to have some some (un)reliable source detection. The good part is that RefToolbar is a community-maintained gadget and so it can be implemented without any changes in mediawiki software (which are well known to take a lot of time to be implemented and approved). Any colour indicators would only indicate likely reliability or unreliability, so I don't see exceptions and edge cases as being problematic. – SD0001 (talk) 06:53, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is no source that is a priori reliable. There are sources with a history of prior reliability. This is entirely irrelevant when it comes to supporting a new wikitext claim. The fact that certain sources have been historically reliable in no way elevates reliability of a new, particular claim backed by the same source. Reliability trends do not predict the reliability of individual new claims any more than they predict the next outcome of a coin toss. And every citation must be reliable in its context. The aggregate or average or trend being "generally reliable" just won't cut it. Every wikitext claim must be reliably proven. A "reliability list" or "reliability algorithm" or "reliability bot" will not do. This is too important to be relegated. If you want to help the project, you, personally, have to do the work. There is an exception: when the exact same claim has been made in the past, and has been unambiguously proven correct using the exact same source. For that case only, the particular source is currently (per the available information) considered reliable. Until perhaps contrary information emerges. 74.64.150.19 (talk) 12:59, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the OP has only suggested colour indicators to highlight general reliability status of the source. No one has suggested blocking inclusion of such sources by the software or bot. – SD0001 (talk) 14:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There can be no such thing. As noted above, the reliability of the source is relative to the context of the citation and the corresponding claims made in wikitext. This is not a one-to-many relationship. Apart from the exception, also noted above, of a repeated claim supported by the same citation. 65.88.88.47 (talk) 15:21, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Administrator note If removed, please clean up Wikipedia:Main_Page/styles.css as well. — xaosflux Talk 17:01, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
01:54, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
